Has The Time War Been Ruined?
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- The Time War is an important part of the revived era of Doctor Who, this mysterious event in The Doctor's tragic past. But over the years, has the significance and intrigue of this event started to disappear?
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Another name put to the Last Time War was "The War in Heaven" .
Have you seen any description of a epic divine war between opposite factions of superhuman beings being illustrated so thoroughly?? Never: only a few bread crumbs of the backdrop of the battle. Tolkien mastered it perfectly in his own Legendarium. We can hardly describe the Wars for the Ring and much less the War for the Silmarillon.
I don't think we need ever need to see the Time War at least the one that was set up my RTD, I use Bad Wolf Rose's exclamation that the Time War ends... as the punctuation to that issue. RTD can create something else and go from there.
funny how you don't mention the other sci-fi media that is bigger than doctor who for continous works output : PERRY RHODAN. They have the equivalent of the time war i think. Weekly comics, they started in 1961. German though so people have prejudice vs it for that maybe
A friend of mine and I back in the day had all these ideas for Time War stories that we talked about a lot but were too lazy to actually write fanfics for. Some of my favorite ideas:
-The Nightmare Child was a Star Whale merged with Dalek DNA (think Dalek Sec) that grew to massive size and was outfitted with technology that let it bend space and time. It was a complete monster that even the Daleks couldn't fully control, just sort of aim at their enemies.
-The Could've Been King was Omega, who went absolutely bonkers and played against both sides.
-(one of my favorites) A standard issue Time Lord weapon that was essentially a grenade launcher, but the grenades were modified Vortex Manipulators that automatically sent the target far into the future, mere seconds away from the heat death of the universe. The Master escapes the Time War by sabotaging one of these guns and having it misfire while he's using it. To the rest of the war it appears like he died by the gun's normal effects, but in actuality it drops him several decades prior to the end of the Universe. He uses his Chameleon Arch to turn himself human after regenerating into a child's body. That child then grows up to be Professor Yana.
As a filthy casual who doesn't follow the big finish stuff, the Time War still has the necessary mystique. The Day of The Doctor sticking to the last day of the Time War when all of these mythical weapons have been used and there is nothing left but two exhausted civilizations slogging it out was probably the only way they could do that and I think it worked
Same here. I've heard of the Big Finish stories, but never found the time to actually read/listen to any of it. Besides, I always saw the last day similar to you, with things like guns and flying ships being their equivalent of humans throwing rocks at each other or hitting each other with sticks. Not just scraping the bottom of the barrel, but straight punching through it.
With the day of the Doctor I feel like people also forget the End of Time establishing that Gallifrey was actually pretty removed from the war and the worst was going on (even during the final moments) at its center. I always took that to mean the Daleks and Time lords were basically chucking super doomsday weapons and unleashing abominations at each other across the universe and everyone else was facing the consequences.
@@MotRekrab1347What you describe is very much like the opening of "Genesis of the Daleks", with Kaleds and Thals reduced to using whatever weapons they can find.
Like WW3 fought with bazookas and bows and arrows
agreed. things like this are honestly why i choose to ignore the big finish stories. they’re canon, yeah, but they don’t usually seem to have any hold any importance in the show itself and often they ruin the mystique of important parts of the show
Exactly my thoughts.
I actually quite like the last battle of the Time War being so sticks and stones, because it mirrors the planet Scaro in The Genesis of the Daleks. Seems appropriate for the beginning and the end to match.
As for the expanded media kind of ruining the mystery, yeah, that is basically what expanded media always does. Most franchises have real diamonds in the rough, but for that phrase to make sense, you also have to have most of the expanded media be rough.
The worry there is that by having the time war be near its end, the doctor's actions become a lot less relevant. Like all the damage is done, it could be like a year or two from concluding. It makes it seem like the doctor just kind of got bored of it rather than taking the necessary steps needed to end it before it could escalate beyond repair
16:32 the Clara reading about the Time War scene was possibly the closest Moffat came to depicting the Time War as mysterious as RTD did: it's just the cover we see and we don't get to know the specifics Clara reads in the book. It's only there to show the mystery of both the Time War and the Doctor themselves as well as their participation in it. And it's fittingly erased from Clara's memory mere moments later.
If, at that time, the Doctor was the only one who had survived the Time War (or so he thought), then who wrote the History of the Time War? Who would have known all about it to write of it and to even name the Doctor in it? It's interesting that Clara is the only one besides River, even if only for a brief time, to have ever known the Doctor's true name. Of course we'll never know what it is was but it's meant to be that way to keep the mystery about the Doctor going. It's probably something mundane by Gallifreian standards anyway.
@@localcringelordjr but I don't think she remembers his name though, only fragments about the war itself.
And the Silent Cult?
While the "Timelock" was never fully explained, I always interpreted it as the Doctor essentially wiping out both races before their inception, which caused the war to never have technically happened. Survivors are purely accidental and kept in existence by things like paradox machines, or because the war ripped such great scars into the fabric of reality that some of them "slipped through". I never really thought much about the actual fighting (partly because all references to it, such as the Nightmare Child were so obviously bullshit, lol), and imagined it more like a cat and mouse game across time and space where each race tried to annihilate the other first, and the actual fighting was mostly used as diversion.
I would think of it as being kept in sealed-off bubbles of time outside mainstream reality - constantly and simultaneously both happening, not having happened yet, having already happened and never having happened at all in a strange and convoluted seal.
Timelocked probably refers to the fact it's unbreachable with only a few minor exceptions. That in order to keep the rest of the universe safe, Gallifrey and the time war were sealed off so that a majority of the universe was safe.
I LOVE The Faction Paradox Time War! It wasn't a mess if you really paid attention, it was Awesome! AND it did all of what you seem to want from the Last Great Time War, in that it kept enough stuff unexplained or hinted at to keep its level of intrigue and scale!! Regeneration weaponized into Battle Forms, TARDIS/People Hybrids, Conceptual Entities, the Remote, The 11 Day Empire, the Sombras Que Cortas, Post-Humanity, the Cold, Mictlan and the Celesti... Amazingly Imaginative stuff! Warlords of Utopia and Of The City Of The Saved were masterpieces, and so was Alien Bodies, Interference, Shadows of Avalon, the Taking of Planet 5, all of those and more are still vividly locked in my memory as the gold standard of what a Time War could be! Then RTD comes along and gives us amazing concepts to tantalize us with no payoff planned which just opens the door for other writers to disappoint us. SO I do agree that much that is explained should probably not have been, or at least not by people with such small imaginations as to make the fight seem terrestrial, like any other war, but don't go bad mouthing the Faction Time War, cause that was Exactly how you do it, if you're going to do such a thing at all!
IMO, the Time War should have been shown in a similar manner to Flux. A large scale event that transcends space and time. Each episode could have shown us different facets of the time war, the countless casualties and great losses, finally culminating in Doctor destroying both Time Lords and Daleks as a last resort.
That sounds epic!!!
