karohemd | Classic Who

snapesbabe, you were right, I am a Pertwee man. I'm currently watching the first disc of Inferno and I like him a lot, despite his getup. There is an almost otherworldly mysteriousness (which the character should have, being an alien out of space and time) about him while the others are just quirky in various ways.

Two background questions:
- Has it ever been established what timeframe the Doctor's "presence" and his age is? He turns up in various years on Earth but surely must have been born at one point.
- Recently, he's always been credited as "The Doctor" and that's what he introduces himself as in past series, too but in older episodes, he's credited as "Doctor Who" and Pertwee even has the number plate "WHO" yet I haven't heard anyone refer to that name during the stories. I'd always assumed it was a case of "Who are you?" - "I'm the Doctor." - "Doctor Who?" but I haven't heard such an exchange, either.

ION, I've had lovely dinner with some fine wine and am now enjoying a wee dram of Bowmore Enigma. Early night probably, too. Load of stuff to do tomorrow.

Current Mood: content

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From:

miss-s-b.livejournal.com

dwcanon_fodder is there to ask all your little niggly questions about Who ;)

But, in brief, Ten lies about his age. Eight was at least 1256 at one point.
As to his birth... Oh, that's a subject of HUGE speculation and controversy. He might not even have been born at all, but "loomed".
The early shows were fast and loose with references to him, and at one point during One's time he was referred to onscreen as Doctor Who, but mostly he is The Doctor.

From:

karohemd.livejournal.com

Thanks!

From:

mr-malk.livejournal.com

The only time I know of that he actually introduced himself as Doctor Who was in a film adaptation of the Dalek Invasion of Earth, starring Peter Cushing as Doctor 1. There are many occasions when wordplay has caused the words Doctor and Who to be abutted for effect.

On his birth and age, Dr 10 might lie about his age, or it might have been some or all of the others. We can make a reasonable assumption that he was a few hundred years old when he hit the screens in his 1st incarnation, and Tom Baker always quoted his age in the mid 700s, but some of the references after that I've always considered suspicious. He rarely keeps human companions long enough to age them more than a handful of years, so Sylvester McCoy quoting his age as in the 900s means that each time he has a gap in companions, he must spend a century or so off twiddling his thumbs, or at least avoiding BBC film crews.

The only time that he has really had time to age, in the sense of a huge gap in continuity was between Dr 8 (if you consider that baleful load of old thruppeny to be canon) and his reappearance after the Time War as Chris Eccleston.

When he was born in Earth time is a pretty meaningless question, and although we don't know when he was "born" (or whatever) in Gallifreyan time, we have encountered some of his contemporaries from his student days (for what it's worth).