Doctor Who Series 12 |OT| Spyfall Is Where We Start

[SanTheSly]

The Cybus designs were back the very next year? They're in series 6 after the Pandorica stuff. Then they're gone, admittedly, in Nightmare in Silver, but then they're back (alongside every other variation) in series 12. The lore with Cybermen is that the Cybus alt-universe Cybermen went out into the universe after the events of 'The Next Doctor' and eventually met with, joined with and mingled with the Mondasian one. The 'Nightmare in Silver' Cybermen are meant to be a 'new race' formed by the two uniting.

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I guess I tend to block out post Season 5/6 Moffat for being pretty horrendously bad in my view. It still doesn't explain Jack's reappearance and knowledge of the Doctor though, or the fact that a multiverse theory overarching plot would've been better and/or made much more sense than whatever what just happened was.

 

[Halbrand]

Is it even worse than the leaks said?

 

[Robin64]

I had to laugh at the "TARDIS as a house", especially because it landed somewhere that had apparently had a driveway, fence, etc built but no house.

 

[Protome]

I had to laugh at the "TARDIS as a house", especially because it landed somewhere that had apparently had a driveway, fence, etc built but no house.

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I like the TARDIS as a house thing because it's literally a Dirk Gently joke

 

[Xagarath]

I've really enjoyed the rest of this series but that was an awful lot of exposition and not much actually happening, although Dhawan sold the hell out of what he had to work with.

Big missed opportunities to link back to the opening story as well - all the AI stuff would have fitted with the Master working with the Cybermen all along.

The actual lore stuff is fine (Brain of Morbius plus the Cartmel Masterplan, pretty much) but could have been presented better.

 

[EvilRedEye]

Can't decide whether that will manage to get an AI of 80 or above. I don't think it will. I think the same people that were alienated by Heaven Sent will have been alienated by that.

Place your bets everyone!

 

[Hellers]

Someone give me a super cliffs-notes version of what happened.

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People hate change.

 

[Kalor]

Is it even worse than the leaks said?

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No, it's inoffensive. The leaks make it sound worse.

 

[APZonerunner]

I guess I tend to block out post Season 5/6 Moffat for being pretty horrendously bad in my view. It still doesn't explain Jack's reappearance and knowledge of the Doctor though, or the fact that a multiverse theory overarching plot would've been better and/or made much more sense than whatever what just happened was.

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I don't get how Jack reappearing is any big deal? The last we saw of him he was on earth with a severely depleted Torchwood and a second immortal person the same as him (who will surely never return). Big Finish adventures (which the BBC considers canon unless the show contradicts them) have him out having adventures in space and even encountering River. So it's no surprise that he's out there, and the Doctor has a rep... so of course he'd know a bit about what the Doctor has been up to.

I agree that after series 5 Moffat went through a bit of a rough patch though - 6 has some great episodes but overall is messy, 7 is bland, and 8 is clearly a show in crisis, but 9 and 10 are imo as good as his best output, if not as wildly popular.

 

[Kalor]

 

[Sign My Guestbook!]

I don't get how Jack reappearing is any big deal? The last we saw of him he was on earth with a severely depleted Torchwood and a second immortal person the same as him (who will surely never return). Big Finish adventures (which the BBC considers canon unless the show contradicts them) have him out having adventures in space and even encountering River. So it's no surprise that he's out there, and the Doctor has a rep... so of course he'd know a bit about what the Doctor has been up to.

I agree that after series 5 Moffat went through a bit of a rough patch though - 6 has some great episodes but overall is messy, 7 is bland, and 8 is clearly a show in crisis, but 9 and 10 are imo as good as his best output, if not as wildly popular.

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Yup. 5 is great, then the show goes through a really weird long patch, punctuated by The Doctor's Wife and... honestly I don't know what else. The Day of the Doctor?

Starts repairing itself in 8, then by 9 and 10 is pretty respectable again.

 

[SanTheSly]

I don't get how Jack reappearing is any big deal? The last we saw of him he was on earth with a severely depleted Torchwood and a second immortal person the same as him (who will surely never return). Big Finish adventures (which the BBC considers canon unless the show contradicts them) have him out having adventures in space and even encountering River. So it's no surprise that he's out there, and the Doctor has a rep... so of course he'd know a bit about what the Doctor has been up to.

I agree that after series 5 Moffat went through a bit of a rough patch though - 6 has some great episodes but overall is messy, 7 is bland, and 8 is clearly a show in crisis, but 9 and 10 are imo as good as his best output, if not as wildly popular.

