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What is your favourite regeneration scene?

In a couple of my 'Behind the Scenes' books I have on Doctor Who, they say the reason there was such a close-up on the First and Second Doctor's face is because the producers hadn't decided on what his hair should be like.

Initially, Patrick Troughton was going to wear a Harpo style curly wig before that was discarded right before filming and Anneke Wills gave Troughton her comb and thus the 'Beatle' mop top was created.

Also, I've always been partial on Fifth to Sixth. In fact, the whole serial showcases some of Peter Davison's best acting as the Doctor.
Actually, the change was originally supposed to take place off-screen (as in the book). It was only when the video mixers saw the effects a malfunctioning mix desk produced that they suggested the director show it.
 
This one:
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(the blu-ray where they show a perspective shot of him falling is even more nightmare-inducing than just the companions' reaction shots...)







Honorable mention, the season 6B0NTB version, here's the post-regeneration moment of realization:

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I have Logopolis on DVD and I'm not sure if it's a reedit but you see him fall to the ground there too, or is this new and different?

My memory's a bit hazy... some improved f/x scenes were made for blu-ray only, others were done on DVD and ported over. But I think this was for blu-ray only...

Ah, found something at last:

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(Having rewatched "Castrovalva", what they did for that story is even more spectacular...)

I freeze-framed a few scenes and basked in how much work they did in swapping out background, removing bluescreen/greenscreen fringing, etc... and to create modelwork to show the Doctor falling... floored in amazement over how much they could do. :luvlove:

An added bonus is the blu-ray edition was shrunk down from its upscaled HD source for showing the new f/x side-by-side simultaneously with the DVD, since this also pertains to all of those posts about "Upscaled AI". Looks little different, save for the removal of bluescreen effect fringing, which was done by hand to also transition in better background imagery and color matching/grading (esp. the Doctor on the dish, where the railing has a daylight golden color cast but the old background image was pure white, the replacement image is similarly hued and blends in perfectly... more definition on the floor plate grates the Doctor was laying on while on the dish's gantry too, which could be AI and/or less compression allowing more original detail to be shown instead of compressing it into a single blop of gray/white (time index 5:43)... a lot of nifty tricks went into all that work and it's marvelous no matter what. :luvlove: "The megapixel myth" prevailing, color and contrast bandwidth also play a big role in overall clarity... )
 
Cool article video, albeit done before "Logopolis"'s:

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(when he gets to "rendered in 720i for potential blu-ray release"... I hope they re-render it in 1080P, if not 1080i.)
 
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4th Doctor is an oddity, the watcher thing has never happened before or after on the TV show, not sure about other media.

Other media do all kind of crazy stuff, including a whole circus who are all the same time lord regenerating essentially into each other.

It had been shown on screen before with the Tibetan time Lord.
 
Other media do all kind of crazy stuff, including a whole circus who are all the same time lord regenerating essentially into each other.

It had been shown on screen before with the Tibetan time Lord.

Wait what? What Tibetan Timelord?
 
No I have not but I don't mind spoilers

I was being circumspect, and am going from vey very old memory…
But the concept of The Watcher was introduced in Pertwee last story, where some Time Lords can sort of project their future selves to assist with regeneration. (The Doctor isn’t very good at it.)
In this case, a Tibetan monk called (memory…) K’Anpo Rinpoche was in thi story, and he turns out to be a Time Lord — his assistant, Cho’Je turns out to have been his ‘watcher’ and next incarnation, into whom he regenerates. Rinpoche/Cho’Je is there to help push the Doctors regeneration along as well when he returns from Metebelis III.(the whole story is balanced on the Doctor making up for a past transgression before he can regenerate in a way)

It’s all deliberately very Buddhist (because Barry Letts was a cool dude) and hugely influenced Doctor Who afterwards, particularly in the Wilderness Years. (The novels did a *lot* with the concept, and with the Buddhist themes this introduced to who.)
 
