Talk:The Doctor Dances

Nancy

Should we have an article about Nancy, as she is a main character in the two-parter. Sorry, though, I can't do it --Jawr256 19:02, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

She's still a minor character, unless she becomes a companion or something, so no. --khaosworks 19:06, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

It would go the way of Doctor Constantine — listed for VFD. Tim! (talk) 08:30, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Edits

Sorry about the mess with the edits this morning. I'd done lots of tweaks in one session, then couldn't save them because another edit had been done at the same time. So I tried to merge my changes back in; however, I'd used the 'Synopsis' edit link rather than the global one, so by reapplying the change I managed to delete stuff outside that block. Ah well, I think I'll do edits in small chunks from now on. --DudeGalea 07:55, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

We live and learn. :) --khaosworks 10:30, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Gushing

I don't normally insert editorial comments here, but I just wanted to note that Steven Moffat turned in an absolutely corking two-parter that stands up to the best Who has ever done. It was a tough call for me whether to show the Doctor triumphantly crying, "Everybody lives! Just this once!" for the article screencap, but I thought that would be too much of a spoiler right at the head of it. --khaosworks 10:30, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

bit ironic given its the middle of the blitz. GraemeLeggett 14:59, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

"Schlecht"

Continuing the "bad wolf" references, the German bomb that Jack sits on has the words "Schlecter Wolf" stencilled on its shell. "Schlect" is German for "Bad".

No—schlecht is. Either the transcription or the episode itself is off. Note also that "bad wolf" in German would be "b�ser Wolf", to match the fairytale—"schlecht" is usually bad as in failing; "b�se" is usually bad as in evil (they are somewhat interchangeable, but these are the most common uses). JRM � Talk 14:37, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

It was "schlechter", as can be seen in the photo on Mickey's site. I've fixed up the spelling in the notes. Regarding the difference between 'schlecht' and 'b�se', it could be either that the writers didn't realise the difference in meaning, or that they really do mean 'bad' as in 'failing'. Who knows until we see the end of the season? (Admittedly, "Failing Wolf" would be a pretty crappy name to give a bomb. :-) )--DudeGalea 15:01, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

A bilingual pun could have been created - bad in German being bath.

Interestingly, it looks like RTD didn't even plan this one. Apparently the production crew spotted lots of "Bad Wolf" references, and stuck this one in for a bit of fun. Can't remember where I read this; maybe the RTD interview in DWM, or possibly on the BBC site. --DudeGalea 17:12, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Having taken German classes, I'd like to point out that "Schlechter Wolf" does not mean "Worse Wolf". The '-er' is one of a family of suffixes that are added to adjectives when they appear before nouns. "Worse Wolf" in German would be "Schlechterer Wolf". --[KT]

But "schlechter" doesn't mean "bad". "Schlecht" means "bad". "Schlechter" therefore means "More bad", i.e. "worse". (as does "schlechterer", which is another level above that) --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 08:50, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You're both right, after a fashion. "Der Wolf ist schlecht", the wolf's bad. "Es ist ein schlechter Wolf," it's a bad wolf. "Dieser Wolf ist (noch) schlechter," this here wolf's (even) worse. Consequently, "er ist ein schlechterer Wolf", "it's a worse wolf." So "schlechter Wolf" is indeed "bad wolf" -- it does not mean "worse wolf" in this context; also, as someone correctly pointed out, the "canonical form" (as in, big bad wolf) would be "böser Wolf", which clearly implies "evil" or "wicked", whereas "schlecht" could mean "(morally) bad" or "faulty." --Azundris

Superjamie

This doesn't need to go into the article because it's sheer speculation, but it's interesting to note that the nanogenes weren't just programmed to heal to the right pattern, but to make its patients battle-ready. Now, the Doctor did reprogram them, but that was after they restored Jamie to full health, using Nancy's pattern. That means Jamie is perfectly healthy, but does that also mean he's still a fully equipped Chula warrior? ;) --khaosworks 17:14, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

