Conversations among Who fans have indicated a divide between those who believe that The Day of the Doctor was intended to rewrite history and those who believe it simply clarified history. In other words, some say that, according to the current television canon, Gallifrey was saved from destruction by the 11th Doctor. Others say Gallifrey was never destroyed in the Time War. Which interpretation is borne out by the evidence that we see on screen? That is the subject of this month’s podcast.

Don’t let the title of this episode fool you. It’s not about the Doctor’s relationships with people who are considerably younger. Actually, it’s about the Doctor’s age. How good of a handle do we have on that aspect of the Doctor’s life? Is there any way to know for certain how long the Doctor has been traveling in the TARDIS? We’ll tackle these questions this month and apparent contradictions in our data.

 

Transcript

One thing I think we all can agree on is that the Doctor is supposed to be rather old. Sometimes onscreen he informs us how old he is, usually in round numbers, but on occasion specifically. Generally, we find that his age has increased over time, as we should expect, but it has not always been consistent in the way it is presented. Fortunately, for the most part, there have not been any major contradictions, either in the classic series or the modern. But between them, there is. In the classic series we see the Doctor age from about 400-something to about 900-something. In the new series he ages from 900-something to over 2,000. Seems about right. If we look a little closer, however, there is a glaring discrepancy. I suppose you could call it an overlap. In Time and the Rani, the 7th Doctor gives his age as 953, but later in Voyage of the Damned, the 10th Doctor says he is only 903.

What are we to make of this? Did the Doctor get 50 years younger between those two adventures? Well, it seems clear that Russell T. Davies neglected to research the subject thoroughly enough and thus made an error. But now that the productions have been made, we are stuck with it. The good news is that I think the bump can be smoothed out.

One solution that has been suggested is that the Doctor simply can’t remember how old he is. Yet, he is so specific when he says 903, 906, 907, 909, etc., during the modern series, and both the Rani and the Doctor agree that they are 953 years old in Time and the Rani. This really doesn’t seem to be a case of faulty memory.

A better solution, and I am not the first to suggest it, is that the Doctor sometimes gives his age in Earth years and other times in Gallifreyan years, and that those years are not equal to each other. There is evidence that he has done this.

For example, when he tells Victoria that he is “something like 450 years old” in The Tomb of the Cybermen, it seems clear that the Doctor is talking about his age in Earth years, for he is attempting to help Victoria to understand. He does some math in his head first, which shows he is making a conversion from a system of measurement that he is more familiar with to that of Earth.

Elsewhere it is clear that the Doctor is talking about his age in Gallifreyan years. In Time and the Rani, he punches in his age (which is the same as the Rani’s) 9-5-3 into a lock mechanism programmed by the Rani. She is not likely to have used Earth’s system of measuring time, so the number must have been Gallifreyan. This suggests that, at this time, he and she were both 953 Gallifreyan years old.

So now we need to ask ourselves, on which occasions is the Doctor using a Gallifreyan figure, and when is he speaking in Earth terms? I think we are justified in thinking that, when he is talking with Romana, another Time Lord, they are measuring by the calendar they are both familiar with: that of Gallifrey. This would suggest that in Seasons 13 to 17, when his age is consistently in the 700s, we are hearing his age in Gallifreyan years.

On the other hand, since the age of the Doctor in the modern series starts out in contradiction with that in Time and the Rani, we must conclude that the age he gives is in Earth years. In fact, since the Doctor’s age is consistent throughout the modern series, it is probably easiest and simplest to conclude that his age is always given in earth years. Conversely, with the exception of Tomb of the Cybermen,

Some fans of William Hartnell’s portrayal of the First Doctor were rubbed the wrong way when they saw the David Bradley version spouting sexist nonsense during the 2017 Christmas Special, Twice Upon a Time. In this episode of Fast Return Switch, I try to apply a little balm on that bruise and offer some observations that might make such ones look at the episode a little differently. Give it a listen!

