History Headscratchers / DoctorWho2009Specials

** "The End of Time" would go down very differently. Let’s just say for the sake of argument, the “he will knock four times” prophecy of the Ood didn't happen. Rose probably would have been the one who let the scientist out of the chamber. The Doctor and Rose would have been talking to each other through the glass, and she’d be rightfully freaked out. The Doctor would try to soothe her, telling her he’s going to figure it out somehow. He would start to psyche himself up to enter the other chamber, knowing that Rose would be furious at him for regenerating again, only for Wilf to barricade himself into the other chamber, using the pistol to jam the door. Despite the Doctor begging for Wilf to get out of there, Wilf would refuse and sacrifice himself to free Rose. He'd insist that this is his honor, that he could see just how in love the Doctor and Rose are and how they need to be together, then press the button, freeing Rose and killing Wilf. Depending on whether they restored Donna's memories, they'd either tell her the truth or they'd tell her and her mother that her grandfather died trying to save someone during the chaos when Gallifrey appeared in the sky, and have a situation where Donna always misses them as they leave flowers at Wilf's grave.

* So Queen Victoria's encounter with the werewolf in 1879 convinced her that there were alien beings with hostile intentions against Earth, and inspired her to found Torchwood to fight them. Was [[spoiler:the appearance of a 500-foot-tall robot which crushed half of central London in 1851, before being blasted with an energy wave by a man in a hot air balloon and disappearing into thin air,]] not enough to convince her?

*** Both ''Children of Earth'' and ''[[Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay Miracle Day]]'', which aired after "The Next Doctor", maintain the 1869 date.

*** It's reasonable to assume that, without having witnessed it first-hand, and with no surviving evidence as to what actually happened, she wouldn't have a clue what went on. And, just no be nit-picky, the [[spoiler:giant robot]] ''wasn't'' alien in origin, and nor, strictly speaking, were the Cybermen who built it.
*** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E5RiseOfTheCybermen He/she's right.]]
** [[spoiler:500 feet? Closer to 90, 100 tops. Still noticeably large yes, still a HumongousMecha, but 500feet is silly. I can think of several mecha, including {{Real Robot}}s, that size wise far outclass it... and if you include {{Super Robot}}s its easy-peezy.]]

* In the beginning, the Doctor and the Next Doctor (or whatever you call him) grab onto a rope and get pulled around. At first they can't let go because they're midair, but later they're being pulled along the floor, and it's strongly implied that they're going to die, until Rosita cuts the rope and saves them. But why can't they just ''let go of the rope'', seeing that they're currently on solid ground?

*** [[MemeticMutation WE WILL TAKE AWAY THEIR METAL BOXES!]] Sorry, couldn't resist.

'''WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!'''

[[folder:The Next Doctor]]
* So Queen Victoria's encounter with the werewolf in 1879 convinced her that there were alien beings with hostile intentions against Earth, and inspired her to found Torchwood to fight them. Was [[spoiler: the appearance of a 500-foot-tall robot which crushed half of central London in 1851, before being blasted with an energy wave by a man in a hot air balloon and disappearing into thin air,]] not enough to convince her?
** It's possible she was out of London at the time. Or the reports she received didn't make clear [[spoiler: the giant robot]] was alien at all.

*** The citizens were freaked out, so they blamed it on an opium binge. Humans have an amazing capacity of self-deception, because [[StatusQuoIsGod the public will always refuse the existence of aliens.]]
*** It's reasonable to assume that, without having witnessed it first-hand, and with no surviving evidence as to what actually happened, she wouldn't have a clue what went on. And, just no be nit-picky, the [[spoiler: giant robot]] ''wasn't'' alien in origin, and nor, strictly speaking, were the Cybermen who built it.

** [[spoiler:500 feet? Closer to 90, 100 tops. Still noticeably large yes, still a HumongousMecha, but 500feet is silly. I can think of several mecha including {{Real Robot}}s that size wise far outclass it... and if you include {{Super Robot}}s its easy-peezy.]]

* Okay, so Ten destroys the Cyberking and stops the Cybermen from upgrading the world. Fair enough. . ''But just how the hell is Earth's history not affected by a huge bloody robot stomping around 19th Century London?''

[[folder:Planet of the Dead]]

*** Or...seeing as how the bus was nearly ripped apart when it went through the gate, the likelihood of a metal box ripping open and thus spilling the gas all over the sand, rendering it useless, was too great for the Doctor to even consider suggesting it.

*** Hate to point this out, but the TARDIS isn't indestructible. It just has shields which protect it (which, for all we know, only work when the TARDIS is traveling). Plus, I think he knew that, if the TARDIS was pushed through the portal, who/what put it into the portal would also go as well, therefore killing/destroying it as well (how else did they manage to travel through the portal in a bus, if not protected by a magic bubble). I think he just didn't want to have more blood on his hands. Anyway, (I haven't seen the episode in the while, so I might be wrong here) I don't think the TARDIS was close enough to where he was for them to find it, explain why they needed to transport the police box (assuming the perception filter doesn't make it impossible to find it) and get it to his location before he had found a way back. I think that he knew how long it could take them to find the TARDIS and, as such, decided to only ask for it if there was no other way back.
*** The TARDIS can use shields without moving; we saw that in Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. As for how they'd get the TARDIS through without killing anybody, they could just as well use a robot or, as a matter of fact, ''a bus''. (Or more likely a metal truck, because you'd have to fit the TARDIS inside.) UNIT does manage to retrieve the TARDIS by the time the Doctor gets back. I suppose that if they had retrieved it very recently then it didn't make a difference either way. But if they had been holding onto it for a few minutes then yes, they should have thought of pushing it through.

** Rose used it to fool an ID-badge system in "Army of Ghosts". IIRC, the creators said during the Dr. Who Confidential for that episode that they had Rose do that specifically to show that the psychic paper works on '''machines''' as well as people. Therefore, working on Oyster Pass™ is "fine" because it has a precedent. Complain about "Army of Ghosts", the precedent, instead.
*** Oh dear. I missed Army of Ghosts, so I apologize. My point still stands though, I'm just shifting it to Army of Ghosts - why does the Psychic Paper Work on a '''machine'''?
*** Possible explanation- it's explained that the psychic paper projects anything the user wants it to- perhaps there's a barcode that acts like a master key that the Doctor uses on occasion and may have taught to Rose prior to Army of Ghosts.

[[folder:The Waters of Mars]]
* First the Dalek ignores a young Adelaide, despite their MO being the destruction of all of reality itself at that time. That alone is bad, as they were shown actively killing people who disobeyed them in ''The Stolen Earth'', so why would it spare that one child?
** Secondly The Doctor changes something which he's spent the entire episode deeming a set place in time. As in you can't change history. The kind of thing that, if changed, releases The Reapers, as shown in ''Fathers Day''. Where were they after the Doctor completely changes the history of the human race?
** For the first one, her death was a fixed point in time, and the Daleks were somehow aware of that and didn't want to screw things up for themselves by interfering. The second, well, The Doctor is INSANE at this point. There are probably Cosmic Horrors that would run away from him. It's also possible that, given she killed herself almost immediately afterwards, not much has changed. The other two were referred to as "Small people" meaning their existence probably doesn't have a big impact on the timeline.

