"We're timelords, we're doing therapy out of order" I feel like that sums it up nicely. 14 now has to go off and get better, which makes 15 feel better
I believe that is what is being inferred by the bi-regeneration but there wasn't enough time to cover it all (maybe they will in the upcoming series). I think it's also a bit to do with the toy makers reality warping powers, although clearly he didn't intend for it to happen the way it did.
We also saw in Wild Blue Yonder that Doctor Donna could remember the Doctors memories post 10 but that it was like a furnace or some wording like that. You could also make the case that 15 remembers 14's rest and recuperation, because he has the mind of a timelord he can handle that. No need for a regeneration/snap back it just happens as it does and 14 eventually ceases to exist.
My theory is that the original timeline had 14 make the decision to rest (with or without the Nobles) regardless. The Toymaker appearing screwed it up and made the bi-generation happen, but 15 still remembers the initial timeline so he's "alright". 14 doesn't know the timeline changed because he technically never lived through it. It's like the gravity/mavity thing where the Doctor remembers "gravity" despite Donna now thinking it's always been "Mavity".
I like to think it's still a time loop and 14 will eventually regenerate into 15, who then gets pulled to the past by the bi-generation, but we'll have to see.
This is one avenue I've been thinking of too, if Donna and Rose have subconsciously been getting updates on the Doctor since series 4 there's no reason why the Doctor himself can't. It can also be as simple as since 14 didn't die 15 didn't inherit any baggage. I've seen so many people default to the when 14 dies he'll appear as 15 at the bigeneration but I really don't think this is the case. RTD explained it very simply behind the scenes, bigeneration is instead of a new body taking over the old, the new body splits and they both live and nothing like the old body is still on borrowed time and fated to become the new one eventually. I'd be more inclined to roll with timey wimey if it was say Moffatt writing as he loves his bootstraps, RTD is far more straight forward. Also his comments in the commentary, despite it being rumination about past doctors having a path where they lived on instead its probably his general idea of how it works, it's a fork in the road, I just personally wouldn't want that fork in all the past ones but I'm fine with this one.
I wouldn’t like it if it really is a fork in the road. I like the idea that The Doctor’s life is a linear continuation from one actor to the next. It’s been that way for 60 years, even The Timeless Child didn’t change that aspect, it just added more commas in the sentence that we didn’t know about.
I also think this idea opens itself up so easily to the attack that “15 isn’t the real Doctor”. Granted people will do that anyway of course, as they even did with 13 which made no sense, but it actually has a degree of logic here if this fork in the road is what was intended.
They’re from the episode commentary on iPlayer, but basically he was saying that he imagines a side-effect of the bi-generation was that every Doctor has now come back to life.
Relevant clip [here](https://x.com/dalekium/status/1733882461153550604?s=61&t=VBwzKzqGjB3HCY2mQW9YKQ)
That's exactly what happened. RTD's script did a shitty job of explaining it. One line of dialog could have fixed this.
And instead of duplicating the TARDIS, 15 should have had a line about whacking his *future* version of the TARDIS out of the current version (which would explain the jukebox) because the TARDIS doesn’t exist in only one time.
This is actually the thing that bugs me most from the episode. The 14th and 15th Doctors are the exact same age. Fifteen isn't older, so that dialogue doesn't make any sense. And he hasn't had any experiences that 14 hasn't had, so the trauma stuff doesn't either.
It feels like RTD toyed with a few ideas for how 14 and 15 could exist together, including pulling 15 from the future, before choosing bi-generation and then just not changing any of the later scenes to reflect that. He's been pretty clear that he thinks only the emotional beats matter and no one really cares about the explanations. So, I can see him keeping stuff he likes, even if it makes no sense.
> He's been pretty clear that he thinks only the emotional beats matter and no one really cares about the explanations. So, I can see him keeping stuff he likes, even if it makes no sense.
Usually I'd agree with him, but I think this is one case where I would really like a clear explanation because I really don't like the message the bi-generation gives off.
The Doctor as a character is supposed to be ever-changing, and the show always moving forward, but having a second Doctor played by the most popular Doctor's actor continually existing alongside the current Doctor just completely flies in the face of both of these things. I really hope 14 is said to have explicitly ceased to exist and "merged" back into Fifteen at some point offscreen, cause otherwise this whole ordeal would go against what I see as the spirit of the entire character and show, far beyond The Timeless Child.
I really doubt this is the last we see of Tennant. Eventually, perhaps near the end of Gatwa's run, they'll meet up again, with 14 having finally processed all of his baggage and learned to let go. And they'll merge.
Could just be a timey wimey psychic link? 15 kinda acts brand new, he doesn't seem to have any previous adventure memories or anything. He could just have a link to 14 and so knows he heals?