In my follow-up to last month’s podcast, in which I discussed the nature of time travel in Doctor Who, I delve a bit deeper into the concept of the preservation of free will and of independent causes in a universe in which time travel is possible. Let me take your brain for a spin.

Occasionally in Doctor Who, we witness scenarios that suggest that perhaps all events in history are predetermined, that everything that happens is destined to happen. In this episode of the podcast, we look at the question of free will. Does the Doctor live in a deterministic universe, or do time travelers have free will to choose their own futures?

 

Transcript

Time is Not a River

In the common view, time is divided up into three parts: past, present, and future. It’s the grammar of our language and is based on our experience. For us, of those three, only the present is real. The past has slipped out of existence. The future is some possibility that has not yet come to be. So the “now” has special significance. It truly exists, and for us it is in motion. The present moves forward, adding more to the past and subtracting from the future. This process we call the flow of time.

Yet this understanding of time, though it seems to make sense, is at odds with modern physics. Einstein’s special theory of relativity has tossed the traditional conception of time out the window. As he once famously expressed to a friend, “The past, present and future are only illusions, even if stubborn ones.”

This reminds us of an exchange that occurs between Ian and the Doctor in “The Cave of Skulls,” the second-ever episode of Doctor Who. Ian says, “Time doesn’t go round and round in circles. You can’t get on and off whenever you like in the past or the future.” “Really?” replies the Doctor. “Where does time go, then?” And Ian expresses the common understanding: “It doesn’t go anywhere. It just happens and then it’s finished.” The Doctor laughs.

He laughs because the traditional notion of the passage of time is nonsensical. It doesn’t happen and then is finished. That’s a misconception. The present moment for someone here on earth would not be the present moment for someone on Mars or another planet. It’s all relative. If you and I were in different places in the galaxy, something for me might be considered the past, but for you the future. Since we cannot single out any moment as special or real, because every moment considers itself to be special, we must therefore conclude that past, present, and future all are equally and objectively real. Physicists prefer to think of time as a landscape, laid out in its entirety, all events existing together, and nothing in it is to be considered privileged or special. In other words, time is not like a river. It doesn’t flow. The Doctor and the Time Lords recognize this, and although they may use expressions that suggest a flow or movement of time, they do so in much the same way as we speak of the sun rising and setting. We know it doesn’t actually work that way, but it has become part of language.

Well, how can we say that time does not flow when we perceive it as flowing? It seems to move to us. The answer is to be found in psychology and neurophysiology. It has something to do with how our brains function. The formation of our memories is unidirectional—we might perceive this as the flowing of time. It may be even that we have some kind of time organ in our brain. The jury is still out on this.

The important thing is that time travel can occur because all events are real and exist, and the TARDIS can enter into the time landscape at any point.

But does this conception of time mean that everything is written in stone, that nothing in the time landscape can be changed? Some time travel stories are presented this way: anything that will happen has happened. Everything is fated to be. A time traveler cannot go back and right the wrongs of history; they cannot even move a speck of dust on a certain day in the past if it is established that the speck of dust remained unmoved. They can participate in the past, but they simply make the past as it was. Whatever they do is destined to be.

In this episode of the podcast, I deal with the so-called UNIT dating controversy, which suggests that we, and everyone in the Doctor’s universe, have no idea when Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart headed the organization. Were all the records destroyed and people’s memories erased? Did something timey-wimey happen? Of course not. Hopefully, we can put this issue to rest once and for all.

Transcript

What U.N.I.T. Dating Controversy?

If you’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for any length of time, you’ve probably heard by now of the “U.N.I.T. Dating Controversy.” There were some in-jokes made about it in recent episodes of Doctor Who, having to do with whether the stories featuring the Doctor and U.N.I.T. took place in the 1970’s or 1980’s, and this may have prompted you to look it up. Or you may have been a fan for a long time and knew about it already. But to be honest, there really isn’t all that much to argue about. It’s very clear when those stories took place, if we interpret the show according to the principles of canon that I outlined in Podcast #2. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I recommend you cue it up and give it your ear.

