The Doctor gives Amye a pill which makes her feel better almost immediately. He asks after Robert Dudley and Amye tells him [sadly] that he’s at court in London. As usual. She offers to lend the Doctor a pair of horses so he can go and try to see him.
Not quite McCoy re-growing her kidney but it does the job.
A werewolf is stalking the heath…. Sir Robert is a werewolf… no reason for this absurd conclusion, just taking a randomn stab
Antacid tablet?
mostly from the way it work so fast its a sugar pill, you know its all in your head.
If Robin Dudley is a werewolf, then I shall eat my hat with salt and pepper.
(I think Rich is a bit more imaginative than that, Rukos. Just sayin’.)
If Robin Dudley is a werewolf, then I shall eat my hat with salt and pepper.
If life were a sitcom, then this statement would have guaranteed a werewolf.
phage83 — Or, y’know, Gallifreyan science.
I was expecting him to say something about her corset pinching her organs or something – but the sugar pill seemed to do the deed. (Okay, the bottle looked like a modern 20th century prescription pill bottle so it might be something else …but the reaction was so fast that I can’t help but suspect it was just a bit of home drama. Either that or some Doctor cure for migraines that we wish we had nowadays!)
Excellent.
Pairs of bodies were very comfortable in this era, actually. They supported the breasts with reed boning, sometimes whalebone or wood busks, and they ended before the hips. No organ compression at all, or at least, no more than your standard sports bra! These ones actually added bulk to the figure as they attempted to give that flat-front-cone shape.
Hmm – sounds quite reasonable. Fashion does go backwards in logic sometimes.
It’s totally circular, really! Everything we think is new has gone around again and again before in different forms. The ideal female body type of this time was slim, long-waisted, and small-busted (remind you of the Twiggy/mod look at all?). To have large, soft, uncontained breasts meant that you had nursed your own children instead of having a wetnurse, and was associated with sloppiness, immorality and general lack of class or breeding.
That reverses completely in about a hundred years, by the way (think the off-the-shoulder gowns from things like Three Musketeers) and that’s when stays start working to project the breasts up and out instead of keeping them secure and compressed.
ETA: Terminology clarification!
16th/17th cen = “pair of bodies”
17th/18th cen = “stays”
19th cen = “corset”
20th cen = “corset/girdle”
All of them change the shape of the female body, but in different ways. Some later forms of Stays and then Corsets are the ones you’re thinking of which were tight-laced and could cause damage.
You left out 20th cen/21st cen = Surgical enlargement.
What’s next–I’m voting on nano-tech that moves the placement of the curves to the backside. That way when a women wants to speak to the man in front of her, he’ll actually be looking at her eyes.
Implants change the shape, sure, but they’re not a garment – I was talking about the terminology used for one specific piece of clothing as it evolved over time.
(An equivalent progression for male clothing would be something like jerkin -> waistcoat -> weskit -> vest, or ruff -> falling band -> cravat -> ascot -> necktie)
I concur with Hilary! I have a pair of bodies from this era, and it’s very nice. My only complaint is that I get stabbed in the under arms with the boning. (spring steel. Hooray for technology!) However, looking at Janet Arnold books, it appears that this was a common complaint, and it was alleviated in later periods. =) there’s lots of information to be had about them. I suggest The tudor Tailor (book) Janet Arnold’s patterns of fashion, and there’s a virtual gold mine at http://www.reconstructinghistory.com You can even BUY the patterns there. in fact, the gown that Amye is wearing in this comic has just been added to Cass’s repertoire of patterns. I’m SO excited. I LOVE that gown. (I have one of those too)
I like the way that the Doctor doesn’t trust the TARDIS to take him to the right place in the right era 2 trips in a row! (Six and Four would probably attempt it [and then bame someone else when it goes wrong!], but Three plays it safe).
Bugger, I meant blame.
@The Doctor’s Son *giggle* Thanks for helping to make my day. =D
@ LadyGrainne: Anytime, although I’m sure Rich’s artistry made your day more!
Did he… just give her some antibiotics or vitamin pills or something..?
o_o;;; you got to love his half assed view of interacting with the past lmao
All of this discussion of fashion through the ages is intriguing. Maybe we need a section of the forums to discuss it!
Evolution of styles is very interesting to me.
As usual, Rich, your attention to details, especially with period pieces, is to be admired. *Admires* Seriously, I don’t know many people who have the patience to sit down and do this. What with the ruffles and the frills, the checkers and the feather in the hat, it’s practically my worst nightmare. Not to mention the hands. *Shudder*
@ The Doctor’s Son:
I dunno, based off of my experience, once the Doctor is *there* and in the moment, he doesn’t like to use the TARDIS to go elsewhere or elsewhen. He more likes to stay and see what develops on the “slow path.”
