A theory of Time Lord regeneration (with pictures!) Note: an earlier version of this post can be found here. This one has been updated to include details learned on- and off-screen in the last few months of 2013. Below the cut are my thoughts about Time Lord regeneration on the show Doctor Who, taking into consideration various things we’ve learned over the past 50 years. Also various pictures and animated gifs of the show, none of which are mine. In the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor’s Time Lord companion Romanadvoratrelundar regenerates her form, and ends up looking exactly like Princess Astra of Atrios, an individual Romana and the Doctor had encountered on a previous adventure. When she first reveals her new form to the Doctor, the two of them have the following exchange: DOCTOR: What are you doing in that body? ROMANA: Regenerating. Do you like it? DOCTOR: But you can’t wear that body. ROMANA: I thought it looked very nice on the Princess. DOCTOR: But you can’t go round wearing copies of bodies. ROMANA: Why not? We’re not going back to Atrios, are we? DOCTOR: No. ROMANA: Well, then. At the Doctor’s request, Romana then “tries” a number of other forms — exiting the console room, returning as somebody else, and having that appearance critiqued by the Doctor. After several rounds of this, she reappears looking like Princess Astra once more. There are several interesting implications to this scene for just how Time Lord regeneration works. First, it appears that a Time Lord can consciously choose a form while regenerating. For even if most of Romana’s forms here are random, she specifically chooses to revert to the Astra form at the end of the sequence. Now, there is no good proof that the Doctor regularly chooses his form in this sort of manner, and in fact he often seems surprised by how he turns out. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors each express a disappointment at not being ginger, the Twelfth Doctor doesn’t like the color of his kidneys, a seemingly newly-regenerated Ninth Doctor says, “ Ah, could’ve been worse. Look at the ears,” and so on. And, in seeming contrast to Romana’s parade of forms, the newly-regenerated Tenth Doctor has the following exchange with Rose: ROSE: Can you change back? DOCTOR: Do you want me to? ROSE: Yeah. DOCTOR: Oh. ROSE: Can you? DOCTOR: No. The Ninth Doctor also tells Rose right before that regeneration, “I might have two heads, or no head… It’s a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you’re going to end up with.” With the exception of the Eighth Doctor choosing to become a warrior to fight in the Time War — a process that was aided by the Sisterhood of Karn — the Doctor does not appear to exercise conscious control over how he regenerates. However, other Time Lords do demonstrate such control. In addition to Romana’s regeneration, the Master indicates in the 2007 episode Utopia that he too can choose his new form. “If the Doctor can be young and strong, then so can I,” he says, right before changing into a younger, stronger body than he had before. And in the 1969 serial The War Games, when the Time Lords are forcing the Second Doctor to regenerate, they present him with several options of what to look like next. (The serial ends without him actually picking one, and the Time Lords threatening to make the decision for him — and when the Third Doctor makes his first appearance in the next serial, he turns out to not have one of the pictured faces at all. But it seems clear that a form can be chosen by someone directing the regeneration process, whether that’s the Time Lord doing the regenerating or some outside force.) It may seem odd, if Time Lords can indeed choose to direct their regenerations, that the Doctor so often seems to leave his to chance in the hope that he’ll get something good. One explanation may be that the degree of control can vary by Time Lord, and the Doctor simply isn’t particularly good at it. However, readers are invited to remember that that lack of control essentially characterizes how he pilots his TARDIS as well. TARDIS technology is capable of precision navigating, which other Time Lords seem to prefer, and even the Doctor utilizes that ability on occasion. But more often, it seems as though he is content to arrive not at a particular destination, but merely somewhere interesting near when and where he actually had in mind. (Some writers, such as Neil Gaiman in the 2011 episode The Doctor’s Wife, have suggested that the TARDIS herself helps guide him to where he’s most needed.) It may well be that the Doctor approaches regeneration in much the same fashion, willfully choosing to not exert the strongest amount of control over the process. Romana’s regeneration is also interesting for the parade of forms she tries before settling on the one resembling Astra. It seems strange that she would discard those forms so casually if she were limited in the number she could have in her entire lifetime. Note that the idea of a ‘regeneration limit’ is one that has never been fully explained on-screen, but in the 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin, the