Talk:Penelope Gate

Givin' a red card to this page

What in the world is going on with this page? How have we conflated every reference to "the Doctor's mother" to Penelope Gale? We're making all sorts of assertions that cannot be supported just because there's a redirect from "the Doctor's mother" to Penelope Gale. There's no way that Eoin Colfer is making a reference to Penelope Gale in A Big Hand for the Doctor. This information is getting conflated simply because OttselSpy25 created a redirect to this page. There is, I would submit, a difference between Penelope Gale and the general concept of "the Doctor's mother".
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  03:27: Sun 27 Jan 2013

Well, to be fair, Penelope Gate is the only character who has been specifically identified in-universe as being the Doctor's mother. It's the same with Ulysses as being the Doctor's father. So even if Colfer didn't intend to refer to Penelope when he wrote the e-book, I see no problem with the information from A Big Hand for the Doctor being added to this page. I can see how their would be a problem with adding information about The Woman, given that there was no in-universe confirmation of her identity. Slughorn42 ☎ 03:40, January 27, 2013 (UTC)

[edit conflict]

But, as it were, Penelope Gate is, "The Doctor's Mother". She is the only person in the DWU ever called that, other than The Woman, thus any reference to "The Doctor's Mother" is referencing towards the idea of "The Doctor's Mother", a concept currently only held by Penelope Gate. Basically, Penelope Grant is the only identity of "The Doctor's Mother" we've ever known, other than the odd sewing machine, and so any reference to "The Doctor's Mother" must be "Penelope Gate".

I could see someone wanting to split up if there were multiple identities to the Doctor's mother, but there aren't. There has only ever been one identity to her. And that's Penelope. It's like if scared man got his own spin-off and got the name "John Jenkins". John Jenkins and Scared Man aren't then separate entities, they're both the same person. "The Doctor's Mother" got a name in a spinn-off book and it was "Penelope Grate", and there's no reason to make separate pages for "The Doctor's Mother" and "Penelope Grate". OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 03:46, January 27, 2013 (UTC)

I've been reading the Gallifrey Chronicles again and I've just found this flashback segment which should cement the fact that Penelope is the Doctor's mother:

"High above the Capitol was the Edifice. Inside the Edifice was a control chamber, and inside the control chamber was the Doctor. He was face to face with the leader of Faction Paradox. The Doctor hadn’t been able to sleep the night he’d first heard his name. He’d been a very small child. He couldn’t remember how old he was, but he remembered his mother’s long red hair and her cut-glass voice. She was sitting at the side of his bed, reading from a storybook."

-Page 113

Now you'll note that when Penelope appears later in the novel, she is given the exact same description as this one here. --Revan\Talk 15:42, February 8, 2013 (UTC)

So... This discussion is going no where, anyone have anything else to say? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:08, February 8, 2013 (UTC)

This discussion is going somewhere, but slowly. It's not even been opened for a month, so people will have something else to say. MM/Want to talk? 01:34, February 9, 2013 (UTC)

I admit I have not read any of the novels in which Penelope appears so this is entirely speculative on my part but I have a theory as to how the Doctor can be both half-human and fully Gallifreyan at the same time. It's established that Penelope Gate is a human who created a time machine. She's from 1883 and therefore isn't a Time Agent. So where did that expertise with time travel come from? Perhaps her parents were Time Lords who left Gallifrey to live on Earth (like Professor Chronotis) and raise their daughter as a human. So she's physically Gallifreyan but otherwise human. Of course, that doesn't explain the "retinal structure of the human eye" bit from the TV-Movie. I know The Forgotten indicates it was part of an elaborate plan to fool the Master but I don't know if it gave a reason for the deception. Steven Moffat likewise said in a recent interview that the Doctor was lying but again did not say why.