The one problem is it was 2005 and Doctor Who has been off the air for 16 years, it's too early to go into a large-scale event like the flux, which happened 15 years the show was back on the air and in people's minds!
I think we never should have seen the time war at all. It was created as part of the series 1 arc as the finale is referred to as the end of the time war. It was never meant to be a detailed story that we saw and obviously depicting that was not going to be meaningful as the character growth surrounding the time war was explored in series 1.
@@livinghomunculus657Hard agree. The more mystery and unambiguous nature around the war. Few whispers and rumours, some references and pain around it.
All of that was what made it special in the 00s.
The 50th worked in my opinion as it focused on the multi doc story and the moral dilemma rather than the potentially dark and complex acts surrounding it and internal politics.
Chibnall ruined it by destroying Gallifrey out of nowhere.
I think the Time War as an idea always ment to have certain limits. At some point, it needed to be resolved, Timelords shoud've returned - which has happened. Imagine let's say 10 seasons withouth resolving the Time War - even the mistery of it couldn't keep it interesting enough for so long. Alone-in-the-universe Doctor also couldn't last forever.
Was the moment of resolving the Time War great enough? Perhaps not. Was the return of the Timelords good enough?.. Well, everthing that happened with Timelords after the end of season 7 felt like a mess to me. And that's the problem - once touched upon, the Time War should've been left behind and something else interesting should've taken it's place, like a new arc with the Timelords or something. Yet it felt like nothing consistent enough ever happened after that.
I think the war should have ended with the Doctor having to to choice to end his own people and the Daleks. I think that sacrifice for the greater good and safety of the Universe itself was more hard hitting than what the Day of the Doctor did and the rest of the stuff about the time lords after that story did. It showed even the Doctor can't always win the day and has to some times take a pyrrhic option to "win".
Not like the Time Lords were used that well in the show after they came back anyway, all they got to be was ineffective, kidnap the doctor, one of them get shot by him and then wiped out easily by The Master and the cybermen (Something which really should not be possible and only made them look like clowns and weak). They were wasted and to be honest and ended up dead anyway so why even bring them back. Better to let them perish in the Time War and serve as a lesson that even The Doctor can't save everyone.
Day of the Doctor was great as an episode, till that finale where they "Won" so magically and saved Galifrey and stopped some war on earth of infiltration.
To be honest, the Seventh Doctor would have stopped the Time War even before it happened.
We've already had adventures with the Doctor not saving everyone (cough Adric, Horror of Fang Rock, Warriors of the Deep cough) And frankly the Tenth Doctor's morality makes him seem like a hypocrite.
@@mayotango1317 Hey I'm not the one who wrote the scripts. At the end of the day, the time war was going to happen at some point. The Daleks and Time Lords biggest kids on the block. Going to fight at some point.
@@RomanHistoryFan476AD But the Daleks are just tin boxes. The Time Lords just delete them.
@@mayotango1317 There is mutant squid inside that battle armour.
From the perspective of only seeing the revived era, I forgot that Night of the Doctor's pilot woman was a human, I assumed she was Galifreyan.
I thought Day of the Doctor was great, seeing the Doctor forgive himself, while also getting name drops to run wild with the imagination.
If anything, hearing about how Timeless Child destroys Galifrey was a disappointment, since the Doctor worked so hard to save the planet.
it maybe an upopular opinion but i want to see the time war explored more myself and i grow up during the rtd era when it was this big mystery which is why the day of the doctor ranks as the number 1 best episode of all new who for me
Top video! The Deathsmiths of Goth are from a back-up comic strip in the old "Doctor Who Weekly". Written by Alan Moore and featuring, I think, a lone Cyberman. RTD is known to be a big comics fan, and what with Beep the Meep appearing, he's obviously using part of that continuity. Maybe we'll see Wardog and Zeitgeist next?
Church of Yarvelling is mentioned in the short story shown briefly on screen.
Yarvelling was the creator of the Dalek travel machines in Terry Nation's original Dalek comic strip in TV 21, back in the 60's. I absolutely loved that strip, but was disappointed when Genesis, also written by Nation, threw it out of the window.
Apparently Nation was often doing that, not a great follower of his own continuity. Chibnall would have loved him
My two cents. This always happens with media fans are invested in certain elements. Sometimes annoyingly it's the creators or the successors who go on to ruin those elements because as fans we want to know more, it's hard to ignore pandora's box when we're so curious to know what's inside even though we know we'll be dissapointed.
My own examples are Mass Effect and Dead Space. In Mass Effect 1 and 2 we learn of the Reapers, these biomechanical creatures that come every cycle come to wipe out sentient life. In Mass Effect 3 it's revealed why they do it and it ruined the mystique and as a result also damages the two games that came before it.
Dead Space hasn't yet ruined itself but has the potential to ruin itself now that the remakes are coming out. The main antagonists, the Brethren Moons are these impossible lovecraft entities who are so beyond our understanding and care so little for our existence outside of wanting our flesh. With the remakes now coming out there is potential the new studio will want to answer those questions and ruin that mystique and alien aspect.
It's the annoying thing as fans we love the mystery and are curious to answer it but in doing so we also ruin that mystiqe because we've put a name and a face to it. Doctor Who is sadly no different, having just learned from this video what the Nightmare Child is, I envisioned it as something... well massive, in my mind I always envisioned Davros' ship being incredibly small with the jaws being so huge. So to learn it's just another Dalek is underwhelming.
Yes, I haven't known what the Nightmare Child really was before this video and I'm now super disappointed. I actually sort of imagined it as a destructive force or a place, not an actual being.
Once you explain the magic trick, it ceases to be magical.
Interesting that you would mention Star Trek there, as many fans hold a similar opinion on how a particularly intimidating species, the Borg, seem to have become less intimidating the more they appeared on screen and the more we learned about them.
I still wonder if 'Day of the Doctor' changed the events that ended the war, or if that's how it always happened and the Doctor just didn't remember it properly.
He didn't remember it, it's explained that because of the presence of three doctors, only the oldest version would remember it
@@r3apsr209 The oldest version present would be Capaldi, not Smith. You have to think of it as super-time. The doctor in the episode you're watching is the present. Anything that happened after that hasn't happened yet.
I sometimes think that that very fact is deliberately vague, or that they're implying that it doesn't matter either way, in terms of time.
Sometimes I really wish this program would pick some concrete time travel rules, but I know that they don't consider that the point.🤯
@@r3apsr209 But that's just a cheap lazy attempt to un do it though, he doesn't remember it my arse its stupid.
@@calvinfranklyn5499 If they had concrete rules it would limiter their storytelling potential. So it’s better they don’t.
I think of it using the rules of Legacy of Kain; if you know that.
Which is basically “You can’t change the past because you didn’t. Except for when you do.”