Let’s go back to the story The Web of Fear, which features the first appearance of Lethbridge-Stewart, who later will become the Brigadier who heads U.N.I.T. The story never states explicitly the year in which it is set, but it does provide some chronological indicators that imply it. First, in episode one, in the scene set in the museum, we are told that the Yeti creature, which Professor Travers brought back from Tibet, has been in the museum for 30 years. The implication is that Travers returned from Tibet about 30 years previously. But then in episode 2, Travers recalls that he first met Jamie and Victoria “over 40 years ago.” Jamie and Victoria, you see, had met him in Tibet, when he first encountered the Yeti. Why the discrepancy between episodes 1 and 2? It would seem that The Web of Fear originally was set in the present day, but Story Editor Derrick Sherwin made the decision, somewhere in between the shooting of episodes 1 and 2, to set The Web of Fear rather in the near future. So he increased the length of time between the Tibet adventure and this current one from 30 years to over 40 years. Terrance Dicks, who wrote the Target novelization of The Web of Fear, repaired the discrepancy by changing the period that the Yeti was in the museum from 30 years also to 40 years. In what year did the Tibet adventure take place? (This, by the way, was depicted in the story The Abominable Snowmen earlier in the season.) Victoria tells Anne in episode 2 of The Web of Fear that they were in Tibet in 1935. This would mean that The Web of Fear must be set sometime after 1975.

Now the first U.N.I.T. story is The Invasion. In that adventure we are told that it has been four years since the Brigadier has seen the Doctor (in The Web of Fear), so this would indicate that the first U.N.I.T. story is set sometime after 1979. The run of classic U.N.I.T. stories, from Spearhead from Space to The Seeds of Doom, would therefore have to take place from about 1980 forward. Five winters are depicted in this run, so that would mean at least 4 years pass during this period.

The problem is that, even though the years of these classic UNIT stories are never stated in dialogue, indications are that they take place, not in the 1980’s, but in the 1970’s. So, for example, in The Green Death, a calendar is shown, which has the month February as a leap year, and the 29th of the month falls on a Sunday. In the entire period from the 1960s to the 1990s, only 1972 would fit that calendar. Also, at the time of the Third Doctor’s regeneration into the Fourth Doctor (Planet of the Spiders and Robot), Sarah Jane Smith carries a U.N.I.T. pass dated “4th April 1974.” In Robot, the Doctor’s roadster Bessie has a road fund licence disk set to expire April 1975.

In the third installment of the podcast, I turn to the concept of identity, specifically as it refers to the Doctor’s character in the program. Having assumed so many different forms, and having various personalities, how is it possible to identify the Doctor? What would we classify as the Doctor’s “self”? Is this self a physical or immaterial entity?

 

Transcript

Is the Doctor a Mind or a Body?

“Who am I? Who am I?” Remember when Xoanon in The Face of Evil had a crisis of identity? He expressed a fundamental question of existence: What is the nature of the self? What makes me me? How am I distinctive? I’m not going to attempt to answer that question here in general sense. I’m more interested in the character of the Doctor, and how the show Doctor Who defines the Doctor’s identity. Hey, the name of the show suggests that this would be one of the crucial themes dealt with in the program. If the Doctor approached and said “Who am I?” How might we answer? What makes the Doctor the Doctor?

The answer depends quite a bit on whether persons are defined by their bodies or their minds. In other words, is biological continuity the most important part of identity? Or are psychological traits? Or a bit of both? The mind-body problem is a philosophical issue that has been discussed for millennia. How does the show Doctor Who tackle the question? Is the Doctor a mind or a body?

The Doctor doesn’t really have biological continuity, right? Some might say the Doctor does. After all, every time the Doctor gets a new body, it’s right in the very spot that the old body was. And the Doctor is always a Time Lord, always has two hearts and other physical traits, probably, that Time Lords have. But it has been established in the show that no vestige of the physical body of a Time Lord remains after regeneration takes place.

