#gallifrey time war 4

[trailmixtime]

the chicken reviews

after time war 3 i began rating gallifrey episodes based on how many chickens appeared in them. last night i found the reviews again, so i figured i'd post them here so i can continue the tradition when war room 2 comes out :D

(quick disclaimer: these are just fun reviews, not to be taken too seriously)

enjoy :)

time war 4

time war 4.1: deception

no actual chickens, but there is a reference to a Large Beast when leela's trying to get back to the tardis. no description is given, so it is entirely possible it was a Very Large Chicken. but, given the lack of description, we can't know for sure. 1/10.

time war 4.2: dissolution

once again, no chickens, despite them being on a luscious green planet. no chickens are mentioned. if you listen carefully, you can hear some birds chirping in the background, but none of them are chickens. disappointing. 0/10.

time war 4.3: beyond

no physical chickens yet. however, it's made clear the ravenous can possess characteristics of that which they eat, so it's possible a ravenous that ate a chicken has characteristics of a chicken, but we don't know for sure. 0.5/10

time war 4.4: homecoming

no chickens appear. no chickens are mentioned. there aren't even any animals i could try to headcanon as chickens. rassilon probably killed all the chickens. -100/10.

war room 1

the last days of freme: -100/10

no chickens, and whatever chickens may have been there previously, died. very disappointing.

the passenger: 0/10

no chickens. no places there could plausibly have been chickens :( once again left disappointed.

collateral victim: 0.01/10

once again, no chickens :( however, there was the POTENTIAL for chickens, and i will give it .01 points for that.

the first days of phaidon: 0.01/10

same as the previous story: no chickens, but there is potential for chickens, and therefore it gets the .01 points.

[i-am-become-a-name]

"Narvin, by picking up the sextant you risked your life. Your only life."

"Of course, and I'd do it all over again. Leela, I- I-"

"I know. I also know you want to ask me a question, and you know my answer - I cannot."

"I think I've known all along."

"If it was not this way, I would come with you. But Romana only lives while I serve. While we are apart... you are no longer alone, Narvin. "

"No. No, I'm not. None of us are. "

[notthetraveler]

At this point I am speedrunning through Gallifrey let's be honest

[doctor-who-binge]

Davros speaking to 10: The Doctor, the man who keeps running never looking back, because he dare not, out of shame, this is my final victory Doctor

..... This face coming back, is it perhaps The Doctor finally looking back? Mature enough to handle pride and shame equally.

[triple1st]

thinking about rassilon's (lack of) characterization in gallifrey time war

[intuitive-revelations]

Random headcanon I came up with early this morning, because I’ve been thinking about Gallifreyan language recently:

The reason why so many Time Lord things are decorated with circular Gallifreyan, often too impractically to actually be read (eg. on the Moment), is because it’s a cultural touchstone that remains from pre-/early-Pythian Gallifrey’s use of magical runes and sigils.

Presumably it was more typically Old High Gallifreyan used in that time (though The Timeless Children does seemingly confirm circular Gallifreyan existed at least as far back as Rassilon's time, if not earlier), however. Twelve describes it as ‘the language of the Pythia’ in The Lost Magic, and as Eleven says in The Time of Angels:

ELEVEN: There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.

This is obviously very reminescent of the Carrionites' (themselves from the Dark Times too) "word-based science" from The Shakespeare Code:

MARTHA: What did you do? TEN: I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic. MARTHA: But there's no such thing as magic. TEN: Well, it's just a different sort of science. You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. Carrionites use words instead.

In other words, while they probably weren't actually intended as such and may have their own specific meaning, whether they be poetry, namesakes, histories, instructions, whatever... these are basically protective wards:

[ID: Five screenshots of Circular Gallifreyan in New Who.

1. Rassilon's Inner High Council meeting in The End of Time Part 2. The table and headrests are inscribed with circular Gallifreyan.

2. The Moment in Day of the Doctor. Gallifreyan writing bends round the edges of the wooden frame.

3. The 'whirligig' rotar in Eleven's second TARDIS, inscribed with individual Gallifreyan symbols.

4. Set photo of the glowing Gallifreyan writing on the steps of Thirteen's TARDIS.

5. Tecteun's laboratory in The Timeless Children. Circular Gallifreyan lines the light above her, and a door in the background.]

As a side note - if they actually are kind-of intended as a form of protection, perhaps this is why we were only introduced to Circular Gallifreyan in New Who, despite it seemingly existing through Gallifreyan history. Because it was retroactively inserted into Gallifreyan culture as a form of defense during the War in Heaven / Last Great Time War?

Regardless, this also opens up questions how many other Time Lord traditions are holdovers from the Dark Times.