@ Hilary, LadyGrainne, and M’reen:
All I have to add to the whole garment conversation is, that when M’reen says that about corsets being uncomfortable and pinching organs, all that was in my mind was that scene from “Pirates 1″ with Elizabeth and Jack, when he has to slice hers off to allow her to breathe.
~CoZ
Child of Zion: Thanks! But a lot of the credit goes to Hilary (co-author this time round remember!) who is an authority on period clothing. Particularly this period! That being said, it’s always a goal of mine to be as accurate as I can when depicting historical pieces. Even with “House of Paulus”, while not exactly a textbook expert, I try to get as much of the detail as accurate as possible for the period it takes place in. The historical sequences of “Forever: Janette” had a similar attempt at authenticity (again, thanks in laaarge part to Hilary and her books), and the 1995 parts were hopefully devoid of post 2000 dialogue or fashions.
CoZ: Ahhh, but Pirates was set in the late 1600s, but the costumes are all 17th and 18th century-ish. Totally different styles of underwear required.
I have a feeling that was plain simple asprin
@DennyWilson: Seconded.
For those who would cry, “The Doctor (and by extension, all Time Lords) is deathly allergic to aspirin!” consider these items:
One: The Time Lords (and even common Gallifreyans) are the result of ten MILLION years of evolution, a lot of which would probably involve beneficial genetic engineering. Poisoning by any natural chemical (as in willow bark/aspirin) seems unlikely.
Two: An unfortunate side-effect of regeneration can scramble Time Lord immunities. See: Five’s visible leeriness of Praxis-gas effects, even wearing celery to detect them.
Three: Perhaps Seven was slightly allergic to aspirin, but the trauma of being shot and then having aliens with no knowledge of his physiology cutting him up were the real things that killed him, made worse by his allergy (much like any human with an allergy to a medication – including aspirin, if I may say.)
Thus, Three, whose regeneration was DONE by the Time Lords (and who would be scrupulous in correcting any genetic mishaps to keep the status quo) would have no qualms in carrying a bit of aspirin to effect a ‘miracle’… or just deal with a nasty migraine.
The Doctor has been known to keep Aspirin in the TARDIS First Aid kit. During The Web Planet, after being offered some by Barbara for a headache, Future Girl Vicki described them as ‘medieval’ and a level of medicine akin to being stuck all over with leeches (as a comparison for Barbara). They belonged to the Doctor who “must’ve picked them up on his travels”.
Perhaps Aspirin isn’t quite as deadly to the Doctor with his mother being human
(dodges objects and comments being thrown for bringing that subject up again!)
@walksineternity It’s kinda funny that quite a few don’t consider (especially since the Fox movie was supposed to be the kick-off to a new series) that the Doctor was just joking around with the scientist that he told that he was ‘half-human’ in order to distract him, and just maybe they may have brought in a dodge like the Chameleon Arch (or just the fact that the Master, in staring into the Vortex again, was hallucinating up a storm) to explain what the Master blurted out to the human?
Yeah, long sentence. But I highly doubt the Doctor’s mother could be human, considering the vast species difference, millions of years of evolution and genengineering… Could you mate with (and produce a viable offspring with) a muskrat? Didn’t think so.
@King Rat: Please note the wink during that line. It was a joke! Besides, do you really think that an imaginary race which could engineer themselves with the ability for total bodily regeneration would find creating a hybrid impossible? Gallifreyan science is supposedly millions of years in advance to our own, so Who knows.
As for human/animal hybrids, chimeras, Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells. Natural, physical interspecies reproduction, no. Unnatural genetic tinkering and splicing, yes.
@ WalksInEternity and King Rat: The half human thing can be fixed anyway. RTD gave us the perfect get-out-of-continuity-problem-free card in Journey’s End.
Or you could…y’know… just ignore it. Since it only appears in the FOX film which also mentions things like “The Eye of Harmony” being in the Doctor’s cloister room, the TARDIS key being kept in a compartment over the P in the POLICE BOX sign, the Daleks respecting the Master’s dying wish and the Chameleon Circuit being called a Cloaking Device.
(All of these things are fixed in the Novel, however, except the half-human thing which winds up being part of story and impossible to erase.)
I also abhor the Chameleon Arch crap, myself, since it’s a really lame plot device that could have come in REALLY handy in early episodes if it was that easy to simply become human. So, like the Doctor being half-human, I accept it as part of its episode and forget about it for the rest of the series.
“The Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!”
Apologies if this is a question better suited for the forums:
King Rat, I thought I knew my (Hartnell and post-Troughton) Who pretty well. Where did you get the tidbit that the Doctor was allergic to aspirin? I’ve never heard that one before.
I thought I’d seen it all myself, at least, all that exists. But I learned this little trivia tidbit in the “30 Years in the TARDIS” documentary which showed the 1st regeneration scene over the narration.
