Re: From the Archives .....

On 20/04/2024 14:15, The Last Doctor wrote:

The Doctor <doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca> wrote:

In article <uvtoin$30ajm$1@dont-email.me>,
The True Doctor  <agamemnon@hello.to.NO_SPAM> wrote:

On 19/04/2024 13:13, Daniel70 wrote:

Tonight's post from the past concerns Regeneration Limits, a topic that
has been close to the Hearts of some here-abouts, recently!!
>
Quote from 'Olton' in the 'Favourite Dr Who' thread of June 1991
In "Nightmare of Eden," the Doctor says something about timelords having
125 lives, and that he had had about 190. This clearly doesn't "jive"
with other established facts, unless you want to think that he means
that their lifespan is 125 times the length of a human's. That's
possible, but the context that he uses it in implies 125 regenerations.
End Quote
>
So it would seem that Chris Chibnall was not the first to suggest that
there had been many re-generations PRIOR to Hartnell (over and above the
"The Brain of Morbius" confusion).
>
Discuss.

>
The Deadly Assassin which was 3 series earlier firmly establishes a
limit of 12 regenerations and that is repeated by both the Doctor and
the Master in The Keeper of Traken, the 4th Doctor's penultimate story.
>
Maybe he was talking about going undercover 190 times or on 190
different planets or different historical periods.
>

>
Good facts AGA!

 Facts? Facts? (Not that I think there was any such discussion in Nightmare
of Eden, but maybe my memory of that is faulty. Or maybe it’s another of
those novelisation inventions like the nonsense Aggie loves from
Underworld.)
 But wait - Aggie is saying that Deadly Assassin predates Nightmare of Eden
therefore the 12 regeneration limit is absolute.
 But Brain of Morbius came before that, and on screen showed 11 faces of the
Doctor prior to Tom Baker’s. Therefore using Aggie’s logic, Peter Davison

No it doesn't. The faces other than Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee were the faces of Morbius and that's what it says in the novelization by Terrance Dicks who wrote the original script.

was the 13th and final Doctor and when he says “Feels different this time”
he is dying. Doctor Who ended with Caves of Androzani in March 1984 and
every episode since has been a fever dream of the dying Doctor.
 

The Keeper of Traken affirms that Tom Baker had more than just one regeneration left and Mawdrin Undead confirms that he has 8 more left.

(I am of course not taking account of the retcon in the novelisation that
suggests the 8 unknown faces are those of Morbius. Morbius is clearly

It's not a retcon since it agrees with the original continuity that Hartnell was the first Doctor, he'd never regenerated before turning into Troughton, and we only know of 3 Doctors before Tom Baker. No one familiar with Doctor Who would have concluded that the 8 unknown faces were anything other than those of Morbius.

winning the mind duel and it is the Doctor who is being pushed back, and
this was Philip Hinchcliffe’s intent).

Morbius is winning the game because his faces are on the screen indicating that the more past regenerations you have had the stronger your mind becomes in the game. Hinchcliffe didn't write the story, it was Dicks.

 Unless, of course, we go back further to The War Games, when the Doctor
reveals that his people can “live forever, barring accidents”.  But perhaps

So can anyone. Just place yourself on the event horizon of a black hole.

that can be construed as suggesting that Time Lords who do not suffer
twelve fatal accidents never reach their thirteenth and final incarnations.
 Which explains the need for the Matrix - millions of years of memories
couldn’t possibly all be retained in one mind, so some sort of external
augmentation and storage would be very much needed.
 But of course the idea that there had been earlier Doctors didn’t originate
with Morbius.
 

It didn't originate anywhere because The Tenth Planet is the only Hartnell episode that establishes the existence of regenerations (bodily renewals) and Hartnell states there and then that he's never done it before.

Whitaker's draft scripts (for The Power Of The Daleks) revealed that the

That would be David Whitaker not the fake blonde.

Doctor had been “renewed” before; he was to open a drawer in the console
which contained relics from his previous incarnations, including an earring
and a metal bracelet (which in the 60s would have suggested that at least
one previous Doctor had been female). The scripts also specified the

So Troughton opens a draw and looks a Hartnell's past possessions or keepsakes. This does not infer past renewals. Earring and bracelet in the 1960s inferred pirate. In some past adventure or other Hartnell had to dress up as a pirate.

Doctor's age as 750 years, included various references to his grandchild

Previous stories specified his again as somewhere around 400ish. He doesn't get to the 700s until Tom Baker.

Susan -- whose present location the Doctor could no longer recall -- and
hinted that it might have been the Daleks who had destroyed his homeworld.
All this material was cut in Dennis Spooner’s rewrites for time - much
additional background was removed to fit the very complex story and
introduction of the new Doctor into six episodes.
 

The material was probably cut because it might contradicted existing continuity. There is no suggestion in An Unearthly Child that the Doctor's world was ever destroyed. He stole a TARDIS and fled with his granddaughter and his people were chasing him suggesting his home planet was still there.

Then we move forward again to the 80s and The Five Doctors, where the
Master reveals that he has been offered a whole new cycle of regenerations.
So the limit of 12 was never absolute, and the Master’s whole motivation
for The Deadly Assassin is negated.

The whole motivation of Berusa to seek immortality is also negated.
The Deadly Assassin establishes that there is a 12 regeneration limit but it can be overridden and restarted with enough energy. Berusa wants to go beyond having to consume infinite amounts of energy. The Underworld before that already establishes that Time Lords and Minyans could go on regenerating forever using regeneration machines, as does The Keeper of Traken using the power of the Source.

 In short, a rigid insistence on a specific canon is pointless when it comes
to Doctor Who.

Wrong! Canon cannot contradict or rewrite a characters origin story, otherwise you don't have the same character by a completely different one and it's no longer Doctor Who.
Nothing you cited contradicts any previous continuity. The First Doctor was William Hartnell. There were no previous incarnations before him, as stated by the 1st Doctor in The Five Doctors. There is a 12 regeneration limit for Time Lords and the Eye of Harmony is needed to restart it. Calling the Doctor's home planet Gallifrey doesn't change any of that and neither does giving a name to his people. This including the regeneration limit is called providing additional information about a character, and is done in a manner which doesn't contradict what we already know.
 >
And paying any attention to Aggie, who insists on repeating

his delusions about the show as “facts”, is a sure sign of a very limited
intellect. So know you know why Dave says what he says.
 

"So know you know"? You're just as bad as Yads yourself and by attacking him you simply attack your own argument.
--
The True Doctor https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngrZwoS0n21IRcXpKO79Lw
"To be woke is to be uninformed which is exactly the opposite of what it stands for." -William Shatner