posted
Does that mean the Master and the Rani were both there?
Well, the Master is pretty certainly toast after the TV movie. I mean, you never know with the guy, it seems, but they have an excuse for him not being there if necessary.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
I find myself unable to recall the Master's exact fate in the movie, but the guy's pretty well proven himself immortal...
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posted
Didn't he get sucked into the Eye of Harmony?
There are also enough situations in the show that imply a Time Lord can die without regenerating. When the 6th Doctor encountered his tomb in whatever his Dalek story was called (Revelation?) he said something like:
"That's it then. It ends here. No more regenerations."
He said it in a resigned tone of voice, and there was no hint of "but how is that possible?!!?!??!?!?!!" (I imagine that Colin would have lots of punctuation marks in his dialogue.)
Were you referring to The Monk, Tim? Or the Cellestial Toymaker? (Was he a Time Lord or not? I can't recall.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: And the Doctor's hermit friend whose name I don't feel like looking up?
Would that be Kan'po, the Monk who appears in "Planet of the Spiders"? He was a timelord - in fact I think you even saw him regenerate.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Were you referring to The Monk, Tim? Or the Cellestial Toymaker? (Was he a Time Lord or not? I can't recall.)
The Meddling Monk was a Timelord, but as for the Toymaker I don't think so. He was implied to have some sort of history with the Doctor, but I don't think it ever showed him to be from Gallifrey.
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posted
The Toymaker was not a Time Lord. And folks like Drax may not be Time Lords despite being Gallifreyans. Some think (and novels may establish) that only Time Lords are granted twelve regenerations.
And they can die just like the rest of us. While not established, severe physical trauma (decapitation, dicing, etc.) is generally assumed to be un-fixable via regeneration. You need most of your previous body intact for the process to work properly.
That said, there are plenty of time the Doctor could have been melted, vapourized, led through rotating knives, and so forth to keep the possibility of him ACTUALLY dying as a dramatic point. Had Eccles not made it through the big fans on Platform One, odds are there wouldn't be enough left of him to regenerate into Tennant.
posted
I was, indeed, referring to the guy from "Planet of the Spiders". Who, I guess, was a monk on Earth. (On Gallifrey, it seems he was just a hermit.)
I intentionally left out the Meddling Monk, though. I was thinking that he had been trapped in his TARDIS, so we could assume he never got out and eventually died. However, now that I think about it, he was trapped outside of it. So, he probably would have figured out a way to leave Earth eventually.
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posted
Regenerating also isn't like waiting for a broken bone to heal. In a way, the Doctor does die. He's not quite the same person afterwards, in either body or mind. The core might be the same, but the 6th Doctor was rather disdainful of what the 4th Doctor was like, and in the books no-one seemed to like the 7th.
Not forgetting that there's a 12 regeneration limit anyway. So even if it doesn't kill a Time Lord, it does bring them one step closer to death. And with the Doctor about to hit the big 10, he should probably be getting a bit concerned. At the very least, he should have had a mid-life crises. (Although maybe he did. Maybe that explains the 6th Doctor's taste in clothing.)
(I do wonder what regular Time Lords regenerations are like. The majority of them probably don't result from falling off of radio masts or getting shot by New York street gangs. Do they all suffer the "I'm going to run around for an episode in a barmy manner" problem, or is that just the Doctor?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Regenerating also isn't like waiting for a broken bone to heal. In a way, the Doctor does die. He's not quite the same person afterwards,
Like drinking Absenthe.
P.S.- do not ever drink absenthe. Bad.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Not forgetting that there's a 12 regeneration limit anyway. So even if it doesn't kill a Time Lord, it does bring them one step closer to death. And with the Doctor about to hit the big 10, he should probably be getting a bit concerned.
You know I have wondered about that for years, glad to see I'm not the only one who's had that thought! :-) The Doctor never seems all that bothered about getting close to the final regeneration, when I would have thought it would at the very least be a point of concern.
I also never bought the idea of the Timelords inducing a regeneration between Troughton and Pertwee - surely that would be a waste of a perfectly serviceable regeneration? That's why I tend to buy into the theory of the "hidden season" between the 2nd and 3rd Doctors.
quote:(I do wonder what regular Time Lords regenerations are like. The majority of them probably don't result from falling off of radio masts or getting shot by New York street gangs. Do they all suffer the "I'm going to run around for an episode in a barmy manner" problem, or is that just the Doctor?
Even though they regenerate and probably go through the same mental and physical stresses as the Doctor, I would imagine that they would do so with Gallifreyan medics on hand to help reduce the stress so I think the barmy thing is just down to the Doctor having to recover on his own. Post regenerative treatment would probably be a branch of medicine on Gallifrey - sound plausible?
quote:P.S.- do not ever drink absenthe. Bad.
Seconded. And if someone dares you to drink 5 large shots of the stuff they are not, contrary to appearances, your friend, but the devil in disguise.
FD
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quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: I also never bought the idea of the Timelords inducing a regeneration between Troughton and Pertwee - surely that would be a waste of a perfectly serviceable regeneration?
I looked upon it as a form of capital punishment, except not quite as extreme. Of course, that only works if there's a limit on regenerations, an idea that wasn't introduced until later.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Sure, go ahead and make a good point why don't you! :-)
True, the regeneration limit wasn't introduced until later (at the time I think the Timelords said they were just changing the Doctor's appearance) but in terms of looking at the show's continuity as a whole - and bearing in mind the shudder-inducing implications of that phrase - it does seem a bit rough to knock off another regeneration when you don't really have to.
Capital punishment is one thing - but kicking the guy in the balls as he's walking the green mile is quite another!
FD
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posted
Well, they were putting him on trial for violating pretty much every law they had. You could say that he almost got off easy.
(Nerd facts: It wasn't called "regeneration" until Pertwee's final episode, "Planet of the Spiders". The 12 regeneration limit was first mentioned in "The Deadly Assassian", a mid-Tom Baker story.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
But WHY is there a regeneration limit? Is it imposed, or just natural? If the former, then it can be broken, enabling the Master to come back; if the latter, what's the science behind it, why is it Exactly Twelve Strikes And You're Out? Or - more likely, if a natural thing - would twelve be an average number, meaning some Gallifreyans get less, some more?
posted
That would make more sense, but I think the series states that it's exactly 12. Was the Master in "The Deadly Assassain" suppossed to be the end of his 13th life, or had he attempted to regenerate and it had gone horribly wrong?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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