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From: The True Doctor <agamemnon@hello.to.NO_SPAM>
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Subject: Re: From the Archives .....
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 01:38:14 +0100
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On 20/04/2024 22:05, Blueshirt wrote:
> The True Doctor wrote:
> 
>> On 20/04/2024 14:15, The Last Doctor wrote:
>>>
>>> But wait - Aggie is saying that Deadly Assassin predates
>>> Nightmare of Eden therefore the 12 regeneration limit is
>>> absolute.
>>> But Brain of Morbius came before that, and on screen showed
>>> 11 faces of the Doctor prior to Tom Baker’s. Therefore using
>>> Aggie’s logic, Peter Davison
>>
>> No it doesn't. The faces other than Hartnell, Troughton, and
>> Pertwee were the faces of Morbius and that's what it says in
>> the novelization by Terrance Dicks who wrote the original
>> script.
>   
> Correct, that is what it says in the Target novel. Nobody has
> ever disputed that.
>   
>> Morbius is winning the game because his faces are on the
>> screen indicating that the more past regenerations you have
>> had the stronger your mind becomes in the game. Hinchcliffe
>> didn't write the story, it was Dicks.
> 
> Robert Holmes re-wrote the script as you well know and it was
> the intent of the Production team of that story that those were
> the faces of the Doctor. When you watched "The Brain of Morbius"
> as a child, that was the intent behind that scene. This is a

Nope. When I watched the story as a child the faces were presumed to be 
those of Morbius as he was winning.

> simple fact that has been mentioned many times over the years by
> members of the production team (whose faces they actually were)
> and it is easily researched.
> 

They were playing previous incarnations of Morbius. They knew full well 
there were no Doctor's before Hartnell and The Three Doctors. The only 
thing they might have been able to get away with would have been to 
suggest that there were different faces given to the Doctor by the Time 
Lords between Troughton and Pertwee while he was working on missions for 
the CIA. Most kids not being old enough would not have even recognised 
Troughton or Hartnell.

> Terrance Dicks - like some fans - did not like the idea of
> pre-Hartnell Doctors, so revised it in his novelisation. So yes,
> in the Target novel they are the faces of Morbius.
> 

Dicks wrote the original story. He never intended them to be the faces 
of the Doctor. He got really pissed off at the changes that were made to 
it and wouldn't have his name associated with it on screen.

> There has been plenty of interviews with Uncle Terrance over the
> years where he explained why he changed it. But him not liking

He changed it back to the way he originally wrote it.

> the idea of pre-Hartnell Doctors is the short version! He was
> aware of the original intent behind that scene in the episode
> though and has often talked about it.
>   

The original intent was to show the face of the Doctor when he was 
winning and that of Morbius when he was winning.

>>> But of course the idea that there had been earlier Doctors
>>> didn’t originate with Morbius.
>>
>> It didn't originate anywhere because The Tenth Planet is the
>> only Hartnell episode that establishes the existence of
>> regenerations (bodily renewals) and Hartnell states there and
>> then that he's never done it before.
> 
> Not correct. Clearly the idea originated or it wouldn't have
> been part of the original "The Power of the Daleks" script.
> However, the idea wasn't followed through with.

No. The idea was to de-age the Doctor and pretend that Troughton was a 
younger version of Hartnell. That's why the chose an actor of a similar 
height and look, but younger. The when Troughton quit they realized they 
couldn't make the Doctor younger still using the same idea of bodily 
renewals so they had the Time Lords change his fact to the of Pertwee 
instead and therefore they could also use a taller actor. Regeneration 
was never established until Tom Baker came along, and it was the same 
principle as Hartnell to Pertwee, actor of similar height and both must 
have curly hair, and on top of that the Doctor had to learn some sort of 
meditation process to cause the regeneration to happen, and it was still 
bodily renewal. Only when they got to Romana II did they show that a 
Time Lord could actually regenerate into someone who looked dissimilar 
and who was of a different height or species even.

>   
>> So Troughton opens a draw and looks a Hartnell's past
>> possessions or keepsakes. This does not infer past renewals.
>> Earring and bracelet in the 1960s inferred pirate. In some
>> past adventure or other Hartnell had to dress up as a pirate.
> 
> The [second Doctor] line about a previous "renewal" was cut from
> the draft script following a discussion among the production
> team. 

So they realized it would contradict what Hartnell said in The Tenth Planet.

 >
At a guess it was only in the script as a way to explain
> to the children of 1967 that this sort of thing ("renewal") had
> happened before so don't worry the Doctor isn't dead, this

It was already explained will enough by Hartnell. There was never any 
intention for the Doctor to have different appearances. Troughton was 
supposed to be a younger version of Hartnell. Tom Baker was supposed to 
be a younger version of Jon Pertwee. Only after Romana II did they 
decide the Doctor or Time Lords in general could regenerate into 
different forms.

> happens all the time, sort of thing. Not because they actually
> wanted to expand the show with pre-Hartnell Doctors. But the
> idea was still there.

There was no such idea. The fact that the Time Lords had to intervene in 
The War Games to give the Doctor a choice of a new face implied that 
this was not possible through Renewal, which basically was a form of 
de-aging. Regeneration was not referred to until The Planet of the 
Spiders as far as I remember and did not imply anything different to 
Renewal, ie. de-aging until Romana II, since Lala Ward looked nothing 
like Mary Tamm. There was also some sort of requirement for some sort of 
ability of psychic projection if it was to be achieved for anything 
other than reversing old age but that idea was abandoned for Romana but 
brought back again with the Watcher and abandoned again straight after.

Bi-generation is out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon and cannot be accepted as 
being canon.

Doctor Who ended in 2017.

-- 
The True Doctor https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngrZwoS0n21IRcXpKO79Lw

"To be woke is to be uninformed which is exactly the opposite of what it 
stands for." -William Shatner