Bigeneration Nation

Television Doctor Who (2023-)
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41

I answered no opinion/don’t care but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, just closest. I don’t mind it as a one-off thing. As they said it’s a Time Lord legend, something not thought to have actually happened before, a legend that was able to happen because of the Toymaker’s influence. As a one-off, I think it’s an interesting idea, and something to make that particular regeneration unique. Regeneration has never really been consistent or the same over the course of Doctor Who, and bigeneration is just one of many differences in the Doctor’s regenerations, a difference I think a lot of fans have overreacted to.

That said, I don’t want it to become a regular thing, frankly don’t want to see it ever happen again, and certainly don’t want it as a permanent change to regeneration. RTD has said speculation/expressed his belief that now all Doctors have bigenerated, which I think should be ignored, and absolutely should not happen/be revealed to be true. I think the idea that all things must end and change to move on is a very important theme of Doctor Who, and if regeneration just became bigeneration, I think that theme would be lost. The other thing is that I subscribe to the time loop theory, where 14 lives out the rest of his life, and then at the end becomes 15 as he’s sent back into the bigeneration “the long way round.” I don’t want the bigeneration to lead to a whole different second Doctor.

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42

I’d personally suggest that everyone might be best off just considering anything RTD says about Doctor Who that isn’t in an episode non-canon, as he tends to say some pretty out there and controversial stuff sometimes…

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43

Arguably anything any author says that isn’t actually reflected in the text this can apply to.

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44

But it is used as a way to get more screen time for Ncuti not David. Normally the Doctor changes at the end of the episode but this time it was before the third act. If anything it was to give 15 a head start.

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45

As most people have said, I wouldn’t want it becoming the norm (and don’t think that it will), but I think it enabled an arc that really resonated with me for 14. I absolutely loved having the Doctor literally give himself the permission to take a break and heal from trauma with people he loves and stop feeling like he’s responsible for solving every problem, and all the complaints people have about potential lore implications or fandom discourse just don’t matter to me when it enabled a story that I loved

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46

A little context, too, as far as David Tennant returning:

Russell says: "It’s quite a well-known story. It was Emily Cook who arranged during the pandemic some ‘Tweetalongs’ so we’d all say watch Catherine’s first episode, “The Runaway Bride”. Fans would watch it worldwide, you tweet along with it and they became very successful.

"At first Emily had to drag us along kicking and screaming and Catherine hadn’t watched an episode since she left. She loved her time on Doctor Who but it isn’t something she does, watch old Doctor Who episodes. I do, this morning I had the telly on and watched an old episode from 1973.

"Then it was Catherine who said she loved it, that she loved watching it and she said I’ve always loved Donna Noble and wouldn’t it be marvelous to make some more. And I went ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ like that and then she asked David. She said, ‘Would you make some more?’ and he went ‘Oh yeah in a heartbeat!’. So then she told me that and I genuinely felt honor bound to go to the BBC and say look these two stars have just said this and I know it’s the 60th anniversary coming up and I know they would love to come back,’ so I sent off that email, simple as that.

“It was Christmas Eve or the 23rd and I just sent them the best Christmas present they ever had. And all I got was a reply saying, ‘thank you, we’ll think about it’. But what I didn’t know was at the same time top BBC drama boss Piers Wenger and BBC Controller of Content Charlotte Moore and the BBC were planning the future of Doctor Who — the next step of Doctor Who which was to make it bigger and take it to an international streamer such as Disney Plus, and to syndicate it across all countries worldwide. That conversation was happening at the same time. So my email went boom and exploded and sat there. But it all ended up coming together and here we are at the start of this new era of Doctor Who.”

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47

I hate it with a passion. I think it came out of nowhere, I think it had no explanation other than “it’s a myth, nobody thought it was real!” which feels like a copout to me when we’ve never heard of such a myth before and it wasn’t ever set up, I feel like it took away from 14’s character arc (as folks have already said above), and I hate that 14 is still out there. Also as folks have said the more you think on it the more confusing it gets. What happens to 14? Does he die eventually? Does he disappear? Does he turn into 15? A second 15?

To me this felt like RTD came up with a gimmick to get people talking, but didn’t consider literally any of the logistics and it leaves me cold and annoyed.

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48

This is true but on the other hand if, a few episodes early the Doctor had said to Donna:

“There’s this myth that sometimes when you regenerate you split into two and the previous Time Lord goes on living”

Then that would have given it all away and it wouldn’t have been a surprise.

As it was, it was one of the few times (because I’m always online) that I was genuinely surprised, and when he said “pull” I had no idea what was happening.

