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So the Regeneration limit jumps from 12 to 507...? SJA SPOILERS

So, in other words, the last time the regeneration limit was in a story, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, Ronald Reagan was President, the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War was still going on, Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't even the Soviet Premier yet, M*A*S*H was still on the air, the Nintendo Entertainment System had only just launched in Japan, the Falkland Islands War had just finished and the military junta in Argentina was being dissolved, Return of the Jedi was in theaters, McDonalds had only just introduced the McNugget, Issac Asimov was still alive, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Nintendo's Mario Bros. were new, Tom Cruise was dancing in his underwear in Risky Business, and Roger Moore was still James Bond.
Right, obviously the year Bill Clinton was in office, Tony Blair was not yet Prime Minister, Boris Yeltsin was still alive and in office, Windows 95 was still new, Independence Day was in theaters, Toy Story was the only CGI animated film in history, the Troubles were still ongoing, Alanis Morrisette's first album was a huge hit, Braveheart won Best Picture, Tom Cruise had an obnoxious catch phrase in Jerry Maguire, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were killed, the Spice Girls had their first big hit, 7th Heaven premiered on TV, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ended is so much more timely than 1983 or 1985. ;)
If you didn't notice, Doctor Who wasn't on for all those years. How the fucking hell could we have had a story which referenced rengeration limits then? It's quite obvious you only really care about new Who and the rest didn't happen in your personal canon. If you only want the version of the show with paving slab oral sex and Cybermen crying their heads off, then I'm happy for you. But passing comment on a show with a much longer and deeper history than that and insisting it ought to just be dismissed out of hand because there's not enough snogging and CGI in it for your taste is disrespectful to the people who made the show what it is in the first place.
Yeah, I think it's safe to say the regeneration limit isn't central to the Doctor Who mythos. :)
No, it's not safe to say that. It's your own view.

;););) *patronise*
Sorry, but the regeneration limit hasn't mattered in a long time. That's just a fact. No one but a few of us die-hards on the Internet actually give a shit about it.
Even that most incapable and damaging of hacks RTD acknowledges the show as a continuation and not a remake, so if you think this isn't an issue then you're quite alone in that from the people who make the show. Why else would he put his shit 507 line/joke into that SJA at all?
Oh, I understood your point. I just don't agree. William Hartnell's Doctor smoking a pipe is an example of something that happened so long ago as to not matter to the current character. The Regeneration Limit is a key piece of show history that supports an entire era. Is it so important that RTD can't joke about it? No. But, is it an important enough concept within the mythos to demand a proper dismissal story or concept? Yes.

No one here is saying it shouldn't happen.
Actually...

I haven't said it in this thread yet (because I know I'm in the vast minority) but I've mentioned my personal take on this in previous threads. I want to see The Doctor face his mortality when he's on his final regeneration and see how that affects him. When he dies, he stays dead. No last minute fixes.

I know, I know, as long as Doctor Who remains popular, BBC will not want to end to show based on a few lines mentioned here and there in the classic series. That being said, we probably won't have to worry about that for at least ten years assuming Matt Smith and his following two successors average 3-4 years.
There's integrity in that, but we know that so long as the show is popular and profitable the BBC won't let it end. I wouldn't want the show to end with the Thirteenth Doctor - I'm a big Doctor Who fan, it's just a crying shame we wasted two regenerations and 5 years on RTD's pathetic version of the show. But the issue is really how we deal with the limit. Do we pretend it's not an issue by ignoring it and carrying on thus ruining the character of the Doctor by making him immortal, or do we get a satisfying and interesting story that gets him more lives? I'd favour the latter, and struggle to see why anyone wouldn't.
 
Well, at the moment I only have a blackberry for internet, so I'm not going to sift through all the other posts up thread.

I just saw it as a throw away mention, like you do with banter between yourself and someone.
I mean, I didn't take it as gospel. The Doc was probably just either joking like you do sometimes, besides, smith didn't play the scene seriously, or lying as we all know, the doctor lies. as they crawled through the ducting.

I duno, being rtd, he doesn't really play by the rules regarding Who.

Besides, did anyone find out if rtd wrote Elevens dialogue or did moffat take an uncredited part?
 
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Even that most incapable and damaging of hacks RTD acknowledges the show as a continuation and not a remake, so if you think this isn't an issue then you're quite alone in that from the people who make the show. Why else would he put his shit 507 line/joke into that SJA at all?


I will have to admit that I did not care for the implication of creepy concrete slab oral sex, the Master "aging" the Doctor into a tiny Gollum (who is then 'resurrected' by the Earth's population), the fact that the combined forces of the Doctor's enemies did not take the PLUMB opportunity to BLAST him to bits during his defiant speech skyward in "Pandorica Opens", etc., but this obsession over a line that is SO easily explained and accepted as a little joke (that in no way disrespects or supplants ANYTHING in previous DW lore) is just silly.

I can truly understand why people do not care for some of the developments in recent Doctor Who plot lines, but the continuing rage over this little joke is unbelievable. Best to forget this obvious joke and get back to the issues where annoyance (if not all the fury) might actually be justified.