** Its talked about a lot here about the Doctor releasing the Reapers by saving Adelaide, what about the Daleks? Maybe the reason why the Dalek didn't kill Adelaide was because it would bring Reapers into the picture. Invincible bat-monsters eating everything that moves would likely be harmful to the plan, especially if they somehow got to the Crucible. Also, the Dalek likely knew that the reality bomb would wipe out all of existence, presumably including the Reapers, so she was going to die anyway. It seemed like too much of a risk just to kill one little girl who probably won't be a threat.
*** Reapers don't appear for just any sort of temporal infringement or random paradox or fixed point; as evidenced by this episode, the universe can easily accommodate if someone tries to botch a fixed point, hence why it is a fixed point. In Father's Day, Rose blatantly created several paradoxes and essentially did a Riverdance on her own personal timeline; in other words, she screwed up so badly that the only possible way the universe could fix it, short of overriding the free will of humanity, was send in the reapers to wipe the slate clean.
*** Metaphor Time! In Waters of Mars, the Personal Physician of the Universe sat down with his/her patient and said, "What seems to be the problem?" The Universe said, "You see, there's supposed to be a lady dying on this date, or thereabouts, but she's not. It feels like there's some idiot screwing with my fixed points in there." And then the physician took the universe's pulse, checked its tongue, and said, "Just take two aspirin every day for a week, and your fixed point will get right back to normal. Might not be the exact same way it was before, but you'll be much healthier in the long run." The Universe thanked its physician, took the aspirin, and Adelaide committed suicide. In Father's Day, the Personal Physician of the Universe threw up his/her hands in exasperation. "You should have come on your usual check-up," he cried, "When it was just a matter of two versions of the same person in the same time and place! We could have treated that with antibiotics. Now, I'm afraid that the infection is spread too far. We'll have to amputate the whole leg."
* So, [[TrickedOutTime Tricking Out Time]] wasn't an option in ''The Waters of Mars''? Why does the universe care whether an astronaut dies (with the body never found) or gets [=TARDISed=] off to the 59th century?

* OK, so the Doctor spends the WHOLE time essentially going on about how this is a fixed point in time and how it must happen [[spoiler: before he decides to give everyone that is still alive a lift home to Earth...]] but why did he get so worked up about this ONE point. Presumably, he has been traveling for some time since the Time War and there have been other events where his hands were similarly tied... the Doctor has a big soft spot for saving people but really, he's known these people for five minutes and then all of a sudden has a mental breakdown, realizes he's the God Damn Batman of Time and it's time to flip off the universe? SURELY there have been other points when he'd have more compelling reasons to mess around with the rules. Beyond going on about fixed points in time, there isn't much lead up to this - and not to mention, that he even cites precedent for this - the Fires of Pompeii - where he did something almost identical.

** Not to mention the prophecy [[spoiler: of his own forthcoming death]] in ''Planet of the Dead''. I suppose that by this point, the Doctor figures if he can stop even a Fixed Point in Time from occurring, he can avoid [[spoiler: his own death]]. Fair (if desperate) logic.
** He reveres Adelaide highly, she's one of his personal heroes. Imagine being given the chance to save one of your all time historical heroes (as he's done countless times before) with what seemed to be no negative consequences. Short work for the batman of time.

** A fixed point in time is some event, big or small, such as a birth, death, or two people meeting, or a battle, or a volcano eruption, or something that the universe has arbitrarily (or maybe not-so-arbitrarily) decreed is NOT TO BE MESSED WITH. Under any circumstances. As such, Hitler is probably a walking fixed point. You try to kill his father, you end up introducing his parents to each other. Time Lords, having evolved on a planet with a gap in the fabric of space and time and having learned to travel in time, have some inner sixth sense that tells them whether time is "in flux", or whether there is a fixed point. The Doctor, upon landing, probably could have smelled that fixed point from a mile away. If anybody tries to mess with a fixed point, events in the future, or even in the past, will alter in order to accommodate that fixed point, because Goshdarnit, the universe wants it to happen! In series 6 and 7, it seems that a fixed point can artificially be created if enough paradoxes are involved. In other words, Fathers Day is made more clear retroactively; there were enough paradoxes involved with Pete's death that it became a fixed point.

** Liquid water evaporates instantly on the surface Mars due to the low air pressure.

* Does anyone else think that Adelaide's "importance" is a bit...arbitrary? Sure, she inspired her granddaughter to command the first starship, but if she doesn't, why wouldn't the ship simply be launched with a different commander? Unless she built the thing herself, Susie Fontana Brooke is no more vital to the timeline than Neil Armstrong.
** We don't know the whole situation, but presumably it was something she did that nobody else would do that makes it important- hell, it was the first starship, maybe she was the only one crazy enough to do it. Plus all her descendants that go out there do important things too, as the Doctor points out- even a ''whole new species'' results from a Brooke. Presumably those are all fixed points that just ''have'' to happen.

* In the same vain as the previous quarry, why does Adelaide's suicide "fix" the timeline? We learn that her grand-daughter went into space having been inspired by her grandmother's heroic death on Mars; committing suicide on Earth under mysterious circumstances is ''not'' going to have the same effect.
** Here's my best understanding of how ''Doctor Who'' TemporalMutability works. Film/TheButterflyEffect is not nearly as much the case as scientists believe in the real world. Time (to the extent that it's correct to personify it) cares deeply that fixed events happen, and it ''doesn't'' care as much about the logic of their happening, even when one fixed event leads to another. So if "Adelaide's death inspires granddaughter Susie" is a fixed event, then by God it's going to happen, even if the logic of it seems strange. (Continued in next bullet)

** Actually, we have no confirmation that Adelaide's suicide "fixed" the timeline any more so than her survival would have done. We know that her original death on Mars led to the standard future. We know that her new suicide on Earth leads to a very similar future. What we don't know is what would have happened if she just took the Doctor's advice and lived her life. We didn't have, for instance, a repeat of Father's Day, wherein the reapers start eating people until the timeline is (relatively) back in place.
*** That's true but even in Father's Day, the reapers didn't show up immediately and Adelaide killed herself within five minutes or landing, which is before Pete even got Rose back to his apartment.
** Right after she kills herself there is a shot of the article the Doctor was reading about her, and it changes. it goes from something like "her granddaughter was inspire to go to space to find out what happen to her" to "her granddaughter goes to space to find out why she committed suicide" or something like that.