I’m glad it was a surprise :grin:

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49

Fair enough, but for me it’s a surprise for surprise sake, and I don’t really like that. It just makes it feel more like a gimmick to me

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50

I don’t have any ‘active emotion’ towards the bi-generation concept—neither positive nor negative.

In-universe, I think it makes sense. We’ve seen on different occasions in the past that regeneration energy is capable of healing instead of triggering a full regeneration. It’s even able to create a clone. So, it seems absolutely possible, albeit very rarely, that a regeneration ‘goes wrong,’ allowing the current incarnation to live on while also producing a new one who isn’t ‘just’ a clone.

Still, I voted ‘Bi-generation is a bad idea’ because, in its current form—as far as my understanding goes anyway—I think it’s not a good storytelling choice. It introduces too many complications, especially with RTD’s ‘headcanon’ (as far as I understand, he hasn’t explicitly pinned it down in-universe; but since he’s the current main creator, it carries extra weight) suggesting that every Doctor ever has undergone a bi-generation.

Seeing the concept as overly complicated, I ask myself: Why?

It’s already established that every Doctor can meet every other incarnation of themselves. It’s a time travel show, after all—they don’t all exist at the same time but in the same timeline. The concept of ‘same time’ carries less weight in a time travel narrative.

As for 14’s body remaining after the regeneration, it could have been easily explained in a different way (e.g., the Toymaker creating doubles of themselves for a game, with one of the two Doctors regenerating and leaving the other without regeneration energy but still alive. I’m sure there are many other ideas, just as good—or bad—to reach the outcome of 14 sitting with the Noble family).

And if the intent was to give ‘more time for 15,’ there’s no need for bi-generation to accomplish that.

Shoutout to others who pointed out that it might have been a better idea for 15 to simply go to therapy himself, instead of—well, I don’t know— 14 after the bi-generation do stuff to heal his emotional wounds, but even as 15 split from him before that still helping 15?
Sometimes, even in Doctor Who, a little less convolution makes for better storytelling, imho.

All in all, I don’t see why the story couldn’t be told without introducing a new concept. In my opinion, this new concept adds unnecessary complications from a storytelling perspective.

That said, I absolutely acknowledge it was a creative choice to introduce this concept. And I’m fine with creators making choices I don’t agree with—RTD or any creator should do what they think is best. That doesn’t mean I have to find these choices good. Both can be true at the same time.

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51

Just as a thought experiment - this sentence could just as easily apply to regeneration in The Tenth Planet.

I do think, sometimes, we lose sight of how easily things are introduced and then get absorbed into the canon. This sort of sentence was exactly the same thing we saw when the Timeless Child was revealed.

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52

Very fair point! I still really don’t gel with it for all my other reasons though.

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53

I was going to write a post here, but @shauny said absolutely everything I wanted to say here. I could just do a 100% reaction here, but I needed to underline it. This is what I think. It’s a one off and gave us the chance to see a doctor go into retirement, not to be kept in reserve. Ncuti is the real doctor. Tennant went to sleep off the hangover of watching half the universe burn.

Never again, and, despite RTD’s theorising about it in his commentary, I also think that it never happened before. 100% a one off as far as I’m concerned, and, as that, it was fine.

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54

It was an interesting idea but pointless unless you do something with it.

Part on me feels that RTD did it as a get out clause if things didn’t work out with the new series. But I also think he’s throwing stuff in, so that each fan can accept only the canon they want.

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55

Yeah, I’m still figuring out why he said he needed to change 15’s sonic because it looked too much like a gun, mate, 14’s sonic had a Dalek GUN inspired design, you greenlit that one but suddenly you’ve got a big problem with it looking like a gun?? It never looked like a gun, it’s never been used as a gun, I get you don’t want children to think of it as a weapon but, it’s never been used as one, it’s a tool, chances are it’ll probably be used more as a lightsaber than a gun.

(Sorry for the rant but it gets on my nerves)

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56

Yeah the gun thing was weird.

And when I look at the Fifteenth Doctor’s sonic I think “sole of a shoe”.

Sorry for putting that image in your head, it’ll never go away.

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57

I don’t really care about its shape, I actually like the design it’s just the explanation for it that bothers me, he could have changed it without having to make statement about it.

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58

The toy is really really cool and fun to use, I’ve warmed to it but the gun analogy from RTD was just bs.

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59

I always thought “Sky remote” but now I see the shoe…

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60

I do think people stick on the gun thing too much sometimes because we literally never even got a quote from him on that with any like actual context, it was just mentioned in an article

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