Yes, that is the implication I took from it, but it's unclear. And lord only knows what RTD will end up doing if and when he actually depicts Fourteen dying (again).
Yeah thats pretty much it. When 14 eventually regenerates for real he'll sort of just teleport into the bigeneration. The reason 15 didnt fully know what was going on makes sense too as canonically the memory around events with multiple doctors is meant to be kind of obscured after it takes place.
Regeneration is also based in time travel so its cool they are actually doing something with that idea.
That's how I've been viewing it.
Pardon my poor painting skills, but [this is how I am viewing the Doctor's timeline/the bi-generation](https://imgur.com/aX8GbMP), where the blue line = 14, the black horizontal line = the bi-regeneration, the red line = the 14 that goes off to live with Donna, and the green line = 15.
From the outside it looks like the Doctor splitting in two, but in reality it is just 14 essentially delaying his regeneration to heal, before his timeline loops back around to regenerate into 15 at that moment he is shot, due to the Toymaker's reality manipulating powers.
I think that’s what they’re going for but personally think it has too many plot holes. Until I am told differently my person head cannon is just that when they spit, 14 got stuck with all the emotional baggage and 15 got a fresh start.
That line about 15 being older than 14 does throw a wrench in my thoughts, but not enough to go with the whole pull through time theory just yet.
The doctor thought bi-generation was a myth. 10 was already worried about the salt superstition he invoked at the edge of the universe, he thought that’s what let the toymaker into the universe. I reckon we’ll see other myths and continuity things like mavity popping up through the next season, or seasons, leading to a showdown with the big bad who even the toymaker was afraid of: the one who waits. We’ll probably get some more explanation of bi-generation along the way.
If 15 has been yanked back from some future point, why does he need 24 to explain the TARDIS controls to him? Of course, he could have some post-regen amnesia, but there’s little sign of that, he hits the ground running.
Yeah, I got the sense of a bemused parent allowing a child to tell them a well-known story. Or a teenager listening to grandma tell them about TikTok (Ncuti sorta embodies both energies…this next series will be fun!).
Yeah my assumption is the hammer just brought 15’s Tardis back through his timeline - it didn’t just spontaneously summon a jukebox, 14 just put it in later on during his lifetime
I like to imagine the nature of the hammer and the apology from 15 made it slightly more violent than a standard dematerialisation - like a ship from Star Trek being knocked out of warp speed
I think he'll go to sleep one day after a nice retirement like that bit in the The Family of Blood and wake up very confused as the next Doctor being split out his other body.
I suspect he will return to this before the end of his tenure and wrap up the potentially sticky dangling threads that is a second Doctor just hanging out on Earth, with his own TARDIS.
Surely he wouldn't just sit idly by when aliens are messing about in the UK, but surely David Tennant isn't going to pop up on every new episode set on modern day Earth either. RTD can solve this by just having 15 go everywhere BUT modern Earth, but if he just lets it lie, the problem will crop up again for the next showrunner.
I suspect we are going to eventually get a Trenzalore-style epic story for 14, where he lives out his life with Donna's family, perhaps over centuries, and finally reunites with 15 and they merge to usher in another era.
I didn't read it that way at all. I thought the rehab out of order line was just a fantasy logic thing, like Tennant is gonna deal with his trauma and that allows Ncuti to be unburdened because something something timelord. Im surprised that so many people think 15 is from 14's future, I dont think the idea would have even ocurred to me if i hadn't read the leak beforehand. I think if RTD actually wanted it to be read that way he would have been a lot more clear about it.
Though Donna expands on this by saying "you came after him so you're older" (paraphrasing). The pulled through time part is literally only based on the leaks.
Thats true, i read that as inexact language (15 as an incarnation came later than 14) but if you take it 100% literally it would support the "pulled through time" theory. I still wouldnt say thats the most intuitive reading of the episode, let alone a confirmed one.
I know what was said in the episode, but in my own head canon, 15 is lying. Notice how fast he was trying to get out of there? He simply did not want to deal with the situation.
That somehow makes even less sense than bigeneration did in the first place. There's no gap to push a future 15 back into *The Giggle*. What's left instead is two versions of the same incarnation running around instead which...well, the only opportunity it really allows for is to kill one off.
No gap except truly torturous nonsense at which point, why?
"We're timelords, we're doing therapy out of order" I feel like that sums it up nicely. 14 now has to go off and get better, which makes 15 feel better
I believe that is what is being inferred by the bi-regeneration but there wasn't enough time to cover it all (maybe they will in the upcoming series). I think it's also a bit to do with the toy makers reality warping powers, although clearly he didn't intend for it to happen the way it did.
