Changing the way of changing

[scarfman]

crossposted to scarfman and doctorwho Edit now crossposted to metatardis

At least until the Master's regeneration this week, Romana's regeneration in the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks [edit being the only onscreen regeneration besides the Doctor's there was] was the most normal regeneration viewers have ever witnessed.

The scene is taken issue with because Romana appears to switch between several bodies before settling into the one she'd initially chosen but the Doctor had objected to. Largely the scene's objected to because it was done for the laughs, which is true, but also because it's tricky to justify in-text. It's been suggested that Romana didn't actually take on all those bodies, but that they were mental/temporal projections like the Doctor's Teacher accomplished in Planet of the Spiders or like the screenwriter says the Watcher was in Logopolis. It's been suggested that it's accounted for by the fifteen-hour grace period cited by the Doctor in The Christmas Invasion. It's been suggested that the only explanation needed is the truism that females are just different from males.

Personally I favor the second of these. I've encountered the objection that there's a considerable difference between the Doctor growing a new hand and Romana switching between half-a-dozen entirely different whole bodies. But here's the sticking point: Romana was changing bodies at leisure in the TARDIS, while the Doctor was growing a new hand on the fly under emergency conditions having been subject to great physical trauma. Not to mention being in the middle of a swordfight. The Doctor always regenerates on the fly under emergency conditions while subject to great physical trauma, and that's because he leads a non-standard Time Lord life. The Doctor's never had a normal regeneration. Even his first regeneration was complicated, by his having resisted it so long an energy drain from Mondas. (Also - if you subscribe to the school of thought - by his being half-human.)

Your ordinary stay-at-home dull Time Lord probably schedules his regenerations years ahead of time, checks into the nearest clinic and has his personal morphologist standing by. Okay, that's supposition on my part; but he certainly hasn't, e.g., fallen off a radio-telescope tower, been shot in the chest, or sucked the Time Vortex out of a stupid ape. It remains that we viewers have never witnessed a normal regeneration, unless that's what Romana and the Master did, which we don't even know. It seems more likely to me that regenerating aboard a TARDIS is the equivalent of giving birth on a cruiseliner instead of in a hospital (thanks to antikythera for that metaphor; I'd said "getting a haircut on a cruiseliner"). Whereas the way the Doctor always regenerates is more the equivalent of having a heart attack and breaking your leg while on a rafting trip with your office buddies, who give you CPR and splint your leg with a tree branch because there's not another person around for fifty miles in every direction.

I've seen discussion of the Master's regeneration last week objecting that the shooty glowy regeneration is non-standard, even though it's what the Doctor's looked like last time, because the Doctor's shooty glow was due to having assumed the Time Vortex from Rose. I've seen it objected to that the Master was awfully alert afterwards* for the Doctor having nearly slept through Christmas Day after his most recent. But here again is the same error: people are taking the Doctor's regenerations for standard when that's the last thing we ought to be doing. And, given that the Master's motivation since 1976 has been the attempt to replentish his exhausted regenerative cycle, perhaps his regeneration can't be assumed to be standard either (but, past that, how he contrived to regenerate again at all is beyond the scope of the present discussion).

Romana's regeneration in Destiny of the Daleks, for all its slapstick, remains the most normal regeneration viewers have ever actually witnessed. How normal it was is subject to further developments onscreen and to our own speculation. The Doctor's, however, have probably been the nine most unusual regenerations there've ever been.

* Master of unintentional alliteration!

Comments

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Assonance.

[angryricecooker.livejournal.com]

Both, actually. Assonance includes any repeating vowel sounds in non-rhyming words, whether at the beginning of the word or not. Alliteration includes repeating word-initial sounds, whether consonants or vowels. They're not mutually exclusive.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

And, given that the Master's motivation since 1976 has been the attempt to replentish his exahusted regenerative cycle, perhaps his regeneration can't be assumed to be standard either...

Yeah, I was gonna say.

[scalderwood.livejournal.com]

Well said, well said.

Although I didn't particularly care for the way the Master regenerated, I have no problem with the lack of any RTD (regeneration trauma disorder).

[spoofmaster]

Makes a lot of sense, when you put it that way, and I do think that you're right about it. I'm still not sure that I buy that Romana actually went through all those bodies, since you'd think that would take a lot of energy, but as to the Doctor never having had a normal regeneration, that sounds right. I'm still not sure whether or not I subscribe to the half-human school of thought (what little I know of biology tells me "NOOOOOO!!", but then Doctor Who has never been terribly true to actual science), but I think that would also go a good way toward explaining why he appears to be so bad at regeneration compared to the other Time Lords.