Doctor regenerations how many

The doctor had 12 regenerations. When he was "born" he didn't regenerate into the 1st doctor, which means 1st reincarnation- 2nd reincarnations is one regeneration and so on. So when the 11th doctor Matt turned into the 12th doctor Capaldi , he still has one more regeneration before he has used all 12 regenerations.

If what you say that he got a new regeneration to regenerate into Capaldi, the doctor would have only regenerated 10 times before he regenerated into Capaldi, which can't be right.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How many regenerations does the Doctor have after The Time of the Doctor?

Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 10 months ago. Active 2 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 47k times. Improve this question. Kevin Stark07 Stark07 16k 9 9 gold badges 65 65 silver badges bronze badges. Credibility of the source AshishKulkarni Well, the source's credibility is called into question just by the fact they think a cycle would have thirteen regenerations; it's twelve regenerations plus the original body which gives thirteen bodies before a Time Lord runs out. Sounds like pure speculative assumption to me.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. But technically nothing explicit was promised. Improve this answer. Ya, that does sound like the thing "Moff" would do It is kinda confusing though.

I guess it might get clearer in the upcoming series 8. At this point I think Moffat has pretty much tossed out the limit completely. He can abide by or it or now, depending on how he wants to work plotwise. Would I be able to watch that? Show 2 more comments. The Spooniest The Spooniest 3, 18 18 silver badges 15 15 bronze badges. The series 9 finale, "Hell Bent", strongly implies that he has more than one: Rassilon: [preparing to kill the Doctor with his Power Glove] How many regenerations did we grant you?

Jason Baker Jason Baker k 41 41 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Good find, I was reading through to check if someone'd mentioned this. I take this as given that the Doctor must therefore have whatever number the writers decide to give him DoctorWho22 DoctorWho22 When he says "reset", he means that the body was reset to it's original form before the new regeneration kicks in.

The same thing happened when Tennant started to regenerate. All his scars vanished End of Time Part 2. And either case Capaldi would be the first in the new set of regenerations. Not the second. Matt resetting to his original factory reset wasn't a regeneration. But getting a new regeneration cycle would mean that Capaldi is technically the first regeneration in the new cycle wouldn't it?

So that would mean that Matt is still the first doctor in the new regeneration cycle. Matt was the first Doctor in the new regeneration cycle. Yes, you are right. Capaldi was the first regeneration and the Second Doctor in the new regeneration cycle. Who sure is confusing :P — Stark Lightness Races in Orbit 12k 3 3 gold badges 43 43 silver badges 76 76 bronze badges. Aidan Pigdon Aidan Pigdon 29 2 2 bronze badges.

This doesn't prove anything. The question is, what does "whole new regeneration cycle" mean here? It means a full set of regenerations, not just one — L. J Rob. Yes, that is an interesting addition! But it's highly probable that The Doctor said that to intimidate the astronauts, or so I feel. Obsession King Obsession King 17 3 3 bronze badges. This sounds like speculation to me. Do you have any proof e. I feel this makes some sense. If we consider that the Doctor received an entire regeneration cycle, he was the first of that set.

Doctor Who 's regeneration rules can be tricky, and as many fans are aware, as is writing interesting twists in the franchise without messing with continuity. Current showrunner Chris Chibnall has spoken about the Doctor Who regeneration twist and told Radio Times this had been his plan since he agreed to take over the show. Chibnall is aware of what a significant retcon the Timeless Child twist is, but also teased there will be more to the story that will play out beyond what fans saw at the end of Season The point being The BBC knows what Chibnall's plan is in the long run, and presumably wouldn't let him directly contradict one of the most steadfast rules of The Doctor without knowing it has a satisfying conclusion.

To put it simply, the latest we know is that The Doctor is not a Time Lord, and seemingly has far more regenerations than the originally stated With that said, we don't know the full story, and with The Master largely orchestrating The Doctor's discovery, there's plenty of reason to be skeptical.

Chris Chibnall still has a plan for how this shakes out and has confirmed there's more to it than what fans have seen. Rest assured, if you're confused on what's going on with Doctor Who 's regeneration story, you aren't the only one. The good news is answers are coming, at least, according to Chris Chibnall.

For more on the series, read on about the rumors about Jodie Whittaker's upcoming exit , and share in the comments who you'd like to see potentially replace her. Mick likes good television, but also reality television.