My own two cents is that the ability to regenerate is one of the things that makes a Time Lord a Time Lord. The 13 regeneration limit, however, is NOT a crucial element, IMO.

It is rule that has been mentioned on the programme a few times, yes, but it is a rule that has been 'gotten around' more than once (by the Master, in particular), and we ALL KNOW that it is a hurdle that WILL be jumped over, tunneled under, or simply walked around when the time comes. The debates going on here on these boards clearly demonstrate that it is not clear how the limit (or skipping over the limit) occurs. We don't know how it works. It remains a mystery. Let it stay a mystery.

I say let him be surprised by his 14th regeneration and move on, pondering and hypothesizing and maybe one day finding out. Keep it a mystery is my vote. Otherwise, if we need a grand explanation with bells and whistles, then why not have a crossover episode where a combination of Geordi's targeting of an adaptation of the deflector's harmonics PLUS Seven injecting the Doctor with a few of her good ol' nanoprobes and we'll have all the jargon needed to move him ahead into additional regenerations! :lol:
 
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^
I've said before, I don't care about RTD's silly SJA line. No one's taking it seriously. I'm talking about how the issue of the regeneration limit is dealt with in the future, and how best to do it. Try reading my posts.
 
Besides, did anyone find out if rtd wrote Elevens dialogue or did moffat take an uncredited part?

I'd say it was RTD, as that would have been a siginificant portion of the episode for Moffat to write without getting a credit.

Meanwhile, why does everyone thinnk Moffat is some sort of supreme overlord of Doctor Who and noting happens in the franchise without his involvement and blessing? He's the showrunner of Doctor Who, he has no authority over the spin-offs. Meaning Torchwood and SJA can do whatever the hell they want without consulting him. The only way he'd have authority over a spin-off is if it were a spin-off he developed.
 
Meanwhile, why does everyone thinnk Moffat is some sort of supreme overlord of Doctor Who and noting happens in the franchise without his involvement and blessing? He's the showrunner of Doctor Who, he has no authority over the spin-offs. Meaning Torchwood and SJA can do whatever the hell they want without consulting him. The only way he'd have authority over a spin-off is if it were a spin-off he developed.

No authority over the spinoffs UNLESS they reference The Doctor. Anything referencing The Doctor (or any peripheral cast) has to be okay'd by Moffit (or whoever is running the show at the time) so as not to contradict something that has or will happen in an episode.
 
You misunderstand me. I don't mean how it will physically effect him (I suspect The Master looked the way he did because resisted death). I mean how The Doctor views his life at the final incarnation.

If the Doctor dies after his 12th regeneration, that doesn't mean his final form has to look like the Master's did. The 13th Doctor could look like anyone. Doesn't have to be old, or young, or shriveled, or burned, or anything specific. The Master surely had a specific set of things happen to him that made him look that way. (Anyone who's read Legacy of the Daleks will know what I mean.)
 
..... This isn't about RTD's fucking stupid attempt at a joke...
... Why else would he put his shit 507 line/joke into that SJA at all?...
... I've said before, I don't care about RTD's silly SJA line. No one's taking it seriously. I'm talking about how the issue of the regeneration limit is dealt with in the future, and how best to do it. Try reading my posts.

Oh, I have tried reading the posts. And I appreciate and respect quite a few of your ideas (including several that I do not even agree with) (... and despite the tiring overuse of "fucking" and such descriptors that takes too many of the comments back down to the 'riding the 7th grade school bus' level).

If you want to simply discuss the concept of the regeneration limit and how to possibly get around it and genuinely DO NOT care about this specific '507' quote, then why keep referring to that line as "shit", "fucking stupid", etc.? It was neither, IMO. It was a good chuckle. It WAS a joke.

We truly get it that you don't like RTD. It is just amusing that even a little wispy joke by RTD can not pass without dousing it with venom.....

That is my two cents and I will now keep out of it....
 
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The Master, *not* counting cheats/stolen bodies (Tremas/Bruce) and audio/novels/comics, is currently on his 15th or 16th life, when you think about it... (and he's the whole reason this thing was brought up in the first place!)a lot of this is conjecture, but is based I think on the evidence.


-The decaying body played by Pratt and Beevers was his final incarnation(13). It was never stated to my knowledge that Delgado was also the final incarnation, for all we know there were others between him and the final life.

-However, at some point he definetly gets a new time lord body sometime after "Bruce". Otherwise Yana wouldn't need the CHameleon arch and would not be able to regenerate. We can also presume that Yana was not the first resurrected body, since otherwise the Doctor would've probably recognized him physically.

-Which makes Simm like the 16th Master.



Also about the music, Sea Devils I think is an exception. The guy who did it returned in the 80s to score most of the Cybermen stories.
 
..... This isn't about RTD's fucking stupid attempt at a joke...
... Why else would he put his shit 507 line/joke into that SJA at all?...
... I've said before, I don't care about RTD's silly SJA line. No one's taking it seriously. I'm talking about how the issue of the regeneration limit is dealt with in the future, and how best to do it. Try reading my posts.

