Amph Doctor Who Discussion (Russell T. Davies returns)

Truly, I love Doctor Who speculation. It's great, but will people please stop closing the Whoniverse in on itself. Two kids who might be Rose and Mickey are not Rose and Mickey. Clara is not Rose, and so and so on and whatever other theory can be spawned from putting two and two together and making eight.

 

Susan is actually Jenny's daughter.

 

Isn't it kind of the same for Jack though? The Tardis thinks she shouldn't exist or be possible just like Jack?

 

Could it be that the TARDIS is thinking about the events of Aslyum of the Daleks and believes that Clara will end up as the Dalek Oswin we first met?

 

I don't think the TARDIS would have such a precise handle on events. In my head - at least - she sees the broad strokes. Thus any dislike she bears towards Clara might be rooted in a general sense of discomfort with her. That Clara doesn't fit. That she's not possible.

 

It's quite simple. Rose remembers Clara from the playground and when she absorbed the heart of the TARDIS, she became part of it. So Rose IS the TARDIS as well as being Clara. Clara is the TARDIS

 

Of course!

 

It's a publicity shot. That's all. Very different thing.

But you know that.

 

I completely disagree. This is the 50th Anniversary. This is the exact time the Whoniverse should be referencing its past, publicity shot or no.

I don't know that the Rose connection theory is exactly right, but I definitely thought (even before it was announced that Billie would be in the 50th) that there was some connection between Rose and Clara. Largely because when Clara calls the Doctor in The Bells of St. John and says she got the number from "the girl in the shop", my instant assumption was that that was some incarnation of Rose.

And then I definitely kept rewinding to see what the dates were on Clara's mother's tombstone. My first objective was because I wanted to see if it were possible that she could be Ian and Barbara's granddaughter. But they came back to earth in 1963 and Clara's mother was born in 1960. And if she were related on her father's side her last name would be Chesterton. So they seem to have intentionally placed that prior to 1963. But then I immediately noticed that her date of death was the day the Doctor met Rose. So yes, I definitely think there's a connection.

Rose Bad Wolf'd the universe. Amy restarted the universe and brought the Doctor back into existence based on her memories of him. I definitely think that Clara is a byproduct of the Doctor's memories and potentially involving things that Rose and Amy did to the universe. I had been more focused on the Amy aspect and so I hadn't really thought about Rose, save for instantly assuming that she was "the girl in the shop".

Ahhh hahaha, the Rose haters are going to be so pissed off

I definitely think the 50th Anniversary is going to have to do with the threat of the Doctor actually dying and potentially also being erased from history, which is the ultimate threat this show can have. Obviously that would echo series 5. And it would also give a very good reason why the Human Doctor (Tennant) and Rose are needed. Between Rose's Bad Wolf abilities and the Human Doctor having the Doctor's mind and memories up to a certain point, the two of them might be the only ones capable of helping out.

 

How can Rose have been "the girl in the shop" when she's currently stuck in the parallel universe?

I hope Tennant and Piper are actually proper Ten and Rose from the Series 2 timeframe, rather than Human Doctor and Rose from the parallel universe. Because the latter would mean that they broke the "she's stuck in the parallel universe and can't come back" principle yet again.

EDIT: Oh, and referencing the past for the 50th Anniversary is perfectly fine. Making everyone related to or a different incarnation of someone else - not as much.

 

I can kind of understand the theory given that Rose was working in a shop when we first met her (which Nine promptly blew up), and I suppose it could work given Clara didn't exactly say the woman in the shop was working there, and if we're talking about S4 Rose (we don't exactly know just how many jumps with the Dimension Cannon she made while looking for the Doctor), but ultimately I thought 'woman in a shop' was a reference to River, so ...

 

River makes more sense than Rose.

 

Spoiler: s7

Considering Alex is supposed to be reprising River later in the season, yes, it does.

Edit: Or it could be Moffat trolling the fans again like he tends to want to do every once and awhile.

 

Spoiler: possible spoilers

I'm betting that River will show up in Moffat's finale. Where all will be revealed.

 

Spoiler

Likely since there's been no set photos from the episode thus far and she's not in any of the rest of them.

 

Spoiler: spoilers

We know the villain though, right? It's the Whispermen.

 

I kinda hoped "the girl in the shop" was Sally Sparrow. Not that I think Cary Mulligan would ever come back to Who, but it would be a nice call-back to Blink, and more interesting than Rose again.

 

That would be cool but I'm not sure why when asked how to fix teh interwebz, Sally would give Clara The Doctor's number.

 

Is she currently stuck in the parallel universe? Why is that assumed? It could easily be Rose jumping through from the other universe, or another time during her time travels with the Doctor even. She jumped through constantly in series 4, so it's not like they'd even be contradicting themselves there. If there's a good enough reason and if she's going to be coming back from the parallel universe, then it makes sense. Or it could easily be some affect of her Bad Wolf powers.