For example, who's to say that the renegade naming tradition didn't begin as a form of protection from hexes - either from hostile forces in the pre-anchoring universe, or from oppressive magic-users back on the homeworld? This may also be connected to the change in Gallifreyan name format before and after the Intuitive Revelation (eg. ancestral -sti and -sor names), though shifting power structures, gender roles etc. presumably played a role too.

Heck, is this one reason why Gallifrey's own name has changed over its history? From Jewel to Gallifrey in Rassilon's time to try and protect it from vengeful Pythian curses. From Gallifrey to just 'the Homeworld' in the War to protect it from new rituals of alternative histories and paradox?

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

Whenever I think about how the Doctor and Donna causing the eruption in "Fires of Pompeii" narratively functions as a parallel/microcosm to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey in the Time War I go insane and have to lie down.

Because this time he isn't alone, Donna is with him and he says the words out loud "Push this lever and it's over. Twenty thousand people." and he is waiting for her reaction and she puts her hands on his and they pull the lever together. And this time he doesn't have to make the choice alone, so he subsequently doesn't have to carry the burden of guilt alone.

And maybe, just maybe, this can be seen as his first step into his healing journey regarding his Time War guilt. Donna Noble - a woman who he grows to love and admire and regard as his guiding light - made the same choice (yes on a much smaller scale, but functionally the same choice) he did when he destroyed Gallifrey. He will never ever forgive himself (at least during his time as Ten), but maybe when he realizes that he doesn't blame her and doesn't want her to feel guilty for what she did in Pompeii he starts to be a little kinder to himself. For Donna's sake.

I really believe that during season 4 both Donna and the Doctor are on a healing journey. They make each other better, they begin to heal the wounds of the other person. Donna's self-esteem grows and the Doctor's guilt complex gets a little less heavy. Just a little. Baby steps. But they are walking them together.

And then Journey's End happens, and their healing process gets interrupted and without Donna nothing makes sense and he almost turns into Time Lord Victorious (this arc is so insane)

Because why should he stick to the rules of a universe that took Donna from him?

But he gets stopped. Adelaide stops him and later he himself recognizes that he's lived too long.

And he turns from the man who regrets into the man who forgets.

And then day of the doctor happens. And Gallifrey falls no more. And yet, he still has to live with the memories of 4 incarnations (war, nine, ten, eleven) and hundreds of years during which he believed he killed his own people. But now he has an excuse not to face that.

Anyway, thesis statement: Donna helped the Doctor confront his Time War guilt complex in a way no companion before or after her did. (shoutout to Martha though for making him open up about Gallifrey!!!)

And neither the character of the Doctor in the show or the show itself narratively ever continued to truly confront the trauma of the Time War guilt or continued the healing process Donna started.

Until now.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 3

The Master's father, Marnal, wrote an episode for Star Trek but took his name off it after they changed it too much.

The Fifth Doctor took Tegan back and time to kill that same would-be-dictator as a baby but was also unable to go through with it.

Nyssa once turned the Fifth Doctor into a vampire.

The Time Lords created the Were Lords, a species of lycanthropic soldiers who could regenerate, to fight for them in the Vampire Wars.

The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors have different enough blood that the Fourteenth Doctor was able to resist blood control that used the Tenth Doctor's blood.

The Garvond is a monstrous entity in the APC Net of the Matrix composed of all the demented, evil sides of the Time Lords.

The First Great Time War was between the Time Lords and the Order of the Black Sun.

The Veil was fond of the Twelfth Doctor and considered them to be companions. The Veil hoped that the Twelfth Doctor would take them with him when he escaped from the confession dial.

Jack Harkness described the Midnight entity as someone who could eat its way into a person's brain and steal their voice. Given that it is unknown where he got this information, this suggests that Jack might have had an encounter at some point.

Both the Doctor and the Master have used the name "Merlin" before.

The final incarnation of the Master was a highly destructive entropy wave in one timeline.

The Eleventh Doctor once returned to the Library with Amy Pond, but he never mentioned River Song. They encountered Book Monsters.

The Doctor's first TARDIS was a Type 50, but they were left behind when the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey. This left them angry and hurt that the Doctor had replaced them, so they ran off from Gallifrey to find him.

According to the Seventh Doctor, the Rani and her giant rodent came to his graduation party.

There exists a canned drink called Sontaran Up that a Sontaran was seen drinking.

The Sixth Doctor's method for fighting the Weeping Angels included winking one eye at a time, so the Angels were always being observed. Given that he was almost immediately sent back in time where he encountered the Tenth Doctor, this isn't a very good method.

Due to similarities between the life stories of the Doctor and the Devil, there are many races who believe they are the same being.

The Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz, and Dan once watched a production of Cinderella. While trying to make it more exciting, the Doctor accidentally replaced all the characters and props with the real versions, who began to attack each other and the audience.

