"The stuff that ..."

[scarfman]

Includes discussion of casting and of trailers revealed at ComicCon.

The Dalton voiceover for the End of Time trailer states that everyone on Earth is having bad dreams. Well, I wondered from the start, when I read that Dalton was (rumored to be) playing a Time Lord High Councillor, whether his appearance and Simm's were to be in flashbacks. But dreams make more sense. If the Master were genuinely coming back, he'd have to have regenerated into a new face, wouldn't he? And if it were a flashback then the Master wouldn't be in John Simm's face. But in a dream he'd still be wearing a face the Doctor would identify as his, and most likely the most recent. And in a dream is the only place the current incarnation of the Doctor might have a meeting with a Time Lord High Councillor*.

Which makes me wonder whether all the other returning characters for whom we've seen location photo spoilers (and perhaps one or two more who'll've only shot studio scenes) are genuinely appearing or will only be in dream sequences.

* Unless Rusty's bringing back Gallifrey for a departing gesture.

Comments

[tommx.livejournal.com]

He wouldn't have had to have regenerated to come back. He refused to regenerate when he'd been shot. My guess is he found another workaround that allowed him to retain John Simm's face.

I suspect this is more than just bad dreams.

[ex-rogerpit.livejournal.com]

Who wants to bet that the ring that got picked up at the end of LoTTL will have something to do with the Master's return?

[tommx.livejournal.com]

Well duh. :-)

RTD threw that in so that the character could be retrieved in the future if need be. I frankly don't think they can end the run of 10 without the Master's intervention. He's just too wonderful a character.

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

I disagree. He's not a wonderful character any more. Now he's just another pathetic baddy. He's not sane. He clearly abused the girl he was with, and most of that was just big herrings put out. "Just in case you missed it, the Master's bad. See? He beats the girl. See? He allies himself with the monsters humanity became at the end of existence. Oh, and he's bad. Understand? Bad bad bad."

He used to be interesting. Oh, I had fun with him when he appeared beside Sylvester McCoy. "If we fight like animals, we'll die like animals!" Lovely Doctor line. But... y'know... they might just as well have left him dead.

I'm sick of the Daleks, too. It's beginning to seem like the writers lack any real creativity.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

I bet it'll work something like the fobwatch, retaining him somehow so he doesn't have to regenerate.

[scarfman]

He wouldn't have had to have regenerated to come back. He refused to regenerate when he'd been shot.

Yeah, I knew that assertion was weak when I made it.

[ex-rogerpit.livejournal.com]

If Russell brings back Gallifrey and the Time Lords, it will be epic to say the least. I've seen one photo of Dalton in what appears to be Gallifreyan clothing, so I'm inclined to think that these won't be flashbacks - we will indeed see the return of the Master and the Time Lords.

[sweetsyren.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

My theory for the Masters return is a clone body. That'd explain the blonde hair posibbly??

I like the idea of Dalton being a Time Lord High Councillor. Someone the Doctor trusts from the Time Lord elite to walk him through a complicated regeneration maybe?

[alawston.livejournal.com]

A genetic graft from Lucy Saxon?

[sweetsyren.livejournal.com]

Oooh! I like it!

Thank you for lending my crack theory some credability.

[litharriel.livejournal.com]

Someone the Doctor trusts from the Time Lord elite to walk him through a complicated regeneration maybe?

Or maybe he's going to be punished for the way he ended the Time War. Remember, the Doctor in Classic Who often had a somewhat strained relationship with his fellow Gallifreyans, particularly authority figures. /:-)

[sweetsyren.livejournal.com]

There is that ;)

[fourzoas.livejournal.com]

I've been expecting the returns to be in dream sequences, but I'm open to other possibilities...especially if we're somehow getting Gallifrey back.

[lordindra.livejournal.com]

The Master has shown an ability to take on new bodies, not regeneration, but taking them over. Not even the same species. The TV movie even had him take over a non-humanoid, possibly even non-biological life form.

Given that, and the presence of some extremely advanced technology in the Who universe, cloning a Simm body from DNA found on the ring(or stored in a secure vault) isn't all much of a stretch. From there, if he had stored his conciousness in the ring, he could inhabit this clone body, as he's inhabited other bodies in the past.

Maybe Lucy didn't murder The Master. The ring may have been designed as a conciousness storage device(or easily retconned as such). If The Master invented it The Doctor might not have recognized it as such, since he had never encounterd that technology, he wouldn't recognize it for what it was.

Then he had arranged with Lucy to "kill" him should his plans ultimately fail. The bullet had a trace radioactive element in it so that Lucy could find his remains, retrieve the ring, activate the cloning device, and BAM- Master's back. The whole "murder" was simply his escape plan.

The Master I think is certainly intelligent enough to devise such a scheme, provided he had access to a suitable conciousness storage device. There is some debate over whether or not he was sane enough to implement such a plan, it was heavily implied that the Toclafane and all that drumming had damaged his mind. But assuming a minimal level of rational thought and the right technology, he's certainly smart enough to put the pieces together for an escape plan like this. And if he was thinking rationally, he *would* have had an escape plan prepared.

