Thinking aloud with pictures...

[elisi]

Because we are watching one long, continuous story, and it's timey-wimey and told backwards, but also hugely dependent on what came before (i.e. Ten).

Let me show you what I mean (obvious point is obvious, but hey ho, that's not stopped me before):



The Impossible Astronaut (/this whole season) is literally the counterpoint to Waters of Mars. That is... on Mars the Doctor declared that The Laws of Time were his, and that he could do whatever he wanted and broke a Fixed Point.

In TIA he submits to The Laws of Time and - willingly - makes sure that the Fixed Point stays fixed, even though it means his own death.

Now the other thing is the Doctor's death. When Ten died you had to have a heart of stone not to feel for him (oh that music)...



OK, so he was man!pain incarnate, but he'd screwed up pretty much everything and died alone, realising what a fool he'd been.

Now Eleven... Well, it was a bit of a surprise, to say the least. And we didn't know what to make of it. But looking back at that scene on the beach, his final words are beginning to be painfully poignant:

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

Ah, I thought you meant him turning into goo was a sign that he'd never been able to regenerate. Like "Time Lords regenerate, gangers return to the ooze."

I agree, though, it would take some work to bring ganger!Doctor back (though they did explicitly leave that possibility open on the show). Hasn't seemed to have stopped half of fandom from assuming he'll be back anyway, and really I wouldn't be that surprised if he did come back for some purpose or other.

All of this is mute, though, because we agree that him dying in the Doctor's place would be a cheat.

[elisi]

Ah, I thought you meant him turning into goo was a sign that he'd never been able to regenerate. Like "Time Lords regenerate, gangers return to the ooze."
Well that too. I just think it'd be a far-too-easy way of making new Timelords. I mean, why not make a ganger of River, and then she and the Doctor could happily frolick about after real!River is dead, and regenerate lots more? Heck, then we're back to 'I can use my regeneration energy to get my love back...'

[promethia_tenk]

I figure it's basically a mechanical matter. If Moff needs a ganger copy of a Time Lord to be able to regenerate to make the emotional/symbolic/thematic stuff work, he'll do it. Bringing the gangers in at all opens up all those questions about keeping people alive after death, suddenly making life "too cheap," etc. River's whole existence makes making new Time Lords "too easy." Heck, we're on a show where no one stays dead--the logics stopped being relevant long ago.

[elisi]

I figure it's basically a mechanical matter. If Moff needs a ganger copy of a Time Lord to be able to regenerate to make the emotional/symbolic/thematic stuff work, he'll do it.
I suppose, but I'm not sure he needs it. And i want to point out that making a Ganger took moments, whereas River took... nine months of hard work, not to mention the extraordinary circumstances during which she was created. I'd never call River 'easy', more... nigh-on impossible to re-create.

That said, I'd have no problems with Ganger!Doctor turning up (TWICE THE LOVELINESS), but since Moffat already has River to play with, I sincerely doubt he'll need another regenerating mirror.

[promethia_tenk]

Doesn't need it, but that in no way means he won't use it anyway *g* Just when I think this show doesn't need another layer of mirroring and infolding, we get two O_o

Also wouldn't be the first example of a copy taking on the extraordinary abilities of the original: the image of an angel becomes itself an angel, the image of a Silent becomes itself a Silent (with the same memory-altering phenomena), so the image of a Time Lord becomes itself a Time Lord? That's just playing by the rules by this point!

But, still, I'm wandering far off my point, which is just that I'm not going to use the idea that a ganger shouldn't be able to regenerate to rule out any possibilities.

[promethia_tenk]

Actually, the interesting thing with how River was created is that it makes the constraints on having new Time Lords ethical rather than mechanical. If the Doctor really wanted to revive the whole race, what's to stop him from setting up a little TARDIS honeymoon business? Invite couple after couple to come traveling with him, seed the whole galaxy with new Time Lords? But River's whole life is basically showing that those powers are a liability and a responsibility. It would be utterly foolhardy to spread them around willy-nilly with a bunch of people who will have no idea how to use them or of the danger they might be in because of their special status. No doubt many of them would run wild like Melody and/or fall prey to groups like the Silence.

And the gangers were rather similar in this respect: creating new life was easy, probably too easy. The constraints had to be ethical. And that was the problem the Time Lords ran into--what they could do exceeded their sense of what they should. And in the universe of seemingly infinite power Moff is giving his characters (of rewriting time and recreating people and wishing things into existence), what keeps any of them in line? It's not so much about what they can do as it's about their responsibilities to each other and to the greater order.