What’s up, my Know-It-Alls? It’s time for another episode of The Know-It-All Files, and the short answer on what that is: it’s Mr. Know-It-All proving he knows it all.

What I’ve done is go onto Quora and Reddit and find relevant questions in various categories. You’ve seen the Star Trek ones on Trek Talk Tuesdays, where we answered a whole bunch of them. This time it’s Doctor Who. I came prepared. I’m in my third outfit, my jumper, looking like my Ninth Doctor cosplay, and I’m ready.

Why Can’t the Doctor Go Back to Amy and Rory?

He can’t, because it’s contaminated, man.

When they were dealing with going to New York, as River explains in the episode, there’s already a whole lot happening. With all the time travel going on, it’s chaos. There’s no chance he’s going to be able to bring the TARDIS in, which is why she uses a time hopper she got off of a time agent.

It comes back to the angels. The entire episode keeps reinforcing that the angels are using this place as their own personal buffet. They trap you there, they send you back to that very moment, you loop through time, and they’re just sitting there feeding on it. That creates a massive set of circumstances that makes time travel very difficult.

So Rory and Amy cause a paradox, which contaminates the well and ultimately resets everything. But it really only made things worse from the perspective of how time is handled. Then the last surviving angel touches Amy and she zaps out of existence. Actually it’s Rory first and then Amy, but Amy was the one that was the most dramatic at the time.

What you end up with is so much damage connected to this era that, yes, he could go visit, but his presence would cause so many problems and ripples. You know he’d be tempted to take them back. And they have a destiny that he now knows, which is that they’re going to die here. He can’t interfere with that.

I think I started out saying that was a short answer. Clearly it was anything but.

Russell T Davies Is Back, and I’m All About It

The question was how I feel about Russell T Davies returning as Doctor Who showrunner now that Chibnall has left.

I love it. I’m all about it, man. He’s the guy who rebooted it. It’s wonderful. I did a whole video on what Russell T Davies’ master plan for Doctor Who is, and you’ve got to check it out. It’s all speculation, but I definitely believe we’re moving in kind of that direction. If there’s an architect I want steering this thing, it’s him.

The answer sitting on the question itself was actually a very cynical one. Well, because of ratings, and this and this, and they knew they needed something stunt-wise.

Look, you don’t come here for negative reviews. You don’t come here for negativity. I don’t feed that kind of fandom, because I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who, and I’m a huge fan of Star Trek, and I’m a huge fan of all these different things we discuss on the channel. I’m always hopeful. I was hopeful for the Jodie Whittaker era, and the writing just wasn’t there.

So I’m definitely of the mindset that the Chibnall era had its place. There are people who are going to love it and die by that decision. There are people who don’t like it. Hey, I’m good either way.

What Would a Harlan Ellison Episode of Doctor Who Be Like?

I love these kinds of questions. This is like my Star Trek, Star Wars question.

First off, everybody needs to understand who Harlan Ellison is. Harlan Ellison was the guy who wrote “The City on the Edge of Forever.” He’s a very famous sci-fi writer who wrote some really good Star Trek.

Honestly, IDW did a comic book version of Harlan Ellison’s original script for “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Time travel. I’m cheating. I’m going right there.

In it, there’s a massive hall of faces. It wasn’t the ring thing we saw in the episode, which is beautiful, by the way, and iconic. He was much more ambitious in his original script. There were these massive columns of faces, and multiple voices, and you heard voices from different perspectives. It was supposedly like moments in time, or the same statue representing the various stages of time. Brilliant.

It had all the elements from “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Spock putting the hat on and the whole thing, but there were deeper, much more involved elements. Spock in the original one was really working hard. It reminded me a little bit more of “Time’s Arrow,” the Next Generation episode. Remember Data and everybody trying to build some sort of a device to signal back to the future? That was kind of what this story was like, and I wouldn’t doubt it if they borrowed elements from it years later to do that other episode of Next Generation.

So I’d expect something much deeper. It’d probably feel a little closer to some of the old Doctor Who episodes. What I really enjoyed about Harlan Ellison’s writing is that he always gave us deep questions, and that’s what science fiction is supposed to do.

That’s my answer. An episode from Harlan would be just like “The City on the Edge of Forever,” but the extended version, like what we saw in the IDW comic book.

Will the Doctor Ever Lose His TARDIS?

Sure. He has. He’s done that before.

The Third Doctor spent almost his entire career on Earth. I think he traveled once in a while, but for the most part he was always there on Earth.

