Twenty years ago this week, the first season of the revived era of A doctor who ended with “the separation of the roads”, as well as the tenor of Christopher Eccleston’s ninth physician. Ready to sacrifice everything to Stop the Daleksthe final moments of the ninth doctor remain an essential moment in A doctor who History. It was the first time in decades since then A doctor who had asked for his audience to rely on the magic of the definition of the series for survival and re-invention: the Magic of Regeneration itself.
Eccleston’s exit may have been born Behind the scenes strifebut giving the revived series a need to introduce this fundamental aspect of A doctor who To its new public so soon, it would go on to form all regeneration after it for the next 20 years. Certainly, they became more explosive, but that bright, violent flash of conical streams of orange light had been with the series somehow since the ninth doctor offered one last farewell.
What remains so interesting, and so moving, about the regeneration of the ninth doctor beyond the themed pattern it set up for the series is as quiet it is. Violence has become an indelible part of the modern A doctor who Regeneration: console rooms are shattered and beaten; The doctors themselves are bored with sudden, debilitating agony; The release of energy is less about the rejuvenating appearance and more about this sunny, overwhelming strength. Regenerations are Big. They are dramatic. They are sometimes indulgently overcrowded, a possibility for the main star of the show to have one last precipitation, one last emotional speech or one final surprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA3NM9JHKN0
The ninth doctor is anything but big. It has to balance a delicate line, both explaining to Rose and the audience just as exactly what happens, but also metatically acts as this end point on the story of who is the ninth doctor. For a man so hated by the spectrum of the Last Big Time -WarThat his final moments are quiet, contemplative and peaceful is a wonderful code. An incarnation of the doctor who was born in anger and shame for what he had to do in battle is given peace, a moment to think and acknowledge that his turn in this life was good and valuable, both to the doctor and to the people he left in his life with this face.
There is something fascinating to review the moment for this 20th anniversary – in a time where Eccleston’s stage partner in Billie Piper now stood where he once was, the doctor’s face (or something that remains unseen), as A doctor who comes in uncertain future. At that time, the series felt full of possibilities, even with concerns. Would regeneration work in 2005 did it have back in 1966? Would people accept a new face to their hero? Could the show continue, and thrive?
These questions remain here and now with the doctor’s latest transformation, albeit in a different tone. The question of regeneration itself is this moment; We have seen many, because, much greater, much stranger than Eccleston’s departure. But that nervous energy of what follows beyond that explosion of bright light still exists now.
It may be humbly that we can look back at those similar feelings from two decades ago, with the afternoon that yes, there was Something beyond that light: 20 more years of something. Maybe sometime will be more.
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