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Wasn't the entire universe reset at the end of Season 5? Have I misunderstood this for the better part of a decade?

Also I feel bad for Capaldi. I had to stop during his era because I was partially done following all the Silence nonsense and by the time he came around, and I also couldn't stand Clara.

I think I tried watching a Capaldi episode and the Doctor rode into a medieval court playing electric guitar and wearing shades and I just stopped watching on the spot.

 

[The Unsent]

Someone give me a super cliffs-notes version of what happened.

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The master shrinks the lone cybermen and creates regeneration cybermen with timelord hats. The doctor finds out she's the timeless child that was used to create regeneration by a scientist, it's not completely explained but it doesn't matter... as long as the doctor is stilll the good old doctor.. yet when the doctor gets the choice to destroy Gallifrey with a lone cybermen figure, Barristan Selmy does it instead. The humans escape to earth. The doctor gets put in jail (I think Stormcage) by Judoon in the tardis. To be continued until Revelation... I mean Revolution of the Daleks.

Dr Ruth also appears in the doctor's memory to motivate 13 to save the day, but then Barristan Selmy does it anyway.

 

[EvilRedEye]

Quite strong stuff coming from Christel Dee!

 

[PlanetSmasher]

The master shrinks the lone cybermen and creates regeneration cybermen with timelord hats. The doctor finds out she's the timeless child that was used to create regeneration by a scientist, it's not completely explained but it doesn't matter... as long as the doctor is stilll the good old doctor.. yet when the doctor gets the choice to destroy Gallifrey with a lone cybermen figure, Barristan Selmy does it instead. The humans escape to earth. The doctor gets put in jail (I think Stormcage) by Judoon in the tardis. To be continued until Revelation... I mean Revolution of the Daleks.

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So the Doctor has existed for the entirety of Time Lord civilization? And nobody remembers that at all? That's pretty goofy.

 

[APZonerunner]

Yup. 5 is great, then the show goes through a really weird long patch, punctuated by The Doctor's Wife and... honestly I don't know what else. The Day of the Doctor?

Starts repairing itself in 8, then by 9 and 10 is pretty respectable again.

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Series 9 and 10 remind me a lot of RTD-era Series 3 and 4. 9 is just like series 3 in that it has a series of really great episodes, no absolutely terrible episodes (yeah, I'm here to defend Evolution of the Daleks, what of it), and a slightly botched finale. Then 10 is less interesting overall but has a really high overall quality level.

I do think those Moffat difficult years have some great spots. A Christmas Carol is the best Christmas Special they've ever done. The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon is a great two-parter, but it's dragged down by association with what came before. The Doctor's Wife is great. The Girl Who Waited is a stone-cold classic. Even The God Complex and A Good Man Goes to War have interesting ideas.

Series 7 is way more irredeemably boring. Like... the Ice Warriors episode is good, I guess? A Town Called Mercy is a decent romp with some fun location filming. A lot of S7 is genuinely just cack, though.

 

[Qwerty Keyboard]

Quite strong stuff coming from Christel Dee!

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😂😂😂😂😂

 

[Deleted member 2430]

Wasn't the entire universe reset at the end of Season 5? Have I misunderstood this for the better part of a decade?

Also I feel bad for Capaldi. I had to stop during his era because I was partially done following all the Silence nonsense and by the time he came around, and I also couldn't stand Clara.

I think I tried watching a Capaldi episode and the Doctor rode into a medieval court playing electric guitar and wearing shades and I just stopped watching on the spot.

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It was only reset to the same as it was before but without the cracks. Which un-erased all the stuff that the cracks erased in theory, so all the RTD era stuff happened in the post rebooted universe.

 

[SanTheSly]

It was only reset to the same as it was before but without the cracks. Which un-erased all the stuff that the cracks erased in theory, so all the RTD era stuff happened in the post rebooted universe.

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Oh.

 

[APZonerunner]

Wasn't the entire universe reset at the end of Season 5? Have I misunderstood this for the better part of a decade?

Also I feel bad for Capaldi. I had to stop during his era because I was partially done following all the Silence nonsense and by the time he came around, and I also couldn't stand Clara.

I think I tried watching a Capaldi episode and the Doctor rode into a medieval court playing electric guitar and wearing shades and I just stopped watching on the spot.

Click to shrink...

