The Doctor’s uncanny ability to change his whole appearance and personality has revitalised Doctor Who on a regular basis over the past five decades.
Before 2005, regeneration looked utterly different each time, with the director of the day putting their own spin on the change.
Some used practical effects and others opted for video imagery when it became available.
Over the past decade the regeneration process has had a fairly consistent look, but here are some of our favourite Time Lord transformations…
‘The Caves of Androzani’ (Fifth Doctor to Sixth Doctor)
By giving Peri the last of the life saving antidote to Spetrox Toxaemia, the Fifth Doctor sealed his own fate. He met his end on the floor of the TARDIS console room in a swirling technicolor nightmare of floating faces, apparently inspired by the crescendo ending of The Beatles ‘A Day in the Life’, where his companions urging him to live and the Master taunted him.
With the whole process done by visual effect for the first time, it sets the benchmark as the craziest regeneration ever.
‘Doctor Who: The Movie’ (Seventh Doctor to Eighth Doctor)
After dying on the operating table, the Seventh Doctor was sent to the hospital morgue and it was in a cold store that his regeneration took place. With crackles of blue electricity and a physically uncomfortable transformation, involving plenty of gurning from the rubber faced Sylvester McCoy, the beauty of the scene is how the transformation is contrasted with movie Frankenstein, watched on television by morgue attendant Pete at the time.
Of course, it all gets needlessly messianic after that, with a resurrected Doctor wandering though an abandoned ward, but it looks stunning.
‘The Parting of the Ways’ (Ninth Doctor to Tenth Doctor)
The Ninth Doctor burned brightly, if briefly, and gave his life to save Rose Tyler by absorbing the power of the Time Vortex. The resultant regeneration set the mould for those to follow as rather than a static transformation on the floor; Nine erupted in a volcano of light.
‘Logopolis’ (Fourth Doctor to Fifth Doctor)
After a fall off an extremely high radio telescope, foiling a plot of the Master to hold the universe to ransom, we discover the Watcher was the Doctor after all – or rather that the Time Lord had been aided by a projection of his future incarnation (or something).
Melding through what looks like an uncooked pastry cocoon, the Fourth Doctor mergers with this spectral projection and gives way to the Fifth. Thus ended Tom Baker’s seven year reign.
‘Utopia’ (‘Professor Yana’ to The Master)
Found at the end of human history and hidden by a chameleon arch, the Master was blissfully unaware of his dastardly potential while disguised as the kindly Professor Yana (Sir Derek Jacobi). Hidden, that is, until Martha Jones enquired about his pocket watch.
With the evil Time Lord unleashed and suffering a fatal wound, he forces himself through an agonising transformation, in an angry, violent parody of the Doctor’s last regeneration. The result? John Simm’s utterly unhinged Master, aka Mr Saxon.
Which regeneration scene is your favourite? Let us know below…