Regeneration is always a huge moment in Doctor Who’s mythology. But it’s also incredibly important for the fans, too. Perhaps none more so than your first.
With the new Doctor’s first series due to be broadcast soon, I’ve recently been thinking about regeneration. Not just why it’s important to Doctor Who mythology, but why your first is especially important.
In some ways, many fans get two “firsts”. There’s the first one that they actually see, but one that’s not connected to “their” Doctor. It could be watching a clip on YouTube, or it could even be watching a whole story retroactively.
When I was catching up on Classic Who, particularly during the late Nineties, I was always keen to check out every regeneration story I could. This was partially to check out any story that linked two distinctly different eras. But it was also because there was always something fascinating about the idea, of someone dying and resurrecting into a completely different body.
In fact, the reason I became so rapidly interested in Doctor Who as a kid was seeing Seven regenerate into Eight. When I first watched the TV movie, I didn’t have too much of an idea of Doctor Who at the time. I also didn’t really care about the plot while I was watching it.
No, what really grabbed my interest, more than anything else, was the TARDIS, which to this day, is unlike anything else out there in sci-fi, and the regeneration scene. I didn’t realize at the time how underwhelming Seven’s regeneration was for fans of his Doctor, of course.
Instead, I was more fascinated by the idea of it. At eight years old, I hadn’t seen anything else quite like it in sci-fi. At thirty years old, I still haven’t.
Your first regeneration in context
Cut to almost a decade later in The Parting of the Ways. We’re saying goodbye to Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor. I felt excitement at witnessing my “first” regeneration, in full context. But also sadness at saying goodbye to a great Doctor, one that I had been following on TV for a few months.
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And that’s the key thing. The first regeneration that you see in context can bring so many mixed emotions. This won’t be true for everyone, of course. Some will feel just pure sadness at saying goodbye to “their” Doctor, or perhaps just their first Doctor. (While there can be some correlation between the two, they’re not mutually exclusive.)
But others, like myself, might be more bittersweet about it. We’ll still be sad on some level at saying goodbye to a Doctor that we’ve enjoyed watching. But we might also be excited for something new, too. Even while we’re completely uncertain of the future.
And that’s something that makes your first regeneration, in its full context, so important. Not just simply the sadness, but the uncertainty as well.
It’s also something that sticks with you, too. While you might be more emotional over subsequent regenerations, even sadder, you will still never forget the first time you watched a current Doctor change into someone else entirely.
You won’t forget being uncertain of the future, wondering if you’ll like the next Doctor even half as much. And you’ll never forget watching them and enjoying the new Doctor, too. And that’s what makes it so special.
Which Doctor was your first regeneration? How did you feel at the time? Do you have your own thoughts on regeneration? Let us know in the comments below.