And watch the episode “Blink,” with our boy David Tennant, back in the Tenth Doctor’s era. “Blink” is literally about him and Martha going back in time and getting stuck in the past. I think they got sent back by the angels, which is why that ultimately happened. So they’re back in the past without the TARDIS, and he’s got to do his best to talk someone through how to get him back, and then ultimately recover the TARDIS.

So he’s lost it before, and I mean for long periods of time. That isn’t a big obstacle. Will he lose it again? Yeah, sure he will. Will it matter? Mm-mm.

Rose Tyler or Sarah Jane Smith?

Which companion did I like better, and why.

I only vaguely remember Sarah Jane Smith from the Tom Baker era. Tom Baker was the first Doctor I can say I remember having watched. It used to be on in the afternoons. On Sunday afternoon it would be Godzilla and then Doctor Who, and then maybe kung fu movies later in the afternoon. Okay, I’m dating myself. I know this.

But I do know Sarah Jane Smith from the episode she was in when she came back. And then later on, of course, she had her own series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

From what I know, I liked Rose Tyler better. But my understanding is Rose Tyler and Sarah Jane Smith had very different relationships with the Doctor. It’s almost like asking who’s better, Donna Noble or Rose Tyler. They’re two very different characters who are equally important in different ways, if that makes sense. So much so that Rose comes back briefly to cameo in that two-parter.

That’s a difficult choice to make. But I’m going to say Rose.

Are Doctor Who’s Aliens Really More Believable Than Star Trek’s?

The question as written: why are the extraterrestrials on Doctor Who so much more varied, believable, and non-anthropomorphic than on Star Trek?

Varied? Believable? You think the aliens in Doctor Who are believable? Because the way the question’s worded, that’s as opposed to the unbelievable ones in Star Trek. That’s the only thing I can glean from all that. Okay. I’m willing to go there.

Star Trek fundamentally enlists an idea from science, and I think I said this literally in one of the last Star Trek Q&As we did. If this is the perfect form, then ultimately all life will mature like this. Two arms, a head, two eyes, the whole bit, some version of this.

Doctor Who doesn’t subscribe to that. They subscribe to the chaos notion, which is that anything in space can happen. It’s like Rick and Morty. “I’m not in danger. There’s nothing out here.” “Literally everything is out here.” It’s not wrong.

So the whole idea of the aliens in Doctor Who being more realistic or more believable than the ones in Star Trek, I find laughable. At the same time, I get it. I totally get it. It’s like, oh, so they all walk around with five fingers and blah, blah, blah. No, not really. Some of them have no toes and whatever else. Two different styles.

But you got me thinking now. What I’ve always liked about Doctor Who is a different thing than believable. I love that the TARDIS answers how to translate, because the TARDIS gets into your head and now you can understand every language.

And I really do like that almost everything is related to aliens. Oh, you have witches and magic? Well, witches are just another form of math. You lot gave math and science power. These people gave words power. It’s really smart, the way they do that.

It’s never a supernatural thing. Even the one haunted house episode turned out to be a time traveling astronaut from the future. To me, I love that it’s always extraterrestrials that can be explained away. Not omnipotent, nigh god-like beings. We already have one of those.

The First Black Doctor Already Happened

Who will be the first Black Doctor Who?

Jo Martin, as the Fugitive Doctor, during the Jodie Whittaker era that just passed. That’s your first Black Doctor.

Ncuti Gatwa is going to be the first male Black Doctor, but the honor of being the first Black Doctor belongs to Jo Martin. It’s already come and gone, and she did wonderful. Or, as my cosplay would say, she was fantastic.

Why the Doctor Tried to Avoid Captain Jack

At the end of season 1, Rose has the Bad Wolf persona, the Bad Wolf power, the energy, the time vortex poured into her head. And she brought Jack back too well. Too much life.

Time Lords have a natural understanding of how time moves. The Doctor’s even said many times that his history’s perfect. He knows events because of the nature of who he is and what he is. And when things go wrong, he knows that too.

So Jack is a fact. In fact, David Tennant says that. His Doctor says it: you’re a fact. I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s an affront to his very Time Lord core.

That’s ultimately why he tries to avoid Jack. It’s anathema to everything he understands, the way he was raised, and everything else.

More Where Those Came From

Man, those are great. We’re going to do some more of these in just a little bit, and I hope you enjoyed that.

There you go. Now you know. And if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.

Leave your own questions. Otherwise I’m going back onto Quora and Reddit and whatnot, and I might start a Quora group or something so these all have a place to go. If you’ve got something that’s kind of off the wall, I’m down, man. I’m here for it. Let’s do it.

Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.

Got a Doctor Who question you want answered in a future Files episode, or a take on the Chibnall era either way? Leave it where the conversation lives, in the comments on the video above.