Doctor and fellow Time Lord Engin have the following exchange about the Master: DOCTOR: He was evil, cunning and resourceful. Highly developed powers of ESP and a formidable hypnotist. And the more I think about it, the less likely it seems. ENGIN: What? DOCTOR: Well, that the Master would meekly accept the end of his regeneration cycle. It’s not his style at all. ENGIN: But that’s something we must all accept, Doctor. DOCTOR: Thank you. Not the Master. No, he had some sort of plan. That’s why he came here, Engin. ENGIN: After the twelfth regeneration, there is no plan that will postpone death. The typical interpretation of these lines is that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen different forms. It’s true that Engin’s use of the word ‘regeneration’ is somewhat unclear as to whether he means twelve different incarnations or twelve different instances of regeneration. However, in the 1986 serial The Ultimate Foe, the Master tells the Doctor that his opponent the Valeyard “is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation.” This would suggest that the natural limit is thirteen, rather than twelve, incarnations. The Doctor’s limit would later be extended by the Time Lords in the 2013 episode The Time of the Doctor — more on that later — meaning that the “final” incarnation that the Valeyard precedes is not the Doctor’s thirteenth form after all. However, that episode also clarifies that the regular limit is thirteen incarnations, and that the version of the Time Lord known as the Eleventh Doctor is actually the thirteenth. He and his companion Clara have the following exchange: CLARA: But you don’t die. You change. You pop right back up with a new face. DOCTOR: No, not for ever. I can change twelve times. Thirteen versions of me. Thirteen silly Doctors. CLARA: Okay, so you’re number eleven, so DOCTOR: Ha. Are we forgetting Captain Grumpy, eh? I didn’t call myself the Doctor during the Time War, but it was still a regeneration. CLARA: Okay, so you’re number twelve. DOCTOR: Well, number ten once regenerated and kept the same face. I had vanity issues at the time. Twelve regenerations, Clara. I can’t ever do it again. This is where I end up. This face, this version of me. So, barring any intervention, the regular limit is twelve instances of the regeneration process, for thirteen total incarnations. Despite Engin’s comment that “there is no plan that will postpone death,” it is possible for Time Lords to get around that limit of thirteen incarnations. And in fact, the Master almost manages to do so in that same serial by gaining access to a new regeneration cycle from The Eye of Harmony, so Engin’s declaration wasn’t even supposed to ever be taken as canonical fact. The Master employs various different tricks to try to get around this limit over the course of his time on the show — some of which involve merely taking over a non-Time Lord’s body — but it isn’t entirely clear what the origin of the limit is. One popular hypothesis is that this limit was imposed by the ruling Time Lords on their citizens. Another argues that it is simply an inevitable fact of the regeneration process. The issue is still unresolved, but the Eleventh Doctor’s comments to Clara indicate that, whatever the source of the limit, it remained in place for him even when no other Time Lords existed in the universe. Once the limit has been reached, a Time Lord cannot regenerate in their accustomed manner. The Eleventh Doctor’s revelation that he has reached that limit is even foreshadowed in the 2011 episode Let’s Kill Hitler, when he has the following exchange with his TARDIS’s voice interface: INTERFACE: Your system has been contaminated by the poison of the Judas tree. You will be dead in thirty-two minutes. DOCTOR: Okay. So, basically better regenerate, that’s what you’re saying. INTERFACE: Regeneration disabled. You will be dead in thirty-two minutes. Although viewers at the time may have assumed that his ability to regenerate had been disabled by the poison currently in his system, it appears in hindsight that it was actually because he had reached the limit. (The Doctor’s suggestion of regenerating here is admittedly unclear, as it sounds as though he thinks he should be able to. However, he may not yet have realized that the Tenth Doctor’s Meta-Crisis regeneration still counted as one of his twelve regenerations, or he may have been actively suppressing the memory of his Time War self. He may also have simply been somewhat addled by the poison.) Note: the Eleventh Doctor appears to begin his regeneration cycle in the earlier 2011 episode The Impossible Astronaut. However, this is later revealed to be an optical illusion performed by the shape-shifting Justice Department Robot known as the Teselecta. However, there were ways to get around the regeneration limit, even without resorting to the Master’s body-snatching plots. in the 2007 episode The Sound of Drums, for instance, the Master says that the Time Lords have “resurrected” him to fight in the Time War. A similar resurrection is likely behind the Time War reappearance in the 2010 episode The End of Time