In the original series, regeneration was a calmer physical transformation like shifting muscles, bones, even hair color and shape like with the 7th to 8th regeneration in the movie. But in the revival, each regeneration is now a glowing flash of light from their bodies, sometimes even so powerful it can wreck apart the environment in an energy surge. What’s the explanation for all this with the lore about Time Lords?
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man, that’s a whopper of a Watsonian question
Just a function of Time Lord biology, I guess. Each regeneration takes- and subsequently releases- a bit more energy than the last.
It seems to be a conscious choice, but a difficult one. Think like holding in a sneeze.
The calmer regenerations tend to be done around humans or in places that could be destroyed. The more violent ones seem to be when he’s alone or seeking destruction.
9 to 10 (Eccleston to Tennant) was in front of Rose so had to prevent destruction, and then he had some serious rebound from keeping it in.
10 was able to use it to remodel his TARDIS since he didn’t want to share it and was kinda taking it down with him. After all a captain will go down with her ship.
11 (Smith) was able to use it to rip apart enemy ships out of the air.
It also seems that the longer a time lord has been in that form the more energy that builds up.
I’ve seen it theorised that Time Lords managed to weaponise regeneration during the Time War – if a Dalek kills them, the force of the resulting regeneration would destroy the Dalek in return.
Maybe the more a Time Lord regenerates, the more energy is needed or created to revive them? Are Time Lords even meant to regenerate as frequently as The Doctor does? It could also be sign or cause as to why later regenerations could be so wildly different from each other too. Plus, regenerating might not be death in a sense but it probably stinks either way
Pre time war it was just an effect of aging it got a little bigger each time.
However this took something of a turn mid and Post time war that effect was magnified and weaponised by the timelords. where the power could do local damage…
Ironically this one of the few areas that faction paradox did not use even though it sounds just right out of their M.O.
All Doctor Who questions can be answered with the same two words: timey wimey.
I have a theory that the intensity of a regeneration is tied to a few factors
In this instance a wound as simple as a gunshot or something similar might induce a relatively tame regeneration. Take the Master’s season 3 regen or the General’s regen
If a time lord deliberately delays a regeneration ot refuses to go through with it, thst energy could build up over time until it finally/violently comes out. For instance 10-11 had been cooking for hours before finally giving into it. 12-13 even more so, literally spending days/weeks fighting and taking more damage before regenerating.
By this, I mean how old that particular body is. If a body is a few years old, maybe the regeneration is mild, if it is centuries old, the regeneration could be even greater
By far, the most destructive regeneration was the 11-12 regeneration. In this instance the Doctor had no regenerations left but was gifted an entirely new set in his final moments. The transition from one set of regenerations to an entirely new set could be especially violent.
Part of it might just be a coincidental series of circumstances – 1 to 2 was nice and simple, just resetting old age, and 2 to 3 was a medically imposed regen. Neither of those would be very flashy. It wasn’t until 3 onward the Doctor started having more traumatic regenerations, which likely required a lot more energy to stabilize his body.
Now, as for the really explosive ones of recent years: 9 had to pop off the residual energy of the Vortex (I’m reaching here because the whole point was that he had just given that energy back to the TARDIS, but maybe he still had some traces left). 10 held off regenerating for a long time; legitimately I remember thinking this back in 2009 when I saw the episode, that it was so explosive because he was holding it in for so long.
11… I can think of a few possible explanations? None of them great, but still. Maybe that just happens when you get reset to a new cycle? Or maybe he, like 10, counted as “holding it in” when the new cycle was given to him after he would have otherwise regenerated hours earlier. Something something Timeless Child. Or maybe he was just intentionally trying to regen big to fuck up the Daleks. 12’s relatively wasn’t so bad compared to the two previous; maybe you could invoke “holding it in” again but only for his goodbye speech. I’m not sure I have anything for 13. And 14 was a bi-generation, which, we have a sample size of one for those so “maybe they just do that.”
I don’t know that there’s a true reason but I’d say something like:
There is a theme of the show where the more a being in the whoniverse has impacted reality the more impact they have into the fabric on the universe, both literally (timetravelllers immediately have a different relationship to the rest of the universe) and implied (Jack Harkness becomes a giant head revered across the galaxy (maybe galaxies)) . The long lived also experience this it seems but in small increments, built up over hundreds of years. The growth may be milestone based rather than exp but for most beings it’s hard to see a difference. But either way the doctor continually does more and more of it and so when it comes time to regenerate all that temporal accumulation, the chronological potential, the timey-wimeyness affects the event. What we see is the leaking of vat energies into the visible spectrum.
Interestingly, between the original and revival he was granted one of his extra regenerations in the form of the War Doctor. It’s possible that this unnatural form is what altered all his future regenerations to be more violent, which was only compounded when he went on to gain another dozen extra.
So at least for 9, 10, 11, they’re deaths are due to being overloaded with energy. So the regeneration was their bodies off-loading the excess energy.
I the End Of Time, when 10 gets shot by a Dalek, his pseudo-regeneration is less pronounced and doesn’t damage his surroundings.
Don’t know about from 12 onwards tho
Lots of things its easy to do when you’re young become a lot harder to do when you’re older.
Regeneration is treated like a skill among Time Lords, something you can train and get better at. The Doctor is supposedly very bad at it, hence the collateral damage. Personally, I think he picked up a flair for the dramatic somewhere, and now regenerates badly on purpose.
>sometimes even so powerful it can wreck apart the environment in an energy surge. What’s the explanation for all this with the lore about Time Lords?
Want to address this bit first because I do think Doctor Who fans overestimate how often this happens. Off the top of my head in new Who we’ve seen the Master, the General, River (twice), and Doctors 8, 9, 10 (first one), and 13 all regenerate without causing any destruction. The only time we’ve seen regeneration cause destruction is 10 (second one), 11, and 12. 10 and 12s can be put down to how long they held their regeneration off for, and 11s was intentionally designed that way by the Time Lords so it would destroy the Daleks.
As for why this is case it can only be assumed it was done during the Time War.
Short answer: your pov is looking at a fixed point in time of the DR’s life. Like when we first saw river song and that was her last day alive vs The last time we saw her having her last date with the dr at the singing towers before going to the library.
My theory for a long time was that the Spectrox Toxaemia that forced the fifth doctor to regenerate permanently damaged his ability to do so. All previous regenerations where more physical transitions into a new person, the fifth doctor straight up says it “feels different this time” as he starts to regenerate, for how his regeneration looked it was clearly a struggle for him that time and I think he nearly died. The sixth Doctor had the worst post-regeneration where he briefly attacked his companion. Every regeneration after the fifth to sixth regen had an energy effect on it which I interpreted as his regenerative abilities being damaged so the process is more painful and destructive
I guess the regeneration is more violent the longer he holds it. Ten visited every single companion he’s ever had before regenerating and the resulting explosion severely damaged the TARDIS and forced it to remodel its interior.