Catch up with the lives and many deaths of our favourite Time Lord. Just how many Doctor Who regenerations have there been?
1) The Tenth Planet (1966)
This is the first of the Doctor Who regenerations – the one that started it all. Following his first ever skirmish with the Cybermen from Mondas, the Doctor’s body started to “wear a bit thin” and he collapsed on the floor of the TARDIS, his face changing into that of a much younger man. The process was kept ambiguous at this stage, simply being referred to as “part of the TARDIS” and a “renewal.”
Interestingly, unlike most of the other Doctor Who regenerations, the Time Lord’s clothes inexplicably changed along with his body, something that wouldn’t happen again until the Thirteenth Doctor’s regeneration in 2022.
2) The War Games (1969)
The next of our Doctor Who regenerations wasn’t actually shown on screen. The Doctor was sentenced to death by his own people the Time Lords, and forced to undergo a transformation. But all viewers saw was the Time Lord tumbling into a black void before returning with a new face at the start of the next story ‘Spearhead from Space.’ This was because, when the sequence was filmed, the producers had yet to cast the Third Doctor Jon Pertwee.
3) Planet of the Spiders (1974)
This was the first time that regeneration was given its name. In ‘Planet of the Spiders,’ the Doctor faced up to his fear and defeated the deadly spiders of Metebellis 3 – at the cost of his own life. He was subjected to an overwhelming dose of radiation and collapsed on the floor of the UNIT laboratory, with his transformation witnessed by his friends Sarah Jane and the Brigadier.
But on this occasion, the process was given “a little push” by a fellow Time Lord known as Cho-Je. Had he not done so, the Doctor might have stayed dead indefinitely…
4) Logopolis (1981)
The next of our Doctor Who regenerations saw the Doctor finally being defeated by his old enemy the Master. The Doctor thwarted his plans for taking over the universe by severing the main cable atop a radio telescope, but as he was doing so the Master set the structure in motion, causing the Time Lord to plunge to his death.
But in the build-up to the change, the Doctor was stalked by a future version of himself known as the Watcher who acted as a harbinger of the upcoming regeneration. He also saw visions of his past friends and enemies before he morphed into his fifth incarnation.
5) The Caves of Androzani (1984)
‘The Caves of Androzani’ was the longest and slowest of the Doctor Who regenerations to date. The Time Lord was poisoned by a batch of unrefined spectrox and slowly withered over the course of the story, ultimately foregoing the cure (the milk of the queen bat) in order to save his companion Peri. This time, though, he wasn’t sure that he would actually regenerate, and before he changed he saw a terrifying vision of the Master telling him that he was about to die…
6) Time and the Rani (1987)
This was perhaps the most hurried of all the Doctor Who regenerations owing to the unprecedented sacking of the Sixth Doctor Colin Baker, who declined to film the regeneration scene. As such, we cannot even be certain what killed the Sixth Doctor.
At the beginning of ‘Time and the Rani,’ the TARDIS is shot down by his old enemy the Rani, who finds him on the floor of the console room. She orders her minion to bring the Time Lord to her laboratory, but before he does so, he undergoes his sixth regeneration and emerges with the face of Sylvester McCoy, who was forced to dress up as his predecessor in order to make the scene possible.
7) The TV movie (1996)
The TV movie was supposed to herald the beginning of a new era, and that meant saying a hasty goodbye to Sylvester McCoy. At the start of the TV movie, the Time Lord is gunned down by a San Francisco street gang, and even though he survives for some time after, he eventually regenerates in a hospital mortuary. This is one of the more troubled Doctor Who regenerations, though, with the process almost being destroyed by the surgeons’ anaesthetic.
8) The Night of the Doctor (2013)
The next of our Doctor Who regenerations wasn’t depicted until the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013. The Eighth Doctor Paul McGann was given a special minisode to explain his transformation into the War Doctor, and in the adventure he dies in a spaceship crash. He is briefly resurrected by the Sisterhood of Karn, who give him the opportunity to choose his next body. The Doctor concedes that, if the Time War is to be brought to an end, then the universe is in need of a warrior…
9) The Day of the Doctor (2013)
2013 was an exceptional year in that it saw no fewer than three Doctor Who regenerations, and this was the second. The War Doctor (seemingly succumbing to old age) admitted that his body was “wearing a bit thin” and started to regenerate at the story’s conclusion. He was changing into his ninth body, although the face of his successor Christopher Eccleston wasn’t shown.
10) The Parting of the Ways (2005)
For the tenth of the Doctor Who regenerations, we jump back to 2005 and the conclusion of an epic battle with the Daleks. The Time Lord’s companion Rose absorbed all of the energy of the time vortex in order to save her friend, but the effect was killing her. And so the Doctor took on all of the energy himself, and underwent a rapid transformation in the TARDIS console room.
Interestingly, this was the first time in the series’ history that the Doctor was seen to regenerate standing up. This quickly became the norm and became the preferred method for Time Lord transformation!
11) The Stolen Earth (2008)
This was perhaps the most secret of the Doctor Who regenerations in that nobody saw it coming. The Doctor was shot by a rogue Dalek and quickly began to change, although on this occasion he simply used the regeneration energy to heal himself and kept the same body. Rumour has it, he didn’t want to go…
12) The End of Time – Part Two (2010)
The Doctor didn’t want to go in ‘The End of Time’ either, but he was left with little choice after suffering a lethal dose of radiation courtesy of the Immortality Gate. On this occasion, though, it actually took the Time Lord a long time to die – so long, in fact, that he had time to revisit all of his past companions before returning to the safety of the TARDIS.
However, this would turn out to be the most violent of all the Doctor Who regenerations so far, and it destroyed the TARDIS console room.
13) The Time of the Doctor (2013)
The rules of regeneration are known! A Time Lord only has 13 lives, and in ‘The Time of the Doctor,’ the eponymous hero has reached the end of his rope. In this 2013 Christmas special, the Time Lord is slowly dying of old age and facing impossible odds – only to be saved by his own people at the last minute, who grant him a brand new regeneration cycle.
14) Twice Upon a Time (2017)
The next of our Doctor Who regenerations actually took two episodes to complete, with the Twelfth Doctor experiencing a ‘death of a thousand cuts’ at the hands of multiple legions of Cybermen. But the Time Lord delays the process for as long as possible, unsure if he even wants to continue.
Eventually, of course, he agrees to just “one more lifetime,” but it turns out to be his most radical transformation to date as he regenerates into a woman. This seems to be too much for the TARDIS to handle and the console room self-destructs, with the TARDIS turning on its side and throwing the Doctor out of the doors!
15) The Power of the Doctor (2022)
This marked the second occasion in which the Doctor was taken out by her old enemy the Master, who blasted her with the power of the Qurunx in a moment of fury. This time, though, the Doctor returned with the face of her tenth incarnation and, even stranger, her clothes changed along with her body.
16) The Giggle (2023)
The latest of the Doctor Who regenerations! This was one of the strangest in Doctor Who history as it was, in fact, a bi-generation which resulted in the Doctor splitting. David Tennant remained as the Fourteenth Doctor, and Ncuit Gatwa broke away from him to become the Fifteenth. The two Doctors even ended up with their own TARDISes. This bi-generation also rippled down the timeline, according to Russell T Davies, meaning that every previous Doctor also bi-generated.
So there we are. These are all of the Doctor Who regenerations to date. Which one is your favourite? And how do you think the Sixth Doctor died? Let us know in the comments below.
Leave a Reply