The Doctor had thirteen children before running away on Gallifrey who were all killed (or perhaps a better word would be 'culled') by the Watch after Susan's birth.

The Doctor has had other children over the years (although they did not recognize all of them as such) including but not limited to Miranda Dawkins, Edward Grove, the Sound Creature, Daqar Keep, Jenny, and the Sapling.

Gostak was one of the First Doctor's tutors who he admired very much, but similar to Borusa, he went mad and had to be stopped by several incarnations of the Doctor.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

[sadcoms]

AU where Rose stayed with the Time Lord Doctor after Journey’s End and they start to argue more like they did in S1 because the Doctor is doing his “I never would” thing and Rose is now saying “but sometimes you HAVE to” which causes him to start down another Davros-inspired spiral about how he’s “turned her into a weapon” and she’s like...actually travelling across dimensions trying to fight eternal darkness brought about by a ton of genocidal aliens will do that to you regardless!

Because Rose was never for pacifism-above-all-else. The episode before Dalek Harriet Jones straight up says she’s a very violent young woman because Rose (not unreasonably) wants the Slitheen to be blown up after they murdered countless people. Same with the Nestene Consciousness - but the Doctor says he has to give it a chance, and that is what she mirrors back at him in Dalek. This is usually why the pair works, because if one doesn’t have mercy on or compassion for someone the other one usually will (eg Cassandra). That’s why Ten is even willing to give Davros a chance, though it’s exacerbated by a lot of guilt around the Time War, especially when it kicked off in-part because of what he did, and failed to do, in Genesis of the Daleks.

And that is what Davros never got - that Rose had already seen the Doctor’s soul and loved him anyway; that part of their souls are the same because they helped each other grow. And it’s the same for all of the companions this era, whether it’s Jack saying he never doubted the Doctor would kill him, or Donna seeing him murder the Racnoss and still regretting not travelling with him, or Martha (somehow) forgiving the Doctor for the year that never was and for everything he burdened her with.

Because I think what Davros and the Doctor came to see as him turning people into weapons was actually just people willingly taking on the burden he carried. Again, a lot of people sort of write Tentoo and Rose off as the dalek genocide couple, but what exactly was the alternative? Let them destroy the universe? The Doctor is a coward, any day, and that makes complete sense as a reaction to already bearing two genocides on his shoulders, but it’s also that cowardice that makes other people step up and be brave, which usually means sacrificing themselves, and the Doctor carries that too. That is why Martha gets the direct parallel to the Doctor with the Osterhagen key - both are willing to burn their planets to save the rest of the universe, and Martha already spent S3 being more like the Doctor than he was because he was so broken by grief. By Season 4, the Doctor is already so self-destructive and so self-loathing that only he, the "true" Time Lord, can be the arbiter of genocides and who can’t be. Even when it comes to Martha, or to another exact replica of himself.

(Never mind that he makes essentially the same decision the Metacrisis Doctor and Martha did again in End of Time when he sends Gallifrey back into hell, but hey, he got there in the end.)

And it’s one of the reasons why the Doctor’s so reliant on the Master. I’m not sure he would have gone to get his ‘reward’ had some of that weight of destroying Gallifrey again not been shared with another Time Lord. Ten does, ultimately, put humans on a pedestal and does his best to protect them even when they are willing to share his burden (note that Tentoo destroying the Daleks means Donna doesn't have to take on any of the burdens Rose or Martha did, so she stays the least militarised companion). He simultaneously wants that other Time Lord judgement while needing humans as another perspective.

All of this to say that, I think most people understand that Ten being with someone but especially with Rose would have stopped him going Time Lord Victorious, but they don't necessarily understand why. TLV comes from his desire to save everyone, because all the loss he's seen and has caused is too much. Not only does having Rose help soothe that, but she also specifically could have helped ground the Doctor back to where he was morally in the first two series, which is quite different from where he is by S4.

(Also The Next Doctor would have been an absolutely wild story for Rose and the Doctor to have gone on next. They arrive thinking they might have a fun Christmas and then they have to confront the fact that the Battle of Canary Wharf is still following them and how when they lost each other they lost everything. And how the villain in that is defeated by the Doctor showing her herself, which is what Davros tried to do the Doctor.)

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

tbh Gallifrey is an insane series given how much stuff happens in it in 50 episodes. like the original run of the show (series 1-3) was 14 episodes and in it we cover several coups, a gay vacation bodyswap episode, a whole zombie plague, Nazi time travel episode, time loop episode, an evil ghost possessing the main character and stealing her past body, the premiere spy network collapsing because one guy committed identity fraud and abandoned his wife, and an entire Civil War. and this is just the stuff that happens before series 4.

