Doctor Who

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Question: 1. How did Sarah-Jane Smith get introduced to the Doctor? 2.Does she have a 'title'? (eg. Amelia is the girl that waited) 3. How did she get written out?

Shadow5

Chosen answer: 1) She broke into a UNIT base during the story "The Time Warrior", masquerading as her aunt, a respected scientist, and met the Doctor there when she investigated the strange blue box that she found there. 2) No, she doesn't. 3) She left the series at the end of The Hand of Fear, after the Doctor was summoned home to Gallifrey and decided that it would be too dangerous to take her there with him. He dropped her off, ostensibly near her home in South London, but actually in Aberdeen, due to the navigational eccentricities of the TARDIS.

Tailkinker

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Question: I can't seem to find this episode, which I never saw the end of, so could someone please tell me the name of it so I can find it? All I remember about it is that the Doctor is played by Sylvester McCoy and his assistant at the time is Ace, and at the end of the episode, there is a cat on a horse and I think he hypnotises Ace or something because before the credits rolled, she turns around and has green eyes.

Answer: It's an episode of "Survival," Sylvester McCoy's last proper story.

Captain Defenestrator

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Question: Throughout all the series, whenever the Doctor and his companion/s encounter aliens or planets, the Doctor knows who they are, where they're from etc. I mean I know he's pretty intelligent and knowledgeable, but what I'm wondering is, how does he know everything about every species in all the galaxies, even the ones in the future? Is it something he's learned/gathered throughout his travels?

Heather Benton

Chosen answer: Partially through that, I mean if you've spent hundereds of years, visiting millions of places and times, its not that wierd that you learn a lot, particually if you're one of a race of super geniuses, he's even a genius for his kind. There also the fact his race observe most events over most times, so he probably learned a lot doing that too.

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Question: Has the Doctor's real Gallifrey name ever been mentioned? And why does he call himself the Doctor?

Answer: No, his real name has never been stated, although one previous nickname from his early years ("Thete", short for "Theta Sigma") was mentioned by Drax, another Time Lord. Nor has his reason for adopting the pseudonym of The Doctor ever been fully explained. The name appears to be a personal choice rather than something given him by others - the Master tells him at one point that it was sanctimonious of him to choose a name that identifies him as "the man who makes people better". Several incarnations have claimed to have studied a number of different disciplines (including medicine) at various points in his existence, making it also possible that he could genuinely hold at least one academic doctorate, which could be a potential factor in his choice.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: Because Dalek toilet technology is the only area where they are inferior to the rest of the universe. Approximately 1960's. You'd have to ask the designer of The Daleks. It is shown in the new series to be a very nasty weapon indeed, some sort of point singularity projection device, like a mini-black hole launcher.

Grumpy Scot

There are lots of documentaries and DVD special features about The Daleks and how they made. It was due to budget costs that they use the plunger the idea was that it was able to suck or stick to anything push and pull.

Dan23

Chosen answer: It's principally related to the Time Lord's strict non-intervention policy, which stated that they should only observe events, not interfere in any way. The Doctor staunchly disagreed, believing that they had a moral duty to protect the universe from evil. That, combined with his own wanderlust and desire to see and experience the wonders of the cosmos, was what ultimately drove him to steal the TARDIS and take up the life of a renegade.

Tailkinker

Yes he has mentioned before why he left.

Dan23

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Question: In which season and episode is Gallifrey destroyed, or is it just a shocking new plot development for the new series?

Answer: It was never destroyed on-screen; it was intact at the end of the TV movie, and destroyed by the start of the 2005 series. It was destroyed in the novel "The Ancestor Cell," but in a completely different manner to what happened in the series.

DaveJB

Answer: TARDISes are generally available for properly authorised use on Gallifrey; they're not usually assigned to a particular Timelord on a long-term basis. The Doctor stole his when he left his homeworld.

Tailkinker

Planet of the Spiders - S11-E5

Plot hole: At the climax of episode 2, the Doctor is about to catch Lupton when the latter simply teleports to safety. So why didn't he do that in the first place, before engaging in a 15-minute chase?

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Planet of Giants - S2-E1

Trivia: This Doctor Who story was originally scripted and produced as a four-episode story, but, just two weeks before transmission, upon viewing the story, co-creators Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson felt that the final two episodes (Episode 3, 'Crisis'; and Episode 4, 'The Urge to Live') should be combined into a single episode. The new 'condensed' episode incorporated the opening titles of 'Crisis' with the closing credits of 'The Urge to Live'.

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