Why We Shouldn’t Hate The Tenth Doctor’s Regeneration
Guest contributor Paul Raymond looks at the other side of the debate.
It is no secret that Ten’s regeneration was a bit of a polarizing event within the Doctor Who fandom. Everything about Ten leading up to his regeneration was so unlike the Time Lord many of us knew and loved that some of us felt cheated and betrayed by his character. I would like to offer up a different explanation for the way he behaved with a simple example: children and medicine. It is a quite normal for a child to act like it’s his/her final day on this earth when at the mercy of a spoonful of the raspberry flavoured acid we call medicine. Many children act up and cry at the thought of consuming such a horrid concoction but from the time they ingest it they seem to act like nothing happened as if they realized how silly it was to make such a big deal about it.
Now let’s look at the things Ten went through prior to his regeneration: Leaving his human clone to a parallel universe (while he continues on alone), Donna’s memory wipe, escaping his prophesized death only to be psyched out by the only man on the earth he trusted at that very moment. So it goes without saying that Ten experienced some intense events in a very short time period and his reward for enduring such turmoil is the death of his current body. We see this reaction straight from the time he is told his death is near with his uncharacteristic description of regeneration:
“Even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies and some new man goes sauntering away.”
To me this is a man so full of contempt that he sort of misses the big picture (not dying). Think back to the child-medicine example, when a child freaks out due to his/her fear of the action of taking the medicine, the fact that it can actually help them is completely lost to them in that moment and that is what I see in Ten in his final moments. Eleven’s first moments to me is the aftermath where the child realizes that he/she was being silly and that it was helpful after all.
Moving forward, Ten loved himself immensely. He was the first truly young Doctor (while Five was physically young, he was written as a very mature and calm character and Four and Two were young at heart but both had the physical appearance of a mature adult). Ten was written as a childish genius without a care in the world and he looked the part! To the Doctor this was new and exciting, his body finally matched the personality he adopted, and he could keep up with his own quirks and mannerisms. He could bounce all over the room firing off some wibbly wobbly nonsense and no one would question it. As a matter in fact, he was so charming that most people joined in (or at least went along with) his antics. Everyone falling in love with him as soon as they met him makes this obvious as not only is he this young looking man with great hair, he’s stone cold brilliant! He’s like a double wammy and he knows it.
“Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but as soon as that was done I didn’t need to change. I didn’t want to. Why would I? Look at me!”
The above quote upon his first regeneration completely explains how much Ten loved being Ten. The whimsical fun of being the Doctor combined with the youthful image a heartthrob? I wouldn’t want to change either.
“Number Ten once regenerated and kept the same face, I had vanity issues at the time.”
Eleven was very much aware of his own flaws as Ten and looked upon them as a silly yet forgiveable moments in his time spent in that body. Ten became so distracted by his love for himself that he lost the big picture in his final moments, he started to think about himself and his prospects as the man he was. This is why I do not look back at Ten’s reaction to Wilf being his “reward” with contempt because of what he went through leading up to that moment. I look at that moment as the Doctor at his worst: selfish. Doctor is not supposed to be selfish, he is the one man we can count on to put everybody else first but in the wake of such traumatic events he starts to slip and lose sight of what is truly important. Many of us in horrible times act selfish or lose sight of the big picture. It’s also worth mentioning that Ten quickly realized how ridiculously he was acting and went on to save Wilf. Eleven was guilty of acting this way once as well, upon the loss of the Ponds.
“Over a thousand years of saving the universe, Strax, you know the one thing I learned? The universe doesn’t care.”
Frustrated by his loss, he resorts to seclusion as a way of coping and selfishly states that there is no point in saving the universe when the universe never repays him. Of course normal people know that good deeds are not meant to be equally reciprocated in a timely manner but in his moment of grief he misses that fact. Did we hate the man for that? No, because somebody else made him realize that good deeds are not currency. He realized how silly he was acting and went on to save the universe once again.
What I am getting at here is how would you feel if people judged you for being the person you were at your all time worst moment? I know if I was judged based on the person I was at my worst I would feel cheated and betrayed. Yes the Doctor is a man we all love but he is not perfect. Sometimes he slips into moments of weakness and we, as fans must continue on to respect him as the character he truly is. Think about all the incredible people who dealt with depression, anxiety disorders, psychological trauma, etc. Shakespeare and Van Gogh for example were extremely troubled men throughout their lives but they are remembered for the genius they displayed at their best and that is how we should look at Ten and his regeneration.
