Doctor Who: One Detail in Ten’s Swansong That Ruined His Regeneration
Each Doctor’s regeneration breaks our hearts to pieces, but that’s just how Doctor Who is.
The Tenth Doctor’s goodbye was definitely one of the saddest in the New Who era. David Tennant’s incarnation was many fans’ favorite, and people were simply not ready to bid him farewell, even after enjoying his performance for five years.
The End of Time two-parter, the Tenth Doctor’s swansong, was one of the most bittersweet episodes on the show. The Doctor knew that his time was coming to an end, but he was trying to delay his regeneration for as long as possible.
He managed to survive the Timelords’ return and another one of the Master’s evil plans… only to get killed by Donna’s grandfather, Wilfred Mott. Well, not exactly.
When everything was settled, and the Master, the Timelords, and Gallifrey disappeared back into the time lock, the Doctor finally breathed out, thinking that he had done it again – escaped death (regeneration), that is.
Overjoyed, he suddenly heard four knocks (as it was foreshadowed) and saw Wilfred inside the control room of the Vinvocci device. The Doctor sadly learned that the room was about to become deadly due to radiation, so he made a sacrifice and freed Wilfred by stepping into the other room himself.
Once the Doctor absorbed the radiation, he slowly started to regenerate. All this would be very heartbreaking and all if it weren’t for one tiny detail – the room in question wasn’t airtight at all.
In the scene where the Doctor replaced Wilfred in the control room, viewers could easily spot the cracks between the glass, so how did radiation not flood the building or even the city? It must have been a magic glass or something.
We love the Tenth Doctor’s final (at the time) episode as much as the next guy, but this oversight just seems sloppy. Come on, if his regeneration was meant to be caused by radiation, the least they could’ve done was build a room that looked airtight to the naked eye and didn’t have spaces between the glass.
This Doctor Who continuity error was a total buzzkill and ruined the atmosphere a bit.