* What was the Flood doing near the end of ''The Waters of Mars''? Assuming Maggie (How did she survive the shuttle explosion, anyway?) was cracking open the glacier to free the rest of the virus, what would that have accomplished? The shuttle had already been destroyed, so they couldn't just load it with infected water and leave for Earth, and since the base was falling apart around them it wouldn't have been too long before they were exposed to Mars' freezing temperatures. The infected bodies couldn't be frozen as explained earlier, but wouldn't the rest of the Flood just freeze all over again, making whatever she was doing completely pointless?

** I have two theories, either could be wrong or right, 1) The Flood parasites are literally subserviant, and there is something worse under the glacier, or maybe how they spread from planet to planet, but they need so many infectees to crack the ice fully. or 2) the flood knew it was buggered with the nuke and was trying to fragment the infected ice so it would get flung out into space to spread.

* In "Waters of Mars" how does Adelaide committing suicide still inspire her grand daughter to become an astronaut?

*** Fair point, but that's easily where the 'stressed her heroism' part comes into it.
*** Maybe the granddaughter was simply intrigued by the mystery of it. Her heroic grandmother was the commander of a really high profile expedition but she impossibly killed herself on Earth the day Bowie Base exploded. It would be like finding the dead body of the Captain of the Titanic in London the day it struck the iceberg - people would go WTF?

** Not necessarily; it depends on how far ahead you're thinking. Presumably Bowie Base One is intended to be the foundation of a greater human presence on Mars -- a larger facility, perhaps even eventually a colony -- and is built in anticipation of future development with plenty of space to eventually accommodate upgrades, supplies and a larger population; they wouldn't have built it if it was only ever going to be for these ten (or however many) people. Since building materials presumably weigh more (and thus cost more) to send up than people and things like bikes, you're not going to want to be constantly sending building materials up, since that's going to cost a lot over time and decrease how many other useful things you can send up (such as more people, bikes, etc). If you build it big to start with, then it's built -- it might cost a lot to initially get the resources up there, but once it's done you don't need to worry about sending any more building materials to expand it further until it reaches capacity, by which time you've presumably sent up a lot more people and other useful-but-nonessential tools (such as bikes), you've got a thriving community going and you can start drawing upon the resources around you (such as mining, terraforming, etc) to help you expand, thus lessening the amount which needs to be sent from Earth. Built it small initially and equipped solely for the first people there, however, and if you want to expand your operations then you need to send more building materials from Earth, which means less people and other things which could be useful, which means everything develops at a much slower pace. Bikes were presumably a nonessential item, since everyone on the crew could just walk to where they want to go.

** He presumably just thinks that when he hears 'four knocks', he's going to die soon after (he "thinks he knows what that is" is simply Death coming knocking for him, metaphorically speaking) -- and since he hasn't heard any knocks, he's confident that it doesn't apply to him just yet.

* What is it with everyone acting like the Doctor crossed the MoralEventHorizon in Waters of Mars? That he has become some kind of monster that crossed the line or something? Because frankly, I don't see it. He went ScrewDestiny to save some lives. That's pretty much a hero-exclusive thing. He went all arrogant and had a bit of an AGodAmI thing going on, boasting about saving "unimportant people" and being the Time Lord Victorious (am I the only one who thinks that's an awesome title?), fine. But those were just words. He always had a thing towards the BadassBoast. I'd feel boastful too if I just defied the universe like this. People don't just change suddenly at the snap of a finger. He'd still be the Doctor in the future. Even if he decided to change future events, it'd be likely a nicer universe than one that sends Time-Dragons to eat everyone involved at an inconvenience. Then there's the thing that he risked a different future. So what? That it was a different future doesn't mean it would be a BAD future. YMMV if it's worth the risk I guess, but trying would make him a WellIntentionedExtremist at worst. And as he said, Adelaide could've just inspired her ancestors by being alive and at home. It's not really so great a change that it could end up in the world being ruled by Daleks or something. And even then, the Doctor would find a way to fix it. Sure, maybe he'd eventually end up changing all of history, but if he had good intentions for it, that'd at least be somewhat acceptable. I don't see him as a future Evil God-Emperor or something, anyway. Now the "the rules of time shall obey me!" thing? Yeah, that's pretty arrogant, I admit and defies typical hero humility rules. But the Doctor always was a bit arrogant. Nothing wrong with that, as long as he stays a good person. Besides, I myself see it as a bit of a "Make the power your own to do good" thing. Similar to what DarkIsNotEvil people try to do? You're tropers, you should know what I mean. The point I am trying to make, even if he went a bit over the edge ego-wise, there is nothing in that episode to warrant everyone acting like he became a monster. If a classical hero is faced with the choice of letting people die for some rules or saving people and breaking the rules, most of them would screw the risks and try to save lives anyway. Again, the Doctor would be a WellIntentionedExtremist at worst. Maybe that's not his style, but he's not going to turn into the Master overnight.

Secondly, cliche or not, there's a reason that people say "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". People have gone on to do terrible things having started out with good intentions. The Doctor might not become evil (although I don't believe anyone is saying that he is) and he might not do so overnight, but good intentions or not, he is putting himself on a path that can lead to him committing great evil. Because even if 'all' he's doing is becoming a WellIntentionedExtremist, that's still pretty bad. Because an extremist by his or her very nature can't see when too far is too far. The Doctor is becoming blinkered, and whether he starts off with good intentions or not, that can have terrible consequences. Because good intentions by themselves don't mean a damn thing; it's what the end consequence is, and the end consequence here is, well, as mentioned above a woman is driven to commit suicide. When your first supposed glorious triumph ends with a woman killing herself, it's hard to see how that bodes well for the future, or how any amount of good intentions makes that okay.\\

Thirdly, the Doctor does not just become 'a bit arrogant'. That's an understatement if ever there was one. It's very quietly done, but he essentially decides that being the last Time Lord means he's ''unquestionable lord and master of all of time and space''. That he can do whatever he wants, even fundamentally alter history itself and change the fabric of the universe to suit his will, and if anyone doesn't like it? "Tough." "That's for me to decide." (Yeah, those are direct quotes from him when someone challenges him about all this. Should tell you everything you you need to know about the mindset of the Time Lord Victorious towards people with dissenting viewpoints). Anyone -- even the Doctor -- both having that kind of power and deciding to use it, quite frankly, a ''fucking horrific idea''. Adelaide is right; no one should have that kind of power or try to use it. Because ''no one can be trusted with it.'' Not even the Doctor. There's a reason people ''also'' say "power corrupts".\\

