Touché

 

Remember, the 4th Doctor had the same problem inside the tachyon recreation generator on Argolis in The Leisure Hive... he was prematurely aged. While Time Lords supposedly do not age greatly (a few comments here and there that within the Capitol, a Time Lord with 12 regenerations - 13 lives - can effectively live forever, and that skews their viewpoints a little) this may be as someone else pointed out that their bodies can handle small amounts of aging in the short term, or handle great physical trauma with a regeneration, but rapid aging without physical (or mental, the 7th Doctor was originally going to regenerate if all went to plan because he lost his mind) trauma might not trigger a regeneration, but require time perhaps for the body's own processes to catch up and either de-age them or settle them into the new apparent age.

Well, it's as good an explanation as any.

 

Maybe we'll find out when he de-ages?

I remember pondering that too, and I guess we can just hope that it's explained later (most things are... eventually...)

 

Doctor Who's time is over

I've not had much exposure to the new versions.

The only info I have is seeing the 8th Doctor movie and skimming a book on a newer version.

We'll discuss Doctor 8 first:
I knew this was doomed to fail from day one. Whenever Americans try to recreate British shows, they fail miserably. Red Dwarf USA had been attempted prior to this and not even a total rewrite of the script by one of the creators managed to save it.

It seems with the versions after this that they're erasing the history established by the previous versions.

The only conclusive data I have is that the Cybermen were created by an invalid (on Earth in an alternate timeline) trying to cure his condition (he became the Controller (the Cybermen's head honcho, top boss, leader supreme, etc).

In the original version, the Cybermen were from another planet where the inhabitants were getting physically weaker and resorted to bionics/cybernetics to replace their failing parts. In a foolish decision, they decided to remove all emotion from their brains and the Cybermen were born.

In my opinion, Doctor Who should have ended with Survival (the last episode of the 7th Doctor).

And what happens when the Doctor runs out of regenerations? He can only have thirteen (fourteen different actors (his first body plus thirteen more) and I'm not sure how many he's up to yet.

 

Actually it's 13 lives, 12 regenerations. The 13th Doctor is the last. And who knows what they'll do after Doctor 13 dies. If they really want it to kepp going, they'll do it. In Sci-Fi you can explain your way out of anything, much like soap operas.

 

Er, no. Like you mentioned those were alternative reality cybermen-the ones from the classic episodes, our reality cybermen, are still canon in the new Who. In fact, the Doctor mentions when he meets the alternate reality cybermen how he fought the ones from ours.

 

As did the Daleks.

Also, while he can have 13 lives, as was pointed out in the Five Doctors, it is possible for the Time Lords to be set up with a complete new regeneration cycle. While that may require something from Gallifrey, it also may not.

I also think at some point in the future, we will see Gallifrey again. Either a time paradox bringing them back or something that changes that part of history... it's just a feeling, mostly based around television shows where the dead always come back. May not come to pass, but I think it will, at some point. Even if it's Gallifrey 2.0 with new Time Lords or something.

 

that was a awsome ep.

i had an idea that the orbs might have been the humans headed off to the utpoia in the last ep. its the only thing i could think of that would break the Doctors hearts. it might also explain why the orbs dont realy like the darkness.........

blast it! i need the next ep bad ><

 

I've never watched the new Battlestar Galactica, but it must suck balls because I watched Galactica 1980 and read that Starbuck was a woman. Does anyone know where I can find a thread full of people who know far more about it then me so I can go and do some uninformed bashing?

 

Possibly, as an after effect of making himself human, then completely re-writing his biology to become a time-lord again, made him completely new, giving him a new set of regenerations?

If so, then does the master have a new set too?

 

Well he did mention that the Time Lord resurrected him so I am guessing that included a whole new set of regenerations.

If we assume that Professor Yana was regeneration 1 then the PM is the second incarnation of this new Master.

 

They resurrected him, but he never specified how long ago, the Master could have used a regeneration or two, but Yana's comment about being found as a baby would have me believe that he was made human as soon as he was resurrected.

 

Was anyone else stunned when the Time Lords proposed to this to the Master? The TV series has never satisfactorily explained why and how regenerations work, but when the restarting of the cycle came up in 'Five Doctors', I was floored. Wouldn't this mean that the Time Lords have the power to perpetuate their 13-life cycles ad infinitum? I'm sure some script editor or writer noticed this but this ability to restart regeneration cycles appears to have been glossed over since that one mention of it.

Who knows what powers he was given after the TARDIS ate him up. Maybe he'll be the first Doctor Who Transformer and have a TARDIS as his alt mode.

