in Series 6 opener - The Impossible Astronaut - the 11th Dr starts to regenerate before being shot dead by River.

Have I missed something as surely he had used all his regenerations up at that point?

Apologies if it's been mentioned somewhere before

The clue is in the final episode of the series - It wasn't The Doctor!

As fans we can work around it. For me fact is Moffat has planned some things. Others he hasn't. He didn't walk into the job with an entire plan for everything. There has to be a bit of making it up as you go along. No writer in TV has ever planned and executed a perfect arc that makes perfect sense. Not when a show lasts this long. And actors come and go. And production issues. And budgets. Sometimes things have to change.

Er?...Hello? It was. Just the Eleventh Doctor from the future. But he had gone back in time and had a beach picnic with Amy, Rory and River.

You might want to watch S6 again.

Its all a bit confusing tbh.

IMO the first death scene was the Doctor but second time round it was the Teselecta but lots of people believe that is was the Teselecta on both occasions and that the regeneration was a ruse

The Doctor that went back in time to the beach for a picnic was the one from the end of the series, after visiting Craig and hatching the plan with the Tesselecta. The Silence didn't know that the Doctor had a hidden incarnation, and presumably didn't know about 10.5 either, and so would have expected to see him regenerate, and so that's what they were shown.

But yes, I doubt if that part was hatched so early on, it's just nice that it fits.

It always was the Tesselecta, with the Doctor inside. The event was a fixed point - River's attempt to change events caused the break down of reality - the Doctor knew what would happen so he wouldn't have changed anything.

er?...Hello?

Pay attention!

At no stage did The Doctor start to regenerate in The Impossible Astronaut.

Another 'request' that you watch Series 6 again.

The doctor didn't regenerate. The only thing seen looking like regeneration in that episode was a tesselecta ship, currently shaped as the doctor, performing a convincing special effect. Series 6 arc is a bit iffy overall, but this particular point was pretty clearly made by the series 6 finale.

Such an iffy resolution to it all.
The funny thing is that many people didn't see it coming, because they thought that Moffat was going to use the 'Gangers' to explain it all, and were angry that that was a bit of a lame explanation!

My theory is that given that the War Doctor was such a secret, The Silence didn't know about him and would be expecting the Eleventh to regenerate (as we all would at the time). A lack of regeneration would have raised questions from the Silence and River about a mystery incarnation, and also whether or not that was really the Doctor - the regeneration effect is a good way to convince everyone that it's a real Time Lord on the beach.

didn't see it coming before the episode but on the actual episode itself, the fact that the previously showed footage of the tesselecta, ruined it for me at the very start of the episode for me. It was like 'this thing from a few episodes ago is important to this episode' which kind of gave the game away. Not that it was a great resolution anyway. It made sense and served it's purpose and all, just wasn't particularly impressive.

I never got River's reaction 'of course not' when she failed to shoot herself. Her actions before and following the event didn't suggest prior knowledge so i don't accept 'river lies'.

At the time I thought it meant: "Of course not... A space suit comes out of the water after a long time being there (having to have been in the water before we got here to have this picnic), and shoost the Doctor twice from no visible source... Why would I think a handgun will stop that kind of technology?"

Obviously, it could be that I was wrong (most likely, almost definitely am), but I can't currently remember the whole timeline of River...

Particularly for a series-spanning arc that took over half a year to resolve.



Ah, River lies. The Doctor lies.
The biggest sort of insult to writing that Moffat could have pulled. It's extremely poor form to simply say that a character previously lied in order to suit your plot and where you want it to go. Write an actually decent and coherent story that doesn't mean you have to explain two contradictory scenes with 'oh, they were just fibbing'. A child could write that!

Don't forget timey wimey. It went from something clever, to something that became an easy get out of jail free card. And with regard to the lying, the doctor and river must also be professionally trained actor's because they often seem pretty emotional on thing's where they later casually say they lied.

It's not a question of River lying. It's a question of a much older River reacting instinctively, and then realising she's found herself in a situation from her past. She was under a lot of mental conditioning at the time.

From a story perspective, any more obvious sign of recognition and the game would be given away immediately.

It's a spacesuit. You can't breathe in space, so obviously it would have an oxygen tank. That's how she survived so long underwater.

So her emotional response on the seeing the Doctor in the diner afterwards was all an act? If she realised that the spaceman was in fact her from the past, would she really have reacted in that way?

Really? Thanks for that. I also didn't know that they train astronauts against low gravity environments in underwater tanks... Oh, yes, actually I did.

What I meant was that she was under water for the length of their picnic, and had to have been there long before the others arrived otherwise they would have seen it. I don't know if that was longer than the 6 hours' capacity of oxygen that a regular tank would have had.

And then there are the other points that I mentioned, that a regular spacesuit wouldn't have had.

considering this is Doctor Who, could she not have been teleported to that position

Yes, she would. He forced her to watch her younger self 'kill' him. Even though she learned the secret in the alternate timeline, he lured her later self there without any kind of warning. In particular, he put her parents through it too, and she couldn't say anything to them.

Even if it wasn't that earlier Doctor that was at fault - he was summoned too - you can understand her wanting to let out her frustration.

I'm here to be contrary!

The Doctor did start to regenerate at the start of Series 6. He didn't at the end. Breaking that fixed point is what caused all of The Wedding of River Song. Had it always been the case that it was not the real Doctor that regenerated, that would have been the subject of the fixed point and the Wedding stuff wouldn't have happened.

Which would have been better, because it was rubbish.