Saturday, January 4, 2014


A new theory of "Relateeveety" for Toobworld....

Beth Latimer, 'Broadchurch'
MacKenzie McHale, 'The Newsroom'
(First Cousins)

Beth Latimer, wife of Mark and mother of Chloe and the late Danny, was Beth Ropley before she married.  (Her mother, Liz Ropley, stayed with them during those difficult weeks after the tragedy.)

 So I think MacKenzie's mother was a Ropley and that her mother and Beth's father were brother and sister.  Beth was raised along the Dorset coast but Mac was raised in the United States during the time her father was the British Ambassador to America.  

Beth is played by Jody Whitaker and Mac is played by Emily Mortimer.


Friday, January 3, 2014



'SPOOKS' (aka 'MI5')


Krista Villaroche was a preventions analyst/investigator for Wakeman Insurance.  Her last big case dealt with the security of the Robin's Nest estate in Hawai'i for the Robin Masters Jewelry Design Competition in 1984-85.  She succumbed to the temptation to assist her father, legendary jewel thief Doc Villaroche, in making one last big score by stealing the entries in the competition, including the Karachi Diamond which was insured for about $175 million.

Although it angered Doc, Krista was relieved when she found out that Thomas Magnum had anticipated her plans and switched out all of the jewels, to be replaced by his Vietnam memento tream ring featuring the Cross of Lorraine.  She returned the ring with thanks for saving her soul and with the promise that one day she would return the favor.

Right after this case, Ms. Villaroche was approached by the British intelligence organization know as MI5, with a request to pull off a job for them at the American Embassy in London at the Court of St. James. This of course would mean it was on American soil.  Should she be apprehended while committing the crime, the agency would disavow all knowledge of her.  

They needed the best at her craft to pull off the heist since the security system for the embassy, but the safe in particular, had been designed by a former thief working for the SIA, Alexander Mundy.

Having proven herself successful in the "acquisition", Krista was offered a permanent position with MI5, which she accepted.  However, she was too well-known in many circles as not only Krista Villaroche, but also as the daughter of Doc Villaroche.  So she chose a new identity: that of Tessa Phillips.

("Phillips" was her mother's maiden name, and the first name was a diminutive of the nickname her father called her whenever he told her "bedtime stories" about kidnapped Persian princes, the Crusades, and the Nazi connection to the Karachi Diamond.  "Tessa" was short for "Contessa".)

When Doc Villaroche died under suspicious circumstances, something in "Tessa Phillips" changed; she became hard and cynical, always attempting to gain the upper hand in the office politics at Whitechapel.  And, having discovered how easy it was to create a new persona, she invented several fictional members of her team as a section chief in the Counter-Terrorism Unit.  This way she was able to draw about four more salaries in addition to her own.  

Once her ploy was uncovered by MI5 agent Zoe Reynolds, Krista/Tessa had no option but to flee, as she would be facing "extreme sanction" as a traitor to the state for stealing from the Crown.  Unable to use her identities as either Krista or Tessa, she assumed one of her other emergency aliases not known to the bureau.  She then called upon the memories of the stories told to her by her father of the Karachi Diamond and of its possession by Martin Bormann in South America*.

And if Bormann was able to elude capture there, being one of the most wanted men by the whole world......

To this day, Krista/Tessa is safely ensconced in South America under a new identity.  She may yet reappear on the Toobworld stage.

(There is some conjecture in the contstruction of this biography.)


* In the Trueniverse, Bormann's remains were found in West Berlin back in the 1960's.  The Toobworld follows the line of contention espoused by Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal that Bormann escaped to South America.

Thursday, January 2, 2014


Here's our second look at "Casablanca" for "Toobworld Goes To The Movies"......

As far as Toobworld is concerned, the 1942 movie "Casablanca" was an idealized version of events in the TV Universe.  The "real" Rick Blaine did not look like Humphrey Bogart; he was stockier and resembled actor Paul Douglas (whose televersion is confirmed thanks to an episode of 'I Love Lucy'.)