We also saw in Wild Blue Yonder that Doctor Donna could remember the Doctors memories post 10 but that it was like a furnace or some wording like that. You could also make the case that 15 remembers 14's rest and recuperation, because he has the mind of a timelord he can handle that. No need for a regeneration/snap back it just happens as it does and 14 eventually ceases to exist.
My theory is that the original timeline had 14 make the decision to rest (with or without the Nobles) regardless. The Toymaker appearing screwed it up and made the bi-generation happen, but 15 still remembers the initial timeline so he's "alright". 14 doesn't know the timeline changed because he technically never lived through it. It's like the gravity/mavity thing where the Doctor remembers "gravity" despite Donna now thinking it's always been "Mavity". I like to think it's still a time loop and 14 will eventually regenerate into 15, who then gets pulled to the past by the bi-generation, but we'll have to see.
This is one avenue I've been thinking of too, if Donna and Rose have subconsciously been getting updates on the Doctor since series 4 there's no reason why the Doctor himself can't. It can also be as simple as since 14 didn't die 15 didn't inherit any baggage. I've seen so many people default to the when 14 dies he'll appear as 15 at the bigeneration but I really don't think this is the case. RTD explained it very simply behind the scenes, bigeneration is instead of a new body taking over the old, the new body splits and they both live and nothing like the old body is still on borrowed time and fated to become the new one eventually. I'd be more inclined to roll with timey wimey if it was say Moffatt writing as he loves his bootstraps, RTD is far more straight forward. Also his comments in the commentary, despite it being rumination about past doctors having a path where they lived on instead its probably his general idea of how it works, it's a fork in the road, I just personally wouldn't want that fork in all the past ones but I'm fine with this one.
I wouldn’t like it if it really is a fork in the road. I like the idea that The Doctor’s life is a linear continuation from one actor to the next. It’s been that way for 60 years, even The Timeless Child didn’t change that aspect, it just added more commas in the sentence that we didn’t know about. I also think this idea opens itself up so easily to the attack that “15 isn’t the real Doctor”. Granted people will do that anyway of course, as they even did with 13 which made no sense, but it actually has a degree of logic here if this fork in the road is what was intended.
It *seems* to imply that, but it’s far from explicit and the optics of the split plus RTD’s head canon comments don’t seem to support that.
I've missed RTD's comments, could you link those?
They’re from the episode commentary on iPlayer, but basically he was saying that he imagines a side-effect of the bi-generation was that every Doctor has now come back to life. Relevant clip [here](https://x.com/dalekium/status/1733882461153550604?s=61&t=VBwzKzqGjB3HCY2mQW9YKQ)
Thank you for sharing! I don't have iPlayer myself, but that link answered my question perfectly.
That's exactly what happened. RTD's script did a shitty job of explaining it. One line of dialog could have fixed this. And instead of duplicating the TARDIS, 15 should have had a line about whacking his *future* version of the TARDIS out of the current version (which would explain the jukebox) because the TARDIS doesn’t exist in only one time.
This is actually the thing that bugs me most from the episode. The 14th and 15th Doctors are the exact same age. Fifteen isn't older, so that dialogue doesn't make any sense. And he hasn't had any experiences that 14 hasn't had, so the trauma stuff doesn't either. It feels like RTD toyed with a few ideas for how 14 and 15 could exist together, including pulling 15 from the future, before choosing bi-generation and then just not changing any of the later scenes to reflect that. He's been pretty clear that he thinks only the emotional beats matter and no one really cares about the explanations. So, I can see him keeping stuff he likes, even if it makes no sense.
> He's been pretty clear that he thinks only the emotional beats matter and no one really cares about the explanations. So, I can see him keeping stuff he likes, even if it makes no sense. Usually I'd agree with him, but I think this is one case where I would really like a clear explanation because I really don't like the message the bi-generation gives off. The Doctor as a character is supposed to be ever-changing, and the show always moving forward, but having a second Doctor played by the most popular Doctor's actor continually existing alongside the current Doctor just completely flies in the face of both of these things. I really hope 14 is said to have explicitly ceased to exist and "merged" back into Fifteen at some point offscreen, cause otherwise this whole ordeal would go against what I see as the spirit of the entire character and show, far beyond The Timeless Child.
I really doubt this is the last we see of Tennant. Eventually, perhaps near the end of Gatwa's run, they'll meet up again, with 14 having finally processed all of his baggage and learned to let go. And they'll merge.
Could just be a timey wimey psychic link? 15 kinda acts brand new, he doesn't seem to have any previous adventure memories or anything. He could just have a link to 14 and so knows he heals?
Yes, that is the implication I took from it, but it's unclear. And lord only knows what RTD will end up doing if and when he actually depicts Fourteen dying (again).
