"And why would he only tell his name in one particular rare or unique circumstance? "
Well, in canon, he's never spoken it, not even (Deadly Assassin) on Gallifrey. Something is going on there. (My speculation was that he no longer *had* a name, that it had been stripped from him. Ah, well.)
The only Gallifreyans we've seen who use titles (The Master, The Rani, The Meddling Monk) are all exiles. So it makes sense that there is some sort of prohibition going on, or some sort of custom that he still honored.
> marriage or death,
Marriage, maybe. We've seen him die, repeatedly, so no cigar there. I'm hoping it's something far more interesting than that. It's sci-fi, after all. He can only speak it when the universe is ending. He can only speak it when he's doing something uniquely Gallifreyan. He can only speak it when confronting Rassilon. (He's done that before, though.)
But it's something so dreadful that River apologizes, repeatedly, before telling him his name. She's not just apologizing because she knows it, she's apologizing because she's telling him something in his future that he doesn't want to know. I very much doubt that's marriage, and he's certainly faced death with reasonable equanimity before.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-06-10 02:10 pm (UTC)Well, in canon, he's never spoken it, not even (Deadly Assassin) on Gallifrey. Something is going on there. (My speculation was that he no longer *had* a name, that it had been stripped from him. Ah, well.)
The only Gallifreyans we've seen who use titles (The Master, The Rani, The Meddling Monk) are all exiles. So it makes sense that there is some sort of prohibition going on, or some sort of custom that he still honored.
> marriage or death,
Marriage, maybe. We've seen him die, repeatedly, so no cigar there. I'm hoping it's something far more interesting than that. It's sci-fi, after all. He can only speak it when the universe is ending. He can only speak it when he's doing something uniquely Gallifreyan. He can only speak it when confronting Rassilon. (He's done that before, though.)
But it's something so dreadful that River apologizes, repeatedly, before telling him his name. She's not just apologizing because she knows it, she's apologizing because she's telling him something in his future that he doesn't want to know. I very much doubt that's marriage, and he's certainly faced death with reasonable equanimity before.