It was NEVER the Doctor, it was always the Tesselecta.
An unsolved mystery
- Thread starter TemporalFlux
- Start date
Yep, the Tesselecta just used some fancy "pyrotechnics" to simulate the regen-effect...
That one is a bit of an anomaly. IMO the Doctor had at that time no idea he had no regenerations left, and was probably just doing the "I'll pretend to regenerate" thing because he figured he would do just that to convince everyone it was him. If he KNEW he was on his last incarnation, it figures that River would know on some level and would thus be surprised if he DID regenerate. She wasn't, so I figure he threw in the regeneration effect because at the time he was confident he had at least one more in him.
Then again, the whole plot is one big damn paradox anyway so there are few ways of rationalizing ANYTHING we saw or heard. Welcome to Doctor Who, post-2010.
Mark
Then again, the whole plot is one big damn paradox anyway so there are few ways of rationalizing ANYTHING we saw or heard. Welcome to Doctor Who, post-2010.
Mark
Was that ever stated on the show?
All I know is that just prior to that episode the Doctor Who Magazine had an issue with four alternate covers (the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River) and the tagline that one of these WILL die. OK, invoking the mag is a bit metatextual, but that only makes sense if one character did die, and that event was later undone.
We all know Ecclestone was originally pencilled in to play the Doctor who ended the war in 'Day Of The Doctor', and the Hurt Doctor was only created to fill the gap when Ecclestone decided he didn't want to do it. Personally, I reckon that was the point when Moffat decided to make Smith the final Doctor, to give him the chance to create a new regeneration cycle.
It may or may not have been stated, but if you understand temporal physics, that's what happened.
In The Twin Dilemma, a Time Lord on his last incarnation dies when he attempts one final regeneration-- it may be the natural instinct of the Time Lord body to attempt regeneration even when regenerations are depleted, and then die because there's not enough energy left to complete another one.
Azmael already knew he was on his last incarnation - he forced a regeneration to kill the baddie who'd transfered himself inside the Time Lord. He also didn't end up crispy, which generally jives with the notion that the Master was trying to extend his life by other means than stealing / starting a new cycle the way the Doctor has done. "Time" basically cements that while a new cycle CAN be granted, it's the Time Lords and/or Gallifrey as a whole that needs to do it. Hence why the Master, (presumably) Rassilon and now the Doctor have have been properly resurrected into new cycles.
Mark
Mark
Not really, the magazine is obviously being misleading and setting up for the arc of the season.
Oh, I'd forgotten that aspect of The Twin Dilemma. Well, the point stands that you could be out of regenerations, but still display some of the signs.
Agreed....mostly.
Rassilon wasn't really dead (per The Five Doctors), but was asleep in his tomb. The Timelords locked him in there then, ostensibly, woke him up in their hour of need.
As far as the Master, could we assume the Delgado version was extremely old and the crispy critter version was just that much older?
though, I have no problem with the assumption he made some attempt on his own to regenerate, or at least extend his life and ended up that way.
But in The Deadly Assassin it's explicitly stated Time Lords only have 12 "packets" of energy in them for regeneration - Moffat said he used that as justification for the Stolen Earth regeneration as #11 - so the attempted regeneration in The Impossible Astronaut is retrospectively just wrong.
A couple of minor corrections to the above:
The Deadly Assassin established that a regeneration cycle ends with the 12th regeneration, but nothing about "packets." That was from Mawdryn Undead according to this wiki, though curiously I can't find mention of it in this transcript. (I have not seen it, personally. Perhaps it is a misattribution?)
As others have already mentioned, the Doctor's apparent death and accompanying aborted regeneration in "The Impossible Astronaut" was retroactively established in "The Wedding Of River Song" to have actually been the Tesselecta in disguise with the Doctor onboard.
The small amount of energy used to heal River's wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan" could be left over from when River used up all her remaining regenerations at once to save the Doctor in "Let's Kill Hitler." She gave it to him and he gave it back to her.
I think it is possible to say both that a full regeneration was used up in "Journey's End" and that the "Meta Crisis Doctor" was not a proper incarnation. The regeneration energy was split between 10 (actually the 11th incarnation because of the War Doctor) and his severed hand from "The Christmas Invasion," combining with material from Donna to form something different. So a full regeneration was used up, but did not produce a new incarnation. Matt Smith was the 12th incarnation, produced by the 12th regeneration, though nominally he was the 11th Doctor.
The Deadly Assassin established that a regeneration cycle ends with the 12th regeneration, but nothing about "packets." That was from Mawdryn Undead according to this wiki, though curiously I can't find mention of it in this transcript. (I have not seen it, personally. Perhaps it is a misattribution?)
As others have already mentioned, the Doctor's apparent death and accompanying aborted regeneration in "The Impossible Astronaut" was retroactively established in "The Wedding Of River Song" to have actually been the Tesselecta in disguise with the Doctor onboard.
The small amount of energy used to heal River's wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan" could be left over from when River used up all her remaining regenerations at once to save the Doctor in "Let's Kill Hitler." She gave it to him and he gave it back to her.
