Steven Moffat dropped some hints a few days ago about what was coming in the coming specials this year. First, he confirmed that the Doctor can only regenerate 12 times. But then he said, regarding the number of regenerations the Doctor's had:
"I think you should go back to your DVDs and count correctly this time...there’s something you’ve all missed.”
Dear Steven, trust me, I did not miss this:
I just assumed that you'd missed it. And no, I don't have any doubt whatsoever that this is what you're talking about.
I've always noticed this, I just assumed that the writers were choosing to ignore it. But when the Doctor was shot by a Dalek in "The Stolen Earth," he regenerated, but he siphoned all of his regeneration energy off into his hand, keeping him from regenerating completely. While this was exceedingly stupid writing, it should count towards his regeneration count.
So now we know that the 11th Doctor is actually the 13th Doctor. So that means that, as Moffat has confirmed that he will be following the 13 Doctors rule, something in either the 50th Anniversary Special or the Christmas Special will deal with the fact that the Doctor's out of regenerations.
So we deal with the Doctor's end of his regeneration cycle in the next few months.
But if the 11th Doctor is really the 13th, then where's the Valeyard? The GI said that the Doctor would be known as the Valeyard by the end, but if he really is the 13th Doctor, the Valeyard should have been created already.
On Sunday, the UK's Daily Mirror reported that 106 long-lost Doctor Who episodes had been found in Ethiopia at the Ethiopian Television and Radio Agency. Fans immediately became skeptical, especially since similar rumors have been floating around for years and nothing has ever come from them. Furthermore, the source that the Mirror quoted was someone who claimed to have heard the news from a friend. Everything pointed toward some sort of hoax. Then, it was confirmed that this news was at least partially true, and now the entire thing is steeped in confusion. I'm going to try to provide everyone with a little background on this, as well as trying to work through some of the confusing and contradictory reports. Now, for those of you who don't know, many early black and white episodes of Doctor Who have been lost for decades. In the 1970's, the BBC showed a shocking lack of foresight when it taped over many old episodes of television shows in an attempt to save time and money. Apparently they didn't anticipate a future where people would pay good money to own such episodes for viewing in their own homes. At the very least, you'd think they'd have the common sense to realize that these episodes would be useful to rebroadcast in the future. Instead, many of the best BBC shows from before the 1970s are now lost, probably forever. Doctor Who wasn't the only show to receive such shabby treatment, as BBC did this with many shows on hand at the time. For example, many episodes of Til Death Us Do Part and Steptoe and Son--which were the basis for Norman Lear's brilliant American remakes All in the Family and Sanford and Son respectively--are now lost for the same reason. Over time, lost episodes have turned up in the oddest of places. Episodes from "The Dalek Masterplan," for example, turned up in a Mormon church in England which was on a property they bought from the BBC in the 1980s. Imagine being the person cleaning up a freaking LDS church to find a copy of "The Dalek Masterplan"! Private collectors seem to turn up a lot of them here and there. Some episodes were sold overseas, meaning that the networks that aired the episodes in other countries have found old film reels of the episodes. The first regeneration scene of the First Doctor into the Second Doctor only exists because a news program did a special interest story about the regeneration and they showed the footage on air. While the episode in which the regeneration occurred was lost, someone miraculously saved the news report and got the footage from there. You'd think that would be an episode someone would say "Hey, that's important enough to save!" Only episodes from the black and white era--meaning only William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton episodes--remain lost. While some Jon Pertwee episodes were wiped, black and white prints of the lost episodes remain, meaning that some episodes only exist in black and white, but all of them still exist. Patrick Troughton got the short end of the stick on this one, as many more of his episodes were lost than Hartnell's. It's a shame because, if we had to lose an entire Doctor's work, I'd rather it had been Hartnell's. Troughton's performance as the Doctor was brilliant, and it's the main reason that the show has the longevity it now has. Only 6 of Troughton's serials remain fully in tact. Luckily for fans, every episode's audio still exists perfectly in tact. This has led to a number of groups and individuals putting together what are known as "recons." Recons are episodes that are reconstructed by combining the existing audio with still photos from the production, what little video remains, narration to explain gaps, and/or original footage to fill in for the lost footage. These recons vary in quality a great deal. The most well known company that does recons is Loose Cannon. Loose Cannon's recons are a little overrated, though, and the fact that they refuse to sell any of their episodes in anything other than VHS quality means that the quality of the episodes suck. The best recons come from this random dude named Richard who makes them with Windows Media Maker (which is a horrible program, but somehow he does a great job with them) and actually includes the assisting narration to the episodes that is fully available for free from the BBC! Why nobody else ever thought to include this narration is a fucking mystery to me.
This is above average quality for a reconstruction. Some of these are more painful to watch than that "Miracle of Life" video we all saw in high school
So what happened in Ethiopia? Well, the Mirror's announcement that 106 episodes had been found seemed a little too good to be true, specifically because 106 is the exact number of episodes that remain lost. The idea that every single episode could be available once again is a prospect that would make every Whovian orgasm simultaneously. Therefore, we're all very weary of such promises. The story on the Mirror's website was inundated with comments from fans who were all calling bullshit on this. Some of them, understandably, had trouble with the fact that the article cited Doctor Who "expert" Stuart Kelly, whose first sentence of his quote began with "I was told by a friend..." It's not something you normally hear in credible news reporting. "An inside source at the White House today said that he heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from her cousin that Osama Bin Laden has been killed." A commenter named Phil Cooper commented with great confidence:
"Ethiopia only got 77 episodes, and didn't GET any Troughton stories, and it only got half of the Hartnell ones. The most we could hope for from Ethiopia is 11 missing episodes and 66 that we've already got." I saw this same comment repeated on Facebook and it dashed my hopes for a while. But while Stuart Kelly's "friend" is a fairly weak source, so is someone who's commenting on The Mirror's website. I decided to wait and see what the newspapers said the next day and see if anything is confirmed. When Radio Times confirmed the news, that's when people started to sit up and listen. Radio Times was founded by the BBC and, up until 2 years ago, was still a part of the BBC. Even if there's no official connection between the magazine and the BBC anymore, the magazine isn't likely to publish bullshit rumors about its former owner. Radio Times, however, didn't say the exact same things that the Mirror had said. For starters, it made no claims about all 106 episodes being found. It simply stated that the BBC would be making some long-lost episodes available for purchase this week. It said that they were rumored to be from a "haul" found in Africa, but that details were "sketchy." It seems to strongly imply that they know that there are more episodes that have been found than the few that are being released this week, but it didn't have a number:
Asked by RadioTimes.com if there were around 90 missing episodes from the 1960s a BBC statement said: “There are always rumours and speculation about Doctor Who missing episodes being discovered – however we cannot confirm any new finds.”