Fifthly, what makes all of this horrifying (and where I suspect the point is being missed)? As the OP points out, when he's doing all of this, the Doctor's not that different from what he usually does and how he usually acts. But the crucial thing is, he's clearly crossed a line. Yes, he saves lives, but there's a difference between saving lives because it's the right thing to do and saving lives because you want to make the universe and everyone in it your bitch and let everyone know that "I'm the winner!" -- the former is admirable, the latter is kind of monstrous, particularly since it's heavily implied that the Doctor is just doing this because he's terrified of his own impending death and wants to prove that he can change it if he wants, not out of any genuine benevolence. There's a different between flaunting the fact that you're the cleverest person in the room and deciding that everyone -- except for a few people who happen to impress you -- are "little people" who aren't really that important. Who the fuck is the Doctor to decide who's meaningful and who's a 'little person'? There's a difference between boasting a bit about how good you are and calling ''yourself'' something like "the Time Lord Victorious" -- and seriously, people, that's the kind of thing ''supervillains and mad dictators'' call themselves. If you're giving yourself a name that UsefulNotes/JosefStalin or Kim Jung Il would have happily given themselves if they'd gotten the opportunity, you might want to rethink things. The point being, the Doctor's clearly gone from being a lovably arrogant know-it-all to someone who thinks he knows best for the entire universe. That can't end well.\\

Sixthly; '''''it doesn't end well.''''' ''That's'' the point. Not that the Doctor's gone evil, but that his arrogance and hubris has had terrible consequences. And the key redeeming thing about it is that the Doctor ''realizes'' this. He realizes he's gone too far, that whether Adelaide could have lived and inspired the future or whether '''TIME ITSELF''' interfered to kill Adelaide, he's let himself get out of control and that a good person has suffered and died -- and worse, taken her own life -- because of him. That for all his good intentions, for all that he dismissed Yuri and Mia, the irony is that they get to live and the big prize he was after, the reason he was all so glowy and triumphant and smug? Is dead anyway. His arrogance has resulted in exactly the same thing he set out to prevent happening (and remember, he ''wasn't interested in the slightest'' about saving Mia and Yuri when it came down to it, they were just the 'little people' he happened to catch as well), only it's worse now because it's directly his fault that it happened. And really, it all comes back to point 1 -- for all the arguments we can have about whether the future would or could have been the same if Adelaide had lived or died, ultimately, the Doctor's arrogance led to a woman deciding to kill herself. Even if nothing else, ''that's'' why it's bad.

Yes, the Doctor sees himself as the lord of time. He also uses this term in the The Girl In The Fireplace and calls himself the highest authority that exists in New Earth. The show itself goes out of its way to paint him as being godlike figure. To say that the Doctor crosses the {{Moral Event Horizon}} or that he is suddenly insane because of that would be arbitrary and special pleading. When it comes to the 4th and 5th paragraph, simply sounding like the Master, a super-villain or a dictator does not make you evil, this sounds like a bad sci-fi version of Godwin's law. Even the term "little people"(or a variation, unimportant) was used before to refer to Donna Noble by the Doctor. Labeling the Doctor completely nuts seems to once again be begging the question.\\

Simply, because he thought they were less important than Adelaide does not mean he didn't want to save them. The Doctor says himself that most the people he makes an effort to save are "little people". So,yes it falls largely into {{Designated Villain}} territory.This is ubiquitous in Doctor Who, because the show is family friendly, but also wants to send the message that the protagonist is dark and edgy to appeal to the adult audience , the Doctor is rarely put in a situation where he does things that are actually morally questionable.

** The problem wasn't that Adelaide committed suicide or that the Doctor was being uber-arrogant, though those are definitely symptoms of the real problem; The Doctor has always been careful to respect the laws of time, avoid paradoxes, and never interfere with fixed points. On one end of the spectrum, you have Time Lord Society, who look down on the Doctor for even daring to set foot on Earth and contaminate the time stream, rather than watch it safely from a distance. On the other end, you have the Master, (or, my personal favorite evil Time Lord, the Meddling Monk,) who interfere with time for their own ends, or manipulate events to create a "brighter future". (The Meddling Monk's motives really were benevolent!) Normally, the Doctor follows guidelines (don't step on a butterfly) that make time travel a fun, quantum-safe experience for himself and his companions. Once, he was given the opportunity to wipe out the Daleks when they were still balls of flesh in test tubes, but the Doctor at that time refused to, saying he didn't have the right to interfere with time on that scale, even if it would save billions of lives. The Doctor crossed the threshold into "shape the universe into how I think it should go" territory, (which he deliberately turned down in School Reunion, if you'll recall).

[[folder:The End of Time]]

*** Not exactly...the Valiant itself was considered neutral territory. However it could have been hovering in what is considered British Airspace.

** She says seeing them change is like the things that happened before. Seeing something that weird happen triggered her memories of the other stuff she saw and experienced with The Doctor.
** From Journey's End:
-->'''Doctor''': And how do you know that?
-->'''[=DoctorDonna=]''': Because it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine.

* In The End Of Time part 2 [[spoiler:the Doctor dies from radiation. Why didn't he siphon it off like he did in the season 3 opening episode?]]

*** Not everything can be cured. Also, radiation poisoning isn't just an illness, it's massive damage and corruption to every single one of his cells. The only way to fix it would be to completely rebuild the cells from scratch -- i.e., to ''regenerate'' them. Even if he did go to New Earth, he'd probably have to regenerate anyway.
** I'm guessing that [[spoiler: the amount of radiation was too much for him to safely siphon away.]] but i was wondering that too

*** Indeed. [[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=500%2C000+ rad&a=UnitClash_* rad.* Rads-- About 5 times as]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Comparison_with_insects much as you need]] to kill a [[NighInvulnerable cockroach]] instantly.

** Simpler way: Go to the Tardis (it's in the same building) and travel so as to materialize around Wilfred, just like he saved Rose in Parting of the Ways.

*** Actually, since there was a 6 month timeskip between the end of TW S3 and Jack's leaving...yeah, he's still on Earth.

** This has since been addressed in a way in episode "The Angels Take Manhattan" the Doctor was told that the person who would bring on his death would knock four times. Once you read something about the future that future must happen, therefore when Wilfred knocked four times it meant that he would be the one to cause the Doctor's death. There is no way around that once the Doctor hears those four knocks from Wilfred.

** Plus the fact that he was standing in the dark. Besides, do ''you'' remember every drunk you spoke to on New Years Eve / New Years Day?
** My ex girlfriend made me watch ''Film/TheCraft'' about 20 times when I was a teenager. I watch ''Series/TheMentalist'' regularly and never noticed that they share a main lead until it was pointed out to me. Pretty much that.

* Doesn't the Doctor feel even the slightest bit of remorse when he [[spoiler: regenerates into Matt Smith]] I mean he was crying, sobbing [[spoiler: "I don't wanna go"]] a few seconds previous, he even [[spoiler: resisted the regenerative process and [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome blew up the TARDIS!!]]]] Afterwards, not even a "geez I went a bit mad then" or "Well that wasn't so bad" [[spoiler: Eleven]] seems awfully insensitive towards, y'know, HIMSELF. He carries on as if nothing has happened. What a Jerk!
** He did check out how his new body was before being like "ok enough of that for now there's something else happening.... oh that's right the TARDIS is about to crash land". He probably wants to make sure he doesn't crash to much and risk ANOTHER regeneration. He can work out personality/body issues after sorting out the immediate situation.
** Well that IS kind of what Ten discusses with Wilf in the cafe. I mean, a 'new man goes sauntering away'... like he doesn't even care about what he did a moment before, it's all like it never was, and ''that's'' why regeneration feels like dying. Stopped the scene being so amusing for me TBH.