Douglas may not have been the most handsome of leading men, but then again neither was Bogart.  This is just another example of the movies idealizing the "real-life" inspiration.

The movie was adapted for television early in 1955 as an episode of 'Lux Video Theatre'.  It was O'Bviously edited for time, but all the major plot points from the movie were addressed.  And this is now the official version of events which were "later" adapted into the movie.

Later in 1955, and again in 1983, "Casablanca" was adapted as a TV series, but as prequels to the events of the movie.  Both of these are assigned to alternate TV dimensions.

It was tempting to finagle entry into Earth Prime-Time for the Charles McGraw series from 1955.  Altough many sources online claim that McGraw played Bogie's character of Rick Blaine, it's likely those sites just shared a common assumption.

If any site would be dedicated to every detail concerning "Casablanca", it would be Vincent's Casablanca Page.  

He says that McGraw played Rick Jason, not Rick Blaine.  I probably could have come up with a splainin - that Rick Jason sold the Cafe Americain to Rick Blaine, but then how would I splain away all the other recastings - like Captain Renault, Signore Ferrari, and Sam?

Occam's Razor must be applied here.  But it was tempting.  Just look at McGraw - he was perfect for the "historical" figure upon whom Bogie's movie character was based.......

So the one-shot for "Casablanca" is the only version of the movie in the main Toobworld.

Here's lookin' at you, Kid.....

(Unfortunately, I don't have any actual pictures of Paul Douglas as Rick Blaine.  The second photo is from "Panic In The Streets", but it had a nice feel to it - as though Rick was giving instructions to one of his waiters.....)


I won't be doing the daily showcase anymore for Toobworld, neither the "As Seen On TV" nor the "League Of Themselves".  Four years of that was enough and I'm frankly burned out on the feature.

But I'm not tired of Inner Toob, never fear!  So instead I am instituting a monthly feature called "Toobworld Goes To The Movies".  Once a month we'll take a look at the TV adaptations for some of the great movies throughout Time.

And we're kicking off our monthly salute to the televersions of movies with a look at the Toobworld counterpart to the film considered by many to be the greatest movie ever made: 


This is one movie for which we'll have several posts, one running each week during January......


Hi there!

Didja miss me?

You may not have noticed, considering yesterday's deluge of posts during the annual Who's On First blogathon, but I have not been posting on a regular basis since August 19th!  There were a handful of posts done while I was recuperating from surgery, and only two of the Who posts were written once I got back to Toobworld Central (needed to wait until the 50th anniversary).

But I was not idle.  I filled a Composition notebook with stories, promising to post them in 2014, a post a day.  So some may feel like old news but that's the way it goes.  There still new O'Bservations for the most part (unless somebody else came up with the same idea?)

There won't be anymore daily features like "As Seen On TV" or "League Of Themselves", but I will have a monthly feature to go with the inductions into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.  It's called Toobworld Goes To The Movies and will be about the televersions of twelve classic movies, something appropriate for each month I hope.

As for the TVXOHOF, it'll be another off-beat year of candidates as the Hall celebrates its fifteenth year of existence.  Most of the inductees only have one credit to their name, but theoretically they could link many other shows together.  (Like Dr. Loveless did.)

Just keep my mantra in mind: "What I say, goes."

So I hope you enjoy this return to our normally scheduled programming, already in progress.......



Well, here we are.  Midnight in Toobworld and our blogathon of 'Doctor Who' postings have come to an end.

As he played my favorite incarnation of the Doctor, I wondered what Patrick Troughton might have thought of my undertaking......

Oh well.....

Thanks for dropping by today, Team Toobworld.  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did in putting it all together!


(Thanks to the "Oh My Giddy Aunt" Tumblr page for the gif.....)

Wednesday, January 1, 2014


There is a reason why the Doctor can't cross his own time-stream......  

