I was viewing a Tom Baker episode a couple of months back and it just dawned on me, the inference was he had regenerated more than 13 times.

I think it was Terror of the Zygons in which Baker's Dr's mind is displayed on a screen, and it shows the faces on previous Docs.

Going back...Tom, Jon, Pat, Will, and then about eight other regenerations of previous doctors!

For the fans out there familiar with this, please let me know your thoughts. It could be I have it all wrong.

sssshhh we dont talk about that it never happened


oh and the dr isnt half human either

lock these away in the torchwood files

It was "Brain of Morbius" and it's not specified whether the other faces belong to the Doctor or Morbius.

This expands on the dilemma:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bra...ius_Doctors.22

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It's from "The Brain of Morbius" and actually dates from before the 13 Incarnations idea was introduced in "The Deadly Assassin".

While the idea at the time was that they were meant to be previous Doctors* we were subsequently told that Hartnell was indeed the first Doctor and Time Lords are limited to 13 incarnations (unless they ask nicely).

*The faces were in fact various members of the Production team and the show got into trouble for not using actual actors.

Also didn’t the production team say something on the dvd extras about the other faces possibly being ancestors of the Doctor? I am sure I have heard that theory before somewhere.

According to an official BBC source

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/fa...ntinuity.shtml

whilst time-lords used to be limited to 13 lives (12 regenerations), with the destruction of Gallifrey and everything about their society, that limit may no longer apply to any who survived.

Sounds like a reference to Logans Run to me lol.

1 thing I never got and still dont is that there is the 12 regenerations thing of cause. But I also recall there being like a 2000 year age limit on the lifespan.

The 2000 year thing never seems to get mentioned on here from memory so I mat have got it wrong an in fact the 2000 year age limit may have simply been a comment\idea that may have been mentioned in those hard backs of the 80's I used to get.

Anyone else ever recall the 2000 age limit?.

Thanks for putting me right and the interesting posts.

I actually think the pictures of 'previous' reincarnations was a good idea, but it's apparently a boob.

Hinchcliffe has said that he intended that the faces seen prior to William Hartnell's were intended to be the Doctor's previous incarnations. However, as there was no dialogue to support what we saw visually it is now open to interpretation.

However, with Hinchliffe's intention to have the faces be previous Doctor's he was ignoring established continuity. In The Three Doctors one Time Lord on Gallifrey refers to the Hartnell and Troughton incarnations as the Doctors 1st and 2nd. So clearly Pertwee was the 3rd and Tom Baker the 4th.

Even as a 5 year old when I first saw it I assumed that the other faces were Morbius as the brain and the Doctor went head to head. That still works for me now.

In the 5 Doctors the first (Hurndall/Hartnell) asks of the current incumbent (Davison) "Regeneration?" to which Davison replies "4th" and Hurndall counters with "Goodness me so there are 5 of me now"


Personally I think the whole 13th incarnation being the last be like the whole Y2K business when we all found out that the world didn't stop at all and it was a false alarm

That's their way of allowing for when Matt Smith's second successor leaves - hopefully not until 2025! (that's 5 years per Doctor)

Quite - that was my & my family's opinion too. Why wouldn't we see Morbius' previous incarnations too?
Its only now we have the interweb that the question arises

Interesting thought. But aren't the Dr's regenerations that begin the sequence?

Yup. Also the 8th Doctor states of McCoy "In all my travels through space and time, and nearing the end of my seventh life, I was finally beginning to realise that you could never be too careful"

As people have confirmed in there posts here, there is far more evidence to back up the Doctor only having 10 incarnations so far. Morbius is really the only story that could contradict that, but it doesn't actually say in the dialogue those faces were the Doctor's. It's just one of those things, like Doc 8 being half human.

You don't just think that the other faces on the screen could be Morbius' past incarnations, then...?

Well obvisouly from the comments in this thread there is doubt.

Besides that Hinchcliffe has said he intended them to be the Doctor's. So at the time of production they weren't intended to be Morbius's. But keep rolling your eyes as we are clearly all thick.

Yes, clearly!



So, then, if - as has been stated many times in past episodes - Time Lords have 13 lives, with the faces on the screenin Brain Of Morbius, David Tennant is the last. So what on Earth is Matt Smith going on about being the next Doctor for? What a nutter! Does he not know that at the end of the specials Tennant will die and not regenerate?

I reckon actually you've sussed it-RTD did say the regeneration wasn't a normal regeneration!

wasnt it in the brain of morbius that happened??? (during the "mind bending" contest?)

When I said there is doubt, I mean in the minds of fans, not in the context of the continuing story of Doctor Who. Personally I'm not saying that we take the faces seen in Morbius to be the Doctor's, all I'm doing is stating facts that at the time of production they were intended to be, which meant Hinchcliffe contradicted what had been established. Of course the new production team are not considering the faces in Morbius as the Doctor's.

But it is just another of those little Doctor Who contradictions that are fun to sweep under the carpet.

:

Um...nope! I think you've imagined that one, sorry!



Plus in Mawdryn Undead the Doctor says he's regenerated four times so far and has eight left... in The Three Doctors the Time Lords refer to Hartnell's Doctor as being the earliest... in Time And The Rani the Doctor refers to his new self as "my seventh persona"... in The Next Doctor there are flashback clips of all the Doctors from Hartnell to Tennant with nobody else beforehand... same as in several other stories where the Doctor's had his mind scanned i.e. Resurrection Of The Daleks.

In short, when dealing with contradictions in Doctor Who continuity, I always go with the idea that when there's an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest one version of events and only one little thing which doesn't fit, the simplest option is to go with the majority and reconcile/retcon the single counter-example. Doing it the other way would involve coming up with tortuously contrived explanations for all of the above examples, probably involving the Doctor and the Time Lords all lying/being amnesiac, etc.

Actually, Peter Davison would've been. There were 8 additional faces, plus the first four Doctors, that's 12 in total.

I cannot remember the episodes name, but I remember one with Tom Baker where The Master was on the last of his regenerations, and tried to take The Doctors last regenreations to prolong his life.

It's possible that with the Master being re-incarnated - and very likely alive in a new body - that there will be an excuse contrived where The Doctor defeats The Master once and for all take the Masters regenerations to prolong his own life.