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

I'd put money on it. He's still out there somewhere, with that chip in his head. Even without the information he intended to translate at home, surely jjust teh technology in his head could be retro-engineered? Plus he's going to be pretty pissed off with the Doctor for showing him a glimpse of the future then dumping him.

Given that RTD has shown an unexpectedly religious streak to the ending of this series, the name Adam may well be deliberate foreshadowing of the creation of a new race of men. If it is, that's thinking ahead...

It's not *that* unexpected, who are talking about the bloke responsible for Second Coming.

The Neo-Humans, New-Humans and Humanish that Cassandra mentioned, perhaps?

No comments from you two about the script being posted at imdb?

Cassandra - I still say they missed a major laugh-out-loud moment when Cassandra exploded. Some of it should have hit Rose, like when she got the "exchange of body fluid" in her face.

As my home computer is dead, and as I rarely if ever go to imdb in any event, it didn'y affect me.

I have to say though I wouldn't have read it even if I knew it was there.

When Rose was glowing and talking about 'my Doctor' and 'keep you from harm' or whatever, I saw that as being the TARDIS speaking through her. When he kissed her, it was the Tardis. Not that I have a problem with the Doctor kissing Rose. Much!
Anyway, next series I am going to attempt to live spoiler free. So I won't be back here. 'Cept I will, cos I have no will power.

I notice everyone is basing their opinion on David Tennants acting on Casanova (which I loved), well I thought he was great in Blackpool as well, he certainly wasn't shallow in that series. So maybe his perceived shallowness is 'acting' and we should actually watch the new series and give him a chance.

YOu can catch him on Radio 4 on the remake of Dixon of Dock Green as well. He's the fresh recruit in it.

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I don't. The origin of the Cybermen is sufficiently canon that RTD would horribly alienate many fans if he did that (plus the Cybermen originally hit earth before Adam was born).

Oh, and whilst we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next'un, anyone care to give a potted history of the Cybermen for us? And how they could work in 'wicked weasel' or 'ferocious ferret' or someting?

Forgot to say: I am feeling smug that my BW theory was partially correct- I was right that it was a message for Rose.

Cybermen. Right then. First appeared in The Tenth Planet, William Hartnell's last story. The cybermen's home planet was Mondas, which was originally Earth's twin. Some great disaster on the planet sent it spinning out of orbit, off on a journey through space. The people on the planet were getting weak, their life-spans decreasing, so they started replacing their worn-out organs with mechanical replacements, a la spare part surgery. Eventually they replaced so much of themselves that they weren't 'human' anymore, they were emotionless cybermen.

After the destruction of Mondas, the surviving cybermen set up home on Telos, which was also destroyed. By the time of the 51st century, they were 'just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship'.

Ferocious ferret? Wicked weasel? Not things I can image cybermen saying...

Which indeed is canon. But whose to say how they ended up on Mondas in the first place...

Hmm, didn't Jimster swear he'd worked it all out last week...

conspicuous by his absence from this thread this morning isn't he?

Isn't he just. I want to hear his theory. And I shall eat my hat (couple of days tenderising, should be fine) if he was right.

Okay, so last week I nearly typed out my theory about Bad Wolf and then stopped as I worried that fi I got it right I'd look like a Beeb mole. Kerr Avon asked that I should post the theory after the episode to compare how it actually panned out.

So:

Firstly, the bit I got spot on. The Emperor Dalek. The clue was in the scene with the Controller on the Game Station the second she disappears. In the background is a section of piping. As the characetrs look up at the screen where she'd been you can still see the piping, and it's the kind of thing that would normally be removed for spoiling the shot... except it just happens to form the exact design of piping that ran down the front of the old Emperor's casing.

Added to the cables running into the Controller that look just like thsoe that ran into the Emperor and you get a wonderfully subtle clue... completely ruined by the trailers.



Now for Bad Wolf. I can't say for certain that I got this right OR wrong. I felt that Bad Wolf wasn't a person or a thing but a situation, just as the Moxx of Balhoon spelt out in 'End of the World'. The Doctor's accidentally created another future for Earth, one that should never have happened (and he admits to Rose that this is possible in a throwaway line in 'The Unquiet Dead'). I thought that the Bad Wolf was the history that's hiding just underneath the surface. The Gelth who might break through and take over the Earth, the Slitheen, whose alien invasion goes unrecorded by historians, the dalek that should never have existed, the Jagrofass's news channels, the rift in Cardiff and of course the dalek invasion.

As it turned out, Bad Wolf doesn't actually exist (one of the cleverer bits of foreshadowing in the series). In 'End of the World', the Doctor spells out to Rose that the Tardis can get inside her head. I suspect that every time the characters heard or saw 'Bad Wolf' it actually said soemthing else (as shown by the final appearance where Rose sends the letters of Bad Wolf flying away). When they ask Lynda what Bad Wolf is, she probably hears then ask 'What's Geocomtec' or something, but the Tardis rearranges the words, so Lynda hears what she needs to so she can reply, but for the Doctor and Rose, the words sound different (it's possible Mickey also sees different graffiti to Rose, and when he sees 'Fulham FC' it becomes 'Bad Wolf' for Rose).

Even after seeing the episode, I don't think I was far off. Bad Wofl isn't the Tardis - the Tardis was as much Bad Wolf as the spray can used to write it on the side of the Tardis in episode four. It's not Rose - she's just the conduit. But as Croz said, it's the whole effect - the Time Vortex reacting to a situation, sending Reapers to mend the hole in time created by Rose's dad not dying, then sending Bad Wolf anchors across time so that the Tardis can lock onto them, and finally giving Rose enough power to save the day and putting the Doctor in the right place to be abel to save her afterwards.

It's this whole chain that I think was what Bad Wolf was.

And it's this level of thought that makes me love this season above all others. The general public come away thinking Rose was Bad Wolf, which isn't wrong really, they don't need a load of backstory to be impressed that the daleks have an Emperor and they probably get that the Doctor did something quite understatedly brave in order to need to regenerate. But the fans also have something they can continue to debate and discuss that doesn't get as bogged down with itself as, say, 'Trial of a Time Lord' did. Fans can latch onto the Emperor's line about his time ship falling to safety as the only surviving ship and debate whether that means the Emperor and the 'last Dalek' are one and the same. It's full of gaps in the text that the fans can enjoy and insert their own theories for.

Not that Trial of a Time Lord alone hasn't kept fans busy for the last 19 years...

Not that I want to turn this place into some friendlier version of rec.arts.drwho, but that word is 'canonical', by the way. Canonical - part of the canon (ie, for most people, the TV series)

Just pretend everyone is using an abbreviated form, Jimster .

I shall comment on your other post, when I've had time to mull it over.

And Trial of a Timelord never existed. It was a mass fan-hallucination.

Now that the series is over, I'm thinking this might be nice if it and the other thread were moved over to the h2g2 Doctor Who Group...

Is this your bi-annual attempt to actually get some life over there? Well, I'm certainly game.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'Ask the h2g2 Community' to 'The H2G2 Doctor Who Group'.