Doctor Who always moves on, as it should. The huge events of the time pass into history and become lore, which future writers can pick over and use as they see fit. It's an important part of how the show's universe grows and changes over time. The Doctor's exile on Earth, the Key to Time arc, the Dalek Civil War, the Time War, the Silence, the Flux - all these things are definitive aspects of their respective eras' identities, they're separate entities in their own right that can be revisited and recontextualised by future stories. It's a wonderful thing really - Doctor Who is a huge amalgamation of a vast variety of stories, each one capable of living and growing in their own right as time goes on. It's beautiful really. Sure, the Time War may not be as mysterious as it used to be, but the same can be said for many aspects of Doctor Who - the Time Lords themselves being the most notable example. The Deadly Assassin fundamentally altered Time Lord lore and destroyed much of the mystery and intrigue surrounding Gallifrey and Time Lord society, yet it's remembered to this day as one of the show's most important and impactful episodes because the show took what it did to the lore and built off it. That's part of the reason why I hope RTD uses the Timeless Child plotline Chibnall created and makes something better out of it, using the ideas of a previous writer to create a new story that builds off what came before and surpasses it. That's how Doctor Who's lore has always worked and it keeps the show fresh
Super well said, my dude. Super well said.
Perfectly put.
Yep I definitely agree there
The Timeless Child can work well, just not as the Doctor. I hope Davies can do the idea justice, without sullying the impact of the Doctor's past choices.
@@scarletbard6511 the Timeless Child being the Doctor has no impact on the Doctor's choices, it was specifically tailored to keep the character development of Doctors 1-12 intact
I always thought the ninth doctor was the doctor that fought the time war, hence his personality and clothing. And that he killed the daleks and time lords with a delta wave like he was going to do in Parting of the Ways. His adventures with Rose though made him make a different choice
Honestly the Ninth Doctor never seemed so traumatized, he was very "fantastic" and eccentric. I have never seen him so psychologically damaged.
That was the route they were going to go with had Christopher came back for DotD. I don’t think it would have fit well given that it’s implied he’s somewhat recently regenerated in Rose when he looks in the mirror.
One thing that bothers me about the Time War in Big Finish, many stories feel very repetitive: The Time Lords (mostly represented by Ollistra) want to retrieve a being/ weapon that could end the Time War (how many things are there, actually, given how often it happens), the Doctor, despite saying:"No, I'm not fighting!", goes to some alien planet, where he either meets Daleks or their agents or Gallifreyan traitors hating the Time Lords as a plot twist. He finds the weapon/ creature, but rather destroys it/ lets it go than using it. The Daleks/ their agents get destroyed. Ollistra/ the Time Lords get mad and the Doctor leaves.
That's I think how about 90% of the Time War (except Time War 4) and the War Doctor audios feel to me, at least. Don't get me wrong, there are some great mysterious beings like the Ourashima in the Time War 2 or the Enigma Dimension in the War Doctor 4, or time-travel focused plots (which are actually surprisingly rare for a TIME War, mostly we just get time loops or time manipulating weapons playing a role) like in Time War 4's Palindrome (one of my favourite over-complicated time travel stories in DW) or War Doctor's Neverwhen, but all the strange creatures and timey wimey plots are completely overshadowed by how most stories follow the structure mentioned above.
The only series not having these problems (not counting Unbound: Doctor of War) are the War Master series and the Gallifrey Time War series, which focuses more on politics. But all of Doctor Who: Time War (except for Time War 4, being actually the most ambitious one when it comes to the Time War IMO) and the War Doctor series following that same "Doctor on mission to get super-weapon/-being while Fighting Daleks/ Dalek agents/ Gallifreyan traitors and ends destroying what he came for, upsetting the Time Lords"-plot makes them kind of boring, at least for me. Even He Who Fights With Monsters, one of my favourite War Doctor plots, kind of follows that structure being splitted in three parts.
So, to answer your question: I don't think telling us the mysteries ruined it, but Big Finish doing mostly the super-weapon-retrieval-plot makes their stories feel more boring and underwhelming than they could've been. At least a few of their stories like Palindrome show us how the Time War COULD be done.
I agree while I do love the war doctor audios they are kind of repetitive and do kind of ruin it also i agree that time war 4 is amazing manly because of restoration of the daleks (I like me some emperor and time strategist action)
@@timecontroller8800 Time War 4 was the best Time War series with the Doctor, Palindrome was all the complicated time-travel stuff the Time War should've had, the Dreadshade dealt with the Time Lords being the most feared race if there were no Daleks (and gave us a fantastic evil spin on the Twelve), Restoration of the Daleks was a great conclusion. Aside from that, most stories had sadly kind of the same plot. When listening to the War Doctor 4, I was like, "Great, same plot all over again". The only change was that the Doctor was at least one step in the direction of saying: "No More", but sadly, it was still far from what would compell him to steal the Moment and it was all we got after 4 entire boxsets.
I really liked the War Master stories myself.
I think the thing with Big Finish is it's meant to be (or feels like) an optional "it's Canon if you want it to be" type of thing. It's not very heavy handed (none of the DW EU is), but once it's out there and with it being endorsed and with the original actors it's hard to just dismiss it. So you're stuck with these lingering feelings of repetition and the magic being lost even when they don't directly tie into the show.
As someone who's a big fan of the series, where would you recommend I start with the Big Finish audios?
I was considering just picking whichever Doctor I liked the most, and starting there.
I disagree, I'm not really bothered by it
I always pictured the Nightmare Child as something not quite alive, and yet completely embodied by hunger and a will to consume. Something big enough to devour an entire starship. Idk to me the best option seemed like some form of sentient black hole
All I'm going to say is that the War in Heaven is still ongoing. And always was and never will be.
I think the Time War was never intended to be shown in the series, with the short exception of the special. And that was enough. As Harbo mentioned, when you show something you take away the mystery.
Over the last months I had the opportunity to dip into the Time War as imagined by Big Finish, and I love every aspect of it. The audio play format leaves enough for your imagination. I don't know where the road will take it, but I am entertained. So I don't see it quite as negative as Harbo, as the views are still very much focused on the different characters and the bigger picture is never revealed. Everything is in chaos and the characters try to survive, without a possibility to shape what is happening for more than a moment. I do like to listen to it when doing chores.
I do get why the Time War was invented, as a means to deliver a blank slate for the new series, without the baggage of what came before. And after all that time I was happy to see the Time Lords return, nearing the end of the Moffat era. There were new possibilites for stories, new interactions, maybe the Daleks and Cybermen could take a rest for some years, focusing more on character traits of the Doctor and why they chose to leave Gallifrey. And then the Time Lords were killed off again by Chibnall and we got a plot twist that lets the Other look harmless in comparison. And I'm still cross about it. I would have liked to see a storyline with maybe a few survivors trying to mimic Omega and Rassilon in jumpstarting a New Gallifrey, pre release from the time lock.
So, does the Time War get to much attention over the years? Maybe. But think about it, it was THE big thing in the new series and of course there would be someone interested in it, be it fan fiction or other. Always remeber, books and audio plays are non canon, even if something could give an example of the Nightmare Child, you don't have to go with it.
The Eigth Doctor audios are canon.
What would be a good starting point to Big Finsh's Time War stuff? I'm familiar with their stuff but I stopped listening just before they came out with John Hurt's audios.
