Hi all,
OK, I'm pretty much caught up to the current state of affairs now. But there is something in "The Name of the Doctor" that's really bugging me. Has to do with what seems to me is a glaring inconsistency in the 11th Doctor's character.
So, we know that the Doctor is less merciful than he was before the Time War (by the 10th Doctor's own admission), but what's getting me is the scene where the Great Intelligence and his Whisper Men attempt to blackmail the Doctor in order to gain admission to the latter's tomb (the derelict, oversized TARDIS on future Trenzalore). The Doctor's true name needs to be spoken in order to do so, and even as the Whisper Men come quite close indeed to killing his companion and friends, he continues to hesitate and seems ready to try and negotiate with the G.I. It's finally River Song (basically a ghost at this point) who speaks his name (Clara having forgotten what she saw in the Time War book), saving the others and allowing access to the tomb.
Something's wrong here. This kind of self-serving, skin-saving reaction seems just totally uncharacteristic of the Doctor--this one, anyway. Is this the same Doctor who said he would gladly sacrifice a nuclear-armed submarine, with himself still on it, to prevent World War III breaking out ("Cold War")? If I were Clara and the Paternoster Gang, I think I would have a *great* deal less respect for--and trust of--the Doctor after this little episode. Was he really willing to throw their lives away in order to avoid giving the G.I. what it wanted?
The only way I can rationalize this is through a "needs of the many" way of thinking, which the Doctor has shown a number of times before. If the Doctor had some notion of what was going to happen should the G.I. gain access to his timestream, and knew that it would result in the deaths of billions (which did happen, until Clara set things right) then letting a handful of people die in order to save all those lives--even including his best friend--would be consistent with that way of seeing things. But this is basically the same decision the War Doctor faced when he used The Moment to destroy Gallifrey, and even he later came to see (in "The Day of the Doctor") that would've been the wrong decision.*** And just as with that decision, the 11th Doctor might have been able to live with it initially, but it would end up eating away at him as time went on. And remember, he's already allowed a companion to die once--has he ever come to terms with that?
So, whether it was the Doctor or River who spoke the name and opened the tomb was ultimately immaterial, as the outcome would've been the same. But the fact that it was River who did it considerably diminished the character of the Doctor in my eyes--and should have in the eyes of his friends too.
***Technically speaking, did the War Doctor ever actually destroy Gallifrey? Or has the whole revived series up until now been predicated on a premise that was (retroactively) actually false?
cheers,
Gabe