Mick Joest. Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands. Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors.

PROSE : The Indestructible Man When the Seventh Doctor deliberately affected himself with light wave sickness to save the Spiridons from the Daleks, he briefly believed that he was going to regenerate until he retreated to the TARDIS, his body spending some time fighting between its cellular paralysis and natural desire to regenerate until it stabilised in his current self.

When his second heart was extracted by Sabbath and placed in Sabbath himself, the stolen heart created a link between the Eighth Doctor and Sabbath that rendered the Doctor essentially immortal; as his second heart was still beating in Sabbath's chest, the Doctor could survive normally fatal injuries, such as having his chest crushed by sandbags or being stabbed in his remaining heart, without changing, although he would go into a near-death state until his body could heal.

However, it was unspecified if there were any limits to this connection - the Doctor only needed to use it when he and Sabbath were on the same planet at the same time in the same city - and the connection was lost when Sabbath tore the Doctor's heart out of himself. The ancient Gallifreyan scientist Artron was able to devise a system of perpetual regeneration where the subject would not need to change their appearance during the process, but even after this knowledge was regained during the Time War with the recovery of Artron's Matrix print, the Time Lords were never shown putting it into full practise, save for granting the Master a new set of regenerations in return for his assistance while insisting that he limit himself to the standard thirteen lives under the usual rules.

One of Romana's intermediate forms during her first regeneration. TV : Destiny of the Daleks. Foreman , an early Gallifreyan but not a Time Lord , absorbed the DNA around him and underwent indescribable changes as a result of mutations, transcending sex, species and even physical existence itself.

AUDIO : Spring Although the Doctor 's actual tenth self was, like the Time Lord's previous and later bodies, indistinguishable from a human , the previous incarnation of the Doctor had mused that his next body "might have two heads… or no head" before regenerating. Occasionally, a regeneration would fail and the process would abort.

Though the Time Lord would have regenerated, they would be severely deformed. Though Time Lord technology could treat this, on some occasions the damage would be too severe to fix. Regenerative collapse was a potentially fatal complication of regeneration.

Mortally wounded by Zor , the Sixth Doctor 's body attempted to regenerate when he found himself on the brink of a regenerative collapse. Fortunately, he was found and healed by Captain Jack Harkness , saving his life as well as stopping him from regenerating.

After being shot by the War Lords , the War Chief was barely able to survive. While being returned to the War Lords' planet , his body attempted to regenerate. Due to the massive injuries and the lack of medical care, this regeneration aborted. This resulted in two conjoined individual bodies, poorly fused together, and also apparently compromised his ability to regenerate ever again, preventing him from simply regenerating once more to solve the problem.

During the Last Great Time War , Rassilon experimented on other Time Lords, retro-evolving their timelines and connecting them to the time vortex, in order to build a possibility engine - a machine to question about decisions to make during the conflict. A side effect of the process on the so-called Interstitials was the trapping in a loop of an iterative regenerative cycle, which caused their appearance to enter a state of constant flux among their different incarnations. Even if a Time Lord's body was damaged to the point that regeneration became impossible, their cells would continue attempting to do so, making the actual process of death very slow; it took each copy of the Twelfth Doctor imprisoned in his Confession Dial "about a day and a half" to die after being attacked by the Veil.

TV : Heaven Sent There were, however, ways to circumvent this. A "full blast" of the Master 's laser screwdriver killed Missy within a minute, with no visible wound and not even the beginnings of a regeneration. More simply, dealing a second killing blow to a Time Lord while they were already regenerating could prove fatal, as after beginning to regenerate from a first shot the Teselecta duplicate of the Eleventh Doctor at Lake Silencio appeared to die instantly when shot mid-regeneration.

As noted above, regeneration was not guaranteed. The Doctor on numerous occasions believed they were at risk of actually dying. Even with regeneration a possibility, the Doctor came to feel such a change as being a "death". In recollecting the events surrounding the Master 's attempt to steal the Eye of Harmony , the Eighth Doctor referred to his incarnations as "lives".

The Twelfth Doctor also referred to regeneration though not his own as the same as death, but also stated that to Time Lords, death was simply "man flu". TV : Hell Bent When faced with regeneration himself, however, this Doctor truly valued his life, resisting the process as he didn't want to change. After seeing what his future would bring though, he felt more comfortable, embracing the change as he lost consciousness.