A spokeswoman added: “We can’t confirm because it’s not true, as far as I’m aware."
Doctor Who Online said on their Twitter page that they could confirm that the episodes were found, but also stated that they have heard it is not as many as 100. Less than 24 hours after their original story, The Mirror returned to the interwebs to defend their original report. When they talk about the statements that have contradicted their original report, they claim that the BBC is very secretive about Doctor Who news, pointing to their report in 2012 that Matt Smith was leaving at the end of 2013, which turned out to be true. So now their is a press conference on Tuesday with a screening, presumably of the lost episodes. Journalists are supposed to learn which episodes exactly have been found. However, there's one thing I'm very happy about: Radio Times seems to be very certain that these are Troughton episodes that are being released this week, not Hartnells. Bleeding Cool was told that they can expect the episodes to be from "Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear," both of which are episodes I'd absolutely love to watch in their entirety! But how many more episodes have turned up? The Mirror's blind optimism seems too good to be true, but I also have to remind myself that they're just applying my own Rule 1 (Moffat lies) to the entire BBC. In other words, I can't make fun of them that much if they sound kind of like me. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised to find that they were right. While they make a good point about their report about Matt Smith leaving turned out to be true, it should be stated that it may have been a coincidence and that the decision for Matt Smith to leave could very well have been made after their report. Either way, I'm going to be happy to see a few new Troughtons soon! I'll try not to get my hopes up too much about what else is coming, because the truth is that the worst case scenario at this point is still very good news. At the very least, we have a few more Patrick Troughton serials, most likely "The Web of Fear" and "Enemy of the World." That's still means that, potentially, Patrick Troughton could come to be more appreciated by other Doctor Who fans. No matter what is to come on Tuesday, that's still really good news!
“We are aware that Peter Capaldi’s played a big old part in Doctor Who and Torchwood before and we are not going to ignore the fact.
“I remember Russell [T Davies] told me that he had a big old plan as to why there were two Peter Capaldi’s in the Who universe: one in Pompeii and one in Torchwood. When I cast Peter and Russell got in touch to say how pleased he was, I said, ‘Okay, what was your theory and does it still work?' and he said, ‘Yes it does. Here it is…’"
(Moffat apparently really likes the phrase "big old.")
So let's see: there's a plot arc that was started by Davies and will be fulfilled by Moffat. What?! That could be a pretty fantastic idea. Or pretty horrible. It depends. If you've read this blog through, you should know about my strongly mixed feelings on Davies. While a great show runner, his individual episodes were often...silly. His ideas for how the show should run as a whole, however, were excellent. So to have one of those ideas carried out by a much better writer is a great prospect (assuming that Series 8 isn't anything like Series 7).
So this opens up a new mystery: What do Caecilius and John Forbisher have to do with the 12th Doctor? God, this is just the kind of Doctor Who mystery that I love to speculate about! Thank you, founding fathers of New Who!
“The face is not set from birth. It’s not like he was always going to be one day Peter Capaldi. We know that’s the case because in The War Games [sic] he has a choice of faces. So we know it’s not set, so where does he get those faces from? They can’t just be randomly generated because they’ve got lines. They’ve aged. When he turns into Peter he’ll actually have lines on his face. So where did that face come from?”
Good point, Moffat, but not the best example to illustrate this point. In "The War Games," there was a choice of faces because it was a forced regeneration. The Doctor was being forced to regenerate as a punishment by the Time Lords. They gave him a choice of faces. I always took it to mean that the Time Lords had a special way of forcing a regeneration that would allow them to pick his face.
There are two much better examples, though. One is Commander Maxil, the Time Lord guard who oversaw the attempted execution of the 5th Doctor in "Arc of Infinity." Commander Maxil was played by Colin Baker, who would later go on to play the 6th Doctor. This led to Colin Baker commenting that he was the first actor to get the role of the Doctor by killing off his predecessor. But why did the Doctor regenerate into Maxil's body? Did he have a choice? If so, why choose such an insignificant person in his life to regenerate into? Not to mention such an unattractive one. (Sorry, but at least in comparison to Peter Davison, Colin Baker was not much of a looker). Also, the Sixth Doctor needed to see a mirror before he knew what he looked like, suggesting that it wasn't much of a choice. And the 5th Doctor's death was a strange one, where he thought he was going to die outright. How did he find time to "choose" his face?
The next very significant example is Romana II. Romana was one of only two Time Lord companions that the Doctor ever had, and since the first, Susan, left before the words "Time Lord" were ever spoken on screen, Romana is more or less the only Time Lord companion. She's also one of the few characters besides the Doctor to regenerate on screen (only one of the Master's regenerations actually happened on screen). Romana seemed to have a very clear ability to choose her regeneration. Rather than explaining it to you, why don't I just show it to you, since someone was kind enough to upload it to YouTube:
A lot of people have suggested that Romana wasted a whole bunch of regenerations in her indecisiveness. However, more recent episodes point to the possibility that this all only counted as one regeneration. The main clue is the 10th Doctor in "The Christmas Invasion" grows a new hand after it's chopped off. Likewise, after Mels regenerated into River, her body could be riddled with bullets, only for her to regenerate them away into the Nazi soldiers. A lot of people have pointed to this to suggest that Romana's several bodies in this sequence only constituted one regeneration, as the regeneration process seems to last more than a single instant. The concerning part is that she seems to be regenerating just for fun. But this scene did air before the 12 regenerations rule was established in "Marwyn Undead." It's a shame that nobody told the writers in the 70's that writers 30-40 years later would be trying to make a real continuity out of all this.
