SUMMONING THE TIME LORDS

WONDERFUL CHAPEAU, ALL OF THEM

Over the years, the Doctor has had some wonderful hats, each perfectly fitted to work not only with the rest of the Time Lord's outfit, but also with his personality.  

As I write this on August 14th, I'm sure the Grand Moff and Peter Capaldi have already worked out what kind of costume will be worn by the Next Incarnation of the Doctor.  But I still wanted to put in my two cents regarding his "Who-berdashery".

This is the look I would favor:

That 1950s vibe but especially that hat!  

There are two actors I always think of when I see that hat.  One is the French master comedian Jacques Tati.  But as the Brits get touchy about any foreign taint to their beloved sci-fi hero (and I suppose quite rightly), I'll advocate for the other choice - Sir Alec Guinness.

Here are two pictures of him with the kind of hat I think would look perfect with the Doctor:

BCnU!

RECASTAWAYS - FROM COLIN'S DOCTOR TO McCOY'S

I couldn't resist this choice for the donor of the DNA used for the regeneration into the Seventh Incarnation of the Doctor:

As seen in 'Doctors', Graham Capelli used to star in "The Amazing Lollipop Man", a show about a time-traveling eccentric who's on the run from his own people. 

Here's the IMDb summary:
Graham Capelli, an aging actor most well known for his role as a time traveler in a 1980's kids program, 'The Amazing Lollipop Man', visits the doctors to see Dr West. Unfortunately it is the day of Dr West's funeral. Capelli spends his time now recording DVD commentaries and hoping the show will return.

 

David Semple wrote the episode and had this to say about it:
The fictional show I invented within my episode – "The Lollipop Man" – is about a time traveller who, whilst hiding out on earth, gets a part time job as a school crossing patrolman, but his lollipop stick can take him anywhere in time and space: so he takes children on amazing journeys…he mostly takes them on journeys of self-discovery, so, for example, with a child who's upset because his granddad has died, the Lollipop Man takes him back to the Second World War, where he gets to meet his granddad as a small, scared evacuee…and they get to play together one last time, even though it's a kid his own age he's playing with. That's what the Lollipop Man does – he helps people over the road, both literally and metaphorically.

As Colin Baker's tenure with 'Doctor Who' as the Sixth Doctor was during the 1980s, I'm sure he had plenty of London-based, off-screen adventures during that time.  Sooner or later he would have seen or heard about the TV show 'The Amazing Lollipop Man' and would have been mighty suspicious about it, considering how closely it hewed to his own life.

I think it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, the Sixth Doctor and Mel would have gone to the BBC in Birmingham to see if somebody did know too much about him.   There he would have met Graham Capelli and his biological imperative would have taken it from there once they shook hands.

And who knows?  Maybe it turned out the writer of the show within the show (not necessarily David Semple) was an alien hoping to expose the truth about the Doctor through his scripts.

If you're interested in seeing Graham Cappelli in his later years, here's the episode of 'Doctors' in which Sylvester McCoy guest-starred:

BCnU!

ACTION FIGURE "DOCTOR WHO"

Would this take place in the world of 'Robot Chicken'?

RECASTAWAYS - ROMANA'S REGENERATION

At this point, I'd like to take a break from the run-down of the regenerations of the Doctor to take a look at another Gallifreyan's change.

Romanadvoratrelundar, better known as Romana, decided to change her appearance voluntarily after the Key of Time adventures.  It may seem like a waste of a regeneration cycle, but at least it helps buttress some claims about regeneration made by the Doctor.

Before she finally settled on her look for "Romana II", the Time Lady underwent three other physical forms.  Each of them suggest that she got access to DNA from sources other than a Time Lord.

One was blue-skinned, which suggested that Romana had once met Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan or at least some other humanoid plant from the sentient species known as Delvians.  ('Farscape')

Then there was the Amazonian who may have been a combination of Romana's DNA with that of the legendary Irish warrior woman Boudicca (who bore an amazing resemblance to the Doctor's future wife River Song.)

And then there was the demi-goddess, suggesting that Romana had visited the interdimensional world known to the mortals of Earth as "Olympus".  Perhaps she even encountered Hera, the wife of Zeus.