I was being circumspect, and am going from vey very old memory…
But the concept of The Watcher was introduced in Pertwee last story, where some Time Lords can sort of project their future selves to assist with regeneration. (The Doctor isn’t very good at it.)
In this case, a Tibetan monk called (memory…) K’Anpo Rinpoche was in thi story, and he turns out to be a Time Lord — his assistant, Cho’Je turns out to have been his ‘watcher’ and next incarnation, into whom he regenerates. Rinpoche/Cho’Je is there to help push the Doctors regeneration along as well when he returns from Metebelis III.(the whole story is balanced on the Doctor making up for a past transgression before he can regenerate in a way)

It’s all deliberately very Buddhist (because Barry Letts was a cool dude) and hugely influenced Doctor Who afterwards, particularly in the Wilderness Years. (The novels did a *lot* with the concept, and with the Buddhist themes this introduced to who.)
I wonder would this also explain how Three knew (in The Five Doctors) that his successor was “all teeth and curls”? Some have speculated that the two had an offscreen team-up adventure but usually the earlier incarnation doesn’t remember anything about his successor.
 
I wonder would this also explain how Three knew (in The Five Doctors) that his successor was “all teeth and curls”? Some have speculated that the two had an offscreen team-up adventure but usually the earlier incarnation doesn’t remember anything about his successor.

The novels introduced the concept of a Time Lord ‘game’ called ‘Eighth Man Bound’ so called because it was a kind of stupid risky stress based game that allowed them to essentially preview in a shadowy fashion their likely incarnations. It’s name comes from the fact that almost no-one gets to their eighth. (You can guess which book era it’s from)
Which of course, may or may not gel with things like the Doctor being offered a choice at his trial, and ‘that’s the trouble with regeneration, you never know quite what you’re going to get’.
It, and the Watcher concept, does gel quite nicely with Romana trying on her different bodies in Destiny of the Daleks, as she might well have just been waltzing projections into the control room whilst still looking like Maryomana, before just wandering in as her new self, which she had already decided would be the Lallamana model.
 
Regeneration is so inconsistent, that it is completely random is the best option. I suppose it's possible that the next incarnation can come back to ensure things go smoothly, but in the same way the conception of a child is (in most circumstance) down to purely random intersection of specific egg and specific sperm I've always assumed that a regeneration is similarly random, and that a Timelord who regenerates at 11:45 will wind up a completely different body than if they held the regeneration off until 11:46.
 
Regeneration is so inconsistent, that it is completely random is the best option. I suppose it's possible that the next incarnation can come back to ensure things go smoothly, but in the same way the conception of a child is (in most circumstance) down to purely random intersection of specific egg and specific sperm I've always assumed that a regeneration is similarly random, and that a Timelord who regenerates at 11:45 will wind up a completely different body than if they held the regeneration off until 11:46.

War Games, Planet of the Spiders, and then Destiny of the Daleks sort of went against that. Night of the Doctor much much later sort of has it both ways, and a few in the Capaldi Era suggest there’s a fair bit of control even in emergencies — subconsciously copying a face, holding it off for ages (like Tennant in his swan song as well really)
 
War Games, Planet of the Spiders, and then Destiny of the Daleks sort of went against that. Night of the Doctor much much later sort of has it both ways, and a few in the Capaldi Era suggest there’s a fair bit of control even in emergencies — subconsciously copying a face, holding it off for ages (like Tennant in his swan song as well really)

Well add Romana to that list she tried out at least 4 bodies before settling on one so yeah inconsistent is a word to describe it.
 
Well add Romana to that list she tried out at least 4 bodies before settling on one so yeah inconsistent is a word to describe it.

That was in Destiny of the Daleks. Watched it for the first time the other day. (Like many fans of a certain age, Doctor Who was almost a literary franchise thanks to Target.)
 
That was in Destiny of the Daleks. Watched it for the first time the other day. (Like many fans of a certain age, Doctor Who was almost a literary franchise thanks to Target.)

But it would seem some Timelords like her have enough control they can window shop new bodies
 
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