It’s recently been announced that David Tennant is engaged to Georgia Moffett.
So let’s see if I’ve got this straight:
The Tenth Doctor is going to be marrying his own daughter who also happens to be the daughter of the Fifth Doctor and Trillian from the TV version of “Hitchhiker.”
Most meta engagement EV-er.
PAD
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Jenny Who! Her episode was just kind of average, but she was good in it.
I wish them well.
Yep.
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Apparently, the original plan was for her to actually die at the end, but someone (Moffat – the producer/writer one, not “Moffett”, the actress – i think) suggested she should live, which sounds as if they had a few thoughts toward her return…
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But she was great: “Hello, Dad!”
Steven Moffat has said that fandom crediting him with the survival of Jenny is overblown; he only said to RTD something along the lines of, “That seems like a bit of a downer ending.”
Didn’t Heinlein write that story already?
I had to IMDB her to make sense of all that (I originally thought you meant she played the daughter of the fifth Doctor and Trillian, as well… so I’m thinking, wouldn’t she be a bit old for David Tennant?).
So as not to mix universes within couples, it could be said that she is the daughter of Trillian and “The Dish of the Day” – which conjures up some interesting images.
I kinda thought Georgia Moffett was a bit of a Dish of the Day herself, I have to say.
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That said… is there such a thing as regenerative incest?
I’d like to see Jenny back.
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I still suspect that Jenny grows up to become River Song…
ewww.
Vas ist das “ewww”?
The implication has been that there was something romantic between River Song and the Doctor. (I haven’t seen the second half of the latest season, so don’t tell me if that’s been nullified.)
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Besides, it’s not possible. The Doctor would have noticed if River Song was a Time Lady. Time Lords can tell each other apart from normal humans.
The implication has been that there was something romantic between River Song and the Doctor.
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It’s been more inference by the fans than actually implied in the show. Granted, she’s been described by one of the show’s creators as “like the Doctor’s wife,” but if it’s not in the program, it’s not implicit. Thus far she’s been more of a tabula rasa for fans to speculate upon. She’s so fan-oriented a creation that she talks like a board denizen (“Spoilers!”) We know that she has an intimate connection to the Doctor, and yeah, she could be his wife. Or his daughter. Or his mother. If Time Lords are capable of transgender regeneration, she could be his father. Or a future incarnation of the Doctor himself. Hëll, she could even be the Master; how screwed up would THAT be?
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My vote still remains that she’s somehow the TARDIS in human form, but that’s just me.
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PAD
Which is all why I said “implication” and not established fact.
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And yes, I know the difference between inference and implication. Since the mindset of the writers is that she’s like a wife, then it’s an implication. She’s been written that way and that’s the mood that the writers are deliberately trying to set, which is the definition of “imply.”
I recently read an article that said that there may, indeed, have been something to the fan rumours back in the Baker/Davidson era that there was a suggestion within the production team for a female regeneration.
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Back in the day, Diana Rigg was mentioned…
As to “Time Lords can tell each other from normal humans” – apparently not always; when the Doctor encountered the Master disguised as a human, he didn’t notice…
I didn’t say you didn’t know the difference between imply and infer, Jason. I didn’t even–ahem–imply it.
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All I said was that I disagreed that it was necessarily implied by the writers that there was anything “romantic” between River and the Doctor. Just because she was described in an interview as being “like a wife” doesn’t mean that’s necessarily really how she’s being written. An interview doesn’t make it so. They could have something else entirely unwifely, unromantic in mind, which brings us back to the romance being more inference by the fans, based on (a) interviews and (b) her tendency to call him “Sweetie.” The former could be a ruse and the latter is what Kathleen calls Caroline, what my grandmother called me, and what waitresses in the deep south call their customers.
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PAD
PAD, you keep giving the definition of “imply” and then saying that the writers didn’t imply it. If the writers think of her like a wife and write wifey things (“It’s not supposed to make that noise, you leave the parking break on”) then it is implied.
If the writers think of her like a wife and write wifey things (“It’s not supposed to make that noise, you leave the parking break on”) then it is implied.
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Yeah, but Jason, what I’m saying is that we don’t ACTUALLY know FOR SURE how the writers think of her. They may well know what her real deal is and are keeping it secret. I literally cannot count the times when I have either provided disinformation myself, or seen other writers do it, regarding comics-related events, with that information being disseminated purely to throw readers off the scent. For instance, when people asked about the possible return of Layla Miller, I said, “Come on, you know Marvel would make a big PR splash about it if she were coming back. Logic tells you that if you don’t read anything about it, it’s not happening.” I then allowed them to infer from that that she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
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Now if you really want to insist that I was likewise implying she wasn’t coming back, all right, I won’t argue it since it seems kind of an absurd thing to drag out.
