Regenerations
According to this article by Thomas Ling, regenerations or the number of is a contradiction of the Doctor Who canon. If you begin watching Doctor from the beginning and don’t see new who, you learn Time Lords are reborn twelve times. But the idea does not always seem to stand. There are a couple of times we see a contradiction to the canon. One of them deals with the Master and the other the Doctor. In both instances, they are beyond their allotted regenerations.
The Master
After the sudden death of Roger Delgado, the Master does not return to Doctor Who for several years. The next pictures fans see are those of a decaying man. All we see is a skeleton of a man at the end of his twelfth regeneration. It seems that he is near death and will soon die. Well, he does not die. Because of residual energy from the key to time, he takes the body of another person. Meaning he regenerated for the thirteenth time.
Fast forward from 1989 to 1996, fans see another new face of the Master. Making it fourteen regenerations for him, but it does not end there. Russell T Davies brings the Master back during the Tenth Doctors reign. At first, we see a man who thinks he is human, but what the Master did is put his Time Lord essence in a fob watch. Which he later opens returning him to his old self.
The next time we see the Master he has a new face. John Simm’s Master hatches a plot to take over the universe after becoming the Prime Minister of England. We don’t see his face for very long before he dies only to return on the End of Time after the Time Lords resurrected him. This incarnation is the fifteenth regeneration of the Master.
The Master dies again only to return to Doctor Who as Missy meaning she regenerates for the sixteenth time. Some ask the question did not the Time Lords give the Master another life cycle? I am not sure and can’t recall whether they did or not. So, for the next three incarnations, the Doctor will face Missy with the Twelfth facing both Missy and the prior version of the master. Whether we see the Master/Missy again is up to Chris Chibnall. If he chooses to bring the Master/Missy back, it will be his/her seventeenth regeneration.
The Doctor
We begin with The Brain of Morbius for the first contradiction of the regenerations. Causing problems for many Doctor Who fans. On the Brain of Morbius, the Doctor faces an evil Time Lord by the name of Morbius. Near the end of the episode, the Doctor has a mind battle with Morbius. It is during the mind battle the viewers see several different faces pass through the sphere.
Some fans may think the unfamiliar faces belong to Morphius rather than the Doctor, but Phillip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes had other ideas. They believed it possible that the Doctor had more face than the four we knew. Well, fans did not like the idea. So, for the time being, The Brain of Morbius has been swept under the rug.(1)
The Day of the Doctor confuses things even more for me. The special does not answer any of my questions. So, when Davies brings Doctor Who back, the Eighth Doctor does not regenerate into the Ninth Doctor. Therefore, he leaves space for Moffat to fill in the missing information later. Moffat tries to fill in the blanks left by Davies with the War Doctor. If this is the case, then the War Doctor is the Doctor’s Eighth regeneration. If this is true, then the Ninth Doctor the Doctor’s ninth? Are you confused yet?
Okay, let’s add some more confusion. The Tenth Doctor is the tenth and eleventh regenerations. What how is that? If you remember, some of the Doctor’s regeneration energy makes the half-human version of the Doctor. And by creating this Doctor, future regeneration energy was used. That means David Tennant was both the tenth and eleventh regenerations.
So, fans we move forward to the twelfth regeneration for the Doctor, meaning he will die for the last time. The man playing the Doctor is Matt Smith. Once Steven Moffat knows that Matt is leaving he must plan for a way to continue making Doctor Who. What we see happen is Clara ask the Time Lords to give the Doctor a whole new set of regenerations. So, when Matt regenerates it is the 13th time but what is weird is that Peter Capaldi is the 12th Doctor. Are you confused now, I am? One thing can be added though. Even though the War Doctor is an incarnation if you remember he did not consider himself the Doctor. Does that mean the Eighth Doctor’s regeneration into him does not count? Well, I will leave that for you to decide.
Now that Peter Capaldi has stepped down and regenerated into Jodie Whittaker we have a total of fifteen regenerations with a total of thirteen different actors/actresses playing the role. Wow, that is a lot of information to handle. But it is all true.
Considering all the information and everything which has happened I am still confused. But that is okay, maybe one day it will all be clear. As a fan, I can enjoy Doctor Who without overthinking it. It does not matter how many incarnations the Doctor there are. All fans want is a great show and something worth watching.
