“Right then, Doctor Whoever-I’m-About-To-Be. Tag, you’re it.”
*cracking knuckles sound effect*
Right, it’s time to bring the long song to it’s crescendo with the third (and final!) part of my discussion of the Doctor’s regenerations. Check out Part One and Part Two by the way. When we last left off the Eleventh Doctor’s time had come to a close with the definitive end of their regeneration cycle, only for the Time Lords to dig deep and offer up a literal new lease on life. Much in the same way the Time War reverberated through the regenerations that followed, I also believe this one act is still having an effect on the Doctors to this day and beyond. It all boils down to one simple question, a question of identity. With a new regeneration cycle are they still the same person? Are they the latest in a long line or a starting over from scratch? WHO are they?
That question is very core to the Twelfth Doctor. I mean ‘A Good Man?’ is the title of their theme track from season 8, I’m not sure how much more in your face the theming could be. In a way it is a reaction to the Eleventh Doctor who was so confident in himself, a walking legend able to stop a war with words alone and send his enemies scurrying away into the night. The Twelfth is riddled with indecision to the point where it triggers his own personal mid-life crisis. Honestly that is the only explanation I have for the sonic sunglasses, humans trade-in for flashy cars, Time Lords apparently swap tools for accessories.
Here’s the thing though, underneath all that bluster and poor-decision making is one of the kindest and most caring Doctors you’ll ever find. Yes he can be blunt and insensitive, but I really believe all of that comes from a place of caring. He just wants to help people and gets so infuriated when all the usual petty selfish pig-headedness that us humans are capable of keeps getting in the way, so he tries to cut straight through it. Of course this hardly ever works and that desire to help can lead the Doctor into making some monumentally horrendous decisions. Even then he still loses people he cares about, both of his main companions in fact and is it any wonder he wants this regeneration to be his last? He never asked for a new regenerative cycle and as an earlier incarnation said, sometimes you can live too long. It’s the curse of the immortal, but the Doctor does regenerate and that brings us to Thirteen.
Now I’ll admit it took me a long while to get a handle on Thirteen’s character. At first she comes across as the opposite to Twelve in a lot of obvious ways, she’s bubbly and cheerful for one. Desperate to surround herself with people and, well, follow her previous incarnation’s last request and be kind. She gets her own identity crisis when she discovers her history isn’t what she thought it was, but I’ll leave that discussion for another day. No, what I want to talk about is the fact that while the Twelfth Doctor is the one who cares too much, the Thirteenth is the one who cares the least, because she won’t allow herself to.
There is a wall around the Thirteenth Doctor that never once falls. Despite how eager she is to call her companions her ‘fam’ there is a definite gap between them that never closes. She never lets them in. Never tells them what’s going on without said companions having to pull the answers out of her like teeth. This Doctor even chooses to regenerate in isolation and again both of her last incarnation’s main companions died in one form or another so I completely get the reaction, but it’s kinda tragic. This Doctor so desperately wants to cling on to the idea of what she wants her life to be, without ever truly being able open herself up to it.
And that brings us to the end of the Doctor’s regenerations so far and, I hope, it’s highlighted one thing if nothing else. I always used to think that the shifts in the Doctor’s personality were random, but that’s not the case. Each life impacts the next and shapes who the Doctor will be going forwards and I hope I’ve managed to showcase that. It’s a great metaphor for how we all grow and change over the course of our lives. We’re not static. We are ever reacting to the world around us and adjusting accordingly, that’s my theory at any rate.
Speaking of theories, knowing that a Doctor’s past life impacts their next is great for speculation on what’s to come, such as the Fourteenth Doctor who we’ll be meeting shortly. Given Thirteen’s life, what will they be like? Having spent an incarnation closed-off and unable to truly connect with those around them, perhaps this new face will learn to let people in again? Perhaps by visiting some old friends with a face from a time when they were more human than most? And the Fifteenth? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. But what about your thoughts? What personality will our next couple of Doctors have? Theories in the comments please!
I’m Chris Joynson, aka Neverarguewithafish, I’m a writer and blogger and if you want to chat with me you can find me on twitter @ChrisGJoynson. See you out there in the vortex.
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