Fr, Chibnall destroying it again before we even got a second look after Hell Bent was infuriating. It made the Day of the Doctor, Time of the Doctor and Heaven Sent/Hell Bent look pointless
@@NTNG13 I really can't tell. As Harbo mentioned, there are different series from Big Finish dealing with the Time War. As a result the direct continuation after finishing a story might be with a sidedip in a different arc. I just bought a few things with Paul McGann's Doctor, because they were discounted at the time. 😄 I bet there are some suggested listening orders online, but continuity is not a strong thing when time gets put through the blender.
While I agree with your point of not demystifying the Time War I don't see much issue with humans getting dragged into the conflict. With the Time War happening at multiple points in time I don't find it implausible that the humans of 5023 could have the technology to end up getting caught in some random Time War battle. It still should be an event that intrudes upon humans, something they were unlucky to wander into.
Yeah, I think it actually helps that humans are involved. It helps to sell the idea that this war affects everyone in the universe and adds to the scale of the war.
The final battle/day of the Time War as described by the Tenth Doctor in the End of Time I always interpreted as Lovecraftian and terrifying.
Moffat went with Star Wars but with weirdly dressed Time Lord soldiers and Daleks shooting lasers. It was cool to see at first in DoTD but looking back it was very lame.
I also don’t care for Big Finish’s Time War boxsets, or even the War Doctor as a concept. I haven’t even really liked Big Finish recently. It should’ve been kept mysterious and ambiguous.
I feel it was there fighting with sticks and strones they used all the magic over the top stuff.One of the time lords said what Forbidden weapons we used them all, now this is what both sides have left there so advanced warships are what sticks are for humans
The thing I like about the many variations of The Time War is that is so overwhelming. So much novels, Big Finish, etc. So much overstimulation. Now times that by infinity and you have just a slice of how horrifyingly nuclear The Time War was. And the amazing part is, The Doctor survived all of it
I would have turned Chibnall's Fugitive Doctor to write her as the third or fourth incarnation of Romana whom took on the title of her mentor of the Doctor whom she believed had perished in the time war.
My general take is while the RTD Era mystified the Time War, that made it attached to it because throw a dart and you have a majority odds of hitting something that is a consequence of the war.
To move on from the Time War, completely, and in order to properly reintroduce Galifrey like Moffatt wanted to, you kinda *had* to demystify it a bit.
Thus comes up the idea of The final days of the time war, a period where literally every weapon on both sides were spent, reduced to fighting on the ground with guns and standard space fighters.
It shows how long the conflict has been going that all that mystical stuff they'd been using for who knows how long wasn't enough to end it and it took the Doctor attempting to use the universal equivalent of "/delete" with the Moment to end it.
Now, this does bring up the question of if Galifrey should've been brought back to begin with. But my general take is that at some point it would've, and imho the decisions made likely would've been replicated if done later.
I don't think it should have been brought back. But that is only with the hindsight of Chibnall just saying "nah fam" and destroying it all over again.
@@amaurapond Agree on that one,
For me, particularly, there are three things on the show that impacted the mythos of the Time War considerably more than it's overexploitation:
1. Bringing Gallifrey back but not really: By bringing Gallifrey back you desmitifies it, it's inevitable. I'm not against it, though. Time Lords have been around for most of the show's existence and it worked. There are lots of stories you can tell exploring the scenario where Gallifrey and Time Lords exist. But if their absence was so impactful (on the Doctor and on the universe), their return should have had the equivalent effect. Having them back and almost no consequences to it, makes you feel like they were not that special and thus that their absence, and therefore the Time War and its effects, were never really that important.
2. The lack of Dalek exploration on the Moffat era: The Time War have restablished the status quo of the Daleks and their role as the main nemesis of the Doctor just as set their arc through the new series: defeated by the Doctor, they are now few and are seeking to rebuild their empire. That is explored through all of the Daleks appearences under RTD and in all of his series. Under Moffat though, that's kinda put aside. Off course Victory of the Daleks and Asylum of the Daleks still touched the subject by introducing the New Dalek Paradigm and the Parliament of the Daleks, but it was just not treated with the same relevance it was before. From that point on the Daleks were just back and that was it.
3. Gallifrey falls again (but nobody seems to care): The main consequence of the Time War is off course the destruction of Gallifrey. The Daleks were coming back and back again. The rest of it was beyond our scope as viewers. But the falling of Gallifrey had a very important and permanent impact in our main character: He was now the last of his species, the last of the (now mythical) Time Lords, forever guilty for the genocide he made to put an end in the war. That defined the character from that point on, that was the Doctor many people first met. Yet not only the reverse of it was not as impactful (go back to point 1), but the repetition of it had not 1% of the importance. It's hard not to see the destruction of Gallifrey on series 12 as some sort of duplication of the results of the Time War, yet it have zero impact, undermining even more the relevance the absence of Gallifrey once seemed to have over the Doctor and the universe.
All those three points kinda weakened the Time War for me, and they make me feel like the show now considers it as something finished. A chapter of the series that had its conclusion and doesn't really matter anymore for what comes from after The Day of the Doctor and on.
I would have had the doctor find more time lord survivors, who come together to build a new galifrey with the doctor as their president, before he gets kicked outand becomes a fugitive when it's discovered he was the one who blew up the og galifrey.
You've hit the nail on the head for me. The Time War I imagined based on Davies' descriptions simply could not be visually rendered. The revelation that actually, the Daleks just lasered each other while Gallifrey ducked out of the way was hugely disappointing, I was imagining some screwy paradox where the Doctor removed some fundamental condition of their existence from the timeline or something.
I agree for the most part, but I’m okay with secondary cannon exploring some of it. Big Finish and the books have always had a cherry picking style of cannon. Also a continuity mess is pretty apt for the time war 😂
I think the answer to your titular conundrum would be similar to the answer for the titular question posed by the franchise...Doctor WHO? Just as it is a hook for the show, it is also implied to be a promise to the viewers that if you keep watching the show, you will learn slowly, but surely just WHO The Doctor (the mysterious main protagonist) is. And yes, I understand that the Time War was partially used to reintroduce some mystery into the main character after so much had been revealed about him in the classic series. However, even if RTD had no intention of revealing The Time War to us, the idea of it and it's affect on our protagonist practically all but ensured that it's mysteries would be revealed to us over time. That's just the nature of serialized storytelling.
I think Paul McGann should have been in the time war, I think it would have made a good character arch, though I did like John Hurt.
Isn’t it ironic to want the Time War to be left mysterious whilst also over-analysing every mention of it?? Davies had the luxury of mystery Moffat never had: We’re over 15 years into New Who!! Every aspect of the show has been explored again and again. They are literally bringing back David Tennant. AGAIN!
Please, Moffat is the master of mystery. RTD is the melodrama king with Rose Tyler love story.