In fact, the Doctor sometimes seemed to regard their previous incarnations as different individuals, capable of interacting and working with each other. TV : The Three Doctors , The Five Doctors , The Two Doctors , Time Crash , The Day of the Doctor , Twice Upon a Time However, they still regarded their other selves as them, to the extent that their seventh incarnation became ashamed of the actions of his sixth self , going through a period of keeping his memory of his previous self locked up in his mind PROSE : Head Games until he accepted that he was the Doctor in all of his incarnations, and forgave his past self's sins after he nearly died after being shot by an arrow.

TV : Hell Bent The Missy and Harold Saxon incarnations of the Master grew to outright despise each other, despite having grown attracted to each other when working together, due to their juxtaposed view of the Doctor, to the point that they actually killed each other. At the same time, meeting other Doctors could allow other incarnations the chance to re-evaluate their opinion of themselves, such as the Eighth Doctor coming to admire the Sixth Doctor where his seventh had feared his potential, PROSE : The Eight Doctors and the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors recognising that the War Doctor was a true Doctor despite denying him for years.

TV : The Day of the Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor was also rather fond of the First Doctor, in a way very much tied to their shared identity; presented with this embodiment of his younger days, the Twelfth Doctor was amused at the First's old ways such as how he still called the TARDIS "the Ship" , and how he looked wearing the sonic sunglasses. He was, nonetheless, incredibly embarrassed by his original incarnation's occasional sexist remarks.

The First Doctor's reaction to his future was much less warm; he was dismayed at learning the Twelfth Doctor played the electric guitar , and disappointed in the Twelfth Doctor's lacklustre treatment of their TARDIS deeming the new decoration "hideous" and expressing dismay at the dirtiness of the console room, which he attributed to the absence of Polly Wright , who, in his days, cleaned the TARDIS for him.

He also criticised the Twelfth Doctor's over-reliance on technology over his own intellect, and his need to always boast about his plans.

As a whole, the First Doctor was, at first, horrified to learn he would eventually become a "Doctor of War". However, he grew to admire his future self, believing their actions were for the greater good rather than malicious purposes as he initially believed. Most other Time Lords never expressed any strong opinions about their other incarnations as they had never met their other selves. However the General 's twelfth incarnation noted an immediate dissatisfaction with her predecessor shortly after her regeneration.

TV : Hell Bent More notably, when the Time Lord Straxus learned that he would become the insane Kotris in his next incarnation, he was horrified at his next self, proclaiming that Kotris was a psychopath, although Kotris claimed that his insanity was the result of Straxus' insanity and self-loathing.

However, despite his disgust at Kotris's actions, Straxus only made a few half-hearted efforts to kill himself to avoid becoming Kotris which were prevented by a drone Kotris had sent, until the final confrontation between the two incarnations culminated in Straxus being exterminated as even the Daleks were disgusted with his selfishness.

AUDIO : X and the Daleks When the Master made contact with the Cult of the Heretic and was offered an alliance with them if he killed one of his past selves - with the promise that the Cult would use the Anomaly Cage to prevent him being wiped out by the paradox - the Master laughed as he dismissed his past incarnations as foolish.

Although he later claimed that he had targeted his past self at a point when he knew that the younger Master would survive, the two Masters found it difficult to cooperate, as the younger Master was more serious and dedicated to ensuring victory where the future Master's new lease on life had left him more inclined to make various bad jokes as he taunted his enemies. The older Master noted that the Cult's plans to remake the universe had been inspired by the beliefs of the renegade Time Lord known as the Heretic, whose belief that the universe was sick, led him to perceive regeneration as the only cure for this 'illness'.

In general, the Doctor avoided discussing regeneration with their companions unless someone else brought it up first, TV : Planet of the Spiders but explained the process in the aftermath.

They were particularly open about the process in their eighth incarnation , telling companion Charley Pollard about regeneration and their past faces, noting at one point that he considered regeneration superior to the straightforward immortality of the ruthless Sebastian Grayle , as regeneration allowed him to change and develop as time went on where Grayle was stuck with one point of view and no real way to change.

AUDIO : Seasons of Fear Despite this, the Doctor's attitude towards regeneration seemed to change during their later incarnations, considering it more like true death. In their ninth incarnation , the Doctor bade farewell to his companion even though he was not actually dying. TV : The Parting of the Ways The Doctor's tenth incarnation was concerned about a prediction made regarding his own impending regeneration, saying, "Even if I change, it feels like dying.

Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away TV : The Day of the Doctor Following his regeneration into his seventh incarnation , the Doctor's memories of his sixth self's persona came to resent the current Doctor, accusing the current Doctor of "murdering" him PROSE : Head Games before the Doctor came to accept that he was the Doctor in all his lives and forgive the sins of his previous self.

TV : The Day of the Doctor After receiving his new regeneration cycle, the Eleventh Doctor appeared relatively comfortable about his imminent regeneration, reflecting that everyone changed throughout their lives and the important thing was to remember who you had been, TV : The Time of the Doctor although his fear about the scale of the change he was about to experience prompted him to call his current companion in their personal future to ask her to stay with his next incarnation and help him through the transition to his new body.

TV : Deep Breath The Twelfth Doctor later recalled that the end of the First Doctor 's life at Snowcap was "the place where [he] died", comparing it to Clara Oswald 's limited memories of her 'splinters' by describing it as something so huge and terrible that the mind had to block it out in the aftermath.

Harriet called the Tenth Doctor "absolutely the same man ", still believing in this despite the Doctor threatening to destroy her government after she ordered Torchwood to blow up the Sycorax spaceship.

TV : The Christmas Invasion , The Stolen Earth While the Brigadier noted that one Doctor was more than enough to deal with at any time, TV : The Three Doctors he nevertheless confidently proclaimed that all of the Doctors were "remarkable chaps", willing to work with whatever Doctor answered his calls for help even if he acknowledged that he knew certain Doctors better than others.

After deciding to help the Doctor against the Mondasian Cybermen , the Missy incarnation of the Master was shown to see her past self as still being her, stating that she'd loved being him and the feeling of all that he was.

However, due to her genuine desire to change, Missy mortally wounded her past self to force his regeneration into herself, appearing to see it as necessary to ensure the Master became Missy. Although most associated with Time Lords , regeneration also existed in other species, or sometimes in specific individuals, directly copied from the Time Lords. This form of regeneration was explicitly shown to allow a change in gender.

TV : The Hand of Fear. Like their masters the Time Lords, the living timeships the TARDISes were capable of regenerating themselves if they were heavily damaged, leaving a very characteristic Artron energy trace when they did so.

The Timeless Child was a member of a "Timeless" species with the power to regenerate an infinite number of times. This child's ability to regenerate was used by the Shobogan scientist Tecteun from Gallifrey to create the Time Lords.

Kate Yates regenerated her hair when her Dalek Factor was activated after being hit by a car. Swarm regenerates. TV : The Halloween Apocalypse. Swarm , an enemy of the Division and of the ancient versions of the Doctor who fought on the Division's behalf, showed the ability to renew himself after consuming the life force of Division agent En Sentac , reducing her to ash in the process.

As he regenerated, Swarm glowed blue and red and the crystal growths on his face extended, before receding again as he settled into his new incarnation. Early in their history, the Time Lords discovered the planet Minyos , and gave the natives some of their technology. TV : Underworld This included bestowing the power of regeneration on the Minyan royal family, who knew it as "cellular renewal", and kept it secret from their subjects until Oxirgi 's revolution against the rule of the "Gods", during which the princess Malika faced public execution by firing squad and renewed herself in a flash of golden light immediately after she'd been shot.

Over time, they wearied of life. TV : Underworld. Time Lords fighting the War in Heaven gave the ability of regeneration to their lesser species regen-inf soldiers. After the Celestial Toymaker , a Guardian of Time , merged with the Doctor 's friend and fellow Time Lord Rallon , he gained a form of regeneration, albeit not in the direct way one might have expected; after centuries of keeping the Toymaker in check, Rallon 'died' when he triggered all twelve of his regenerations at once, but the Toymaker was subsequently kept in check by Rallon's Watcher, with the Doctor explaining the situation to his companions by using the analogy of the Toymaker having regenerated himself.

Mawdryn and his followers, who had stolen the Time Lords' regeneration technology, also had a great number of incarnations, though they had no control over when it would happen and what form, often grotesque, they would change into.

