If the modern world of film and television has taught us anything, it’s that the medium deems a franchise is only as important as the money it makes. If it doesn’t make money, it goes away, only to return in another form – perhaps then led by someone who might care about the franchise, but who doesn’t have the ability to project such passions onscreen. Good intentions only go so far in storytelling, and a poor tale told to such a dedicated following is not easily forgotten.
So why not Steven Moffat? If the man who created the terrifying Jekyll because of his love of ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ – who created the imaginative Sherlock (with An Adventure in Space and Time writer Mark Gatiss) because of his love of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective tales – who, in 2006, wrote a short story for a Doctor Who magazine which he then turned into the fan-favorite episode “Blink” – wants to take on a Time War tale which he, himself, said was too impossible of a feat, why not let him?
Why, indeed. Perhaps the answer to all this, after seeing ‘The Day of the Doctor,’ is: because he can, completely and passionately.
3 iterations of the Doctor meeting and existing together without consequense, even if the time stream was out of sync, one dying and regenerating immediately, the other (possibly) forgetting and only the newer doctor remembering, is a silly excuse. Considering all the past episodes of the Doctor hammering on why time couldn't be tampered with. When he had to let his other self go with Rose to the other Universe, because they couldn't exist in the same one.
How could he have entered into his own life-force's time-stream at the end of Season 7's finale, "The Name of The Doctor". No repercussions to him also this time, arguement that his time-stream was under repair from the attack on his life and memories from 'The Silence' is rubbish. The only purpose of that contradicting journey was to introduce us to the forgotten and hidden 'War Doctor'.
The biggest bomb dropped, though, was Moffat’s weekend announcement during an interview with Radio Times that "Matt Smith’s Doctor is in fact the 13th, rather than the 11th". Moffat has officially declared John Hurt’s Doctor as an official incarnation and said that David Tennant’s Doctor used up two regenerations, bringing the tally to 13 lives and leaving fans wondering what this means for the series.
It’s been considered canon since the 1976 episode “The Deadly Assassin” that Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times and live through 13 incarnations, which means Smith should technically be the last Doctor. So where does that leave Capaldi?
Fans had already been theorizing about additional regenerations once John Hurt’s mysterious forgotten Doctor appeared in the season 7 finale, “The End of Time,” wondering if River Song’s regeneration transfer had something to do with it, or perhaps if when the universe rebooted in “The Big Bang”, so did the Doctor’s regeneration count – or perhaps even the High Council added some regenerations on along the way, as they can do. Obviously Capaldi will still be succeeding Smith as the Doctor — now it’s just a matter of seeing how the regeneration cap-breach is explained in the Christmas special.
Moffat had this to say on the matter:
""The 12 regenerations limit is a central part of Doctor Who mythology. Science fiction is all about rules, you can’t just casually break them.""
No comments:
Post a Comment