** Regeneration's a traditionally destabilizing process; presumably he was a bit more concerned with making sure he had all the required parts and didn't die crashing (and if we're talking JerkAss behavior, I'm sure if we flipped the situation around Eleven could probably have some choice words to say about Ten's self-indulgence and over-dramatic angst resulting in the fact that Eleven was now starting his new life in a death-dive) than angsting about his last self's death. In all seriousness, I'm not sure that going too far down this rabbit hole will be wise, since pretty much ''every'' Doctor who's just regenerated has at at least one moment where he's all but gone "God I'm glad I'm now me, and not that last version of me; he was the ''worst''..." Particularly since Ten was equally chipper after he technically 'murdered' Nine -- what a sod.

** In a way, though, he is a different person walking away, to an extent. He has a completely different personality and mindset- and, of course, appearance. He is still the same, though, in that he has his previous self's memories. He can understand what his previous self was thinking and feeling, but now he is looking at such events through slightly different lenses. Typically, though, the Doctors all hold pretty much the same values and morality, and certain likes/dislikes seem to be universal. In this sense, you can think of the Doctors as different people, but these over-arcing similarities make them all the same person.
** Also consider that by that point, Ten was pretty much insane. I interpreted his sobbing dread of regeneration as yet another symptom of how incredibly broken he was - and Eleven's ability to get on with, you know, ''not crashing'' immediately afterward as evidence that the regeneration had healed not only physical harm but also stabilized the Doctor's mental state.

** A fairly common bit of self-reflection in teenagers is to illogically despise your 'future' self as someone who isn't really you, and to believe that YOU are the genuine article. And yet when you get to twenty, thirty, fourty...it's just another stage of your life, no more true or false than any other. The Doctor isn't really a different person as such, he just has his transitional periods on fast forward. Ten may have despised the idea of becoming someone else, but when he became that someone else, the very thought became irrelevant.
** 10 likely had such a negative view of regeneration because he was only around for 7 years(he's 907, and Nine was 900). Add to the fact that he just dealt with the majority of all the drama about the Time War(all the Dalek survivors are dead, and the Time Lords too), and I can imagine he doesn't want to go yet.

* I was sold on the Time Lord's plot in The End Of Time- in large part due to a brilliant performance by James Rassilon- until the White Point Star was brought in. Why can it follow the Sound of Drums to the Master? Why by throwing it at a hologram? Why as a shooting star? Why does hooking it up to the Immortality Gate- A Sufficiently Advanced ''medical device'' do anything at all, other than looking neat? And why oh why leave that vital part of the plan up to a man who blew up a quarter of the universe once as part of a ''blackmail attempt''?
** The episode does a pretty good job of explaining this as it is, but let me give it a shot. The gem in question acts as a bridge between time-locked Gallifrey in the Time War and modern-day Earth. Since it's from the former but is in the latter, the two time periods then have a connection. But the only way this works is via the drumming sound, which the Master realizes is a signal, and uses the mental power of six billion Masters focusing on the Whitepoint Star to allow the Time Lords to complete the "bridge" as it were and cross time to end up on Earth. As for the hologram/shooting star... well, that's just how they sent it to Earth. Without a knowledge of Time Lord tech, I can't really say exactly how that works, but it wasn't ''really'' a shooting star, it just looked like that until the Master discovered what it was. They don't really explain how connecting the Whitepoint Star to the Gate works, but I presume that as brilliant as the Master is, and with alien technology right there, he rigged it up to double as a literal gate for the Time Lords. As many of him as there were, they probably could have done that easily, or perhaps the Time Lords did something on their end. Finally, since you ask why the Master, it's simple- the prophecy was that the Doctor and the Master would have their final battle in the future, on Earth, so the Time Lords knew that the two of them would survive. Also, we know that the Master ran before the conclusion of the Time War, so the Time Lords probably implanted the signal in his head so that it would be safe until they needed it. The only other option was the Doctor, and of course he ran from the Untempered Schism rather than staring into it, so... the Master was the only viable option. Rassilon was so concerned about his own personal safety that he probably didn't really even care who it was that had to live with the drums.

* The End of Time Part 1. Not even [[SanDimasTime San Dimas Time]] or the [[RuleOfDrama Rule Of Drama]] can really settle this in a way that satisfies me. So the Doctor finds out from the Ood that [[spoiler: the Master is returning]], so, because he has no time to lose, he rushes back to the TARDIS and heads to Earth with all speed, only to arrive at the scene too late. Which would be fine. If he weren't flying. A freaking. TIME. MACHINE.
** And the Doctor has been able to perfectly pilot and steer the TARDIS to his intended destination since...when, exactly?

* Why did the [[spoiler: Gauntlet of Rassilon]] (for lack of a better name) take so long to charge up when [[spoiler: Rassilon tried to kill the Doctor]]? At the start of the episode he vaporized the [[spoiler: Time Lady]] who spoke out against him in a second, and when he undid [[spoiler: the Master Race]] he again did it with a simple gesture that took only a second, if that. So why does it suddenly take half a minute or so to warm up during it's third use?

* Did the secret conspiracy that resurrected the Master in ''The End of Time'' actually know he was actually an evil Time Lord? They certainly weren't present on the bridge of the Valiant and they consistently refer to him as Harry Saxon rather than the Master. Even though Saxon is probably notorious in this planet for murdering the POTUS on live television (TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot?), why would there be a sinister cult dedicated to resurrecting a dead Prime Minister? I know that some ardent chaps in the Monday Club can get a bit obsessive about Mrs. Thatcher, but this is kind of silly (and not in the {{Camp good Doctor Who style of silliness}}).
** They DID know he was The Master. When Lucy tells them that his real name isn't Harold Saxon the woman in charge yells they know that his true name is The Master. Presumably he also told them about his true nature...with a few embellishments to make sure they would stay loyal

*** And The Master can mind control people WITHOUT the Archangel network

* In ''The End of Time Part 2'', why does the Doctor suggest [[spoiler: the Gate transformed the dead into clones of the Master as well]]? This bothers me because ''a)'' [[spoiler: the Doctor didn't even know what the Gate was and had to be explained,]] and ''b)'' [[spoiler: the Gate is designed to heal (or in this case mutate), not resurrect the dead.]] Is this another part of the Tenth Doctor's GuiltComplex, simply him apologizing all over again.

** The Doctor and Wilf were [[spoiler: on the Vinvocchi ship, looking down on the Earth. Wilf said that his wife was buried down there and asked the Doctor if the dead had also been transformed into the Master.]] The Doctor response was: "I'm sorry" and Wilf said "It's not your fault." They didn't outright say it but it was obvious what they were both thinking.

