Shades of grey
Sep. 16th, 2006 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenI've just finished re-reading the DW MA "Millenial Rites", which is one of the very few 6th-Doctor adventures I liked. In it, there is some foreshadowing of the way the 7th Doctor (especially in the NAs) will be very Machiavellian ("master of a thousand chessboards" was one turn of phrase), tied in with the 6th Doctor's anxiety about becoming the Valeyard, his own "dark side" at the end of his life.
It was all fascinatingly ironic, considering that the 9th Doctor rendered both those worries insignificant in comparison.
Insignificant? Like a candle to the sun, indeed.
Why worry about the manipulative Machiavellian ruthlessness of the 7th Doctor, who will finally commit the sin of sacrificing a pawn, when the 9th Doctor (or was it the 8th?) has become so ruthless that the ruthlessness of the 7th Doctor is trivial in comparison? Well, it does seem, er, ruthless that he can see no other way but to sacrifice his entire race in order to destroy the Daleks. Well, we don't actually know the details of that, of course -- it could have ranged from (a) him ruthlessly determining to sacrifice his people, to (b) his people knowing they were doomed, and wanting to take the Daleks with them, and him just happening to be the person on the deadman switch. The fact that he hadn't expected to survive doesn't really tell us which one, though.
And of course the other piece of irony is that the Valeyard is never going to have existed, because the circumstances which brought about his creation -- manipulation by corrupt timelords, the Master, the Matrix -- no longer exist. The Time Lords don't exist any more.
As I said, ironic. Becoming the Valeyard is insignificant in comparison to becoming the last Time Lord...
It was all fascinatingly ironic, considering that the 9th Doctor rendered both those worries insignificant in comparison.
Insignificant? Like a candle to the sun, indeed.
Why worry about the manipulative Machiavellian ruthlessness of the 7th Doctor, who will finally commit the sin of sacrificing a pawn, when the 9th Doctor (or was it the 8th?) has become so ruthless that the ruthlessness of the 7th Doctor is trivial in comparison? Well, it does seem, er, ruthless that he can see no other way but to sacrifice his entire race in order to destroy the Daleks. Well, we don't actually know the details of that, of course -- it could have ranged from (a) him ruthlessly determining to sacrifice his people, to (b) his people knowing they were doomed, and wanting to take the Daleks with them, and him just happening to be the person on the deadman switch. The fact that he hadn't expected to survive doesn't really tell us which one, though.
And of course the other piece of irony is that the Valeyard is never going to have existed, because the circumstances which brought about his creation -- manipulation by corrupt timelords, the Master, the Matrix -- no longer exist. The Time Lords don't exist any more.
As I said, ironic. Becoming the Valeyard is insignificant in comparison to becoming the last Time Lord...