But why did she have so much choice in her regeneration? No other Time Lord has ever shown this ability. The closest example is when Mels regenerated into River Song, she said she had to "concentrate on a dress size." I wrote a fan fiction one time where I said that this was a special ability Time Ladies had that Time Lords did not: the ability to choose one's own appearance in regeneration. Frankly, I think it's about as good of an explanation as any.
But even if the Doctor can choose his appearance, that only explains one of the other Capaldi's in the Whoniverse. If there was one other Capaldi out there, that would explain the 11th Doctor regenerating into a Capaldi Doctor. But why are there two other Capaldi's out there? It seems a lot like the Clara mystery, except it could hardly be the same thing. Somehow, it seems the Doctor has been split across time. I could almost buy that Caecilius was the Doctor undercover. The episode also features Karen Gillan in a pre-Amy role. Imagine an episode in which we find that the 12th Doctor was there undercover, so was Amy, and Captain Jack is there too (he said he was in Pompeii on "Volcano Day").
But John Frobisher is definitely not an undercover Doctor. Frobisher does a lot of things that the Doctor would find despicable. And the murder/suicide of Frobisher pretty much rules him out as an undercover Doctor.
So I guess I've left you with more questions than answers, but I feel like that's my role more than anything: raising the questions that need to be asked. And they're questions we'll be pondering until Capaldi's debut, which won't happen for about a year.
Scientists have confirmed that Georgia Moffet is the most attractive woman in the world.
Five years ago, the episode "The Doctor's Daughter" opened up some exciting and amazing possibilities, none of which have been fulfilled. The Doctor, the "Last of the Time Lords," is no longer the last. Technically, Jenny is also a Time Lady, and she is still out there somewhere in the Universe.
In the episode, in case you don't remember, the Doctor's DNA was stolen and, through a process called progeneration (which sounds scientifically impossible, but then again, I'm not a hard scientist), some soldiers on the planet Messaline created a soldier that is technically the Doctor's daughter, with the Doctor's genes making up both parents (which I don't think is scientifically possible, but I'm not a hard scientist). In the end of the episode the Doctor's new daughter, Jenny, is shot. The Doctor watches her die in his arms, and says that she won't be able to regenerate. It is not until the Doctor leaves that Jenny proves him wrong by sort of regenerating (although not changing her appearance somehow) and leaves in a stolen spaceship, meaning that she's still alive out there somewhere.
It's been said that Steven Moffat t was the reason that Jenny didn't die at the end of the episode. Even though he didn't write the episode, Moffat supposedly knew he was going to be taking over the show soon, and he asked the writer, Stephen Greenhorn, to bring her back to life, as he thought he might like to use her after he's taken over. Yet, to date, in the three whole seasons Moffat has been in charge, he has never used her.
When the epsiode "A Good Man Goes to War" was coming up, I was tricked into thinking Jenny was coming back. On the Doctor Who Wiki, it was reported that Jenny would return in this episode. The source this came from was actually the actress, Catrin Stewart's, official website. On it, it listed upcoming roles she was going to play. One of them said "Jenny" in the episode "A Good Man Goes to War." Jenny is a Time Lady, and therefore should be able regenerate. Therefore, literally any woman in the world could, theoretically, play her.
When the episode aired, myself and many who thought they knew what was coming, were sadly disappointed, as Catrin Stewart was not playing the Doctor's daughter, Jenny, but an unrelated character named Jenny Flint. In the episode, Jenny Flint's character's name was not spoken in such a way that it really drew my attention to it, so I kept looking at Lorna Bucket, hoping she was going to be a regeneration of Jenny. She didn't turn out to be a regeneration of Jenny in the end (although she did seem to be suspiciously set-up to be a future character, and she has yet to come back either).
At the time, I was slightly worried that a main character who was also named Jenny would prevent Moffat from being back the Doctor's daughter Jenny. Writers rarely use multiple characters with the same first name. While it would be more realistic, as, in real life, we often encounter people with the same first name as ourselves. However, it's far too confusing in fiction to keep track of people with the same first name. So this is generally avoided, unless the name needs to be used for two different characters for reasons integral to the plot (think Heathers). But, happily, Jenny Flint seemed pretty inconsequential. She was Madame Vastra's lesbian lover/assistant/ass-kicking sidekick. I didn't think she'd be coming back. However, Moffat later decided he loved Jenny, Vastra, and Strax so much, he wanted to make a spin-off about them. It never happened because he was too busy with Sherlock, so he decided to bring them back instead! Now, Jenny Flint is a significant character, having appeared in 3 episodes in the latter half of the season. You can tell Moffat is really interested in the characters becoming very central as he let another writer write for them. Special characters like River, Dorium, the Silence, the Weeping Angels, or Madame Kovarian are reserved solely for Moffat-written episodes. He doesn't seem to let anyone else write about them. But he once allowed the sadly inconsistent Mark Gatiss to use the very funny yet lamely named "Victorian Trio" in his episode "The Crimson Horror." Special recurring characters are Moffat's, but real, full time companions can generally be handed over to someone else.
So now, with the addition of Jenny Flint as an important recurring semi-companion, the other Jenny's reappearance becomes much more unlikely. Why on Earth would Moffat name another character Jenny? What was he thinking? He could have used any other female name in the world. Why Jenny? Is it possible he knew what he was doing? Possible, yes. But not likely.
Of course it's possible that Jenny Flint is secretly a regeneration of the Doctor's daughter, but it's not likely. I don't know why Moffat would wait so long to reveal something like that. I don't understand why the Doctor wouldn't have figured it out by now. The Doctor is supposed to be able to recognize his own kind when he sees them. It seems difficult to believe that, in all this time, he failed to recognize his daughter.
Then there's the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan. My friend Victor Infante told me that he wrote an essay once called "The Susan Foreman Problem" about Susan "illuminating" everything to come in the series, especially in the new series where they're willing to admit she exists.
