Regenerated or Resurrected?

Steven Moffat has revealed that, as many have speculated, Matt Smith is the last life of the Doctor. To give context, a Time Lord has thirteen lives, facilitated by 12 regeneration cycles. The War Doctor took up one of those cycles and the Tenth Doctor wasted one in order to heal himself in “Journey’s End”. This means that when Ten regenerated into Eleven he used his last regeneration cycle and is no longer capable of brining himself back to life in a different body.

So how’s he gonna do it?

Peter Capaldi has the role; he even appeared as the Twelfth Doctor in “The Day of The Doctor”so how will he survive.

Theories:

The limit is artificial:

It could be that the higher ups in Time Lord society, such a Rassilon and other members of the council could regenerate as many times as they wanted and that lowers such as the Doctor and the Master were limited as a means of ultimate control over them. Part of the Second Doctor’s punishment at the conclusion of his trial was to be forced to regenerate, effectively bringing him one cycle closer to the limit; a warning shot if you like, to tell him to stop breaking the rules or they’d burn out all his lives. This also showed that the Time Lords could control aspects of the Doctor’s regeneration such as his appearance; meaning that they could feasibly have the power to control how many times one could regenerate.

Of course this theory doesn’t really stand up as if they artificially controlled the regeneration cycles, there’s no reason that they wouldn’t have just stripped him of his ability to regenerate at all and told him he was welcome to break the rules, in the knowledge that when one his adventures inevitably got him killed he’d be dead for good. The revived series has also demonstrated that the process is born out of regenerative energy, which would suggest that the limit is caused by this energy being too depleted to bring a Time Lord back to life properly. In fact the Master attempted to regenerate after exhausting his cycles and turned into a disgusting hooded creature, presumably a half regenerated body.

The Doctor Will be Resurrected

So Gallifrey is still out there somewhere and the Doctor is tasked with finding it. Add to that that Capaldi’s Doctor didn’t seem to be present on Trenzalore (at the Doctor’s grave) and all indications are that Matt Smith’s Doctor will die and be buried at Trenzalore and then the new Doctor will be the product of a Time Lord resurrection, something the Time Lords reserve only when absolutely necessary; like bringing the long dead Master back for the Time War. If the Doctor were to be responsible for bringing the whole of Gallifrey back from the Pocket Universe, he may be rewarded by another life cycle. He would still be dead and buried at Trensalore, but the Twelf Doctor would effectively be a new First Doctor, with a full set of new regeneration cycles, like the new Master. This is the most likely way around the limit and does fit with the established grave of the Doctor.

But who truly knows? Steven Moffat could simply be lying about not being able to break the rules as he frequently has in the past. But after what I consider a very successful 50^th anniversary, I am confident that whatever he comes up with will be clever and entertaining.

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

I started watching and then awesomeness happened.

I’m going to be honest, I was expecting to be let down by thus episode. It had a massive task; introduce a new Doctor, while balancing the massive personalities of Ten and Eleven. This is something that could have gone very wrong.

Steven Moffat pulls this off by giving himself enough time to do each. It sounds simplistic to say that, but with this kind of Blockbuster phenomenon that’s built up around the 50^th anniversary, there would have been massive pressure to get straight to the action. But no, Moffat takes his time and sets all the pieces in place.

The real masterstroke is the John Hurt’s War Doctor; rejected by his later selves and then treated like he might pull out an Uzi and let loose as soon as they see him. But the point is, that he is the Doctor. The impression that Eleven gave in “The Name of the Doctor” was that the War Doctor was a complete departure from the Doctor persona, taking no elements whatsoever from his previous incarnations and (even in appearance) having more in common with the Master.

But Hurt’s performance shows elements of at least the First and Sixth Doctors. This could have very easily been about an evil version of the Doctor forcing his later selves to unite to defeat him, but instead Moffat went for the harder job; show the Doctor (not a bitter, bruised or insane version) but someone who could clearly be recognised as the Doctor, by classic fans and new, stooping to the level of mass genocide.

The War Doctor has been misrepresented by his later selves; he is not evil, he is not insane; he is desperate.

The contrast between Ten and Eleven is pretty good as well. Their dislike for each other’s outfits serves as a nice bit of comedy and Eleven’s mocking of Ten’s err investigative techniques is a very nice send up of the Everybody-kisses-David-Tennant convention that built up during his run. On that point, the war Doctor’s reaction to that mirrors Colin Baker’s reaction (outside the show) to the idea of the Doctor and romance. In fact there are too many intertextual references like this to count.

I also like that Rose Tyler wasn’t in this episode, in favour of the Bad Wolf persona. I’ve made my feelings about the Rose love story clear in another post and the last thing that such an important episode needed was that weighing it down.

There really isn’t much else to say; this is a really good episode and more than a fitting 50^th Birthday present for Who. A very well written script, paired with top-notch performances from David Tennant, Matt Smith, John Hurt and Peter Capaldi’s angry eyes.

Student Loans to be Privatised

So apparently the government is planning on selling all student loans taken out between 1988 and 2012 to private companies.

Well that’s good isn’t it? No more strain on the old public purse and the private sector will be obliged to keep to those good old low interest rates…oh wait my mistake, that’s utter rubbish.

There has been no confirmation that the private companies buying the debts will have any obligation to keep to the current interest rates and I can tell you now that they won’t.

First reason for this; well what kind of business would you be running if you charged such little interest on money owed to you? A really bad one is the answer, s no one in their right mind would ever take on such a massive amount of debtors without the government having to sweeten the deal by allowing them to get creative with the amount they can make off it. 

Second reason; have you ever encountered a bank or private financial agency that didn’t try to screw you over with interest?

So here’s the thing; I took out a student loan in 2009 to pay for my Law Degree and in my time at Uni, I don’t think I met single person who didn’t. I (and everyone I met at Uni), agreed to the loans we agreed to; the reason we did that was because they were such a good deal.

You go from Uni and start at the bottom of the jobs ladder (for which ever profession you choose). I knew that when I started University in 2009 and part of being willing to do it was knowing that when I went into work and started earning enough, paying back the money I was borrowing wouldn’t be a massive strain.

Under a private company, it will be, under a private company, I’ll be paying back twice as much. It’s not right and it’s not what I agreed to.