[waffowo]

While Donna Noble will always be my favourite companion in NuWho, Clara will always be the most multi-faceted and complex (as of now). I think that a lot of divisiveness surrounding Clara stems from 5 common criticisms:

1. Clara’s characterisation in 7B and how Moffat treats her mostly as a mystery box first and character second.

2. The length of Clara’s tenure and how some may have been fatigued due to the many times “she should have left.”

3. The emphasis on Clara’s flaws in Series 8 and how it kind of paints her as unlikable over her Series 7B depiction as at least kind.

4. Clara’s departure in Hell Bent as something that ruins her ending in Face The Raven.

5. The belief of Clara as the most important character in the Doctors life inherently devaluing other companions.

I think while I can understand the reasons leading up to these criticisms, I also think that it does help to look back throughout the Moffat and RTD era as it does help explain a lot of these points imo.

Actually, the character Clara most prominently echoes is Rose. Rose, like Clara, helped the Doctor through a time of extreme emotional vulnerability (for 9th, Time War trauma) and developed a relationship of co-dependency with him (as 10th) which never really went away even after Doomsday. Clara had the luxury of time however, and has undergone more events with the Doctor (Impossible Girl, Trenzalore, 50th Anniversary etc) but also how 12th was undergoing an extreme identity crisis of figuring out whether he’s a good man post-Trenzalore and saving Gallifrey. Clara was the one who facilitated his character growth through the turbulence of the arc in instances like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, Mummy on The Orient Express, Kill The Moon, Last Christmas etc and would naturally result in the Doctor developing an extremely unhealthy reliance on Clara as being his “carer,” his anchor to being The Doctor (refer to her whole “Be A Doctor” spiel in the 50th Anniversary). Series 9 already heavily implied the Doctor’s willingness to engage with destructive measures by choosing to separate Clara and The Doctor almost every episode (Magicians Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar) as the stakes rose and cumulated in Face The Raven.

RTD has also once said when paying tribute to Moffat:

“And nestling at the heart of the show is Doctor Who's very own problem category, the Companion, a title inherently subordinate to the Man. Until Clara comes along!”

Imo, while poorly phrased, I think does also hit another nail on the head to explain how Clara can be so compelling to someone like me but also extremely polarising. RTD is talking less about the companion being “weaker” or “submissive” but how Clara is the NuWho companion that wishes to obliterate the boundaries between the power dynamic of companion/doctor. Series 8 for instances plays on the recurring motif of, “Do as you are told” which the Doctor firstly uses to threaten Clara to keep her safe. However, Clara actively retaliates by parroting the phrase back in an attempt to attain parity. This escalates to the events of Dark Water where she attempts to maintain control of her circumstances by forcing the Doctor to be on equal ground with her. What is so fascinating is that Clara while changing and emulating more of the Doctor’s heroism, she equally begins to absorb his flaws which intensify throughout Series 8-9. Clara becomes more deceitful, egotistical, reckless and cunning as she begins to become more and more like him. The means she lies to Danny, her ability to think more and more like him.

However, what people (fans and haters) also ignore is how nuanced the circumstances are. While Clara’s flaws become more heightened, it is also a fact that she wants to be like the Doctor because of his kindness and heroism. Episodes like Robots of Sherwood, Last Christmas or even Rings of Akhten reveal a lot about how Clara reveres the Doctor as a mythic and heroic figure. Clara’s attitudes towards the children in Forest Of The Night, Name Of The Doctor and Into The Dalek reveal that in spite of her ego and selfishness, she is someone who desires to help people. Thus, her desire to become the Doctor becomes more explainable. What a lot of people can’t really accept is that she can be both egotistical, reckless and kind at once. Her actions in Face The Raven were driven out of the fact that it came from a place of ignorance and impulsiveness (not stupidity, the Doctor would do something similar, it’s just that Clara did not have all the clues) in what she believed would be what the Doctor would do and that she was confident she could match the trickery of the Doctor, and yet it was also driven by her compassion towards Rigsby and her while impulsive, sincere desire to save her friend.

Clara is punished because of this, she forgets that she’s far too human. The Doctor is less breakable. She pays for it and as Ashildr says in Hell Bent:

“She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful.”

She died due to her physical fragility, her ego, her ignorance, her impulsiveness/recklessness and yet she also died because she was too brave, she died like the Doctor, who she loved (literally look at how her arms were outstretched as though she was mid-regeneration and how the black smoke parallels the orange glow of regeneration). However, this leads to the fourth main criticism I prior stated, so how does one answer that in relation to her character?

