After one helluva cliffhanger, only hours stand between us and the eleventh incarnation of Doctor Who. Unless they’re trying to pull a fast one on us.
David Tennant is on-board for the annual Christmas episode and three specials in 2009 but as for the 5th season, which won’t be until 2010, there’s no word yet. So how can these contradictory facts be reconciled?
Well first off there’s always the possibility that this is not a full regeneration and it’s more akin to when the doctor recently regrew his hand. But if on the other hand if this is a genuine regeneration, the future specials could be explained away as prequels or perhaps the tenth & eleventh Doctors will meet, which wouldn’t be a first in the series.
The real question is what will/should the next doctor be like, cause let’s face it either way Tennant’s not gonna around forever. The last two Doctors have be remarkably similar in appearance and temperament, that is relatively young eccentric white men. It’s time they switch it up. Why not a female doctor? Or an older incarnation like Doctors one & three? Or even a black Doctor? Or all three, an old sassy black woman (think Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan on Star Trek). I can see it now: the “Doc,” as she will now be known, will tripping through time in a tricked-out TARDIS dispensing pearls of wisdom and opening cans of whoopass on any one that messes with her.
Also expect one of the Doctor’s companions to experience a more permanent death in the season finale as foretold by the Dalek Caan. But who will it be? According to Caan, it will be the Doctor’s “most faithful” companion. The odds-on favorite for that would be Rose considering her feelings for him and her desperate search to reunite with him. But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s the TARDIS that dies. I mean who’s more faithful then the time machine that’s been with him through every incarnation? And it’s already been well-established that the TARDIS is alive, even Rose said as much when she absorbed its energy in the episode The Parting of Ways. And what bigger finale could there be than the loss of the very thing that defines Doctor Who?
SEASON FINALE UPDATE (spoilers):
I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Not only was there no new Doctor, but now there’s 2 Doctor #10’s? That’s just dumb. Why not have the hand grow into another Doctor #10 but have the original turn into the eleventh Doctor? And his explanation to why he didn’t change is laughable: “I didn’t want to.” So those 9 other times he did? Then switching out the Doctors for Rose was similarly strange, basically saying ‘I love you Rose but my clone needs you more.’ As if that wasn’t bad enough, why on Earth did the Doctor re-strand Rose and the new Doctor back in the parallel universe? What the universe isn’t big enough for 2 Doctors? Talk about fucked up. Finally there was Dalek Caan’s prediction that someone would die. That was yet another let down. I guess some may argue that Donna losing her memories of the Doctor was the death of the person she’d become… but ain’t one of those people. I don’t think Caan was speaking metaphorically and he never actually said when it would happen so you never know.
