I don't know or care, because that's completely missing the point.
The point is that the show is already effectively about an immortal character, because the idea that the Doctor has a limit to his regenerations has never played a role in the program since it was revised, and that, as such, it would not weaken the show if they were to make the decision to contradict or remove the "13 regenerations" limit.
Saying that the limit was artificially induced by the Time Lords is just one potential justification for the decision to go beyond the Thirteenth Doctor. There could be others that they could use to justify the decision to maintain consistency. Or they could choose to ignore the inconsistency with TOS entirely. Whatever; it's not important. What's important is, it wouldn't weaken the show because the idea that the Doctor is mortal is already absent.
You're getting caught up in irrelevant plot details instead of addressing the question of thematic content. Again, the specific plot device used to justify moving beyond the Thirteenth Doctor is irrelevant to the question of whether or not it weakens the program. Plot exists to serve theme and characters, not the other way around.
No, it really hasn't. It was peripheral, at best, on TOS, and it's been completely absent from the revival.
Fair enough. But I think that's a very subjective evaluation; the most reasonable argument I think you can make is that the revived series has already been diminished from TOS by the Doctor's mortality being absent as a theme since "Rose" aired. But I don't think you can argue that contradicting the limit would weaken the series as it currently stands, because of the very absence of the idea of a regeneration limit since the revival began.
I for one really don't care if it makes "no sense," because I don't care if they contradict an episode or two that aired before USENET was invented.
There are possibilities for cohesive and interesting stories on the opposite matter, too. There are possibilities for cohesive and interesting stories on almost any given subject. At the end of the day, this argument is completely subjective. The only question is which potentially cohesive and interesting story you subjectively prefer.
Um, never, because it's all equally fictional.
And RTD makes a valid point when he says that some "facts" stick and some don't. The Third Doctor claimed to be thousands of years old, but no one buys that anymore. Even the oldest estimates only put the Doctor at around 1,400.
The Master's resurrection scene in "The End of Time, Part One," was literally the first and only time in the RTD era that I sat there and shouted at the screen, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?!"
Yes.
(Of course, RTD is a hell of a lot more reverent of TOS than I would have been in his place. I'd've been tempted to declare all of TOS out of continuity with the current Who and to never feature any crossovers with TOS characters at all.)
Certainly it's trivial! My point was, just because RTD tried to change it on a whim doesn't mean it matters. There's a lifetime of the Thirteen limit in the show Doctor Who, and a single, joking line of RTD's in a spin-off kid's show. So, it's irrelevant what he said...
Yep!
Everything that comes before now is irrelevant in comparison to the needs of the story being told now. If Moffat produces a story that requires the Doctor to have a 13-regeneration limit, then RTD's line in Death of the Doctor is irrelevant. If RTD had needed to write a story about how the Doctor has no regeneration limits, then all of those stories from TOS would have become irrelevant.
After all, it's just as irrelevant that Jack disappeared into the TARDIS in the Hub in "End of Days" but had to run for it out in the open in "Utopia." It's just as irrelevant that in "Voyage of the Damned," the Titanic was a threat to the whole planet yet in "Turn Left" it only destroyed southeast England. It's just as irrelevant that Martha would not be working at UNIT Base in New York at 4:00 AM Eastern Time on a Saturday just when the Earth happens to be transmatted to the Medusa Cascade at 8:00 AM Greenwich Time. It's just as irrelevant that....
Etc.
Besides, RTD made it pretty clear he doesn't think we should take the "507 regenerations" line too seriously.
No, that would be the writers who had the Fourth Doctor and Romana running around saying that the Doctor was only around 700 years old during the Tom Baker era.
What RTD said is completely valid: "Facts" get put onscreen, and both later writers and fandom accept some facts as binding while ignoring others in favor of contradictory "facts" given later on. Which "facts" are accepted and which "facts" are ignored is often quite arbitrary and subjective.
Umm, the Internet is not the source of all fandom nitpicking. It existed as far back as the 1960s when people would write compendiums to their favorite TV shows and nitpick minor continuity glitches.
And why should the fact that a few fans like us are weird enough to ramble about the show and look up "facts" from the show on the Internet bind the producers? Their goal should be good storytelling, not pleasing nitpicky uber-fans like us.
Um, no, what he's saying there is that he deliberately writes so as to create the illusion of there having been no pre-planning, so as to create the impression that everything is happening suddenly and unexpectedly. He's not saying he's making stuff up off the cuff, he's saying that he's writing to create the impression that it's coming off the cuff.
It is.
For you. For others, it works just fine. Certainly the fact that Doctor Who's audience consistently grew during RTD's tenure, even as it won numerous writing awards, indicates that many others did find RTD's structural decisions satisfying.
Welcome to subjective taste.
People wrote news letters and fan magazines.