The end of series 5 does have a reset, but it just resets the status quo to how it was before the Doctor was put in the Pandorica, which triggered the end of the universe. So everything that happened prior absolutely still happened, which is why you have continuity in terms of the evolution of the Daleks and Cybermen, River, and even Torchwood (not just Big Finish - Miracle Day, the last televised Torchwood series, takes place in-universe after S5).

The thing that was the lasting impact of the whole S5 arc was just that the 'crack in spacetime' was used as an excuse to erase things from history problematic for the lore. So, to quote the Doctor, "A Cyberman walks over the whole of Victorian London and nobody even remembers!" It still happened, but nobody remembers it, just like Amy's parents and anything else swallowed by the crack. Because Amy was special she was able to remember and bring back somethings that'd been swallowed, like her never-again-seen parents (lol) and the Doctor.

Every now and then you need to reset especially contemporary earth's knowledge of aliens, which was built up to a big degree in the RTD era, otherwise the universe the show is in just doesn't seem very contemporary to the show at all. A companion that grew up on an earth that remembers two separate Dalek invasions and several Cyberman incursions isn't going to be much of an audience cipher everyman character, after all.

 

[Serebii]

I do wonder how they're going to explain River's ability to regenerate now they explained it away another way to how it was established :P

 

[Protome]

I do wonder how they're going to explain River's ability to regenerate now they explained it away another way to how it was established :P

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Hopefully they never mention River again tbh. I think that well is far too poisoned as is.

 

[SanTheSly]

The end of series 5 does have a reset, but it just resets the status quo to how it was before the Doctor was put in the Pandorica, which triggered the end of the universe. So everything that happened prior absolutely still happened, which is why you have continuity in terms of the evolution of the Daleks and Cybermen, River, and even Torchwood (not just Big Finish - Miracle Day, the last televised Torchwood series, takes place in-universe after S5).

The thing that was the lasting impact of the whole S5 arc was just that the 'crack in spacetime' was used as an excuse to erase things from history problematic for the lore. So, to quote the Doctor, "A Cyberman walks over the whole of Victorian London and nobody even remembers!" It still happened, but nobody remembers it, just like Amy's parents and anything else swallowed by the crack. Because Amy was special she was able to remember and bring back somethings that'd been swallowed, like her never-again-seen parents (lol) and the Doctor.

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This whole time I assumed it was a complete continuity restart from that point on because it was likely the exact kind of dick-measuring self aggrandising move Moffat would pull. Whoops!

It still doesn't change the fact that I think Moffat has basically always been a horrendous showrunner on everything he's ever touched.

 

[Halbrand]

No, it's inoffensive. The leaks make it sound worse.

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The doctor finds out she's the timeless child that was used to create regeneration by a scientist

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That doesn't sound inoffensive to me

 

[Protome]

That doesn't sound inoffensive to me

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Well it is 🤷‍♀️

 

[Robin64]

The origins of the Time Lords as they stand now are... fine. Nothing has really changed all that much, it's just Rassilon isn't the real inventor of it, Tecteun is. Makes you wonder why the Time Lords even bothered hiding that fact.

 

[EvilRedEye]

Didn't the Time Lords invent regeneration before time travel now? So it wouldn't really matter about River as the Time Lord gene splicing and conceiving a baby in the Time Vortex could both be valid ways of producing the ability to regenerate.

 

[The Unsent]

So the Doctor has existed for the entirety of Time Lord civilization? And nobody remembers that at all? That's pretty goofy.

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The timelords hid it. And we don't know if this child doctor was abandoned in the past by future timelords or not.

I think the message was, are you still you if you don't know everything about where you came from or if you lose your memory? And honestly it was the least wrong with the episode.

There was a big choice at the end when the doctor can destroy the time lord cybermen and herself, and they look silly and the choice is nowhere near as good as the parting of the ways or day of the doctor. And the lone cyberman, who was really hyped throughout this series, it just tricked and then turned into a figure by the master like he's an idiot. He explains his plan fully to the master too moments beforehand like a complete buffoon.

 

[RyanPrime_]

Every now and then you need to reset especially contemporary earth's knowledge of aliens, which was built up to a big degree in the RTD era, otherwise the universe the show is in just doesn't seem very contemporary to the show at all. A companion that grew up on an earth that remembers two separate Dalek invasions and several Cyberman incursions isn't going to be much of an audience cipher everyman character, after all.

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Loved all the ways RTD had Donna miss big events!

