Last week, news broke on an upcoming episode of “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” the long-running franchise “Doctor Who” would do away with a limit to the number of times the Doctor could regenerate, thus potentially allowing the series to run forever (or at least until they bring Pip & Jane Baker(*) back as writers).
The news has set off quite a debate among fans of the good Doctor, including a spirited debate here at Slice of SciFi.
Now, Blastr has weighed in on the subject as well, saying that the doing away with the limits for regeneration is a bad idea.
Characters, like people, are stories in and of themselves. They’re born, they live, they struggle, and then they die. They run their course. Without that ending, that inevitably finality, those characters lose all their urgency. As Alan Moore wrote in his introduction to a collection of The Dark Knight Returns: “All our best and oldest legends recognize that time passes and people grow old and die. The legend of Robin Hood would not be complete without the final blind arrow shot to determine the site of his grave. The Norse Legends would lose much of their power were it not for the knowledge of an eventual Ragnarok, as would the story of Davy Crockett without the existence of the Alamo.”
If you’d like to read the full article you can HERE.
* And if you’re a new series fans and don’t get that Pip & Jane Baker joke, consider yourself a blessed….
Then what about comic book characters that appear to live on forever? Or the Simpsons, Maggie has been a baby for over 20 years! I admit I’m not a big Dr.Who fan (because I’d like to see the series from the beginning), but unless the character can’t willingly stay dead, there’s no reason to worry. Besides, being immortal doesn’t mean being pain free. Unless he goes insane, having 20 regenerations is no different than having 10000 or or infinite number of regenerations.
The 12 regenerations did set a nice expectation for the series run. At the same time, though, there’s immortality, and there is invulnerability. The Doctor could be immortal, why not? However, he is vulnerable, His body takes injury, and he can choose to die. If the series ever gets to the point of ending, that might be the final issue to tackle… voluntary suicide or something.
Anyway, until then, though, there’s no reason to postulate that the doctor isn’t immortal.
Except for that whole “The Five Doctors” 20th anniversary thingy where the doctor refused immortality… but, that’s the old series now isn’t it.
Discarding the irony Syfy’s news feed calling someone out for good storytelling, I disagree on the concept that this ruins The Doctor as a character. To me, it seemed that Tennant’s Doctor was showing signs of being tired of running from time. He’s the last of his kind, all alone in the universe. He’s had the hope of other Time Lords come and go, and even commiserated with his mortal enemies on the concept of being the last vestige of a long dead society.
I can see a time when The Doctor says that enough is enough, infinite regenerations or not, and hangs up the screwdriver. His continued lives are full of adventure, but also chock full of tragic loss at nearly every turn. Even if he can regenerate an unlimited number of times, how long is it before he is mortally wounded and decides *not* to regenerate?
Even better, how long until he’s redeemed for his perceived mistakes? Are his adventures done when he finally feels redeemed, or is he a perpetually tragic character that will never be redeemed?
That concept still meets the ideals of Syfy/Blastr’s beginning, middle, and end, and it’s honestly more fitting in my limited experience with the show. Until he gets tired of running, The Doctor’s “urgency” shoudn’t be affected. There are always people in need of saving, and there are always moral quandaries. If that’s all he has to live for, then there will be no shortage of adventures for him.
Having a character that is immortal, alone, and the last of his kind has got to be one of the most tragic types of characters you can have. Death for the Doctor wouldn’t be tragic at all…it would almost be like a release from a curse. I don’t see why there has to be some kind of definite ending to the Doctor to make a fitting ending to the series. I actually kind of like the idea of him still running around the universe long after the ending credits roll.
As was noted in the David Tennent transition to Matt Smith, the Doctor DOES die each regeneration, with a new personality being born with the memories of the old available. The removal of his limit on regenerations does not bode poorly for the Doctor since now we have the potential for an immortal, with all the pain that true immortality may bring. What would be interesting would be the potential for the Doctor to regenerate into a PREVIOUS regeneration. An older Tom Baker perhaps?
Don’t like the clearly stated “immortality”. It’s too much of a departure. However, the Dr. Who writers are smart enough to come up with a storyline where The Doctor gets more lives. Perhaps having them sucked from the “thought he died, but here he comes again” Master. From what I remember (not necessarily the last word on the subject), the Master, in this reboot of the series, 1st showed up as an old man, disguised as a human. A regeneration? Who knows? Then he regenerated, but not afterward. So he still has about 10-11 regenerations left.
Interesting point, zsingerb.
Pip & Jane weren’t all bad.
Some of their dialogue was horribly precious, but that’s what head writers/script editors are there to fix. “Mark of the Rani” was not a bad story if you look past some of the awful Doctor/Master dialogue (and the apparent inability of the writers to look up the word “melatonin”). On the other hand, “He’d get dizzy trying to walk a straight line” was a great line.
Let’s be honest: their tenure as contributing writers coincides with an incredibly cheesy period of the show – the Colin Baker era + the first year of McCoy. (No slam on the actors – the “light entertainment” production approach was to blame. Give them meatier, darker material like “Revelation of the Daleks” and “Ghost Light” and good things happened.)