by Rassilon, a founding member of Time Lord society whose tomb is visited in the 1983 serial The Five Doctors. (Although given his people’s access to time travel, he may simply have been brought forward to face the conflict and then later returned to an earlier time to die and be entombed.) Rassilon does not regenerate during his appearance in the End of Time, but the Master does so in Utopia following his resurrection by the Time Lords. He then refuses to do so again — which suggests that he could have if he had wanted to — two episodes later in The Last of the Time Lords. The resurrected Master’s ability to regenerate suggests that his resurrection brings with it a new cycle of regenerations, since he had been at his limit in his last canonical appearance before then, in the 1996 movie Doctor Who. Thus, the High Council of Time Lords have it in their power to bestow additional regenerations on a Time Lord who has reached the limit. Over Lord President Borusa’s objections, the Council even offers the prize of “regeneration — a whole new life cycle” to the Master in the 1983 episode The Five Doctors, although the renegade Time Lord apparently does not collect on this bounty, either due to Borusa’s treachery or his own. And in the 2013 episode The Time of the Doctor, the Time Lords send a burst of energy from the pocket universe where they currently reside to enable the Doctor to regenerate past his “Eleventh” self. In the Eleventh Doctor’s last moments, he describes this gift as “a whole new regeneration cycle,” indicating that he now has another twelve regenerations to go before he reaches the limit again. Moments later, he uses the first of these new regenerations to become the Twelfth Doctor. The Doctor’s new regeneration cycle explains why he has not yet become the Valeyard, as that form comes before his final self, not before his thirteenth. It also explains why, in the 2013 episode The Day of the Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor appears to encounter a version of himself from “years to come,” who says he is in the process of “revisiting a few old favorites.” (This line also provides further evidence that it is possible for a Time Lord to control their regeneration process, as well as indicating that that’s something the Doctor will get better at in time.) It is not yet clear — and may well never be clear — just how far in the future this version of the Doctor is from, but he is plainly outside the Time Lord’s original cycle of regenerations. However, while the High Council can bestow new regeneration cycles, it appears that they do not do so lightly. They only resurrect the Master (and perhaps Rassilon) in order to fight in the Time War, and they extend the offer of a new cycle in The Five Doctors only because the Death Zone “is draining energy from the Eye of Harmony… to an extent which endangers all Gallifrey.” And in The Time of the Doctor, Clara has to beg the Time Lords to get them to give the Doctor a new cycle. So, whatever the origins of the limit, it is not easy to get the Time Lords to extend it. Yet if such a limit was in effect when Romana was regenerating in Destiny of the Daleks, why is she so cavalier about changing her form so many times in such a small period of time? The likely answer is that those were in fact all part of a single regeneration process. When the newly-regenerated Tenth Doctor loses a hand in the 2005 episode The Christmas Invasion, he’s able to regrow it, saying “I’m still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, which means I’ve got just enough residual cellular energy to do this.” And Romana herself suggests that she can still change her shape slightly even once she’s settled on a form, saying, “I think it’ll do very nicely. The arms are a bit long. I can always take them in.” River Song says something similar in the 2011 episode Let’s Kill Hitler: “I might take the age down a little, just gradually, to freak people out.” Given River’s comments, it’s not apparent whether the Doctor was correct that the regeneration energy lingers for only 15 hours, but clearly within that time at least, a Time Lord’s form can still change. So given the existence of some sort of regeneration limit upon Romana, it’s likely that all those temporary forms were manifestations of a single burst of regenerative energy. To summarize: a Time Lord can willfully shape the regeneration process, even to the extent of exactly resembling someone that they have met before. And there’s a little plasticity in the regeneration process, allowing a Time Lord to experiment somewhat with their form before settling, without running into the limit of twelve regenerations / thirteen forms. So far I think everything I’ve laid out above is fairly noncontroversial with what’s been established in canon. But now I’d like to use that as a launching point for a new theory of what else regeneration entails. So Romana’s new form is an exact lookalike of someone else in the universe — someone that she has met before, in fact. And although it wasn’t explicitly stated in canon, the same thing is true of the Doctor’s sixth incarnation when he first