The answer is what Clara does and what the Doctor says towards the end of Hell Bent. Clara after being extracted and is with the Doctor in the TARDIS, spies on him because she is instantly suspicious of his erratic behaviour. Again, Clara shows how much she has become like him, she immediately picks up that he is hiding something because she has begun to think like him. Of course, the Doctor was planning on wiping Clara’s memories similar to what he did to Donna. But what does Clara do? She immediately reverse the polarity of the device that the Doctor was going to use on her and challenges the Doctors actions. Clara states:

“Tomorrow’s promised to no one, Doctor. But I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.”

Clara’s language indicates her assertiveness and also a kind of last hurrah in her game of parity. She is refusing to submit to the narrative of being reduced to merely a companion that the Doctor moves away from. But more importantly, the Doctor after pressing the device and is losing his memory, states:

“Run like hell because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it’s always funny (…) Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends (…) Never eat pears. They’re too squishy. And they always make your chin wet. That one’s quite important. Write it down.”

I think on initial viewing when the show was airing, this wouldn’t make much sense but this really shows the crux of how Hell Bent completes Clara’s arc and the necessity of her resurrection. In Face The Raven, the Doctor tells Clara that she’s more breakable as she questions why she can’t be as reckless as him. However, now the Doctor is instead telling her what would later be repeated in Twice Upon A Time, his regeneration speech. In his eyes, Clara has succeeded in graduating from the Magicians Apprentice and into becoming the Magician herself. He’s instructing her how to properly be The Doctor. As I said, Clara was also motivated by her desire to be kind when she engaged in her reckless gambit but what is so wrong about the desire to be kind? And why should Clara be punished for it? Thus, while Clara MUST die, her final act of kindness at the end of her arc enables the Universe to allow for Clara’s final transformation into the Doctor.

Clara is still dead, it is an unchanged historical event. However, to challenge the status quo and allow for Clara’s ascension, Clara becomes a fairy tale herself. Her body is caught in a permanent form of stasis, signalling her departure from the limits of her physicality (subverting her physical fragility) but also as seen through her last words to the Doctor:

“You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”

Clara has successfully become what she admired, a myth, a fable. She has become a symbol in a story, a story that would go on to have an infinite number of other stories. She has become the leaf she raises to the monster in the Rings of Akhten, she sails off into narrative ambiguity but also infinity. Clara is so polarising because she challenges the definition of what it means to be The Doctor on a pure metatextual level. It’s a logical progression from the introspection of the question from the Doctor himself in Series 8. To want to resist, I argue, is natural.

I could explore further about her adrenaline addiction in Mummy On The Orient Express or these traits I raised explored in Flatline which I may do another day, but I hope I have provided a new perspective on Clara Oswald.

[natequarter]

random ideas for a four-part series à la gallifrey series 4:

retirement: the gang land on a gallifrey superficially similar to their own, only to run into... the fifth doctor? a rather aged version, as well. as it turns out, at the end of the key to time arc, this doctor was convinced to go back to gallifrey, rather than dragging romana further away from it. gallifrey in this timeline is mostly fine, but it's alone amidst a devastated universe; without the doctor in action, the master's attempt to destroy the universe through accelerated entropy has succeeded but for gallifrey, which sits alone in an empty expanse of dust and loss. the doctor appears to have made peace with his former career as renegade (and has settled down with romana, of all things)... that is, until he sees leela again.

a quieter apocalypse: this gallifrey appears almost identical to their own, except that romana is actually happy. (as is leela.) in this timeline, she was never subjected to the events of the apocalypse element - rather than sending the president, the time lords sent one cardinal braxiatel. tormented and finally broken by his captivity, his lack of meddling in time lord politics has created a power vacuum that the cia eagerly exploits... and more than a few familiar faces are missing from this gallifrey, not least of all narvin's.

hero: this is a gallifrey scarred by civil war. (it seems to happen quite often.) with the citadel a radioactive heap of rubble, the time lords have moved their base of power to arcadia, and are working to rebuild society from the ground up. at their head is the up-and-coming romana - now in her third incarnation. the kicker here is that this romana is genuinely idealistic, and refuses to tolerate any of the corruption or trickery that the main timeline romana ii would guiltily admit to. seeing a sincerely, straightforwardly heroic, in some ways rather naive version of herself really drives home how far romana has drifted from her youth.

the archives: the doctor is still in his fourth body, and still in the role of president. in fact, he refuses to give the office up, and his increasingly bizarre whims and tendency towards dictatorship are driving the rest of his people slowly mad. meanwhile, in the archives, romana - in her fourth incarnation, but with no memory at all of ever having been romana ii - is still working as an archivist, never having left the seemingly menial (all things considered) job. the picture becomes increasingly sinister when the gang discover that she's not the only time lord with more regenerations than memories...

[ofutopia]

HIV-AIDS metaphor in series 1-4 of Doctor Who (2005)

Fair warning that you have to accept that there is at least homoerotic tension between the Doctor and the Master to understand this post.

