Remember David Tennant’s Doctor? That happy-go-lucky guy, always running down corridors and getting into scrapes?


Yes, he had his moods…

…but he would never, say, lose his temper and declare himself the ultimate master of time and space.

Hmm.

The Doctor’s declaration that he is the the ‘Time Lord Victorious’ in The Waters of Mars isn’t exactly out of character, but it was certainly an extreme swing.

Now Reddit user Lorix_In_Oz might have an explanation, and it’s all to do with that strange moment in the series 4 finale, when the Doctor manages to heal himself after a fatal laser blast from a Dalek.

The Doctor somehow avoided a full-scale regeneration by ‘siphoning’ off the energy into his nearby detached hand.

This confused fans for many years, but it was later made clear when Matt Smith regenerated into Peter Capaldi that this still ‘counted’ as a full regeneration. As the Doctor says, he ‘regenerated into the same face.’

[Side Note: Gosh this can be a strange show, can’t it?]

What if, Lorix_In_Oz posits, this wasn’t a perfect regeneration? What if something…changed?

We all know the Doctor doesn’t really have much control over his transformation so it is possible that something like a subtle personality shift have crept up on him? Was he more predisposed to becoming the Time Lord Victorious as a result of it?

It’s a surprisingly convincing theory, and somehow gives that fake-out regeneration more ‘weight’.


But what do you think? Did this regeneration give the Doctor a darker side, or was the Time Lord Victorious just the result of a really, really bad day?