It's probably just as well that Romana didn't choose this form, as demi-god DNA must be extremely malleable.  Like the Time Lords, they can change their appearance at will (without the constraints of having only a certain number of changes available to them.)  The mixture of the two strands of DNA might have caused severe repercussions in the long term.

Besides, as the Doctor pointed out, as a demi-goddess Romana was too tall.....

So she finally settled on a simple humanoid female form and as far as we know, having last seen her in E-Space, she remains in that form even as it ages.

But where did she get the original DNA sequence to blend with her own?

That's easy.  We saw it happen within 'Doctor Who'.  Princess Astra of Atrios was one of the segments of the Key of Time but in human form*.  

Romana's regeneration variations support statements made by the Doctor over the years.

1) The Ninth Doctor said that he could have a dog's head or no head at all.  So a Time Lord could regenerate into a life form other than a humanoid.

2) The Tenth Doctor claimed that he had fifteen hours in which to lock down the template for the new incarnation.  (He demonstrated this by growing a new hand.)  By regenerating in the first place Romana was wasting one of her cycles.  But trying out the different templates available to her (perhaps thanks to the program installed by Drax?), took place in the span of a few minutes, so no extra regenerations were lost.

3)  The Eleventh Doctor said that every regeneration hurt.  Maybe that's why Romana did all out of the view of the Doctor (and the audience in the Trueniverse) because it was just too painful and she didn't want to share that.  So she slipped into something similar to a changing room.

But in doing so, we never got to see the how the regeneration effect worked for Romana.  However, a fan of the show has put together his own version of what it must have looked like:

BCnU!

*  I've often wondered if the whole Key of Time story was an inspiration for the Horcrux in the "Harry Potter books.  Harry Potter and Astra would then share similarities.

NOAH'S TARDIS?

It's never too early to start thinking up those untold stories about the 12th Doctor which will never be seen by the viewing audience in the Trueniverse.

More than likely there will be space between episodes in which these stories can be squeezed in, so if you've already started wrting some, let me know where to find it on the web.  I'd love to read it.

Ever since the announcement that Peter Capaldi would be the 12th Doctor (I say he's the 13th Incarnation.  We'll see.), Facebook has been flooded with old publicity pictures of the actor as well as photoshopped treats showing what his Doctor might look like in action.

And that's where I found this minor oddity.

It looks like the type of picture Entertainment Weekly might have taken for some story about Capaldi... like if he had been doing publicity rounds for a movie like "Fierce Creatures."  (Which he is not in, I checked.  Does anybody have a clue as to what this picture was for?)

Well, no matter the picture's original intent, I'm going to suggest it to be considered part of the off-screen adventures of the next Doctor.  And I have the story tailor-made for it, already written!

Not be me.  By some schmuck who helped write the Book of Genesis (Chapters 6 - 9.)

The Doctor has been involved with events from the Bible before, at least with the New Testament.  He rented the last hotel room to be had in Bethlehem, which is why Mary ended up giving birth in the manger.  Whether he did so knowingly or not wasn't mentioned in his anecdote.

So why couldn't he have become involved with Noah's quest to save the wildlife of the world?

There would have been plenty of cubit space in the TARDIS for two animals of every kind.  He could even have taken on board the two unicorns and then provided them a better ending than the one we know from the Irish Rovers.

How I  would handle it?  

Clara  begged to save the unicorns, but the Doctor said their extinction was a fixed point in Time; he couldn't help them.  But without him knowing it, Clara got a pair of them on board the TARDIS and hid them away in her room, deep in the TARDIS.

The Doctor didn't discover them until he and Clara left Noah and his disembarked zoo behind.  Rather than taking them back to Earth, knowing that he couldn't jeopardize the planet's timeline, he took them to a pastoral planet free of sentient life, where they would have no predators to worry about.  There they would be able to breed and flourish.

So this picture could be of the Doctor protecting a young fawn born during the trip from a lion looking for a meal.  And as the person who posted this picture mentioned, the Doctor speaks lion.  He was O'Bviously telling the King of the Jungle to back off.

