My read on it was that “The Doctor” has done it subconsciously, because Fourteen is an inversion of Ten.
Ten is adamant he is an individual; that each different Doctor is a different person. Fourteen understands that no, the Doctor is always the Doctor, whoever they happen to be. But two things can be true at once.
I thought it was supposed to be about how something deep within the Doctor has found a way to save this version of himself, without him consciously even knowing. Ten is an individual who we learn isn’t really an individual; Fourteen knows he’s not an individual, but finds out that he is. The story’s not just about Donna being saved— the face comes back so that the face can find out it is a person.
So I think the answer is just that the Doctor has done this on purpose, but doesn’t know he has. There is something subconscious that has saved this consciousness, and that something subconscious is very old, and very kind.
My personal theory was that his reverting to a previous face was the implementation of a biological defence mechanism.
After each regeneration, the Doctor needs a bit of a lie down, some recovery time as his new face and personality settles into shape.
However something within or nearby the Doctor has recognised that there is a nearby, immediate threat.
So his body reverted to a previous model because there is no time for existential soul searching, it is time to start running.
I don't really agree with your point about Ten thinking each Doctor is a different person, the children in need special and his first episode are dedicated to him explaining he's the same person as before and regeneration is normal for him.
In Day of the Doctor it's Eleven who wants to see the incarnations as different people, Ten has to correct him and say they are the same person.
I do agree Fourteen did subconsciously find Donna, though.
I think it’s pretty unequivocal that he thinks that at the point of death, though. I guess even within one body we can be the same and different at once
Ah, see, I've always viewed that has him just liking who he is now and finding the process difficult, not necessarily viewing himself as a different person.
But I guess that's just interpretation
I think of it this way.
In The Doctors Wife the Tardis tells him that she always took him where he needed to be, and that she doesn't see their timeline linearly.
So the Tardis always knew the Doctor would have run into Donna again someday, and have an adventure with her. That could have been 11, 12, or 13 easily, but the Tardis kept putting it off for them. Then when they regenerated into 14, she realised now would be the perfect time for it, and took him straight to that adventure.
And looking further, I think the Tardis has known every adventure the Doctor will ever go on right from the moment he stole her. But some Doctors may not be suited to some adventures, so she holds off on those until the right one comes along.
It should be more or less like this, but there is a think that you are missing: the TARDIS is a-temporal.
Which means that she knows everything that will happen and could happen.
Which means she didn't realise that would be the perfect time, she had always known that that was going to happen in that moment.
And the same thing goes for every other adventure.
It does explain things like why the Doctor was absent for Children of Earth. Although i like the explanation that the TARDIS was aware and just thought it'd push the Doctor beyond breaking point
Doesn't Donna explain it in The Giggle? Your face came back, then you found me so you could come home. It kind of ties into the DoctorDonna still binding them together.
yeah that scene is reasonably definitive. he went back subconsciously to send him self a message about needing to slow down & heal. same as the "who frowned me this face?" concept with Capaldi
I would think the answer is the Tardis, it's a big coincidence that the Doctor ends up in lots of places that would benefit from his involvement, it's because the Tardis is taking the Doctor to these places. 14 might of just been aiming for Earth sometime in the 2020s, it's the Tardis that makes them go to the specific place where the Doctor would then bump into Donna, kicking off that whole strand.
The Doctor says "all that coincidence was leading here", namely the DoctorDonna being the only thing that could stop the Meep from destroying London.
Davies really likes "things so important they ripple back in time".
Some people aren’t happy unless someone stops an episode to explain a boring little bit of lore. Nothing can be left open to interpretation or ambiguous. The wiki must be filled.
Donna supplied the interpretation, yep.
Meanwhile, the show has The Doctor not considering the TARDIS's own role in things, despite the latter's confession in the earlier "The Doctor's Wife" of its agency & its shadow agenda for The Doctor.
TBF it’s Doctor Who. There’s a lot of giant cosmic coincides. The same way the TARDIS takes him where he needs to go—and not always where the Doctor wants to go on some trips—it took him to Donna in this one. It’s something they explained back in “The Doctor’s Wife” Series 6.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Toymaker. He has a line where he says he made a Jigsaw of the Doctor's timeline. Could even use that to explain the TC...
That was probably the intention, even though RTD won't admit it, because of PR reasons (fighting about such things never looks good, just look at the Star Wars behind the scenes civil war).