Long infatuated with his own brilliance, and admittedly attracted to members of the same gender, inevitably he would be tempted to travel back in Time and go bleep himself......



As I write this, the 50th Anniversary special for 'Doctor Who' is still months away with the Christmas special a month after that.

I don't know how much I'll be able to accomplish in getting these posts done before I have surgery on Wednesday, August 21st.  But I'll have limited capability online while I'm recuperating up in Ct. - iPhone and tablet are worth shit for blogging to my mind.  So at best I'll be able to post the text of my thoughts on them both, but I'll have to eschew most pictures (just like in the old days!)

But in the meantime, I can post my theory about the donated DNA for the regeneration between the Eleventh Incarnation and the Twelfth.

For once, we actually saw it happen!

However, there is a hitch - this is the first time in which we saw an earlier Doctor's biological imperative absorb the DNA and not the Doctor immediately preceding the new Incarnation.

When the Tenth Doctor listened to Donna's pleas and went back to rescue the family of Caecillius, he grasped the hand of Caecillius to guide him inside the TARDIS.  That's when the contact was made.  

So this was one time when the DNA was stored but not used upon the next regeneration.  The Doctor may have even stored it away in that data storage program which may have been designed by his old school chum Drax.  Which is why his body called upon a later collected sample from young Jim Taylor when it finally did come time to regenerate.

Eventually I hope to have the regeneration scene added in for you....

As to those mewling complaints that Peter Capaldi shouldn't be the Doctor because he was not only in 'Doctor Who' - "The Fires Of Pompeii", but also in 'Torchwood: Children Of Earth' as John Frobisher?

Well, I hope my DNA absorption theory settles the conflict as far as Caecillius goes.  As for Frobisher, it was the show's production team at the time who suggested that Frobisher was descended from Caecillius.  

As usual in Toobworld, the family genetics ran strong even down through countless generations.


I'm back at Toobworld Central as of today, November 30th, but still hobbled by my foot.  However, at least I can blog again!

And in that time I spent away, I've heard a rumor that the facial resemblance between Capaldi's Doctor and the characters he played in 'Doctor Who' and 'Torchwood' may be addressed - if not in the Christmas special, then in the next season of the series.


Everything we see happen in the TV series 'Doctor Who' actually takes place in the TV Universe.  But there are TV characters in that same universe who talk about 'Doctor Who' as a TV show, when they should be sharing the same plane of reality.

This has happened with a lot of TV shows and Toobworld Central has had to accept the possibility that in the future - to paraphrase Any Warhol - everybody in Earth Prime-Time will have a TV show about themselves.  (Hence, all the mentions of 'Gilligan's Island', 'The X-Files', 'The Brady Bunch', 'The Twilight Zone', 'Lost', and especially 'Star Trek'.)  Any time a show becomes popular, some other show will eventually reference it.

There's no getting around the fact that the Time Lord has had a TV show created about him.  To get around this discrepancy (which we call a Zonk), I came up with the concept that the TV show within the TV show of 'Doctor Who' was underwritten and overseen by UNIT as a way to maintain a deniability of the Doctor's existence to the general public.  It's similar to claims by the government that visions of UFOs are caused by swamp gas.

Similar TV programs - and movies - were created to obscure the existence of the spy agency U.N.C.L.E. as well as secret agents James Bond, Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott.

The Fictional 'Doctor Who' in Toobworld began as a couple of theatrical films starring Peter Cushing.  (This is how Toobworld has dealt with the existence of those movies in our world.)  The facts about the Time Lord have been deliberately altered so that nobody should guess the truth.  For instance, Peter Cushing's version of the Doctor is a human, not a Gallifreyan Time Lord.  And his name really is "Doctor Who".

Since then, the focus has been on televised representation, with even scenes from the real series showing up in some other programs - like a clip from one of the "Peladon" episodes with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.  Actual mentions of some of the actors who have played the role have been made so we got around that by saying that those actors were cast because they bore such remarkable resemblances to the actual Doctor in his various incarnations.