Consequently, they longed for death, making their mutations a kind of de facto punishment by the Time Lords for stealing their technology. TV : Regeneration He later regenerated again after exhausting his power core to defeat Trojan. TV : The Eclipse of the Korven. During the Last Great Time War , the Daleks discovered the ability to use artron energy leeched from other time travellers to enact a similar renewal to the Time Lords'.

This would allow the Dalek to repair its casing as well as heal its inner organic body. However, this process was still primitive by the time the destruction of Gallifrey by the Doctor ; PROSE : Dalek it also caused the Dalek to absorb DNA from the time traveller it had used to power its regeneration, beginning to mutate and thus deviated from the Dalek baseline. TV : Dalek. Due to being experimented on by the Dalek Overseer , an Ogron was sent to Gallifrey with the memories and certain biological traits of the Doctor , retaining DNA traces of the Doctor that created the impression that he was actually a regenerated Doctor rather than a completely different person.

The Ogron, named "Doctor Ogron" by Bliss , was exterminated by the Daleks, but, due to possessing aspects of the Doctor's biology, regenerated.

He was restored to life but did not change his appearance like a Time Lord would. Davros , with the help of Colony Sarff , once tricked the Twelfth Doctor into sacrificing some regeneration energy to him and then funnelled much more energy than the Doctor had meant to give into the systems of the Dalek City , pumping all the dying Daleks there full of the regeneration energy.

Lit aglow with the familiar orange halo, the Daleks emerged "renewed" and "more powerful", though this victory was short-lived, as, all according to the Doctor's plan, the mass of the regenerated Daleks in the sewers led to the destruction of the City.

The CyberMasters , a group of Cybermen created by the Spy Master from the corpses of Time Lords, possessed the ability to regenerate due to their origins. The Aja'ib contained tales involving regeneration.

Regeneration was introduced to the mythos of Doctor Who to solve a practical staffing problem: the production team needed to find a way to exit William Hartnell but still keep the show running. The original idea for this replacement came from producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh. They proposed to write out Hartnell during The Celestial Toymaker , a serial they commissioned and prepped, but ultimately didn't produce.

Their notion was that the Celestial Toymaker would make the Hartnell Doctor disappear, but when the Doctor re-appeared he would magically be another actor entirely. REF : The First Doctor Handbook , The Second Doctor Handbook Though not at all a regenerative process as the term has since come to be understood, Wiles and Tosh do at least get some credit for being the first people to moot the possibility of carrying on the show with a new lead — and for the necessity of finding a narrative explanation for this switch.

Though this is taken for granted today, this was an important milestone on the way to regeneration. Doctor Who could have just as easily gone down the route of another s show, Bewitched , where a main character was simply recast without narrative explanation. His successor, Innes Lloyd , was better able to negotiate Hartnell's departure, in part because the climate within the BBC hierarchy had changed with Shaun Sutton 's management elevation.

REF : The First Doctor Handbook Still, it is uncertain who, precisely, came up with the idea of regeneration-as-biologic-process, rather than the mystical solution Wiles had earlier mooted.

Howe , Stammers and Walker believed "the likelihood is that it emerged in discussion between Lloyd and his story editor Gerry Davis " — along with additional input from Shaun Sutton , and Kit Pedler. The metaphysical change which takes place every or so years is a horrifying experience — an experience in which he re-lives some of the most unendurable moments of his long life, including the galactic war [which was believed, at this time, to have been the cause of the Doctor and Susan's departure from their home planet].

It is as if he has had the LSD drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect. Initially, the concept wasn't called "regeneration" at all, but rather "renewal". In fact, the term, so familiar to Doctor Who fans today, didn't appear until the Doctor's third regeneration, first seen by fans in 's Planet of the Spiders.

Since The War Games , Troughton's final story, merely had the Time Lords suggesting that they would "change [his] appearance", the only explanation of regeneration — for the show's first twelve years — was found in a cryptic exchange in part one of The Power of the Daleks :. The phoenix rising from the flames: the first illustration ever used to explain the process that would later be called regeneration.

Doctor Who Annual Although the Second Doctor's last claim of a connection between the TARDIS and regeneration has never been explored in detail, it is heavily suggested by later regeneration stories.

There, the effect used for regenerative energy was the same as the energy that emanated from and was returned to, the heart of the TARDIS. Beginning with the regeneration that resulted in the Fourth Doctor , each successive regeneration reveals a bit more about the mystery of the act. Planet of the Spiders shows viewers that one Time Lord can help another by giving the process "a little push". This act of "gifting" regenerative energy is later expanded upon in Mawdryn Undead and Let's Kill Hitler.

