Freddy Krueger corners the Doctor inside a dream, and the Doctor tells him he’s got it backwards. You thought I was running because I’m scared of you? No, my friend. You’re in my mind. I’m scared for you.
That’s a scene from an episode that doesn’t exist, and I made it up on the spot because somebody asked me what would happen if the Doctor from Doctor Who went up against horror icons like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger. I’ve got an answer for both of them, and I’ll get there.
This is the Know-It-All Files, where Mr. Know-It-All proves how much he knows by just talking about things and answering questions from online. If you don’t agree with an answer, that’s awesome. Let’s talk. Debating and discussing this stuff is one of the things I love to do the most, and as sci-fi fans we’re the ones who always come up with the crazy, harebrained excuses and justifications for things. That’s the fun of being us.
What’s Wrong With the Doctor
The question says the Doctor is definitely not like normal Time Lords, and asks what’s wrong with him.
Nothing’s wrong with the Doctor. Time Lords are an eccentric bunch, but much like the British people they’re based around, there’s a stuffy sort of pomp and circumstance about them. Not all of them. I have friends who are British, and I spent three years doing voiceovers for Great Britain, getting up early in the morning to do it. I have huge respect. I’m what some would consider an Anglophile. I’m literally doing a Doctor Who thing right now.
So think about when he looked into the Untempered Schism. There’s a part where David Tennant explains it: some people saw purpose and hope, some people went mad, and some people ran in fear. And when he’s asked which one he was, he says he’s the one who ran, and he never stopped.
He’s right. Something he saw inspired him to do what he does, to go and chase adventure, but at the same time wonder. Everybody says the Doctor is running to trouble. He’s not just running to trouble. He’s running to see things, because the universe is so big and vast, and stars are dying and universes are folding and races are coming and going, and the entire thing happens so quickly that you have to take the chance and see it.
And when he finds someone who’ll be more amazed than he could ever be, he wants to bring them along. It’s just like when I wanted to show my family any of this, Star Trek, Doctor Who, whatever. When I’m sitting down watching with them, I’m barely watching the thing. I’m watching their expressions most of the time, because I want to enjoy it through their eyes. That’s what the Doctor does on a regular basis, and he’s not wrong for that.
If you want to know what’s wrong with the Doctor, he saved the universe from the Time Lords and the Daleks. He made a horrible choice. Later on they retcon that choice, an in-canon retcon, because the Doctor himself was the one who changed what happened. But I don’t think anybody else could ever do what he does and survive. So no, he’s not like the normal Time Lords, and I’m very glad for that.
Yes, David Tennant Married the Doctor’s Daughter
Trivia question: is there any truth to the rumor that Doctor Who’s David Tennant married the daughter of the Doctor?
Yes, of course. Georgia Tennant, then Georgia Moffett, played the part of Jenny in the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter.” That’s when they met, and ultimately it blossomed into a beautiful relationship. Still together, as far as I understand.
Somebody asked last time what I’d like to see from Russell T Davies. Bro, give me a Jenny show. Let Georgia Tennant reprise her role as Jenny for a season, maybe two, and then regenerate, and now you’ve got an entirely new Time Lord, a Time Lady, running through things. It’d be so great. You’d get to see how she would handle these adventures. Maybe she crosses over with her dad once in a while, maybe not. It doesn’t even have to be David Tennant. It could be any of the others, in the future or in the past. With this whole big giant multiverse conglomeration thing they’re building, I’m so down. I’m so here for it.
The Woman Doctor Question, One Last Time
Why were Doctor Who fans unhappy when Doctor Who was a woman, but Star Trek fans didn’t care when Janeway was captain?
I really need to know who’s submitting these. We had one like this last time, the one about whether Star Trek fans would be upset about a Jennifer T. Kirk the same way Doctor Who fans were upset. I feel like this is the exact same question asked a different way, and I’m going to tell my producer we’re not putting these in anymore, because they feel a little aggressive underneath, like somebody’s angry. But I’ll play this game one last time.
These are two very different scenarios. The Doctor is a person who regenerates, meaning it’s a literal grab bag. Traditionally it’s been played by British Caucasian males. Who cares. Most recently it was played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker, who I was super excited for. And then you have Jo Martin, who plays the Fugitive Doctor. Whether or not you want to agree that’s in canon, I don’t care. It happened. It appeared in an episode, a couple actually. Star Trek was casting a brand new captain of a completely different ship in a completely different set of circumstances. You have to take that into consideration.
As for why the fans were unhappy, the fans I know were happy. What I know is a whole bunch of people who wanted to just be crappy about it.