The Time War was first and foremost a narrative device used by RTD to answer a plot hole he had created himself in his pitch to the BBC to revive Doctor Who. Indeed, he suggested “no baggage” which meant no Time Lords & no Gallifrey. (T is for Television by Mark Aldridge and Andy Murray)

That doesn’t mean we can’t question what it symbolises in the show and in its time.

(Two important caveats:

The AIDS epidemic is still very much happening.

Any depiction of the AIDS crisis / any metaphor will be fragmented and very much subjective because a writer and a reader / viewer watches from a specific point of view)

I’ve considered a few key episodes but truthfully you can consider all of series 1 to 4 as part of this idea. Of course, the series 3 finale trilogy has a key place in this.

The End of the World

Dalek

Father’s Day

New Earth

School Reunion

Gridlock

Utopia

The Sound of Drums

Last of the Time Lords

End of Time part 1

The Doctor finds himself the only surviving member of his planet. “I lived. Everyone else died. - What do you mean? –  Everyone died Sarah.” (School Reunion, Doctor Who, Series 2) And he’s left fending for himself in the world. Then there’s guilt, RTD didn’t bother to make it subtle. Survivor’s guilt and are recurring theme of first 3 series of Doctor Who. It starts to make sense with Dalek and it’s an ongoing theme from then on.

Many queer people found themselves the only surviving person of their group of friends. If they were HIV-positive a lot of them wondered how they managed to survive it, if they were HIV-negative they sometimes wondered how they didn’t get it. Trauma in long term survivor of AIDS has been studied both through psychological and sociological lenses, enormous loss and guilt always come up. And it’s something that you can find in memoirs and autobiographies.

Outside of the Utopia - The Sound of the Drums - Last of the Time Lords there is one scene I want to discuss in depth:

Gridlock is an interesting episode. The conversation between the Face of Boe and the Doctor mirrors the one he will have with the Master later in the series (and we will talk about it). But more than that the conversation between Martha and the Doctor at the very end of the episode is fascinating.

“I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else. – What happened? – There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.” (Gridlock, Doctor Who, Series 3)

The Doctor and Martha’s relationship has been analysed in many ways and I won’t try to argue with them here. However, I think at that very moment we can see the Doctor as an old(er) gay man talking about the loss not only of his friends but of the places he had come to call home.

All this in an episode where we’ve seen a city devastated by an epidemic.

Now about the finale three episodes of series 3:

I won’t go too much into the Doctor/Master relationship because the relationship between Ten and Simm has been analysed thoroughly before. However, in Utopia the Doctor tells him two things, that they are both alone and he is sorry.

One of the last scenes of Last of the Time Lords features the Master dying in the Doctor’s arms while the Doctor begs for him to stay alive “You've got to. Come on. It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. (…) We're the only two left. There's no one else. Regenerate!” (Last of the Time Lords, Doctor Who, Series 3).

Someone is begging his friend to stay alive. He is asking him to use a treatment available to him, a treatment that has been shown to be painful and traumatic but it’s the only way to stay alive. It’s also the only way his friend won’t be alone again. Real life translation – HIV first effective treatments did work but people were sometimes burnt out.

I have wanted to make a post for a little while but hearing RTD talk about Queer as Folk and It’s a sin made me want to write about this.

I hope you found something interesting here.

(finally wrote this @roxannepolice )

[raspberry-gloaming]

The thing about getting into Gallifrey and currently being on Time War 4 is that now every time I see a time war related nuwho tv episode, and the Doctor is angsting about what they did, and so on, I just want to yell WHY DIDN'T YOU JOIN THE RESISTANCE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER WHAT WERE YOU THINKING BRO???

Like I obviously know that the Resistance was created long after NuWho and the time war came into existence, but thats meta, ooc. But IN UNIVERSE? The resistance had how many timelords? all those double agents and exiles and renegades... Even if somehow the Doctor was not contacted about that or by them pre-War Doctor, surely while working for Gallifrey in the John Hurt years between Night and Day of the Doctor someone, just someone, could have said something to them. Leela was on Gallifrey! She could have said something! A double agent still on Gallifrey could have said something!

[pl9090]

Order of the Black Sun analysis

As always constructive feedback is welcome.

"Alan Moore's back-up strips were an obvious influence on both Marc Platt's view of ye olde Gallifrey and my view of its future (Alien Bodies shares 95% of its .D.N.A. with its closest relative, 4-D War", Lawrence Miles.

Timeline 10,000,000.B.T.W.: The Anchoring. The Order of the Black Sun hired mercenary Fenris fails in his mission to prevent the Timelords from developing physical timetravel but does unintentionally succeed in sending and stranding Omega to the antimatter universe, his timetravel belt's directional control device is taken by Rassilon to be reverse engineeered. Rassilon tricks him him to banishing himself The Zone of No Return as punishment. (.D.W.M.: Stardeath).