Both these stories take Cho Je 's "push" one step further by suggesting that regenerations can be outright gifted from one being to another.

The Watcher , a mid-regeneration Doctor. TV : Logopolis. The "Cho Je push" is also tweaked a bit for the Doctor's fourth regeneration. In Logopolis the audience is introduced to a kind of "mid-regeneration Doctor", a being called " the Watcher " who exists between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors. He then merges with the dying Fourth Doctor to start the regenerative process, and thus become the Fifth.

The notion that there is an existence for the Doctor within the act of regeneration is again mooted by the audio story Winter , which takes place almost entirely in that interim between incarnations. In Winter , the Doctor again merges with the Watcher to complete the transition into his next incarnation, though on this occasion the merging takes place inside the Doctor's mind between psychic recreations of both the Doctor and the echo of his future represented by the Watcher.

The story's chief antagonist is implied to be the Doctor between his twelfth and thirteenth lives. A variation of this was seen in The Brink of Death , which depicts the Sixth Doctor in his mind at the moment of regeneration, including a brief moment where the Seventh Doctor 'speaks' to the Sixth before their voices merge as they state " It's far from being all over Another novelty of the fourth regeneration is the introduction of the idea that a regeneration can "fail", resulting in the Doctor's death.

TV : Castrovalva But if the fourth regeneration focuses on a physical crisis, the next three surely stress the mental hardships of the act. The fifth regeneration leads to a kind of mania never before experienced by the Doctor.

It even shakes loose some criminal tendencies. TV : Time and the Rani , Doctor Who This condition is particularly profound in the newly arrived Eighth Doctor , who completely forgets all of his past history for a number of hours. Additionally, complications like amnesia can be brought on by anaesthesia , which holds chemical agents that interfere with regeneration.

TV : Doctor Who This regeneration also brings forth the notion that the Doctor actually dies prior to the metamorphosis of regeneration. The idea that the Doctor dies, even if briefly, is something that the Tenth Doctor later explains to Wilfred Mott in the first part of The End of Time. The tenth regeneration, whose after-effects are documented in The Christmas Invasion , introduces the notion that the regenerative cycle lasts for fifteen hours.

Within that window, the Doctor can lose body parts and yet re-grow them as he does with a hand he loses in battle with a Sycorax. Both Invasion and the preceding mini-episode also add another wrinkle to the mythos of regeneration. They show that the Doctor needs to expel regenerative energy in the aftermath of a change — something seen again in The Eleventh Hour.

The Doctor's twelfth regeneration is shown to be tangibly explosive, something that hadn't been explored by any previous BBC Wales — or, for that matter, any — regeneration. That is, regenerative energy is depicted as being able to physically damage things. Aspects of both the ninth and tenth regenerations are invested in River Song 's second regeneration, as seen in Let's Kill Hitler. River Song practically begs to be shot by Nazi soldiers immediately after regeneration so that she can re-trigger her explosive regenerative energy and hurt them.

The Hitler regeneration also definitively proves that skin colour can change through regeneration — though this had actually been practically settled long before by the "blue option" seen in Romana 's Destiny of the Daleks regeneration. The story Twice Upon a Time featured what the Twelfth Doctor called "a state of grace", during which the regenerating Time Lord is restored to full health for a period of time, but grows steadily weaker and must decide whether or not to regenerate once it's over.

This "state of grace" allowed an explanation for the Tenth Doctor 's ability to delay regeneration to visit all of his former companions TV : The End of Time , Death of the Doctor and allowed for a story where the First Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor shared an adventure together that would help them determine whether or not they would regenerate or die. Because of a relative lack of narrative explanation about regeneration, some writers of non-fictional or reference books about Doctor Who have tried to fill in the gap.

One theory from such a source is that regeneration is caused by a "nanomolecular virus " that rebuilt the body much like the "self-replicating biogenic molecules". Each new regeneration was also radically different from the previous one, even in terms of the visual effects used to represent the moment of regeneration.