All that said, appearances in flashbacks and dreams is probably more likely, but it wouldn't take much to bring him back for real.

[lordindra.livejournal.com]

As for conciousness storage- The watch seems to require too much support technology to be feasible in this scenario, though it's likely that if the ring was such a device the Master created, some of the principles behind the watch were used in developing the ring.

And there may be side effects to dispensing with the support technology used to store conciousness in the watch.

[eruvadhril.livejournal.com]

As for conciousness storage- The watch seems to require too much support technology to be feasible in this scenario, though it's likely that if the ring was such a device the Master created, some of the principles behind the watch were used in developing the ring.

Didn't the ring have a similar sort of design to the watch, what with the overlapping circles and things?

[eclecticmuse.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, could you imagine the ensuing wankstorm if that were the case??

I tremble in fear at the thought.

[the-terrible.livejournal.com]

Oh, he BETTER NOT...

[genderblender.livejournal.com]

I'd always thought that the appearance of the master would be a dream or flashback (i thought the same of Donna, but the presence of Wilf in the trailer brings to mind that the Noble family will actually get involved) - but if RTD does bring back the Time Lords, it'll be a good soft reset for Moffat. After all, part of what made Classic Who so fun was that the Doctor was running away from Gallifrey because he didn't want those responsibilities!

[jane-prefect.livejournal.com]

I figure the Master's return has to be in real-world time, not a flashback, based only on the belief that Time Lords on Gallifrey didn't wear hoodies. :D
Also: the blonde hair. Makes more sense for him to be blonde now (after a cloning/reincarnation) rather than before.

[clocketpatch]

"based only on the belief that Time Lords on Gallifrey didn't wear hoodies"

The Master begs to differ; hoodies are the HEIGHT of fashion among budding Time Punks.

[jane-prefect.livejournal.com]

I guess he would know, wouldn't he?
He makes that hoodie look good...

[perfectchichi.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the audio Circular time:Winter where the doctor is dreaming.

[chewynutter.livejournal.com]

Bad dreams? I wonder if they'll involve dreams about a newly elected Prime Minister suddenly taking over the world, and millions of spheres?

Do Not Want Tinkerbell Jesus though.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

My brother, who watches the show avidly but is not quite a fan (and so sometimes comes up with very interesting ideas untainted by spoilers and fanon), hopes the special will end with Gallifrey returning, but the Time Lords blaming the Doctor for their destruction (or for something else), so that the Moff gets to start Season 5 with a fugitive Doctor on the run from Gallifrey.

Which sounds like a nice enough idea to me that I'm sort of hoping for it. And as the Master stated a wish to build a new Gallifrey in LoTL... who knows?

[bludfeast.livejournal.com]

"...so that the Moff gets to start Season 5 with a fugitive Doctor on the run from Gallifrey."

"Why not? After all, that's how it all started."
- Peter Davison, at the end of The Five Doctors

[litharriel.livejournal.com]

Gallifrey returning, but the Time Lords blaming the Doctor for their destruction (or for something else), so that the Moff gets to start Season 5 with a fugitive Doctor on the run from Gallifrey.

Seconded!

[buttercupgaud.livejournal.com]

IS it just me that would find it annoying if RTD brings back the Time Lords? Just seems a little like breaking his toys so Steven can't play with them. Of course, they could have discussed this first, but RTD doesn't seem the type, really. Hmmmm....

Excited about the remaining specials now, though! I would find it slightly odd if RTD did use dreams too heavily though because in his book he spent a LOT of time complaining about the use of dreams/flashbacks because they're not real plot. I'm inclined to agree and tend to skip them in novels and ignore them in movies/tv shows. But, he's not really predictable, so who knows?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

IS it just me that would find it annoying if RTD brings back the Time Lords?

No.

(ETA: I mean, I thought the destruction of Gallifrey was gratuitous to begin with; it seemed like it was done solely to give the Doctor pain, and obvious, one-dimensional pain at that. I always liked the pressence of Gallifrey as the complicating factor in 20th C. Who. But to go to all that effort to destroy it, have the Doctor and the audience live through the ramifications of that for four seasons, only to bring it back as a parting shot plot twist? 'Tis trivializing.)

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's a good reason (excuse) for eliminating Gallifrey: deleting a deus ex machina. The Doctor, being one Time Lord with a clunky TARDIS and off-the-shelf tools like the screwdriver, is enormously powerful. Gallifrey, as a whole, was capable of doing anything and everything needed by any writer run out of ideas.

(The counterargument, of course, is that Gallifrey was almost never actually used that way, after The War Games... but it could have done.)

That said, I want Gallifrey back... and I wish I'd either been at SD or had broadband to see the trailer.

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

I miss the 9th Doctor. Well, not overly much, we didn't have enough time with him. But the fact is the Doctor running around having every woman he meets fall in love with him and want to kiss him is getting... really annoying.

[trinity-tragedy.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My brother and I have had a theory for a few months that it will run something akin to Trial of a Time Lord; not the plot, so much, but the concept. Genocide? Interference? Sounds applicable to us!


T.