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Okay, more thoughts following a rewatch, though there still needs to be several more rewatches to get it all!
Lee
So who is Lee, who doesn't have a history and gets weird books out of the library? Well obviously he doesn't have a history because he arrived here with Ruth, whenever that was, but I can't help wondering what weird books he gets out of the library!
First thing I noticed is that when the TARDIS materialised somewhere near him in the café, he had no reaction whatsoever to the sound. And then I forgot to notice whether Ruth!Doctor's TARDIS made the same sound when it materialised on the Judoon ship.
Lee looks after Ruth. He gets her home, he tells her to pack a bag, and when it's too late and the Judoon are coming he gets her own and pretends to be her. I think it's safe to say that he is not a Chameleon Arch'd Time Lord. Because he knows who Ruth is, he knows what's going on, and he's trying to protect her. Because he loves her – and she obviously loves him. If he's a normal companion, that's quite a stretch from the norm, even from a Doctor transformed into human form. (Saying that, he seems a little uneasy at various points even before the Judoon arrive, right at the start of the episode, so I wonder if actually the 'relationship' only happened after the Doctor became Ruth and he needed to stick around to watch out for her, but he's not actually that comfortable actually being married to her?) But he obviously does care for her a lot, given he's willing to sacrifice himself for her.
I tried to watch to see if Lee would recognise our Doctor as the Doctor, given the way she barges into his flat and takes control – it's pretty distinctive for the Doctor we know, but perhaps less so for Lee's Doctor, as he didn't seem to recognise that any more than the TARDIS noise.
He tells Ruth "I've made a mistake" when he's urging her to leave – I wonder what mistake that is. Something he's mucked up, in looking after her?
Gat
I kind of skimmed over Gat the first time round in the midst of all the other squee, but she's a really interesting (and cool) character in her own right.
So, she's a Time Lord, she and the Doctor served together, and "share all the same training" and she starts off with "Hello, old friend". Which would seem to indicate that, like the Master, they were actually friends at one time, however much she seems to want to kill the Doctor now.
She says (to Lee, but pretending she thinks he's the Doctor) that they held a funeral for the Doctor, who had presumably faked his/her own death.
Lee pretending to be the Doctor doesn't fool her. She calls him out as "faithful companion", and then shoots him.
Ruth/the (other) Doctor
All the way through the first half of the story (the first time round, before I knew who she was), Ruth was bugging me because she was just a bit too ordinary/happy/slow to react to things. Once I knew why, on rewatch, that made such a lot more sense. She's designed not to ask too much about things, which is why Allan's accusations about Lee just seem to slide off her, and why she doesn't react much to the arrival of the Judoon.
Until suddenly she's activated, in the cathedral, and goes all 'Jackie Chan' on the Judoon, which seems incredibly out of character for anyone calling themselves the Doctor. Still not quite sure what to make of that, especially as later the whole thing with the Judoon gun is revealed to be a double bluff, so that if Gat does try to use it against her, Gat herself gets blown up. And you can see the Doctor's genuine regret at that – she's not that different.
Love the bit in the car: "I don't know why I'm even trusting you." "I've got one of those faces."
The reveal is something out of this world. Both the buried TARDIS being uncovered and the complete and utter transformation of Ruth into the Doctor and her sudden almost insufferable smugness. (Yep, that's the Doctor!)
They beam into her TARDIS (I couldn’t remember how they'd got there the first time). That's new.
I love the way when Thirteen asks, again, who she is, she says "I'm the Doctor" and there's a Chameleon Arch hanging down right beside her head as she says it…
And her TARDIS looks, to me, distinctly old school. Monochromatic and stark. Which kind of supports the theory that, if she doesn't know what a sonic screwdriver is (introduced in Two's last serial, The War Games) then she's got to be extremely early. She can't be between One and Two because we saw that regeneration, so she'd have to be pre-One. (And to have already regenerated at least one, apparently.) Which makes it hard to explain why her TARDIS would look like a police box, though really that's the least of the things that need explaining!
My theory is still alternative universe or split timeline, though. That seems to be the way things are going this season, and would account for neither of them remembering each other. (I wish they'd had a bit more time to ask other questions that might have helped, like whether there was any of their past they *did* remember.) It also feels supported by our Doctor's bit at the end about "Time is swirling around me – the Master, Ruth, Captain Jack Harkness" (I didn't write that down but it was something like that).
Jack
Not much more to say about Jack except I adore him with the companions and the way they all take him pretty much in their stride and all seem rather taken with him.
Still wish there was more actual canon introduced for Jack, beyond a month-long party on wherever it was!
Oh, and "The lone Cyberman"… is there anyone else who instinctively thought Bill??? I mean, probably not, but that's where my mind went!
(And oh boy, Bill with two female Doctors???? :-D Oh god, and with Jack! She would slap him so hard!)
Lee
So who is Lee, who doesn't have a history and gets weird books out of the library? Well obviously he doesn't have a history because he arrived here with Ruth, whenever that was, but I can't help wondering what weird books he gets out of the library!
First thing I noticed is that when the TARDIS materialised somewhere near him in the café, he had no reaction whatsoever to the sound. And then I forgot to notice whether Ruth!Doctor's TARDIS made the same sound when it materialised on the Judoon ship.