Susan will stab you like you're a lounge chair.
In the audio adventures, which are mostly considered cannon, the 8th Doctor actually reunites with Susan and her son, the Doctor's great grandson. If we're to believe that this is cannon and happens in the same exact reality as the TV show, then Susan was, at the very least, still on Earth before the Time War. However, it was established that only two Time Lords survived the Tie War: The Doctor and The Master. The Time Lord This doesn't necessarily mean that Jenny is dead. Even though the "Visionary" said that the Master and the Doctor would be the last of the Time Lords, it was because they were the only ones to survive the Time War. Her prophesy didn't seem to apply to Time Lords (or Ladies) who somehow managed to be born after the Time Lords were wiped out in the Time War.
But the prophesy should apply to Susan. The Visionary said only two Time Lords would survive the Time War, which means Susan must have returned to Gallifrey to help defend her people in some way. The only way she could be alive is if somehow the Visionary was wrong.
Ending, burning, falling, all of it falling, the black and pitch and screaming fire, and bizarre vague crazy shit!
I always hated The Visionary in "The End of Time" for two reasons:
1) Doctor Who doesn't take place in a magical universe. The scientific explanations may be thin, but there is almost always a scientific explanation, with the notable exception of "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit," and even that was left ambiguous. At the same time, it's true that, in the Doctor Who universe, there are psychics and even people with precognition, but there's a certain science behind it in this universe. So there is plenty of precedence for someone like "The Visionary" to exist, but everything about her just reeked of magic. She just seemed out of place in the Doctor Who universe. Even the term "Visionary" sounds like something the Time Lords would have turned down their noses at.
2) Her prophesy presents a problem that future writers are going to have to deal with one way or another. We all know that, sooner or later, another Time Lord is going to have to come back. Whether it's Susan or the Rani or Omega or someone we haven't met yet, some writer some day will want to bring back a Time Lord. The show can, theoretically, go on forever. You're not going to tell me that nobody is going to want to bring back a Time Lord at some point. Davies really shat the bed on this one.
So now, for Susan to be anywhere out there, the Visionary has to have been wrong somehow. Who knows if the narrative will even bother to address what the Visionary said. Maybe, much like the "I'm half human on my mother's side" comment, they'll simply ignore it.
The spot of hope comes from the fact that the Doctor's status as a father and a grandfather has been coming up a lot more often in the past few seasons. The Doctor, in "The Doctor's Daughter," mentioned his former family for the first time since the 1st Doctor era. In "The Beast Below," Amy asks if he's a parent, and he suspiciously dodges the question. In "A Good Man Goes to War," he brings out a cot from his TARDIS to let Amy and Rory put Melody in, and says that it was his cot from when he was a baby. However, in Doctor Who Confidential, Alex Kingston (River Song) said that we should be asking "Who else slept in that cot?" Something about the Doctor's role as a father or as a grandfather is coming up very soon. I don't know how or in what way, but it's definitely coming.
Whether it's about Susan or Jenny or someone else entirely is a huge mystery, but it has to come up very soon.
At age 14, Peter Capaldi started writing in to Doctor Who frequently asking for photos. At his announcement special, they read one of the letters he wrote in after the 10th anniversary special saying he hoped that there would be a 25th anniversary special in another 15 years. But when he wrote in demanding to be the head of the Doctor Who fan club and was told the post was filled, he both started harassing the BBC and the current head of the fan club. The producer's secretary, Sarah Newman, became so enraged that she was once recalled saying "I wish the Daleks or someone would exterminate him or something to that effect."
Now he's the fucking Doctor!
Who is Peter Capaldi? I've been asking myself that since his announcement as the 12th Doctor. As I've gone on a Peter Capaldi marathon since the announcement, I've learned a few things about him. He doesn't have a lot of leading roles in his long career, but he does seem to have been nominated for awards in the few that he does have. That's a pretty good sign of an underappreciated actor. In fact, it's how you could describe most classic series Doctors in their pre-Doctor Who careers: someone who has worked tirelessly in the background, only to get a few good parts here and there. People like this are usually known as "character actors," but, to be honest, character actors usually play the same kind of character in every single thing they play. But that's not what Peter Capaldi is. Peter Capaldi has the one attributes I admire most in any actor, the attribute I judge most of my fellow slam poets by, the attribute I judge my favorite musical artists by, and the attribute that makes me so admire Steven Moffat:
Range!
Peter Capaldi has played a sniveling middle man (John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth), a fallen angel (The Angel Islington in Neverwhere), and--most famously--a hypermasculine bulldog (Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It/In the Loop), plus a ton of other very diverse roles. And he can handle each one with the same level of talent. When watching him as Frobisher in in Torchwood and watching him as Tucker in The Thick of It/In the Loop, you can forget that he's the same person and, if you watched the two with a long gap in between them, you might not even remember him as his character in the other one. He transforms into very different people in those two roles, and not just because he can slip easily back and forth between a Scottish accent that's even thicker than the one he has in real life and a basic British accent.
A Dashing Doctor?
Like I said in the last blog I posted, we've had older Doctors, and we've had attractive Doctors, but we've never really had an attractive older Doctor. In fact, and I can't believe this is true, but, depending on when you count from (his first appearance as the Doctor or his first full episode as the Doctor) Peter Capaldi will actually be either the second oldest or the oldest person to play the Doctor, based on their exact age at the time they debuted in the role. The difference between the age William Hartnell was when he debuted as the Doctor and Peter Capaldi's age right now is a matter of months, not years. And yet clearly, Capaldi has aged much better than Hartnell ever did:
It's like Hartnell is looking into a magical mirror that shows you what you wish you looked like.