"I was in Spain"
"They had Cybermen in Spain"
"I was scuba diving"

 

[Protome]

The origins of the Time Lords as they stand now are... fine. Nothing has really changed all that much, it's just Rasillon isn't the real inventor of it, Tectuen is. Makes you wonder why the Time Lords even bothered hiding that fact.

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Yeah this is where I land on it really. It's not some mind blowing canon ruining thing, it in fact changes...nothing?

 

[Halbrand]

Well it is 🤷‍♀️

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The Doctor being the source of power for all time lords and basically the first one is inoffensive to you? It's a pretty huge deal and I really don't like it

 

[Protome]

The Doctor being the source of power for all time lords and basically the first one is inoffensive to you? It's a pretty huge deal and I really don't like it

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It changes almost nothing about the show

 

[Starphanluke]

This was bad. Re-framing the Doctor to be a super-special prophesized, chosen figure completely shifts her character. What we now know about her past changes how we see her, for the far worse.

Moffat and Davies made some big lore decisions in their time, but at the end of the day, the Doctor was still an alien in a box who helped people because he wanted to.

I do wonder how they're going to explain River's ability to regenerate now they explained it away another way to how it was established :P

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That would require anyone involved to care about the storytelling of the last 10 years of Who in any capacity.

Hopefully they never mention River again tbh. I think that well is far too poisoned as is.

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River was great, though.

Edit: I feel like I should emphasize that no matter what stupid lore dumps they come up with, that will never really 'ruin' the show for me. I can just... ignore it? But this episode, like the rest of the season, was just so poorly done. It was boring. All of the big twists were exposition dumps. The scene of her retrieving her memories was cringe as hell. There are NO compelling characters left on the show.

 

[WadiumArcadium]

I preferred last week's ep but after the doomsayers claimed the leaks were terrible, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much. I've found most of the finales underwhelming since I started watching with the 2005 reboot, but it was above average. Doctor Who always seems to struggle with Part 2, whoever the showrunner is.

 

[Protome]

River was great, though.

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In her first couple of episodes yeah. Moffat really managed to ruin her character and story completely by the end though. One of those "the question is more interesting than the answer" scenarios.

 

[APZonerunner]

I do wonder how they're going to explain River's ability to regenerate now they explained it away another way to how it was established :P

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There's a bit of lore wriggle room on this one imo as it's stated explicitly that they don't discover time travel (and therefore the Time Vortex) until after they've gained regenerations, and for all we know the Timeless Child got regenerations from the time vortex in the first place... which therefore wouldn't contradict the concept that River had regeneration from exposure to the vortex when in utero. Plus, by this point, all Time Lords would've had regeneration the illegitimate way anyway.

 

[Deleted member 2430]

I know it's been a constant in the show, but the Doctor being unwilling to kill the Master and all the timelords herself but being totally ok with someone else doing it doesn't really reflect all that well on her.

At least most other times that's happened, the choice was taken out of the Doctor's hands, this time it was just "oh you want to commit genocide and die instead of me, that's cool."

 

[WhovianGamer]

No, it's inoffensive. The leaks make it sound worse.

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Fucking with the Doctor's origins and having Hartnell not be no.1 is beyond the pale for me.

 

[APZonerunner]

This whole time I assumed it was a complete continuity restart from that point on because it was likely the exact kind of dick-measuring self aggrandising move Moffat would pull. Whoops!

It still doesn't change the fact that I think Moffat has basically always been a horrendous showrunner on everything he's ever touched.

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I much prefer RTD to Moffat, but to be honest as showrunner Moffat's greatest fault was probably that where RTD was willing to just handwave old lore away if it inconvenienced him, Moffat once described himself as "medically unable to contradict lore", which is why sometimes you got these long, hand-wringing, not-very-interesting answers to questions that didn't need to be asked in the first place - because as a detail-focused megafan (where RTD was arguably more of a big picture focused megafan) he felt he had to respect all the lore.

 

[Dwebble]

For all the "this changes everything!1!1", that was very... disposable? Doesn't need to do anything to future episodes if they don't want to- maybe you can't do any more Time Lord from Gallifrey speeches, but not a lot else. Any talk of bemoaning the Doctor not being special cuts very little ice with me- the character hasn't been an ordinary Time Lord since the Time Lords have been a thing, and this just codifies that.