According to the Doctor Who wikipedia entry, however, “The Doctor also exhibits some weaknesses uncommon to humans. For example, in The Mind of Evil (1971) he claimed that a tablet of aspirin could kill him.”
So it looks like it wasn’t a 1st or 2nd Doctor factoid after all.
JustAWanderer: Wikipedia claims that the Third Doctor says in Mind of Evil that aspirin is harmful to him, although the word “aspirin” is never spoken (or scripted) and the pill he refuses is not clearly shown to be aspirin (but given the context and reason for being given implies that it is).
DOCTOR: That’s wrong…wrong metabolism. It’d probably…probably kill me, Jo.
Thanks. Like most of the Third Doctor series, I haven’t seen Mind of Evil since about 1990.
And don’t forget, the Doctor seems to be a little bit delirious when he says it, so it’s possible he could be wrong/confused/mistaken etc.
About the asprin: isn’t it reasonable for the Doctor, with his human companions, to carry human medicine?
Maybe he gave her Tylenol, instead of Aspirin.
@WalksInEternity and King Rat, it always bugged me in “The Doctor’s Daughter” how Jenny was created. Sure, she came from the Doctor, but she obviously wasn’t a direct clone. Was she a hybrid or the result of some sort of weird major recombination of the Doctor’s DNA?
Countess: none of the soldiers were made to be clones at all (tho RTD did say maybe when it malfunctioned it spat out a clone) they were individuals created from essentially an artificial egg and sperm packed the donors genetic material – the machine took genetic samples and the dna chopped up into invidiual genes, which were then copied/ recombined into new viable patterns. Put a cat in, get a cat out, but each one different from the genetic options within the first cat’s genes, but a human in, same, lots of different humans come out, put a timelord same …the Doctor could have had hundreds of children if they kept the machine going, all his own species.
Main limitation of variety would be things like, females would only be able to have female children, while males could have both females and males. As much variety was in the first person’s dna, is how much variety would be in the selection of children.
In other words, if Jenny had been a clone, she’d have been a he. But everything she was genetically, came from the Doctor.
Happy to continue this in the forum as we’re not talking about Stalker of Norfolk now
As for the aspirin controversy, just recall the last mantra of the MST3K song: “Just repeat to yourself it’s just a show, and I should really just relax!”
Personally as for the novel and the half-human thing, I felt it was sort of a last-ditch effort for the Master to use the Doctor’s devices against him (again). And Rich, I do agree about the Chameleon Arch, because I’ve felt the New Who seems to be like Bewitched at times where RTD seems to obviously give The Doctor the easy way out w/the sonic screwdriver.
Which is why I like this Norfolk tale with the Third Doctor and Classic Who, where he tends to utilize his resources than just heavily relying on gadgets. But hey, that’s just me. Great tale, guys!
:::throws something at Walks in Eternity:::
OK, there!
As fun as the gimmicky gadgets are, seeing the Doctor using his wits to get out of a situation is one of the joys of the series.
(Loathed the whole Chameleon Arch thing myself. Glad to see I’m not alone in that.)
on second thought, it was probably just some sugar pills or something, a placebo.
he’s not that stupid, to actually give her something that could fall into the wrong hands.
@M’reen
I still like the phrase “petri-dish parthenogenesis” to describe the process used by the machine in TDD. It may not be accurate, but it’s fun to say.
Well, John, be thankful it wasn’t Anacin, from what I recall from those commercials the poor woman would be dancing wildly about free from her ailment. Though okay, not exactly what The Doctor had in mind… could you imagine the history books on THAT one?
I feel I have to defend the Chamelion Arch. Making the Doctor human for 2 episodes was one of the most origional and intriguing ideas in the history of the show. And the moment when Professor Yana opens his watch in Utopia and says “I… am… the Master!” is the most thrilling moment of the new series.
The Third Doctor is the one I love least, but respect the most. Is that weird?
Back to the pill……
Historically wasn’t Amye dying of breast cancer? It has been theorized that she ,knowing she was dying,threw herself down the stairs hoping that scandal of murder would nix any chance Lord Dudley had with the Queen—-Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
Why can’t the Doctor have a quick pain relief pill. His technology is so advanced after all. I hardly believe he would save from death someone supposed to die as she was (tough by accident, not sickness). But he enjoys relieving pain or suffering from people anyway (even saving lives when possible).
Believe me, a sugar pill has no effect at all, except in a person with diabetic problems (which she can be as well). But then it would be unwises to give her the sugar pill, because it would affect stablished events: a diabetic with a low-glucose problem can faint and fall down the stairs, so sugar pills would avoid her death! I hardly believe the Doctor would take that risk!
Does anyone else think that she’s behaving . . . weirdly when wearing the neclace and not so much when she isn’t?
Or perhaps it’s a counteragent for poison.
Dun dun DUNNNN…..