The following are pictures of Peter Capaldi looking very dashing and handsome:
And now these are some pictures of Capaldi looking like a frumpy doofus:
Some of these pictures are thanks to what I swear to God is a real Tumblr that I did not create: Fuck Yeah Peter Capaldi's Hair
Now, what's the difference between the pictures on the top and the pictures on the bottom? Capaldi isn't in character for anything in the pictures on top. Peter Capaldi can be a quite handsome man, when he isn't playing some sort of funny-looking loser. So, obviously, we hope, for the sake of the screaming fangirls, that the hair and make-up people allow Capaldi to actually be a good looking man. The hardest part in going older with this Doctor is that Tennant and Smith built up such a female audience with their sex appeal, that the next Doctor has to be sexy. This is about as sexy of a 55 year old man that they could have gotten.
A Scottish Doctor?
Most Scottish actors can do a British accent. It's pretty necessary. Just like American actors from the South should probably know how to do a neutral American accent. Scotland is, after all, technically still part of the United Kingdom, so at least half of your work is going to be asked to do a lot of roles where a Scottish accent just isn't appropriate. Peter Capaldi is no different. The question is, what accent will he use to play the Doctor?
Capaldi will be the third Scottish actor to play the role. The first was Sylvester McCoy, the second David Tennant. I always thought it particularly strange that McCoy played the role with his natural accent, where Tennant did it in his fake British accent. My friend Victor once joked that the reason was because, by the time they hired David Tennant, they knew people were actually watching the show. But it does demonstrate that, in canon, it has been established that the Doctor can change accents upon regenerations. As the 9th Doctor said when questioned about his Northern accent, "Lots of planets have a north!" (I'd love to hear Peter Capaldi say at some time "Lot's of planets have a Scotland!")
Capaldi's Scottish accent actually sounds better to me. It's his natural accent, it makes him seem more like his natural self. And it's a sexy accent, unlike Tennant's natural accent. Tennant's natural accent makes him sound like a dog with a 10 foot tongue is barking at you. The only problem is that Capaldi's Scottish accent is way harder to understand, at least to an American ear. Just watch Thick of It and see how many jokes you miss because of that accent. However, Moffat's a Scot too, and he might be more open to a Doctor with a Scottish accent than Davies was when he cast Tennant. After all, Karen Gillan offered to play Amy Pond with her British accent, and Moffat wouldn't have it. Instead, he rewrote the character to be Scottish.
Now, to look at some of the roles our future renegade Time Lord has done in the past:
Local Hero
This is considered to be Capaldi's big break, really. It was his first major part, and he was in a movie with Burt Lancaster, so it must have seemed like a pretty big deal at the time. What I found really strange about this movie is how much I really enjoyed it...without understanding why. The movie seems to have very little discernible plot and virtually no conflict whatsoever, but I still found it wonderfully pleasant to watch. Maybe it's just because the village it was shot in is so fucking beautiful.
It's about a company in Houston that decides that they want to build an oil refinery in Scotland, which requires them to buy out this entire small village. "Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) is sent to try to talk the village into selling because of his success with past deals like this, but also because the company mistakes him for a Scot because of his last name, which is actually an Ellis Island special. Danny Olsen (Peter Capaldi) is the representative of the company in Scotland and accompanies Mac in his mission. Mac finds little resistance from the town, as they're actually so excited they have to hide their town meetings about it because they worry that Mac will lower the price when he sees how ecstatic they are about selling. But he still starts to doubt that he should be buying this village.
Capaldi's role is central, yet subdued. His character is a young up and comer who is eager to please, but also shy. He has the only love interest in the whole movie, and it seems like that was on purpose so they'd actually have some slight love story in it. But the main reason I want to bring up Local Hero is because of the absolutely, brilliantly hilarious way that Peter Capaldi runs in the movie. Watch (I tried to link it to the specific second he runs, but I can't, so just watch from 1:44:40 for about 30 seconds just to watch him in all his silly running glory):
Wee, I'm an airplane!
The Vicar of Dibley
Capaldi has done a lot of small roles here and there that really don't amount to much and didn't allow me to get a good idea of what his acting abilities are like. One of these is the long running sitcom The Vicar of Dibley where he appeared twice. His second appearance is simply bizarre and I don't know why they even bothered to bring him back. But his first, while not giving me an idea of what kind of actor he is, made me think of one particular thing:
Interestingly enough, the bottom image in my list of frumpy looking haired versions of Capaldi was from The Vicar of Dibley where he was described as very attractive and female characters were swooning over him. Even for the crazy hair of the early- to mid-90's, that seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's an attractive hairstyle. I think people were told to pretend that he was attractive, the same way that classic series Doctor Who actors were told to pretend that ridiculous monsters in big, obviously fake rubber suits are scary.
Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life
This isn't something that Capaldi was in, but rather a short film he wrote and directed. The entire thing is on YouTube, in all it's fucked up, bizarre splendor:
The film stars the Great Intelligence himself, Richard E. Grant, as Franz Kafka writing his famous work, The Metamorphosis and finding inspiration in what appears to be some sort of drug addled dream. It actually won an Oscar and a BAFTA. The film looks like some sort of over-the-top experimental college film, but it was actually commissioned by BBC Scotland as an official comic skit. I'm glad, because if this wasn't meant to be funny, I'd lose a lot of respect for Capaldi.
Peep Show, Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War
Like I said, Capaldi pops up in a lot of little roles here and there. These are three that I found just because they were on Netflix and I was curious. My girlfriend and I are watching his most famous work, The Thick of It, together, so when she's not around I look into some of Capaldi's smaller roles. It whets my curiosity for his more significant roles.
I lump these all together because of the general similarity of his characters in these three shows. Peep Show is a great Seinfeld-ian sitcom that I've watched all the way through before. Midsomer Murders is one of those detective dramas for people over 70 like Murder She Wrote that just allow them to pass time until they die. Foyle's War is a period drama about civilian life during World War II with a kind of detective angle. In both Peep Show and Foyle's War he plays your typical left-wing radical college professor/intellectual, while in Midsomer Murders he plays an overzealous choir director. They're all the same general type of character: educated, stuffy, stuck up. If there's anything close to a Peter Capaldi stock character, this is it. He does have range, but it seems that a lot of people want to pick him up to play stuffy intellectuals.
Neverwhere
That which takes the image of an angel, does not necessarily become, itself, an angel.
