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Capaldi's Regeneration

To be fair, the fake regeneration was for the benefit of people watching, who probably didn't know about 10th's "hand regeneration", and maybe not even The War Doctor, so would have assumed the 11th Doctor would regenerate, so the effect was added because the bad guys expected it. I think the only real time where the 11th Doctor's lack of regeneration is really in question was when he healed River's hand with regeneration energy. That's pretty hard to justify.
I forgot about using regeneration energy to heal River's hand. I was more thinking of Let's Kill Hitler, where he attempts to regenerate after River poisoned him, only he can't because the poison apparently prevents regeneration. And then there's Nightmare in Silver, where he tells the Cyber Doctor in his head "I can regenerate right now" which since the Cyber Doctor was in the Doctor's head, and had access to his memories, should know that's bullshit.
 
I forgot about using regeneration energy to heal River's hand. I was more thinking of Let's Kill Hitler, where he attempts to regenerate after River poisoned him, only he can't because the poison apparently prevents regeneration. And then there's Nightmare in Silver, where he tells the Cyber Doctor in his head "I can regenerate right now" which since the Cyber Doctor was in the Doctor's head, and had access to his memories, should know that's bullshit.

I'm one of the few people who seems to really like that episode, but I don't remember any poison. Still, I'd assume he was just putting on a show for the people watching. Either that, or that's when he realized that he was out of regenerations (he may not have thought about the hand thing being a full regeneration before).

As for Nightmare in Silver, I barely watched that episode the first time I was going through the 11th Doctor's episodes, and even then I mostly tuned it out, so I'll take your word for it. Still, he is a timelord. I can see him blocking an entity from his memories even if its in his head. Otherwise, the entity would know everything he knows, like his name, and I doubt the Cyber Doctor learned that.

Of course this is just me trying to justify stuff after the fact. Moffat obviously didn't put any thought into the regeneration issue until Time of the Doctor, so I'm mostly just trying to make things work with what we know know.
 
Actually, IIRC the Tardis avatar (little Amelia Pond) simply states "Regeneration not available."

I'm also not clear whether 11 recalled The War Doctor or not? I guess it isn't completely clear whether he'd blocked out the memory of that Doctor.
 
Still, I'd assume he was just putting on a show for the people watching. Either that, or that's when he realized that he was out of regenerations (he may not have thought about the hand thing being a full regeneration before).
Thing is, he was alone in the TARDIS. No one to put on an act for.
Actually, IIRC the Tardis avatar (little Amelia Pond) simply states "Regeneration not available."
True, but you'd think something like being on your last life isn't something that just gets forgotten in a moment of stress.
I'm also not clear whether 11 recalled The War Doctor or not? I guess it isn't completely clear whether he'd blocked out the memory of that Doctor.
The existence of the War Doctor was never really blocked, indeed just from Day of the Doctor we see him doing things the Doctor has always talked about doing anyway, like fighting the Time War, witnessing the Fall of Arcadia, preparing to commit genocide against the Time Lords and the Daleks. It's just the Doctors that came after him denied his existence and didn't consider him to be a Doctor.

Ironically, had they revealed the existence of the War Doctor during Eccleston or Tennant's run it would be easier to retcon in since those two never said which number Doctor they were. Unfortunately, with Smith, we are repeatedly bashed over the head with the fact that he's the Eleventh, to the point that it was even a central element to the storyline of his run, what with the Fall of the Eleventh and all that. So after three years of going out of his way to make it clear he's the Eleventh Doctor, we learn at the end of his run "actually, he's really the Twelfth. No, you know what, he's Thirteenth and last."

Now I am going off on a bit of a tangent, but this has me wondering, with the next Doctor, are they going to refer to him as the Thirteenth Doctor, or are they going to choose to be superstitious and avoid using the number thirteen and just call him the Fourteenth, which technically isn't a lie since counting the War Doctor he does have thirteen predecessors? Hell, if anything, the logic is a lot more sound than office building which just label their thirteenth floor the fourteenth just to avoid bad luck.
 