But they don't all have to be played by the actual actors that play the roles in our world.  

For instance, the Tenth Incarnation of the Doctor as seen in a quick cameo on 'Extras' could have been Rob Harker, who finally got his big break!  (As seen in an episode of 'People Like Us'.)

And who knows?  Maybe the entire run of the Seventh Doctor with his Companion Ace was played as a puppet show.....

(As seen in 'Spitting Image')

Okay, maybe not.

But as was seen in that quick cameo on 'Extras', the show within a show doesn't necessarily follow the same plots as the real show.  UNIT would never allow that.

So on the televersion of 'Doctor Who', the Doctor battles a giant slug named Schlongg.  

And then in one of the more recent episodes, this happened.....



A bad habit picked up by the Eleventh
When he was hanging around with Stan Laurel.....

Because of the carolers and the purveyors of "Christmasey" products, the Tenth Incarnation of the Doctor knew what season it was; he just didn't know the year.  When he asked a young lad as to the date, the boy thought him to be as thick as a whale omelette, but did tell him that it was Christmas, 1851.

We never saw the Doctor physically make contact with the boy, but it may have happened.

The moment of contact probably occurred in the edit between his first sprint upon hearing Rosita's cry for the Doctor to the shot where he was running down the alleyway.  The lad had wandered off just before that but had to be in the general vicinity in which the Doctor was running.  So he would have been in the way and thus the Doctor had to nudge him aside.

I'm going to make the claim that the unnamed lad would grow up to be Jim Taylor, a character from the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's "Ruby In The Smoke".

This period mystery marked the TV debut of Matt Smith (the main reason I find this choice irresistable), who would go on to become the Eleventh Incarnation of the Doctor.

Allowances do have to be made for the age of Jim Taylor, however.  First off, we can dismiss his age in BookWorld, where he was but a lad of thirteen - Smith just can't pull that off.  But the lad in 1851 is about 8 to ten years old which would mean that Smith would have to be playing Jim a few years older than he really was, perhaps even as much as a decade.  (That is, if the year of 1872 is the date for "Ruby In The Smoke" as it is in the book.)  At least that age could be considered pozz'ble, just pozz'ble.

One other problem does come up in making this suggestion.  Even though allowances are made for aging when it comes to recasting, it's hard to believe that this cherubic face would one day resemble Matt Smith's.  Especially when it comes to my personal bugaboo about physical features - the nose.

(Remember what the Doctor said upon finding out he had a snout like Jim Taylor's?  "I've had worse."  Even so, it's hard to believe it would go through that much of a change.)

Have no fear, the Toobmeister is here with a splainin.  During the rampant destruction caused by the giant Cyberman (which somehow must have been covered up by the Torchwood Institute), the lad - that is, Jim Taylor - was seriously injured.  He recovered, to the point you would never have known he had been in that disaster, but he was never going to look as he did as a young boy again.




Theo Howard: 
I still believe in pacifism, Florence. 
That hasn't changed. 
But I'm as capable of killing as the next man. 
'Foyle's War' - "A Lesson In Murder"





SINGER: It had to be you....
(The Doctor takes the woman's place at the microphone.)
(Silence, then laughter.)
DOCTOR: Would've landed quite near here. With a very loud
MAN: Quickly as you can, down to the shelter.



And that's all that it would take.....



Supposedly, Christopher Eccleston wished Steven Moffat well with his plans for the 50th anniversary special for 'Doctor Who', but he had no interest in reprising his role as the first Doctor to be seen in the new series in 2005.  When he first appeared on the scene, he had just recently regenerated and only first saw what he now looked like in the hall mirror at Jackie Tyler's flat.  So I imagine what Moffat had in mind was to have Eccleston around just long enough to act out the regeneration from John Hurt's War Doctor.  (Perhaps even one scene to show the connection to the Nestene Consciousness?  Although I think that it was the TARDIS - as usual - who put him on the track of that by landing in London of 2005.)