LOL! Nice observation. I'm guessing the intended answer is 'no' (the reprogrammed nanos could also have re-repaired Jamie), but it's fun to think through the possible consequences. --DudeGalea 18:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this will be a future episode, as Boom Town is bringing back one of the Slitheen, and the rift in Cardiff? :-> --Christopherlin 20:21, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I've been idly wondering why the Reapers didn't show up, given that a dead Jamie is now a not dead Jamie... Harris 17:18, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Because there wasn't a paradox, really. Jamie's survival may have been meant to happen. The difference between Jamie being saved and Pete being saved was not so much the fact of Pete's survival, but that by saving her father, Rose altered her own personal history (she went back in time because her father died/her father lived so she didn't go back in time/she didn't go back in time so her father died/she went back in time because her father died) tangling up her own timeline in a very very nasty knot. --khaosworks 17:27, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Could also be that there was a long time line/story axis involved - given what happens in the last episode. (I am trying to avoid accidental overriding of plot-spoilers.)Jackiespeel 15:47, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quotes

Can anyone remember the Doctor's comment on having a long night and a lot of shelves to put up? I'd like to put it on wikiquote:Doctor Who. --Jawr256 18:28, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

I actually had Jack's comment just before that up, but I'll expand it and shift it to the Conversations section of the quote article. --khaosworks 18:33, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Butcher

She says that half the street believes that Mrs Lloyd is having an affair with the butcher, but she knows that it is actually Mr Lloyd who is doing so - serious blackmail material in the 1940s.

My memory of this episode isn't too hot, but I seem to recall that the "affair" was only implied; Nancy expressed it as something like "Everyone thinks Mrs Lloyd is involved with the butcher, but it's actually you"; which could mean that she knows he's involved in some criminal enterprise, rather than a relationship. I know the implication that we are supposed to derive, but I just had this feeling that it was phrased ambiguously enough to make the "blackmail" comment inappropriately definite.

But I could be wrong. Anyone remember exactly how it went? --DudeGalea 15:23, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The phrase was, IIRC, "Half the street thinks your missus is messing about with Mr Haverstock the butcher, but she isn't, isn't she? You are." I've rephrased the "blackmail" line a bit. --khaosworks 15:25, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

'Messing about' still doesn't necessarily mean they're having an intimate affair; they may just be, as DudeGalea just said, partners in a black-market operation to profit from illicit meat distribution... Radagast 16:24, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

True, but you have to look at it in context of the sentence, where "messing about" implies sexual conduct. If it meant something else, the sentence should have been "half the street thinks your missus is messing about... but she isn't. You're dealing/stealing stuff with the Butcher" or something similar. --khaosworks 16:28, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

I think the phrase "messing about" is quite understandable in English, unless you are referring to children "larking about". GraemeLeggett 16:26, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree that "messing about" is a bit more specific than the version I remembered. And I also agree that it was clear that the intended meaning was sexual. But still, the fact that it was an ambiguous phrase (even if only a very slight ambiguity) means that we should retain the feel of the original phrasing when we summarise it, rather than make it sound like the episode contained an overt sexual reference. IMHO, of course. --DudeGalea 17:52, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, let's leave in "messing about" and leave it up to people who want to read it however they want to read it. --khaosworks 17:58, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

I like it. --DudeGalea 18:10, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, that's odd. I fixed up the English in your edit because it was a bit garbled. But now when I do a diff, your edit looks perfectly fine! I have no idea what happened there, but feel free to rv to your edit. --DudeGalea 18:13, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh heavens, now it looks garbled again. I dunno, I'm gonna abandon wikipedia for a while and let someone else with a competent connection sort it all out. :-) --DudeGalea 18:15, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Are there meant to be parallels with the other "triangle" at the end - the Doctor, Rose and Jack?

OnCom or OmCom?

I thought the "communicate through anything with a speaker" was called OmCom (as in "omni-communiation", or some such). Anyone got the DVD to check? (I know the DVD subtitles aren't entirely accurate, but they might help.) —Josiah Rowe 14:16, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

OmComm sounds right, actually. Should have caught that. --khaosworks (talk � contribs) 14:30, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess when the script book comes out we'll know the spelling for sure. —Josiah Rowe 14:52, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Erm...you know that the Doc says anything with a speaker grille can be used? Well...what about the typewriter that Nancy points out? That doesn't have one.--84.51.149.80 17:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

He was still using it to communicate, though. In any case, Jamie's powers weren't limited to talking through radios. He was also telekinetic, and super-strong. --khaosworks (talk � contribs) 17:52, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)- True, but he didn't say only something with a speaker grille could be used. Alternatively, it could only speak through a something with a grille- typewriters don't speak. --Sean Jelly Baby? 17:58, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Subtitles call it "Om-Com" but without the quotation marks.

