Talk:Third Doctor

Excised material

When I encountered in, article had the following in its behind the scenes section:

• It is interesting to note that, during his exile on Earth, Torchwood made no known attempts to capture the Doctor, despite him being named in the Torchwood Charter.

This could be explained by the fact that Captain Jack Harkness most likely would have stopped them from interfering with his personal timeline. Also, because of the constant changing nature of time, and it being in flux, Torchwood may not have existed. A final possibility is they simply didn't recognize him as the TARDIS was hidden within UNIT HQ and he didn't resemble the incarnation of the Doctor that Queen Victoria had met, and none of Torchwood One displayed any knowledge of regeneration.

I yanked it and placed it here for several reasons. First, behind the scenes sections shouldn't have this statement-rebuttal format. This quickly leads to forum-like posting of opinion in the main article space. If you want this sort of thing, go to The Howling. Secondly, this isn't information strongly related to the third Doctor. It's better placed on the Torchwood and UNIT pages. The truth is, you could say it about any incarnation of the Doctor who had an encounter with UNIT. Why didn't UNIT report his whereabouts to Torchwood during Battlefield or Terror of the Zygons or Invasion or World War Three or The Christmas Invasion? Sure, the third Doctor is most associated with UNIT, but he's not the only one. What the original editor was getting at is why didn't UNIT communicate better with Torchwood, so that's where this comment belongs. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:05, January 7, 2011 (UTC)

I was going to try to work this one back in:

• Due to the absence of the TARDIS as a travel device, for much of the first through third years of the third incarnation's period, this is one of the few known extended periods in the Doctor's life where time passes at approximately the same rate for him as it does for the rest of the universe. Being exiled to Earth, his few TARDIS travels during this time consistently involved his immediate return to the same time on Earth that he left. Using the Humans around him as a measure, the Doctor presumably aged only a few years between the events of Spearhead from Space to The Three Doctors, the point where his exile is lifted and he can time travel freely.

... but when I did, I couldn't make it work as an interesting fact. The truth is, that it's not a statement that can be made to read unambiguously. The Doctor only "sort of" passs time in a "normal" way during this period. But then you've got Colony in Space (which definitely happens in Earth's future) and The Mutants (ditto) and Curse of Peladon (ditto again). So in order to be true, the sentiment in the above statement would have to read something like, "The Doctor experienced time in a linear fashion during his exile on Earth, except for the event of The Mutants, Colony in Space and Curse of Peladon." And anything with that many provisos just isn't worth saying. And the thing is you can't even say "except for when the Time Lords needed him", because it's not awfully clear that Curse happens because of Time Lord intervention. At the end of the day, it's just a "blah" sorta statement that can't be written in an unassailable way. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:29, January 7, 2011 (UTC)