I think it is possible to say both that a full regeneration was used up in "Journey's End" and that the "Meta Crisis Doctor" was not a proper incarnation. The regeneration energy was split between 10 (actually the 11th incarnation because of the War Doctor) and his severed hand from "The Christmas Invasion," combining with material from Donna to form something different. So a full regeneration was used up, but did not produce a new incarnation. Matt Smith was the 12th incarnation, produced by the 12th regeneration, though nominally he was the 11th Doctor.
What if rather than a full regeneration, the meta crisis Doctor used 9/10 of a regeneration packet? That would still prevent him from regenerating again, but leave something left to heal River.
But he said used the regeneration energy needed to heal himself completely and then channeled "the rest" into the hand.
^"The rest" could just mean all the remaining regeneration energy that flowed out before he could stem the tide.
The Metacrisis Doctor may have been created from the Doctor's regeneration energy but he's not the 12th Doctor by regeneration count. Tennant simply played two identical Doctors-- the 11th Doctor from "The Christmas Invasion" through "The Stolen Earth" and the 12th Doctor from "Journey's End" through "The End of Time."
Dang. I was hoping I would be the first one to point this out.
It totally blew my mind once I noticed it! So many possibilities. How many Doctors were there really? Did the Doctor really have an accurate count of how many were there? Only the Time Lords specifically counted "all 13" and that presumably is just referring to incarnations that they can clearly count. (Presumably, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two versions of Tennant. Or, if there were multiple versions of Tennant, perhaps they were all from after "Journey's End.")
But then, even if Smith wasn't aware of Capaldi's presence when they froze Gallifrey, why would Smith think it's the end in "The Time of the Doctor" when he's already met the Curator in "The Day of the Doctor"?
Well, we saw all of the Doctors on the monitor except for Capaldi. But I don't think Colin Baker or Paul McGann got any lines.
Well, it's possible that Smith wasn't sure at that point how much regeneration energy he had left, factoring in the regeneration energy he got from River in "Let's Kill Hitler" (which, from the perspective of the Doctor who got shot in "The Impossible Astronaut," has already happened even though we haven't seen it yet) and the possibility that the "Journey's End" regeneration didn't use up a full regeneration's worth of energy. So might as well try (or at least look like you're trying to try, since "The Impossible Astronaut" was just a ruse anyway).
The Metacrisis Doctor may have been created from the Doctor's regeneration energy but he's not the 12th Doctor by regeneration count. Tennant simply played two identical Doctors-- the 11th Doctor from "The Christmas Invasion" through "The Stolen Earth" and the 12th Doctor from "Journey's End" through "The End of Time."
Dang. I was hoping I would be the first one to point this out.
It totally blew my mind once I noticed it! So many possibilities. How many Doctors were there really? Did the Doctor really have an accurate count of how many were there? Only the Time Lords specifically counted "all 13" and that presumably is just referring to incarnations that they can clearly count. (Presumably, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two versions of Tennant. Or, if there were multiple versions of Tennant, perhaps they were all from after "Journey's End.")But then, even if Smith wasn't aware of Capaldi's presence when they froze Gallifrey, why would Smith think it's the end in "The Time of the Doctor" when he's already met the Curator in "The Day of the Doctor"?
Well, we saw all of the Doctors on the monitor except for Capaldi. But I don't think Colin Baker or Paul McGann got any lines.
Well, it's possible that Smith wasn't sure at that point how much regeneration energy he had left, factoring in the regeneration energy he got from River in "Let's Kill Hitler" (which, from the perspective of the Doctor who got shot in "The Impossible Astronaut," has already happened even though we haven't seen it yet) and the possibility that the "Journey's End" regeneration didn't use up a full regeneration's worth of energy. So might as well try (or at least look like you're trying to try, since "The Impossible Astronaut" was just a ruse anyway).
1) We don't know for a fact the Curator is a future Doctor.
2) If he is, then the Eleventh Doctor would forget about him afterwards, just like the Tenth Doctor and the War Doctor forgot.
Why would Smith forget? The timestreams were out of sync for Hurt & Tennant but everything was the present for Smith. There's no implication that he forgot anything. If anything, he kinda remembers parts of the adventure from Tennant's perspective that Tennant had initially forgotten when he returned to his own timestream.
All right, I guess one can say that's in a sense true, but it could not have been more directly or heavily implied. To me it's abundantly clear that this is what was meant by their exchange. Earlier, the letter from Elizabeth I explicitly said she appointed the Doctor the Curator of the Undergallery. He was musing about retiring to do it full time, and the Curator immediately answered him with "You know, I really think you might!" and told him he might find himself revisiting some "old favorite" faces. And the camera lingered on the hexagonal pattern on the wall, suggesting that the room they are in (and perhaps the whole Undergallery) is the TARDIS.
Yes, I think this is indeed the logical implication based on what was said just before. Basically, it seems to me that the Doctors only remember meetings with other incarnations while they are happening. Is there anything in previous Doctor-meets-Doctor(s) stories that contradicts this? I don't recall. Anyone? (Actually, I guess it would only be contradicted if there are instances of him remembering meeting himself in episodes that aren't themselves Doctor-meets-Doctor stories.)
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