As it plays out in the special, we see the War Doctor begin his regeneration cycle, with a slight change to someone who looks similar to Christopher Eccleston (if not some old footage of that actor) but the scene cuts away before the cycle is completed.  

Still we saw enough to make two O'Bservations.

One: This regeneration was similar to that of the First Doctor into the Second in that his body finally knew it was time to renew.  After so many countless years in battle, the culmination of the Time War was a signal that his services as the War Doctor were no longer needed.  He had become stretched and thin, as a certain Hobbit would put it; and while he was never going to find rest, at least he would be renewed and refreshed for whatever new problems the Universe held for him once he regenerated.

(The actual regeneration process of fire and light remained similar to that which chronologically began with the Eighth Doctor.)

Two: So where did the DNA template for Eccleston's Doctor come from?

Because his entire career was focused on the Time War, it's possible that the War Doctor came into contact with another Time Lord (or even just a normal Gallifreyan - there is a difference!) who bore similar features.  

But there's a whole universe of other options out there....

"This is the truth, Doctor: 
You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons...," 
'Doctor Who'
"The Journey Home"

Davros more than likely crossed paths several times with the War Doctor during the Time War and saw for himself that this was the case with the companions that accompanied him during the conflict.  The War Doctor may have even chosen them for the skills they already possessed.  
Some spoilers ahead......

One candidate might be Frank Carter, a young hot-head social activist who was suspected in the murder of the dentist Dr. Morley (as seen in the 'Poirot' mystery "One Two Buckle My Shoe".)  Before he ran afoul of Inspector Japp, it could be that Carter spent some time travelling with the War Doctor.  His experiences may have soured him on Life after seeing the worst the Universe had to offer during the Time War.  

A better candidate would be a fellow named Claude, a mutant seen in several episodes of 'Heroes'.  Although 'Heroes' veered off into a parallel dimension with the arrival of Future Hiro, it began in Earth Prime-Time.  So all of the characters would have already been established in the main Toobworld even if they didn't appear until after the divergence.

Claude would have made for an excellent ally for the War Doctor considering his mutant ability was the power of invisibility.  But eventually his shady character would have caused a rift in the relationship he had with the War Doctor and they would have parted ways.  Of course, he may also have died during the Time War - I don't think the survival rate for any of his Companions was very high during those dark times.

And then there's one last candidate, one who was more likely to be an atagonist rather than a Companion during the Time War - Malekith the Accursed.

Malekith the Accursed is the king of the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim, as seen in "Thor 2: The Dark World" and in the Marvel comic books.  Although he's primarily in the Cineverse as a live-action character, and never seen in TV, Malekith belongs to the alternate TV dimension of Marvel Toobworld.  Still, Thor is part of Earth Prime-Time, thanks to appearances in 'The Incredible Hulk' and 'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys'.  

Based on those two portrayals, we know that Thor has the ability to alter his physical appearance.  So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Thor now looks like Chris Hemsworth in the main Toobworld as well.  If so, his adventures in the movies (three so far) could also have happened in Earth Prime-Time, with adjustments so that they didn't cause any major discrepancies.  (Like that battle in New York City in the "Avengers" movie is right out!)

If the War Doctor came into contact with Malekith during the Time War, there are several factors that may have proven desirable to his body's imperative to collect the DNA.  Physical appearance would be the least of it, but even so the adaptation to a more human-looking version couldn't get the ears right.  

Also, there was Malekith's strength in character and purpose and determination which added up to being factors in his choice.  But like the choice of Nasca by the Second Doctor's biology, Malekith's ruthless nature would have been discarded.  Otherwise Eccleston's Doctor would have had no qualms about destroying all of Mankind along with the Daleks in "Parting Of The Ways".  (Memories of the true solution to the Time War may have been at play.)

