WHO FAMILY TREE?

 

This genealogy diagram covers the basics, although the jury is still out on the Time Lord played by Claire Bloom.  (Personally, I do believe that she was the Doctor's mother.)

One day I hope the family lineage backstory for "Susan Foreman"* will finally be revealed.  And it would be proper for it to happen while we still have Carole Ann Ford among us. 

Also, the Doctor's marriages to Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Regina, and the Warrior Queen of Felooth should also be included, even if there was no offspring.

* O'Bservation - Susan must have had a Gallifreyan name as well, don't you think? 

ROSE TYLER AND BILLIE PIPER - IDENTICAL COUSINS IN TOOBWORLD?

In Earth Prime-Time, it is not uncommon for TV characters to look exactly like the televersions of the actors who portrayed them in the real world of Earth Prime.  That splainin has helped disable a lot of Zonks (discrepancies) over the years, especially when those actor televersions talk about the characters they played in shows which should have both the character and the actor’s televersion sharing the same dimension.

Was that too confusing?  Well, let me give you two examples….

• ‘King Of Queens’ – In the episode “Shear Torture”, Lou Ferrigno and Adam West are openly acknowledged for the roles which made them famous, the Hulk and Batman respectively.
• ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ – While in a dentist’s office, Will, Carlton, and William Shatner get goofy on escaping laughing gas in the episode “Eye, Tooth”.  They begin doing ‘Star Trek’ routines.

There are times when the televersions of actors meet the characters whom they play in the real world.  Usually there is no indication that the character actually has a TV show about them… yet.  That will be established once the show is mentioned in some other series when they both should be sharing the same world.

Here are some actor televersions who met the characters they play:

• Brandy Norwood – Moesha
• Redd Foxx – Fred Sanford
• Robin Williams – Mork
• Lucille Ball – Lucy Carter

So what does this have to do with 'Doctor Who'?

So in this post, Cooper Hillier noticed that Billie Piper’s CD was in the Coopers’ apartment.  Gwen and Rhys were from the ‘Torchwood’ series, which was a spin-off from ‘Doctor Who’.  So that CD of “Honey To The B” serves as the proof that there was a televersion of Billie Piper in Toobworld.

Currently, Rose is living in a parallel dimension with the human version of the Tenth Incarnation (one heart, no regenerations) and it’s possible, just possible, that in that world there is no Billie Piper!

WHO NEWS - JINKX MONSOON

I don't think this will see the light of day until after this "Who's On First" blogAthon.  More news may be released during the coming year and I'll probably add updates.  But I'm not going to speculate as to whom they will be playing.

From Variety:

Jinkx Monsoon, winner of the fifth season of 'RuPaul’s Drag Race' and the seventh season of 'RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,' has been added to the cast of the BBC’s long-running and immensely popular 'Doctor Who' series.

Monsoon is set to be playing a major role in the series.

“In a galaxy of comets and supernovas, here comes the biggest star of all. Jinkx Monsoon is on a collision course with the TARDIS, and ‘Doctor Who’ will never be the same again,” showrunner Russell T Davies said.

“I’m honored, thrilled, and utterly excited to join ‘Doctor Who!’ Russell T Davies is a visionary and a brilliant writer — I can’t wait to get into the weeds with him and the crew! I hope there’s room in the TARDIS for my luggage,” Monsoon said.

UPDATE
[based on the last special, "The Giggle".]

All might be revealed come Christmas*, but I'm guessing Monsoon will be the new Rani.

For the full story, click here.

* O'Bservation - it wasn't.  But a feminine hand was seen picking up the Toymaker's gold tooth which contained the essence of the Master.  So now I'm thinking that was Monsoon and they will be playing the Rani.

I hope that's true, mostly for my friend Mike who really wants to see the return of the Rani....

BANNED BOOKS ON GALLIFREY?

Of course, The Doctor is not supposed to cross his own timestream, so the Third Incarnation wouldn’t know that his future self, the Thirteenth Incarnation, would meet Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley on the night when she was inspired to write about the “modern Prometheus”.

It could be that the High Council of Time Lords banned the “Frankenstein” book from Gallifrey’s libraries and from the curriculum of their various levels of academia.  While they practiced regeneration, revitalizing themselves when they were “mostly dead”, they probably had serious qualms about bringing someone back from being completely dead.

By the way, the Lux Foundation Library planet had to have a copy “Frankenstein” in its massive data storage core, possibly more than one copy, as with any book, in a separate backup drive. 

THE MEDDLING MONK... IN OIL

 

This painting is "A Good Drink", by Eduard von Grützner (Oil on panel) from 1897–1897.

But could it be that the Galifreyan trickster known as the Meddling Monk posed for this a few years before the dawn of the 20th Century?

Why would the Monk have been whiling away the time in Germany by posing for the artist in 1897?  We know he enjoyed disrupting the timeline of the Earth, marking him as a renegade Time Lord. (In his own mind, I believe that he truly thought he was doing so for the greater good.)

Maybe his own Tardis was acting wonky and he arrived too early for the event which he planned to alter in History.  So he was biding his time until the right moment to strike by amusing himself as a model for Mr. von Grützner.

I've looked through the events of the German timeline for 1897, and one jumped out at me as being an interesting choice for a 'Doctor Who' timeline.

October 29 - The birth of Joseph Goebbels. 

Maybe the Monk thought that by causing Goebbels' death as a newborn infant, he could prevent much of the carnage to come.  Perhaps Goebbels would have been the first such victim, with Hitler on his hit list as well.

This possible plot line is reminiscent of the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Fires of Pompeii", in which he sadly had to stop the Pyroviles' plan to prevent the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so that History could play out as intended.

