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Lake Silencio and the War Doctor, Regeneration Issues...

TJ Sinclair

TJ Sinclair

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
A thought occurred to me as I woke up this morning. Forgive me if this has been brought up before.

If the Eleventh Doctor was actuallyhis thirteenth and final body, per Time of the Doctor, how was he regenerating while River shot him in The Impossible Astronaut?

We all know the real world reason is that during Series Six, the War Doctor wasn't even a gleam in Moffat's eye and the Doctor was still supposed to have one or two regenerations to go. But what's the in universe explanation?

The regeneration energy/effect was simply faked by the Tesselecta so the Doctor could obscure the fact that this was his "last" body? Or something else?
 
That's one explanation (given the Doctor never talked about the War Doctor) but the other is that a Timelord's body might simply try and regenerate, even if it can't complete the act.
 
That wasn't the real Doctor. That was just the Teselecta putting on a fancy light show for anyone who might be watching, while the real Doctor was safely tucked away inside it. So it doesn't count towards the total number of regenerations.

As for why he would bother putting on the light show if it was his last body - artistic license? Maybe he knew that if they just shot him and he seemed to be dead, they would never trust that he was really dead because they'd expect him to regenerate eventually, even if quite a while later. Whereas if he showed them he was regenerating, and they shot him again during his regeneration, it would convince them that they had killed him for good?

.
 
I think its far simpler than that. I think the Tesselecta simply didn't know about the War Doctor, or the Meta-Crisis Doctor.
 
lvsxy808 said:
That wasn't the real Doctor. That was just the Teselecta putting on a fancy light show for anyone who might be watching, while the real Doctor was safely tucked away inside it. So it doesn't count towards the total number of regenerations.

As for why he would bother putting on the light show if it was his last body - artistic license? Maybe he knew that if they just shot him and he seemed to be dead, they would never trust that he was really dead because they'd expect him to regenerate eventually, even if quite a while later. Whereas if he showed them he was regenerating, and they shot him again during his regeneration, it would convince them that they had killed him for good?
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This.
 
The Doctor did seem to be pretty thorough about pretending he still had a regeneration or two left. In Let's Kill Hitler he even has the TARDIS in on the act, via the avatar of Young Amy.
 
The TARDIS there told him quite truly that his regeneration was disabled, which we all naturally assumed at the time to be due to the poison, but which we now know was due to him having run out.
 
Starkers said:
That's one explanation (given the Doctor never talked about the War Doctor) but the other is that a Timelord's body might simply try and regenerate, even if it can't complete the act.
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We know that a Timelord has some odd stuff happen to him after he dies, we saw the column of light that allowed access to his timeline and we know that on Gallifrey they upload themselves to the Matrix. I'm of the opinion that you get a light show, but the end result is something other than a regeneration.
 
A thirteenth regeneration's not impossible, though survivability woud be low. Azmael in The Twin Dilemma triggered a thirteenth regen but it failed.
 
Mr Soak said:
A thirteenth regeneration's not impossible, though survivability woud be low. Azmael in The Twin Dilemma triggered a thirteenth regen but it failed.
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I think most of us have blocked The Twin Dilemma from memory. Struck from the Inforarium, as it were...
 
I'm thinking that in-universe the Doctor, by that point, may have even lost track of how many regenerations he'd been through.

His life isn't like a video game where you'd want to know how many lives you've got left; perhaps he was vaguely aware that he was somewhere towards the end of his lifespan, but not specifically how many (if any) regenerations he has remaining. He's not really the kind of character to go about hoarding his green mushrooms nor knowing what he's got in his back pocket. He lives his days not knowing if he's going to be able to get out of whatever predicament he's found himself in that day, or if regeneration would be a way to do it. Haven't you ever opened your wallet to pay for something, only to realize you had no cash in it? That's how I'm thinking Eleven was treating his life.

So, offhandedly when it comes up, he's probably thinking that he can always regenerate to get of trouble. Whenever it really came up for him (Let's Kill Hitler, Nightmare in Silver, arguably Closing Time), it seemed to be in the middle of a crisis - and let's face it, the Doctor leads a pretty hectic life in this era, with nary a deep breath between adventures. Only when he had a chance to actually slow down and take full stock of his situation, as he finally had a chance to do on Trenzalore (albeit during a 900+ year siege), did he realize he was actually on his last incarnation and there was nothing to be done about it. So when Clara finally shows up to ask about it, he's had plenty of time to resign himself to his apparent fate.

Mark
 
Mark_Nguyen said:
I'm thinking that in-universe the Doctor, by that point, may have even lost track of how many regenerations he'd been through.
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Well, the entire Matt Smith era is littered with references to him being the Eleventh Doctor, so maybe he did start to believe that and forgot he had two others?
 
Starkers said:
That's one explanation (given the Doctor never talked about the War Doctor) but the other is that a Timelord's body might simply try and regenerate, even if it can't complete the act.
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Agreed.

I also think that the Doctor had some weird stuff happen towards the end that made it harder to keep track of just how much regeneration energy he had left. I figure the Tennant-to-Tennant regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" didn't quite use up a full regeneration's worth of energy. Furthermore, there's a question as to just how much leftover energy he had from absorbing all of River's remaining regenerations in "Let's Kill Hitler."

Furthermore, I've wondered if perhaps River has kept better track of this than the Doctor has. Perhaps that's why she's so cross with him when he uses some regeneration energy to heal her broken wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan." She knows how tenuous his situation is and that the odds of another successful regeneration for him are probably low.
 
The Borgified Corpse said:
Furthermore, I've wondered if perhaps River has kept better track of this than the Doctor has. Perhaps that's why she's so cross with him when he uses some regeneration energy to heal her broken wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan." She knows how tenuous his situation is and that the odds of another successful regeneration for him are probably low.
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Ooh, I like this.
 
DWF said:
Trying to reconcile the whole regeneration thing is like trying to ski uphill.
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Yep, particularly since in the Davies era it seemed like the production had dropped the idea of a set number of regenerations.
 
drt said:
DWF said:
Trying to reconcile the whole regeneration thing is like trying to ski uphill.
Click to expand...

Yep, particularly since in the Davies era it seemed like the production had dropped the idea of a set number of regenerations.
Click to expand...

Why because of the Master? We know that the Time Lords gave him more regenerations in the hope he'd fight the war for them, but he raan off instead. But there's nothing to suggest that RTD dropped the regeneration limit.
 
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