Beyond the End of Time Itself: An Overanalysis of the New Trailers for "The Day of the Doctor"

RASSILON: We will initiate the Final Sanction. The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart. 

MASTER: That's suicide. 
RASSILON: We will ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone. Free of these bodies, free of time, and cause and effect, while creation itself ceases to be. 
DOCTOR: You see now? That's what they were planning in the final days of the War. I had to stop them. ("The End of Time Part 2")

This weekend, the BBC released another full trailer for the 50th Anniversary Special, "The Day of the Doctor," as well as a short clip from the episode, both of which are above.   If you remember, I already gave my analysis of the first trailer they put out a few months back.  Then the BBC put out this teaser trailer that everyone but me felt the need to dissect and analyze.  Personally, I think trying to learn anything from a trailer that has literally no footage from the episode is fruitless.  It's a cool looking trailer, but it tells us nothing we didn't already know.  But this trailer is an actual trailer that gives us some new information, so it's time to dive in.

If you ask me, it seems pretty clear that this episode is, first and foremost, the sequel to "The End of Time."  "The End of Time" told us how The Time War ended, and this episode is going to show us in greater detail.  I'm not surprised that fans speculated that this episode would be titled "The Time War." I think we're finally going to see what really happened.  Perhaps, we're going to see the very moment when the Time Lords and the Daleks were destroyed.

The 10th Doctor, the 11th Doctor, and True 9 are somehow brought together for this episode.  But the 10th Doctor says in the trailer "Why are we all together?  Why are we all here?"  That means that they didn't just stumble upon each other, or seek each other out by choice.  Something forced them together, a direct violation of the Time Lords' First Law of Time (which they broke when they felt like it).  Furthermore, there's something that never dawned on me before:  If they can meet True 9, then the time lock is broken.

In "Journey's End," we learn that the entire Time War is "time locked," meaning nobody and nothing should be able to get in or out of the time period in which the war happened.  However, Dalek Caan found a way to break through, yet it cost him his sanity (not that Daleks are really sane to begin with).  Then, in "The End of Time," Rassilon found a way out, but it was not easy to pull off.  True 9, as far as we know, only existed in the Time War, and his regeneration almost certainly happened in that war.  This means that either the 10th and 11th Doctors, along with Rose and Clara, are going to be breaking into the time lock, or True 9 is breaking out.  My money is on the former.

It's never been known when and exactly how the Doctor regenerated into the 9th Doctor.  Up until "The Name of the Doctor," it was assumed that Paul McGann's Doctor regenerated into Christopher Eccleston's, but now we know that's not true.  That leaves us with 2 regenerations we've never seen on the show, and a lot of wiggle room as to when things happened.  However, there's one important clue:  In the beginning of the episode "Rose," the 9th Doctor checks himself out in the mirror, and it looks like it's for the first time.  "Ah, could've been worse. Look at the ears. "  So True 9 presumably regenerated into 9 moments before the events of "Rose."  I think it's fairly safe to assume that his regeneration occurred because of the event that caused him to end the Time War.

It's been said that Eccleston was approached to come back for this special, but that he turned them down.  I've been wondering about this:  was True 9 supposed to be in the script, or was he added into the script because Eccleston turned down the special.  Is True 9 playing the role that Eccleston's 9 was going to play?  This would have required Moffat to completely ignore the mirror scene I mentioned earlier, but perhaps the special was supposed to be about how Eccleston's 9 ended the Time War.  Regardless, it's going to be very difficult to do this story without Eccleston, if this is the story I think it's going to be.  How do you not show True 9's regeneration into 9 if Eccleston refused to come back?  Maybe Eccleston is lying, but I doubt it.  He does seem like he's too much of a dick to come back for the fans.  But maybe he's going to surprise me.

The other little clip they released, referred to as "But That's Not Possible!"  Other than introducing a character in the background, who's supposedly going to be named Osgood (I don't feel like unraveling that little puzzle) and who seems to be wearing the 4th Doctor's scarf.  The whole clip seems pretty pointless to me.  It tells us very little.  UNIT (it sounds like Kate Stewart) is showing the Doctor a painting, and Clara sees something that she thinks is "not possible" (a phrase that is used often on Doctor Who and is almost always proven wrong).  I couldn't understand what Clara was shocked by the painting.  My girlfriend said "She saw herself in the painting."  That would be interesting, as the painting is clearly of Gallifrey burning to the ground.  But I'm afraid we're looking at a much more commonplace and tired plot device:  Clara saw the same image in a dream that's in the painting.

