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The 7Th Doctor Concerned 🌂

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Are you afraid of the big Bad Wolf(,) Doctor?

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I have not read the Dr Who new adventure series in ages, but in those it was introduced about time lord’s not being able to reproduce.

When Classic Who ended a bunch of the writers who worked on the show went onto write for the Dr Who Virgin New Adventures series range.

And those books went onto carry out what fans called “The Cartmel Masterplan” that very roughly described the overall "vision" script editor Andrew Cartmel and his writers had for re-introducing mystery and general darkness into the character of the Seventh Doctor.

That darkness was beginning to be shown in the last season/series of the Seventh Doctors run, with the show was cancelled the "Masterplan" never played out on screen.

The "plan" which Marc Platt has called "more of a mood and direction" would have dropped hints of the Doctor's actual origins throughout the later part of Sylvester McCoy's tenure as the Doctor.

According to Ben Aaronovitch in DWM 147, Platt, Cartmel and himself "all had similar, but slightly different, views of who the Doctor really is".

A large part of the culmination of a version of the “Masterplan” played out the in the novel Lungbarrow.

And “https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Loom” has much more info than I vaguely remembered about the Genetic looms.

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible was the fifth book in the New Adventures series and the first in the Cat's Cradle sub-trilogy. It features the Seventh Doctor and Ace and was written by Marc Platt, released in 1992. (Marc Platt wrote the Doctor Who 1989 TV story Ghost Light)

In the ‘92 novel Looms or breeding-engines were devices used by the Great Houses of the Time Lords to perpetuate their race after the Great Schism. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, The Book of the War)

The Great Schism was an event that befell the planet Gallifrey long before the Gallifreyans took their position as Time Lords. It involved a war between the forces loyal to Rassilon and the female priesthood of the Pythia. The ruling matriarchy was defeated and banished from Gallifrey, but not before the last Pythia cursed the Gallifreyans with sterility.

Unable to procreate sexually, the Time Lords had to rely on Rassilon-invented devices (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) to "weave" new life from base matter and biodata.

Pre-time war Looms had frames (PROSE: The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale) with a mesh of "a million fine chords" which sang with the wind and had microscopic data flowing down themselves, (PROSE: Human Nature)

Each Great House on Gallifrey had their own Loom which they used to create new members of their Family. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Lungbarrow)

According to one account, the Doctor was loomed from the genetic material of the Other. (PROSE: Lungbarrow) He screamed when he was dragged out from the Loom. (PROSE: The Blue Angel) Upon leaving the Loom the childe Doctor's first word was "Again". (PROSE: Human Nature) When he was only five years old, the First Doctor boasted that he could remember existing in the House of Lungbarrow's Loom before being actually born.

Each Great House had a specified number of cousins which could exist in the Family at any given time. The House of Lungbarrow, for example, was allotted forty-five cousins. When a member of a Family died for the final time, the Loom would weave a new cousin into the Family. Cases did exist when an additional cousin was illegally woven, such as the Doctor's cousin, but these were extremely rare. Another rare crime was "Loom-jumping", where a perpetrator covertly entered another Family's Loom and dissolved their own body in it, allowing them to be re-loomed as a child with a fresh regenerative cycle. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)

The Fifth Doctor once claimed to be "unambiguously loom-born" (AUDIO: Cold Fusion) and remembered being born on Otherstide through the Loom of the House of Lungbarrow. (PROSE: Cold Fusion).

When Serif tried to mentally regress John Smith to the moment of his birth, Smith relived the Doctor's looming. (PROSE: Human Nature)

The Eighth Doctor remembered both being loomed and having parents and a childhood. (PROSE: Unnatural History, The Shadows of Avalon, Bafflement and Devotion) He knew that one of these was a dream, but he could not recall which.

The genetic relationship between people originating from each Family Loom was lateral rather than direct, meaning that people from the same Loom were "cousins" of each other. Many Gallifreyans were loomed as "full-grown adults", albeit ones that began child-like and had to mature mentally. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)

Indeed, the Thirteenth Doctor once claimed that Gallifrey had no teenagers. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen) However, many accounts showcased that Time Lords started out life as children. (TV: The Sound of Drums, et. al)

Also, there existed other accounts that indicated Gallifreyans were in fact not sterile and able to reproduce without Looming; the Eleventh Doctor once said that, like humans, members of his species started life out though biological ovum systems, stating they began life as "little jelly eggs" in "goop". (TV: The Rebel Flesh)

In a 2019 short story, after reading through TARDIS Wiki, Lady Peinforte deemed Looms to be "non-canonical". (PROSE: Lady Peinforte) where the events of (TV: Silver Nemesis) are seen from Peinforte's perspective.

All of the above said, For Nu Who… no idea, it could be when the Master killed all the time lords before going onto to make his cyber masters… but you wouldn’t think that would apply to anyone who was off world… or maybe it was when the death particle went off and destroyed all life, again doesn’t make any sense for someone who’s not on the planet..might’ve been something from the Flux episodes… or they made the book series from the 90’s canon and didn’t tell anyone.

Or just assume something went wibbly, wobbly during the 60th when we got mavity…. and magic and superstition got invoked and lo.. Gallifreyans are sterile, because magic. Then one day gravity will return and it’ll be like Dallas where the whole last seasons with mavity turn out to be a dream/alternate reality.