The Doctor's first regeneration. The very first regeneration was devised and executed by vision mixer Shirley Coward , who had rather unexpectedly come up with a method of achieving the effect electronically. The original plan of the production team was simply that William Hartnell would fall to the floor at the end of The Tenth Planet and pull his cape over his face. Troughton would then appear at the beginning of The Power of the Daleks , retracting the cloak.

Coward's then-innovative vision mix necessitated that Troughton be hastily contracted for The Tenth Planet , part four. The series' first regeneration sequence was then duly recorded on 8 October , with the cliffhanger resolution filmed two weeks later on 22 October. The final episode of The Tenth Planet is missing from the BBC archives, however footage of the regeneration survives through a clip that was used on Blue Peter.

As part of a missing episode, the Doctor's first regeneration has also been reconstructed four separate times:. Each subsequent regeneration was then filmed in a variety of different ways, as dictated by the director on that particular episode. Indeed, no two regenerations were particularly similar until the Russell T Davies era. With The Parting of the Ways came what is now the standard "golden glow explosion" although the colour of the explosion is fiery orange in The Parting of the Ways and is milky white in Utopia.

The subsequent Children in Need Special established that there was residual " regeneration energy " after a transformation which had to be expelled through the mouth. Davies later gave the Restoration as a narrative explanation why the Doctor's regenerations are now golden in Doctor Who and the Time War.

This visual standardisation has allowed narratives to play around with regeneration. The mere presence of "regeneration energy" can now be used to heighten dramatic tension.

This visual shortcut, unavailable to production teams in the classic era, has been a particular favourite of Steven Moffat , who used the "golden glow" liberally throughout the series ; in fact, unlike in the Russell T Davies era, in which nearly every regeneration had subtle differences, every Moffat era regeneration until TV : The Time of the Doctor is nearly identical.

Several of the episodes used that VFX in a way that wordlessly suggested regeneration. The standardised visual effects style carried into Staz Johnson 's art for the comic story Doorway to Hell , which featured the Master pre- Parting of the Ways and Utopia starting to regenerate. Colourist James Offredi also coloured the glow in golden shades similar to what was shown in the Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat eras. Fans have long speculated as to whether the Doctor could change sex or skin colour as a result of a regeneration.

They've also long speculated on the number of times that a Time Lord can regenerate since both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures have given different impressions on separate occasions.

It had long been " fanon " that regeneration can cause a change of gender in Time Lords. This theory was proven correct with the regenerations of several characters in the DWU, including the Doctor , whose thirteenth incarnation was a woman. Eldrad already displayed this change in The Hand of Fear and even stated that his species' regeneration process was the same as the one used by the Time Lords. Female versions of the Doctor previously appeared in Comic Relief story The Curse of Fatal Death and in the Doctor Who Unbound story Exile , though the latter included rules and mindsets which do not exist in the prime Doctor Who universe.

Foreman was portrayed as having changed gender as a result of regeneration, though the character is noted as having received the gift of regeneration when the process was still experimental and unstable.

He thought this would "keep life interesting. In The Doctor's Wife , the Doctor mentions the Corsair , who has regenerated into both male and female incarnations. Similarly, Harvest of Time revealed that one of the Master 's potential future incarnations was female; a female Master going by the name Missy later appeared in Deep Breath.

The Night of the Doctor had the Sisterhood of Karn boast that they could control regeneration and give the Eighth Doctor the choice of "man or woman" for his next incarnation. Hell Bent showed the first on-screen male-to-female regeneration with the General 's eleventh regeneration, shortly after The Black Hole had featured the first one ever. The General's first nine incarnations were female and she was pleased to return to a female incarnation.

The Gallifrey series later depicted the first female-to-male regeneration through Trave 's regeneration in Enemy Lines. The Twelfth Doctor's regeneration finally resulted in him becoming a woman , in 's Twice Upon a Time. In The Sarah Jane Adventures story Death of the Doctor the Eleventh Doctor noted that his racial characteristics were not limited to white; he "can be anything". Although both actors to play K'anpo Rimpoche were Caucasian, Kevin Lindsay donned an accent and was made up to appear ethnically Tibetan.

Further, the General 's eleventh regeneration was from a white man into a black woman. Russell T Davies noted how firmly the concept of limiting Time Lords to thirteen lives, introduced in The Deadly Assassin , was lodged in fans' minds.

Davies attempted to deliberately subvert the limit in Death of the Doctor , though he admits that fandom may resist his attempt to alter the programme's mythos.