And that's what's in The Shooting Scripts too. Confirmed. —Josiah Rowe 17:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)\

Shooting script confirms "nav-com" as well. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 11:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

DVD typo

As requested, I can confirm that the "Dance's" mistake is present only on the "vanilla" release. At least, it's not on my R1 or R2 Series One box sets either. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Nobody Dies

Can Castrovalva or The Celestial Toymaker really be considered "nobody dies" episodes? All the residents of Castrovalva were certainly destroyed, does the fact that they weren't "real" people mean they didn't die? Given they certainly had free will, I'd call that dying. The Toymaker's minions were people he had trapped formerly and certainly died when his world was destroyed. --Suttkus 21:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

That's why the note says "technically", I thought. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

My bad. I should have read more carefully. --Suttkus 14:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Having just gotten to see School Reunion I fieel that it needs to be said that, while individual viewers might debate whether the destruction of Jack's computer casts doubt on the "everybody lives" nature of this story, there are numerous examples in the history of the show that the Doctor considers artificial life of importance and worth consideration. Along with his reactions to K9 Mark III's sacrifice tonight I am reminded of the Doctor's sentiments to K9's I and II travails, to Kamelion's pleas for destruction and, in particular, the way the Doctor treats the andoids in both The Robots of Death and The Androids of Tara. Now I know that there have been numerous androids and computers that the Doctor has destroyed AND I know that the scriptwriters may simply have missed the fact that the destruction of Jack's ship might constitute a death in this episode. However, I like to think that, perhaps in a future book or radio story (of debatable canonicity), that the Dootor finds a way to go back and rescue Jack's Chula ship then truly everybody will have lived. MarnetteD | Talk 03:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd also have some dispute with that claim for Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead... the whole archaeology crew effectively died! Their brainwaves were saved and put into the index computer, but whether they are therefore still alive, or, in the library's own words, merely "saved" (without surviving) is another matter. What's left behind is something akin to a mental photograph... After most of them were stripped to the bone, and River was electrocuted, even the behind-the-scenes footage from the Doctor Who Confidential pretty much concludes the existence within the databanks as a kind of postmortem "heaven" 77.102.101.220 (talk) 19:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Everybody Dies

Another example of the "Everybody Dies" type episode is the 5th Doctor's "Warriors of the Deep", in which nearly all the humans and all of the Silurians and Sea Devils die. The Doctor's comment at the end of the story, 'There should have been another way', pretty much sums this up. D. R. Hucke

Yep. The reason why the others aren't mentioned is because the note is primarily for examples of "Everybody lives". --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 10:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

The Girl in the Fireplace

The S2 episode The Girl in the Fireplace also has a reference to the Doctor dancing/not being able to dance (and a banana mentioned with it).

Jackiespeel 16:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. The Girl in the Fireplace is mentioned in relation to bananas in note 6. Added a brief line about the repeat of "dancing". --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Spoilers

Was it really necessary to put such a *large*, detailed spoiler (the Bad Wolf one) for episodes beyond this one in the footnotes? When it said "Plot and/or ending details follow", I was assuming for the episode, not the whole season. Certainly I don't expect spoiler protection for things like 'there's a 10th doctor' (or inconsequential ones like the reference to dancing in a second season episode), but it'd be nice to avoid spoiling episodes that haven't yet aired in the US in en.wikipedia.org. Or at least say 'season ending details' to make it clear.

I'm not sure I understand - are you talking about the "defabricated" note? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:07, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. I bailed out of reading immediately at that point so I don't know what other context there might have been, but it was an unpleasant surprise. --tavella

Sorry, tavella (hi, if it's the same person from LJ); but honestly, it's not a major spoiler, just a very minor event in Bad Wolf. Perhaps the word "defabricated" is a bit vague and can be misconstrued: I'll rephrase it. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

On reflection, the note is quite trivial, and isn't really notable by itself. I'm removing it. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 07:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've managed to remain so unspoiled I don't even know what Bad Wolf is, and I'm trying to hold on to that for the last three episodes. Glad to know it wasn't as significant as it sounded. And yes, I'm tavella from LJ. --tavella

Speaker grill

Sorry if this has been mentioned before in the talk, but after seeing a few 10th Doctor spoilers on this page, I had to quit reading.