Yes, it was ruined in the Day of the Doctor because Moffat forgot or ignored about the horrors of the Time War and he admitted that Russell T. Davies's decision to have the Doctor destroy Gallifrey during the Time War never sat well with him, and he always believed that a fundamental part of the Doctor's character would be to find a way to take a third option which many people think that Moffat got the Doctor confused with Batman and he would have more ground to stand on if the Doctor's character had already not been established as capable of committing genocide, given the reason why the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey was to stop Rasslion and the Time Lords from ripping the time vortex to ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone, free of their bodies, free of time, cause and effect while creation ceases to be.
This! Applause for you. To be honest I never liked the Moffat's vision of the Doctor as character, he seemed to see him solely as a paternal figure unable to do real damage because he saw him with fanboy eyes, when is established that the dude is able to take hard decisions when nobody wants to take them.
@@tiozorro7853i think what you both said it's interesting, because the Ninth Doctor is the first one who brought the concept of a warrior Doctor from a Time War, but Christopher Eccleston himself says that he only understood who the Doctor is when Moffat explained to him.
imo Moffet just fundamentally misunderstood the time war and gallifrey. He made them so uninteresting.
I do like the concept of the Time War being something incomprehensible and lovecraftian. It definitely should be war on a scale that is difficult for humans to grasp. But I also think that part of Doctor Who's DNA is seeing grand cosmic things through the perspective of humans.
We tend to think of Time Lords as these supreme beings but I think it's also important to show the very real toll war has on everyday people. It wasn't just warriors and fleets dying in the Time War. Children were dying. That's something that anyone can understand as being horrific and I don't think that diminishes the other part of the time war that is so cosmic.
It's also so important to the Doctor's character to show that real cost of war. Because battles are terrible and soldiers are still people losing their lives, but it's the suffering of innocents that truly pushes the Doctor to his breaking point.
Some parts of the Time War will always be a mystery so I don't think it's wrong to show bits and pieces that are a little bit more grounded.
(Plus we get more 8th Doctor content and that's awesome)
I wondered for years what the Nightmare Child is. Finding out wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the mystery.
I always imagined it as some eldritch giant dalek mutant with massive jaws
That's exactly the bit of lore you leave vague and never touch, like the Midnight entity. Big miss on that reveal.
Yeah, the description of it was lackluster to say the least
I kind of imagined it like a star whale gobbled up Davros
@@oliverfarlow6042that’s what it SHOULD’VE been.
As to humans being involved in the Time War... while most Gallifreyans thought the other half of the Hybrid was 'Dalek', there was never a consensus on that. In the BBC novel range involving the Eighth Doctor, Gallifrey fought a similar, prior, conflict with an unknown 'ENEMY'. This would be akin to the Great War on Earth being 'merely' World War I. At one point, humans were the Enemy, rivals to the Timelords. That, along with the fact that it is humans being entertained by Doctor Who and needing to be involved with their species, their wanting to see their fictional representatives involved as well.
imo the time war works best when both it AND gallifrey/the time lords are incredibly mysterious. as soon as you start watching the classic series, or at least for me, the time war loses a lot of intrigue. though maybe it's because I like the classic serials that are set on gallifrey a lot and think the classic interpretation of time lord society was a lot more interesting than the route the modern show has taken
The Clone Wars used to be just a world building name drop in Star Wars but then became a really deep story. And I prefer that.
The Time War could become like that, but it needs really solid ideas and I don't think the BBC has those anymore.
Another name put to the Last Time War was "The War in Heaven" .
Have you seen any description of a epic divine war between opposite factions of superhuman beings being illustrated so thoroughly?? Never: only a few bread crumbs of the backdrop of the battle. Tolkien mastered it perfectly in his own Legendarium. We can hardly describe the Wars for the Ring and much less the War for the Silmarillon.
The War in Heaven and the LGTW are generally portrayed as two distinct time wars.
So... what you are saying is, "They never should have mentioned any of these weird things and kept the Time War a conventional one because that stuff actually ruined Doctor Who.
Harbo, I’d love to see a video full of mini reviews for minisodes like The Last Day!
It all started with Moffat and the Day of the Doctor, which all boiled down to Moffat completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the Time War. He's said that his motive for doing Day of the Doctor was because he "couldn't imagine The Doctor killing all the children on Gallifrey" which just shows that he just didn't understand or didn't care about the concept of the war. It wasn't just a bunch of his moronic interpretation of the Daleks flying around blowing stuff up, and the Time Lords weren't just the poor victims that needed to be saved, that's never how the war was set up or descried in the Davis era.
As for Big Finish, that's expanded media that isn't strictly canon until the show makes it canon. Unlike all of Moffat's poorly thought-out concepts like making the Time War boring and making the Dalek casing the reason why Daleks are hateful and say Exterminate all the time. Sure, they can be ignored, but they are technically canon.
When I read those words of Moffat I can't avoid to imagine him as a kind of Helen Lovejoy screaming _"somebody please think of the children"_ , he definitelly proved to be a wrong choice as showrunner.
i so agree. all hail the unnameable, unspeakable horror and never, never show whats behind the door when something knocks.
Honestly, the Time War thing wouldn't stay a secret forever. Fans would have gotten frustrated about that eventually. Heck, Rose and Tennant's melodrama is more remembered and explored than that. It's like the Clone Wars from Star Wars.
I guess I just disagree with the premise of your argument. The more we find out about the Time War, the more interesting I find it. References to events that we’ll never see aren’t world building. It’s just useless breadcrumbs. Learning more about this time makes the Doctor’s story more complete. I don’t want mystery that we never have answers to or vague references that we’ll never understand. Those were some of the main criticisms several people, myself included, had about the Chibnall era.
The Time War is my favorite thing that was created for the revival era. But after The Day of The Doctor any reference to Gallifrey and the rest of the Time Lords feels so forced. Like as much as I like Hell Bent that should have been the last we saw of Gallifrey honestly. There isn't really any weight from the war on The Doctor's part now that he can just go back to Gallifrey whenever. Also not just Gallifrey but time lords and The Master are so over used now. They don't need to appear in every season
In my opinion, the Time War CAN be done justice, if the makers are willing to go against traditional Doctor Who story conventions. I think the only one I feel REALLY did the war justice so far is the War Doctor audio He Who Fights with Monsters, in which the final episode becomes almost like the seventh seal or apocalypse now.
If I were doing a time war story, I’d want to make it as strange and alien as possible, Doctor Who done in the style of Twin Peaks, The Return, if you will.
To me, the Time War can be explored. The biggest weakness of the Time War is that regardless of how incomprehensible they try to make it, it is just Time Lords and Daleks - and we all know a few fans who feel like the Daleks were over-used in the TV series.
However, the fact we already know who the villains are allow the stories to focus on OTHER aspects of mystery instead of who it is.
Many of the Big Finish stories DO go into time paradoxes, contradictions and things that are hard to comprehend, because that is the nature of the Time War. They go into how both sides become beyond redemption, considering sacrificing entire planetary systems just to spite each other, even without real tactical advantage - In The War Doctor Begins, you see that the Time Lords are even willing to sacrifice Kaan and the Sisterhood just to create a speed bump that won't grant them a complete victory, but buy them more time.
The Time War isn't something that has to stand on mystery, but something that can show true horrors.
