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.