If the writers do want to expand his regenerations, I think the easiest way would be to say that River gave him hers. We know she "used" all of the remaining regenerations, but have no way of knowing exactly how that effected the Doctor's regenerative process. All we know is that he got healed from the lip-poison.

"We have rules everywhere so that things don't get royally fucked up. Why would a time machine (which has the most potential for fuck-uping) be any different?"

I'm not saying SOME rules don't make sense SOMETIMES for SOME characters...

But even if it means genocides and such, you can't bend the rules a little?

And from the flip side...well, I suppose the bad guys probably have attacked in the past, so clearly they can...so their not going terminator on the Doctor's mother--whoever she is--just seems like a glarlingly-huge plot point to never be adressed or explored in 50 years for a time travel show.



Maybe there are some reasons for the rules, but I dunno, a lot of them just seem too convenient and there not out of logic, but to duct-tape the story's logical frame together, so no one can ask those obvious questions.

I guess if you watch a show like that you accept those sort of conventions, but I dunno, for me, it just bugs me when it seems half the time I can think of an easier or better solution using that time machine or other Doctor Who beings...it's like the show's telling me "Yes, we COULD acknowledge this other, harder plot point...but we won't, just go with it, alright?"

That's why I say it seems to me more like a comedy or something to watch in a fun mood and not care about that sort of thing, at least for me.

It's like watching 007. Just put your brain under your seat and enjoy the ride.

The time travel thing is explained faily poorly by the show which has said many times in many differing variations it's all bloody complicated and only a genious like the Doctor has a hope of understanding it. Quite why it is possible to get upset by this and not by the sonic screwdriver, which is essentially a magic wand that can do anything to anything except on the occasions that a bit of tension is called for, is beyond me.

Lets face it, it's damned near impossible to write sci-fi without gaping plot holes because reality is rather dull and simple without much room for heroism. Take an alien invasion of earth, for example:

The alien spaceship shows up with a crew of two (let's call them something evil and alien like Tettleton and Chewie) and demonstrates it can wipe out modern civalisation as we know it simply by aiming large rocks at our major cities and letting the build up of kinetic energy as they fall do the rest. As we have no technology that can even come close to fighting back we are forced to surrender and do what they wish. The end.

This makes for a shite film. As such pretty much every sci-fi show ever made contains huge plot flaws for the sake of making life interesting.

And think about this... Just becuas e*you* thought to do something, doesn't mean the writers (who are, in essence, the real life embodiment of the characters) thought to try that. I am much more forgiving of things I thought to try that the characters didn't than I am forced situations like the aforementioned Signs. M. Night wanted to use the baseball bat and mom's last words and the kids allergies and the aliens issues with water so heintentionally had Mel and family leave the axe downstairs. that is forced Deus Ex, not just an oversite. It's as bad as the worst slasher flicks where the girl in babydoll tee and panties hears a noise in the basement while the lights are out so she goes down to investigate. It's forced and not natural.

But Doctor Who is at least natural in that the writers may not have thought of your solution to the problem, but they don't artificially create the problem by having the characters be total fuckups. They just choose to use the "fixed points in time" and "can't cross his own timestream" to keep the solution from being too easy. They have stablished a set of rules for the universe that are somewhat flexible, but only with resulting parallel timestreams.

Oh, and River is almost as hot as Amy, for us old geezers at least. But neither are Rose, the Doctor's first true love.

For the best use of a time machine to solve problems after the fact, see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I love when they make themselves remember to do things so they can get out of situations. they just decide they have to remember to do things like steal Ted's dad's keys and hide them in the bushes where they need them to be at that moment. It was like, think of it and it happens because they'd go back in time later and rig it to happen when they need it to.

The paradox possibilities in that movie are so much fun. Especially the two scenes where they meet themselves in the future/past. The second time around they go "Wow! That made so much more sense this time!". It may have been "low brow" humor, but I loved it. To bad Bogus Journey wasn't as good.

Another great time travel movie is The Final Countdown...

SPOILER ALERT!

In the movie, a reporter gets sent on the Enterprise (the carrier) to write a story for whatever reason and, in the end, he is instrumental in two people hooking up, one from the present and one from 1941, and they both wind up staying in 41. At the end of the movie, we discover it is them who sent the reporter on the journey to begin with. It presents that wonderful paradox and provides a serious dilema with the debate of"Should a war changer like a modern day aircraft carrier with jet fighters intervene if it can at Pearl?" And the answer the captain came up with was "Yes" but then they got pulled back to their own time before he could. Awesome movie.

I really don't have the time to read this all but I want to take a shot at obi's question anyways. The reason they can't kill the doctor as a baby is because he fought in the time war. The time war is time-locked so no one can travel in or out of it and it's outcome cannot change. So, even if the doctor were to die before fighting the war, he would have to be alive both before and after the war. Therefore, the doctor cannot be killed as a baby.
About the ultimate redo button, I really don't know why he can't except for the possible reasons of some fixed points in time or to avoid messing up some sort of twisted causality.
Finally, regarding the fixed point in time and the doctor cheating death, a fixed point cannot be moved or edited. So, when River attempts to edit it, time begins to collapse. However, all the doctor knows about April 22, 2011 at 5:02 PM is that he has seen from the tesellecta's archives that an astronaut (which he realizes is River) shoots his body. He also knows that he has to be there. So, he realizes that he can go there inside the tesellecta and the conditions are satisfied. What appears to have happened remains unchanged and the doctor was at the place he needed to be. Also, if the doctor were to actually die there, he wouldn't be able to go to the fields of Trenzalore (where the "fall of the eleventh" might even refer to him, the eleventh doctor) and if he never went to the fields of Trenzalore, no one would want to kill him.
Just a final note: The doctor realizes that while he could avoid going to lake Silencio by continuous time travel for the rest of his days, he also knows that the fixed point has to happen so he must go there, in his current incarnation, anyways.

