Talk:The Doctor (From Eternity)

Merge

"Harsh and angular face" and working for the Time Lords could also refer to the Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka) much better fits this description and the era in which it was published. Shalka was broadcast November-December 2003, Short Trips: Monsters (in which From Eternity (short story) is within) was published September 2004 --Tangerineduel / talk 14:17, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

An intriguing thought — but "thumb-tucked arrogance" does seem to allude to that trademark thing the First Doctor does with the lapels of his coat. A curly-haired Doctor in eccentric clothing could be Four, Six or even Twelve, but if a story specified his "toothy-grinned excitement", we'd read that as Tom Baker, wouldn't we? This seems like the same thing. But I think I'd better track the story down before giving a settled opinion, and would welcome additional voices on the matter. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:40, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I've always thought the First Doctor was the most likely, with the Shalka and Sixth Doctors also being possibilities. But in reality, I don't think there's nearly enough evidence to say anything with enough certainty. Those two descriptors are all we have, since the entire story is told from the perspective of the entity, so we never "hear" the Doctor's voice. We only know what the entity says in response. The other thing is that the Doctor here is apparently working with or alongside the Time Lords. Now, I wouldn't say a story couldn't depict the First Doctor acting in this way (it wouldn't be the first), but it is ununsual enough that it could be deemed as evidence against it being him. Either way, I don't have the thread in question to hand, but I do seem to recall a ruling that all pages for nondescript Doctors should be merged into The Doctor#Adventures by unknown incarnations of the Doctor. Danochy ☎ 01:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Much moreso than anything to do with what The Massacre or The Witch Hunters depict, I thought the implication (if we do indeed read this Doctor as Hartnell) to be that we're dealing with a pre-running-away Doctor, doing his job as a Time Lord agent (and beginning to chafe against the moral ambiguity of it). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:40, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Having grabbed Short Trips: Monsters from my shelf and given it a read, I might withdraw my suggestion that it's the Shalka Doctor.

Even the implication the Doctor's working for the Time Lords is a bit of a stretch. It is as Danochy says an entirely one sided conversation between the entity and the Doctor.

There's not even enough suggestion of when it takes place, it either takes place in the middle of the existence of the universe, or possibly closer to the start of the universe. Time work backwards for the entity, so by the end of the story it's near the beginning of the universe.

I'm not sure which Doctor this is, but something about the entity's questions / responses from the Doctor doesn't feel like the First Doctor. And I don't think there's enough in the text to really suggest the Doctor's working for the Time Lords, they are referred to, and the Doctor is there, but it's very abstracted.

The entity has the Doctor define some words; parents, love, promise. And from reading its responses the Doctor is able to provide something of definitions of these, and...it just doesn't seem like a First Doctory-y sort of question/response sort of story / defining interaction.

I'd still like it to by the Shalka Doctor, but beyond the "angular face" which was how the animation was described at times, I don't think there's enough info in there so concur with Danochy that the info should be located in The Doctor#Adventures by unknown incarnations of the Doctor and therefore this page would need to be merged into the Doctor. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:08, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

It's been a long time since I read this story, but I agree with the proposal to consider this an unknown incarnation. Shambala108 ☎ 17:51, 31 January 2024 (UTC)