h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Will check it out.

any chance you can make illegal copies and put them online somewhere so that we can all hear?

We won't it was you - honest

You can have perfectly legitimate copies to listen to via BBC 7 in just a few weeks.

torchwood starts tomorrow! yay!

When does it start on BBC7 - p.s. I saw Torchwood - it was awesome. Kind of a cross between Men In Black, Captain Scarlet and X-files...

I believe they're doing another repeat season of McGann at the moment, leading up to Chimes of Midnight near Christmas, then the new series airs in the New Year.

That means a LOT of Doctor Who-related new episodes in the last week of 2006 and first week of 2007.

Anyone think Doctor Who will get another Christmas Radio Times cover this year? I think it's unlikely, but then, I didn't expect the *four* covers it got during its run this year, so anything's possible. The RT folks know that a Who cover results in some extra sales...

Does the Radio Times still exist?

I heard a rumour that David Tennant has spoken about leaving "Doctor Who" at the end of the third season, but so far I've been unable to find any evidence for it whatsoever, so I'm inclined to dismiss it as merely an unsubstantiated rumour.

Got a back log to read it seems

Funny you should say that CYBERHUMAN, someone at work last week mentioned about him leaving after the next season too. It's the first I've heard of it, and I'm sure these forums would be full of talk about it, so I'm also ignoring it and hoping it's not true!

What worries me about the vague possibility of the Tenth Doctor not being around for much longer is that in the original series, it was established that Time Lords only have thirteen incarnations, and then they die. So that means that after the Tenth Doctor there can only be another three incarnations, the Doctor's eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth incarnations. And if they all stay for only two or three seasons, then the grand revival of "Doctor Who" is going to be somewhat shortlived.

I have a bad feeling though that Russell T. Davies is going to disregard the mythology established in the original series and create some 'previously unknown' method of the Doctor gaining some new incarnations. We saw it in "The Five Doctors" that only the Time Lords can give members of their race a new cycle of regenerations, but with the Time Lords now dead, RTD is going to have to seek an alternative solution to the problem of giving the Doctor some more incarnations to keep the series running.

And if, like me, you think the mythology of "Doctor Who" is quite important, then that's a cause for concern.

I wouldn't describe a series that will apparently run for at least nine seasons as short-lived...

Anyway I think there's a bit of a double standard here, as people never complain about previous production teams 'disregarding the established mythology' to rewrite the Doctor's background, the nature of the Time Lords (who originally were described as being truly immortal, with no apparent regeneration limit at all), the origin of the Daleks, etc - in fact it's the production teams who did that who tend to be most popular with the long-term fans!

And would you *really* have Doctor Who permanently and irrevocably cancelled in all media rather than just have a few tweaks made to the mythology? That's a funny way to be a fan...

Frankly, if I were doing Doctor Who at the time of the twelfth regeneration, I'd make damn sure I'd strongly reiterated the 'twelve' rule well in advance, and make it clear that if the Doctor dies, that's it.

Then I'd have the last two episodes build up to a cataclysmic finale where the Doctor absolutely has to die in order to avert whatever universal disaster is threatening. And he'd make the final, ultimate sacrifice.

And then, as the show is just about to close, and everyone involved has blubbed their eyes out at the heroic sacrifice of our hero, I'd regenerate the bugger. Because one minor plot point in The Deadly Assassin is roundly trumped by the very real need for Doctor Who to contine for as long as people want to watch it. Maybe that would be the time to bring back the Time Lords.

Or maybe something slightly more left-field. How about introducing a new recurring character towards the end of the series (in the same way that Captain Jack was introduced) who becomes a companion, but when the Doctor dies, it's revealed that this character was actually the Doctor's fourteenth incarnation all along. There's even precedent for that - Logopolis and Planet of the Spiders.

But the only important thing is that the Doctor has to die, knowing that he really will die for good. Because that's what the Doctor *would* do. And then bring him back, because that's what *we* want.

See also all the nihilists who were disappointed that Rose didn't die at the end of Doomsday "because that would have been great drama". They were wrong.

Awix, I wasn't suggesting for a minute that "Doctor Who" should come to an end in all forms of media simply because the Doctor only has thirteen incarnations and will die after that if the mythology isn't altered slightly. On the contrary, I think that "Doctor Who" will go on forever, in some form of media or another, whether that be audio books, 'New Adventures' novels, webcasts, TV episodes, made-for-TV movies, comic books or whatever. In my opinion, the series will always exist for as long as there are fans out there and decent writers to write the stories.

