• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Why Doctor Who is a MESS

If a pregnant Timelady regenerates into a Timelord... What happens to the baby?
Even if a pregnant Time Lady regenerated into another Time Lady, wouldn't she still lose the baby? After all, regeneration is the death of one body and transformation/rebirth into a new one. The death of the pregnant body would take the baby with it and it would transform and be reborn as a new, not pregnant body.
 
Why can't the baby also regenerate if it dies? Young time lords regenerate into old ones and old ones transform into young ones. Why can't a (for example) viable 8 month old (don't know the real gestation period for a time lord) baby regenerate as someone with the appearance of a 60 year old person? At what age do Time Lords attain the ability to regenerate? Does the death of the mother before the baby make all the difference. If mother dies, the regeneration erases the baby's existence? What if the baby dies while the mother is living? Does the baby then regenerate? Does that kill the mother?

I don't know ... just asking.
 
Connected by an umbilical cord (maybe).

After regeneration, the parent and child roles could switch.

The child could be feeding the adult, as the vampireing, life sucking, reverses direction.
 
Hardly "annually." The only year you got 38 episodes and a movie was 2008. Here's how things break down for 2006-2011, the period in which Torchwood and SJA were airing.

2006
DW: 13 episodes, 1 special
TW: 11 episodes
Total: 24 episodes, 1 special

2007
DW: 13 episodes, 1 special
TW: 2 episodes
SJA: 10 episodes, 1 special
Total: 25 episodes, 2 specials

2008
DW: 13 episodes, 1 special
TW: 13 episodes
SJA: 12 episodes
Total: 38 episodes, 1 special

2009
DW: 3 specials
TW: 5 episodes
SJA: 12 episodes
Total: 17 episodes, 3 specials

2010
DW: 13 episodes, 2 specials
SJA: 12 episodes
Total: 25 episodes, 2 specials

2011
DW: 13 episodes, 1 special
TW: 10 episodes
SJA: 6 episodes
Total: 29 episodes, 1 special

You missed out "class". Completely understandable to fair.
 
If a pregnant Timelady regenerates into a Timelord... What happens to the baby?

Until we see something on screen we'll never know, but what if Timelord biology is able to recognise a pregnancy and thus ensure that a regeneration while pregnant will be forced to remain female (or whatever gender gets pregnant) and the body regenerates around the foetus without harming it?
 
Until we see something on screen we'll never know, but what if Timelord biology is able to recognise a pregnancy and thus ensure that a regeneration while pregnant will be forced to remain female (or whatever gender gets pregnant) and the body regenerates around the foetus without harming it?
Given regeneration is an artificial process, it would be lunacy to think there were no safeguards in place for such events.
 
Given regeneration is an artificial process, it would be lunacy to think there were no safeguards in place for such events.
Of course, we've never seen a pregnant time lord (or lady) so it's not out of the realms of possibility that the entire process is artificial from insemination to birth. Even leaving aside the idea of looms, its not an impossible assumption.
 
Given regeneration is an artificial process, it would be lunacy to think there were no safeguards in place for such events.
Yes, but what are the constraints? It seems that there are limits or the Time Lords would have allowed the person to keep their genetic structure in the regeneration. Instead there is a random element to it, including not even being able to keep one's preferred sex. So, the safeguard might be "disable regeneration under the following cases: 1. you are a pregnant woman; 2. you are a baby in a womb; 3 .... etc)". Regeneration isn't a promise of immortality. It is just a way to extend your life and eliminate a great majority of circumstances that can kill you. It's kind of like wearing a helmet on a bike. You can still step off your bike, take the helmet off while you are on the side walk, and then a drunk driver runs you over. Reality can be "cold", and the TIme Lords are not afraid to be cold when it suits their purposes.
 
Sterilization at birth.

Totally a clone species from the looms.

Sterilization would have to be...

Miscarriages.

Multi-exploding peanuts in a Time lady's undercarriage.

That'd be a chain reaction.

