A few problems with your assumption that McGann couldn't be the Time War Doctor:
It's not an assumption. It's now canon that he's not the time war Doctor. I've never stated that he couldn't have been. I absolutely accept that they could have gone that way, but I was just trying to work out why they may have decided not to.
As for what fandom decides, or the numbering system people use outside of the series to refer to the Doctors, or what RTD has to say, I can easily ignore all of that for a simple reason: Death of the Author.
Nicolas Winding Refn says that Ryan Gosling's character survives at the end of the "Drive". He can say that as much as he likes, but that doesn't make it true. At the end of "Drive" Gosling's character has what would appear to be a fatal wound. The fact that he's still alive when the credits come up does not mean that he's going to survive any more than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were ever going to. Authors have no right to the final word on interpretation and neither does fandom. All that really counts is what is actually in the series.
As far as I can tell (and I'm not claiming to be an authority, so please tell me of any examples I may have missed) asides from, technically, the episode title "The Eleventh Hour" (which is a play on words and need not be accurately numbering that Doctor) and, so I hear, a reference to McCoy as the seventh life of the Doctor in the 1996 tv movie, the numbering system is otherwise entirely external to the episodes.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-11-15 11:23 pm (UTC)It's not an assumption. It's now canon that he's not the time war Doctor. I've never stated that he couldn't have been. I absolutely accept that they could have gone that way, but I was just trying to work out why they may have decided not to.
As for what fandom decides, or the numbering system people use outside of the series to refer to the Doctors, or what RTD has to say, I can easily ignore all of that for a simple reason: Death of the Author.
Nicolas Winding Refn says that Ryan Gosling's character survives at the end of the "Drive". He can say that as much as he likes, but that doesn't make it true. At the end of "Drive" Gosling's character has what would appear to be a fatal wound. The fact that he's still alive when the credits come up does not mean that he's going to survive any more than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were ever going to. Authors have no right to the final word on interpretation and neither does fandom. All that really counts is what is actually in the series.
As far as I can tell (and I'm not claiming to be an authority, so please tell me of any examples I may have missed) asides from, technically, the episode title "The Eleventh Hour" (which is a play on words and need not be accurately numbering that Doctor) and, so I hear, a reference to McCoy as the seventh life of the Doctor in the 1996 tv movie, the numbering system is otherwise entirely external to the episodes.