In a way, it's almost a shame- at a stroke, the character has more mystery (including to herself) than since the earliest days of Hartnell, but I can predict without a single second's hesitation that the impact on the main body of Doctor Who's going to be negligible.

Fucking with the Doctor's origins and having Hartnell not be no.1 is beyond the pale for me.

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The idea of Hartnell not being first has been around for 45 years by this point.

 

[Halbrand]

Fucking with the Doctor's origins and having Hartnell not be no.1 is beyond the pale for me.

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Agreed.

 

[8bit]

Fucking with the Doctor's origins and having Hartnell not be no.1 is beyond the pale for me.

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If anything it's reinforced the other Doctors in Brain of Morbius, so not really a new thing.

 

[APZonerunner]

Fucking with the Doctor's origins and having Hartnell not be no.1 is beyond the pale for me.

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I don't love what's being done here, but at the end of the day we never really got an answer about Ruth - about who she is. I assume we'll get that next series. But based on this we now know that at some point they erased the grown-up timeless child's memory and regressed them back to childhood, and that child grew into the Hartnell Doctor. For all we know Hartnell is still the 'first Doctor' in the sense that he's the one to run away and the one to take on that name. Maybe he runs away because he has a deep-seated feeling in his gut that something isn't right, and maybe that's inspired by the past lives he can't remember. I don't think that's particularly problematic, though, and I actually prefer it to him leaving because Clara or whatever.

Ruth contradicts this, but the thing is this episode did absolutely nothing to address exactly where Ruth falls or whatever. She could still be alt-universe or something else entirely; it is clearly left as an open thread.

Like, there were individuals before Hartnell. Regenerations. That doesn't mean he wasn't the first Doctor, though, as the Doctor is something else entirely, imo.

 

[WhovianGamer]

If anything it's reinforced the other Doctors in Brain of Morbius, so not really a new thing.

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To me those faces should have forever been downplayed and forgotten like the half-human Doctor of the 1996 movie.

Genuinely gutted.

 

[sir_crocodile]

I do wonder how they're going to explain River's ability to regenerate now they explained it away another way to how it was established :P

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parents had too much contact with THE TIMELESS CHILD

 

[Dwebble]

To me those faces should have forever been downplayed and forgotten like the half-human Doctor of the 1996 movie.

Genuinely gutted.

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Nah, I don't buy it. Hartnell's importance is always going to be that he was the first who played the part, and that's in no way diminished by this.

Adding more mystery while still maintaining the importance of Hartnell (the first one to run away and see the universe, etc.) is absolutely fine by me- nothing else even implies otherwise.

 

[The Unsent]

I know it's been a constant in the show, but the Doctor being unwilling to kill the Master and all the timelords herself but being totally ok with someone else doing it doesn't really reflect all that well on her.

At least most other times that's happened, the choice was taken out of the Doctor's hands, this time it was just "oh you want to commit genocide and die instead of me, that's cool."

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It was boring more than anything. Compared to 9's "Coward any day" or creating the cross fire in Day of the Doctor. As wondeful as Ian McElhinney was in this episode, we weren't attached to him enough to feel his sacrifice and look back on it, before the judoon arrest the doctor.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Nah, I don't buy it. Hartnell's importance is always going to be that he was the first who played the part, and that's in no way diminished by this.

Adding more mystery while still maintaining the importance of Hartnell (the first one to run away and see the universe, etc.) is absolutely fine by me- nothing else even implies otherwise.

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But if Ruth is a pre-Hartnell Doctor, IS he the first one to run away and see the universe?

 

[Deleted member 2430]

I much prefer RTD to Moffat, but to be honest as showrunner Moffat's greatest fault was probably that where RTD was willing to just handwave old lore away if it inconvenienced him, Moffat once described himself as "medically unable to contradict lore", which is why sometimes you got these long, hand-wringing, not-very-interesting answers to questions that didn't need to be asked in the first place - because as a detail-focused megafan (where RTD was arguably more of a big picture focused megafan) he felt he had to respect all the lore.

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Ironically I think RTD was much better at continuity than Moffat was. His era really felt like it was building up a consistent world, particularly with earth based episode. When you get to Moffat, episodes feel like they take place in more of a vacuum. I don't think you could do episodes that depended on that consistent world like Turn Left or Love and Monsters in the Moffat era. You only start to see that sort of thing reemerge later on with 12 and Unit based episodes.

 

[8bit]

Oh, did hope for a little more on the Ireland / Division stuff though, but I suppose it's Timelord Section 31 or something.