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I just had some glorious Fridge Horror about The Name of the Doctor:
Yes, I am troping again. I shall again explain for the uninitiated and, being a generous god, warn you first: Do NOT go to TV Tropes. Don’t throw your lives away. Our sacrifice is enough. It's not your burden to bear.
Anyway, according to TV Tropes, “Fridge Horror is, simply put, when something becomes terrifying after the fact. Maybe you thought about this or that plot point a little too hard, and suddenly you realize that everyone was trapped in stasis forever, or that the lovable child will grow up in a world where everyone around her is dead.”
“The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day, and he will have other names before the end. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard.”
See, I do not think that Simeon is just fucking with him here. It's a goddamn Lovecraftian entity, why would it need to? The Great Intelligence is either foretelling or has seen this future. Either way this shit is serious.
Now, this of course could mean that this happened in the future before they saved Gallifrey and the Time Lords helped him on Trenzalore, but at first, this seems unlikely: The events of the Name/Day/Time of the Doctor take place in a very short period of time (unless he went crazy on Christmas or something). Unless of course in the original future they didn’t go to Galifrey at all and there was a large gap between the two Trenzalore visits.
In the first case this would mean that this would have to take place now, in the changed future, the Valeyard has to happen at some point, since it didn’t and couldn’t happen in the original one.
In the second one, well, it doesn’t have to happen anymore, since the original future covers it, but it is still very likely because of simple probability: If he was able to completely lose his shit during the 900-year period he had to live (because he had no regenerations left) in the original future, well, what are the chances now that he has 12 MORE REGENERATIONS to go through, a really long time, that this won’t happen at some point? I just blew my own mind.
However, if they do it at some point, they will probably be a bit liberal with how he comes to be: Moffat and many others have said that they didn’t quite understand what exactly he was, and the Valeyard’s continuity is a bit fucked up anyway: It's said he is a creation of the Time Lords by extracting the Doctor’s dark characteristics between his 12th and final incarnation (so he's like a rogue Watcher?), they say he actually is an incarnation, in an audio he claims that he came to be when the Doctor’s 13th incarnation tried an experiment to break the regeneration limit but he's probably lying…
Now, the first is possible and I think the most canon (canon in Who? Ha!), but it will be a bit complicated and difficult to explain after all this time since Six, and I don’t think they will risk doing the second (although it would be so cool).
About the third, well, apart from the lying-through-his-teeth part (and being an audio drama which the TV show usually ignores), it seems a bit impossible because Eleven was revealed to be the 13th incarnation and he was busy running all over the place with his weird, timey-wimey story arcs (unless he did it by accident? If one Doctor could do it by accident it would be fucking Eleven). We also don’t know when exactly he realised with certainty that he couldn’t regenerate again and therefore whether he would have time to do something like that and besides, I don’t think he would try that hard anyway, being a self-hating mess with a death wish every two episodes. It would also be really ridiculous from a writing standpoint: Something so vital happened off-screen? What?
So yeah, if they do it, methinks they might play it differently, for instance the Time Lords have returned and do it when he is number 17 and the Master was wrong about the Valeyard’s exact origins in the Trial of a Time Lord because the War screwed up the time-streams.
Now, a very interesting development is Twelve’s persistent worry about whether he is a good person. However, to quote Moffat “I think a man who worries about going bad is never really going to go bad. Maybe not…” and I agree. So I think that unless he is artificially created by an outside force, or there is a twist, that his worry somehow ends up causing the Valeyard’s creation, for the time being we're safe and 12 will remain cool. I believe we should start worrying if, say, number 14 stops doubting himself and does not realise his inner darkness.
Oh, and if they do indeed do the Valeyard at some point? I say bring back Paul MacGann to play him. Because:
1. We all need more Paul MacGann in our lives
2. He deserves more Who screen time. (Or do a spin-off. Please?)
3. He's an incarnation of the Doctor and he has stated that he's not above re-using faces (neither is the BBC) and besides, being a dark side/rogue Watcher/artificial/whatever maybe he can choose what he looks like and looking like Eight would fuck with the Doctor’s head.
4. Do you know of the gloriousness that is crazy, evil Eight? Zagreus and The Natural History of Fear? Cheerful, romantic Eight with his silky smooth voice reciting creepy poems about Eldritch Abominations and spouting Orwellian propaganda while he's torturing and lobotomizing people? Ah, good old-fashioned Nightmare-Fuel! You do not yet know true terror nor creepiness. Fuck all the yeahs, says I!
Just some random thoughts.
By the way, if we want to go the reusing-old-actor route, I submit that Matt Smith also does hammy, scenery-chewing, insane and creepy evilness quite spectacularly.
Oh and the American Psycho musical seemed quite good too. He can sing! (Who knew!) As Patrick Bateman! With an American accent!
Whatever argument you might have had, it is now invalid.
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Comments35
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I won't lie and say I'm an Doctor Who audio drama expert, and, unfortunately, I have not seen Trials of a Time Lord. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid when it comes to the Valeyard, I know about him and everything.
It was always my theory that the Valeyard was linked to the Metacrisis (I'm not the only one who thinks this) as this was the regeneration between the eleventh and twelfth incarnations (or the Tenth Doctor) and it makes the most sense to me. I like your... Thoughts on the Valeyard though, that's just my two cents.
Evil Eight would be cool, I liked him (I saw the movie back in June), and it would also put Tom Baker's words in the Fiftieth into context, you know, the part where he said the Doctor would be revisiting some old faces.
It was always my theory that the Valeyard was linked to the Metacrisis (I'm not the only one who thinks this) as this was the regeneration between the eleventh and twelfth incarnations (or the Tenth Doctor) and it makes the most sense to me. I like your... Thoughts on the Valeyard though, that's just my two cents.
Evil Eight would be cool, I liked him (I saw the movie back in June), and it would also put Tom Baker's words in the Fiftieth into context, you know, the part where he said the Doctor would be revisiting some old faces.