#I was originally going to add a “Comment from Amy” box but that would probably confuse most readers...

[fazedlight]

Supercorp Fanfic Bingo

I was thinking about tropes I like writing vs. tropes I like reading (which, there isn't 100% overlap!) and came up with this.

[doccywhomst]

oh. oh. hmm.

what if.... what if the Doctor is a species lifeboat?

let me explain in a long-winded but extremely thorough fashion. (please read everything before asking questions or leaving comments)

unlimited regenerations, all of them utterly unique, even discordant - as if they're completely different people. simultaneously, all of them are from the same species: two hearts, identical biology (sorry, Eight, but... for the purposes of this discussion, i'm gonna say you were 0% human, bud). the Doctor is the only surviving member of their people, from what we can tell, or at least the only one left in our universe. this adds up to one very specific, very disturbing concept.

think about it. what's the advantage of regeneration (dying and creating a whole new body), rather than just healing a wound? if regeneration energy can heal things like broken bones, amputated limbs, etc., then why go through the trouble of starting from scratch? the reason is obvious in the real world (changing actors), but we're canon-welding. we have to think outside the box.

let's look at Captain Jack. he received a huge blast of artron energy from the heart of the TARDIS when it was occupying Rose. what happened to him? he became a "fixed point," more or less - a definitive fact of the universe. if he died, he came back. if he became injured, he healed. if the Doctor were powered solely by artron energy, their experience would probably be far more similar to Captain Jack's. obviously, it isn't. something's different.

i know what you're saying. "but doccywhomst! there are other Time Lords! what about them? what about River??"

1) for this exercise, we're going to accept that the Doctor was the originator of the Time Lords. all regeneration abilities ultimately stem from the Doctor, so all of the Doctor's weirdness applies to them as well. we know that Time Lords can technically look like any species, but it's obviously very rare. interestingly, this theory might mean that the Time Lords are voluntary lifeboats, having incorporated regeneration into their biological make-up through looms or bioengineering. they've taken regenerations from the Doctor, thus reviving the Doctor's species within their own.

2) River is.... an outlier. she was exposed to the time vortex/time travel, not artron/regeneration energy, so her ability to regenerate is... interesting. nothing about exposure to the vortex or the untempered schism has ever been suggested to provide regeneration abilities. i guess we could say that the TARDIS did it? but then, what separates her from Captain Jack, or from Grace Holloway and Chang Lee, or any other character that the TARDIS intervened with??is it that she was conceived on the TARDIS? how would that even result in such a massive biological difference if living aboard the TARDIS has no effect? did the TARDIS fuck Amy? River wasn't even on the ship for that long as a fetus, she was with "real Amy" and Madame Kovarian. what a mess. we're just going to set her down on this pedestal and, uh, not look at her. she's a one-off. sorry, River.

so, we've arrived at web of threads.

the Doctor regenerates.

it's due to an energy that's slightly different from artron energy, or else Captain Jack could likely also regenerate.

regeneration isn't from exposure to the time vortex, or the untempered schism, but instead is due to something inherent about the Doctor's physical make-up.

they were the first individual in the universe to regenerate, as far as we know.

all of the Doctor's incarnations are from the same species.

all of them are incredibly and unusually different from one another when compared to the collective incarnations of other Time Lords.

the Doctor is the only one of their kind.

here's the center of the web: the Doctor is a species lifeboat.

species lifeboat (n.): a term i just came up with that describes one of two things.

an entire species, or a substantial population of that species, piles into one body like a family into a soccer mom van. this concept is seen in an episode of Stargate SG-1 titled "Lifeboat". it's fascinating and reminiscent of The Eleven.

a single member of a species is chosen to survive, and possibly prevent, a catastrophe. to ensure their survival, they're equipped with the best that the species has to offer. in this case, it would be regeneration energy, a.k.a. unlimited lives. the Doctor is perpetually on creative mode.

let's explore.

the Doctor, as the Timeless Child, is found at the base of this portal.

if the Doctor was sent through the portal from another universe, it could've been a survival attempt through both of the "species lifeboat" methods. maybe the Child contained many members of their species, and in order to protect them, some of that sweet, sweet regeneration energy was sprinkled in.

if the species left through the portal, the Doctor could've been left behind as a failsafe. what if the portal goes somewhere bad? what if they die? it seems like a good idea to leave behind a god-like, indestructible juggernaut, just in case. maybe put a lot of the surviving species members inside the juggernaut so that they could start over on that planet, perhaps through cloning or looming. nothing could possibly go wrong. little did they know, Tecteun was in the market for some eternal life.

there are just so many possibilities, but this makes sense to me. if artron energy can make Captain Jack, then why isn't the Doctor just... Captain Jack? why change bodies and personalities? why die and come back as someone else? it seems very cumbersome, like it's an accident - or, perhaps, the best that could be done in a survival situation.

maybe the Doctor was sent to explore and research our universe. maybe they were sent to escape a disaster. maybe they were left behind as a failsafe. ultimately, i think that the Doctor is many separate people manifesting through the same energy, and since they're all from the same species, it would make complete sense for them to be a conglomerate of distinct individuals.