* In The End of Time, the immortality gate is used to turn humanity into copies of The Master. It is then used as the gateway for the Time-Lords to break into the current time-line. So how exactly was the Master supposed to use it to turn the Time-Lords into himself? Especially after telling Rassilon his plan beforehand.

* It's been well demonstrated that The Master is a [[JabbaTableManners messy eater]] in his current state as of this story. So, why were those two skeletons at the start standing perfectly upright with no apparent damage at all?

** He thought it was funny? It would fit his sense of humor.

* In "The End of Time," when Gallifrey starts to materialize, it looks to be about ten times the size of Earth. That means that Time Lords must have much stronger muscles than we do if they're able to walk and stand up and so on normally. Now given how much time the Doctor spends on Earth, it's easy to imagine that he decided it would be worth his while to train his muscles to exert only a fraction of their strength so he could move normally in a lower gravity; but, like Superman or John Carter of Mars, he should retain the ability to use his full strength whenever the situation calls for a very high or long jump, or something. We saw the Master jump around like he was on the moon for a bit, but we've seen many more times when the Doctor and other Time Lords seem as bound by Earth gravity as humans are. The only other explanation (and this works only for the Doctor) is that he's spent so much time in Earth-like gravity (on the TARDIS and almost every planet he visits, his human companions get along just fine) that his muscles have atrophied to the point where Earth gravity is all they can handle; in which case going to Gallifrey would cripple him, at least while he was on the planet. Not an issue these days, since Gallifrey's not there anymore, but as recently as the end of the 1996 movie returns to Gallifrey occurred regularly. Also, Time Lord bones must be much, much denser than human bones, or they'd be shorter than Sontarans. I can't think offhand of the Doctor ever having broken a bone, can anyone else?
** Not necessarily, gravity goes by mass, not volume. Well yes it's logical to assume that a bigger planet has more mass, the fact that Gallifrey is bigger then Earth, yet all evidence says it's has Earth like gravity, means we can only assume that Gallifrey's mantle and/or core is much, much less dense the Earth's resulting in the two planets having roughly equivalent mass.
*** I had thought that, but Galifrey is a terrestrial planet the size of a gas giant. It looked to be about the size of Saturn, maybe a little smaller, and gravity on Saturn is far greater than Earth--and would be greater still if Saturn were a terrestrial planet; those are much denser than jovian planets because they contain a greater proportion of heavy elements. If there's any doubt of that, look at just how many odds and ends we see Time Lords use are made from metal; if Gallifrey were significantly less dense than Saturn, it would have almost no metal and the Time Lords would use it extremely sparingly. (Though I suppose they could mine it from other planets or asteroids or moons, but not until they'd managed to get into space in the first place.)
*** Gas giant? Saturn!? Unless you're pulling this from somewhere other than what we SEE in The End of Time, that's patently ridiculous. Saturn's easily ten or fifteen times larger than Gallifrey, if not more so! (Also, Gallifrey barely looks more than three or four times larger than the Earth, but that's neither here nor there)
*** Two things. One: judging for what we see in the episode, Gallifrey is nowhere near the size of Saturn. Saturn has about 9 times Earth's radius. Gallifrey seems only about three Earth's radius, that will make it, knowing volume increases with the cube of the radius and assuming identical density, 3^3 = 27 times as massive as Earth. Two: Surface gravity not only depends on mass but also on radius, because a greater radius means you are standing a greater distance from the center of mass, and if you remember high school physics, gravity equals the product of the masses divided by the distance squared. So, three times more radius means nine times less gravity. This makes Saturn surface gravity, contrary to popular belief, a bit LOWER than earth's because it has a big radius and a very low density (even Jupiter's is only two and a half that of Earth, not the tens or hundreds of times most people believes). Concluding, gravity in the surface of the Gallifrey we see in the episode would be 27/9 = 3 Gs tops, and that assuming Earth's density. If we allow for half the density of Earth, it would be reduced to 1.5 Gs . This would make it only a little less dense than Mars, so it's not an impossible density for a rocky planet, not sure how much iron would you find on its crust though, less than on Earth for sure, but maybe enough for Timelords necessities. And a gravity 50% percent higher would be uncomfortable but not bone-crushing for someone accustomed to earth-like gravity.

*** This being Doctor Who, normal science in many cases can be ignored. Considering this, we could just presume that Gallifrey is made of a metal-rich crust and nothing within. Well, not nothing but a very not dense space, with all the density in the crust. To explain how they have grass and such, maybe Gallifrey is composed of a 50m layer of dirt, then maybe 1km of various metal and then next to nothing. I know this makes absolutely no sense, but this is Doctor Who - when does it ever need to make sense?
*** Same troper as above; maybe Gallifrey started off as dense as Earth and obviously larger. However, over millennia and with the use of time travel the Time Lords managed to take so much from it is has become sufficiently less massive to have the same gravity as Earth. This also makes no sense in real life, but again it's Doctor Who.

* How is it that the Master can shoot electricity out of his hands, jump around like superman, etc.? Has he done that before, or are these new powers he got from his resurrection?

* Dear god, why did it take the Doctor forty minutes to die at the end of The End of Time?

*** Or--you're forgetting those TV-like things that allow you to watch historical events. They cropped up once or twice during the First Doctor's era, I haven't seen them anywhere/anywhen else but they could very well still be around. He could've found out about stuff that way.

* In The End Of Time, one of the Masters tells the actual Master "Night has fallen on Earth." which is all nice and dramatic and they go do the Big Plan. But won't it be day on half the Earth no matter what?

* Also in The End Of Time, [[spoiler:Wilf]] knows about the "knocking four times" prophecy. What would have happened if he'd considered that and knocked ''three'' times?

** Remember how in ''The Sound Of Drums'' it was a minor plot point that a side effect of the Archangel Network was to subliminally compel everyone to tap out that very beat? The conditioning just hasn't worn off yet.

* The Doctor makes an awesome entrance through a glass roof in The End of Time. Except... the Fourth Doctor took a much shorter fall in Logopolis and had to regenerate.

** There's a number of reasons that could account for it- younger body being more durable, godlike forces keeping him alive until the final four knocks, regeneration causing him to be a more fall-resistant species, Four landing at a really bad angle...

*** Deaths after falling from a great height are in reality very, very tricky things. It's not always just about how high you fall, but also about how you ''land'' (stunt doubles are taught to fall on their sides where possible - because there are no important bits on your sides). Some people survive falling from much greater heights, while others are killed toppling down a set of stairs. I've even heard of a woman who survived a parachute jump from 10 000 feet when her parachute failed to open, because she managed to hit a single telephone wire on the way down, slowing her down enough to avoid death, and only suffer a couple of broken bones (she also used the relaxing technique mentioned earlier) - incredibly lucky, but possible. And Ten hit a pane of glass. This makes a lot more sense than the radiation bit, I reckon...

