#the last person who did it was brutally murdered by cybermen“

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

my newest dr who theory is that the master didn't decide that it was time for yaz to die because she refused to accept him as the doctor, or because she stranded him on an asteroid. it was because he had a list of things that the doctor did with their companions and one of the items was "get them killed and cry about it".

[fangirlinglikeabus]

like off the top of my head and with the caveat it's been a While since i last saw most of these (though i have watched them all at least twice)

the twin dilemma - i mentioned this in the tags but obviously this has the World's Worst Regeneration. actually this post was partly brought about because i saw the clip post-him trying to murder peri where he tells her 'i have an inbuilt resistance to any form of violence' but then realises that she's genuinely terrified of him - that whatever the spectrox poisoning did, it's altered him far more than simple death.

attack of the cybermen - idk man it's the cybermen, lytton almost gets converted.

vengeance on varos - peri almost gets turned into a bird and while this is apparently an expression of her desire to fly away, the doctor does have to bring her back to herself by telling her 'i am the doctor and you are peri', as though the transformation put her in danger of losing that.

the mark of the rani - one of the goofier examples cuz a man gets turned into a sentient tree (whose human consciousness does apparently still manifest itself enough to save peri!) but on the flipside we've got the men who remain human but whose personality is altered by the rani stealing a chemical from their brains.

the two doctors - this is doctor who's Race Science Is Real episode and i therefore cannot in good conscience defend the whole Mess that is the androgums and the argument that they're inherently brutal and quote unquote 'reforming them' both requires medical intervention and is doomed to fail. however i do think a more interesting version of this would present dastari's experiment as wrong not because it won't work and invites a monster among 'civilized people' but because he's imposing his own ideas of superiority onto someone else, altering her body in the name of it, and thus disconnecting her from the rest of her people. though admittedly i don't think that would solve the problems innate to chessene's conception as a character. oh yeah, and the second doctor ALSO gets his body modified which transforms his personality in this one.

timelash - okay to be fair the borad did that to himself. but he wants to transform peri into his mate! men being gross to and objectifying peri is its own form of bodily violation, besides the whole unwanted mutation thing, but that might be a topic for another day.

revelation of the daleks - humans being transformed into daleks! it's kinda wild to me that Noted Cybermen Enjoyer eric saward should leave his 'isn't it horrible to be forcibly converted into a monster intolerant of those different from itself while also losing your sense of your own humanity' plot for this instead, though i suppose with the daleks you've got the added element of 'they'd HATE to be reliant on human dna'. CANNOT remember if that's at all brought up here.

mindwarp - philip martin's obviously big into this whole theme cos it crops up in creed of the kromon as well. anyway this is the big one, we've got a mutated guy, we've got peri being forcibly turned into a vessel for another person's brain - and it also serves as something of a callback to the twin dilemma, with peri once more dealing with an unpredictable and hostile doctor while she's isolated and out of her depth.

terror of the vervoids - comparatively tame but we do get a woman who's mutating into a plant thing, to her own horror. what with the tree mines of mark of the rani as well, this seems to be a Thing for the bakers.

the ultimate foe - this is a major stretch but like...the valeyard? all that's evil in the doctor, facing him across a courtroom, looking to supplant the doctor's identity by stealing his remaining lives.

no i don't know what it All Means but i do kind of feel like i'm destined to post about it on my next proper classic who rewatch because it's certainly a recurring motif, and even if that just represents saward's interests (and thus what he was inclined to commission) rather than a deliberately worked out theme, there's still probably something to say about that

i think listening to peri and the piscon paradox has fully reactivated the 80s dr who brainrot part of my mind...anyway do you ever think about how many of the sixth doctor's tv stories involve someone undergoing a physical transformation imposed upon them by an outside force which fundamentally alters their identity in some way?