Oh, I have tried reading the posts. And I appreciate and respect quite a few of your ideas (including several that I do not even agree with) (... and despite the tiring overuse of "fucking" and such descriptors that takes too many of the comments back down to the 'riding the 7th grade school bus' level).

If you want to simply discuss the concept of the regeneration limit and how to possibly get around it and genuinely DO NOT care about this specific '507' quote, then why keep referring to that line as "shit", "fucking stupid", etc.? It was neither, IMO. It was a good chuckle. It WAS a joke.

We truly get it that you don't like RTD. It is just amusing that even a little wispy joke by RTD can not pass without dousing it with venom.....

That is my two cents and I will now keep out of it....
Mmm, you are right, I ought to cut down on the "fucking". It is a bit crass. Still, I'm not the only one here.

As for calling the RTD line fucking stupid, that's because it is stupid. It's not clever, it's not funny - what was the point? No one's taking it seriously. The reason it's getting mentioned at all is because it's the catalyst for the current discussion of the regeneration limit is all. I think the line's stupid, but inconsequential and just Russell pretending he's clever or something. It's the regeneration limit I'm interested in discussing, not that line. So stop telling me I'm on about the line. The line's not the issue.

No more line :borg:
 
As for calling the RTD line fucking stupid, that's because it is stupid. It's not clever, it's not funny - what was the point? No one's taking it seriously.

What was the point? It's a throwaway line, a snappy answer to a stupid question from Clyde.

Why did RTD put it in? Because he knew he'd get a reaction from fans, and he likes messing with them. No one else would care, or give it a 15-page thread.
 
-The decaying body played by Pratt and Beevers was his final incarnation(13). It was never stated to my knowledge that Delgado was also the final incarnation, for all we know there were others between him and the final life.

I seem to remember something - may be a book, or an episode, or an audio; not sure which - which said that Delgado's version was indeed the final Master. AFAIK, the Master was trapped in some kind of spatial anomaly (like a black hole) in which he used up all of his regenerations in trying to escape.
 
The overall point is, just deal with it head-on... :techman:
The thing is, by the time they do there may be a whole generation of Whovians who treat the "limt of 507" as gospel!:)


Why not? It exists on the same basis as the previous, outdated one.

Not really. As we firmly established, there have been numerous instances where the 13 limit was mentioned and incorporated into the story. There are contradictions but they are far fewer in number.

Mr Awe
 
-The decaying body played by Pratt and Beevers was his final incarnation(13). It was never stated to my knowledge that Delgado was also the final incarnation, for all we know there were others between him and the final life.

I seem to remember something - may be a book, or an episode, or an audio; not sure which - which said that Delgado's version was indeed the final Master. AFAIK, the Master was trapped in some kind of spatial anomaly (like a black hole) in which he used up all of his regenerations in trying to escape.

Ask Lonemagpie... ;)
 
No more line :borg:

Fair enough- Thank you, also, for your even-handed response to my comments regarding "colorful metaphors", despite the fact that most folks probably don't have a pet peeve about them to the level that I do. You are correct, of course, that other people around here find them very useful.
 
Besides, did anyone find out if rtd wrote Elevens dialogue or did moffat take an uncredited part?

I'd say it was RTD, as that would have been a siginificant portion of the episode for Moffat to write without getting a credit.

Meanwhile, why does everyone thinnk Moffat is some sort of supreme overlord of Doctor Who and noting happens in the franchise without his involvement and blessing? He's the showrunner of Doctor Who, he has no authority over the spin-offs. Meaning Torchwood and SJA can do whatever the hell they want without consulting him. The only way he'd have authority over a spin-off is if it were a spin-off he developed.

I don't see him as a supreme overlord at all.
I figured that rtd had written most of the dialogue etc, but the only reason I asked was because rtd said that for elevens scenes in tennants finale moffat would write the lines cos smith was moffats doctor, just wondered if that had carried over.

Obviously, rtd had to clear certain points in elevens possible timeline before he wrote the ep, which to be honest didn't clash with anything personally, I thought that amy and rorys absence and his different attire wouldn't be explained, that way we could be looking at eleven anywhere in his own timeline
 
You misunderstand me. I don't mean how it will physically effect him (I suspect The Master looked the way he did because resisted death). I mean how The Doctor views his life at the final incarnation.

If the Doctor dies after his 12th regeneration, that doesn't mean his final form has to look like the Master's did. The 13th Doctor could look like anyone. Doesn't have to be old, or young, or shriveled, or burned, or anything specific. The Master surely had a specific set of things happen to him that made him look that way. (Anyone who's read Legacy of the Daleks will know what I mean.)

Goth had said that the Master knew he was dying, so I to think he had been holding back his death for a while and knowing the Doctor's own feelings about his life I can't seee him dying any easier than the Master. I would just as soon not see the Doctor get to that state nor would I want to see him commit suicide of some sort so that doesn't happen to him.
 
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