Talk:Shadow of a Doubt (audio story)

The mentioned Doctors

Hey all, :) I'm wondering what should be done with the "the old one with all the hair" and "the thin white aristocrat". Which incarnation these Docs are is potentially contentious.

Currently, the "old one" is linked to Capaldi's Doctor, but my instinct (due to the hair) is that it is meant to be John Hurt's Doctor. I feel like he is hairier. As for the aristocrat, I checked several of Cornell's past works for the word "aristocrat" and found that he has not apparently used that before to describe a known Doctor (such as, say, the Third Doctor); is it reasonable to say then, given the context that this is written in early 2020, that this is a reference to The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius)? CoT ? 22:37, April 24, 2020 (UTC)

"Thin white aristocrat" seems more likely to be a reference to the Third Doctor than any of the Morbius Doctors, if I'm being honest, with the mention of "white" especially. (Strictly speaking, we only know the various Morbius Docs to have been pale-skinned, but they could be blue or green for all we know!)

And there is a distinct difference between "[having] all the hair" and "being hairy"; it's slightly comical, and rather unlikely, to describe someone (like the War Doctor) who's got normal-length hair, and a beard, as being "the one with all the hair". It certainly wouldn't occur to me at all. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:42, April 24, 2020 (UTC)

Shouldn’t the mere fact this debate is even taking place, particularly with phrases such as ‘seems more likely’ and ‘to me’ thrown about, prove OPs point? NightmareofEden ☎ 00:13, April 25, 2020 (UTC)

You'd probably enjoy Talk:Totem_(short_story). – N8 (☎/👁️) 05:47, April 25, 2020 (UTC)

Isn’t that the story where the Doctor kills a guy with a shovel? NightmareofEden ☎ 05:52, April 25, 2020 (UTC)

Surely it doesn't make too much sense for the hairy one to be a Morbius Doctor, or the Third Doctor for that matter, since the Daughter of Mine incident only occurred during the Seventh Doctor's lifetime, and mercifully the timeline hasn't been rewritten that far yet. That said, there is one post-Seventh Doctor incarnation who comes to mind as having been described as a pale-faced aristocrat: namely, "an aristocrat with a high forehead and devilish, shadow-sunken eyes suck[ing] on an asthma inhaler." (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) – N8 (☎/👁️) 05:45, April 25, 2020 (UTC)

I thought the dialogue about the story repeating again and again clearly suggested that the Human Nature story had happened many more times than we're familiar with, possibly including to much earlier incarnations than McCoy. But you're right, now you think about it, that the reference is more likely to be the Shalka-in-Tomorrow-Windows Doctor than anything else. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:05, April 25, 2020 (UTC)