Monday, March 28, 2011

TIN CYBERMEN AND NIXON'S COMING

The High Council of Timelords - a group I belong to on Facebook - published this frame grab from the preview of the new 'Doctor Who' season: These are the assumptions I made from it:

  • It's from "The Impossible Astronaut". (A big "Duh!", since that's the visor of a space-suit he's looking at.)
  • The aliens can't be seen as aliens if you look at them directly.
  • But they can be seen as aliens if you look at their reflections.
  • And judging by the smirk on the Doctor's face, the Doctor has just figured that out.
A day or so later, the BBC released the online prequel for "The Impossible Astronaut". At the end, we got to see what President Nixon couldn't - the Secret Service agent in the Oval Office is an alien. So that pretty much confirmed that theory.
There was some online speculation that since the Doctor would be in the White House, and there's usually an alien involved, then the President would be Harry Truman. But I think that may have been too obvious. I like the choice of Nixon, mainly because I want to make a prediction as to when this episode takes place:

On or just before June 20, 1972. That was the date on which those 18½ minutes of the Watergate tapes were recorded which were later mysteriously erased.
One thing that's always been great about 'Doctor Who' is how the Time Lord is always present and/or responsible for key historical events on Earth Prime-Time.

Here's a list of some of them:

  • The first spark of life on Earth ("City Of Death")
  • The end of the dinosaurs ("Earthshock")
  • The Great Fire of London ("The Visitation", mentioned in "Pyramids Of Mars")
  • The destruction of Pompeii ("Fires Of Pompeii')
  • And he took the last hotel room in Bethlehem so that Jesus had to be born in a manger. ("Voyage Of The Damned")
So a sci-fi splainin for those missing 18½ minutes on the tapes would be in keeping with the show. If so, we should expect to see H.R. Haldeman in the episode as he was present at the time of the taping. Rose Mary Woods, the scapegoat for their erasure, would not be necessary as she didn't erase them until September. BCnU!

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