Problem 1: It is about the OmCom/Oncom being able to transmit through anything with a speaker grill. A speaker grill is just the piece of wire or plastic over the speaker. Now, I have a feeling it is implied that a speaker must be under the grill, but I could have a speaker grill attached to the side of my desk here, with no speaker. That would make O(m/n)Com impossible, in my opinion. Nitpicky I know.

Problem 2: Rose turns up the radio just prior to inviting the Doctor to dance. With no power to the radio, Jack Harkness would have had to increase the power output through the O(m/n)Com system for the sound to increase. Without power to the radio, Rose should not have been able to turn the radio up at all.

Problem 3: If, in The Parting of the Ways, Mickey heard the TARDIS from far off, enough to make him have to run, why in the world didn't Jack Harkness hear it arrive in his ship? Is there a difference between planetary appearances and appearances in smaller areas, such as a small ship?
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 08:12, 11 June 2006 (UTC) PS. I am American, so I used the common spelling for "grill" here in the States.

Problem 1: . . . oops. 'Twas a goof.

Problem 2: Another goof.

Problem 3: Continuity error.

Darn those pesky writers.  ;) DonQuixote 15:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Are 1 and 2 notable enough to be included in the article? I guess I should have asked that. - LA @ 18:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Is this season's DVD set out in the UK yet? If so, does it have subtitles. If yes, then to clear up the O(m/n)Com problem, just turn on the subtitles to see which is right. The set isn't out in the US until 7/4. - LA @ 18:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

It's OmCom. That's what's in the shooting script. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Bit of an awkward quote

"The world doesn't end if the Doctor dances" because it sounds like he *has* to.

Lunakeet 18:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Luke Perry?

I suspect that this ISN'T the American actor Luke Perry (a la "Friends"), so the hyperlink on the name should either be removed or redirected.

(BTW, "suspect" is used ironically here.)

)

98.229.237.2 (talk) 07:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. It's been redirected. DonQuixote (talk) 15:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know where else to put this or how (newbie, advice appreciated), but...

Rose, Jack and the Doctor play the tape of Dr Constantine trying to treat Jamie. But there were no tape recorders in Britain in 1941. Tape recording was developed by the Germans in WW2 and not available to the Allies until after the liberation of Luxembourg. A professional like Dr Constantine would have used a transcription disk of some type. Jeffm23 (talk) 06:57, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Just put it down to the Doctor Who universe being different from ours. We didn't have nanobots running around during WWII either. DonQuixote (talk) 15:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

That is now mentioned in the Production section. -- Beardo (talk) 22:48, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

'Spose so. I'm a recent discoverer of the BBCAmerica series, finding the whole mythos very interesting. One thing I noticed about Earth in the "Doctor Who universe" is that it seems amazingly un-bigoted, particularly regarding ethnicity and sexuality. Of course, it does appear that the price they pay is that they get invaded by aliens every Xmas... Jeff (talk) 22:13, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

References

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Jack as a companion

There's no such thing as "being credited as companion". Defining a companion as such is original research. Sources say that Jack is a companion, and that's what wikipedia goes by. DonQuixote (talk) 11:03, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I have done some digging and not found any sources that explicitly state that Captain Jack Harkness was a companion. There are lots that say that he joined and travelled with the doctor from this point but none that say that he played the role of a companion in this episode. Also what I meant by being credited as a companion is that you never see a companion being credited anywhere apart from the top of the episode end credits and the opening credits as well. Jack was credited in neither of those. Panda815 (talk) 12:28, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

That's your interpretation of the credits and constitutes original research. As per companion, a quick search results in [1]. Also, read Jack Harkness#Characterisation DonQuixote (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Your source tells us that Captain Jack was a companion in general but with regards to this episode all it says is that he met the doctor here. There is no source that confirms that he was a companion in his first appearance. It’s like Wilfred Mott, he wasn’t put as companion in Voyage of the Damned was he? Panda815 (talk) 12:53, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Wilfred Mott was a separate character before they made him a recurring character (after Howard Attfield's death) and then made him a companion in The End of Time. If you read Jack's character creation, they clearly mapped out his role in series 1 during production. They're nothing alike in terms of creation and development (i.e. MOS:REALWORLD). DonQuixote (talk) 13:03, 16 July 2020 (UTC)