I didn’t watch most of Jodie Whittaker’s era while it was happening, because I thought the episodes were badly written. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like her. I liked her a lot. Her portrayal of the Doctor, I’m here for. The whole fam thing, all the little quirky bits, I loved. Those are her Doctor quirks. Tennant had his, Eccleston had his, Matt Smith had his, Capaldi had his, and Jodie Whittaker has hers. Ncuti Gatwa’s guaranteed to have his own, and I’m down for it. So this idea that it somehow comes down to male or female, I think that’s silly.
And by the way, rose-colored glasses, y’all. I was there. Nobody was happy about Janeway being a captain. There were just as many sexist idiots out there at that time as there are today, trust me. Then they turn around and bail on what the show could’ve been. You know what, I’m sorry. I’m not going to do that. This is neither the place nor the time.
The Doctor vs Freddy Krueger
Doctor Who is no stranger to horror. What Doctor Who does is explain it.
Television writer here. Wrote three pilots, had a feature script on the desk of the president of Warner Brothers, before Zaslav. So I’m going to play this thought game with you.
The Doctor arrives someplace, and what he finds is people being killed in their sleep. Literally. It looks like someone’s murdering them, so he begins to investigate. He’ll have a companion. In my head canon right now I’m seeing Matt Smith, because I always see Matt Smith immediately as the Doctor, and I’m not going with Rory and Amy. I’m going Clara, which immediately changes Matt Smith’s outfit in my head.
What he finds out is that someone has managed to enter people’s dreams using a sleep wave generator. Made that up on the fly. Clara finds a video file, and it’s the person who invented the thing, talking about how it’s all for the good. And you literally get the guy who played Freddy Krueger to play this character, as a regular person. We invented this thing, it began to help people see their better selves. It’s a self-help tool, and society is thriving.
Then they get the idea: what if we started using this to rehabilitate criminals? And you get one genius-level criminal, a real Moriarty if you will, who disconnects his consciousness while they’re in his brain. He becomes the ghost in the machine. The problem now is that most of the population is dead and the machine continues to crank out the signal. Anybody who shows up is part of the network. The minute they fall asleep, Freddy’s in their dreams.
So now you have the Doctor having to fight through it, and you get that moment where Freddy corners him and the Doctor explains: you thought I was running away because I’m scared of you? No, my friend. You’re in my mind. I’m scared for you.
You’ve got to have something like the hotel one, too. Some room that Freddy tries to go into, or the Doctor tries to go into, and the Doctor says no, I can’t hide in here. It should be something truly terrifying to the Doctor, and we don’t get to see what it is. You just get to see the actor play it. Matt Smith, looking in that room: oh, that’s terrifying.
It’s this whole mind play, and ultimately the Doctor’s got the stronger brain, no matter what. This is just a person augmented by a machine. The Doctor’s the Doctor. He’s a Time Lord.
But Clara is terrified. And it doesn’t even have to be Freddy Krueger. Maybe it takes on the guise of Freddy because Clara thinks about him. This person went into her mind and saw her nightmare. Maybe they’re talking it through and she says, oh, you mean like the Freddy Krueger guy, and the Doctor says no, not like Freddy Krueger, what are you talking about. And then it’s just totally like Freddy Krueger.
That would be so dope.
The Doctor vs Michael Myers
For Michael Myers, I think you’ve got to go Torchwood. “Countrycide,” spelled c-i-d-e, is one of the most terrifying episodes of television I’ve ever seen. Spoilers if you haven’t seen Torchwood, and I apologize. The entire episode is them chasing what they believe is an alien attacking people, and you get to the end and find out it was the people the whole time.
You rip that play right out of the playbook. You have the Doctor chasing down what he believes is an alien, working through who it could be, and it turns out to be a person.
If that feels a little too scary, okay. Then you have an alien race and a criminal, like Prisoner Zero, who escapes a prison transport. I feel like this one is Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. He discovers there’s a killer on the loose and everyone’s describing it the way you’d describe anything. Or dude, let’s go Earth. It’s Earth, it’s Halloween. The killer’s been fought by the police, by the authorities, by UNIT.
And then they find out through the Doctor that there’s an alien thing attached to the base of his brain. It’s augmenting his strength and enhancing everything else, because this creature feeds on psychotic tendencies. It’s not an evil creature. You’ve got to remember, Doctor Who is all about taking the thing you believe and flipping it on its head. So the Doctor discovers that this Michael Myers-y person maybe was disturbed to begin with, but the creature at the base of his skull is amplifying that and making it that much worse.
Oh yeah. Bro, that’s the one.
Those were great questions, and this is what I love about the whole thing: Know-It-All Nation getting together to talk and ask questions.
Tell me what you thought of my two scenarios, and if you disagree with any of these answers, I’d love to read what you think for yourself. Got a question you want answered in a future Know-It-All Files? Ask it. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