I understand the point being made in this video but to me primarily a visual learner I really just prefer to see these things rather than only hear about them. Blame it on my imagination if you will, but I like seeing cool creatures and events more than only hearing of them
Your argument about lesser beings being involved in the Time War forgets one very important thing. Not every Gallifreyan was a Time Lord.
I disagree that novels surrounding the time war are a bad idea. Although I agree that every novel and audio drama have done it poorly. You kind of stated the answer to this problem several times though out your video though. Wright the books in the style of Lovecraft easy answer if you think about it😆
Tbh, I've kind of felt that the Time War has been ruined on some level since the reveal that the Doctor *didn't* commit genocide and *didn't* destroy Gallifrey and quite literally the single most defining factor of the Doctor's character since the revival was essentially a complete lie. Speaking purely in terms of basic storytelling, something that huge and character/universe-defining should not be just completely undone like that - even if you come up with a reason for why the characters are unaware of how it's been fixed, you can't erase the audience's memory and it will just make everything feel a little less impactful going forwards. After all, if something that huge can be changed once, what's to stop it happening again at every little pitfall? It's the same reason I never really liked how often they brought back Rose after 'Doomsday'. And on top of that, it feels like everything concerning the Doctor as a character from the start of the Revival Era up to that point was...kind of pointless in hindsight. Why did we get so many years of this person trying to come to terms with the guilt of having destroyed their planet in an act of genocide if it didn't really happen..? And yeah, people can point to the (almost literal) Deus ex Machina of the whole "I have to make sure I don't remember doing this because otherwise -it openly shits on and completely destroys 7 years worth of character and worldbuilding continuity- it breaks time or whatever" all they want but at the end of the day, the fact remains that it's still a Deus ex Machina explanation to excuse something that should not have happened and the narrative of the show simply couldn't support. There were plenty of other ways to bring Gallifrey and the Time Lords back into the narrative if Moffatt really wanted to (though I'd still point out that RTD managed a full four years without needing to) - TEOT somewhat inadvertently handed us a pretty glaring one on a silver platter: simply have the Doctor grow to a place where he's comfortable travelling back to Gallifrey in the time *before* the war; IIRC, it was never stated that returning to pre-war Gallifrey wasn't a possibility since I'm fairly sure it was just the war that was placed in the time-lock, it was just heavily implied that the only real reason the Doctor hadn't done so was purely because of their trauma from what he did. Allowing them to grow to a place where they felt they could return to Gallifrey despite knowing of the existence of the war would actually do a lot in terms of character development and story progression far more than just "bringing it back" and also provides a new context to the classic "Doctor goes to the site of a 'fixed in time' impending tragedy and needs to deal with the reality that he can't stop it/save everyone" story that gets trotted out at least once a season...
The problem is that the Doctor is more depressed by Rose.
This made me think of the elder scrolls... In the elder scrolls there's the lore most players know, those who mainly only played Skyrim. And its pretty neat stuff, to be sure.. But its only the surface. Its like the dwarves. People still wonder what happened to them... But no we know exactly what happened to them. But the concepts are confusing and esoteric.. And even then there's more, weirder stuff. Like I can't even imagine what the War of Manifest Metaphors was like, but it was probably really cool. But we'll never know because it happened during a period of time where time didn't work right, which in itself is impossible to understand.
“Nothing in Star Trek compares”
*the temporal Cold War has entered the chat*
lol exactly what I was thinking.
Sometimes I think my not reaching out into much expanded media is better for me, the time war still seems to me like a myth that brought two great races down to our level because they've used everything else.
I understand the need to depict the Time War (people want visual answers), but it should have stayed limited to the two shorts and the 50th anniversary. Nothing more. Than people would have at least some answers and fan fiction will do the rest.
If you want to have an idea on how insane the Time War should be, check the later stages of the Xeelee Sequence. There's a reason why the vs community likes using it
As you stated, this is one of the VERY rare situations where telling is actually more effective than showing. I almost think of it as akin to dialogue in a stage performance, where the effectiveness of the material very much comes down to actor performance and dialogue expression since there is only so much that can be shown on a physical stage. This is actually why I think Davies' era worked so much better than future eras even though it was on a significantly lower budget - he used this budget limitation brilliantly by focusing on script and actors rather than effects. When I heard about Disney jumping on board for the purposes of increasing the show's budget, my first thought was honestly "why does this show need a higher budget?" I don't want more well-rendered depictions of the time war and other spacey environments, I just want writers that can give great actors the tools they need to give a compelling performance.
Anyway, I trust Davies very much and I am trying to keep my faith that he is making the right call with this upcoming Disney deal. Though I'd be lying if I didn't say I am apprehensive about Doctor Who turning into just another lifeless greenscreen shitshow like all of Marvel's trash these days.
IMO, the time war can be explored and experienced without removing its mystery, if done right. Obviously aside from the few fringe glimpses we’ve already seen, it shouldn’t be shown on TV at all. However, I think Audio dramas and press stories can be a big use. The author doesn’t need to describe the events and weaponry in detail, but just vague descriptions, incomprehensible techno-babble, and name-dropping of events and weaponry can give us just enough to tease the imagination without going into too much detail. You could still write a story about the nightmare child, for example, simply by not describing the entity in much detail. “The Time Lord Arqos Prism Caliphate broke the guardian Caderex Sphere and shimmered into Furl Space, a sunken part of reality where 76 realities existed simultaneously yet independently, swarming together like a soup. Dalek Star Striders lay in ambush, knowing of the Time Lord’s arrival because the’d already seen the Caliphate arrive 6 times before, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future, sometimes both at the same time. Opening fire with the metapsychic energy of the Gamnod Obelisk, a singular, unduplicateable structure from the dawn of time that due to Furl Space could be carried and used by each Star Strider simultaneously, the Daleks began their ambush. Returning fire with Yrbliqual Lances, the Time Lords found themselves in a battle of attrition. A strider could be destroyed in its future, whilst 6 of the same Strider could appear at different places and times later on in the battle, due to the engagement taking place in one of the striders many pasts yet in one of the Time Lord’s futures. Sometimes a Fatorex bomb would override a Strider’ positronic gateway, but sometimes the diffusion decay would shunt the bomb into an expansion column, causing 3 paradoxes at once that the Furl Space would attempt to override by instigating warp decay. Eventually the Daleks summoned the Branch of The Veft, it’s tendrils penetrating and stabilizing Furl space until it expanded into itself and the Striders and Caliphate both died and survived simultaneously, their bodies now trapped in a quantum state of the 74’th power, the paradox energy of touching even one is currently being studied for use in the conflict. Now none of that made any sense but it was a confusing, interesting read that means that you get to decide in your mind just exactly how any of that means and how it all looks
14 unskippable ads. I see why I don't watch your channel anymore.