In this case, the Doctor and his Companion would have to make it possible for the Baby Goebbels to survive and eventually grow up to become the chief propagandist for the Nazis in control of Germany, until his scheduled death in May of 1945, as abhorrent as that was to their sense of justice.

As depicted in the painting, the subject doesn't look like the actor who portrayed the Monk, Peter Butterworth.  But in his own personal timeline, he could have sat for von Grützner centuries after we last saw him sparring with the Doctor.  As such, the years had not been kind....

Or maybe he had regenerated.  I expect - and hope - that soon the 'Doctor Who' series will bring back the Monk to be an adversary for the Doctor.

My dream casting for the choice of actor?  Kris Marshall.

Or the difference in appearance could just be artistic license.

A LITTLE ABOUT MYSELF....

It occurs to me that I should have begun this blog-A-thon with a little about me, WHO I am....

 

PRYDONIAN ACADEMY TEACHINGS - A LESSON IN PHILOSOPHY 101

 

FANFICCER'S FRIEND - A COMIC INSPIRATION

Apparently Mrs. Blumfield knew that her husband Carl had been trapped in the past due to a time machine.  It could have been one of his own making, or one that he found abandoned, or he got picked up by The Doctor in the TARDIS and unfortunately died during one of their adventures together back in 1924.  (Which incarnation of The Doctor?  If this newspaper comic inspires you to write fanfic to expand the story, it could be any one of your choosing.)

But I've got a suggestion to get you started – what happened during 1924 which could have gotten Carl killed?

Here are a few historical suggestions from Wikipedia, any one of which could have had an alien influence at work behind the scenes....

• January 25 – The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, in the French Alps.
• April 27 – A group of Alawites kill several nuns in Syria; French troops march against them.
• April 28 – An explosion in a mine at the Wheeling Steel Corporation in Benwood, West Virginia kills 119 men.
• May 4 – The 1924 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies are held in Paris, France.
• May 26 – Harry Grindell Matthews attempts to demonstrate his "death ray" to the War Office in the United Kingdom.
• June 8 – George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen "going strong for the top" of Mount Everest by teammate Noel Odell at 12:50 P.M. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.
• June 13 – In Hungary, a devastating tornado, "Wildkansas", strikes, in 3 hours leaving a 500-1500m wide and 70 km long path of destruction from landfall at Bia to its end near Vác, completely destroying the village of Páty. 9 people are killed, 50 injured and many left homeless by one of the strongest tornadoes ever not only in Hungary but in Europe, estimated as F4.
• July 19 – Napalpí massacre: Around 400 indigenous people of Toba ethnicity are massacred in Argentina.
• Autumn – In the United States, the final raid of the Renegade period of the Apache Wars takes place, bringing the American Indian Wars to a close, after 315 years.
• December 30 – American astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.

Or you could make up your own.

Mrs. Blumfield’s mention of a time machine seems to lock in that plot point.  But I still get the feeling that this could have been due to a Weeping Angel.

 

COULD RUBY SUNDAY BE A MATA HARI?

This on-location shot shows the crew filming Millie Gibson and Jemma Redgrave meeting as their characters Ruby Sunday and UNIT’s Kate Stewart respectively.

That picture is from January as is the following post....

One of the YouTube Who videographers reported that based on rumors he had heard, Kate Stewart might be actually related to Ruby Sunday.  And then he suggested that she could be playing her grandmother.

Her grandmother?  Jemma Redgrave is 58.  Millie Gibson is 19.  Whoever is the parent of Ruby and the child of Kate, they had to have been 20 at most when they had Ruby, and by extension, Kate would have been 19 when she had Ruby’s parent.

I like the idea of them being related, but not Kate as a grandmother! Ruby’s Aunt, maybe....

The idea that Kate would be related to a Companion sounds too coincidental to be believable.  The Doctor usually meets his Companions by chance. This had to be deliberate. 

Maybe Kate maneuvered Ruby into meeting The Doctor in order to have an inside source. But I don't see her risking a family member like that... unless Ruby is another member of the family who works for UNIT.

That would be a Companion tweak we haven't seen since the days of Turlough, who was working undercover for the Black Guardian. And it probably would work better if the Kate/Ruby family relationship wasn't part of it at all. Just have Ruby be an undercover UNIT trooper.

Just my two quatloos.  I will have a theory on Ruby's mother later today….

THE 2024 WHO'S ON FIRST BLOG-A-THON: INTRODUCTION

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everybody had a great New Year's Eve?

Welcome to the 16^th anniversary edition of the "Who's On First?" blogAthon.  For the next 24 hours, there will (hopefully) be forty-eight posts about 'Doctor Who', one every half hour.

This round-the-clock celebration of 'Doctor Who' began somewhat modestly - there were only seven "episodes" for that first outing.  But it has grown to the point where for the last couple of years we have tried to present a new blog post about the universe of the Doctor every half hour.   That may not be the case this year.  We'll at least try to get one in every hour.

And I always amaze myself that I find enough topics each year.  But then, I have yet to see every episode of the 59 year old series.

Because of their time-sensitive nature, there were a few posts I published earlier in the year.  Some are just mentions of the Doctor, most of them dealt with the breaking news about the show.  If so, I'll re-post them early in the day's schedule.

This edition will hopefully be special.  (I'm setting up this post on January 9, 2023.)  By November of 2023, we should be celebrating the 60th anniversary of 'Doctor Who'.  If we haven't wiped ourselves out by then.

So here it is - the kick-off to the 2024 edition of 'Who's On First'!  And as always, we begin with the frame grab from 'Robot Chicken' which has become our mascot.... 

By the way, that quote in the picture of the Tenth Incarnation and Martha is from the lyrics of the song "The Toast" by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Adam Ezra.

Check out the Adam Ezra Group on YouTube; join the Gathering!