scarfman | Comments in other's LJs

lyssie asked a question about killing Highlander Immortals which in one comment's thread turned to a question about Time Lord regeneration.

You don't seem to be taking into account that the Doctor isn't a normal case. His regenerations are always tricky - but he's always doing it under emergency conditions and he's the only one of them that's true of*.

We saw Romana exercise a fine control over her non-emergency regeneration aboard the TARDIS, and that's the equivalent of you or me getting, say, a haircut on a yacht. And that's nothing compared the manifestations of control of the Doctor's Teacher's regeneration (including a projection of his new body/personality that went around doing his business while he was incapacited), which was performed in a (though primitive) zero-environment, at the most leisurely pace of any regeneration we've witnessed. Even that one was self-induced and -monitored, of necessity due to the (self-)outcast lifestyle of the subject. Imagine the control that can be afforded by having it done properly in the Citadel medical bay, with your own morphologist in attendance.

We don't know what a normal regeneration is like because we've never seen one.

* Except, of course, the Master. But I'll bet the Rani wouldn't be caught regenerating on the UNIT lab floor. Or on grass.