9,999,980.B.T.W.: The Timelords retrieve Fenris from The Zone of No Return in order to mindprobe him to learn what they can about their current enemy, discovering only that they are from 30,000 years into the future when a squad Order of the Black Sun operatives who kill Fenris and the mindprobe operator aswell as injuring several others before phasing away. The conflict's nature as a time war is acknowledged. (.D.W.M.: 4D War).

9,999,970.B.T.W.: The Timelords enter into the delicate multi day Desraulturanium trade negeogiations with the Sontarans and to their surprise The Order of the Black Sun. However the Order's representatives are not hostile and they devise a successful joint bid. However the Sontarans disrupt the declaration by mind controling one of the Special Executive into assassinating the Order Elder in front of everyone. This maybe the incident which gets the Order to declare war.

At somepoint soon after 151 .B.T.W.: After their self exile from Gallifrey 1 and reorganisation, Faction Paradox continued their lesser species interference but in the form of creating secret groups telling them, "all the nastiest secrets of the Timelords". One of these groups is the, "Cult of the Black Sun" it's native timeframe is unknown.

30000's: The Order of the Black Sun attack squad's apparent native timeframe.

Somepoint: The First Great Time War is brought to a peaceful conclusion with The Order of the Black Sun somehow realising they had caused the war due to a mistaken assumption and first revenge strike.

10639.5 Rassilon era: While the Eighth Doctor's body healed his mind resided in the Matrix meeting the High Evolutionaries which included the Order member Demoiselle Drin who describes that the conflict as, "ought never to have happened". (.D.W.M.: The Final Chapter).

Notes The Cult/Order is the first Timelord enemy to knowingly use black sun imagery. Whether it's a coincidence like some others or intentional on the Faction's behalf is unknown, (though it must of known about the conflict as it happened before House Paradox was founded). The Order is from the 30000's yet is seen and treated as a respectable Galactic power in the decades after the anchoring. The Order's first/revenge strike against Gallifrey utilising Fenris is perhaps the Faction's largest and only real success agains the Timelords as it has embedded a bootstrap paradox into the Timelord's timetravel development. While it could have been planned the lack of any overt Faction presence or signature suggests otherwise. The First Great Time War is implied to have ended peacefully with the recognition it should/would never have happed to begin with in contrast to The Third & Last Great Time War against the Daleks. An Order member's presence as a High Evolutionary suprises the Eighth Doctor suggesting it wasn't part of the public or recorded peace pomp and circumstance. From the dialogue her actual placement seems recent but the fact she was considered at all says alot. A member in waiting? A secondary tier member? The Order may have be responsible for the black sun radation that turned the Meep species violent. The lack of any Faction style regalia suggests the contact between the two was limited. The Order is a probable Timelord ally in the Third & Last Great Time War.

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

Doctor Who and The 500-Year Diary

(Take 2)

One: 0-650. Was in his mid-200's upon leaving Gallifrey, a little over 100 years out of the academy. I choose to believe he was born disabled, because some sort of looming issues, hence the cane, but I have given up reconciling him looking old. It doesn't matter. He and Susan wander for a while before the show starts, so that by the time he leaves her on Earth it's been 150 years since they left home (so he's around 400 and she's somewhere close to 220). The show doesn't represent the true gaps he has between companions, so he's in his mid-600's when he actually regenerates, having already filled up his first diary. He mostly grumbles and complains in it, requiring reading between the lines to get the adventures, but if you look closely you can see his care and the fun he had. Also he sometimes unexpectedly includes genuinely funny jokes and anecdotes.

Two: 650-700. Very short life, the vast majority of it spent with Jamie. Prefers art and music to writing, and most of his diary entries are just watercolors of landscapes with Jamie in front of them.

Three: 700-748. Equally short life. About 8 years with unit as punishment, and 10 dying of radiation in the tardis, leaving 30 that he spent adventuring. That was almost all during Sarah's time, but he went off without her so much that she only spent like 5 years with him. While trapped on Earth, he would often start diary entries out as complaints about humans and Time Lords and other foolish things, but end up talking excitedly about some adventure or his current companion or Bessie. Not needing to sleep as much as humans do and getting bored very easily, he spends whole nights writing out lists of places to travel when he can and half-formed emergency plans and other such things. He writes very rarely once he has his freedom back, but occasionally comments on some adventure or other.