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PAD
PAD: Yeah, but Jason, what I’m saying is that we don’t ACTUALLY know FOR SURE how the writers think of her.
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That’s nice. It’s also completely irrelevant.
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I never claimed that it was established canon. I said it was implied. An implication is not necessarily true or false, it is just an idea that one person (or show, in this case) is trying to give.
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You said it was not really implied by the show, just inferred by the fans. That is incorrect. It was most definitely implied by the show that she might be his wife. Whether or not there are alternative possibilities doesn’t change that.
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Personally, I imagined her as more of a foster daughter in his life. I got this story in my head of the Doctor finding her as a young child with no parents and taking her into the Tardis for a season or two, essentially raising her for awhile. That would give him a different relationship with her than any other companion, as well as allowing future versions of the show to have a River Song with a different actress despite the character being human. Then they could skip ahead to a teenaged River Song.
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Then that pretty much happened with the kid Amelia Pond, who quickly became the grown up Amy Pond. So my idea for River Song quickly become old news.
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So yeah, I get that River being his wife isn’t set in stone. I never implied that it was.
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http://instantrimshot.com/
mike weber: “As to “Time Lords can tell each other from normal humans” – apparently not always; when the Doctor encountered the Master disguised as a human, he didn’t notice.”
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That’s different. The Master wasn’t just disguised as human, he *was* human, right down to the DNA. They covered that in an earlier episode where the Doctor did the same thing to hide from a species that could track Time Lords.
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I suppose that there’s some possibility that Jenny Who converts herself into a human, but that’s getting pretty convoluted. The Professor Yana was only around for one episode and he was gone by the end of it. River Song has enough history behind her that it would feel like they were replacing one character with another if they took her away and said there was only ever Jenny.
Jason, as I promised, I’m not going to pursue the implied/inferred thing because it really doesn’t seem worth it. However…
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That’s different. The Master wasn’t just disguised as human, he *was* human, right down to the DNA. They covered that in an earlier episode where the Doctor did the same thing to hide from a species that could track Time Lords.
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That’s true. On the other hand, the “recognition” thing has been played so inconsistently that claiming River couldn’t be a Time Lord because he’d recognize her as such is demonstrably wrong. Yes, you’ve got the excuse of the Master being human in that one episode. On the other hand, the Master was disguised in “Castrovalva” and the Doctor didn’t know it was him until the end. The Seventh Doctor didn’t recognize the Rani, another renegade time lord. The Fifth Doctor didn’t even recognize himself as the Tenth Doctor in “Time Crash.” The Tenth Doctor, in turn, thought that he HAD encountered a future incarnation of himself in “The Next Doctor” rather than being able to see through it instantly.
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The bottom line is that the whole recognition thing is, as with many aspects of Who-continuity, extremely elastic to story needs.
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PAD
PAD, I wouldn’t say that Time Lords being able to recognize each other is a hard and fast rule. However, I generally consider Doctor Who continuity to be like comic book continuity. The more recent something was, the more likely it is to stick. So the vagueness of the recognition from the second Doctor seems less likely to be what they’ll do than the more likely recognition that the previous Doctor was able to do in his previous incarnation.
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“Time Crash” was just kind of odd, so I don’t worry about it too much. The stress of the rules of time bending was so much that the fifth Doctor wasn’t himself. That was even part of the story, to explain why he looked so different, which I got a chuckle out of.
All I’m saying is that not only is there plenty of precedent to establish that Time Lords don’t always recognize each other, but as recently as “The Next Doctor,” the Doctor thought that a normal human was a Time Lord.
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PAD
“but as recently as “The Next Doctor,” the Doctor thought that a normal human was a Time Lord.”
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Hmm, I can’t remember that bit of the episode. When was that?
From the very beginning. He encounters what he believes is a future incarnation of himself (right down to the “Allons-y!”). His dialogue and reactions make it clear that he totally believes he’s crossed into his own future timeline. It is only subsequent events that makes him slowly come to the realization that, no, this is in fact a human with his memories messed up.
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It seems pretty simple to me: if there is some sort of psychic mechanism that enables Time Lords to recognize each other, than it follows that they should be able to realize when someone is NOT a Time Lord. The Doctor couldn’t even tell when it wasn’t himself, much less not a Time Lord. Combine that with the events of “Time Crash”–which are, to the best of my understanding–canonical, and it’s clear that even in recent adventures, Time Lords don’t have an automatic means of identifying each other.
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PAD
Ah, right. I was getting confused on which episode was “The Next Doctor.” The title throws me since it wasn’t *actually* about the next Doctor.
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I think you’re right on this one, PAD. There seems to be some talent for recognizing other Time Lords, but it’s like gaydar. Every Time Lord says he can do it, but they’re not nearly as good at as they think they are. So no, it’s not reliable at all and the writers could pull off a recurring character like River Song having secretly been a Time Lord.
