Any references beside the film to which incarnation he is in?

Sorry if there is in classic Who, I'm a New Who Newbie. Just wondering, cos everyone just assumed William Hartnell was the Doc's First ever incarnation and in the Who universe, he was born like that.

Perhaps...he was 3rd or something?

I know there was one in the 1996 Movie, but is it taken as canon?

William Hartnell kicked off Doctor Who as the First Doctor

The 1996 movie is canon but there was no on screen regeneration from Mcgann to Eccleston

We are on the 10th incarnation of The Doctor now

Doctors 1 to 10

1st Doctor - William Hartnell
2nd Doctor - Patrick Troughton
3rd Doctor - Jon Pertwee
4th Doctor - Tom Baker
5th Doctor - Peter Davidson
6th Doctor - Colin Baker
7th Doctor - Sylvester Mccoy
8th Doctor - Paul Mcgann
9th Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
10th Doctor - David Tennant

Yes. The movie is as canonical as Dr Who gets (which, generally, isn't very).

Or 16.

This is a long running problem of continuity in the Who world.

In a story staring the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker, called "The Brain of Morbius" the Doctor gets involved in a battle of minds with Morbius.

Morbius (another Time Lord) asks "How long have you lived?" and seemingly in reply we see Jon Pertwee's image (3rd Doctor), Patrick Troughton's image (2nd Doctor), William Hartnell's image (1st Doctor) and then another half dozen images of people in period costume which you have to assume are earlier regenerations of the Doctor working backwards.*

So if you take that as cannon (and not a script writers folly) Tom Baker would actually be the the 10th Doctor and not the 4th which would make Tennant the 16th.

This is a problem because another piece of cannon "law" is that Time Lords can only have 12 regerations before they die for real. The Master has extended this number before but he's used nasty methods like stealing the bodies of others.

The case for the defence however has Peter Davidson, the 5th Doctor, once stating that he had already used 4 of his 12 regenerations which would confirm that Hartnell was the first but ignores the images in The Brain of Morbius.



*They were apparently faces belonging to members of the crew. The producers had wanted to use famous actors to represent his past faces but it didn't pan out so they used crew members, and got in trouble because they weren't Equity members.

Don't forget in Human Nature just last Series, in Smiths book, is drawings of the faces of his previous forms with arrows going around them.

I don't think you have to assume that at all. It's one interpretation, but the first time I saw it I assumed they were people the Doctor had met on his travels, or maybe his family back on Gallifrey. The other fan-theory is that they're Morbius' past incarnations as the Doctor gains the upper hand in the mind-battle.
There's a fair bit of evidence to support the idea that Hartnell was the first. In 'The Three Doctors' the Time Lords refer to Hartnell as the earliest incarnation. Davison's mention of having used up four of his regenerations comes from 'Mawdryn Undead' and again in 'The Five Doctors' he's said to be the fourth regeneration/fifth Doctor. In 'Time And The Rani' the Doctor says he's in his "seventh persona" and then there's the aforementioned sketchbook from 'Human Nature'.

So weighing all that up against a few faces of dubious origin I'm happy to go with the 'standard' interpretation of events.

I don't think its just a fan theory that the other faces in Brain of Morbius were Morbius's past incarnations - I think it has been stated by the production team that the other faces were Morbius's and not the Doctor's.

There's no reason to think Hartnell wasn't the first and every reason to think he was. He even states, quite clearly, in The Five Doctors that he is the 'original' Doctor.

The only thing I wish they had done - which would have been interesting - is to have the Valeyard revealed to be the Doctor's THIRD incarnation. But he was so evil that the Time Lord's had to pull him back to Gallifrey, wipe his memory of that incarnation and then regenerate him again.

Plus when talking to, ..himself, he jokingly said something along the lines of "Oh, so there are 5 of me out there!"


Valeyard confuses me, simple as, People said he was The Doctors final form who's gone back in time, or something like that?

Actually I think it's the other way round. I'm sure that Phillip Hinchcliffe has often said that the intention at the time was that they were faces of the Doctor. But without any on-screen dialogue to confirm that I think we can just ignore it.
The Master describes the Valeyard by claiming he's an amalgamation of all the evil in the Doctor's personality, and that he's "somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation", whatever that means. Possibly he's like the Watcher from 'Logopolis', a phantom projection of the Doctor from between two incarnations.

For the benefit of this thread's originator, this is how Each Doctor "regenerated" into their sucessor...
1st Doctor - Old Age
2nd Doctor - Regeneration "forced" (?) by the Time Lords after the events of The War Games
3rd Doctor- Radiation Poisoning at the end of Planet Of The Spiders
4th Doctor - Fell off Radio Telescope at the end of Logopolis
5th Doctor - Poisoned by raw Spectrox at the end of Caves of Androzani (Ironically, the processed form is used as a drug to combat the effects of Ageing)
6th Doctor - Fell Victim to the Rani's "Time Tractor beam" at the beginning of Time & The Rani
7th Doctor - Died in hospital, after he got caught in a gang related firefight on Dec 31 1999 during the events of Doctor Who- The Movie
8th Doctor - Unknown, but probably related to the events of the Time War....
9th Doctor - Dies while trying to remove the Time Vortex from Rose Tyler....