Next Saturday, the minisode "The Night of the Doctor" will be released.  The description they've given out says:

"The 50th Anniversary features Matt Smith, David Tennant and a mysterious incarnation played by John Hurt. Only one appears in this mini episode, 'The Night of the Doctor.' But which?"

I'm thinking of the phrasing of this.  "Only one appears in this mini episode."  One of those three?  Or one Doctor?  Moffat said that no other past Doctors will appear in the special.  He said nothing about these minisodes that he's so fond of making.  Furthermore, Paul McGann, the 8th Doctor, seems to have potentially let something slip on Twitter.  Back in October, Paul McGann said on Twitter:

"Spent forty minutes this pm having to imitate Matt Smith’s dramatic delivery in VO. You have been warned….”

After fans got crazy excited, he followed it up by saying:

“I should explain. It was by way of an aural experiment to find out how similar we might sound. We didn’t. And he’s better looking too.”

What the fuck does that mean?  What kind of aural experiment?  For what?  What could that possibly mean?  It sounds like a weird, fumbled excuse that he came up with when he realized he had just said way too much.  Even if Moffat is telling the truth about none of the past Doctors coming back for the special, that doesn't mean that none of them can come back for the minisode.  Plus, he's one of the easiest Doctors to bring back because we know so little about him.  He could have stayed in that regeneration long enough to really, truly age within that regeneration, which would explain the 20 year age difference since the last time we saw him.  You can't really say that about any other Doctor.

I think McGann is in "Night of the Doctor."

The Order of Rassilon #10: Christopher Eccleston, The Non-Doctor

"I’m constantly told I’m not funny and I’m not charming, and they were some of the demands in the role" - Christopher Eccleston, being very correct

When asked why he wouldn't wear a flamboyant costume like the other Doctors, Eccleston literally said that it was because his Doctor wasn't going to be a "tosser."

Keeping with the "first is worst" theme, the first Doctor of the classic series comes in last place, with the first Doctor of the new series in first to last.  His place on this list is going to piss off a lot of people, but I stand firmly by it.

I'll confess, as much as I seem to know about Doctor Who, I'm actually a very, very recent convert.  I just fell so in love with it that I went back and watched every episode, started digging out obscure Doctor Who comics and audio adventures, and two different sonic screwdrivers (a 9/10 one and an 11 one).  I actually began my love of Doctor Who watching the new series from the beginning when they were already well into the David Tennant era.  So, they say that your first Doctor will always be your favorite, but Eccleston was my first, really, and he's just one spot up from the bottom on my list.

Let me be clear:  it isn't that Eccleston wasn't a good actor.  He just wasn't a Doctor.  The three new series Doctors each had a very different position that they started from.  Tennant was already a die hard fan of the show who was said to be able to quote the classic series "chapter and verse."  Matt Smith was not a fan when he became the Doctor, but made damn sure he did his research before taking on the role, which caused him to fall in love with the 2nd Doctor.

Christopher Eccleston had never seen an episode of Doctor Who, and made a conscious effort not to.  I doubt he's seen one since.  He never seemed to fully understand what he had gotten himself into with Doctor Who.  We all complain about his refusal to return for new episodes or audio books, but I think that part of the reason for that is that he doesn't fully understand that it's expected of one of the Doctors. He said that he chose to take the role because he was interested in working with Russel T. Davies, not because he was interested in Doctor Who (which makes me seriously doubt his intelligence and sanity).

Christopher Eccleston has no muscles or fat in his body whatsoever.  Only bones.

The idea of one man with 12 different faces is an idea so bizarre and so wonderful that it seems to blow my mind, only for it to be repaired so it can blow again.  It's a concept that seems brilliant and impossible at exactly the same time.  Part of the fun is trying to imagine these very disparate people as being the same man, and both believing it and not believing it at the same time.  When you watch the Doctor's in order, there's a mostly gradual progression that can allow you to believe that William Hartnell and Matt Smith are the same person in a way that you couldn't really believe if you just watched their episodes in isolation.  But each regeneration strays from his predecessor just slightly so that the combined effect is more believable (with the exception of a few large leaps in personality, most notably the jump from the 5th to 6th Doctors).

But 9 is the oddball out, as putting him up against pretty much any other Doctor in the franchise will still look strange.  He doesn't act like any other Doctors in the history of the franchise.  He has little sense of humor.  He lacks the Doctor's whimsy.  He's never happy.  He's not flamboyant.  He can fade into the background in a crowd of people.  He doesn't really seem to like most people.  He's not the Doctor.

The one thing that 9 now has going for him is True 9, and that's something he can thank Moffat for.  True 9, as we get to know him, might help us get bridge the monumental gap between 8 and 9.