The Deadly Assassin and the 13th Doctor

[Mr Light]

I just saw "The Deadly Assassin", the Tom Baker serial which resurrected the Master, introduced us to Gallifrey, and introduced the twelve regenerations concept. We're told a Time Lord can only regenerate twelves times before dying, and this is what happened to the Master. But the Master had a plan; by accessing the Eye of Harmony he could absorb its energies to revitalize himself and gain new regenerations.

So this could be how the show continues after its twelfth actor leaves. The Doctor just needs to expose himself to the Eye of Harmony and he'll get new regenerations.

Gallifrey was destroyed, but what if the Doctor took the Eye and put it in his Tardis for safe keeping before he blew it all up?

The only problem with this is that we've seen the Tardis requiring the Cardiff Riff to recharge in "Boom Town" and "Utopia". But maybe the Doc just doesn't want to expose the Eye unless he has to since its all that's left of his people.

 

[captcalhoun]

i doubt the Eye of Harmony's an easily portable thing and i rather doubt that the Doctor had time to stop and collect souvenirs when the entire planet was blowing up around him anyway...

 

[Mr Light]

The Tardis is huge on the inside... and if the Doctor is the one who detonated Gallifrey to take out the Daleks maybe he used the Eye to do it from his Tardis (and thus how he alone survived).

 

[Davros]

In the 1996 movie there was access to the eye inside the Tardis.

 

[jbny67]

If they want to go that route, they can always draw on the TV Movie continuity. In that movie the Eye Of Harmony was inexplicably moved to the Tardis.
It would probably be better if that was left alone. They can always use the Time War to come up with some convoluted excuse for him going past 13 lives.

Most likely, they'll say nothing about it. Just like they did with The Master's last regeneration.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Eye of harmony is a sun that Omega detonated and then trapped in a temporal fold so that it is always exploding, feeding the timelords the same overlapped energy again and again and again...

The Doctor did something similar to Skaro's Sun when we he sicked Omega's Stellar (the hand of Omega) converter on the Daleks.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Point of order: With a limit of 12 regenerations, the last Doctor would be the 13th, not the 12th.

 

[Mr Light]

^^ I was actually thinking that myself, but "the fourteenth Doctor" doesn't sound as dramatic a title

 

[Guy Gardener]

The time lords offered the Master a new cycle in the Five Doctors and the technology exists to regenerate ad infinitum in Mawdryn Undead... I saw the episode last about 27 years ago, but i think it was suggested that the Timelords limit themselves on Purpose as a stylistic choice rather than because of a biolengineering fulcrum.

 

[Marc]

Point of order: With a limit of 12 regenerations, the last Doctor would be the 13th, not the 12th.

I thought that it was on the 12 - 13th renegeration that the Timelord died.

We've seen it once but I don't think anyone wants to sit through the Twin Dilemma again to actually find out.

 

[gastrof]

In the 1996 movie there was access to the eye inside the Tardis.

As far as we know, that took place BEFORE Gallifrey was destroyed. It was the McGann Doctor who ended up the Time War Doctor.

There's much in that movie that's hard to explain and may be dismissable.

He's half human? Apparently not, if we take the fact that the hand clone is the first example of a partially human Gallifrean.

Since the whole McGann movie supposedly takes place before the Time War, one really has to wonder what in the world even "an" Eye of Harmony (let alone "the" Eye of Harmony) was doing in the Tardis.

I'd say be careful about using the movie as the solid basis for any Whovian facts.

 

[Brendan Moody]

There's much in that movie that's hard to explain and may be dismissable.

This is true of all Doctor Who, of course.

He's half human? Apparently not, if we take the fact that the hand clone is the first example of a partially human Gallifrean.

The episode doesn't say that. It says that there's never been a Time Lord/human biological metacrisis, not that there's never been a partially human Gallifreyan produced by other means.

I'd say be careful about using the movie as the solid basis for any Whovian facts.

The movie isn't actually more difficult to reconcile with the rest of continuity than many other stories; the reasons fans treat it differently as a contribution to continuity are more outside the fiction than within.

 

[CommodoreKong]

My guess is when they get that far they wont address the issue at all, or at most after the Doctor regenerates and notices he's still alive he'll say something like "That shouldn't of happened, I was out of regenerations".

 

[jamestyler]

The time lords offered the Master a new cycle in the Five Doctors and the technology exists to regenerate ad infinitum in Mawdryn Undead... I saw the episode last about 27 years ago, but i think it was suggested that the Timelords limit themselves on Purpose as a stylistic choice rather than because of a biolengineering fulcrum.

