Board Thread:The Celestial Toyroom/@comment-188432-20140512223153/@comment-188432-20140522191414

TheReturnOfTheKing wrote: What about ... Thanks for all your suggestions of categories! It's good to see that you care enough to comment! Unfortunately, we had to draw the line at ten awards categories, otherwise the post would have never gotten published! We tried to choose from the suggestions that had been made at our planning thread, so that a wide range of people's thoughts were included. TheReturnOfTheKing wrote: ... was the 7th Doctor one seriously an option, or just a joke? If you mean the "best regeneration" category, yeah, it was a serious option. After all, it is an unusually long farewell, and a major part of the plot of that story.

And — read this how you will — I know I for one stood up and applauded when the Seventh Doctor got shot.

I think it's one of the few regenerations that actually says something interesting about the outgoing incarnation. I mean, Seven is known for his multilevelled, brinksmanship kind of thinking, but then he's simply gunned down upon exiting the TARDIS. And as if that weren't ironic enough, the Doctor is then killed by a doctor. It's a far cry from Planet of the Spiders, where the most fearless of the Doctors makes up some guff about having to "face [my] fears" — including a hitherto unmentioned phobia of spiders. It's also far more interesting than Six's demise or Two simply being adjudicated to death.

To my mind, Seven's death is the most realistic of the lot, barring One's passage due to old age. It's something that really should happen far more often. The TARDIS should materialise at the wrong place and time more often, and the Doctor's latter-day smugness about the dangers outside the door should be met with more disaster than it is.