First, a regenerated Time Lord has a very different outward appearance each time it happens. Physical differences can include height, weight, hair color, skin color, eye color, voice, apparent age, sex, and perhaps even species. Species, you ask? Yes, at least on the outside. So for example, we see Romana regenerate at the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks, and a couple of the bodies she tries out are clearly not Gallifreyan in appearance. The Doctor too takes on a body resembling another species when he regenerates into the Peter Capaldi Doctor: we are told in The Girl Who Died that the body was modeled on the body of an Earth person from ancient Pompeii. We presume that it is not the same body, but only a replica, as the Doctor still has two hearts, so his internal physiology is Time Lord. But on the outside, a human. Just about any physical feature can be altered in regeneration, so that the new body need not resemble the old one in any way. We presume that the bodies must be at least humanoid, but who knows? Maybe not.

Second, even the inside of the body must be renewed upon regeneration. If, as the First Doctor says in The Tenth Planet, “This old body of mine is wearing a bit thin,” he was more likely than not referring primarily to its vital organs, which make the body function properly. Body organs, while still remaining Time Lord, are renewed during regeneration, including probably also the brain itself. It is safe to assume that the internal organs are not identical to the old ones, nor are they simply younger versions of the old ones. They’re different. Of the physical material, nothing remains. How do I know that? K’anpo tells Sarah in Planet of the Spiders that all the cells of the Doctor’s body have been devastated and would regenerate. Corroborating this statement, the Tenth Doctor tells Rose in “Born Again” (the 2005 Children in Need mini-episode) that every single cell in his body has been replaced. So we can say that the new body is new even on the cellular level.

And yet we know that, because the Doctor is the Doctor,

Picking up from where we left off last time, this episode of the Fast Return Switch podcast addresses the issue of contradictions within a given canon of Doctor Who. How are we to keep them sorted in our heads? Should we bother to harmonize them in our heads, and if so, how might we go about it? Listen in for a bit of mulling, brainstorming, and philosophizing.

 

Transcript

Putting a Monocle on the Canonical

Last time I talked about what canon is in Doctor Who. I’d like to take some time now to discuss interpretation of canon. Remember, there are many canons, and only the makers have control over what those canons are. We don’t. Whatever canon we happen to find ourselves in, we must accept. But although the fan doesn’t determine the canon, the fan can interpret the canon. And I do mean the fan—certainly the casual viewer couldn’t care less about the minute details of Doctor Who. But the fan is interested in that, and for the fan, I would say, canon interpretation is a worthy endeavor, because through it we not only get to know Doctor Who better and get a view of the larger story, but we also through canon interpretation are able to discover new things organically. But we can’t come at it willy nilly (or should I say wibbly wobbly?) Let’s talk about principles of interpretation, and specifically how we are to look at contradictions—is that too strong a word? How about “inconsistencies”—how we are to look at inconsistencies in a given canon.

The television canon of Doctor Who is immense. I mean, positively immense, developed over 50 years, and it continues to grow, like a Krynoid pod. As might be expected, then, we find all kinds of inconsistencies within it. There are not, however, as many as some claim there are. It’s rather impressive, actually, how much the whole television canon coheres. But if we are to consider it canon, those inconsistencies need ironing out. That is what they do with the Bible canon—numerous books written over centuries by dozens of different writers—and yet theologians make an effort to harmonize them into a unity.

Harmonization is the effort to provide scenarios by which two apparently contradictory statements can both be considered accurate. It’s an adjustment of differences to make them mutually compatible.

I’d like to hammer out a working system for the harmonization of the stories in a Doctor Who canon.

Let’s start with the three basic principles of canon:

* The Canon and the Canon Only (Sola Scriptura, as they say in the religious world). What I mean is that the canon (whichever one you are in) needs to be strictly defined and there should be no accretions to it. If we are talking about the TV canon, then that means that only the television episodes are to be considered canonical. We are not to borrow understandings from other canons. So, for example, if we are in the Big Finish canon, we could assume that an audio story would help explain the meaning of a television episode, because Big Finish accepts both audio and television as canon, but if we were in the television canon, we cannot assume that an audio story helps explain the meaning of a TV episode, because the audio story is not part of the TV canon.

