Standard sci-fi suspension of disbelief covers that for me.

Subject: Standard sci-fi suspension of disbelief covers that for me.
Author: Outhra
Posted on: 2013-11-17 22:51:00 UTC

After all, what's the easiest way to introduce an alien presence in sci-fi stories without said presence providing an immediate threat? Send a spaceship hurtling through the atmosphere, and crash it into the planet. Normally, there's at least one person who stays alive from it, regardless of how much red goo the impact should have turned them into, though they do occasionally die a few minutes after someone finds the crash site following the low muttering of something cryptic or the handing off of some sort of space relic.
The Doctor, a titular character, getting through a spaceship crash from planetary orbit in one piece? Seems basically like a given. He was even dead for a few minutes, so there's a bit of a concession to the more probable option there.

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New Doctor Who 50th anniversary clip! by SeaTurtle on 2013-11-14 17:43:00 UTC Reply

Featuring possibly the most obscure Doctor of them all, this clip actually managed to bridge the gap between Classic Who and New Who.

Presenting: "The Night of the Doctor." (link to YouTube.)

Who you calling obscure? (Spoilers) by Huinesoron on 2013-11-14 19:51:00 UTC Reply

Eight is awesome!

Seriously, it was brilliant seeing him again (in, unless you count cameos in Human Nature, The Next Doctor, The Eleventh Hour, and The Name of the Doctor, only his second on-screen appearance!). He was fantastic, and the plot of the minisode was good too. I liked the way they put an entire backstory into the brief exchange at the beginning.

That said, the decision felt a little quick. I'm not sure why - I'll have to watch it again to think about it.

hS

A spoilery thought by Ekyl on 2013-11-15 04:55:00 UTC Reply

Perhaps 'cause the old lady told him he only had four minutes to decide? ;)

I do wonder what John Hurt's character implies about the order of the Doctors and all, though. Isn't he technically 9? I suppose they'll come up with a reason he doesn't count, but still...

Oh, yeah, forgot about that. by Huinesoron on 2013-11-15 06:56:00 UTC Reply

I think it needed a bit more obvious time pressure, really - she didn't mention that, nor did he start doing the 'cough cough I am totes dying now guyz' thing. So it slipped my mind.

Oh, and two words:

Time

Lock

hS

She says it right at the start. by Ekyl on 2013-11-15 06:57:00 UTC Reply

Something like "I brought you back but you only have four minutes until you're dead again" and Eight was looking all messed up.

(Also, not sure why crashing to the ground would've killed him dead with no regeneration. Guy's regenned from a Dalek shot, a fall shouldn't be stopping him turning into Nine. Ah well.)

I don't think he would have been perma-dead from the fall. by Outhra on 2013-11-17 04:16:00 UTC Reply

It seemed that, while the Doctor would regenerate regardless, the Sisterhood gave him their Elixir so that he would transform into a specific form and personality to fit the task ahead of him. They seemed to predict what he would request, too, since the lead Sister had a specific Elixir prepared for "warrior Time Lord" before the Doctor even crashed.

Eight wasn't the sort of person who would willingly use the Moment, the as-of-now ill-defined superweapon that ended the Time War by wiping out Gallifrey and the Dalek fleets around it, as well as creating permanent scars in the timestream, and a random regeneration might have ended up with someone like Five, who would be even less likely to take that sort of drastic action. There needed to be a Doctor who would do what was necessary to preserve what little was left of the universe's sanity, no matter how many lives had to be lost, and if the new mind was unable to follow through, the Time War would probably rage indefinitely.
When you consider the Doctor's core personality traits, a mind like that would have been almost impossible for him to create through random regeneration alone, especially when the new body was still getting accustomed to it.

'The fall'? by Huinesoron on 2013-11-17 21:22:00 UTC Reply

That's actually the least believable part about the whole minisode for me - that was a spaceship moving at orbital, or even interplanetary, speeds. Even assuming it was heatproofed to survive what seemed to be an unpowered descent into atmosphere, it would still have been moving at multiple hundreds of meters per second when it hit the ground.

Dead? He should have been vaporised.

Conclusion: if you have to be in a crashing spaceship, make sure it was made by whoever built that one!

hS

Some thoughts on that 'fall'. by the Irish Samurai on 2013-11-17 23:01:00 UTC Reply

From the footage after the crash, the craft did get pretty wrecked up - the Doctor appeared to be lying amid debris with the sky above him. The hull had essentially ceased to exist in any recognisable form.

However, the vessel was referred to as a 'gunship', which suggests that it is military in nature. It's not unreasonable to assume that it would have had a lot of armour, and structural redundancy - it may have even had automated emergency systems designed to help out in a crash landing, something like a Star Wars repulsorlift could be used to cushion the impact, but might only kick in at the last second. OK, the sudden deccleration of such a system could do some fairly horrific things to any crew left onboard - but it's not going to be worse than hitting a planet at terminal velocity.

As for the crash itself, the final trajectory appeared to be a straight line. Yeah it was at quite a steep angle, but the craft wasn't plummeting, and it wasn't rolling or spiralling either - that implies that it came down under at least partial control. I don't think it was an unpowered descent. If it did have some kind of emergency landing system fitted, then those two things combined might have been enough to stop it from turning into a relativistic kill vehicle - which seems to be the sort of thing you were expecting from that 'vaporised' comment.