When it comes to actually showing the war I don’t at all mind that we get little glimpses of it like we do in TEOT & DOTD cos at least it shows off the actual scale of destruction & bloodshed there was but crucially none of the atrocities The Doctor describes to The Master in TEOT. As for adding more detail to them like with the nightmare child, I suppose you are right in that it does take the mystery & intrigue away but I do personally think those concepts could always work in completely different stories in the show, so like for example if you did have a Dalek episode completely unrelated to the war in which one does exactly that as in it rejects its casing & mutates into a giant abomination that devours everything it comes across including its own race BUT most importantly it’s not called the nightmare child and instead of the war it’s for example set in 1920s or 30s Rhode Island and it ends up becoming one of H.P. Lovecraft’s inspirations for Cthulhu or some other monster of his own design & imagination (a bit like we see with Mary Shelley & Ashad in HOVD), so it is a pretty sound idea but yeah it being something that was supposed to remain a bit of a mystery does feel like a bit of a cop out
I agree with the time war, it shouldn't be shown, I was a little disappointed when I oneday looked up what the Nightmare Child actually was to find out on the Who Wiki though it was still intresting, or the Gates of Elysium same discriptors shouldn't been shown, maybe the Doctor discribing their influences / aftermath. Even if someone wanted to show it, no budget would be able to pull off showing the timewar. It would have to be its own show with endless spinoffs and still would not be enough....
6:02 this is some serious Warhammer 40k and SCP levels of crazy.
Big Finish and "shoehorn" do go hand-in-hand to be fair. River Song has met like, every Doctor now because of BF, yet on the last day of her life she still calls the Tenth Doctor the youngest she's ever seen him. Big Finish largely just dilutes televised Who
A 'Time War' is, not so simply put, a major conflict in which the 'rules of time' go out the window.
Alternate possibilities, multiple event reversals, alterations in perceived and relative duration and existence of objects all come into play. The Time Destructor and Dalek designed Temporal Transport Capsules are but a tiny part. Changes in individual lives, up through parallel and obverse universes are part of the conflict. No one and NOTHING is safe. ALL damage is collateral damage...
See? A human CAN perceive the ramifications of the concept of a time war...
Do you think RTD will now try and build mystery in the Timeless Child in the same way he did with the Time War?
The problem is if you introduce something like the time war and huge war between the daleks and timelords then its only going to peek the interest of people and writers who want it explored. With only a loose set of events mentioned it's then up to the various writers to fill in the blanks. You end up with the convoluted mess it has become. Creating the war doctor was a mistake, basing a story around him and all the other doctors saving gallifrey was a mistake, dalek cann flying into the time war....mistake. They should have done away with it when all that universe resetting happened in the pandorica opens thing
No, the War Doctor is the only right thing they did.
@@mayotango1317 agree to disagree :)
@@ms.carriage6867 I mean, the Doctor is not a warrior. Even destroy Skaro was a trick.
@@mayotango1317 didnt the daleks have to rebuild skaro though?
I never really liked the fact that they rolled back the tragedy, and pretty much undid the end of Gallifrey and the Daleks. That event lent so much weight to the Doctor's persona, but nevermind!
No, the whole Rose Tyler had more weight.
And if you watch the classic series, the Doctor never like his people.
Absolutely right, makes the Doctor this magical superhero than can always find a cheat to save the day, however bleak. Much more satisfying to portray some situations where he CAN’T avoid the hard choices
@@jons355 To be honest, he always was this. Remember the Doctor Jesús in Series 3 finale.
The Fourth Doctor, the books of the Eigtht Doctor also.
I found the battles shown in the Day of the Doctor disappointing. Lack of lovely Time War imagery aside, they used weapons that are conventional in our here and now. Daleks would be fighting from space, such as hurling asteroids from orbit for maximum damage, not zooming down like soldiers and endangering themselves one-on-one. I felt it was a big step backward. These are advanced species, not modern-day marines. I loved your essay and yes, bringing the Time War down to Earth really does it a disservice. Cheers
You need to watch The Invasion of Time.
The Time Lords are just politics, no warriors.
The War in Heaven is the Time War but interesting, change my mind.
I was kinda wondering what you meant by had it been ruined but I did fail to take into account of the extended canonical entries. I mean I was pretty confused with the inclusion of Galifrey at the end of Clara's journey so far... but I take it as after the War otherwise it all seemingly ties up nicely in the end.
I like the idea of the time war but we did not need to explore it
Iono. Most people don’t read or listen to the EU. So we saw some lasers in and around the 50th. Big deal.
I always make a parallel between the Time War and the War for Cybertron from Transformers as both Doctor Who's revival and the live action Transformers movies began in the mid to late 2000s, showing the heroes of the Autobots and the Doctor continuing their endless battles against the great villains of their show, those being the Decepticons and the Daleks, before potentially revisiting their home planet of Cybertron or Galllifrey at some point but the hero fights to stop their home being brought back so close to planet Earth, such as in Dark of the Moon and The End of Time.
I should probably write a list of the similarities between these two franchises.
FYI Star Trek's biggest conflict was likely The Dominion War...or the War Against the Borg
I loved the Engine's of War Book but I respect your opinion.
The way big finish did the class boxset it was awesome with how they used it and very timey wimey and time war like. However in my head the time war was so chaotic literally everything happens and doesn’t happen at the same time, for example the nightmare child could be hundreds of different things all at once
The irony of this video is I didnt know any of this and now the Time War is ruined for me.
Still a great video
I think the extended media is largely canon-optional for most fans who engage with it. Theshow is skirting the edge of showing too much, although I thought Moffat's implementation of the 'last day' was executed well enough. Glad that Chibnall didn't touch it and hopefully Davies will be smart addressing it again.
I read a quote somewhere on the time war. It went something like "I have no intention of showing the time war because it would cost more money then there is in the world." or something to that effect.
Just going to repost my Community post comment. It's the same amount of true now as it was 24 hours ago:
I haven’t even caught up on Chibnall era, but the answer is yes, it already was before then. Moffat was the complete inverse of RTD’s tasteful referential dialogue that expanded the imagination with every mention of a new detail. Secretly undoing the entire thing so that the Doctor’s misery was just because he was essentially a dummy who has to forget it is a putzy move, there were surely other ways to bring the Time Lords back, not that it mattered much at all except for ONE finale later.
And the War Doctor? Possibly the worst way to deal with not having Eccleston to play a real character. John Hurt may do a great job, but fucking up the entire numbering system because of whatever half-baked idea this dude was supposed to be is, to sum it up for like the third time, amateur shit. Actually visualizing even a minute of the Time War is just amateur, and especially putting FutureGuns in Time Lord hands is another example of not being creative enough to manifest a real idea.
You need to watch The Timeless Child.
The dematgun in Invasion of Time.
The Guard also had teasers.
I think the time war has slightly been ruined and only slightly because while we are still finding out parts of it there is still so much we don’t know and big finish have explained why lesser species are finding out about it because there planets are being affected as some have been destroyed reborn moved or erased because of the war and history itself is being affected and I think that is good. My favourite series that has been related to the time war is Gallifrey time war because it showed how much the time lords changed and how the war effected there society (also because Gallifrey is the best doctor who spin off ever) and if u are going to listen to any of the time stuff listen to Gallifrey time war
i wonder was there any media that showed how gallifre was found after it was locked in the cup'a soup?