Like I've said before, Capaldi has been in a lot of things I've seen that I didn't remember him from because I never bothered to learn who he was. Funny thing how he's now going to be the star of my favorite show. I had seen Neverwhere in college and didn't remember him, but I remembered his character and I loved his character.
Neverwhere is the creation of the legendary fantasy/sci-fi writer who recently became a Doctor Who writer, Neil Gaiman. It started out as a TV mini-series, but Gaiman, disappointed with the TV version, decided to turn it into a novel to tell the story the way he really intended to. Then it became a radio drama. And a comic book. And a play. And, for $10,000, Neil Gaiman will come to your bedside with a lute and perform a musical version of it in perfect iambic pentameter. Seriously, Neverwhere has been made into too many different things. And, as Gaiman himself pointed out in a tweet recently, Benedict Cumberbatch played the Angel Islington in the radio play version of Neverwhere, so one Islington is now the Doctor and one is Sherlock Holmes, both working under Steven Moffat.
This is going to get pretty spoilerish about Neverwhere and since, upon rewatching the mini-series recently, I found it to be much better than I remembered, I don't want to spoil it for you. Neverwhere was made with such a small budget and is shot on poor quality video that I think I wrote it off when I was a pretentious film student. In reality, they did some really great things to make a really creepy story with some really inexpensive special effects. So go watch it if you haven't, and highlight the following to read it if you have seen it.
Okay, so if you've highlighted this, you should know the plot already: the Angel Islington, who had once watched over Atlantis, was banished to London Below to take care of that city in a way that he failed to with Atlantis, having let Atlantis fall. To escape from his prison, required a key protected by the Black Friars and the key had to be operated by the Lady Door. This was to ensure he wasn't released until his punishment was up. Islington, however, chose to take matters into his own hands and trick Door into getting the key for him using an elaborate ruse that began with having her family killed.
What Neverwhere does that I've always found interesting (Gaiman might have said this on one of the audio commentaries, but it's been so long since I listened to them and I don't feel like doing it again) is that it reverses the symbolism of black and white. Black is associated with evil in our society, where white is associated with good. "White hats" and "black hats" are terms used to describe good and evil characters, derived from the imagery used in westerns. Some have pointed out the unfortunate racial implications of this, suggesting it contributes to an association in the mind with darkness and evil. While I understand this argument, we also have to keep in mind that the dark is something that humans are naturally afraid of because it takes away their sense of sight.
Neverwhere reverses these black and white symbols. Dark colors and even dark lighting seem to denote good people, where white and brightness--particularly in the case of Islington--are associated with evil. Partially, of course, that's because Islington is an angel, but I still feel like it's a wonderful reversal.
Neverwhere demonstrates one of Capaldi's defining characteristics, and that's his ability to play the line between good and evil very well. Islington is the villain of the story, but he is also an angel, an angel that begins the story by tricking Door and Richard into thinking he's on the side of good. He has to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he does it very well. Even when we see the true face of Islington, he performs this evil role with a frighteningly sweet and soothing tone in his voice. It adds to the creepiness of Islington's betrayal.
Strictly Sinatra
The only feature length film that's been written and directed by Capaldi. I got literally 10 minutes of this movie before I got so bored I gave up. I love you as an actor, Peter. Stick to acting.
Torchwood: Children of Earth
It was actually pretty funny and coincidental that I chose to rewatch my favorite season of Torchwood about one week before the big announcement, having no idea that I was starting my 12th Doctor viewing marathon a week early. I never would have dreamed in a million years that I was watching the next Doctor.
No spoiler warnings here. If you're reading this, you should know Children of Earth.
Frobisher is a pathetic character, even in the classic Greek sense of the term. He evokes pity and sympathy from the audience. His everyman/middleman character leads the viewer to wonder what they would be brought to do in such a horrible situation. Again, Capaldi shows his strength at playing the line between good and evil. Is Frobisher a good or a bad person? That's a tough question to debate. By certain concepts of morality, particularly utilitarian morality, he makes a morally correct choice. By other concepts of morality, he's doing a horribly immoral thing.
Even his final action, killing himself and his family, can be conceived as moral, since it is an attempt to save his family from a fate much more horrible. There was nothing, in his view, that could be done to save his children from living a vegetative life as the drug that an alien race gets high off of. So he euthanized them, in a way.
Frobisher is another example of Capaldi's impressive range, because I don't see a speck of the pathetic Frobisher in his performances as the Angel Islington or as Malcolm Tucker, as we shall see in a bit.
Thick of It/In the Loop
"We're being invaded by aliens with bloody plungers for hands? We really are at the bottom of the fuckin' food chain."
Now to the meat of the piece. This is Capaldi's most famous work, and with good reason. Thick of It is a brilliantly funny political comedy that is like a cross between House of Cards and the British version of The Office. In the Loop is a related movie, shot in both England and America, which stars many of the same actors as Thick of It playing very similar characters to their Thick of It characters, but with different names and positions. Peter Capaldi is one of only three people in the movie who actually play their own characters, making it a sort of half-spin off to Thick of It. It seems to me that they wanted to do something bigger than Thick of It, but wanted it to take place in a sort of separate universe so that it wouldn't have lasting implications for the plot of Thick of It.
Capaldi's character is Malcolm Tucker, is the government director of communications, a sort of bulldog from the Prime Minister to keep everyone's public image in check. He does this by screaming profanities left and right, bullying government employees into submission. The show follows the fairly irrelevant office of the Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship. The Secretary of State changes between Seasons 2 and 3, and that was a pretty big shift in the show as it seems to have enhanced Capaldi's role. In the first two seasons, the pathetic Hugh can be easily bullied, so Tucker didn't have to keep showing up to shout him into towing the line. The third and fourth seasons feature Hugh's replacement, the more assertive (yet still not that assertive) Nicola Murray. This leads to Malcolm Tucker being a heavier focus of the show as he fights it out with Nicola. It seems to me that Hugh was supposed to be the center of the show, but after two seasons they realized how much better of a focal point Malcolm Tucker was and shifted it towards him.
