elleflies | Doctor Who Speculation...

So the Beeb had a bit of an announcement the other day about Doctor Who...

This being Doctor Who fandom... everyone has an opinion

The Doctor is immortal now. Apparently the 13 regeneration limit was ditched.

Have some thoughts:

1. Crossovers with Highlander are not advised. We've as yet to discover what happens when a Time Lord loses his head and we wouldn't want the bevy of immortals inhabiting Earth to mistake Regeneration for the Quickening.

2. The Classic Who fanboy rage always amuses.

3. Why is this any kind of surprise? I read the article, shrugged and went meh. I did expect them to do something like this, I just didn't expect it to be an announcement coupled with some throwaway line on the Sarah Jane Adventures. I expected more of a story arc in which the Doctor has to face his upcoming final death. The Master went through an arc like this in the Classic Series, it would have been interesting to see what they could have done with the Doctor.

4. I spent the morning coming up with theories for why the Thirteen Lives rule no longer applies. Because I'm an obsessive fangirl and I love this show.

First I'd like to point out that Classic Who canon is extremely contradictory. I still can't figure out how exactly the Doctor relates to Atlantis and even the Doctor's time at Unit is a giant bone of contention between those trying to figure out time lines. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to DW Canon problems.

In fact, this recent announcement by the BBC is more in keeping with the canon of the 60's, specifically the Second Doctor years, than it is with the canon of the 12 regenerations established in the Tom Baker episode "The Deadly Assassin".

In Patrick Troughton's final episode of his run "War Games" where we are finally introduced to the Time Lords for the first time the Doctor states "The Time Lords are an immensely civilised race. We can control our own environment - we can live forever, barring accidents and we have the secret of space/time travel."

This makes me wonder whether both episodes are correct. That Time Lords can live forever but have had a 13 lives limit imposed on them by the Time Lord Governing Body. They're an advanced, psychic culture which seems to be highly impassive and driven by logic and judgement rather than emotions. Imposing some kind of tool to control population growth would seem logical. An immortal population would be one, in my view, that either didn't reproduce itself or got to large to be manageable. It would also be a population that wouldn't seem likely to advance itself much - too many old farts too stuck in their ways methinks... I can see it being within the abilities of the Time Lords to create a machine that would impose these life span limits. They're a race connected to each other psychically and we've already seen proof in the Matrix device that they've already created such machines.

With the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey it would make sense that all culturally imposed life span limits would no longer exist as there's no one left to impose them. Meaning that the Doctor would be, in essence, immortal.

Both a blessing and a curse in a way - your people are gone but you will live with what you've done FOREVER.

I'd love to be able to comment more but I'm only up to Fourth Doctor episode "The Creature from the Pit" so I have no idea what the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors contribute to the subject. Until I see more, that's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

I really can't blame the BBC for taking this step. There's no reason to kill off the cash cow that also happens to be a British Cultural Institution. While they rake in their millions, I'll be off in the corner throwing money at them because it seems I can't help but adore this silly little show.