However, I do feel that Russell T. Davies needs to keep in mind the mythology of the series that he is writing for, and not get too carried away with putting his own mark on the series and going as far as forgetting important details of the established mythology. I think that Jim Lynn's suggestion for the Doctor's final regeneration is a good one, and I strongly suspect that Russell T. Davies will do a scenario like that, with the Doctor making the ultimate sacrifice and then finding out that he has suddenly got a new cycle of regenerations.

Although, I somehow doubt the Time Lords will ever make an appearance in the revived series as that would devalue their destruction and the fact that the Doctor is the only survivor of his race. Perhaps the vortex energy contained in the TARDIS, as seen in "Boom Town" and "The Parting of the Ways," will be used as a way of giving the Doctor a new cycle of regenerations.

I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Yes we will.

There are a couple of potential 'outs' already in play, of course - most obviously the various hints that the thirteen incarnation limit is not unbreakable (see The Five Doctors, and especially Brain of Morbius).

I would respectfully (and strongly) argue that the first thing every new production regime needs to do with the show is put their own mark on it and not feel too constrained by the past. This doesn't mean forgetting every single established fact about the show, but being willing to rewrite or creatively reinterpret a few of the more obscure points. (The twelve-regeneration rule is only referred in Deadly Assassin, the cruddy TV movie, Mawdryn Undead, Curse of Fatal Death, and.... errrr.... not many, I don't think - help me out, guys, I'm 12,000 miles from my DVD collection!)

I wouldn't worry anyway - RTD has spoken very positively about the value of the mythology and I strongly doubt he's going to muck about with it just to boost his own ego (like he needs to anyway). If you're talking post-RTD, well, that's another ball game...

No guarantee RTD will still being doing it at the time of the 13th doctor; that's surely a minimum of 3 seasons away. I'd like DT to hang around for a bit though, simply to stave off all those "Who is *your* choice for the 11th doctor?" conversations

Mol

Firstly, David Tennant didn't say that he's leaving - I can confirm that at least. What he said, in anser to the question 'How long are you staying' is that people keep asking him that, and of course he's of an age where he has to think of his long-term career, but that he's got the best job in the world.

On the subject of rejeneration, which 'established' version do we want to go with? In the Troughton era, he claims that he can 'live forever, barring accidents'. The word 'regeneration' isn't even mentioned until 'Planet of the Spiders' and it's only in 'The Deadly Assassin' that we learn of a limit to Time Lord lives, because of the plot-point that the Master has come to the end of his.

In 'The Five Doctors' we get the loop-hole that RTD and his team have to use. The Time Lords offer the Master a whole new regeneration cycle in return for rescuing the Doctor. In other words, the 13-life limit is probably a Time Lord-imposed thing to prevent anyone from being immortal.

Now... the Time Lords aren't around any more, are they? And the second Doctor probably claimed he could live forever because he thought he had escaped them.

I love that idea of a 'companion' turning out to be a future Doctor. That's brilliant.

As Russell recently said in SFX mag that he wouldn't cast an older man for the Doctor nowadays, my 'ideal Doctor' has shifted a generation. I think everyone who's endured the new Robin Hood has said 'Sam Troughton for the 12th Doctor', even though he's ridiculously young (says me, who's still sulking because Tennant is a month younger than me). But my personal choice for the next Doctor is James MacAvoy (Shameless, State of Play, Narnia, Starter for Ten). He's really mercurial and charming, while capable of doing shouty outbursts and not squeaking.

He's probably a bit young but what about Chiwetel Ejiofor as the next or so Doctor? Though it'd be tricky, what with him being a movie star... then again we managed to get Eccleston.

I'm pretty sure from the way it's phrased that Troughton was talking about Time Lords in general living for eternity rather than just himself. The thirteen-life limit... well we don't know enough about it as it quite rightly only ever gets mentioned in passing, but I always got the impression... well, the Five Doctors is about Borusa wanting to be president forever, so why doesn't he just vote himself more regenerations rather than having his silly plan with the Death Zone? If more regenerations were so easy to get, why doesn't everyone do it?

You could argue that at the time of the Five Doctors the Master isn't in a Time Lord body any more (it's a Trakenite body he's possessed) so it could be given the ability to regenerate, which is a different thing.

There are lots of loopholes you *could* use. You could say the Doctor's a special case and has extra regenerations (unspecified number, of course) cos he's (gasp) half-human, or is that a piece of the mythology that we don't actually want to hang onto? (Let's be consistent, guys... )