Is Tucker a good guy or a bad guy? Again, Capaldi shows a talent for playing moral ambiguity. His primary focus seems to be keeping the government stable. As the Christmas Special, "Spinners and Losers," demonstrated, his desire to keep the government stable is mainly to protect his own job. He doesn't show a lot of loyalty to anyone in particular in "Spinners and Losers." Does he care about the government's job to serve the people? Doubtful. He's part of the liberal party, so it's possible that deep down he tears people to shreds and fights to keep the government stable so that it can help the people, but I doubt that he cares much either way what the government policies are.
In In the Loop, he does, in the end, start to push to start the war in the Middle East. But I think it becomes pretty clear that Tucker didn't care whether the UK and the US went to war with the Middle East or not. If the government told him that they wanted him to stop the war, he would probably have done his job just as well, barking and threatening to disembowel everyone around him to get it done. For all of his forceful controlling of other people, Tucker is, himself, a puppet. He'll do whatever the Prime Minister thinks is appropriate.
I think this was really the role that won Capaldi the spot as the Doctor. He was a middling actor until this, mostly playing small roles and rarely getting first billing for anything. Capaldi really gained his notoriety for this role in particular. It's won him nominations for dozens of awards. He deserves this fame for this role in particular. His expletive fueled tirades are pulled off so effortlessly that you believe Tucker would have to be a raging genius to be able to come up with all of this bizarre violent imagery off the top of his head. And, most importantly, as I pointed out, I don't see a touch of any of his other characters in his portrayal of Malcolm Tucker. Tucker is a different man with a different face from Islington or Frobisher. And he fits perfectly into the skin of all three disparate characters.
Conclusion: A Great Doctor!
After studying all of his work, I'm really satisfied with the casting of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor. I can see the grandfatherly wisdom of the first 3 Doctors in his face. Yet, despite being the oldest Doctor now (more or less), there have been several who have looked older than him. He has the wisdom of age in him, and yet the vitality of youth. The diversity of his work leaves a lot of avenues open for how he will choose to portray the Doctor.
A lot of people have suggested that he can bring some darkness back to the role, like Christopher Eccleston. (Personally, I think that people who call Eccleston's Doctor dark confuse darkness with meanness.) I don't know if he will or not. He could bring a lot of depth and many layers to his Doctor. I can imagine someone both stern and loving.
I've said that the two main characteristics of the Doctor across all of the regenerations are compassion and curiosity. In some Doctors, one or both of these traits aren't easily visible, but they are always there in abundance, even if they're hidden. Capaldi's talent for the mixing of good and evil can bring out the darker more violent side of the Doctor, but will not likely hide the compassion and curiosity at the same time.
"The Doctor lives his life in darker hues" the Great Intelligence warned us. "And he will have other names before the end. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard." Will Peter Capaldi bring us the darker hues? He'll be supported by the writing of the great Moffat, master of the dark fairy tale. Peter Capaldi's seasoned acting ability and Moffat's writing (assuming he gets some of the magic back in Season 8) is a perfect combination for a really strong outing for the first older Doctor since the classic series.
Peter Capaldi, on behalf of Whovians everywhere: We can't wait to see you get started!
Did you ever stop and think about the things and people that meant nothing to you when you first encountered them, but wound up being extremely important to you later on? The first time you were in a room with your future spouse, did you even necessarily notice them? I can remember the first time I ever saw my current girlfriend, and I can tell you that I didn't immediately think this was someone I'd fall in love with and who would move out to Denver to live with me. I'm sure I heard of Doctor Who in my younger days at some point, but never assumed it would play such a big part in my life. When I was first taught the word "poetry," I probably never thought it was something that I would become a semi-professional in. These things circle around at the periphery of our lives and they aren't important until they actually are.
Enter: Peter Capaldi. Twice Capaldi has graced the screen in the Doctor Who universe: first as Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in "Fires of Pompeii," and, much more notably, as John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. His role in the franchise is so minor, that I probably wouldn't have even remembered him as Frobisher if I hadn't been rewatching Children of Earth last week. I certainly didn't remember him as Caecilius until someone pointed it out to me. He is someone who was never on my radar in any capacity. I had seen him in a few things here and there, but never did I care enough to look up who he was. Now, he's the 12th Doctor. He wasn't important, and now he is.
Okay, we'll start off with the bad news, because there's really only one piece of it: He's a white guy. I, as well as many others, were looking for, at the very least, a black Doctor. Even if a female Doctor is a bridge too far, a black Doctor is not. There's no good reason for him to have been 12 white guys in a row and, frankly, it seems rather unlikely, doesn't it?
I did seem to be right about my list of the 5 "candidates" who were definitely not getting the job, but I do seem to have been wrong about one thing: I was wrong about all betting odds being bullshit. Because about 2 days ago, bookies started to refuse taking any bets on Capaldi. How the fuck did they know? I'll remember this for next time.
That being said, Capaldi is a very interesting choice. First of all, Steven Moffat said that, when he took over as head writer, he wanted to go with an older Doctor because he believed the Doctor should be old, but Matt Smith was so perfect he decided to cast him. Whether this is true or not (I think the BBC probably pushed him to cast a younger Doctor) he genuinely seemed to be very pleased with Matt Smith's performance. Now, he apparently finally got to go through with his original idea of bringing the Doctor back to an older man.
But while most of the classic series Doctors were middle-aged or older, one thing that most of them were not were fit, trim, or handsome. Those are adjectives that really only apply to the younger Doctors like David Tennant or Peter Davison. There's never been a dashingly handsome, grey haired Doctor before. This is probably a big advantage if casting an older Doctor, because the biggest danger in doing so is alienating the screaming fangirls who have gone ga-ga over the pretty Doctors like David Tennant or Matt Smith or even Christopher Eccleston. I guess you could always bring back John Barrowman.
GF: He looks like David Tennant?
Me: Fair enough. I could by him as Tennant's father.
