February 10

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]What's with all those [insert number here]th (/st/nd/rd... Geez, what's with this language? ) doctors, anyway?[/colorost_uid0]

[Scooter]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0="catalina_marina"]What's with all those [insert number here]th (/st/nd/rd... Geez, what's with this language? ) doctors, anyway?[/quoteost_uid0]
The part of the Doctor has changed hands several times. Three special episodes have featured multiple Doctors (the current occupant of the role plus some or all predecessors) interacting with each other.

I thought it was fun in SCMoll's fiver of "The Five Doctors" that not only did he use the five Doctors who were in that special (actually, three Doctors, an impostor recast Doctor, and stock footage of another), extra Doctors were thrown into the mix. I thought that was great and stole it for my fiver of "An Unearthly Child", which is the pilot episode of Doctor Who. It also gave me a chance to point out that late in the series, when the Doctor could steer the TARDIS, an explanation was provided for why the Doctor had visited where he was in the beginning of the pilot--even though at the beginning of the show he couldn't steer the TARDIS and could never visit a particular place on purpose.

"So you're my replacements, eh? A dandy and a clown!" is a line from "The Three Doctors", when the First Doctor scoffs at his two successors. It occurred to me that these comparisons also fit the Seventh and Sixth Doctors, who had just come in to ridicule the whole steering-the-TARDIS thing. So the First Doctor still has the upper hand.

And since I brought in extra Doctors there I thought I might as well do it for the shape-of-the-TARDIS scene, especially since it's the Sixth Doctor who actually fixes the "chamelion circuit" (temporarily).

Sorry this is so lengthy. I was just watching "The Five Doctors" with Peter Davison's commentary track on DVD. Now I'm giving a commentary track on my own fiver. Hope that answers your question...


Edited to add additional coherence[/colorost_uid0]

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]The part of the Doctor has changed hands several times. Three special episodes have featured multiple Doctors (the current occupant of the role plus some or all predecessors) interacting with each other.[/quoteost_uid0]

Wasn't the whole multiple-doctor thing caused by the fact that actors kept getting old and dying? I thought that when a Galifreyan dies, he (or she, I suppose) regenerates into a new form, and can do this 12 times.

The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor.[/colorost_uid0]

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]See, [iost_uid0]now[/iost_uid0] I'm confused. :O

So, they aren't the same character, and yet they are, but they're played by different actors... Or something? :eyeroll:

Sort of a Dax thing, maybe?[/colorost_uid0]

[Scooter]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Regeneration started because William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor, became ill and had to be replaced. (His irascibility also let to friction with new producers, who asked that he be replaced both because he was unwell and because he was increasingly difficult to work with.)

The producers decided it was important to give the Second Doctor a somewhat different personality, so that the new actor wouldn't just by aping Hartnell's performance. So the precedent was established that the Doctor remained the same person, the same entity, but when he regenerated both his physical and mental aspects shifted and renewed.

So it's not too far afield from Dax, although there's no sense of a separate continuing core like the Dax symbiont; it's more like the two Darrins on Betwitched--same character, different actors, slightly different personalities.

But they didn't all just grow old and die out of the part like Hartnell.

The Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, wisely left the show after three seasons to avoid typecasting. The Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, followed Troughton's example, leaving after three seasons.

The Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, and the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, retired from the show after five and seven seasons respectively. Broadly speaking there was a consensus between actor and producers that their Doctor was growing stale and it was time for change.

The Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, was fired by the BBC (and famously refused to return for a regeneration sequence the following season).

The tenure of the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, ended when the series was canceled, but continuity was retained when he regenerated into the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann, who later appeared in the "Hornblower" series) in the TV movie years later.

Starting next year there will be a new Doctor. And yes, theoretically, like all Time Lords he is permitted to regenerate 12 times, in other words to have 13 lives. If need by they can write around that. The Master, after all, has had two incarnations already [iost_uid0]after[/iost_uid0] his 13th life![/colorost_uid0]

[catalina_marina]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]So their are...

*counts*
*looses count*
*looks it up*

[iost_uid0]26 seasons?[/iost_uid0]

Short ones though. Damn short ones. :eyeroll:[/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Well, consider that each story consisted of multiple episodes. For the most part there were anywhere between two and ten 25 minute episodes (though most stories were about four to six episodes long). Some of the sixth Doctor stories were in a two-episode, 45 minute format, and that is being considered as the format for the new show. I can't recall the exact figure, but in those twenty-six seasons there were nealy 700 episodes made (of which approximately 130 are missing).[/colorost_uid0]

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]I can't recall the exact figure, but in those twenty-six seasons there were nealy 700 episodes made[/quoteost_uid0]

That's a lot of fiving. Added altogether, they add to almost one full episode of Trek (more, if you count commercial breaks).[/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I can't decide whether to thwap you now or later...[/colorost_uid0]

[Scooter]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]According to the episode guide at Outpost Gallifrey, there were 712 25-minute episodes (or equivalent) over 159 serials between Nov 63 and Dec 89. Yeah, that's a lot of fiving.

What's interesting is that the early Doctors worked a lot harder. Season One had 42 episodes over 8 serials. They actually had to write the Doctor out of individual episodes ("Look! The Doctor's collapsed!" or "Where'd the Doctor go?") just so he could have a measly week's holiday. Imagine a whole episode without Kirk. (Mmmmm, pleasant.)

Season 26, by contrast, had 14 episodes over 12 serials. Sylvester McCoy barely had to work at all.[/colorost_uid0]