In conclusion, if you do have to be in a crashing spaceship, then being in one designed/built by whoever did that one is not a bad idea. Also, try and sit near the Black Box - after all, if that's the only bit of the craft they expect to recover, that sounds like a pretty good spot to be in :)

And I just have to say that I really like the Doctor's logic about why they should move to the back of the ship - I thought that was a very nice line.

Some facts. by Huinesoron on 2013-11-17 23:50:00 UTC Reply

During the initial approach sequence, we see two shots of the gunship approaching the planet. There's about six seconds between them, with no indication that we've jumped in time. In those six seconds, the planet's apparent size roughly doubles. That means the distance to the planet has halved. Since the episode goes on longer than another six seconds, either we did jump a bit, or the ship slows down somehow.

But... I really don't think it's enough. That final crash trajectory? That's really fast. It takes less than a second to go from 'dot on the screen' to impact. Given that the-- actually, wait.

The ship was trailing smoke in space. The only way for it to be doing that is for it to be accelerating on the way down - otherwise the smoke would be moving at the same velocity as the ship, and would just jet outwards. The engines were still working - and without being able to reference the dialogue, I'm betting they were jammed on. That ship hit atmo - and hit the ground - under significant thrust. The explosion when it hit expands to at least three or four times the size of the ship itself - and is big enough to light up the faces of the Sisterhood at what seems to be a fairly large distance. There are multiple bursts of light - at least three major fireballs in the space of two seconds. We then cut to a pan through the ship, which has been torn apart. There are broken ribs everywhere. That impact was not survivable.

My guess? The Doctor was in the TARDIS when the impact came, trying to do something clever (put the gunship on tow?). He was thrown out of the doors, much like Eleven had to be in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. That means it's the TARDIS' dampers, buffers and shields which protected him from the impact, not the gunship's.

And yet, he was still genuinely dead - at least according to the clearly unreliable Sisterhood. To kill someone through TARDIS shielding - which has been shown to fall from orbit with little more than a bump before - that must have been one heck of a crash.

Given the former Frankenstein-flavoured shenanigans on Karn, I'm going to guess that Cass wasn't just dead - she was a complete ruin. Only their experience with Morbius - and the technology which resurrected him - allowed the Sisterhood to piece her back together for the Doctor to look at. Whether they needed that technology to bring the Doctor back to life, or whether their Elixir sufficed, is an open question.

hS

Standard sci-fi suspension of disbelief covers that for me. by Outhra on 2013-11-17 22:51:00 UTC Reply

After all, what's the easiest way to introduce an alien presence in sci-fi stories without said presence providing an immediate threat? Send a spaceship hurtling through the atmosphere, and crash it into the planet. Normally, there's at least one person who stays alive from it, regardless of how much red goo the impact should have turned them into, though they do occasionally die a few minutes after someone finds the crash site following the low muttering of something cryptic or the handing off of some sort of space relic.
The Doctor, a titular character, getting through a spaceship crash from planetary orbit in one piece? Seems basically like a given. He was even dead for a few minutes, so there's a bit of a concession to the more probable option there.

Hm, makes sense. by Ekyl on 2013-11-17 05:34:00 UTC Reply

It looks like we're going to be seeing bits of the TW then. What happened to "We won't show the Time War because all the special effects in the world wouldn't do it justice"?

Re: A spoilery thought by Gen on 2013-11-15 06:38:00 UTC Reply

Possible spoilers if you haven't watched The Brain of Morbius and Mawdryn Undead.

The clip involved a lot of references to The Brain or Morbius (Fourth Doctor), such as the Sisterhood of Karn. The Brain of Morbius implied that the Doctor's incarnation at that time wasn't his fourth, but could also be taken to possibly be previous incarnations of Morbius (who was also a Time Lord). The elixir of life that the Sisterhood guard also seems to circumvent any rules regarding regenration (like the 12 regeneration rule referenced in Mawdryn Undead- but this serial has a lot of continuity errors...) and it seems implied that by taking the elixir, the Doctor has more than 12 regenerations. Moffat enjoys his references to Classic!Who, so I am guessing that he is taking the implication that the Doctor has had many more than 11 incarnations as canon. The frequent references to episodes that are more than 30 years old must be frustrating to newer viewers because they add so much more to the new material. :/

The War Doctor probably doesn't count as "The Doctor" because he isn't really the Doctor in a sense (if you consider the Doctor as a description of what he stands for and not just a name). The Doctor wanted to become a warrior, so he became pretty much an entirely different person in the sense that he isn't about being a force of good in the universe any more (until he starts calling himself the Doctor again). I wouldn't consider the War Doctor to be 9 because he isn't the Doctor. If you've seen The Unearthly Child, you know that One was a terrible person by human standards until the end of that serial. I think it's fair to consider One the first Doctor even if he has had previous incarnations of a different name because his goal wasn't to be a force of good until that point.

I apologize for my ramblings, but the clip has given me so many feels. XD I'm also a bit annoyed that Paul McGann doesn't have a role in the actual 50th anniversary episode. I would love to see more of him on screen as the Doctor instead of just listening to audio plays.