Also, the doctor can control the Tardis to an extent but it's also a living creature and says in The Doctor's Wife that it takes him where he needs to go, not where he wants to go.

@obi

As a Time Lord, the Doctor is very old and has likely seen a lot of shit. Perhaps he just isn't too moved by a genocide.

Also, if you're familiar with the war between the Daleks and Time Lords, you'll realize the Time Lords were some tough mother fuckers. Even if the Doctor's enemies had access to time travel, it may be impossible to assassinate him on Gallifrey.

IIRC - Didn't the Time Lords have Gallifrey in some kind of temporal field where one couldn't just come and go as they pleased? They had to be a Time Lord to enter or at least travelling with one. And considering the Doctor was once the President of Gallifrey...

Found it... From Wikipedia:

The planet is protected from physical attack by the impenetrable barrier called the quantum force field, named presumably after the Eye of Harmony, and from teleportation incursions by the transduction barrier - which can be reinforced to repel most levels of this type of technological attack. This prevents all outsiders (with hostile intent, or otherwise) from approaching the planet and allows the Time Lords to maintain their status of absolute neutrality. It also lets them observe the actions of the rest of the Universe without actually taking part in its affairs. These security barriers were breached on occasion by the Sontarans, by manipulating the more technological Vardans, who suborned the Doctor into sabotaging both of these from within (The Invasion of Time, 1978).

Well, there you go. That answers that.

Also, Draug, you may be the only person on this site that has fewer points than dollars donated : )

"Oh, and River is almost as hot as Amy, for us old geezers at least. But neither are Rose, the Doctor's first true love."
She wasn't even close to his first true love. The Doctor has even been married before. Oh, and River is far hotter than Amy IMHO, but then Sarah Jane beat them both hands down (and always has). The Doctor's problem is the same as the one that Connor MacLeod had in Highlander and Lazarus Long had in "The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" - he's effectively immortal and any mortal woman he falls for will grow old and die [as Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane) sadly did]. Watching that happen to someone you love has gotta hurt.

@abge - Actually, I have a lot of points, they are just tied up in games. I believe in maximizing my earnings potential.

@Speaker - I was more referring to the new series as far as his loves went. As far as married, Tom Baker married Lala Ward in real life but the Doctor wasn't married to Romana. Who else did he marry? And for a moment I thought you meant Sarah Jane had died in the series, then I realized you were referring to the somewhat recent passing of Elizabeth Sladen.

And as far as classic hotties go, Nissa was more my style, and Tegan was pretty damn hot too. Adric was one lucky dude, or would have been if they didn't view him as a boy. Peri was also hot, but a little too annoying for me.

And for some real head turning mix of reality and scifi. David Tennant is engaged to Georgia Moffett, real life daughter of the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, and she also played Jenny, the Doctor's "daughter" in "The Doctor's Daughter". Wow. Talk about incestuous relationships. hehehe

@abgemacht:

Well, he's always concerned about the two or three fleshy humans he's palling around with...and seems to care about the extras he meets...

I'd think if he'll still deign to care about a few humans' suffering, he'd care about a mass amount of them being slaughtered.

And I dunno the Time Lords

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk&noredirect=1

Now you know the Time Lords. :-)

SPOILER:
http://tinyurl.com/3gjep2o

@Draugnar: The Doctor's first "companion" was his Granddaughter - implying a marriage in his past. In "Blink" he said he was "very bad a weddings, especially my own". He told an Ood<sp> that he'd married Elisabeth I.

On Hotties: Jo Grant, and Sarah Jane were particularly hot. Tegan and Peri not so much. YMMV.

I thought you meant on screen. I knew about those other marriages, although there is some suggestion that he was kidding about Elizabeth I.

It's weird. For me, the Doctor's female companions are binary - either total hotties or so irritating that they set my teeth on edge.
Hotties: Jo Grant, Sarah Jane, Romana I, Leela, Rose, Martha, Amy, River
Kryptonite: Liz Shaw, Romana II, Nyssa, Tegan, the Bonnie Langford character, Peri, Ace

I suppose Donna's an interesting case that falls somewhere in the middle - not a hottie but an interesting enough character not to be annoying. One conclusion I can draw from my list is that the casting directors for the new series are on my wavelength!

Yeah, Donna is interesting in that regards. When she first appeared, she annoyed me to no end, but she grew on me with her "Oy! You!" abrasive ways of keeping the Doctor in line. In the end, she is one of my favorite characters and seemed like a right a proper best friend for the Doctor. No potential love interest, just an equal and a moral compass for him.