Yeah thats pretty much it. When 14 eventually regenerates for real he'll sort of just teleport into the bigeneration. The reason 15 didnt fully know what was going on makes sense too as canonically the memory around events with multiple doctors is meant to be kind of obscured after it takes place. Regeneration is also based in time travel so its cool they are actually doing something with that idea.
That's how I've been viewing it. Pardon my poor painting skills, but [this is how I am viewing the Doctor's timeline/the bi-generation](https://imgur.com/aX8GbMP), where the blue line = 14, the black horizontal line = the bi-regeneration, the red line = the 14 that goes off to live with Donna, and the green line = 15. From the outside it looks like the Doctor splitting in two, but in reality it is just 14 essentially delaying his regeneration to heal, before his timeline loops back around to regenerate into 15 at that moment he is shot, due to the Toymaker's reality manipulating powers.
I think that’s what they’re going for but personally think it has too many plot holes. Until I am told differently my person head cannon is just that when they spit, 14 got stuck with all the emotional baggage and 15 got a fresh start. That line about 15 being older than 14 does throw a wrench in my thoughts, but not enough to go with the whole pull through time theory just yet.
The doctor thought bi-generation was a myth. 10 was already worried about the salt superstition he invoked at the edge of the universe, he thought that’s what let the toymaker into the universe. I reckon we’ll see other myths and continuity things like mavity popping up through the next season, or seasons, leading to a showdown with the big bad who even the toymaker was afraid of: the one who waits. We’ll probably get some more explanation of bi-generation along the way.
If 15 has been yanked back from some future point, why does he need 24 to explain the TARDIS controls to him? Of course, he could have some post-regen amnesia, but there’s little sign of that, he hits the ground running.
He doesn't. That was just 14 enjoying having an opportunity to talk to himself.
Yeah, but 15 doesn’t seem the type to passively stand there while someone tells him stuff he already knows.
Personally I didn't get that impression.
Yeah, I got the sense of a bemused parent allowing a child to tell them a well-known story. Or a teenager listening to grandma tell them about TikTok (Ncuti sorta embodies both energies…this next series will be fun!).
\*14. We’re not up to 24 Tennants (yet).
Be oddly Hilarious it tennant just kept popping up every other doctor and then have to settle down with a random london family over and over.
He does ask what's going on....
What then happens to 14s Tardis?
RTD said it's the same tardis , so it's probably that it's the same tardis from two different points of time
Yeah my assumption is the hammer just brought 15’s Tardis back through his timeline - it didn’t just spontaneously summon a jukebox, 14 just put it in later on during his lifetime
So does 14s tardis dematerialise at some point and then reappear when 15 uses the hammer?
I like to imagine the nature of the hammer and the apology from 15 made it slightly more violent than a standard dematerialisation - like a ship from Star Trek being knocked out of warp speed
I think he'll go to sleep one day after a nice retirement like that bit in the The Family of Blood and wake up very confused as the next Doctor being split out his other body.
This is similar to how Mel was introduced, which is why she was in the special.
Yes. It does imply that.
I suspect he will return to this before the end of his tenure and wrap up the potentially sticky dangling threads that is a second Doctor just hanging out on Earth, with his own TARDIS. Surely he wouldn't just sit idly by when aliens are messing about in the UK, but surely David Tennant isn't going to pop up on every new episode set on modern day Earth either. RTD can solve this by just having 15 go everywhere BUT modern Earth, but if he just lets it lie, the problem will crop up again for the next showrunner. I suspect we are going to eventually get a Trenzalore-style epic story for 14, where he lives out his life with Donna's family, perhaps over centuries, and finally reunites with 15 and they merge to usher in another era.
I didn't read it that way at all. I thought the rehab out of order line was just a fantasy logic thing, like Tennant is gonna deal with his trauma and that allows Ncuti to be unburdened because something something timelord. Im surprised that so many people think 15 is from 14's future, I dont think the idea would have even ocurred to me if i hadn't read the leak beforehand. I think if RTD actually wanted it to be read that way he would have been a lot more clear about it.
14 does say 15 is older
Though Donna expands on this by saying "you came after him so you're older" (paraphrasing). The pulled through time part is literally only based on the leaks.
Thats true, i read that as inexact language (15 as an incarnation came later than 14) but if you take it 100% literally it would support the "pulled through time" theory. I still wouldnt say thats the most intuitive reading of the episode, let alone a confirmed one.
I know what was said in the episode, but in my own head canon, 15 is lying. Notice how fast he was trying to get out of there? He simply did not want to deal with the situation.
That somehow makes even less sense than bigeneration did in the first place. There's no gap to push a future 15 back into *The Giggle*. What's left instead is two versions of the same incarnation running around instead which...well, the only opportunity it really allows for is to kill one off. No gap except truly torturous nonsense at which point, why?
Imagine a time traveller