The fetus triggering a regeneration in the mother, triggering a regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus...

Until they both run out of lives.
 
Last edited:
Yes, but what are the constraints? It seems that there are limits or the Time Lords would have allowed the person to keep their genetic structure in the regeneration. Instead there is a random element to it, including not even being able to keep one's preferred sex. So, the safeguard might be "disable regeneration under the following cases: 1. you are a pregnant woman; 2. you are a baby in a womb; 3 .... etc)". Regeneration isn't a promise of immortality. It is just a way to extend your life and eliminate a great majority of circumstances that can kill you. It's kind of like wearing a helmet on a bike. You can still step off your bike, take the helmet off while you are on the side walk, and then a drunk driver runs you over. Reality can be "cold", and the TIme Lords are not afraid to be cold when it suits their purposes.
It is hinted that some of those restraints can be overcome, Romana was able to choose her form. The Master was able to decide to regenerate into a younger form (John Simm). It's hinted that the Doctor's wildly erratic regenerations are due to a combination of his lack of mastery of the process and the fact that his regenerations are generally caused by major trauma. It's likely that on Gallifrey regeneration is more controlled and generally as a result of age rather than trauma.
 
... Romana was able to choose her form. ...
Yes, you reminded me that I have a vague memory from when I was watching back in the 1970s-80s time frame. One of the companions (apparently Romana) was trying on "regenerations" like they were clothing.
 
Given regeneration is an artificial process, it would be lunacy to think there were no safeguards in place for such events.

There’s a sort of inherent suggestion that they are basically human until their first regeneration...insofar as the first doctor was referred to as only having one heart, I think. So it may be that tech like the chameleon arch was developed to skirt the whole issue.
Let’s not forget two important things in that regard (1) we look like Time Lords. Not the other way around...there’s explanations for that in some of the books. Basically, Time Lords were first to evolve and that st the pattern for most of the rest of the universe. And (2) the Doctor is half human...possibly on his mother’s side xD. But seriously, it was a big plot point and it’s never been negated. Maybe only 8 was half human, what with being dead a while. Maybe the Doctor has always been half human, but maybe that simply means he’s one of a bunch of Time Lords who are old enough that they are closer to human.
Other ideas of interest in relation to that are things like genetic engineering in the Time Lords (Rassilon Imprimatur) the idea they were rendered sterile around the time they became Time Lords as a society, the fact that while all Time Lords (at least until Pond and Jenny) are gallifreyan, not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords, the idea of the second heart being key to both regeneration and to things unique to Time Lords...temporal sense, controlled Time Travel, the Eye of Harmony as a source of Artron Energy for regeneration and the Matrix. (Interesting thought... 9/10 to 11/13 possibly even 12/14 and 13/15 do not exist in the Matrix on Gallifrey. Unless they uploaded when 12/14 visited. We know that usually Time Lords edit their memories using the Tardis, but perhaps he didn’t do this post it’s destruction. Hmm. Was the suppression of the War Doctor/9 done in this manner?)
 
Sterilization at birth.

Totally a clone species from the looms.

Sterilization would have to be...

Miscarriages.

Multi-exploding peanuts in a Time lady's undercarriage.

That'd be a chain reaction.

The fetus triggering a regeneration in the mother, triggering a regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus, triggering another regeneration in the mother, triggering another regeneration fetus...

Until they both run out of lives.

Maybe that’s how they came up with the Time Lord soldiers during the whole war in heaven thing.
 
Howzabout this-- maybe Timelord babies are made up completely of regeneration energy, without physical form until birth. If the mother Time Lord regenerates while pregnant, the extra influx of regeneration energy to the fetus accelerates the process so the baby will be born as the mother regenerates.
 
Doctor Who has a belly button.

Even if they are loomed, the Doctor is not a clone, unless the cloning process creates a belly button.

Wasn’t his nickname wormie?

Other Time Lords all have (c) BBC Enterprises etched in the back of their thigh.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top