When I first heard the announcement, I only knew him from Torchwood, but found that a lot of people knew him better than I did. My girlfriend and a few friends just kept talking about him swearing a lot. A Google Image search for pictures of him usually turns up pictures of him yelling with some vulgar caption under it. I thought "How can someone be known for swearing? Lots of people swear in movies and television, especially after the watershed hour in England. How can swearing be someone's 'thing'? It seems too general."
Then my girlfriend showed me his show The Thick of It, which I understand also folds into the movie In the Loop. We watched the first three episodes of The Thick of It and I got it. It's a show that takes place in the British government, It's kind of a comedic version of House of Cards with Capaldi in sort of the Francis Urquhard/Frank Underwood role, only less of a scalpel than a hatchet, being less of a sly manipulator than a foul-mouthed screaming bully who gets things done through intimidation. I can understand why he's known as a swearer.
GF: I know more about the new Doctor than you do!
I'll be watching the rest of that series, and everything else I can find of his, and I'll do a big ol' book report on Capaldi.
It's not the first time a Time Lord has regenerated into the image of someone he already met. Colin Baker played Commander Maxil, a Gallifreyan security guard, before becoming the 6th Doctor. Romana II said she based her regeneration off of Princess Astra, a woman they had met in the previous episode. This is the only indication in the series that Time Lords have an ability to choose their regeneration, and almost everything else in the history of the series contradicts this and says that they have no control over what they regenerate into. But it is possible that the image of Caecilius somehow imprinted on the Doctor and caused him to regenerate into that image (Frobisher never met the Doctor, but could very well be a descendent of Caecilius, explaining the similar appearance).
The biggest thing I thought of when I saw Capaldi was that I can really see the spirit of the older Doctors emanating from him. I can see the brain of the 1st Doctor in his head. I can't imagine the personality of 11 in his head. He's going to be a very big departure from the last few Doctors. The fatherly figure of the first 3 Doctors is really what I see in Capaldi. I imagine him being quick to anger, yet gentle and loving.
Perhaps he'll create a better chemistry with Clara than Matt Smith had, as that's probably my only complaint about Clara so far. She's a great companion, but due to the very nature of her plotline, there had to be a very big emotional distance between her and Matt Smith, which made for poor chemistry. Hopefully Capaldi and Louise-Coleman can strike up a good chemistry. An old fashioned, father-daughterish Doctor-companion relationship.
While researching Capaldi, I tried to follow him on Twitter. The Twitter handle petercapaldi is a page with literally two posts, both of which are flat out nazi statements. Obviously, this is fake. I'm saving a screen cap of it in case it gets shut down, which I'm sure the BBC will do their best to do. I don't think nazi shit is funny, but I think it's ridiculous that someone did that in the name of Peter Capaldi. "But not in the name of the Doctor."
UPDATE: Looks like the Nazi Capaldi page has already been removed, so here it is for you to gaze at in abject horror:
Click to enlarge. Trigger warning.
It also turns out that Capaldi is a very close friend of Craig Ferguson. This is a picture of their high school band, The Dreamboys:
I understand that Capaldi was supposedly the lead singer, so I think that's him in the middle? God knows which one is Ferguson.
Ferguson, as most people know, is possibly the most obsessive Whovian currently residing in America (after me, of course). Capaldi, thankfully, is just about as big of a Whovian as Ferguson, which is great but certainly not a requirement of the job. Tennant was a huge Who fan before being cast, but Matt Smith knew nothing of it, and I consider them the two best to play the role.
Random Fact: Up to, and including, the casting of Matt Smith, no two actors to play the Doctor had the same first name, although two of them had the same last name. John Hurt being cast as True 9 is the first repeated first name, although admittedly with a different spelling than Jon Pertwee, and Capaldi becomes the 2nd Peter to play the role.
Random Fact #2: Moffat is now responsible for casting both the youngest and the oldest Doctor of the new series.
Now the only question that remains is: What will his costume be? When I look at pictures of Capaldi, honestly, all I can think of is a Hugh Hefner style bathrobe.
Bathrobes are cool.
One last thing I'd like to address is the accusations that Moffat made a sexist comment about the idea of a female Doctor. As a Moffat fanboy, I'm often defending him against his accusations of sexism (some of which I, admittedly, can't defend). But this time, while his joke might have been slightly sexist, it was more playful than it was reported. Tor.com maliciously misquoted what Moffat said during the reveal special, claiming that he said that casting a woman as the Doctor would be like casting a man to play the queen. He did not say those exact words. What happened is that he brought up the fact that Helen Mirren wanted the Doctor to be a woman. What Moffat said was "I would like to go on record and say that the queen should be played by a man." Without the context it just looks like a sexist line and comparing the importance of the Doctor to the Queen. In context, when you explain that it's in response to Helen Mirren who played the fucking queen, you realize it's actually a playful joke. Hopefully, when the next Doctor is cast, they'll pick someone who isn't a white male. Maybe a Richard Ayoade. Maybe even a Helen Mirren. Or, my newest idea, Peter Dinkladge:
Just lower the TARDIS console, and you have a recipe for awesome!
Either the new Doctor has been chosen, or this is how Moffat wrote "The Name of the Doctor"
The BBC has announced that the new Doctor has been chosen. Sunday at 7PM (GMT) a special will air live that will announce the 12th Doctor, including interviews with 12, Matt Smith, and Steven Moffat. Finally people's ridiculous and fruitless speculation about who the Doctor is going to be will come to an end.
This is just getting out of hand.
My hopes for Richard Ayoade getting the job, as he should, are dwindling. But I'm still pretty sure of my "shutup" list of candidates people keep tossing around who are clearly never getting the job (Benedict Cumberbatch, Helen Mirren, Russell Tovey, Rupert Grint, and David Tennant). I'm pretty sure that whoever is chosen, we're going to be completely surprised and have no idea who this guy is.
Who knows, they might cast some no-name hipster who looks like Davey Havok.
So I'm going to try to find a live feed of the BBC to watch around noon my time when the special airs. I'll have a response on Sunday, and then I'll be doing some research on whoever it is once its announced. I'll watch as much as I can of this new actor, and put together a book report.
Let's just hope they don't screw this up.
I would kill Steven Moffat slowly with a straight razor.