*** ... But the front has more substantive muscle in the way, and it's a bit easier to break a fall on the front (from a height, anyways). Four may well have suffered a spinal or cranial injury from falling on his back, which is substantially less likely when falling on his front. And he has the pane of glass for deceleration. People have survived falls at terminal velocity because they hit something that let them decelerate a bit more slowly (trees, snow, and so on - after terminal velocity will be reached, this actually makes it easier to survive from HIGHER falls, because there's more of a chance to "target" yourself) - it's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop. Anything that makes the stop less sudden might just save you.

** I presume you mean 'why would he shoot Rassilon?' since you yourself have established that he's got a valid reason to shoot the Master; to send Rassilon and the other Time Lords back into the Time War. As for 'why shoot Rassilon', after years of angst about being the Last Of The Time Lords and how he doomed his entire race to die, I'm not surprised that for all his talk he'd hesitate a bit before dooming them to their fate after laying eyes on them for the first time in years. He's probably tormenting himself with second-guessing loads of possible third options he can take ('maybe if I kill Rassilon, they'll become sane again and stop this madness about ascending to gods so I don't have to send them back to the Time War and I don't have to be all alone again', that sort of thing. Vain hope maybe, but I imagine it would be difficult to wipe your entire species out for the second time in a row in a cavalier fashion, no matter how inevitable.

** My query is...why didn't the Doctor just shoot the machinery/white point star right from the beginning?
** ''My'' question actually comes from a different part of the same scene- Rassilon, to prove he's a real douche, decides that the Master has Outlived His Usefulness and prepares to kill him. Only the Master ''hasn't'' outlived his usefulness- the drums in his head are keeping the link open, and as seen several minutes later, breaking the link instantaneously dooms the Time Lords. So if 10 hadn't turned up at all then Rassilon would've Idiot Balled himself out of existence ''and'' taken the Master with him, ''and'' 10 wouldn't have died rescuing Wilf.

* It's been established that Donna must not remember anything about the Doctor, or else her mind will burn up and she will die. So Donna starts remembering, and her mind starts burning up...and then she zaps everyone around her somehow and then she falls unconscious. Then later she wakes up without memories, but oddly she only wakes up when the TARDIS makes its characteristic noise. How did this happen?

* Was any one else pissed at the revelation that the Time Lords had tried to commit genocide? the Time Lords were, as Giles the Krillitane pointed out, a race of dusty old senators. They were essentially Star Trek's Prime Directive taken to the extreme; willing to borderline execute the Second Doctor for simply trying to explore the universe. Now we see that they were no better than the Daleks - how is it possible for us to now feel sympathy for the Doctor during his emotional speeches about Gallifrey and all it's wonders now that we know they were willing to destroy everything we hold dear? between this and the fact the Time Lords ''started'' the damn war (by sending the Fourth to end their creation) the Time War actually comes off as less ''heroic battle to save the universe from the Daleks'' and more ''the Daleks were acting in self defense.''
** Well I'm not sure on the specifics of what the Time Lords did when, but (a) the Doctor already called out the Time Lords for being dicks (in the old series), so it's established that Time Lord society is corrupt, and (b) Time Lord history goes back for a billion years (according to Rasillon), so all those emotional speeches could be referencing some previous time before the society turned corrupt, and/or certain aspects of that society which aren't as bad as the stuff referenced above. In fact, IIRC most of those speeches were about Gallifrey ''itself'', with natural wonders like red grass and stuff. Obviously the red grass can't be blamed for crimes committed by Time Lords.

** The majority of Time Lords were probably the dull-as-dirt professional-actuary types that bore the Doctor but don't especially anger him. The Doctor, traumatized over the loss of his people, usually thinks of ''those'' Time Lords when he remembers home -- stuffy old uncles who gossip like hens and intrigue over who gets the good parking space. Less monsters to fight against and more a bunch of losers to shake your head at and smile. But then there are sociopathic monsters like Rassilon, Omega, the Master, Borusa, Goth, Morbius, the Rani, the War Chief ... probably the Time Lords as a whole are no more evil than humans, but they're ''so powerful'' that any Time Lord who goes bad has the power to do incalculable damage. In a society made up of apathetics and megalomaniacs, the megalomaniacs will tend to be the ones in charge simply because no one else is willing to take up arms against them.

-->'''Wilf''': But I’ve heard you talk about your people like they’re wonderful!
-->'''Doctor''': That’s how I choose to remember them! The Time Lords of old. But then they went to war! An endless war! [[HeWhoFightsMonsters And it changed them. Right to the core]].

* So...Martha is married to Mickey now. What happened to the guy she was originally engaged to in "The Sontaran Strategem"? (You know, before she had ever even met Mickey, who was trapped in a parallel universe at the time.) And does it bother anyone else that Martha and Mickey don't really have anything in common except for [[TokenMinorityCouple being black]] and having traveled with the Doctor?
** She fell in love with that guy based on how he was in The Year That Never Was. It's fairly safe to say, such a relationship failed. Don't downplay how important "traveled with The Doctor" is. Very few could understand them. Also, perhaps most importantly... [[TitleDrop Smith and Jones]].

* When did Rassilon go bad? In ''The Five Doctors'', he seemed pretty well against immortality, arguing that only a true madman would ever look for it - only to go right ahead and do precisely that in ''The End of Time'', indeed appearing quite insane. It's deliciously ironic, but I wonder just what caused the change.
** I believe there's a few [[Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] stories where Rassilon turns out to be a wrong'un, and in the same story the Second Doctor ominously notes that there are conflicting legends about Rassilon, some suggesting that rather than a rosy-cheeked white bearded father of Time Lord society he was actually a sadistic lunatic. In any case, though there is a bit of a history of seemingly benevolent Time Lords going off the deep-end into madness-inspired supervillainy (most prominently, Borusa -- again, in "The Five Doctors").

* It was established in "Partners in Crime" that the Adipose we see on-screen are babies; we still don't know what adult Adipose look like. So that Adipose in the bar when Ten goes to see Jack...so do the Adipose still look like babies even when they're fully grown, or does that planet allow BABIES to come to a tavern to drink?

*** However if the Master/Rasillon fight ended with the Master regenerating, Rasillon is either really mad still or maybe he's regenerated too, which may be even scarier than when his face was that of one that played James Bond and Heathcliff.

* Wasn't Martha engaged to that guy she met in [[spoiler:"The Last of the Time Lords"? Why did she end up marrying Mickey in "The End of Time"?]]

** Davies said that Milligan was the rebound guy. Remember how her telling Donna and the Doctor about him focused on ways he reminded her of the Doctor? By the time she's on her honeymoon with Mickey in ''Children of Earth'', it's been a year since ''Journey's End'', plenty of time for her to break up with Tom and get together with Mickey.