This edition of Fanficcer's Friend is dedicated to my nephew Thomas Muller.  It has been one of the joys of my life to share 'Doctor Who' with him.  I'm not good at sports or helping with homework, but sharing a great story well-told on TV?  I can do that.....

BCnU!

RECASTAWAYS - FROM DAVISON'S DOCTOR TO COLIN BAKER'S

We come now to the linchpin of my theory that Time Lords come into contact with the donors of the DNA that they will use in their next incarnation when the Fifth Doctor met fellow Time Lord, Commander Maxil..

In "Arc Of Infinity", the Doctor was sentenced to death by the ruling council because somehow an anti-matter creature had formed a bond with him which it was then using to get access into the matter universe.  This would have caused the destruction of the entire TV universe.

No more 'My Mother The Car'!

Commander Maxil was in charge of the detail who was guarding the Doctor during his death sentence.  And at one point, he even shot the Doctor!

Nothing like trying to hurry things up......

I would think the Doctor's biological imperative saw elements in Maxil that would be useful for the next incarnation.  However, if personality quirks do factor into the decision, then it could be argued that "Nature" made a big mistake.  The resulting incarnation, played by Colin Baker, was short-tempered and insulting at first, and in his short time in the Universe, the Sixth Doctor didn't improve his demeanor very much.

BCnU!

MICHIGAN J. WHO

HELLO MY BABY! (Ida Emerson / Joseph E. Howard) The Andrew Sisters Hello, my baby Hello, my honey Hello, my ragtime gal Send me a kiss by wire Baby, my hearts on fire If you refuse me Honey, you'll lose me Then you'll be left alone Oh baby, telephone And tell me I'm your own Hello, my baby Hello, my honey Hello, my ragtime gal Send me a kiss by wire Baby, my hearts on fire If you refuse me Honey, you'll lose me Then you'll be left alone Oh baby, telephone And tell me I'm your own

GAME OF THE NAME - THETA SIGMA!

RECASTAWAYS - FROM TOM BAKER'S DOCTOR TO DAVISON'S

Of all the regenerations of the Doctor so far, the trippiest has to be that of the Fourth Doctor into the Fifth Incarnation.   (I'm writing this on August 15th, however.  We've yet to see the regeneration from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi.)

Throughout the visit to "Logopolis" and then back on Earth where the transformation took place, the Doctor was shadowed by a mysterious figure whom Adric referred to as "The Watcher". (Not to be confused with Uatu of the Marvel Comics Universe.)

When at last the Doctor lay dying after his fall from the transmission tower, the Watcher approached and merged with the Doctor to regenerate into the form he would take as the Fifth Incarnation.

The Watcher was the Doctor's future self, but without the mixture of DNA already stored in the body.  This is why he looks radically different from the Fifth Doctor (besides the fact that another actor was playing the role - Adrian Gibbs, not Peter Davison.)

As the Eleventh Incarnation would say, the Watcher was not yet cooked.  Basically he was the dough, the primordial clay to work with.

And yet the Watcher seemed to be alive.  It was ambulatory and it conversed with Adric (although the Maths prodigy couldn't remember many details of the conversation just moments later.)  He was from the Future, but where exactly did he come from?

I think he was akin to being a Gallifreyan ghost, sent by someone, perhaps a Time Lord, in preparation for the transformation known to be imminent.

Here is my theory - When I said it was alive, it would be better described as being a simulacrum.  It was merely a container in humanoid form housing the DNA from some Time Lord's former incarnation.  This DNA would be used to create the new look for the Doctor.  It was a walking, talking storage bank until it made its deposit into the Doctor to spark regeneration.  (And when I say it talked, I think it was merely a "squawk-box" through which the mystery donor conversed with Adric.  Or it was programmed to supply certain replies.)

So, as with the situation faced by the Second Incarnation, the choice of the new physical appearance of the Doctor was forced upon the dying Time Lord.  And that would mean that the visage of Peter Davision's interpretation of the role, minus any influx from the previous DNA, was a Time Lord from the Past.  That Time Lord would still exist, but in some other incarnation now.  

(I think the storage of Time Lord DNA on Gallifrey is along the lines of the near-mythical transfer of the Vulcan katra into specially designed arks.)

