Loves and stratagems

Fact #596

mumblingsage:

classicwhofacts:

The Time War did not cause the Eighth Doctor to regenerate, rather he regenerated due to shock after his Time War induced amnesia wore off.

IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY

BECAUSE…it is probably completely accurate. *sobs*

It probably is accurate, and not funny at all. *curls up into a ball of emotion* 

(via mumblingsage)

Fact #589

classicwhofacts:

The Eighth Doctor met four hundred and thirty-seven versions of Clara Oswald. He didn’t remember any of them.

(via everandeverprolixity)

theheroheart:

timelordanon:

i really need to get off of the eighth doctor TV tropes page bUT

oh my 

(tw: gore/body horror)

Perhaps my favourite example of this is when Eight has a sandbag fall on his chest, and the book describes how it crushes his remaining heart (the other heart having previously been removed from his chest), and drives the broken pieces of his ribs into the floor under his back.

Like, that’s hardcore.

And the best bit is that he’s still alive, even if he’s actually not breathing. I do love Camera Obscura. (And someday I’ll shut up about it. Sometime in the far future.) 

The Eighth Doctor and Time War canon

I’ve seen a few posts around saying that Moffat has retconned the existence of Eight when introducing the John Hurt Doctor (we need to figure out a better name for him…) I’d just like to ask, well, how? Eight is obviously still part of the canon. We saw him in Nightmare in Silver and (albeit briefly) in The Name of the Doctor itself. Also, Clara says there are eleven of them, which includes Eight among them. 

What has been changed (or seems to have been changed, because all we have at this point are a few hints) is that Eight isn’t the one who destroyed Gallifrey. It says nothing that he didn’t fight the Time War. In fact, all the indisputable canonical evidence (by which I mean the onscreen evidence, and as far as I know, also spin-offs, which by the way I consider canon too) we have is in the TV movie, Gallifrey existed and there was no time-war. By the time Nine turns up in London to find Rose, the Time War has been fought and Gallifrey is destroyed. The only evidence is circumstantial. So Moffat isn’t attacking something which is deeply established in canon, even if a lot of us are very fond of it. 

Personally, I’m quite excited by the idea that the Doctor’s past isn’t known properly. I like that we can be so flexible even with the past of a series. I haven’t grown used to the idea of this yet - I still sometimes go ‘eeep’ over it - but at the same time, it’s opened so many new avenues. What I’m least alright with is that the idea of the name the Doctor as a promise and Hurt!Doctor not being the Doctor, exculpates the Doctor himself from wrong-doing (but there’s a hundred examples of the Doctor doing despicable things when he is most certainly the Doctor, so I think the difference is academic). There’s every chance that Eight did fight the Time War, but died during it. After all, it was a war. If he fought during not one incarnation but two, that makes it all worse. And Hurt!Doctor might well have been a very short incarnation. 

In conclusion, let’s see where this goes before condemning it. We have about twenty seconds of stuff to base any observations on, and this is bound to be important in the anniversary episode. With any luck, we might learn more about the Doctor during the Time War, regardless of incarnation. 

Fear Itself

I’m a little more than halfway through Fear Itself. I thought I had gotten used to Fitz and Eight being coupley all over the place in other EDAs, but this one is just off the scale. They share a cabin, they worry about each other constantly, Fitz goes around thinking that they need to "talk"… This far, the sponge-bath is the least suggestive thing. 

(Also fascinated/scared/confused by the fact that I managed to write an internal dialogue very close to that in Fear Itself in The Reminder, a fic which is supposed to be set at about the same time. So I guess I managed to anticipate that pretty well, or accidentally nick it…)

mumblingsage:

I’m sorry to fellow Eight Fans who love him as tortured and miserable (heh), but if it turns out Eight was NOT the one to destroy Gallifrey then I will actually be completely happy at preserving the happy cosmic five-year-old’s innocence except for what this does to my complicated EDA-inspired Headcanons.

Even if he didn’t fight the Time War, he still destroyed Gallifrey in the Ancestor Cell, so I feel he gets quite tortured and miserable even without the Time War. I’ll just put all my fiction-sadist eggs in that basket if I start feeling miserable about it. Besides, Eight might well have fought parts of the Time War and died, and regenerated before actually destroying Gallifrey. 

anachrophobian:

catwithninelives:

Anyone else ever wondered why the EDA’s describe the Eighth Doctor as “tall” constantly?

Handsome and every other description, yes. Tall, no

haha yes, tall and long-legged. also, his eye and hair colour as well as his apparent age constantly change. but the “tall” thing always really throws me.

Reading the EDAs is sometimes an exercise in reading what you want to read. Every time he’s described as tall, I just let my eyes pass over the word and imagine how cutely short he is. I tend to get a little annoyed when he’s described as “young”. In comparison to some Doctors, yes, but he’s not a lad straight out of school, exactly. Still, there are some wonderful descriptions of the Doctor in the EDAs. My favourite ones are in Camera Obscura, where it’s made clear that actually, he doesn’t look much like a human, when you look properly, which is wonderful and creepy. 

(via anachrophobian)