On a completely unrelated topic, has anyone here who owns a PAL-to-NTSC DVD player ever tried playing a region 2 Who DVD on their NTSC TV? I just started watching the 'New Beginnings' box set from the UK and noticed that the picture quality seems softer than the native R1 releases. I actually own quite a few PAL discs (almost all movies), but this is my first exposure to Who in PAL format. It almost looks like someone performed a reverse VidFire process on the video. It doesn't really bother me (I actually think it looks kind of cool), but I was curious to see if anyone else has had experience with this.

One last thing: has anybody tried listening to the commentary track on 'The Keeper of Traken'? I wanted to strangle Matthew Waterhouse! The blithering idiot acts like a three-year-old when the credits roll, reading aloud and applauding every cast member's name. Now I understand why JNT wanted to blow up Adric.

-= CS =-

 

i believe it was mentioned in one of the first/second doctor stories that he is 450 earth years old and 650 gallifreyan years. so the doctor really hasn't got value for his regenerations in the last nine. i also wonder if having the time votex in him at the end of the first season will give him more regenerations and stop him from becoming the valeyard in his 11th and 12th regenerations( you know the future version of the doctor who puts the sixth/seventh doctor on trial)

 

In the Underworld (fourth Doctor), they address this topic (although it's more clear in the novelization). The Time Lords (one and only time) shared their technology with a less advanced race who destroyed their planet with it. Before this happened, the race in question launced two ships with the intent of recreating their species on another planet. In the journey, the two ships were seperated and the guard ship went looking for the colonist ship.

Because the journey took such a long time, the crew were using a machine to regenerate themselves everytime they reached the old age point of death (based on the Time Lord regeneration power). They'd used it so often that they were getting diminishing returns. The more they used it, the less effective it was (they had to regenerate in shorter intervals instead of 80 years or so). And they were living in a state that resembles chronic exhaustion.

So, a Time Lord can have more regenerations, but there is a point where the process is not effective anymore.

 

Hmm. Time Lord regenerations is a tricky subject, since every single one has been different when televised.

We know the Time Lords can give entirely new cycles, it's possible this may be something also to do with the Eye of Harmony, located under the Panopticon, since the Master does draw energy from it in Deadly Assassin, which with a bit of a stretch could be construed to be rebuilding him from the ground up. Unfortunately, he's not in contact with it long enough to give any kind of definitive answer.

The 4th Doctor even has a transitionary phase (the Watcher), which hasn't been seen before or since.

(and honestly, the 6th Doctor's regeneration didn't really do a lot, he just took his wig off)

The Time Lords don't need to use technology with their regenerations, although it's been noted the TARDIS has helped the Doctor through several. What they gave the Minyans wasn't what they use - for Time Lords, it's been built into their biology (the New Adventures novels state this is because Gallifrey became a barren world after the last of the Pythias died, and they produced afterwards from genetic looms kept in ancestral family homes, like the Doctor's home of Lungbarrow). Presumably, the Time Lord technology for giving new life cycles would work far better than a client race that didn't match up with the same biology. In addition, the Time Lords interfered with the Minyans fairly early on in their development - their technology could and likely would have moved on dramatically in the time since.

The last age given in serials from the original series was 953 - by the 7th Doctor, most notably in Time and the Rani, where he states it's also the Rani's age. But ages is another thing that is all over the place. There's one point he suggests he's had several thousand years experience. Originally, the 4th Doctor had his 751st birthday in The Stones Of Blood, but the scene was cut before filming. And the Gallifreyan year ages are mostly just fandom trying to make sense of differing figures given.

The Chameleon Arch doesn't seem to actually make someone fully human. It seems to re-write their biology to mask their Time Lord nature, and locks the release codes in the watches, along with extracted personality and memories. Could be wrong on that one, but that's been my read of both examples we've seen of it so far. But... is that a possible explanation then for the 8th Doctor's insistance he was half-human? Did his mum "experiment" with a chameleon arch with his father? (were they kinky Time Lords? There's a thought that explains a lot...)

 

perhaps the 8th doctor was half human because of the human blood the american doctors put into the 7th doctor

 

Also, something I noticed about the series suggests that Tennant is staying on:

In the episode with Shakespeare, at the end, one earlier Queen appears, recognises the Doctor, and orders his execution, but they never explained what he's done, so surely that either happens next season, or the Christmas episode.

Also, Freema was on Richard + Judy today, and they had a quick talk about her staying on, to which she replied she wasnt allowed to say anything about Series 4, which suggests she's probably staying too.

 

I do hope Tennant sticks around for a while longer. I think he's the best thing to happen to Doctor Who in a LONG time. And that Freema, she just smokin hot. So much better than Billie.

 

yeah, we need to keep tennat till he is literally too old to play the part and has to step down for medical reasons, with only 3 regenerations left.