Why I Hate the Tenth Doctor’s Regeneration

Guest contributor Jason McDonald shares his viewpoint.

It’s hard to believe it’s already been five years since The End Of Time aired. No matter what anyone thinks of it, it cannot be denied that it was a very memorable story. However, there is one part of the story which I always have, and perhaps always will despise. Something which can be summed up in five loathsome words:

I don’t want to go.

Before I go any further I wish to make clear that I do not dislike or hate the Tenth Doctor. David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor was nothing short of excellent, but his exit was fundamentally flawed and self-indulgent. I’m sure if you consult most fans of Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor they will not be willing to sing the praises of Six’s regeneration. I dislike Ten’s regeneration for two reasons. The first is that it was over-emotional. It could be said that more effort was put in to depressing the audience than there was to producing an effective transition between Tennant and Matt Smith. The second is that it goes against everything that was ever said about the concept of regeneration at other points in the show’s run.

Recall when the Tenth Doctor first appeared on the scene in the 2005 Children in Need mini-episode. He spends much of the episode begging Rose to see that he is the same person as the Ninth Doctor. Most notably this line:

Ten: ”Rose, it’s me. Honestly, it’s me. I was dying. To save my own life, I changed my body. Every single cell, but still me.”

Later on, during Ten’s first full appearance in The Christmas Invasion, Ten gives this response when asked what became of the Ninth Doctor.

Ten: ”I’m him. I’m literally him. Same man, new face. Well, New everything.”

And yet, when discussing the prospect of his own regeneration, Ten comes out with this line:

Ten: ”Even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away. And I’m dead.”

Although the ”new everything” line lends some credence, it is clear that Ten’s statement that he is literally the same person as Nine does not correspond with his claims that Eleven is some new person who walks way from his ”death”.

I was among the people who began watching the show in 2005 with Eccleston. As one of an entire generation who had no idea what regeneration was, The Christmas Invasion had the task of proving to me and many others that this odd ”new Doctor” was the same one we’d been watching over the past year. It passed that test spectacularly. To have Ten’s finale then tell us that the next Doctor is not the same person felt like a spit in the face to those of us who accepted Ten as the Doctor. It also has some uncomfortable in-universe implications when looking back on those episodes. If we take Ten’s words on regeneration as true, does that mean he was lying to Rose, Harriet Jones and the others when he claimed to be the same person as Nine. The idea that Ten told Rose that he was still Nine, the man she fell in love with, when in actual fact that man was dead and he was just another man with the same memories is very uncomfortable to think about.

Also, during his interactions with the War and Eleventh Doctor’s, Ten is the one who points out to Eleven that his accusations hold up equally towards himself and Eleven.

Eleven: ”The Time War. The last day. The day you killed them all.”
Ten: ”The day we killed them all.”

Even in the classic series, it was clear that regeneration did not mean death. Look at Cho-Je’s explanation of regeneration back in Planet of the Spiders:

”Don’t concern yourselves. I am not dying – merely regenerating.”

It clear from the above explanations that The End of Time’s depiction of regeneration as a form of death, and the resulting incarnation being a separate being do not stand up to scrutiny.

I must admit, even I teared up slightly as the Doctor, who thought the day had been saved, finally heard the four knocks that doomed him. However, the sympathy was short-lived when we found out exactly what the threat was and the Doctor began ranting and raving at poor Wilfred Mott. The part of this which angered me the most was the fact that the Doctor (and the audience) knew that the radiation would cause him to regenerate rather than kill him, yet he still ranted about how ”he could do so much more” as though he couldn’t once he regenerates.

If this had been the Eleventh Doctor on his final body, or if Davies had inserted some technobabble to tell us that the radiation prevented regeneration, I would have all the sympathy and probably would have been very upset by the scene. But it is clear that regeneration is the likely prospect. The Doctor is acting as though his regeneration is worth the same as Wilfred’s entire life. More than once defenders of the regeneration have pointed out to me ”how would you feel if you had to die like that?” To which my answer is that if I were in that situation as I am now, as a human with one life, then perhaps I would have reacted the way the Doctor did. But if I had the ability to regenerate, even once, I would have been in that booth the moment I saw someone was stuck inside. Having to change my face and body in exchange for someone else surviving sounds like a fair deal to me. I think Moffat summed it up best:

Moffat: ”If I’d been Bernard Cribbins in that thing, I’d be saying, ‘Doctor, I’m actually going to die. You’re going to get a bit younger and stupider hair, OK? You can let me out and you can get a reset. Selfish bastard.”

Moffat sums up my feeling on the matter perfectly. As mentioned above, regeneration has only ever been treated as death during The End of Time. Within the context of the episode, the ”radiation scene” was a tragic scene in which the Doctor is faced with his death and chooses to do the brave and noble thing anyway. Within the context of the show, the scene was a cringeworthy one in which the Doctor is faced with something he’s faced many times before, and degenerates into a pathetic and cowardly whiner, before finally deciding to do the reasonable thing.

Moving on, we then come to the ”farewell tour.” I see this as pointless. He is going to see all those people why exactly? Because apparently he will never see those people again after he changes, even though some of them (Sarah Jane, Rose, Jack) were people he knew only due to his association with them in previous bodies? It’s taken even further in Death of the Doctor when Eleven claims he visited all his past companions. The very idea is redundant. The Tenth Doctor is going to see people because he will die by regenerating, even though if that’s the case he had never even met most of them, and only knew them from someone else’s memories. The final nail in the coffin comes when Eleven talks as though it was him that did it, as though he and Ten were the same person, negating the point of the whole thing in the first place.

And then we get to the final line. I loath this line and consider it one of Doctor Who’s lowest points. Seriously, ”I don’t want to go”? He isn’t going anywhere. He will still be here when the change has finished. He could easily have said ”I don’t want to change”, but that wouldn’t have had the sheer emotional punch that the actual line had. The whole purpose of the line was simply to make viewers cry rather than make any sense. At least after regenerating, the Doctor discusses ”still” having legs (as though he had them before) as well as referred to the noses he had in previous bodies, rendering The End of Time’s interpretation of regeneration void anyway.

I believe the main reason for this retcon of regeneration was Davies desire to make every finale ”bigger and better” than the last. Journey’s End was in my opinion a fantastic finale, and contains what I consider to be the saddest moment in Who history in Donna’s mindwipe. Davies wanted to make something even more emotional for his and Tennant’s swansong, and so used the regeneration itself as the main emotional point of it, even if it meant significantly altering the concept. The fact that this was both his and Tennant’s final outing also factored significantly in Davies wanting to make this regeneration as depressing as possible.