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  • Below are my original notes on this story from the old board. I should note that my VHS copy of the story is an "extended" edition, with many additional scenes added into the story, so if you see references below that don't appear in the DVD release, check the "deleted and extended scenes" section of the disk, most of them are in there. Afterwards, I'll be posting some additional notes from my viewing of the disk last night.

    Part One 1)I remember reading an interview with the writer saying that he felt that by 1988 the time limit for plausible "surviving Nazi" stories was running out, so he wanted to get one last one in.

    2)Lady Peinforte has a Silver Arrow.

    3)And the Fourth Reich has a Silver Bow.

    4)"This is my favorite kind of jazz - straight blowing."

    5)Robomen?

    6)"Duck!"

    7)"Then have the courage of your convictions."

    8)"You mean the world's going to end and you'd forgotten about it?"

    9)"I'm too young to go to the Tower."

    10)"Nemesis"? Wasn't he caught up in the DC Implosion?

    11)"I'll tell you 350 years ago."

    12)I like how the Doctor shields Ace from the sight of the corpse.

    13)The chess set - that'll pay off later in the season.

    14)"And what you might call a nose for secrets."

    15)"A living metal - validium."

    16)"I haven't been here since they were building the place."

    17)The Queen?

    18)"For I have found his secret out."

    19)"Weasel-features"?

    20)The Seventh Doctor uses eyeglasses for hypnosis.

    21)The Portrait of Ace on the wall - I think that may be one of the scenes they added back in for the VHS release. They never did pay that one off.

    22)"Don't be afraid - we won't harm you."

    23)Cliffhanger #1: "Cybermen."

    Part Two
    24)"So, Doctor, a new appearance..."

    25)"Eradicate them."

    26)"A Cyberman killed with an arrow? But that's ludicrous!"

    27)How do the Cybermen and the Nazis know about all this stuff, anyhow?

    28)"Validium was created as the ultimate defense for Gallifrey in early times." "Created by Omega?" "Yes." "And?" "Rassilon." "And?" "And none of it should have left Gallifrey." Of course, this was all part of a concerted effort to put some mystery back into the character of the Doctor, by implying that he had some connection to the founders of Time Lord society.

    29)"Money? Say you?"

    30)The Cyberleader is a liar.

    31)"It is thy grave, Richard."

    32)"Is this the human condition of madness, Leader?" "It is."

    33)"Blow up that vehicle."

    34)"Hello! I'm the Doctor! I believe you want to kill me!"

    35)"You insult us."

    36)So the Doctor's indirectly responsible for Kennedy being assassinated? (And yes, I've read Who Killed Kennedy. I wasn't all that impressed by it.

    37)"Then, where is the bow?"

    38)A chameleon performing its circuit.

    39)Cliffhanger #2: "Cyber warships. Thousands of them. They were invisible."

    Part Three
    40)"It is meaningless." Cybermen will never understand jazz.

    41)OK, the Virginian woman is overdone.

    42)"I am beautiful, am I not?" Well, no, not really.

    43)"We ride to destiny."

    44)Cybermen are kind of dumb.

    45)"I told you when. Things are still imperfect."

    46)"She is mad."

    47)"Doctor who?'

    48)"It's all over, Ace. My battle. All my battles."

    49)"This is most rational, Doctor."

    50)"Very well, tell them."

    51)"You had the right games, but the wrong pawn."

    52)"Imagination, thought, freedom, pleasure - all will end."

    53)"Just like you nailed the Daleks." Maybe you ought not to be calling attention to the fact that you're re-doing a story you just did.

    54)"Who are you?"

    All in all, a fun story, so long as you don't spend too much time thinking about the plot, particularly that it's essentially a rehash of "Remembrance of the Daleks." The Seventh Doctor/Ace relationship has some good moments here.


    Additional Notes Upon Re-Viewing

    Part One
    1)The old mathematician was played by Leslie French, who was one of the actors under consideration for the part of the First Doctor, before William Hartnell got it.

    2)I seem to recall that there were some calendar changes subsequent to 1638 that would have thrown the old man's calculations off.

    3)The Doctor wears a fez!

    4)"Peinforte" comes from "Peine forte et dure "(Law French for "hard and forceful punishment") which was a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead ("stood mute") would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon his or her chest until a plea was entered, or as the weight of the stones on the chest became too great for the condemned to breathe, fatal suffocation would occur.

    5)The tour group at Windsor Castle is comprised of a numbe rof Doctor Who luminaries, including Peter Moffatt, Fiona Cumming and Nicholas Courtney.

    Part Two

    6)"A hit! A very palpable hit!"