Agree with pretty much everything except that the War in Heaven is exactly how to elaborate without removing mystery. Like we know so much but none of it answers the questions that would prevent our imagination from filling the important substance of the war. Like its never even clarified what the enemy is, just the chaos and consequences that the war produces
I always imagine the destruction of the Thajarian homworld in Demons of the Punjab to be another consequence of the Time War. If that had been the intention, then Vinay Patel did a great job of doing an RTD take on it.
No.
The biggest Star Trek conflict was the Dominion Wars in the series Deep Space 9.
Beat me to it.
The only thing I can think of that could rival the scale of the time war is Warhammer 40k, with the time war a mysterious conflict, and 40k the exact opposite
I think if they do a Paul Mcgann series, which will be a Ltd series . Well it needs to have the Doctor removed from the Time War. Big finish need to start wrapping it up a bit. John Hurt was amazing as the forgotton Dr, and his series for Big Finish their best thing they ever did so far.
For me, RTD went through all the effort of inventing something to give actual weight on the Doctor’s back, actual severe unavoidable consequences, only for Moffat to ruin it barely 3 years after he left.
Bringing back Gallifrey meant the war meant nothing at all. It didn’t need to exist if there’s no actual consequences from it. Thanks Moff.
The Time Lords going mad seemed to have been completely forgotten about. The point was they were as bad as the Daleks if not worse. All the emotion of the End of Time, the proof that the war had to end in fire, just gone to give a generic Saturday morning cartoon hero moment for the Doctor.
They didn’t have the budget to show anything interesting of it and what they did show was MCU-level pew pew lasers. It’s shameful.
I think the decisions Moffat made for the 50th anniversary are one of the reasons I resent his era even more than Chibnall’s. All of Eleven’s era was basically a big middle finger to all of RTD’s hard work.
Then Chibnall came along after to invent his own canon, make the Doctor a god and disregard everything both previous show runners did by doing the absolute worst possible things with Gallifrey.
RTD is back, thank goodness, and I trust him of all people on Earth to straighten things out and fix his previous replacements’ catastrophic mistakes.
The thing that makes it worth while for me is that most of the depictions of the Time War takes place either very early in the conflict and in the last few years of the war. Those hundreds of years of fighting that remains a mystery to us still carry that weight of unimaginable, lovecraftian horror.
Interesting video, BUT...please explain, if RTD never intended the Time War to be depicted, then why did he himself plant the seeds of "Day of the Doctor" in "The End of Time", where the Time Lords tell Rassilon that the Doctor has The Moment. The reference is too cryptic to be a tantalizing name-drop, which suggests to me that RTD had planned all along to tell the story of the Doctor's involvement in the Time War in some fashion.
Damn, the last time I was this early my parents hadn't shown up to my birth
Ah, Dr Doofensmirtz
I actually liked when Moffat reintroduced Gallifrey and Skaro, BUT after that was done, there was no mystery and no intrigue as to the stakes of the Doctor being 'the Lsst of the Time Lords' and became just another character in a crowded universe. Same with the Daleks. It made them less scary although with more time lords came more lovecraftian style lore. We need to have Gallifrey 'get destroyed again' same with Skaro so that there are more stakes in the show. The new RTD era could bring some potential for this.
Meh, the Doctor should be a nobody. No something like The Chosen One.
I do not think it has been ruined, between all the media, it has still that vibes pf things beyond our understanding.
Like the Faction Paradox book is a perfect example of this, it is full of eldritch stuff, while the Bog Finiah takes a more pure sci-fi route which i love.
I think it is perfect in this way, it still leaves room for personal interpretations
I hate Moffatt with a passion and much of that is this.
He took one of the BEST things to be given to doctor who and decided it needed a clever moment.
Nine and Ten CRYING or screaming at it. PTSD taking hold. Nine FREEZES then FIGHTS.
Imagine if instead they stood there. Clara and bad wolf watching on... And three shaking hands, each giving each other the strength to do what they HAD to do. Tearful, Wordless, MORTAL and ever so real as they each press that very button.
The best doctors were "human". Anxious, Scared, Vulnerable, Passionate, Kind. He treat the doctor like some deity. They aren't though. And it robbed the doctor of so much by undoing the fall of Galifray, ONLY TO DO NOTHING WITH ITS RETURN. ALSO THIS ISNT FUCKING BAKERS GALIFRAY. ITS RASALON READY TO PURGE ALL OF TIME TO SUPPOSEDLY ASCEND LIKE A DOOMSDAY CULT. ITS A FASCIST IMPERIALIST WAR MONGERING NIGHTMARE. TIMELORDS AND DALEK BECAME SYNONYMOUS WITH EACH OTHER AND DEATH.
Yeah, Moffatt. Just bring them back 0.0 Its not like they symbolised anything meaningful or that the timewar still fucking caused endless horrors still leaving scars on the universe. I'm sure the fucking Zygons were a okay with that. But now the doctor hasn't done a horrifying act, good for them...
You must hate Chinball now.
And Tom Baker is the best Doctor. The "human" Doctors feel so out of character.
Honestly, the Time War thing wouldn't stay a secret forever. Fans would have gotten frustrated about that eventually. Heck, Rose and Tennant's melodrama is more remembered and explored than that. It's like the Clone Wars from Star Wars.
A big problem is that then the Tenth Doctor's sanctimonious morality makes him look like a hypocrite.
If he already kill before, why are he angry at UNIT for using weapons? Or so angry with his clone for kill Daleks?
Honestly if you watch the classic series, the Time War is meaningless since the Doctor defeated the Daleks on his own and the Time Lords are incompetent politicians.
And frankly the Doctor doesn't have much affection for his people, even coming to see them as a nuisance when they interfere in his life.
Sorry but what scars? The universe feel so fine in the RTD era, as if nothing happened.
Even the Flux had more impact that the Time War.
Star Trek does indeed have an analagous war, the Temporal Cold War from Star Trek: Enterprise, which was explained in similar terms with just glimpses of it here and there.
The major difference being it was left alone and not elaborated within the show once the arc was completed.
If anything ruined the Timelord it was the whole Timeless Child bullshittery, and the Master turning the remaining Timelords into Cybermen.
The 50th anniversary still worked. The Last Day is pretty scary as the humanoid Time Lords are totally slaughtered. I don't think Moffat ruined the Time War at all, although you're right it could have been a bit less Star Wars and more Lords of the Rings in space on acid. The War Doctor didn't work though, as Moffat constantly over-promises in his writing. The War Doctor is too emo, with he and everyone else making out he's some demonic creature, yet he seems like a nice old man. The less we know about the War Doctor the better, but from what I've heard from his story from the novels and audiobooks, and his portrayal in Day of the Doctor, he seems a nice guy who is just another version of the Doctor. We know that the Doctor can be a pyschopath some times (I'm looking at you numbers 7 and 10), and have done things on screen as bad as the War Doctor.