Has Doctor Who just solved the regeneration problem?


Den of Geek

 Quote:
We knew this was coming. It's long been stated in Doctor Who lore that our favourite Time Lord gets twelve regenerations in his life, before time finally comes to an end for him. And while there have been hints over the years about how this will be circumnavigated when the time comes, we're getting ever closer to the point where it needs to be addressed directly. After all, we're on Doctor number eleven so far, Matt Smith, and that leaves two actors to take the role before the number's up.

And even that's if you overlook The Valeyard from The Trial Of A Time Lord, implied to be a future iteration of the Doctor towards the end of that particular saga.

Most of us suspected for some time that something akin to the Master being given more regenerations in The Five Doctors would be employed in the end, as this clearly set down the idea that a Time Lord's life could be extended by other Time Lords. But then there weren't any Time Lords left in the revival of the show. And now there are again. Which surely left a door open somewhere.

As has been reported, however, there's a line coming up in The Sarah Jane Adventures which might just lay the path for an easier way out. In the episode concerned - Death Of The Doctor - Matt Smith's Doctor is asked by Clyde just how many times he can regenerate. The Doctor tells him that there's not a limit. Then they just get on with the episode.

It's thus being speculated that the Doctor is now immortal, that because of the demise of the Time Lords themselves he's got a free pass to a longer existence. I'd wager that there's going to be more to it than that, though. It could, after all, be that the Doctor is lying to Clyde. It would also mean that, if they dismissed the regeneration question here, they're missing out on a far more substantive narrative arc for the 13th Doctor, whoever that's likely to be (the aforementioned Valeyard, in theory).

It's a week or two yet before Death Of A Doctor screens (although one or two of our number did catch it at the BFI screening this week, and confirmed the line concerned), but we'd wager that the BBC has just managed to pump up its viewing figures when it does go out...