| Posted: 20 July 2017 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | 12
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Regeneration is renewal, not reincarnation. This has been slowly morphed over time till we reached the point where The Master turns up as Missy and a Time Lord regenerates into a Time Lady in Hell Bent. In terms of what is long established in the show.... we have had the Doctor regenerating into a man consistently, we had Romana regenerating into a woman, we have had other Time Lords like Borusa consistently appear as a man in multiple regenerations. I don't see it as being long established that the Doctor can regenerate into a woman; it seems a fairly new development.
The Doctor is a relatively mysterious character, but there were some points of consistency established in the original run from 1963 to 1989. He was a grandfather, with a grandaughter called Susan. He had a ship called the TARDIS that could travel in space and time but it didn't work properly. He often did not know very much about the places he visits. He was not particularly powerful or fearsome, often taken prisoner by his enemies or having to run when confronted by danger.
The new show has gone about undermining all these things. Yes, it opens up new possibilities. Not sure we actually have anything left of what was repeatedly established over decades in the classic run.
I'm all for equal opportunities. If they had decided it would make an exciting change to make Romana the lead and run with a story in which the Doctor is taken out of action for an extended period, I think it would have been an interesting change without fundamentally altering who that character was.
Theoretically we can say regeneration opens up pretty much any possibility for a change in the character, but I would argue that in practice you cannot do so without altering (or undoing) certain fundamentals. For example, the Doctor has always been interesting, charismatic, larger than life, brave, anti-authority, committed to doing what is right, curious and so on.
Theoretically we could argue any personality is possible and introduce a boring, conformist, incurious six year old. But it would be a black swan event, ignoring all that had been established before... For the sake of doing something new.
I don't think it works to do that in serial fiction.
Similarly, many have expressed an opinion that they prefer an older Doctor. I don't think that is inherently an ageist comment (or reverse-ageist, if there is such a thing!), even though logically a process of renewal should give the Doctor a younger body. However, the show has had the Doctor regenerating often enough as an older man for this to be not an unreasonable expectation, I think (and in fact, Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker who pretty much defined the character were not young men). We could argue Peter Davison being so young was one of those changes that forever altered the character, and not necessarily for the better. All that we know, is that once it was done, it couldn't be undone.
Edited by Peter Martin on 20 July 2017 at 1:21pm
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