Doctor Who fans, let’s explore the mess that is the number Doctors and regenerations that there have been in Doctor Who.
One of the interesting things established in the early years was that a Timelord could regenerate twelve times, and therefore have a total of thirteen lives.
Now, during the time in which this idea was established the Doctor was only on his fourth regeneration, so imposing such a limit was clearly many many years away from being a problem they may have to address.
However, things starting to go a big haywire when the show was revived in 2005.
After being cancelled in 1989 during the time in which the 7th Doctor was the incumbent, they brought the show back with a TV movie in which the 7th Doctor regenerated into the 8th.
A couple of things to keep in mind is that the 6th Doctor was already cut short with him being replaced by the 7th as a result of wanting to give the show a change and essentially replacing the sixth Doctor Colin Baker when he hadn’t played the Doctor all that long.
Then with the 7th languishing in cancellation and then being immediately regenerated when they attempt to revive the show in 1996, it meant they were already burning through the Doctor’s regenerations without the 6th or 7th having much screen time as the Doctor.
The 8th would only last that one TV movie as the show which was being funded by a US production company wasn’t a big enough hit in the US and so no more were made.
But then when the show returned in 2005, they didn’t even show us the 8th doctor regenerate and just started things off with Christopher Eccleston as the 9th Doctor…
But he had a big falling out with the producers of the show and was written out in the final episode of his one and only season.
Things seemed to finally settle with David Tennant as the 10th Doctor, but along the way they did a big cliff hanger where he regenerated, but they used a cheat where he was able to still stay looking like David Tennant and then grow a second one of himself with the regeneration energy.
So, kinda a pre bigeneration, bigeneration of sorts.
But, with the second David Tennant,
they kinda just quietly ignored that David Tennant was actually both the 10th and 11th Doctors and eventually David regenerated into Matt Smith who was acknowledged both on the show and in the real world as the Eleventh Doctor…even though he was actually the Twelfth.
Expect they then burned through another regeneration but saying the Doctor had a secret regeneration, who is known commonly as the War Doctor, but not numbered as a Doctor because he behaved violently in war and broke the promise of being the Doctor…
Except that when you see John Hurt’s portrayal as the Doctor he comes across exactly like a lot of the Doctors in his personality and is just like a kind grandfather rather than someone who the future Doctors would not even recognise as himself.
So, this then created an issue when Matt Smith was due to leave.
Because whilst things were, ticking along smoothly in the early years of the show,
after the fifth Doctor, the chaos of making the show meant they quickly burned through Doctors six, Seven, Eight and Nine. David Tennant was then technically both the tenth and eleventh doctor, which although they kinda ignored, we all we quietly questioning.
This meant that Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor was actually the twelfth Doctor,
until they introduced the secret Doctor which meant that Matt Smith was actually the Thirteenth, and at the time showrunner Stephen Moffat decided to tackle the tangled mess that had been created and attempt to smooth things out.
Matt Smith’s Doctor acknowledged that David Tennant regenerated twice and that there was the War Doctor, so he was in fact the last version of the Doctor based on the established lore that timelords could only have thirteen lives in total.
So, they created a story whereby the Timelords helped Matt Smith’s Doctor and gave him a new cycle of regenerations.
Problem solved right? It was now set up that Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor would be the first Doctor in a new cycle of thirteen lives.
But because of confusion for the general public, they still acknowledged him as the Twelfth Doctor instead of the Fourteenth which at the time is what he should have been…right?
Well no.
I’m sure some of you will think that I’ve forgotten some things that are relevant to the show’s history as it was established by this point,
or may be saying about some things that they would later establish.
I’m getting to these.
Now, maybe it was because Stephen Moffat felt he had to address the number of lives issue,
but even this was based on selective memory.
The Sixth Doctor encountered a character known as The Valeyard which was revealed at the time to be a version of the Doctor that existed somewhere between his twelfth and final regenerations.
By having Tennant regenerate twice and introducing a secret Doctor,
it meant that Matt Smith was now the Thirteenth Doctor,
and we had skipped over the Valeyard…Or had we?
Matt Smith’s Doctor did meet The Dream Lord played by Toby Jones who was acknowledged to be an aspect of the Doctor,
so if they wanted to, they could justify that somehow the Dream Lord what became the Valeyard that we saw in the Trial of the Time Lords story with the Sixth Doctor,
but even if they were to retroactively do this there is still a problem.
That problem is that the way the things I have described was handled meant that the people that make Doctor Who have continually cheated the fans out fo seeing things we could look forward to.
It was established in the mid-1980s that the Doctor would become the Valeyard in the future and that was a promise that they never delivered on to explore.
We also should have had another two actors to play the true Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors who had the increasing weight on their shoulders that their time was running out.
This didn’t happen because the two Tennants and War Doctor meant that the idea of the Doctor’s final life was crammed into a single Matt Smith episode. Wasted.
But even this wasn’t everything.
We know that the Valeyard was meant to be a version of the Doctor that existed between two core regenerations, and this is something that was also previously established to have happened with The Watcher who was a version of the Doctor that was an interim between tom Baker and Peter Davison. But these were both firmly established to not be full regenerations.
However there then was the Morbius Doctors.