Fangarius, you make a deeply disturbing point.
…but after having just seen the waters of mars, I take it back about the doctor’s stupidity, with what he did in the end… I won’t spoil it for you however, but what he did risked the future of all humanity, just because he would have felt badly about his only other option.
like I said, can’t say exactly what.
but if you want to see the waters of mars, just lemme know your email, and I’ll send you a torrent file to download it from me with.
I wish there would be a new comic here.
The doctor really **** up.
OK, John, I correct my previous sentence: I hardly believe the THIRD doctor would take such a risk.
As sugar pills can prevent fainting (i.e. to diabetics), he would never give her such a thing as she is supposed to fall down the stairs soon, perhaps by simply fainting.
But all Doctors are quite keen on relieving pain, so that’s why I prefer to believe it’s a pain-killng drug.
Y’know… speaking of the comic… I hate to say this, but from a certain angle this all does seem rather reprehensible, doesn’t it? I mean, they’re digging for information around an infamous historical tragedy simply on a whim. Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in from watching the poignant and disturbing resolution of the last special, but… that seems perverse, somehow.
Really, how would you feel if you discovered that you or someone dear to you was destined to die an untimely death soon, and these two strangers who’ve been hanging around and chatting with you were actually time travelers who knew it was going to happen, and were simply indulging their curiosity?
I vaguely recall there being a movie once which involved tourists from the future gathering at scenes of upcoming disasters simply for spectacle. The tourists were made to seem monstrous in their casual indifference. After seeing The Waters of Mars, it makes me wonder how the Doctor must seem sometimes. At least, at times like these.
As a (wannabe) historian I disagree with Joe — going back to check on a controversial issue like this is legitimate and useful. The moral dilemma comes from the problem of “The Aztecs” — knowing something bad is about to happen to these people yet fearing any intervention on your part could change history enough to undo your entire world, make everyone and everything you know cease to ever have existed.
Nievesg, you’re applying normal logic, to THE DOCTOR…
Just consider that, and the fact he probably knows all about her and what pills would do what.
In regards to a sugar pill, I didn’t mean it had to be actual sugar, it could have been a vitamin for all I know, just something to make her think she felt better, and thus was.
You’re right tho, the third doctor wouldn’t be stupid, but the newest one is really getting out of hand, he went too far this time.. next time he faces the master, god only knows what will happen, but if he keeps this up, it won’t end well for him like last time.
Second box. the doctors right hand is biger then the ;left hand. and its not cause its closer.
What’s all this talk of sugar pills? Surely back then taking little white pills for ailments wasn’t as common as it is now (if at all), so no placebo effect would occur?
Jonathan: She was given medicine by a person who she believed to be a doctor and told that it would make her well in no time. It could have been the belief in that alone which created a placebo effect. After all, around the 15th century in England, apothecaries had gained the status of a skilled practitioner, dispensing herbal and chemical ingredients from shops.
I hadn’t checked in on this site in a long time.
Wonderful to see more of these excellent comics!
What is with the strange spelling of Amy?
It’s ALWAYS spelt Amye instead of the correct spelling of AMY
“Amy” was not the standard spelling until the modern day. Technically, there *was* no standard spelling of names at that point, and Amye Robsart’s name is spelled, variously, “Amy” “Amie” and “Amye” in a wide variety of documents from the era. I chose the one I liked the best.
Also to consider – as he told Beverly, the Doctor’s sympathy here is towards Lady Robsart. Why wouldn’t he help her in some small way?
I’ve noticed recently that there has been a slight hang-up. What’s going on, Rich? Have you got a case of the drawing hang-ups? (Ugh. Just got over a case of those myself.) Or is your muse gone again, perhaps? Sorry. Not trying to be mean or nosy at all, I just want to know what we can expect…
And I have a question about The Ten Doctors. ( I know! *Gasp*!) After everyone leaves, do things stay the same, but all the Doctors and companions not on Gallifrey forget, or do things go back to the way they were before the adventure started? Such as, is Leela still young again, along with her kids and 4? Or are only Leela and the kids still young?
Sorry, perhaps this has all been addressed before by you, but I can’t remember it…
~CoZ
Ps~I think that the cannon-osity of 8 was verified in “The Next Doctor” Christmas special, with the data stamp that showed all the Doctor’s incarnations. At least, that’s what I got out of it, and it made me really glad, even if the movie wasn’t the best I still really liked 8.
Regarding fashion. I can tell you that two years ago, while scanning a 1924 SEARS catalog my then eighteen year old daughter was looking through the pages. She pointed at an outfit and said “I say that at Pennys this afternoon.” Of course, it cost a whole lot more than the $2.65 listed in the catalog…
Child of Zion, Rich and Hilary have had some Internet connectivity problems of late. I think (I don’t have my usual link right now) that if you go to the site homepage you’ll see her two posts on the topic.