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But I can’t see her being Jenny (getting back to mike’s original point). That just doesn’t seem very meaningful. Perhaps there are some things they could do to make it work better, but right now I don’t think it’s likely.
But I can’t see her being Jenny (getting back to mike’s original point). That just doesn’t seem very meaningful.
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Oh, I don’t think she’s really Jenny either. Not only would that be anticlimactic, but based on her reaction when she first encountered the 10th Doctor, I got the distinct feeling that she had first encountered him in a different, future incarnation. So since Jenny first met him in his 10th version, the reaction didn’t track.
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PAD
It my understanding there is something in place for Time Lords to recognize *another* time lord. However, The Doctor never recognizes his own future incarnations. I took this as a fail-safe to prevent Time Lords from immediately altering there own timeline should they accidentally cross their own timelines. Instant recognition of one’s own future self immediately changes one’s actions.
As far as Jenny goes, she’s never had the training of a time lord. She’s never had the psychic marker set up that screams “I’m a time lord”.
Even the Doctor said in ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ that it takes more than two hearts to be a time lord.
Well she has refered to him as “My Love” when she was alone, so I don’t think Jenny.
RTD is under the impression that River is the Doctor’s wife. (See The Writer’s Tale, where you also learn that RTD wanted to cast Kate Winslet as River.) Julie Gardner also believes that River is the Doctor’s wife.
Alex Kingston, at least as of a year ago, didn’t know who River was meant to be; at the time, she vacillated between the Doctor’s mother and the Doctor’s wife. (This from an interview in Doctor Who Magazine.)
I’m not convinced that River is anything like what she appears to be. Something about her screams fanboy-slash-grifter, with the Doctor as her “mark.” She’s canny enough to give the Doctor enough to keep him interested, and smart enough not to let him get too close to finding out the truth.
However.
Moffat, unlike RTD, plays fair with his audience. He gave the attentive audience enough clues throughout the season to work out the season finale. I suspect that he’ll likewise give the audience enough information about River to make it clear who she is before the big reveal for the not-we.
Right now, the evidence points toward the simple solution, the one that RTD glommed onto, that River is the Doctor’s wife. It’s consistent with Moffat’s past work (see “The Girl in the Fireplace”), it makes the most sense of “Silence”/”Forest.” The River of Season 5 may well come across as a bit more grifter-like because she’s a younger River, who’s not even a professor yet.
Moffat says that the answers to all the riddles will be coming in the next season. We shall see. 🙂
This gets a bit creepier when you realize that David Tennant grew up watching Peter Davison on DOCTOR WHO and then later got the chance to gush like a fanboy about the Fifth Doctor during the “Time Crash” mini-episode for Children In Need. Becoming Davison’s successor in 2005 was the ultimate Whovian move ever, but actually marrying into Davison’s family has to be right up there as well.
Peter Davison was supposed to be at the annual Gallifrey Convention in LA last year. He couldn’t make it in the end due to his commitment to Legally Blonde: The Musical in London at the time.
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However, he did have an amusing video for the audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ32_4J7G0I
And, of course, it was Ms. Moffett that brought the video along with her to show. She was a lot of fun as a guest. Maybe someday Gallifrey will be able to bring her back along with David.
I dunno, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (who made it official this past New Year’s Day) are a pretty nerdgasmic duo.
Now all we have to do is figure out how this fits into Scott Summers’ family tree…well, and then work out just what shape that’d all work out as, likely qualifying for tenure at a major mathematics department in the process.
Well, Cable’s a time traveler, Tennant’s a time traveler, there could be SOME connection there . . . .
The better question is, is there any way it could be worked into the Tommy Westphall universe? If any board can do it, I’d wager it’s this one.
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PAD
Seems like someone’s done it, although I think the link’s rather tenuous as it depends on common use of a fictional company name rather than direct character appearance:
“2. Top left: St Elsewhere’s Westphall, Craig and Auschlander visited Cheers’ bar
ii. And going back to Cheers it also spun-off Fraiser.
(1) John Larroquette Show’s John Hemingway called into Fraiser’s show.
(a) John Larroquette Show referenced Yoyodyne. Yoyodyne was also a client of Angel�s Wolfram & Hart.
(ii) Weyland-Utani is also a client of Angel�s Wolfram & Hart. Weyland-Utani made some of the weapons used by Firefly�s Malcolm Reynolds in the Battle of Serenity.
1. A Firefly class ship, from and unique to the Firefly universe is visible in a scene in Battlestar Galactica (2003).
(iii) In the Red Dwarf episode “Psirens”, the crew of the Red Dwarf come across a space ship graveyard which includes a Weyland-Utani ship (connecting it with Angel, and a Eagle ship from the TV series Space: 1999.