I wonder if it was possable when The Master died ( or appeared to die ) that the Doctor could of taken the Regenerations the Master left?

Anyway it will be at lest 10 years before The Doctor is on his last Regeneration so they got loads of time to come up with something?

The Master is alive and well and just finished a successful season in Blackpool. He is just waiting for the call to come through asking him to reprise the role of the most menacing, evil genius in the universe....

Was the first Doctor, the first incarnation or just when we picked up the story of his life. Could there have been other doctors before him after all he had grandchildren so presumably he had regenerated before we picked the story up.

Why would him having a grandchild mean he must have regenerated?

And as I said further up the thread, there's a lot of evidence and references within the show to Hartnell being the first.

It doesn't but if you assume that regenerating is a skill you have to learn then it is likely that your parents teaches you meaning they have to have regenerated in the first place to know how. So in that case the Doctor probably had done it a few times. Ok that is pure conjecture but hadn't the Doctor's granddaughter regenerated before she appears on screen or does it before the Doctor does it? In that case how come the granddaughter has regenerated before her grandfather that is just strange. Son doing it before Father is fine because you do ocasionally hear about parents having to bury their children but how many times do you hear about grandparents burying/outliving the grandchildren.
Ok, in the show it is said he is the first - but how many of those references are made by the actual creator of the show who actually knew whether Hartnell was the first or not.

Regeneration is an Automatic Process that starts once the body "kicks the bucket", the person doesn't even need to be awake as the 3rd, 6th and 7th were all knocked out during theirs. The only skill needed is for stopping it and prolonging it, as the 9th Doctor shown and as 6th Master done.

Why is there a need to create an argument that William Hartnell might not have been the first incarnation of the Doctor when we all know for a fact that he was?

I very much doubt that Sydney Newman wrote multiple regenerations into his original concept. (Unless you believe the Pitch of Fear sketch is historically accurate. ) Recasting only became an option when William Hartnell's health deteriorated.

Maybe the Timelords gave the Doctor a new set of regenerations while fighting in the Time War. (they could have given the rest the same but what ever the Doc did to destroy the Daleks and the Timelords was just too severe for any of the other Timelords to survive it).

If they could bring the Master back from the dead anything is possible

6th Master - more than that. The event's of The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper Of Traken clearly indicate he had expired his regenerations and stole Tremas's body to prolong his life. The Time Lords offered him a new regeneration cycle in The Five Doctors but you have to assume this is not something given out lightly or otherwise Timelords would never die. The Anthony Ainley master would have died rather than regenerate if this had not been given did he insist it was granted before he went into the death zone?

However for the 3rd to 4th Doctors regeneration, Cho Je gave the process a little help which would indicate some greater power that certain Timelords have.

However in theory the master is on a second cycle of regenerations and this is, or was, at least his third - Anthony Ainley, Derek Jacobi and John Simm.

Where did you get this from?

Susan (the Grandaughter) was never seen to regenerate, the Doctor left her behind on 21st century Earth and just picked up another young companion.

Susan reappeared in The 5 Doctors played by the same actress, so again no regeneration.


The Ainley Master was (probably) the one killed by the Daleks in the TVM and was not part of any regeneration cycle as the Master was stealing bodies at that point. Derek Jacobi was most likely the first incarnation of the Masters 2nd Regeneration cycle.

Fellow nerds chill. The beauty of sci fi is exactly that its fiction, the writers could have him find regenerations in a cosmic cereal box and we would have to buy it. The doc can go on for ever if thats what they want limited regens or not

peace

Although in Smith and Jones the Doctor clinically dies* and is brought back to life by Martha's CPR. So there is obviously a slight gap between kicking the bucket and the regeneration kicking in.

My memory is also telling me he technically died again in the series and was brought back to life again (it was getting to be a habit)...but I can't remember in what episode.


*Well according to Judoon scans and I believe Martha's examination, so I suppose they could have both been in error.

Sorry, yeah, I meant the 6th Master to us if we count in order of appearence...
1. Roger Delgado
2. Peter Pratt/Geoffrey Beavers
3. Anthony Ainley
4. Eric Roberts
5. Derek Jacobi and
6. John Simm


True, the 7th Regeneration, The Doctor was dead for quite a while before it started but that was explained as the anysthetic interfering with the body. So maybe Human Medical equipment can cause side effects on it and delay it starting.

Have!