Doctor Who: The Doctor's First & Final Moments Always Cut The Deepest

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https://bleedingcool.com/tv/doctor-w...t-the-deepest/

In the BBC's Doctor Who, our hero's constant death & rebirth may be a show-saving gimmick, but it's also what makes the show deeply beautiful.

Published Tue, 05 Sep 2023 05:37:09 -0500 by Adi Tantimedh

The BBC has released one of the better Doctor Who compilation videos depicting all of the modern Doctors' first and last moments. These are the Doctors' first moments as their new selves and their final moment before they regenerate into the next one. That's Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker – and back to Tennent again. You might think this was just another showy set of clips of the show's biggest gimmick, but they reveal something much deeper about the show, something spiritual and beautiful that makes it all worthwhile.

Regeneration was a creative choice made from necessity. First Doctor William Hartnell had to leave the show due to his failing health, and rather than cancel a hit show, the producers of Doctor Who hit upon the idea that as an alien, The Doctor had the ability to regenerate to a different body and a new actor. No other TV show anywhere has that Get Out of Jail Free card, it enables the series to go on forever if the BBC desires. As a show that earns the BBC at least $100 million a year in foreign sales and merchandising every year, this makes the show a valuable piece of Intellectual Property. It's so popular worldwide that declining ratings in the UK won't get it cancelled, no matter how much the haters think so.

But apart from that, the idea of the Doctor regenerating when he or she suffers a fatal wound, they become a new person and carry on, and they carry on doing the same thing: helping people. Accident or not, this central part of Doctor Who references both Christ and the Buddhist cycle of Death and Rebirth. Both Christ and Buddha teach the need to live a good life, to help people where possible, and to be of service. The Doctor's entire life is spent doing that, even as they run from one thing to another.

Showrunners Russell T. Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall have leaned into this theme more deeply than in the older version of the show. The Ninth Doctor sacrifices himself to save Rose (Billie Piper). The Tenth Doctor falters with a moment's hesitation before he sacrifices himself to save Wilf (Bernard Cribbins). The Eleventh Doctor gives up the last centuries of his life saving a whole town. The Twelfth Doctor gives up his life buying time for a colony of people from an invasion after giving a speech that you help people not for the glory or the thanks or the reward, but because it's right and it's kind. He even considers dying forever because he's exhausted from the endless cycle, but like in a Buddhist parable, meets and commiserates with his older self from a past life (David Bradley) about whether to continue to live again before agreeing to carry on. The Thirteenth Doctor gets fatally injured saving an imprisoned living sun. She regenerates into that looks like a a past self, possibly to deal with unfinished business from a past life.

Doctor Who is a show about a time-traveling alien do-gooder but can also be read as a Buddhist parable about the endless cycle of karma, life, death, and rebirth. The Doctor dies helping people and lives again to help people over and over again. Their reward is to live and continue to discover the universe anew. This is why the continuing fairytale of Doctor Who matters.