Doctor Who Question

[shadowkat]

Should make dinner but not sure what I want. Scrolled through flist and...
Regarding Doctor Who, what the heck is Valeyard? Or Vanyard? It's referred to in more than one post - as what they might be doing next year and who John Hurt might be, and I'm confused.

Comments

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

The Valeyard is a Doctor Who villain from the old series, that's all I know. I'm sure you could look up the details on wiki or something.

I really enjoyed Star Trek into Darkness. Lots of fun, a little more contemplative and emotional than the first one, the villains made much more sense and were enjoyable to watch, it was a great movie.

I had never seen Wrath of Khan, though, so I went and watched that today... I have to say, I don't understand the overwhelming love for it. I mean, I can well believe that Khan was "the most threatening villain" the original series cast faced... but that's because most of the writing for TOS was pretty bad. Silly and enjoyable, but not that good. The Khan I saw in the original flick was impressive for his ruthless determination to kill Kirk, and not much else. He definitely didn't act like someone with such "superior intellect." To me, Cumberbatch played a much more threatening and interesting villain. And of course the older movie was much slower and clunkier in general, compared to modern writing. It was enjoyable to watch... but not a masterpiece of movie-making. I feel like it's mostly nostalgia talking there.

Then again, I recently read 'The Great Gatsby' for the first time and could not believe that it deserved the title of the Great American Novel. The writing was dry, the characters felt more like caricatures, and there were lots of references that I'm sure made sense in the 20's but fell flat to a modern reader. It did not surprise me to read that when it came out, the book was a critical and commercial failure.

I think people put too much stock in owning "cultured" media as a sign of status. Most of the movies I own are either animated or geeky things that I enjoy, like superhero movies. I own Iron Man and watch it fairly frequently; I'll almost certainly get Iron Man 3. Yes, in some ways it's just a silly action flick, but the movie did a lot of rather new things, one of which was showing its hero vulnerable and grappling with PTSD. That was good to see. And superheroes can be a really fascinating metaphor for examining society and its fears. That interests me, but more importantly, I enjoy those stories. Life is short, and there shouldn't be any shame in watching something if you enjoy it.

[rahirah]

The Valeyard is a potential evil alternate future incarnation of the Doctor which tried to manipulate the current Doctor so as to ensure that it comes into existence. Kind of like Twilight, now that I think of it. It's more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it.

[elisi]

"There is some evil in all of us, Doctor – even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, and I may say you do not improve with age."
The Master to the Sixth Doctor, The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe

Basically - canon evil!Doctor. (Wiki here)

ETA: John Hurt!Doctor is - I presume - Time War Doctor, but as he is obvious a dark aspect of the Doctor I, too, am tempted to call him Valeyard.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

The Valeyard is a distillation of all the evil committed during the Doctor's lifetime that will be split off at some point during his regeneration from 12th to 13th. In the "Trial of a Time Lord" story he travelled back in time to the Sixth Doctor's era, when he was put on trial by the Time Lords for corrupt political reasons to complicated to explain, and got himself appointed the prosecuting council as part of a not-very-clear plan to take over all the Doctor's future versions and turn them into evil versions of him.