I guess it goes to see how superstitious they are. AFAIK people haven't omitted the thirteenth floor in building designs for years. My own office building has a thirteenth floor and I haven't heard of anything bad happening there... So far... Still, actually playing him AS the Thirteenth Doctor is an opportunity for more and a few lines about just that.

My view on Eleven's omission of knowledge is that he simply didn't know how many he had left. Unlike Ten, this Doctor viewed regeneration as part of regular time lord life and that it simply happened when it happened. He knows he's got twelve get-out-of-jail-free cards, but it's not like he (or at least THIS Doctor) keeps an eye on how many he's got left, and it's not like a little sign pops on above his heard reading out how many lives he's got left. Furthermore, he's long since lost track of how old he actually is, and I'm guessing how many regenerations he's been through is part of this. IMO, it's only when he had several centuries on Trenzalore to sit and actually think about his life, he came to realize that he's on his last card after all.

Mark
 
Only in Time of the Doctor, that being the episode that Moffat decided there was indeed no more regenerations left. The Eleventh Doctor mentioned twice prior to being able to regenerate. Plus the Tessalecta in his form created a fake regeneration effect when it was shot.

Sure. But, ALL the Doctors knew they could regenerate. I was responding to the suggestion that the Doctor walked around knowing when he would regenerate. And that's not true--save for the 4th Doctor (and even then).

All the Doctors were having an adventure that they didn't know would be their last.
 
Capaldi could regenerate into 13 then 13 gets into an accident the a few minutes later and we get the 14! LOL We know Moffat like to repeat his plots, ! LOL
 
Capaldi could regenerate into 13 then 13 gets into an accident the a few minutes later and we get the 14! LOL We know Moffat like to repeat his plots, ! LOL

That would be priceless.

INT. Tardis

The Twelfth Doctor regenerates standing. It's a light show. Suddenly, the Thirteenth Doctor stands there. She smiles at Bill.
THE DOCTOR:
Hello, I'm...
As she steps forward, she trips and BANGS her head on the console.
The Light Show... all over again....
 
That would be priceless.

INT. Tardis

The Twelfth Doctor regenerates standing. It's a light show. Suddenly, the Thirteenth Doctor stands there. She smiles at Bill.
THE DOCTOR:
Hello, I'm...
As she steps forward, she trips and BANGS her head on the console.
The Light Show... all over again....

:lol: I'd do that, but maybe make the 13th Doctor someone like Rowan Atkinson or Richard E Grant (not because I'm against a female Doctor, but because I think one of those two would be a more entertaining way to do the scene). Heck, they could even do it that way and give more opportunities for adventures with that Doctor. Just have the 12th Doctor regenerate outside the TARDIS, enter without the companion then disappear, have them reappear seconds later and invite the new companion into the TARDIS, and when that happens then have them trip. That way you could have the gag and only have to use the special actor for a few minutes of screen time, while non-TV material could do the "lost adventures" of the 13th Doctor for the time that elapsed for him between appearing and disappearing. If they used Richard E Grant for this, that could even put Scream of Shalka back into continuity.

Obviously I have over thought this little joke too much :rommie:
 
:lol: I'd do that, but maybe make the 13th Doctor someone like Rowan Atkinson or Richard E Grant (not because I'm against a female Doctor, but because I think one of those two would be a more entertaining way to do the scene). Heck, they could even do it that way and give more opportunities for adventures with that Doctor. Just have the 12th Doctor regenerate outside the TARDIS, enter without the companion then disappear, have them reappear seconds later and invite the new companion into the TARDIS, and when that happens then have them trip. That way you could have the gag and only have to use the special actor for a few minutes of screen time, while non-TV material could do the "lost adventures" of the 13th Doctor for the time that elapsed for him between appearing and disappearing. If they used Richard E Grant for this, that could even put Scream of Shalka back into continuity.