    7)Gold has gone from "plating their breathing apparatus" to almost being like kryptonite to Cybermen,

    Part Three

    8)The effect of the rocket sled isn't very good - although perhaps not unusually bad for the time.
  • I still have yet to receive my shipment from Amazon. Drat.
  • Odd, mine came early and yours is late.
  • As you said, "All in all, a fun story, so long as you don't spend too much time thinking about the plot." As a 25th anniversary story it was a little "down-letting" though. I'm all for revealing (or even merely hinting at) secrets of the Doctor's past, but I'm not particularly impressed by the they went about it. (I guess it was it supposed to have been the Hartnell Doctor who sent the comet on its way originally...?) When I later watched the special features and discovered just exactly what they were hinting at, I'm just as glad they left it vague.

    Regarding the Doctor being a founder of Timelord society (a characteristic which applies primarily to the Seventh Doctor I believe), I have alternate (and somewhat contradictory) "Earth-J" explanations for the Doctor's own somewhat contradictory backstory. I find it difficult to believe that his first incarnation lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years, for example, when the most he can squeeze out of subsequent regenerations is seven. (The Eighth Doctor may have "lived" longer, but you know what I mean.) On those days I'm willing to accept that The Doctor was a contemporary of Rassilon annd Omega, I like to think he had multiple regenerations before the 13 regeneration limit was put in place. When it was, something (I don't kow what) happened to cause him to decide to remain as the "first" Doctor for as long as possible; previous incarations prior to the limit "didn't count". That explanation may also account for the multiple previous incarations as shown in The Brain of Morbius.

    I wonder what the BBC has planned for the 50th anniversary, just a few short years away...?
  • Interesting theories - I don't agree, but they're certainly plausible.
  • " I find it difficult to believe that his first incarnation lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years, for example, when the most he can squeeze out of subsequent regenerations is seven."

    Two possible counterarguments to that:

    1)The First Doctor may have lived hundreds and hundreds of years on Gallifrey, living a relatively ordinary Time Lord life, before whatever it was that caused him to leave Gallifrey occurred. His post-Gallifrey incarnations incarnations went by more quickly because he was living a much more dangerous lifestyle. That is, the fellow who stays home and lives a quiet life may well live longer than the adventurer who goes out and courts danger. Of course, the adventurer's life, though shorter, will almost certainly be more interesting.

    2)I think it's fairly certain that the Doctor has had many more adventures than we have seen on-screen. Some Doctors particularly have gaps in their history - the Fourth Doctor between "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Face of Evil", and between "The Invasion of Time" and "The Ribos Operation", the Sixth Doctor between the "The Trial of a Time Lord" and "Time and the Rani", the Seventh Doctor between "Survival" and the TV movie, the Eighth Doctor after the TV movie and before "Rose", the Tenth Doctor between "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones", between "Voyage of the Damned" and "Partners in Crime", between "Journey's End" and "The Next Doctor" and between any of the specials. Who knows how many years he spent in those gaps?
  • I did preface that theory by saying "on those days I'm willing to accept..." etc., etc. Most days I'm not willing to accept that, just as most days I'm not willing to accept that he's half human. I ike the "burn-out" theory (just as I liked the "senile" theory you put up in another recent discussion). I also like to think that Timelords age differently than in a strict linear fashion, which would account for the inconsistencies in his age throughoput the history of the show.

    Thanks for providing the list of gaps; it will save me the trouble of doing it myself when trying to fit the comic book adventures into continuity. I see a similar "gap" for the Ninth Doctor within the episode "Rose", namely, near the end after she refuses to join him and before he returns "seconds later" to give her another chance.
  • This has nothing to do with "Silver Nemesis" specifically, but yesterday Tracy compiled a list of the the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctor hardcover books she has by companion, which she has, which she needs. She has all of the Ninth Doctor and Rose books, for example, but until this week she didn't own any of the Tenth Doctor and Martha. (Although she finally... finally... warmed to the Tenth Doctor, she hates Martha!) In one of the two books she read yesterday, one set in the American old west, Martha forgot the name of the horse she was riding and decided to call it "Rose." I reminded Tracy that Martha would eventually end up with Rose's cast-off and then she felt better.
  • I haven't read any the Ninth or Eleventh Doctor books, and only a handful of Tenth Doctor books. There are times when I wish they'd do novelizations of the new shows - I could do with Terrance Dicks to give logical explanations for the various "Davies ex machinae".
  • "I see a similar "gap" for the Ninth Doctor within the episode "Rose", namely, near the end after she refuses to join him and before he returns "seconds later" to give her another chance."

    Yeah, I've seen that notion posted on-line somewhere. Presumably that was when he went and had his picture taken in front of the Titanic.

    I remember back when they first started publishing novels with new stories of "old" Doctors, they used to print on the back of the book where it supposedly fit into continuity, i.e. "This story takes place between 'Snugglefest of the Daleks' and 'An Unlikely Coincidence'."
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