Resurrection and Regeneration

In the spirit of the theme of this unit, I’m going to talk largely (and I mean very, very largely) about Doctor Who. The Doctor is an alien with two hearts who originates from the planet Gallifrey. He comes from a race of aliens called the Time Lords, of which he is the very last. The Doctor, whose real name we do not know, travels around in a blue box, which looks like a police call box from 1950’s ish England, called a TARDIS. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to travel through time and space, trying to correct intergalactic wrong-doings and save the world more times than we can count. So in order to talk about regeneration I’m going to give you a fairly basic yet descriptive depiction of what Doctor Who is really all about.

The word TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. This thing, the TARDIS, is really a sentient time travel device, in which the Doctor can move throughout different times and dimensions in space. There are many rules about moving through these times and dimensions in space, which complicate the story line and make things complicated for the characters within them. Anyways, as the Doctor travels through time and space, he meets many people, some of which who become is companions in this space travel. Companions come and go, yet The Doctor remains the same . . . Sort of.

See there are 12 Doctors, but really only one doctor. They are all one and the same, but all different. It’s the same Time Lord in many different shells. The life cycle of a Time Lord is such that he must go through multiple incarnations. This only occurs when the Time Lord suffers and injury that would be fatal for any other species. When The Doctor suffers such an injury he must regenerate, at which point he takes on a new face and new-ish personality. Hence why there have been 12 (well technically 13 but that’s complicated) Doctors. Each time The Doctor regenerates the inside of the TARDIS does too, so it transforms just as he does in order to suit the newest Doctor. Additionally, The Doctor carries around this little tool called a sonic screwdriver. This tool is kind of his failsafe. It allows The Doctor to fix and solve things. The sonic regenerates with The Doctor as well. So each Doctor has a sonic screwdriver that is specific to his regeneration of himself. So my biggest experience with resurrection is in the regeneration of The Doctor throughout Doctor Who.

For me, the hardest part with this is that I get attached to characters far too easily. I have a hard time dealing with the regeneration of The Doctor, especially after I’ve developed an attachment to that Doctor. The first regeneration that I’d witnessed, from the ninth Doctor to the tenth Doctor, was a little odd to me at first. It had been my first introduction to the idea that the character dies but only to come back anew, and it was a little disorienting. The regeneration of the tenth Doctor to the eleventh Doctor, was painful—devastatingly painful.

Like I said, I get attached. Ten is unequivocally and irrevocably my favorite Doctor. So his regeneration was less like a rebirth and recreation of the character, and more like a complete and utter death of everything I loved about Doctor Who. And it took me a long time to start enjoying the eleventh Doctor. The transition felt sudden and abrasive. That might have something to do with the fact that I was binge watching the entire series on Netflix, and didn’t get the between seasons break that most watchers would get. So I went from the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing “death” of my favorite Doctor (the devastatingly gorgeous David Tennant) to this new, goofy, weird eleventh doctor who was cheery and ready to go and save the world. Eventually, I grew to love eleven too, in his own right. And then they regenerated him too! Now we have twelve, and I still haven’t grown to like him. I’ve watched a fair bit of this first season with Capaldi as The Doctor and he has yet to grow on me. All of this makes me terrified that this is the Doctor’s last regeneration. I mean he is a Time Lord after all, and there are 12 marks on a clock, and I fear that the twelfth Doctor is the final Doctor, and that this final Time Lord is upon his final hour. That’s terrifying mostly because I don’t want Doctor Who to end!

And on that same note, the show as it stands now is a resurrection in and of itself. The show originally started in 1963 and ran for 20 years. Then it took about a 20 year hiatus before making its reappearance to cable TV. With this, not only did the eighth Doctor regenerate to launch the ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston) but it regenerated a show that had been a BBC Classic and brought it back to life for the enjoyment of another generation. Within the show, not only do we see the resurrection of the Doctor, but we also see multiple different foes make their reappearances on the regular. Even foes that started out in Classic Who have started appearing in New Who, and villains that began in early New Who have made reappearances later on in New Who—the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ood, The Master (another Time Lord! GASP!), the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Weeping Angels, the Silence, the Silurians, the list goes on. The show is a resurrection on its own, and is full of resurrections.

In the same way that Doctor Who is full of resurrections, so is the show Supernatural. I know I’ve talked about this show before, but I can’t help but relate all of the things that I love back to each other. So in Supernatural, there are resurrections as well. The two main characters have died and made their way back to life more times than I think I can count. The two lovely Winchester brothers simply won’t die (not that I would ever want them to!) For example, Sam died in season two, and Dean made a deal with a demon in order to save Sam. In season nine, Dean died bearing the Mark of Cain (long story, don’t ask) and the Mark brought him back to life. Every time the boys have made it up to Heaven, or down Hell, or even into Purgatory they somehow make their way back to the world of the living.

Not only do our two main heroes come back to life every time they are stripped of it, there are resurrections of different types of villains and other characters throughout the show. You think the boys have ultimately defeated a villain, only to see that darn thing come back to seasons later. There are plenty of recurring villain species, as well, which could be looked at as a resurrection. Take, for example, the character Bobby. He is Sam and Dean’s adoptive father, for all intents and purposes, and he dies sometime in season 7 (I think) and the next thing you know he comes back as a ghost and continues on as a character in the show for a while. It’s as if you've accepted the loss of a character only to find them back again. Much like Doctor Who, in Supernatural we are often introduced to a minor character for one episode. That character might play a large role within the episode, but overall they really aren’t a big deal and you pretty much forget about them. Then, a few seasons down the road, that character resurfaces and you learn that they are actually a wayyyy bigger deal than you ever would have anticipated from just that one episode. So the show has a way of resurrecting a character’s story line and bringing new life to them.

I think the greatest part of these shows is not the reintroduction and resurrection of characters. The real beauty of these shows is the consistent resurrection of a few of the same themes. Both of these shows speak heavily of love, loss, bravery, friendship, loneliness, being human and being less than human and occasionally being a bit more than human. These shows very regularly resurrect these themes. Sometimes they stray away from them, or even embed them so deeply that a viewer doesn’t notice them, but at the end of the day these are the things that always prevail in these shows. I find it utterly beautiful that these shows can always, always come back to these themes and strike people in a totally life changing way. And no matter how many times I fall away from these shows, I always come back to them and resurrect my love for them, and that in and of itself is a beautiful resurrection.