Obviously I have over thought this little joke too much :rommie:

Also that would get him past that whole I'm still within 15 hours of my regeneration thing there he would heal himself and not change like 10 when he lost his hand, or River when she got shot by the Nazis.

Could also be that the regeneration to Doc 13 is simply not taking for some reason and his body is forced to just regenerate again. There are many scenarios that would be interesting.
 
Honestly, I think if they were to do it they should give some way of telling stories with that version of The Doctor, at least in other media and maybe even leave room for a multi-Doctor story. No reason to completely waste a full incarnation on what is basically a gag.
 
My theory about Smith saying that he could regenerate in episodes like "Let's Kill Hitler" & "Nightmare in Silver" amounts to him not being sure just how much regeneration energy he had left. I'm thinking, the metacrisis regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" used up a lot of regeneration energy but not as much as would have been used by a full regeneration. He thought that he might potentially have enough left over for another regeneration, at least in theory, although it would probably still be quite risky. River is aware of how tenuous his remaining supply of regeneration energy is, which is why she's so cross with him when he uses some to heal her wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan." Perhaps the Doctor was genuinely unsure of just how much he had left, between the metacrisis regeneration, healing River's wrist, excess energy bleed-off from when Tennant regenerated in "The End of Time" (which seemed to damage the TARDIS console in the process), Tennant blowing 10 years of his life force into a damaged piece of his TARDIS in "Rise of the Cybermen," not to mention wondering how much he had left over from River's remaining regenerations in "Let's Kill Hitler." It was only after the Doctor had a few centuries to kill on Trenzalore that he actually ran the numbers and realized that he no longer had enough left to safely attempt a regeneration at all. (Presumably, if he tried, he would have ended up all crispy like the Master in "The Deadly Assassin" & "The Keeper of Traken.")

I'm not so much discussing the regeneration here but more the episode itself: what if the episode has no prophecies (you know, four knocks, the fall of the eleventh etc...) or foreshadowing but instead it is the episode where something simply goes wrong. Just as they think they're in the clear - BANG! I always thought The Stolen Earth was the perfect final episode for a Doctor.

Agreed. While we can argue about whether or not Smith could've or should've known that he could or couldn't regenerate in "The Time of the Doctor," the point is that the whole episode was heavy with portent that this was THE END. "The End of Time" was the same way. I would prefer the Doctor's regeneration to be sudden & shocking, a surprise for him even if the audience knows it's coming. In fact, that might make it more poignant if the audience can see the danger while the Doctor can't.

There's an image that's come into my head. I don't know what the preceding episode would have been but it ends with the Doctor on a boat at sea. He thinks the danger is over and he takes a moment to pause and look at the sunset. Caught up in his reverie, he doesn't see a man approach behind him, one of the villains of the story whom the Doctor had presumed was either dead or safely locked away. The audience would shout to warn the Doctor if they could but of course he can't hear us. And then, while the Doctor is enjoying his peaceful moment, a shot rings out. The Doctor collapses and falls overboard. We see him face down in the water as he's engulfed by regeneration energy. Once the regeneration completes, the new Doctor's first thoughts are that he's still drowning and is miles from shore! The words appear heavy on the screen: "TO BE CONTINUED."

Season 11 opens with the Doctor washing ashore and he could be anywhere leading into any adventure. (It could even be a story decades later, implying that the Doctor was drifting for ages. When someone asks him about this, he just says, "I can hold my breath... a really long time." The Doctor's soaking wet clothes would also give him a reason to change early on in the story. "They're not mine. They belonged to the other guy," he explains to his baffled rescuer.)

I’d still like to see a good(ish) Master, one who’d work with the Doctor but who would perhaps harden over time (sort of the opposite to Capaldi’s Doctor) or else one who approached death with sadness, knowing that with the next regeneration he/she would likely revert to type.

