Are Time Lords still related after regeneration?

[Sketcher]

It's a question that's been bouncing around in my mind as of late. Considering when a Time Lord regenerates their entire body changes into some who can look vastly different than before, is that Time Lord still related to any parents, children, etc after the fact?

Since Time Lords are a telepathic species, I feel at least on a mental level they're related in some way. Especially since they can recognize each other no matter what body they now occupy. But is there still some sort of DNA marker that says this Time Lord is the Doctor, Master, Romana, and so on?

 

[Captrek]

No, which is why it’s okay for him to be married to his daughter.

 

[Chaos Descending]

... is there still some sort of DNA marker that says this Time Lord is the Doctor, Master, Romana, and so on?

Yes. It's something called "bio-data". It's basically the Time-Lord version of DNA, but kind of like "Super DNA". It is talked about in the stories "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Arc of Infinity" and in some of the tie-in novels.

 

[Captain Crow]

It's a question that's been bouncing around in my mind as of late. Considering when a Time Lord regenerates their entire body changes into some who can look vastly different than before, is that Time Lord still related to any parents, children, etc after the fact?

Yes, they're still related as they're the same person. Regeneration just alters their body's form and jumbles their brain bit. It doesn't alter their DNA.

 

[Qonundrum]

No, which is why it’s okay for him to be married to his daughter.

Wait, what now?

I miss the good old days when overly long novels postulated otherworldly ideas for continuing a species, especially a complex one as the Time Lords, who were an elevated splinter of Gallifreyans. As if audiences aren't allowed the luxury of mystery or how phrases like "Grandfather", "Professor", and so on could be terms of endearment rather than mundanely literal interpretation. Now they just copulate like dust bunnies. This is what the show is about now?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Wait, what now?

A poor joke about David and Georgia Tennant.

 

[Christopher]

It's a question that's been bouncing around in my mind as of late. Considering when a Time Lord regenerates their entire body changes into some who can look vastly different than before, is that Time Lord still related to any parents, children, etc after the fact?

I'd assume so. For all that we obsess over it, the genes that determine a person's outward appearance are a small fraction of the total genome. And a lot of our traits -- including sexual characteristics, to an extent -- are determined at least partly by epigenetic factors like hormones that influence how the genes are expressed, e.g. which genes are activated, which are dormant, and how they interact. I'd assume regeneration is something like that -- a Time Lord's genome is engineered to be capable of expressing itself in a range of different ways, so all the different outward forms are just different epigenetic expressions of the same genome.

That could explain the assumption some tie-in stories have made that the Doctor's future incarnations were already predetermined before they happened, that the Doctor's future selves were already in there. Although it contradicts the canonical assertions that regenerations' appearances can be chosen, as suggested in "The War Games" and "Destiny of the Daleks," or can be based on specific people, as was established with Twelve's appearance.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Wait, what now?

David Tennant (The 10th Doctor, the Meta-Crisis Doctor, the 14th Doctor) is married to Georgia Moffat ("Jenny" from The Doctor's Daughter), who is the real life daughter of Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor).

 

[David cgc]

I miss the good old days when overly long novels postulated otherworldly ideas for continuing a species, especially a complex one as the Time Lords, who were an elevated splinter of Gallifreyans. As if audiences aren't allowed the luxury of mystery or how phrases like "Grandfather", "Professor", and so on could be terms of endearment rather than mundanely literal interpretation. Now they just copulate like dust bunnies. This is what the show is about now?

Ironically, the way dust bunnies clump up is probably a better metaphor for the "looms" than anything else, but I'm not going to go into the facts of life (or housekeeping) on a Doctor Who forum.

 

[Shawnster]

Yes, they're still related as they're the same person. Regeneration just alters their body's form and jumbles their brain bit. It doesn't alter their DNA.

Blond, brunette, xx, xy... Aren't these all genetic changes between doctors?

 

[Christopher]

Blond, brunette, xx, xy... Aren't these all genetic changes between doctors?

There are both genetic and epigenetic factors that can go into such things, and slight genetic differences in surface appearance don't preclude people from being related. I've heard of cases where a biracial couple had one child who looked white and another child who looked black. Surface differences like that are a trivially small part of the genome.