But when it comes to the source for that DNA?  Dare I ask it?  Who?

Here's my candidate - and remember, it's only a theory.  Please... no wagering.

I think it could have been the Doctor's old Prydonian Academy classmate, Drax (Class of 92).  

During his adventure to secure the "Key Of Time", the Doctor met up with Drax again while dealing with "The Armageddon Factor".  Despite the years and the number of regenerations between them, these two Time Lords were still able to recognize each other.*

(I've got a few friends who hate to be reminded of their old school nicknames.)

However, while the Doctor was serving the White Guardian, Drax was under duress by "the Shadow" to serve the Black Guardian.  As such, he was forced to lead the Doctor into a trap.  But the Fourth Incarnation easily saw through the ruse played out by Drax and avoided the trap.  Although he was of a criminal bent, Drax did have a moral compass in fairly good working order.  With a bit of cajoling from the Doctor, Drax abandoned the Black Guardian and the Shadow and threw in his lot with the Doctor.

After the adventure was over, Drax remained behind on the planet Atrios to help in its rebuilding.  But before they parted ways, Drax may have told the Doctor that he owed him a huge favor.

The Doctor always had people in his debt.  But this time, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that he decided to cash in right away.

I think the Doctor asked Drax to build him an emergency regeneration system into the TARDIS data banks.  (Having dealt with the Guardians, he was probably concerned about  the percussions of retribution from such near-gods.  Plus, after an influx of human DNA in two of his last three regenerations, he may have felt it time to replenish his stock with Time Lord genetics.)Calling on his skills as a tech wizard with his specialties in cybernetics (and calling upon his record as a convicted criminal), the renegade Time Lord might have broken into the Gallifrey data banks and stole some of the finer samples of Time Lord DNA.

But I doubt it.  More on that in a bit.....

The next time the Doctor would be forced into regeneration, it would be into a body of his own choosing!

So Drax could have created a computer program for the TARDIS which could generate a cybernetic, probably holographic, man with a built-in guidance system (also one of his specialties) that would track and shadow the Doctor once activated.  Drax chose to give the housing unit a humanoid form so that it could monitor and follow the Doctor easily through even the roughest terrain.

If needed, that program could generate several holographic vessels, enough to cover the Doctor's limit of regenerations if need be.  And with each one that was created, a different DNA sample was carried.

The program was probably triggered by the threatened entropic destruction of Logopolis.  Upon seeing the Watcher activated, the Doctor knew he would soon undergo regeneration.

And that's why the Doctor was able to reassure his Companions, "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for."

The inclusion of the Watcher is necessary for the official version of his regeneration, but somebody on YouTube has re-edited it to make a smooth "morph" into the Fifth....

So whose DNA did Drax swipe for the Doctor?

I think he was too big a coward to actually return to Gallifrey, being a renegade Time Lord and all.  And if his burglary skills were that good, how did he end up in Brixton prison?

No, I think Drax took the easy way out - he went back in Time, violating one of the laws of Time Travel by crossing his own time-stream.  That way, he collected DNA samples from his own previous regenerations.

He should have known better.  But then again, he did flunk temporal theory at the Prydonian Academy.....

(Rassilon intended for regeneration to be only available to the elite of Gallifrey - definite class system there.  But I think Drax stole the technology to make it happen and gave himself the capability.  This is why he was a renegade Time Lord.)

Mixed with the DNA originally absorbed within the Doctor once the Watcher had merged with him, it created a new template that looked like some actor named Peter Davison.  (Once upon a time, Davison was hired to play a character called the Doctor in a TV show primarily created to debunk any sightings of Time Lord activity on Earth.)

So one of the past incarnations of Drax looked somewhat similar, but not exactly, to the Fifth Doctor.

(Come on!  I don't know if I'll ever get my dream-casting of Julian Rhind-Tutt as the Doctor, so for the time being, I'll settle for him being a previous incarnation of Drax.....)

BCnU!

* That a TV character in some other series might recognize another despite the other being a "recastaway" could mean that the two of were also from Gallifrey and passing themselves off as human.  Perhaps they made use of Chameleon Arches.