Lee looks after Ruth. He gets her home, he tells her to pack a bag, and when it's too late and the Judoon are coming he gets her own and pretends to be her. I think it's safe to say that he is not a Chameleon Arch'd Time Lord. Because he knows who Ruth is, he knows what's going on, and he's trying to protect her. Because he loves her – and she obviously loves him. If he's a normal companion, that's quite a stretch from the norm, even from a Doctor transformed into human form. (Saying that, he seems a little uneasy at various points even before the Judoon arrive, right at the start of the episode, so I wonder if actually the 'relationship' only happened after the Doctor became Ruth and he needed to stick around to watch out for her, but he's not actually that comfortable actually being married to her?) But he obviously does care for her a lot, given he's willing to sacrifice himself for her.
I tried to watch to see if Lee would recognise our Doctor as the Doctor, given the way she barges into his flat and takes control – it's pretty distinctive for the Doctor we know, but perhaps less so for Lee's Doctor, as he didn't seem to recognise that any more than the TARDIS noise.
He tells Ruth "I've made a mistake" when he's urging her to leave – I wonder what mistake that is. Something he's mucked up, in looking after her?
Gat
I kind of skimmed over Gat the first time round in the midst of all the other squee, but she's a really interesting (and cool) character in her own right.
So, she's a Time Lord, she and the Doctor served together, and "share all the same training" and she starts off with "Hello, old friend". Which would seem to indicate that, like the Master, they were actually friends at one time, however much she seems to want to kill the Doctor now.
She says (to Lee, but pretending she thinks he's the Doctor) that they held a funeral for the Doctor, who had presumably faked his/her own death.
Lee pretending to be the Doctor doesn't fool her. She calls him out as "faithful companion", and then shoots him.
Ruth/the (other) Doctor
All the way through the first half of the story (the first time round, before I knew who she was), Ruth was bugging me because she was just a bit too ordinary/happy/slow to react to things. Once I knew why, on rewatch, that made such a lot more sense. She's designed not to ask too much about things, which is why Allan's accusations about Lee just seem to slide off her, and why she doesn't react much to the arrival of the Judoon.
Until suddenly she's activated, in the cathedral, and goes all 'Jackie Chan' on the Judoon, which seems incredibly out of character for anyone calling themselves the Doctor. Still not quite sure what to make of that, especially as later the whole thing with the Judoon gun is revealed to be a double bluff, so that if Gat does try to use it against her, Gat herself gets blown up. And you can see the Doctor's genuine regret at that – she's not that different.
Love the bit in the car: "I don't know why I'm even trusting you." "I've got one of those faces."
The reveal is something out of this world. Both the buried TARDIS being uncovered and the complete and utter transformation of Ruth into the Doctor and her sudden almost insufferable smugness. (Yep, that's the Doctor!)
They beam into her TARDIS (I couldn’t remember how they'd got there the first time). That's new.
I love the way when Thirteen asks, again, who she is, she says "I'm the Doctor" and there's a Chameleon Arch hanging down right beside her head as she says it…
And her TARDIS looks, to me, distinctly old school. Monochromatic and stark. Which kind of supports the theory that, if she doesn't know what a sonic screwdriver is (introduced in Two's last serial, The War Games) then she's got to be extremely early. She can't be between One and Two because we saw that regeneration, so she'd have to be pre-One. (And to have already regenerated at least one, apparently.) Which makes it hard to explain why her TARDIS would look like a police box, though really that's the least of the things that need explaining!
My theory is still alternative universe or split timeline, though. That seems to be the way things are going this season, and would account for neither of them remembering each other. (I wish they'd had a bit more time to ask other questions that might have helped, like whether there was any of their past they *did* remember.) It also feels supported by our Doctor's bit at the end about "Time is swirling around me – the Master, Ruth, Captain Jack Harkness" (I didn't write that down but it was something like that).
Jack
Not much more to say about Jack except I adore him with the companions and the way they all take him pretty much in their stride and all seem rather taken with him.
Still wish there was more actual canon introduced for Jack, beyond a month-long party on wherever it was!
Oh, and "The lone Cyberman"… is there anyone else who instinctively thought Bill??? I mean, probably not, but that's where my mind went!
(And oh boy, Bill with two female Doctors???? :-D Oh god, and with Jack! She would slap him so hard!)
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Anyway, my money's still on the alternate universe or alternate timeline thing. It seems to make more sense than trying to stick an extra regeneration in the current timeline. We've already had alternate universes in Doctor Who before. And Turn Left had the whole alternate timeline stuff, and the possibility of different timelines was also mentioned in the end of Orphan 55 - that could have been there for a reason. (And maybe it'd help me reconciliate with that episode.)
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Yes, I've seen it mentioned in a couple of places now that Three first appears in Two's clothes, but considering how they were mucking around with him (and considering Season 6B and all that) then yeah, it does seem the most likely place to put this new Doctor, if indeed she is part of the 'real' timeline and not divergent or whatever.
And good point about the bit in Orphan 55. I haven't written about that yet, because the whole 'shove it down your throat-ness' of that episode turned me right off everything, but yes, it did make the point about potential timeline divergence. Not that I think Chibnall's really being that subtle and clever, but you never know!
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Yeah, I was wondering about that too!
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