Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-183721-20130220034316/@comment-188432-20130220171024

Having read the Bold Clone/OttselSpy25 conversation, I'm not convinced by BC's argument that it would somehow be "confusing" to readers to describe a regeneration as "death".

The show itself is confusing on this point, because there are two levels of death in any sort of transformative being. There's the death of the individual phase, and then there's the death of the overall, gestalt being. I think that readers who encounter a section called "Death" on a page labelled "Sixth Doctor", will understand that we're talking about the "Death of the Sixth Doctor", and not be overly confused. Certainly, I think this is less confusing than "Regeneration", because there's regen in and regen out. Even a label like "Post-regeneration" is a tad confusing because to me the phrase "post-regenerative Sixth Doctor" could mean the Seven that's in episode 1 of Time and the Rani. (Granted, this isn't how I use the phrase, personally, but it could mean that.) I'd much prefer that first section on an incarnation page be called "Rebirth", since that's wholly unambiguous, and the word can be sourced to the Utopia regeneration.

It's not that I don't understand Bold Clonee's central thrust. The gestalt Doctor hasn't died, so why should we describe the incarnation as truly dying? I think the reason is that this is the most consistent description that it's ever had.

The problem, of course, is that we don't have a lot of data to work with. A lot of regenerations we've seen have actually happened before death. Regen #2 and Romana have nothing to do with medical emergency. Regen #6 is useless. Regen #8 is unknown. Regen #1 isn't even called "regeneration" but "rejuvenation". Regen #4 works differently to any other ever seen. The Watcher thing is just damned odd.

So that leaves us only with #3, #5, #7, #9 and #10.

Regen #3 is the closest to flatly denying the "death" thing, because Cho-Je explicitly says, "the Doctor is alive". Maybe you could throw Regen #5 in there, too, as a sorta refutation of death, because Davison asks, "Is this death?", and we find out in a matter of moments that it's not. (But that's really flimsy, because Five is clearly talking about the death of the gestalt Doctor, not just him individually.)

RTD uses the language of death much more consistently. Ten says of Regen #9: "I was dying. To save my own life, I changed my own body, every single cell". Regeneration in general is then later described as "death" in TEOT — but it had been pre-figured, don't forget, by the Odd saying "your song is ending" and the whole "knock four times" thing. So in Waters of Mars we get this notion that he might be nearing death. I personally think the common sense reading of the Wilf/Ten café scene is that we're to take it at face value. The Doctor is saying that when he regenerates, the old body — in every practical sense – dies. You can't go back to the old body, as we learn in the 2005 CIN special. This is actually new information. The Doctor can't go back to an old body — so how, practically, is that different from death?

The clearest case, though, is the television movie. It's the ultimate regeneration story, because it takes us every step of the way. There's no metaphor, no "like death". There's just death of 'the individual incarnation.

The Master flatly states to Chang Lee:
 * "That body had died. But now he's regenerated into another one. My body can do this twelve times."  So the Master flatly calls it death.

Eight later confirms this language, saying:
 * "I was dead too long this time. The anaesthetic almost destroyed the regenerative process."

I just don't see how it's possible to get around these two bits of dialogue. To emphasise, we've got two different Time Lords on record as calling it death.

And if that weren't enough, we see it, and there is no doubt of death.

Seven flatlines on the operating table. Multiple doctors back up Grace, who declares him dead while he's hooked up to any number of devices that would have been able to detect the faintest of heartbeats. He gets sent to a morgue where he ain't movin' at all. Seven's cadaver gets wheeled into a refrigeration unit, but we see no breath. Time quite clearly passes. Then the regen happens and only now, from Eight, do we see breath.

Later, Grace says, "You can't cheat death", to which the Doctor says, "Yes you can". And indeed, this is echoed later in the movie when Grace, too, is resurrected and the Doctor reverses the line by asking her how it feels to have cheated death.

Then there's the directorial choice to have intercut the Doctor's regeneration with the Frakenstein reanimation sequence. Why do that unless you're trying to say, "Hey, this guy died, but like Frankenstein's monster, he's comin' back to life."

So I have zero problem with the word death. The one story that fully examines regeneration makes it crystal clear that death does occur then there's a regeneration. And every regeneration since has strongly used the language of death to describe what a regeneration is like.