I'm just saying, Clara somehow got a number to call the TARDIS (which isn't even really supposed to have a phone you can call out there, as we were informed in The Empty Child), they made a point of asking who gave her the number but not revealing who it was, yet stating it was from "the girl in the shop", and the episode was called The Bells of St. John, in reference to the TARDIS phone ringing. I don't think that's something they're just going to drop or that doesn't have any significance. And considering Rose is the ultimate "girl in the shop", I just assume that's who it was. It has to be someone special or else they wouldn't have kept it a secret.

As to Rose and the Human Doctor v. Rose and series 2 Doctor.... I'm sorry, but anyone who would be surprised that they'd bring them back from the parallel universe is being a bit naive about how this show works They constantly establish rules for the universe, time travel, etc. that are then broken in other episodes. Because part of the point is that the universe and its rules are in flux and that it's been even moreso in NuWho because there aren't a bunch of Time Lords around any more to enforce and monitor universal rules. When they said the wall to Pete's World was closing "forever", not for one second did I ever believe that. Because a continual theme of the show is that time can be rewritten, very little is certain or fixed, and that the Doctor doesn't always know everything and isn't always right.

If it's okay to have Jack be "impossible" and have Clara be "impossible" and have the Doctor travel back in his own timeline and interact with himself in The Big Bang, which is supposed to be "impossible", why one earth would it be any more unusual or unforgivable to bring Rose and the Human Doctor back through a supposedly "impossible" separation between universes? The Doctor just mentioned that he can't tell the future, he just works there. When he told Rose that the walls between their universes were going to close forever this time, one has to keep in mind that he's often wrong. There are probably more examples in this show of things happening that the Doctor didn't think were possible than him being right about something he thought was impossible. The whole reason the Doctor keeps exploring time and space is because he loves being surprised, learning new things, etc. It's the reason Clara's the perfect puzzle for him (and possibly the perfect trap). The second he actually knows for certain everything that is and isn't possible is the second he stops needing to explore.

Yes, I get that it can be annoying for the writers to put in declarations of "forever" or "absolutely impossible" and then to break those. And perhaps they should do that a bit less. But that doesn't change the fact that they do it all the time, and bringing Rose and the Human Doctor into the main universe wouldn't be some major, show-breaking breach of continuity. More like par for the course and in keeping with the universe.


But here are some of the more practical story reasons I think it might be the Human Doctor instead of the Tenth Doctor, and honestly why I also think that's probably a good idea:

1) people age. This is the main reason I've always been skeptical about whether they could or even should have all the living Doctors involved in the 50th because, as cool as it might be, they'd have to come up with some reason that the Doctors are all 30 years older now. It couldn't just be running into them from their previous adventures. Some cameos or nods in some way would be cool. But the aging thing is a problem. Now Tennant doesn't look really much older than he did by the end of his run, but Piper does. I would have a bit of a hard time buying her now as series 2 Rose. She even looked much older by her series 4 appearances, let alone now. But come on, when they created the Human Doctor character they specifically mentioned that he will age like a normal human. They might as well have just come right out and said that they wanted to make it possible for Tennant to appear in the future regardless of how old he is, thus getting around the problem of having previous Doctors reappear. The first time I saw Journey's End, I just smiled and shook my head at that part because it was so obvious that they were trying to set it up to make it convenient for Tennant to return in the future if they wanted him to.

2) And even so, if it's the Tenth Doctor proper, you then have the issue of needing to wipe his memory. Once he's saved the day, he can't remember that he's met his future self. Neither could Rose. So they'd have to find some way to erase that, and that sort of trope is a bit obvious.

3) A chance to see a Companion actually settled down into a happy life. It's likely the Human Doctor and Rose would be married and busy battling aliens via Torchwood or some such in Pete's World. The interaction with both those characters and Eleven would be much more interesting if their lives have actually progressed rather than us just regressing to an era of the Tenth Doctor's life that both we and Eleven have already experienced.

4) No real danger. If the character is the Tenth Doctor proper, yes I'm sure he'd be in peril, but we'd know for sure that he wasn't going to die just as much as we know for sure that the Eleventh Doctor isn't going to die (even if there's a huge surprise and he regenerates, he wouldn't be dead-dead). With the Human Doctor, he could actually die and wouldn't be able to regenerate. I don't know if Moffat would actually do it. But he might. And just the possibility that he might would make it much, much more tense, at least for me. Imagining how wonderfully Tennant would handle the scenario of the Human Doctor giving his own life to save the real Doctor... if I were a writer, I couldn't resist including that sort of scenario. The angst potential for all of them in that situation - Ten II, Rose, Eleven - is just too great. Having a version of the Tenth Doctor, whom we already love, but knowing he can also actually die? That's exactly the kind of high stakes tension I'd want to include in the 50th if I were Moffat.

Okay, sorry for the super long post... just wound up kind of laying out all my thoughts and theories, for whatever it's worth

 

Ha, good point. I was forgetting the context.

 

It could be Martha.

 

I mean, I wouldn't necessarily be disappointed if it were someone else. I have no special attachment to Rose, though I do like her. I just felt like it seemed the most likely, especially given some of the other references to Rose that have been pointed out in recent eps with Clara.

 

BBC released two short videos from the filming of the Anniversary:

Spoiler

I love Strax.