I like to thnk that if Malekith was involved in the Time War, he became the Could Have Been King.......

Perhaps there are other options out there among the characters played by Christopher Eccleston.  But these are my three favorite choices......



There were some pretty wild regenerations in the classic series for 'Doctor Who' - the
Second Doctor having regeneration forced upon him by the Time Lords; the Fourth Doctor being inhabited by the Watcher.  Even after the process settled down to be a uniform explosion of fire and rebirth with the regeneration of Eccleston's Doctor into Tennant's, the mythos has backdated itself to finally show the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the War Doctor with a new variation.  

Sir John Hurt played the War Doctor in an online mini-episode "Night Of The Doctor".  He didn't film anything new for this production; in fact, most of the seven minute episode dealt with the last moments of life for the Eighth Doctor. 

Hurt showed up only as an image in a reflection, when he was much younger man.  It is assumed that it came from a 1979 TV adaptation of "Crime And Punishment" and it's striking to see the age difference with that of John Hurt as seen in the 50th Anniversary Special "The Day Of The Doctor".

Hurt has noticeably aged over 30 years - in human chronology.  But who knows how many decades he was in that body as he fought his one-man war against both the Time Lords and the Daleks in the attempt to get them to cease their hostilities against each other?

After Cass' spaceship crashed on the planet of Karn, the Sisterhood of Karn found the Eighth Doctor's body and brought him back to life for four minutes, long enough to make the decision about what type of Time Lord he should choose for his next regeneration.  And they had prepared for that moment with a selection of elixirs that would trigger and lock in the next incarnation of the Doctor.

Having seen how hatred of the Time Lords led Cass to face death rather than be rescued by one, the Doctor was shaken to his core and he no longer wished to be known as the Doctor.  Instead he wanted to choose a regeneration that would make him a warrior.  

And Ohila, the High Priestess of the Sisterhood, had the perfect potion for him, one that she had concocted herself.  Drinking it, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into the War Doctor, whose first words were "Doctor no more......"

We don't know what goes into the Sisterhood's elixir to trigger so specific a regeneration for a Time Lord, but I believe I know where she got the ingredients for each of the offered elixirs, to be fat or thin, young or old, even a choice in gender.

I believe the Sisterhood raided the DNA date banks in the Matrix of Gallifrey.

More than that, I think her special concoction featured the DNA and personality attributes of one specific Time Lord.

I think that younger version of John Hurt was a manifestation of how the Master looked in one of his earlier incarnations.  

We never saw the Master until he was already in his last incarnation, the Thirteenth, as played by the late great Roger Delgado.  Which means there are twelve incarnations of his life still out there in the Time-Stream whom we never met.  

The Master certainly would have held the attributes needed for a Warrior throughout all of his incarnations, probably the one constant in his personality after that of his megalomaniacal desire to rule the Universe.  And the High Priestess would have had the skills to winnow out the quirks of his personality that would have defeated the purpose for her planned offering of a new regeneration.  

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  The War Doctor was the physical manifestation of an earlier incarnation of the Master.

As to why the Doctors played by David Tennant and Matt Smith didn't recognize the face of "He Who Must Not Be Acknowledged"?  Perhaps it was an incarnation of his old enemy who never crossed the path of the Doctor.  Or better yet, by the time they met him, the War Doctor was so old and weathered that he no longer resembled his younger self.

I can see John Hurt when I look at his 79 year old face; but I can't see the man I remember from 'I, Claudius', "Alien", or even "History Of The World, Part One".  How many centuries separated the Doctor's memories of the past incarnation of the Master from how his borrowed face looked on the War Doctor?  I wouldn't be surprised if he couldn't place the face.......




Fellow Iddiot Rich Shapiro wrote to me about a missed opportunity for a 'Doctor Who' in-joke that could have been made in the penultimte episode of 'Inspector Lewis':

They wasted a great chance (or were sensible enough to avoid the easy joke) on an 'Inspector Lewis' episode - the victim was a doctor, and one suspect was the blond Dr. Who from several regenerations ago (Peter Davison).

