Re: From the Archives .....

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
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.

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

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
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.

Whitaker's draft scripts (for The Power Of The Daleks) revealed that the
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
Doctor's age as 750 years, included various references to his grandchild
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.

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.

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

--
“The timelines and … canon … are rupturing” - the Doctor