I've organised a public flogging in my hometown for incurring people's wrath in getting a fact wrong. Please forgive me anora, I mean people.

Jarr:

Didn't you berate someone earlier in the thread becasue you are an avid fan?

Just checking

For Sale: 1 Time Lord, good condition genuine (ahem!) low mileage.

Tel. 07760 ****** and ask for Gary

Being patronised and ridiculing my original post are not very nice I guess.

Jarr, you seemed to imply you are more than a casual fan, yet got the number of Doctors we're on wrong which is what is confusing people I think...

The 12 regenerations thing was inserted by the early writers who could not have possibly forseen the overwhelming success of the series (the hiccup in the 80's ignored of course).

Not that early IIRC as it was first mentioned in a Tom Baker story (Deadly Assassin?)

Yes pretty sure it's that story

Presumably it was a required plot contrivance to give the Master an interesting post-Delgado arc?

Having established that the Time Lords can grant new regeneration cycles, there must be 100 ways the show can dodge around the issue if they feel the need to mention it at all. My feeling is that they're better just not mentioning it again and leaving anyone that cares to fill in the blanks for themselves.

My apologies, it was the Deadly Assassin yes. My entire point then is ultimately moot as it was a well established series with a future with no end.

Nice to see this topic come up again (after all it's been a couple of months since we last had this discussion).

As I said last time, if the BBC dare to cease making their number one non-soap drama instead of finding an easy way round it, I will personally poo through the letterbox of BBC Cardiff. The BBC would be in trobule then ...

I think it'd be good to see the Doctor die properly, a bit like when they killed off Superman in the '90s. It'd be easy enough to think of a way to bring him back and it would be a really good 'big' storyline. It'd be a shame if they just ignored it.

The limit was imposed by Robert Holmes in the 14th season, when Doctor Who was one of the most watched shows on TV and more popular than it had been at any time since the mid sixties.

Tip: collect someone else's and push it through. DNA testing, you know.


Not on TV. It's way too fanwanky and/or soap operaish. It's also a bit pointless. The Doctor can't die permanently. Therefore any "big" story that deals with his death is only a long boring story with a known outcome.

Thanks for the hint re someone else's poo, Newbie. I'll also remember to take a stepladder in case the letterbox is a bit high up.

They killed Superman ?!?!?! Eh ?!?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Superman

Thanks for the link to "The Death Of Superman", Gareth. I read some of it, and then realised that "The Death Of Chuffnobbler" would occur if I read too much.

It strikes me as the kind of self-important fanwonk navelgazing that would kill off DW as any kind of mass-appeal product.

I vaguely recall that one of the Dr Who novels actually kills off the Third Doctor instead of regenerating him, going on to say that the regenerated Doctor was actually not the Doctor at all. I think. Or something. I had long since given up reading the books before this happened and, if I had read the book in question, I would have demanded my money back and then stopped reading any further books.


Lets face it: that's just silly.

Doctor 13: Arrrrrgh... I've absorbed too much zeton energy radiation... I'm going to regenerate.....
Companion: But hang on - didn't you once tell me that twelve regenerations is your lot?
[cue regeneration effects]
Doctor 14: Ah, that's better. Twelve regenerations? Nah - I'll explain later.

So Gary is the Doctor's real name! I always thought it was Leeroy.

Chuffnobbler, that was the book "Interference", but you will be pleased to know that all worked out well and the Doctor's life went back to it's normal course later on.

They'll find a way to do it. Doctor Who isn't one of those shows that rigidly adheres to a set of rules (which weakens it a bit, perhaps, but there we go...). Every single incontrovertible truth that has been presented to us in New Who has been circumvented (death of the daleks, death of the timelords, death of the Master, Rose and the parallel universe, Donna 'never remembering'). With all those rules undermined, there is absolutely no issues in coming up with a solution to the 'problem.'

Maybe he could just regenerate and not understand why.

It was a fairly prominent news story in the early nineties. Perhaps you were asleep at the time?

The majority of the 90s were a blur for me. Halcyon days ...

I stayed (relatively) alert for the Paul McGann Dr Who movie, but felt I had wasted that sobertime.

Despite this, (I think) I can confidently say that I have never slept through an alien invasion. Though there was that one time in summer 1994 when things went a bit bonkers.

Quickest and easiest is for Dr Who to move this known universe into a multiverse, retreat via a wormhole into another Earth in parallel Universe with slightly updated Earth characters and military logistics, and carry on as if nobody could ever count beyond 8.

Or, for a scriptwriter to issue irrefutable proof that the statement in the 14th series about 12 regenerations (13 lives) was just so totally wrong it is laughable - a zero was missing before the decimal point - the Doctor can in in fact regenerate 120 times!!


(runs for exit)