Instead of "When was the last time you saw Dr. Whitby?", they really could have just gone with, "When was the last time you saw the Doctor?"

It may have been too bloody obvious; everyone in England would have gotten it.

That's never stopped the writers in the past from beating the audience over their collective heads with splainins for their references.  Usually I hate the practice, but in this case I would have welcomed it - especially since it slipped right past me as is.

Thanks for sharing, Shap!



If there is a Time Lord known as the Doctor in the Cineverse, did the Eleventh Incarnation get his fashion sense from the First?


This marks the first "recastaway" theory for the Doctor in which the TV character first appeared in the fictional universe of BookWorld.  As detailed in Agatha Christie's "Sad Cypress", Dr. Peter Lord was a suspect in the death of his patient, Mrs. Laura Welman.  He further complicated matters by falsifying evidence when it appeared that Mrs. Welman's niece Elinor Carlisle was the murderess.  (Dr. Lord had fallen in love with her.)

"Sad Cypress" was then adapted for radio before it joined the pantheon of cases solved by M. Hercule Poirot in Earth Prime-Time.  Since Poirot was played by David Suchet, then it is assured that Paul McGann's portrayal of Dr. Lord is the official version, in the TV dimension we most frequently find the Doctor.

You can see what drew me to choosing this character as the donor of the Doctor's future DNA - his name.  Doctor Peter Lord.  Doctor.  Lord.  As in the Time Lord, the Doctor.

For the televersion, marking it as distinct from the novel, the case took place around the time of George Gershwin's death in 1937.  

However, there is a chronology goof regarding this.  The newsboy is seen hawking his papers, pitching as the big story that Gershwin had died.  But the paper is dated in September, as suggested by the obituary for Mrs. Welman on the opposite page.


George Gershwin died in July of 1937.

Sometimes I allow changes in historical dates - after all, we're dealing with Earth Prime-Time, not Earth Prime.  But here we have an opportunity to suggest a reason why the Doctor and Ace would have been in 1937 - someone had tampered with the timeline.  The difference in the dates for the death of Gershwin may have seemed a trifle to some, but it could also have a ripple effect leading to huge ramifications down the timeline.

Who to blame?  Why not the Meddling Monk?  It would have been the perfect opportunity to re-introduce him into the series and he would have been a wonderful antagonist to Sylvester McCoy's Doctor.

[A Casting Suggestion?]

And during their visit to London in September of 1937, when the Seventh Incarnation would have heard that newsboy's cries about Gershwin's death, it could be that the Time Lord Doctor might have bumped into Dr. Lord in the village of Hunterbury.

It could be that location which also drew the Doctor and Ace back to 1937.  There's a possibility that a Weeping Angel was in the area.....

At any rate, contact with Dr. Peter Lord gave the Doctor the DNA which was to be used when he regenerated in San Francisco at the end of 1999......

If you'd like to see that Poirot episode "Sad Cypress", I've embedded it for you from YouTube:




Over the years, the Doctor has had some wonderful hats, each perfectly fitted to work not only with the rest of the Time Lord's outfit, but also with his personality.  

As I write this on August 14th, I'm sure the Grand Moff and Peter Capaldi have already worked out what kind of costume will be worn by the Next Incarnation of the Doctor.  But I still wanted to put in my two cents regarding his "Who-berdashery".

This is the look I would favor:

That 1950s vibe but especially that hat!  

There are two actors I always think of when I see that hat.  One is the French master comedian Jacques Tati.  But as the Brits get touchy about any foreign taint to their beloved sci-fi hero (and I suppose quite rightly), I'll advocate for the other choice - Sir Alec Guinness.

Here are two pictures of him with the kind of hat I think would look perfect with the Doctor: