The great duplicate mystery

[senko]

I was watching the 5 doctors earlier with the replacement for the first doctor and it got me thinking. If you lay aside the hand waving (the doctor only shares general features with the actors e.g. short, dark haired, young, etc and the people who play him had different calls to fame in his universe) it would make an interesting story seed.

While spending time on earth the doctor catch's sight of what appears to be one of his past incarnations playing a part on an earth television show. While investigating he finds that scattered across the late 20th and early 21st century are human beings exactly identical each of his lives in terms of appearance, personality and yet utterly unaware of the time lords. Where did these copies come from? Is it just some bizzare cosmic coincidence, are they echo's from the time war or a move by some future enemy?

[Catsmate]

I like it. Perhaps the cause of the 'duplicates' I down to prior interactions with the Doctor? He could have inadvertently 'infected' humans somehow (morphic fields? Gallifreyan genetics?) and caused their children to resemble him?

[senko]

I deliberately didn't specify that so any GM's could design whatever plot appealed to them.

[starkllr]

Sounds like a variation on John Scalzi's "Redshirts."

Or possibly "Galaxy Quest."

Maybe a companion who gets left behind in the 1950's or early 1960's makes friends with someone who works at the BBC, and starts telling stories...

Or maybe the TARDIS crosses into another universe, one where Gallifrey and the Time Lords don't exist, but the echoes of them resonate and seep into the collective unconscious, with some people (that universe's versions of Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman, Robert Holmes et al) more susceptible than others to that influence, leading them to create a TV series based on those echoes...

[Catsmate]

Jun 27, 2016 13:49:53 GMT starkllr said:

Sounds like a variation on John Scalzi's "Redshirts."

Or possibly "Galaxy Quest."

Maybe a companion who gets left behind in the 1950's or early 1960's makes friends with someone who works at the BBC, and starts telling stories...

Or maybe the TARDIS crosses into another universe, one where Gallifrey and the Time Lords don't exist, but the echoes of them resonate and seep into the collective unconscious, with some people (that universe's versions of Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman, Robert Holmes et al) more susceptible than others to that influence, leading them to create a TV series based on those echoes...

A bit like Doctor How.

[senko]

Lots of potential plots there anyway,

[starkllr]

The more I think about it, the more the Galaxy Quest approach makes sense.

The transmissions of the original DW series leak out into space, get sucked through a wormhole and spit out a few thousand light-years away and a few million years in the past), and are received by a humanoid culture that takes them not as "historical documents" but maybe as prophecy (which would explain why a scientific-minded and hyper-advanced culture like the Time Lords sets so much store by such a fiddly, ancient, backwards concept as prophecy in the first place!).

It quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as such things do. The Gallifrey we recognize from the show takes shape in short order, and important figures take on the names that are used on the show. And then they go out into the universe, just as their prophecy said they would. Needless to say, they seek out Earth, to find the humans who feature so prominently in their prophecies as companions to the Doctor. But of course those people don't actually exist. There is no Sarah Jane Smith or Peri Brown or Jo Grant. But there IS an Elisabeth Sladen and a Nicola Bryant and a Katy Manning, and they all look and talk remarkably like the prominent figures of the prophecy...

[Catsmate]

It's not just the twentieth/twenty-first centuries; there was the unnamed Abbot of Amboise, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, Ramón Salamander, Edward Marlow, John Frobisher Lobus Caecilius et cetera. And some of his companions too.

[senko]

I recongize the first one didn't realize that there were that many duplicates. If I were the doctor I'd be wondering just how was my adoption of images that have an impact on my psyche (latest form explanation) and how much was my image being imprinted on time and space by something

[starkllr]

If I were the doctor I'd be wondering just how was my adoption of images that have an impact on my psyche (latest form explanation) and how much was my image being imprinted on time and space by something

Maybe it's a result of the 11th Doctor rebooting the universe in "The Bi Bang"

What if, when he flew the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS and shined the restorative light of the Pandorica to every corner of the universe, something of his basic nature got transmitted out, too?

It might just be his image, which explains why there are so many lookalikes of him in his various incarnations running around.

Or it might be personality traits, too. Habits, attitudes, quirks. How many weird fads, cults and historical oddities might be chalked up to bits of the Doctor's psyche being transmitted throughout the universe and becoming part of the very fabric of time and space?

[Catsmate]

Jun 29, 2016 11:53:57 GMT starkllr said:

If I were the doctor I'd be wondering just how was my adoption of images that have an impact on my psyche (latest form explanation) and how much was my image being imprinted on time and space by something

Maybe it's a result of the 11th Doctor rebooting the universe in "The Bi Bang"

What if, when he flew the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS and shined the restorative light of the Pandorica to every corner of the universe, something of his basic nature got transmitted out, too?

It might just be his image, which explains why there are so many lookalikes of him in his various incarnations running around.

Or it might be personality traits, too. Habits, attitudes, quirks. How many weird fads, cults and historical oddities might be chalked up to bits of the Doctor's psyche being transmitted throughout the universe and becoming part of the very fabric of time and space?

I like that! A few glitches in the firmware of the new universe after the reboot...
Lots of possibilities.

[slobo1]

It's the start of the first adventure of the ninth doctor in the Comics from Titans.

[Catsmate]

Interesting BBC Future piece.
You are surprisingly likely to have a living doppelganger.

This might also be interesting.

[senko]

Just read about Tom and Idris Whildthyme in the 3rd doctor expanded source book. Assuming for the sake of these question that the entire doctor who series was nothing more than a unit ploy to help cover things up by televising the doctor's adventures or at least those that occured on earth plus the ones he shared (with either the doctor playing himself or actors cast to resemble him) so they can claim future issues are "television stunts gone wrong." First how popular do you think the show would be in his universe and second how would people react after the invasions that affected the entire world and the possible realization he was real?

Hmm I just had a worrying explanation of why all the footage of a long running series was destroyed by the BBC in file clearing resulting in entire lost episodes given the doctor cleared up information on him as he got too big. Just enough left to make people dismiss him as a television show, nothing someone could point at.

Obviously not for the real world but in his universe it was televised (by unit or a companion/companions/companions descendant/s) and then he destroyed as much as he could reach to conceal himself . . .

[Catsmate]

Jul 22, 2016 8:46:56 GMT senko said:

Just read about Tom and Idris Whildthyme in the 3rd doctor expanded source book. Assuming for the sake of these question that the entire doctor who series was nothing more than a unit ploy to help cover things up by televising the doctor's adventures or at least those that occured on earth plus the ones he shared (with either the doctor playing himself or actors cast to resemble him) so they can claim future issues are "television stunts gone wrong."

Shades of StarGate's Wormhole X-Treme! or the ploy used by Bureau 13 to cover up 'incidents'...

Jul 22, 2016 8:46:56 GMT senko said:

First how popular do you think the show would be in his universe and second how would people react after the invasions that affected the entire world and the possible realization he was real?

Hmm I just had a worrying explanation of why all the footage of a long running series was destroyed by the BBC in file clearing resulting in entire lost episodes given the doctor cleared up information on him as he got too big. Just enough left to make people dismiss him as a television show, nothing someone could point at.

Obviously not for the real world but in his universe it was televised (by unit or a companion/companions/companions descendant/s) and then he destroyed as much as he could reach to conceal himself . . .

I suppose it'd depend on how well the series was done; I could see such a show becoming a cult favourite. In the EU there is both Professor X (the Doctor Who analogue) and Nightshade  (a Quatermass analogue) and the former was quite popular.

Professor X was a BBC science fiction television series which ran from 1963 to 1989.
The show concerned a mysterious scientist who travelled through time and space inside a TASID, a ship which resembled a pillar box on the outside.

I've used both in my Who gaming.


Are you familiar with Doctor How? It seems to be defunct but I liked the idea and it's very gameable.

Doctor How’s famous megalomaniac brother Doctor Who sold his fictional life story to the BBC half a century ago, painting himself as a lone hero. Disillusioned, their four cousins dropped out. For fifty years, Doctor How has held the line against the forces of darkness and stupidity. And he’s not that happy, since you ask.
Illegal aliens try to hack How’s Spectrel (TARDIS is a very rude word where he comes from), just as he suspects his estranged cousin Where has been compromised. When reports come in of mysterious attacks by alien creatures, Doctor How has to rely on his new companion Kevin, a petty criminal from south London, and Trinity, a morphing super-predator, as he counters this threat to humanity’s existence. Bungling agents from MI16, long desperate to capture the Time Keeper’s technology, hamper How’s efforts to combat the alien menace. Can Doctor How keep ahead of MI16, save Where and combat the alien threat?

An excellent model for a Who variant, allowing for Doctor Who to exist.

[senko]

You really want to mess with the timeline the doctor planted the idea for the series thinking it'd run for a few episodes maybe a season and then get cancelled like most low budget scifi movies. Then a few decades later he finds out it instead became a cultclassic and has made several episodes he didn't want released based on stories by his former companions and the master so he sets out to destroy the records as its now finally off the air as a result of which it gets revised into new who.