It's definitely going to get lost in all of the other Doctor Who stuff but I have a general lore question....

The Doctor has a granddaughter, Susan, right? So where does this "time lords can't reproduce" thing come from?

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They actually should have been at the club :( I wonder what else we lost to the reshoots

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Sooooooooooooo… the finale now opens (re-opens?) the question-- Will original incarnation of a Time Lord that bigenerates regenerate into an alternate incarnation?

Will 14 become a different 15? Doctor 15b?

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NEW KATIE IN THE SNEAK PEAK FROM THE PODCAST! 💚

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New interviews

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No because I miss them so much, also I wish Lex had left well before the end of the show and Lena and Lillian had more time together

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https://stopproject2025comic.org/

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I couldn't find these gifs so I made them myself lol

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Woo-hoo! New Katie!!!

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She’s alive and well! ❤️

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Literally just made a Tumblr to scream about her. I have no clue how anything works here 🫡

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The Ninth Doctor and River Song collide on 29th May 💋 bgfn.sh/StarCross #DoctorWho

original post on X

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River Song’s Last Words 

Cover artwork, cast and story details are today revealed for The Death and Life of River Song: Last Words, a brand-new box set of apocalyptic audio drama, due for release August 2024. 

River Song may be the Doctor’s wife, but there’s so much more to her than that. Alex Kingston played the time-travelling archaeologist on Doctor Who between 2008 and 2015, and has reprised the role in many Big Finish audio dramas since, exploring what River gets up to when she’s not with her Time Lord husband. 

The first box set in her new series, The Death and Life of River Song: Last Words sees River, after cheating death as a digital consciousness uploaded to the Library, brought back to life in a cloned body and sent to Earth in the future, not long before it’s set to be ravaged by solar flares. 

Joining Kingston in this epic story’s cast is Greg Wise – who listeners may know from The Crown and Sense and Sensibility, as well as the 2021 series of Strictly Come Dancing – as ultra-rich tycoon Garrison Clay. He’s the man behind River’s temporary resurrection, and he has a mission for her. 

And, Jamie Parker – best known for playing Harry Potter in the West End show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, as well as roles in TV series Treadstone and The Crown – plays Sam Avner, a mysterious man who becomes an ally to River. 

The Death and Life of River Song: Last Words is now available for pre-order exclusively here, as a limited edition four-CD box set (plus digital download) for £29.99, or as a digital download only for £22.99.   

Wrenched from her digital afterlife in the Library, River Song finds herself on sixty-first century Earth, resurrected in a clone body. Billionaire tech mogul Garrison Clay has a mystery to solve, and he’s selected River as the person to solve it. 

Armed with only her sonic screwdriver and a fake ID, River heads out into a world soon to be ravaged by solar flares... where danger stalks her at every turn. 

The story is divided into four episodes, or books, all scripted by Robert Valentine: 

Book 1 – Apokalypsis  Book 2 – Fate & Fatality  Book 3 – The Black Hours  Book 4 – Book of the Dead 

These four books together, as well as revealing an important chapter in River’s (after)life, serve as a prequel to the 1975 TV story The Ark in Space, with humanity preparing to flee the doomed Earth. Robert Whitelock guest stars as Lazar and Christine Kavanagh as Vira – characters originally played on television by Kenton Moore and Wendy Williams. 

Also on the cast list of Last Words are Jane Booker, Shogo Miyakita, Jamie Zubairi, Jacob Daniels, Andrew James Spooner, Glen McCready, Issy Van Randwyck, and Nicholas Boulton. 

Producer David Richardson said: “Robert Valentine has done something remarkable with this four-hour drama, which tells the story of the last days of planet Earth before it is destroyed by solar flares, a story told from the perspective of a woman temporarily brought back from the dead. It’s heart-breaking and exciting and doom-laden and, perhaps when you least expect it, uplifting and inspiring.” 

Writer Robert Valentine added: “Originally, I thought I was going to be writing the final ever River Song story. Quickly I realised that I wasn’t, but I thought it would be fun to write something that feels like it’s the last we’ll ever see of River, and actually give that problem to her. Her life is usually intertwined with the Doctor’s, so I thought, what is her life like after her great relationship is over? 

“And, the brief was to do a prequel to The Ark in Space, which is a Doctor Who classic, at the same time. When I went back and rewatched it, I realised that I wouldn't be allowed on this ship, I would have been one of the ones left behind. So I thought, let's give River a mission that leads into The Ark in Space, but with sympathy for those people who aren't on the Ark.” 

Big Finish listeners can also pre-order a bundle with Last Words as well as Volumes 2 and 3 of The Death and Life of River Song, which are both due for release in 2025, for just £80 (collector’s edition CDs + downloads) or £66 (downloads only). 

All the above prices include the special pre-order discount and are subject to change after general release. Please note: the collector’s edition CD box sets are strictly limited to 1,250 copies and will not be repressed. 

Big Finish is currently operating a digital-first release schedule. The mail-out of collector’s edition CDs may be delayed due to factors beyond our control, but all purchases of this release unlock a digital copy that can be immediately downloaded or played on the Big Finish app from the release date.