Four: 748-1,113. As best canon can tell, he only spent about 65 years as Four, but I refuse that to believe that two Time Lords didn't spend centuries traveling together. He spent somewhere between 4-6 years with Sarah, a few decades alone, 5-8 years with Leela, a few decades alone, and the rest with Romana except a few months at the end. He's really bad at remembering to keep his diary. He does sometimes write about the feelings he doesn't realize he doesn't share aloud, and intermittently writes about adventures, but when he does he heavily editorializes them into the way he wants to remember them. After Romana's regeneration, she (with minimal permission) starts correcting his entries, and then just writing about their adventures for him - much more accurate and somewhat more consistently, but still not every adventure, just the interesting ones. He still writes, but mostly about interesting thoughts or sometimes feelings or those moments when he realizes "OH! That's what they meant!" days later. He doesn't write at all between her leaving and his regeneration. He fills the second diary.

Five: 1,113-(almost) 1,500. I can't say how he writes yet, but this is the era he stops bothering to accurately keep track of his own age and just starts telling everyone he's 900.

Six: 1,500-1,700. He finishes his third diary soon after regenerating, realizes "oh, I must be 1500," and immediately goes back to telling everyone he's 900.

Seven: 1,700-2,000. Fills fourth diary.

Eight: 2,000-2,080. He has a lot of adventures, but I feel like he shouldn't last long. May change this when I actually get this far. He takes a break from the 900 thing and just makes up random numbers to cover for having no idea how old he is.

War: The Time War messes it up so he doesn't really count against age, both because trauma and it's genuinely impossible to count. Doesn't write. Actually tries to destroy his diaries and his useless, pointless past, but the tardis rescues them and spits them back out into the library after he regenerates.

Nine: 2,080-2,100. Shortest life ever. Tries to recapture a hint of his former self by going back to saying he's 900. Writes about every adventure (at least, every one with Rose), but in an emotionless, listed itinerary sort of way.

Ten: 2,100-3,000. Starts counting his life again, but has almost convinced himself he really was 900 and starts from there. And also is bad at math. Writes a lot, like way too much, about his emotions without actually processing them. Does also gush about his companions, and people he meets on adventures, rarely telling the full adventure story but more talking about pieces of it in detail. Finishes fifth and sixth diaries, but both times registers how old that must make him and immediately forgets.

Eleven: 3,000-4,200. The most ADHD anyone has ever been. Starts describing an adventure and trails off mid-entry into a totally different story or a ranking of cool planets or lists of funny words or doodles of his companions. Sometimes gets frustrated at his past self for this because he was trying to look something up and found the diary useless. Fills up his seventh and eighth diaries, and both are heavily dented from being chucked across the room.

Twelve: 4,200-5,700. His diary is a weird mix of things. Right after a traumatic adventure, will rant and rave against the universe. Months or years after a fun adventure will fondly remember it, crossing out messily bits that he misremembers and re-remembers mid writing. Infodumps about new hobbies while pretending not to care about them. Skips decades at a time, which is how Missy took it and roleplayed as him for so many years without him noticing that she eventually just told him. He didn't cross out her entries but did write in the margins angry commentary. Filled ninth, tenth, and eleventh diaries.

Thirteen: 5,700-5,790. Spent 20 years with Yaz (and others), 10 alone between adventures, and 60 in prison. Didn't have her diary in prison. Did write a lot for the other 30 years, but is the second most ADHD anyone has ever been and had a tendency to start stories ("so we landed in London in 1863"), get distracted talking about how amazing Yaz is or this cool person they met or the wonders of some ordinary thing, and then forget to tell the middle before concluding the story ("and we sent the daleks packing"). Also just goes on a lot of happy rants with no story attached. Uses SO many exclamation points, but never shares more than surface level excitements and annoyances.

Fourteen: 7,790-6,000. The other round numbers are estimations, but this one is not. He stays with Donnas family for over 200 years, until Rose's grandchildren are old, and heals and relaxes and finally chooses to regenerate (sort of; who knows how that works) when he has filled up the last of his 12 diaries. Uses his diary to finally work through his emotions, talk with excitement about the wonders of ordinary life he's discovering, and sometimes draw, paint, or do those scrapbook-type journal pages.

Fifteen: 6,000+. Being done with a whole diary set feels like a fresh start, but is also sad. It's not like he can just go home for more. But then, inexplicably at first, he discovers more in the tardis library (that she put right by the others). Another whole set, matching (unlike his), of the type often given as academy graduation gifts. It turns out these were Romana's. The first 80 years are filled by Romana i, but after her regeneration she sort of shared his. So he reads them (and cries), and then starts using the first one has his new diary. Fourteen was in the habit of writing every night, so at first (while Ruby is there), Fifteen actually writes about every adventure in detail, though slowly he does get more and more distracted and writes less often. He also tends to focus very heavily on the little details he loved and gloss over big things like almost dying or the horror of whatever they saw this time.

The Doctor never writes about their regenerations. They will note that they did, and write in detail about who they are now (sometimes. depends on who they are now), but never about what killed them.