Reaction post for The Ultimate Foe

May 11, 2009 16:39

Apologies for a tardy post once again--had sudden death of laptop yesterday. So you'll all be spared the atrocious photoshop of Six in an eyepatch ( Read more... )

serial: the ultimate foe, rewatchathon, discussion

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Comments 10

hexiva May 12 2009, 10:54:26 UTC
It interests me that, as the Doctor didn't seem to notice that the Valeyard had survived, wouldn't the Valeyard remember the event as ending with his own death? How, exactly, did he think that was going to work out? Just desperate enough to return to Gallifrey for a few days(or however long that was supposed to be) without causing a paradox or unleashing the Daleks on the world or whatever it was that he didn't mind dying? Had he taken a leaf out the Master's book and built a paradox machine? Does he not remember what happened to him ( ... )

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hexiva May 12 2009, 11:03:05 UTC
Also -- because I hit the post button too soon and I've got rather a lot to say about this serial -- what did the Valeyard do to the Master to make him think the Valeyard is a bigger threat? And, on a completely unrelated note, why can't I find any decently lengthy Valeyard/Master slash?

Does it actually say anywhere in the new series that the Doctor can't go back to Gallifrey as opposed to not wanting to go back there because he might change history with a stray mention/it always did take an order from the High Council to get him back?

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tessavance May 26 2009, 06:39:30 UTC
what did the Valeyard do to the Master to make him think the Valeyard is a bigger threat? And, on a completely unrelated note...
I don't think these two things are unrelated at all. Clearly the Valeyard broke the Master's hearts so he's getting his own back by stuffing up the Valeyards's plans.

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hexiva May 26 2009, 07:14:41 UTC
That's why the lack of slash isn't related?

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scarfman May 12 2009, 19:51:57 UTC

Two points I like to make in discussing Trial of a Time Lord and specifically The Ultimate Foe.
  • The Valeyard. People who've just reviewed the serial probably don't need this point driven in, but the Valeyard is not a normal incarnation of the Doctor. He's a "distillation" of the Doctor's dark side "from between his twelfth and final incarnations". Remember the projection of Cho Je the Doctor's Teacher had running errands for him in Planet of the Spiders, before the Teacher actually regenerated into that appearance? Remember the Watcher from Logopolis, who was projected backwards in time from the middle of the Doctor's upcoming regeneration in order to keep the Doctor on track in the events leading up to it? Like those. How the Valeyard was generated, and by whom if anyone, we're not told. I initially assumed the corrupt High Council which used him to try keeping the Doctor from exposing the Ravalox coverup, but it could have been a project of the Master's own gone awry. It'd almost have to be a Time Lord(s). But to a certain degree ( ... )

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hexiva May 13 2009, 08:30:06 UTC
Does he necessarily have to have been made by anyone? The Watcher, from what I understood, was a natural occurrence -- I thought it was just something that happened sometimes during regenerations.

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scarfman May 13 2009, 12:48:21 UTC

I assume he was made by someone because our previous examples of the same sort of thing (a) were not the regenerater's distilled dark side only (b) projected backwards in time only a short distance before the relevant regeneration (3 c) did require special circumstances to manifest: Cho Je was manifested by a Time Lord so steeped in the ways of Time that he didn't need a TARDIS to get to Earth from Gallifrey, and the Watcher (according to the screenwriter in later interviews) was manifested by the cataclysmic events surrounding the regneration. These projections don't occur naturally in the first place, or they don't occur without special circumstances; and the Valeyard has additional anomalies when observed next to our other two datapoints.
That said, I could still be wrong. We just don't know.

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hexiva May 14 2009, 03:18:56 UTC
But the Thirteenth Doctor(that's right, isn't it?) could have been in any of those situations when the Valeyard manifested. I don't know about Cho Je, but with the Watcher, it's possible it was only one aspect of the Doctor's personality.

In addition, in 'He Jests at Scars,' which is, I suppose, not exactly canon, the Time Lords are behaving as if the Valeyard is some sort of naturally occurring anomaly, and wish to capture and study it-- him to figure out how it occurred.

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