* The Totality of the Canon (Tota Scriptura). This means that the entire canon must be considered, and no one part of it can be removed in order to resolve an inconsistency. We cannot, for example, disregard Mawdryn Undead in order to resolve the UNIT dating controversy or set aside the fact that the Doctor is called “Doctor Who” in The War Machines or eliminate the entire Steven Moffat era for whatever reason.

* The Harmony of the Canon (Analogia Scriptura). As a rule of thumb, we assume the canon’s coherence. When we have found what appears to be a contradiction, we should always explore possible ways in which the contradiction can be resolved. This is not to say that we disregard the indisputable fact that the ...

In this inaugural episode of the podcast, we will look at the issue of “canon” in Doctor Who. No, that does not mean The Highlanders. Canon is the list of stories that are to be recognized as authoritative. Does it exist? If so, what is it, exactly?

 

Transcript

Roar of the Canons

Back in the early 1990s, when The New Adventures of Doctor Who, that is, the books that attempted to continue the series after its cancellation, initially appeared in print, fans of the show began having their first in-depth discussions of which Doctor Who stories were to be accepted as “canon,” and which were not. Today you can hear the word on the lips of just about every Doctor Who fan in some conversation or other. Have you ever been asked, “Is this canon?” or been told “That’s isn’t canon”? The thing is, not everyone is using the word in the same way, and this is one of the reasons controversy about canon continues.

I’d like to address the subject and some of its subtleties, after which I hope to demonstrate first, that everyone who claims there is a canon is wrong, and second, that everyone who claims there is no canon is also wrong. Let me explain.

The term “canon” was borrowed from the Star Trek fan world, who had for some years been reading stories of their favorite show that had never been televised and wondered which ones were to be taken as truly part of Star Trek mythology. They, in turn, had borrowed the term from Sherlock Holmes fans, who had done something similar, and they had borrowed the term from the Christian church: yeah, the word “canon” had been employed by theologians to refer to the list of authoritative books that belonged in the Bible, a formally-approved collection of Scripture. In other words, fans wanted to construct their own “Bibles” for their favorite fiction franchises. Is there such a Bible for Doctor Who?

First we need to nail down the meaning of the word “canon,” because not everyone has the same concept in mind when they speak of it.

In 1992, Geoffrey Cotterill wrote an article for Doctor Who Magazine in which he tackles the issue of canon in the Doctor Who universe, and he offers the following definition: “Canonical Doctor Who,” he writes, “is those stories which are authoritative in providing the ‘facts’ on which other ideas about the show can be based…. Most other stories which are not regarded as canonical should be treated as imaginary.”[1] This concept of canon is alive and well today. On the Doctor Who TV website, Chris McIntyre offers a similar definition: “Canon could loosely be described as the stories that make up the ‘true’ Doctor Who story. On the other hand, non-canon is essentially stories that, while including the Doctor, his companions, monsters or other characters from the franchise, do not actually fit into the Doctor who story and therefore shouldn’t be considered to be ‘true’.”[2]

There is an inherent problem with this definition of canon in Doctor Who. It implies that there is, for everyone, a “true” or “real” Doctor Who and a “fake” or “imaginary” Doctor Who. Cotterill explicitly says that any adventure that contradicts information established in the televised stories is “untrue.” First of all, there are televised stories that contradict information in earlier televised stories, so his framework falls apart right there. But let’s be honest. From a real world point of view, all of the Doctor Who stories are imaginary, so the concept of a canon based on factual vs imaginary tales is ridiculous in itself.

Nevertheless, if you are the type of fan who prefers to believe that there are Doctor Who stories that are true, why not just accept all of them as true? After all, the show itself says that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, right? Therefore all of the stories conceivably could be true, whether they contradict or not.