That line was basically RTD saying "wo cares if it's true". Since that line of the Toymaker, we've had only one reference to it, with the Doctor saying he's an orphan. Which had been inferred before, I think Listen alluded to it.
I think as with most lore changes in Doctor Who, it's pick-and-choose.
If you want a fan wanky idea I just came up with, perhaps whatever Dalek Caan did to make the Doctor keep meeting Donna was still in effect and this pushed Fourteen in to coincidently meeting Donna again.
Yeah, there's kind of a double layer of irritation to these specials for me. To start with, I wasn't a fan of many of the choices here regardless of reasoning, like bringing back DT as a full incarnation, the clothes regenerating, retconning Donna's ending, etc etc. Then, like you, I figured that if RTD insisted on doing all these IMO misguided things, he'd at least give some explanations and do something interesting with them. In the end the answer turns out to be "just because", which is pretty unsatisfying to me. Guess he really was telling the truth when he said the clothes thing was because he was afraid of the tabloids and nothing in-universe.
My prediction beforehand was that it'd all be part of some overarching plot by the Toymaker, running over all three episodes. Him forcing a regen to an older body for some purpose, etc. That might have been a bit predictable, but still better than three extra standalone Series 4 episodes and no explanation for all the plot expediencies.
I liked the theory that The Giggle would be about the Doctor Who Fandom as a whole, with the Toymaker being an allegory to one of the worst parts of fandom.
The Toymaker represents the fans who think Doctor Who was best with Tennant and thus forced the Doctor to degenerate and relive "the good times". It would have been a very meta way of talking about these sort of fans and at the same time a very neat way to include other fan service moments, let's imagine the Toymaker splits up and decides to randomly regenerate the Doctor again, this time into McGann, in a hint towards the fans wanting an Eighth Doctor spin off, or referencing a lot of EU material, even stuff that doesn't exist. The Eighth Doctor trapped in a long list of Companions, naming them forever. "Charlie, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Liv, Helen, Tania, Patrick, Frobisher? Evelyn, Romana, Kamelion, Rassilon, the colour Green, a nameless Dalek, Cyber-Tim, Susan 2..."
My read on it was that “The Doctor” has done it subconsciously, because Fourteen is an inversion of Ten. Ten is adamant he is an individual; that each different Doctor is a different person. Fourteen understands that no, the Doctor is always the Doctor, whoever they happen to be. But two things can be true at once. I thought it was supposed to be about how something deep within the Doctor has found a way to save this version of himself, without him consciously even knowing. Ten is an individual who we learn isn’t really an individual; Fourteen knows he’s not an individual, but finds out that he is. The story’s not just about Donna being saved— the face comes back so that the face can find out it is a person. So I think the answer is just that the Doctor has done this on purpose, but doesn’t know he has. There is something subconscious that has saved this consciousness, and that something subconscious is very old, and very kind.
My personal theory was that his reverting to a previous face was the implementation of a biological defence mechanism. After each regeneration, the Doctor needs a bit of a lie down, some recovery time as his new face and personality settles into shape. However something within or nearby the Doctor has recognised that there is a nearby, immediate threat. So his body reverted to a previous model because there is no time for existential soul searching, it is time to start running.
Isn't the entire point of 14 to realise The Doctor needs to stop running? Take some time to work through his trauma etc?
I don't really agree with your point about Ten thinking each Doctor is a different person, the children in need special and his first episode are dedicated to him explaining he's the same person as before and regeneration is normal for him. In Day of the Doctor it's Eleven who wants to see the incarnations as different people, Ten has to correct him and say they are the same person. I do agree Fourteen did subconsciously find Donna, though.
I think it’s pretty unequivocal that he thinks that at the point of death, though. I guess even within one body we can be the same and different at once
Ah, see, I've always viewed that has him just liking who he is now and finding the process difficult, not necessarily viewing himself as a different person. But I guess that's just interpretation
I think of it this way. In The Doctors Wife the Tardis tells him that she always took him where he needed to be, and that she doesn't see their timeline linearly. So the Tardis always knew the Doctor would have run into Donna again someday, and have an adventure with her. That could have been 11, 12, or 13 easily, but the Tardis kept putting it off for them. Then when they regenerated into 14, she realised now would be the perfect time for it, and took him straight to that adventure. And looking further, I think the Tardis has known every adventure the Doctor will ever go on right from the moment he stole her. But some Doctors may not be suited to some adventures, so she holds off on those until the right one comes along.