I'd like to see an episode where the Master goes "straight." Or at least, straight by the Master's standards, which would be running an alien casino and being a ruthless mob boss but no longer trying to conquer the universe or commit genocide. The Doctor spends the entire episode thinking that the Master is obviously behind all of the mysterious goings-on but it turns out he's totally innocent and there's some other alien menace that they have to team up to fight.

I like Missy. She's my 2nd favorite version of the Master, after Roger Delgado. I can even picture her with a goatee! :D
 
I'd rather the Monk came back. Have a Time Lord nuisance to pester the Doctor with, rather than an out-and-out trouble maker in the Master/Missy. Then you don't have to worry about "killing him off" at the end of every encounter. Just strand him or lock him up somewhere, just for him to pop up somewhere else, meddling with the time line.
 
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Sillier version. The 12th Doctor is killed during the next Christmas special. He regenerates, but into someone unexpected. The episode end with him someplace.

Next Season starts and we have this same Doctor (the 13th) wash up someplace and regenerate (could even do it like the 6th to 7th regeneration if you want to skip paying the special guest actor) into the 14th Doctor we were expecting. The 13th gets to appear in whatever spinoff they like, or can even show up in crossovers, or even have been the Valeyard for a spin, but we get the 14th Doctor instead.
 
Sure, you could do that - if you want to piss the audience off even worse than they were with the Colin Baker firing/McCoy-in-a-wig debacle. Which, given the show's currently shaky status and the debut of both a new Doctor(s) and new showrunner, is the absolute LAST thing anyone should be thinking about doing.
 
I wonder if they'll have something special in mind for the visual effect of the regeneration itself. While no regeneration has been exactly the same, it was relatively similar in process and look, chronologically speaking, from the Eighth Doctor until the Eleventh. The Doctor always looks at his glowey hands (you never noticed THAT, did you?), generally has time to say something, and then the CG lightshow takes over. It was similar enough to the point that pretty much every regeneration by anyone else capable of doing so (River, the Master, the General) following the same principle.

This process is the same and yet different with the Smith --> Capaldi event, with the notable difference of the lightshow being compressed visually to a very quick cut to a shot with the new guy and no significant pyrotechnics. I'm sure this was a case of Moffat wantng to switch things up while rubbing his hands together like the gleeful fanboy he is, but I wonder if there was any particular reason to do so - and if this would be carried over (or not) to the upcoming regeneration.

Mark
 
I wonder if they'll have something special in mind for the visual effect of the regeneration itself. While no regeneration has been exactly the same, it was relatively similar in process and look, chronologically speaking, from the Eighth Doctor until the Eleventh. The Doctor always looks at his glowey hands (you never noticed THAT, did you?), generally has time to say something, and then the CG lightshow takes over. It was similar enough to the point that pretty much every regeneration by anyone else capable of doing so (River, the Master, the General) following the same principle.

This process is the same and yet different with the Smith --> Capaldi event, with the notable difference of the lightshow being compressed visually to a very quick cut to a shot with the new guy and no significant pyrotechnics. I'm sure this was a case of Moffat wantng to switch things up while rubbing his hands together like the gleeful fanboy he is, but I wonder if there was any particular reason to do so - and if this would be carried over (or not) to the upcoming regeneration.

Mark

Maybe they'll go retro and the Doctor will be lying down when he regenerates.
 
The Dr decides to trim his fierce eyebrows, while the tardis is in flight, it bumps into something and the Dr cuts his eyebrow bleeding profusely and unable to stem the bleeding, he bleeds to death, and at the last minute starts a regeneration..........But the blood from the Dr drips into the tardis innards making it go mad and while the tarids goes mad the Dr regenration is also affected with the regen effects turning blood red......and bang, the Dr regens into the Valeyard, who then spends a entire season in his evil tardis wronging all the rights the Dr had done.....and that is how the series stays for the next 40 years,a evil Dr going back to making all the good the Dr did all bad. ha
 
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