The Blog to Nowhere

Title: Ghosts (1/1)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 695
Characters: Eleven
Timeline: The end of "The Time of the Doctor" I suppose; no spoilers. Spoilers for the end of "The Day of the Doctor".
Summary: As he starts to regenerate, the Doctor reflects on his life.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to the BBC. Dialogue snippets belong to their respective writers.
A/N: Written as a good-bye to Eleven and I was also inspired by this moment from "An Adventure in Time and Space". I can't claim to know how Eleven's regeneration will go, so I guess this is all in his head as the actual regeneration happens. Also written for who_at_50's 50th Anniversary Fanwork-a-thon-a-thon Bonus Round.

( The Doctor was dying. There was no doubt about it. His body was failing. Having died eleven times before this, he was intimately familiar with the sensation of one's being slowly slipping away. )

 So yeah. I flew all the way to London to watch "The Day of the Doctor" in the theatre.

All right I didn't but it was still great to see it on the big screen with a room full of fans. Everyone reacted the same. It was great. And cheering! I never would have cheered at home.

Now, it'd be easy to rip the plot to shreds, but I won't. Let's focus on the good stuff.

( Spoilers for "The Day of the Doctor" )

Too many thoughts. I'm sure I'm missing stuff. Now we wait until Christmas...

ETA: I deleted the other post (sorry who_daily) as I posted my reaction faster than anticipated.

So I’ve been steering clear of any spoilers for “The Day of the Doctor”. I haven’t watched any of the trailers or read any articles. Nothing. Nada. I was happy in my ignorance.

Then I watched “The Night of Doctor”. Damn you, Moffat!

( Spoilers for "The Night of the Doctor" )

So many questions now… This is why I try to avoid stuff. Sigh.

Title: Hands Free (1/1)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,686
Characters: Five, Tegan
Timeline: Post-"The Five Doctors"
Summary: There are advantages to having pockets bigger on the inside.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who has belonged to the BBC for 50 glorious years.
A/N: Written for dw_50ficathon's 50th Anniversary Ficathon. Year claimed: 1983.

( He dug into his voluminous pockets and started to pull out the various odds and ends he liked to keep handy. A length of twine. A handful of safety pins. A large elastic band. A crumpled paper bag. A fountain pen. A box of matches. )

So... there's a teaser trailer for "The Day of the Doctor"...

( Trailer and some very general thoughts behind the cut )

34 days and counting!

Okay, I had a chance to watch "The Name of the Doctor" again, with subtitles this time, so I caught a few more things from this viewing. It's like a second breakfast; more filling. :-)

First off, the truth about Clara. Did anyone guess it right? I mean, Moffat stacks the deck, so to speak. He has all of the information and we have very little. How can anyone guess correctly when it's really a shot in the dark? But I suppose being able to guess it right kind of ruins the point of having a mystery. And it's not like the show is Sherlock. The whole point isn't to lay out clues so the audience can guess the truth before the story can. Anyway...

I'm usually horribly off when it comes to speculation. I speculated that River could be Amy and Rory's kid and then totally dismissed it. Honestly. It's in one of my reviews. So, instead of this post proving I will be right, it's a post to prove how off I was. It's more fun this way.

So, I'm going to concentrate on the last, like, five minutes of the episode. Wherever Clara and Eleven ended up, let's just call it limbo for simplicity's sake, that's the Doctor's life. We see past versions of him run by, so clearly elements of his past are there. Does he say anything to rule out the possibility of his future being there as well? Because the Doctor steps into his own timeline, a timeline that stretches from the beginning to the end. There's the potential for stuff to be in limbo that Eleven hasn't experienced yet.

I only wonder because I wonder if John Hurt's character, let's just call him Fred, could be from the Doctor's future. I know, how can the Doctor's secret be from his future, but this is Steven Moffat, King of Timey-Wimey. And the Doctor is also a time traveller. It is possible for him to have seen his future, to have met a future self, and that future self could be an utter jerk, for a lack of a better word. Eleven says that Fred is his secret, the one who broke "the promise". Now, it's not 100% clear what "the promise" is, but it's tied up with the title of "the Doctor". Perhaps Fred is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. He's a tyrant, a killer, something so horrible that it can't be spoken of. And maybe that's why the Doctor chose the name "the Doctor"? He saw his future, knew it was impossible to change, but he could change the points in-between. He could be a man of good, he could do good works, until he reached the inevitable point where he completely breaks down and does unspeakable things.

Because there's this exchange at the end:

Fred: "What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity."


Eleven: "But not in the name of the Doctor."

It could be about something in the future. Of course, it's also likely he's talking about something in the past. If that's the case, I'm going with my "the Other" theory from my first review. Fred was the third creator of Time Lord society, but the worst of the bunch, and so Rassilon and Omega completely erased him from Time Lord history and forced him into a new regeneration cycle, into a life governed by good. I keep seeing stuff suggesting that Fred is from the Time War. He's definitely, probably not, an incarnation of the Doctor we missed between Eight and Nine, so I don't know how it would be tied up with the Time War, but yeah, it is a Time War so past and future can collide.

Or maybe there was another Time Lord who called himself the Doctor and the Doctor we know took the name to honour this other Doctor. So Eleven's line "But not in the name of the Doctor" isn't him referring to himself in the third person, but he's actually talking about another person.

Ooh, does the 50th anniversary special take place in funny limbo land? Is that how Eleven and Ten can team up? That place is the Doctor, all of his memories and experiences. I wouldn't be surprised if he could shape the landscape to his choosing, will into existence people he has met and known. Definitely easier to explain.

Okay, I'm out of theories.

Just something I made for who_at_50's January fanwork-a-thon-a-thon:

January is Eleven's month, so I decided to be clever and claim January 11. Y'know, 1/11. So that's the main inspiration for the banner. From One to Eleven. He wears a bow tie now, but he's still the same mad man with a box.