*** It can't have been too long - maybe Martha broke up with Tom between the Sontaran episodes and the finale episodes, or maybe it was after ''Journey's End'', but either way, once they're back on earth, they're back in the normal timestream. When Torchwood pop up in ''The Stolen Earth'', it is made explicitly clear that the episodes take place after series 2 of ''Torchwood'' [[spoiler:because reference is made to the deaths of Tosh and Owen]]. It's not known how much time passes between ''Journey's End'' and Day One of ''Children Of Earth'', but it can't be more than a year or so, since they tend to try and keep the stories reasonably present-day [[spoiler:and they haven't replaced Tosh or Owen yet]]. The clip of the Doctor saying goodbye to Martha and Mickey probably took place much later in their timestream, because they are already married and having adventures again, but in ''Children of Earth'', Martha's absence is explained as her being on her honeymoon. There IS time for them to get together, but it's not much - especially when you realise Martha didn't know Mickey before ''Journey's End'', so it's not like she had any more time with him than she did with Tom. Still seems a bit PairTheSpares to me.

* If the Doctor wanted to know what happened to Joan Redfern, why didn't he, instead of visiting her great-grand-daughter in the present day, travel back in time to see Joan herself? If he was afraid that meeting Joan in person would cause her too much pain, he could've simply observed from a distance, like he did with Donna.

* Doesn't the Doctor feel even the slightest bit of remorse when he [[spoiler: regenerates into Matt Smith]] I mean he was crying, sobbing [[spoiler: "I don't wanna go"]] a few seconds previous, he even [[spoiler: resisted the regenerative process and [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome blew up the TARDIS!!]]]] Afterwards, not even a "geez I went a bit mad then" or "Well that wasn't so bad" [[spoiler: Eleven]] seems awfully insensitive towards, y'know, HIMSELF. He carries on as if nothing has happened. What a Jerk!

* Given what is written in the HeartwarmingMoments and TearJerker pages, does anyone really believe the Master did a HeelFaceTurn or RedemptionEqualsDeath? The Master is a monster and always has been. The Doctor only thought otherwise because of his loneliness.

* Alright, I'm ready to face complaints of being part of a FanDumb or MisaimedFandom or operating on BlueAndOrangeMorality or whatever, but this has been bugging me for over a week now and I just NEED to get it out. What is it with everyone acting like the Doctor crossed the MoralEventHorizon in Waters of Mars? That he has become some kind of monster that crossed the line or something? Because frankly, I don't see it. He went ScrewDestiny to save some lives. That's pretty much a hero-exclusive thing. He went all arrogant and had a bit of an AGodAmI thing going on, boasting about saving "unimportant people" and being the Time Lord Victorious (am I the only one who thinks that's an awesome title?), fine. But those were just words. He always had a thing towards the BadassBoast. I'd feel boastful too if I just defied the universe like this. People don't just change suddenly at the snap of a finger. He'd still be the Doctor in the future. Even if he decided to change future events, it'd be likely a nicer universe than one that sends Time-Dragons to eat everyone involved at an inconvenience. Then there's the thing that he risked a different future. So what? That it was a different future doesn't mean it would be a BAD future. YMMV if it's worth the risk I guess, but trying would make him a WellIntentionedExtremist at worst. And as he said, Adelaide could've just inspired her ancestors by being alive and at home. It's not really so great a change that it could end up in the world being ruled by Daleks or something. And even then, the Doctor would find a way to fix it. Sure, maybe he'd eventually end up changing all of history, but if he had good intentions for it, that'd at least be somewhat acceptable. I don't see him as a future Evil God-Emperor or something, anyway. Now the "the rules of time shall obey me!" thing? Yeah, that's pretty arrogant, I admit and defies typical hero humility rules. But the Doctor always was a bit arrogant. Nothing wrong with that, as long as he stays a good person. Besides, I myself see it as a bit of a "Make the power your own to do good" thing. Similar to what DarkIsNotEvil people try to do? You're tropers, you should know what I mean. The point I am trying to make, even if he went a bit over the edge ego-wise, there is nothing in that episode to warrant everyone acting like he became a monster. If a classical hero is faced with the choice of letting people die for some rules or saving people and breaking the rules, most of them would screw the risks and try to save lives anyway. Again, the Doctor would be a WellIntentionedExtremist at worst. Maybe that's not his style, but he's not going to turn into the Master overnight.

Referring to Ten's hour-long farewell. It got rather tiresome near the end. Ponder this: New Doctors get hour-long specials to say goodbye, while the sixth Doctor hit his head on the TARDIS console and was gone in five seconds. Hmm. Someone's gotta feel slighted.

Secondly, the Doctor does seem to sort of snap, and there seem to be two explanations: a. This is what happens when he doesn't have a companion to stop him, and b. The universe has been his playground too long, and it's time for him to regenerate.

** Considering Adipose are walking lumps of fat, why assume alcohol would even affect them? Could be that booze is entirely baby-safe for their species.

** Based on the Master that emerges in Series 8, while he/she is still a complete whackjob the new master clearly wants to do some repairing to her friendship/relationship with the Doctor. So I take it that's as good a turn as can be expected from the Master

Fifthly, what makes all of this horrifying (and where I suspect the point is being missed)? As the OP points out, when he's doing all of this, the Doctor's not that different from what he usually does and how he usually acts. But the crucial thing is, he's clearly crossed a line. Yes, he saves lives, but there's a difference between saving lives because it's the right thing to do and saving lives because you want to make the universe and everyone in it your bitch and let everyone know that "I'm the winner!" -- the former is admirable, the latter is kind of monstrous, particularly since it's heavily implied that the Doctor is just doing this because he's terrified of his own impending death and wants to prove that he can change it if he wants, not out of any genuine benevolence. There's a different between flaunting the fact that you're the cleverest person in the room and deciding that everyone -- except for a few people who happen to impress you -- are "little people" who aren't really that important. Who the fuck is the Doctor to decide who's meaningful and who's a 'little person'? There's a difference between boasting a bit about how good you are and calling ''yourself'' something like "the Time Lord Victorious" -- and seriously, people, that's the kind of thing ''supervillains and mad dictators'' call themselves. If you're giving yourself a name that JosefStalin or Kim Jung Il would have happily given themselves if they'd gotten the opportunity, you might want to rethink things. The point being, the Doctor's clearly gone from being a lovably arrogant know-it-all to someone who thinks he knows best for the entire universe. That can't end well.\\

*** Metaphor Time! In Waters of Mars, the Personal Physician of the Universe sat down with his/her patient, the fixed point in time, and said, "What seems to be the problem?" The fixed point said, "You see, there's supposed to be a lady dying on this date, or thereabouts, but she's not. It feels like there's some idiot screwing with my fixed points in there." And then the physician took the universe's pulse, checked its tongue, and said, "Just take two aspirin every day for a week, and your fixed point will get right back to normal. Might not be the exact same way it was before, but you'll be much healthier in the long run." The Universe thanked its physician, took the aspirin, and Adelaide committed suicide. In Father's Day, the Personal Physician of the Universe threw up his/her hands in exasperation. "You should have come on your usual check-up, when it was just a matter of two versions of the same person in the same time and place! Now, the infection is spread too far. We'll have to amputate."