If they wanted to explain it, and given a few nods to the old series it's definatley possible, I've always thought thats the best way to do it.

We've seen with the Master in both old and new series that he could be given another cycle of regenerations. If you leap from that to the idea that the TL council police other Time Lords, forcing their 12th regeneration to be their last (out of not wanting anyone to be too powerful, everything has it's time thing from S1 or whatever other reason) then without a council to regulate it, the Doctor would live until he chose to die.

Though the idea of the Doctor having the Eye woks just as well, especially with the odd inclusion of it in the movie.

There's much in that movie that's hard to explain and may be dismissable.

He's half human? Apparently not, if we take the fact that the hand clone is the first example of a partially human Gallifrean.

I can forgive this to an extent. Either he does have some human in his background, which is unlikely, or my preferred reasoning...

I don't know where I got this from, so it might be in a story somewhere or I might have just made it up. I honestly can't be sure. But if regeneration sucks up energy from around you, helping form your new body, or you absorb something from those around you or who you've spent time with or whatever... you might take characteristics from those people.

That makes good sense of why the Doctor suddenly had a Northern accent as there was a Northern companion in McGanns audiobooks. He could have picked that up from he at some stage. Then when the loss of his world made him connect emotionally with Rose, he got a bit of London in him.

So... maybe there was something in eights regeneration, or maybe just all the time he spent with humans over the years, that made the eight Doctor a little bit human. If Romana can be a bit alien and if we're facing a possible black Doctor it's not too far of a reach.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Point of order: With a limit of 12 regenerations, the last Doctor would be the 13th, not the 12th.

I thought that it was on the 12 - 13th renegeration that the Timelord died.

We've seen it once but I don't think anyone wants to sit through the Twin Dilemma again to actually find out.

If the 12th regeneration were fatal, then they would really only have 11 regenerations because the 12th one would be death, not regeneration.

 

[14thDoctor]

^^ I was actually thinking that myself, but "the fourteenth Doctor" doesn't sound as dramatic a title

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Point of order: With a limit of 12 regenerations, the last Doctor would be the 13th, not the 12th.

Assuming "The Brain of Morbius" to be accurate, then Tennant is the 18th Doctor. The "12 regenerations" limit is bunk.

As far as we know, that took place BEFORE Gallifrey was destroyed. It was the McGann Doctor who ended up the Time War Doctor.

Not necessarily. "Flood Barriers," the essay in Panini's The Flood, suggests that RTD believes that Eccleston's Doctor fought the Time War. Which means that Eccleston's Doctor destroyed Gallifrey, etc.

He's half human? Apparently not, if we take the fact that the hand clone is the first example of a partially human Gallifreyan.

If anything, I think the human Hand Doctor is suggestive that the Doctor is half-human. It's the human genetics in his genome coming to the fore.

(As an aside, when I had the opportunity to write a Doctor Who story for Big Finish, I made sure to get a reference to the Doctor's human mother in there. Doesn't prove anything, except that it was fun to do. )

I'd say be careful about using the movie as the solid basis for any Whovian facts.

And here I was, thinking "Human Nature" had finally settled the question in favor of the film.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Point of order: With a limit of 12 regenerations, the last Doctor would be the 13th, not the 12th.

Assuming "The Brain of Morbius" to be accurate

Of course "The Brain of Morbius" is accurate. It just doesn't mean what you think it means.

then Tennant is the 18th Doctor.

Negative. It's just as easy to say that those 8 folks see in "Brain" were prior incarnations of Morbius, not the Doctor. There's far more evidence that Tennant is Doc number 8 than that he is not.

The "12 regenerations" limit is bunk.

Apparently, but the proof is in The Master, not Morbius.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Negative. It's just as easy to say that those 8 folks see in "Brain" were prior incarnations of Morbius, not the Doctor.

If you think it's easy to ignore the obvious meaning of the episode and make the outcome of the mind duel inexplicable, I guess.

 

[Sci]

I'd say be careful about using the movie as the solid basis for any Whovian facts.

And here I was, thinking "Human Nature" had finally settled the question in favor of the film.

Not really. All "Human Nature" really establishes is that the nine incarnations of the Doctor prior to Tennant's were acknowledged as having existed in the continuity of the current series. There's nothing at all requiring the writers of the current Doctor Who to keep the Doctor's history consistent with what was established in the original series or in the TV movie -- and in point of fact, I would consider the fact that the Doctor repeatedly says that there had never been a Human/Time Lord hybrid before in "Journey's End" retcons what the TV movie had established.