appears in the 1984 serial The Caves of Androzani. No mention of this is made by the Doctor or anyone he ever encounters on-screen, but the Sixth Doctor bears a striking resemblance to fellow Time Lord Commander Maxil, as seen in the 1983 serial Arc of Infinity. Now obviously, behind the scenes, this similarity is simply due to the BBC reusing an actor. But I’m interested more in the in-universe implications of these two individuals sharing the same face. The Doctor has a rather antagonistic relationship with Commander Maxil, so it’s unlikely that he specifically chooses to duplicate his form. And, as discussed above, the Doctor doesn’t usually seem to consciously guide his regenerations. So it’s probably safe to say that the Doctor’s sixth form looks like Maxil by sheer coincidence alone. Or to put it differently: it is sheer coincidence that the Doctor encounters a person whose face he will later wear. Or is it? Sure, in the wide universe of time and space, there are probably bound to be two humanoids who look so similar to one another. But what are the chances that those two individuals will ever meet? That their timelines will cross at least the once? The odds of that seem like they should be remarkably slimmer. But in fact, it looks like the odds of the Doctor meeting Maxil are about the same as him meeting the Abbot of Amboise in the 1966 serial The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve… …or Ramón Salamander in the 1967-68 serial The Enemy of the World… There’s also Princess Strella, for that matter. The Doctor and Romana meet her in the 1978 serial The Androids of Tara, and she is an exact duplicate of Romana. So that’s two of Romana’s incarnations that she’s met an exact doppelganger of, plus at least three for the Doctor. (And yes, there’s another Doctor doppelganger I haven’t mentioned yet. I know.) It’s true that the Doctor also occasionally encounters androids or clones that have specifically been made to look like him or his companions, but this is something different. This is a matter of unrelated individuals looking exactly like one another, and then happening to meet. Yes, it’s a time-honored trope in fiction. But again, what is the in-universe explanation? With this many occurrences, it sure seems like there’s something going on here. Why do these Time Lords keep meeting their doubles? Romana consciously chooses to look like Princess Astra, and the Doctor (presumably unconsciously) regenerates to look like Commander Maxil. These are people they have met before. The Abbott, Salamander, and Strella, however, are still in the Time Lords’ relative futures at the time when they regenerate to look like them. (Or, in the case of the First Doctor… grows up?) Still, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, their timelines are intersecting. And if we take that approach, we can’t rule out the possibility that every other regeneration of the Doctor is also an exact duplicate of someone he either has met in his past or will meet in his future. I realize this is a theory with very little evidence behind it, but I think it fits with what we know about regeneration. It’s an act that replaces every cell in a Time Lord’s body, causing them to look different. It’s an act that can be shaped, or not, and it’s an act that sometimes makes the Time Lord resemble someone from their relative past or future. My suggestion is merely that this last feature is not optional: that regeneration always duplicates someone whose personal timeline intersects with that of the Time Lord. As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t yet mentioned the Twelfth Doctor’s resemblance to another man he’d already met: Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in the 2008 episode The Fires of Pompeii. Much like Commander Maxil, Caecilius is an exact duplicate of a later version of the Doctor than the one he interacts with. I haven’t mentioned this resemblance yet because I just want to emphasize that the theory I laid out above was already there in the original version of this post, written before Caecilius’s actor Peter Capaldi was announced as the next actor to portray the Doctor. In other words, if it was likely before, it’s even more likely now. The issue is also apparently going to be addressed in canon, although I’ll be very surprised if it turns out I’ve gotten it exactly right. The Twelfth Doctor will actually be Capaldi’s third Whoniverse appearance, including his role as John Frobisher on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. There’s no evidence in canon that John Frobisher ever met any version of the Doctor, but former showrunner Russell T. Davies reportedly came up with an explanation for the Frobisher / Caecilius resemblance that is now connected to the Twelfth Doctor and will be worked into the show at some point in the future. You can read more about that here, and then you can join me in hoping that the explanation doesn’t involve the Whoniverse’s other individual named Frobisher. Thanks for reading
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:26:48 +0000
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