1. A Klingon Bird of Prey from the Star Trek universe(see 2.A.ii.(1).(b)(i) for more Star Trek) is also in the grave yard
2. An Eagle ship from the TV series Space: 1999 is in the graveyard as well
3. The TARDIS from Doctor Who appears in the hangar bay of the Red Dwarf – it can be seen during the launch of Starbug in the episode “Thanks for the Memory”
From the site http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html
Surely the Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe references in “A Christmas Carol” are enough to pull Doctor Who into Tommy Westphall’s snowglobe?
Though this is what I’m curious about. If the Doctor likes to pal around with Frank Sinatra (since he has visited Sinatra at least twice, per “A Christmas Carol,” once before the episode, and once during the episode), might the Doctor have been there when Sinatra had his throwdown with Harlan Ellison?
Inquiring minds want to know! 🙂
Well if we use Frank Sinatra and check the IMDB and the same site Tom used we find that Sinatra appeared as himself in an episode of Make Room for Grandaddy (aka Make Room For Daddy/The Danny Thomas Show) which connects to Ðìçk Van Ðÿkë Show, which connects to Mad About You which connects to Friends which connects to Caroline in the City which connects to Frasier which connects to Cheers which connects to Kevin Bacon —- I mean St. Elsewhere.
Someone please keep this info from current show-runner Steven Moffatt. He’ll write an entire season around the possible paradoxes.
Now Matt Smith just needs to start dating Nicola Bryant…
Hey, speaking of Doctor Who, did everyone see the Craig Ferguson musical number online? It was cut from the broadcast, and I was wondering if it was something they really did, or just a gag.
To paraphrase Teri Hatcher on Seinfeld: “It’s real. And it’s spectacular.”
The musical bit will actually air on Craig Ferguson’s show this Thursday night when Alex Kingston (River Song) will be on the show.
*Starts humming “I’m My Own Grandpa”*
Of course, on FUTURAMA Philip J. Fry did become his own grandfather. “I did do the nasty in the pasty.”
For better or worse (or indifferent), there are lots of cases of “role incest” where people who play relatives on a show wind up dating in real life. For examples,
–Don Johnson and Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, playing father and daughter on NASH BRIDGES
–Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panettiere, who played uncle and niece on HEROES
–all sort of stuff on THE BRADY BUNCH
–amusingly, the characters of real-life brother and sister Jason and Justine Bateman almost dated (but might have been related) on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
–and Donny Osmond and Marie Osmond, who played… uh oh…
And let us not forget The Partridge Family…
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(Or am i confusing one show i never watched with another show i never watched and actually thinking of The Brady Bunch?)
And Dave Lister– not only his own dad– but also slept with his female alter at one point and then he got pregnant with their kids. If she were also her own dad/mom those kids are seriously inbred.
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Forget TV, look at real life in the early 90s. Keith Richards married some younger girl and soon afterwards his son married that girl’s mom. Conan O’Brien did a bit one night with a chart to explain the new family tree’s circular branches.
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Keith’s son was now his father-in-law while Keith’s wife was now his son’s stepdaughter. That meant that Keith’s son’s wife was also now married to her daughter’s stepson while her daughter was in fact married to her father-in-law. If Keith and she had a kid it would be his son, his son’s brother/sister while now being his wife’s uncle and his mother-in-laws etc, etc, etc.
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The bit went on for a few minutes and by the end of it it made a West Virginia family tree look sane and normal.
Peter David: So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: The Tenth Doctor is going to be marrying his own daughter who also happens to be the daughter of the Fifth Doctor and Trillian from the TV version of “Hitchhiker.”
Luigi Novi: How is it these people have never been Oprah?
Make that “been on Oprah.”
They haven’t BEEN Oprah because the magic portal only takes them in John Malkovitch.
I dunno, sounds more Jerry Springer than Oprah to me…
With all the things that have already been said around here, my only question is if her bouquet will have roses in it.
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And of course, there should be music from a piper.
Sean, you are making a mockery out of the Noble institution of marriage….
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What version of “Hitchhiker” was she in? I thought that was Sandra Dickinson.
That WAS Sandra Dickinson. She was married to Peter Davison and is, to the best of my knowledge, Georgia Moffett’s mother.
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PAD
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Right. Sorry. Read it wrong. Thought you were saying that she had played Trillian in a TV version of HGttG. Thought maybe a new one had popped up.
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I blame my flu. Never blog when your fever is around 102. It does make some movies a lot better though.
OK, is the Trillian being referred to the one from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Seems to me there was a Dish of the Day at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
For this wedding, two words- DALEK USHERS
ARE-YOU-ON-THE-BRIDE’S-SIDE-OR-THE-GROOMS?
IT-IS-TIME-TO-MATE! YOU-WILL-OBEY!