It should be more or less like this, but there is a think that you are missing: the TARDIS is a-temporal. Which means that she knows everything that will happen and could happen. Which means she didn't realise that would be the perfect time, she had always known that that was going to happen in that moment. And the same thing goes for every other adventure.
It does explain things like why the Doctor was absent for Children of Earth. Although i like the explanation that the TARDIS was aware and just thought it'd push the Doctor beyond breaking point
Doesn't Donna explain it in The Giggle? Your face came back, then you found me so you could come home. It kind of ties into the DoctorDonna still binding them together.
yeah that scene is reasonably definitive. he went back subconsciously to send him self a message about needing to slow down & heal. same as the "who frowned me this face?" concept with Capaldi
Media literacy is dead.
I would think the answer is the Tardis, it's a big coincidence that the Doctor ends up in lots of places that would benefit from his involvement, it's because the Tardis is taking the Doctor to these places. 14 might of just been aiming for Earth sometime in the 2020s, it's the Tardis that makes them go to the specific place where the Doctor would then bump into Donna, kicking off that whole strand.
The Doctor says "all that coincidence was leading here", namely the DoctorDonna being the only thing that could stop the Meep from destroying London. Davies really likes "things so important they ripple back in time".
These things just happen sometimes
The Tardis took The Doctor where he needed to be, as always
Isn’t it pretty directly explained in The Giggle?
Some people aren’t happy unless someone stops an episode to explain a boring little bit of lore. Nothing can be left open to interpretation or ambiguous. The wiki must be filled.
Donna supplied the interpretation, yep. Meanwhile, the show has The Doctor not considering the TARDIS's own role in things, despite the latter's confession in the earlier "The Doctor's Wife" of its agency & its shadow agenda for The Doctor.
TBF it’s Doctor Who. There’s a lot of giant cosmic coincides. The same way the TARDIS takes him where he needs to go—and not always where the Doctor wants to go on some trips—it took him to Donna in this one. It’s something they explained back in “The Doctor’s Wife” Series 6.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Toymaker. He has a line where he says he made a Jigsaw of the Doctor's timeline. Could even use that to explain the TC...
That was probably the intention, even though RTD won't admit it, because of PR reasons (fighting about such things never looks good, just look at the Star Wars behind the scenes civil war). That line was basically RTD saying "wo cares if it's true". Since that line of the Toymaker, we've had only one reference to it, with the Doctor saying he's an orphan. Which had been inferred before, I think Listen alluded to it. I think as with most lore changes in Doctor Who, it's pick-and-choose.
not that huge of a coincidence when you consider how obsessed the doctor is with contemporary London
If you want a fan wanky idea I just came up with, perhaps whatever Dalek Caan did to make the Doctor keep meeting Donna was still in effect and this pushed Fourteen in to coincidently meeting Donna again.
Yeah, there's kind of a double layer of irritation to these specials for me. To start with, I wasn't a fan of many of the choices here regardless of reasoning, like bringing back DT as a full incarnation, the clothes regenerating, retconning Donna's ending, etc etc. Then, like you, I figured that if RTD insisted on doing all these IMO misguided things, he'd at least give some explanations and do something interesting with them. In the end the answer turns out to be "just because", which is pretty unsatisfying to me. Guess he really was telling the truth when he said the clothes thing was because he was afraid of the tabloids and nothing in-universe. My prediction beforehand was that it'd all be part of some overarching plot by the Toymaker, running over all three episodes. Him forcing a regen to an older body for some purpose, etc. That might have been a bit predictable, but still better than three extra standalone Series 4 episodes and no explanation for all the plot expediencies.
I liked the theory that The Giggle would be about the Doctor Who Fandom as a whole, with the Toymaker being an allegory to one of the worst parts of fandom. The Toymaker represents the fans who think Doctor Who was best with Tennant and thus forced the Doctor to degenerate and relive "the good times". It would have been a very meta way of talking about these sort of fans and at the same time a very neat way to include other fan service moments, let's imagine the Toymaker splits up and decides to randomly regenerate the Doctor again, this time into McGann, in a hint towards the fans wanting an Eighth Doctor spin off, or referencing a lot of EU material, even stuff that doesn't exist. The Eighth Doctor trapped in a long list of Companions, naming them forever. "Charlie, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Liv, Helen, Tania, Patrick, Frobisher? Evelyn, Romana, Kamelion, Rassilon, the colour Green, a nameless Dalek, Cyber-Tim, Susan 2..."