I'm not completely up on Who history; but as I understand it, the Doctor has 13 regenerations. We are now at Doctor 11...or is it really 12? To regenerate, you must have generated first; so if Hartnell was the first regeneration, then there should be a Doctor Prime that he came from. Right?
Smith is the 10th Regeneration, 11th Doctor. The doctor has 13 lives, 12 Regenerations. Though, if ratings are still favorable, the Showrunner will either ignore this piece of canon or write him more lives (Sarahjane Adventures already had a throwaway line that he had over 500 lives, which may or may not have been serious)
Hartnell was the first. There are supposedly 12 regenerations, a total of 13 bodies. The fifth Doctor says categorically in Mawdryn Undead: "I can only regenerate twelve times. I have already done so four times." However, all bets may be off following the Time War. It's never been certain if the 13 body limit is a biological or a legal constraint. With no Time Lords left to enforce it, we don't know what might happen to the Doctor in the future. The 11th Doctor has already suggested that he can regenerate 507 times - though he may have been joking. Then again, to complicate things further, I should probably also mention this: http://www.eyespider.freeserve.co.uk/drwho/notes.html#birth
Couldn't those be Morbius' previous selves? In any case, if the 'Other' is acceptable as canon, then Hartnell is still the first, in a very real sense.
Hartnell's Doctor was established as the Doctor's earliest incarnation as far back as "The Three Doctors" in 1973. "The Brain of Morbius" conflicted with this by presenting what were meant to be earlier incarnations of the Doctor (yes, the fans like to rationalize it by pretending they were Morbius's earlier selves, but that's clearly not what was intended), but other references have reaffirmed that Hartnell came first -- there's the "Mawdryn" reference cited above, there's Hurndall's imitation Hartnell Doctor in "The Five Doctors" saying he's "the original, you might say," and there are several references in the revival series.
I love the fact that the series contradicts itself. The Brain of Morbius offers a sudden and inexplicable thing which I think fans should embrace, not try to sweep under the carpet with faulty rationalisations.
And just to throw even more baggage onto the whole 12 limit regeneration, the time lords it seems can grant another 12 full regeration which they offered him in the 25th anniversay The five doctors. Plus add to that the masters ability over the years to be able to steal people bodies, lifes and regenerations. Best just to accept it all and just enjoy it.
That's assuming their offer was legitimate. I don't agree. And I got the sense that the Master didn't believe them either. The Time Lords were BSing him and he knew it. But he played along anyway.
They did give the Master more regenerations during the Time War. Hell, they got him back out of the Eye Of Harmony and gave him more regens, though not necessarily 12.
More recently: River Song transferred her all regeneration energy (which costed her her ability to regenerate) into 11 to save his life. So maybe it wasn't just a boost, but gave him her remaining lives; which would be about 9 or 10 lives.
Possible is suppose, meybe am i just to trusting of the old timelords. lol Quite right, i missed that one. Plus if she did have any regens left would she not have done so when she died in Forest of the dead, or even worse did Tennets doctor unintentionally trap a fellow timelord in the virtual world thing before she had time to regen.
One would think, though, that the Master would know how regeneration work, etc. I'm sure he had a biology class at some point in his youth. Why would the workings of regeneration be a secret? And why would he play along? What's there to be gained by playing along with BS? The simpler answer is that it's possible to gain another cycle of regenerations.
Since the faces in The Brain Of Morbius were abiguous they can viewed either way, even though it was the intent of Terrence Dicks from what I understand that the faces were the Doctor's own. However I don't know how much weight that carries since Robert Holmes rewrote the story.
It was certainly (producer) Hinchcliffe's intention that they were earlier Doctors, since, of course, he was one of the faces. He said, much as Andrew Cartmel would years later, that he wanted to add some more mystery to the character of the Doctor.
People always forget that the whole reason River took 10's place in the library was because he wouldn't regenerate from it. Whatever it was was enough to permanently kill him (and her) beyond the reach of regeneration. So whether or not she still had any regenerations left after "Let's Kill Hitler" is irrelevant - they would have done her no good anyway. .
It wasn't clear from The 5 Doctors what his status was. He spoke to the Doctors, so probably timelocked or something similar. Still, it took a lot of power to keep him that way until they needed him. But, he regenerated from Richard Matthews into Timothy Dalton at some point. Did he still have his own regenerations or did the Timelords do that?