Age has no fury ...
All this talk of regeneration, immortality, etc., but what of the Doctor's actual age? Our first encounter with the Doctor is when he's about 650 (in production documentation). On-screen, he tells Victoria on Telos that he's 450 years old in Earth terms, but reaches "several thousand years" by his third incarnation. Then it is a hop-scotch around the 749-759 mark for the fourth, whilst the sixth persona states he is 900 years, followed up by the seventh pointing out he's the same age as the Rani at 953.
Enter a modern Doctor, and he's back to 900, reaching 903 three series later (Voyage of the Damned). He's 906 by the time Wilfred is travelling with him, and the latest incarnation reflects on being 907.
Maybe the Doctor simply doesn't know. But, then again, time is relative ...
Thus says the second Doctor to Jamie in The War Games. Something that was seemingly lost in the mists of time since Robert Holmes deemed a distinct life-span for Time Lords with his plot requirements for the Master in The Deadly Assassin. Well, until now, that is.All this talk of regeneration, immortality, etc., but what of the Doctor's actual age? Our first encounter with the Doctor is when he's about 650 (in production documentation). On-screen, he tells Victoria on Telos that he's 450 years old in Earth terms, but reaches "several thousand years" by his third incarnation. Then it is a hop-scotch around the 749-759 mark for the fourth, whilst the sixth persona states he is 900 years, followed up by the seventh pointing out he's the same age as the Rani at 953.
Enter a modern Doctor, and he's back to 900, reaching 903 three series later (Voyage of the Damned). He's 906 by the time Wilfred is travelling with him, and the latest incarnation reflects on being 907.
Maybe the Doctor simply doesn't know. But, then again, time is relative ...
People have harped on about the impending end of the Doctor with him having reached his eleventh persona. Just two more to go ... so we all expect them to get out of it somehow. Not too tricky, being back in The Five Doctors the Master is offered a whole new life-cycle - not to mention Borusa seeking the immortality that Rassilon seemingly has found (Stargate's ascension, anyone?). Then, the Time War came along and we hear of Time Lords being raised from the dead to fight (and presumably getting their "whole new life-cycle" too judging by the Master regenerating in Utopia!).
Still, where does this leave the Doctor? We know he fought in the Time War, and was pretty much the sole survivor (well, apart from a seemingly unending supply of Daleks and chameleon-arched wanderers to get around it). Do the rules of regeneration still apply? Back in The Tenth Planet/The Power of the Daleks we were told by the Doctor that the process goes hand-in-hand with the TARDIS, which itself used to draw its energy from the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey (TVM, well at least from Gary Russell's novelisation!). No more Gallifrey, and the TARDIS draws its energy from other sources, notably the Rift in Cardiff Bay (the Doctor will get a bit of a shock next time he goes there after the Hub blew up!). So, if the TARDIS gets its power elsewhere then can the Doctor do so too in order to regenerate? (point to note, in new Who all regenerations have been in the TARDIS, including the Master's!). And if the power needed is independent to Gallifrey then so too might be the old rules governing the ability to regenerate.
Along comes Death to the Doctor, and newspapers (notably the Guardian) have latched onto a line where the Doctor indicates he can change some 507 times - which whilst it gets the series out of the dilemma of what to do in two Doctors time, still doesn't make him immortal like the paper reckons: 'immortal' means you can't die, which is different to "living forever, barring accidents" that the second Doctor says!
So ner!
