Meta-Crisis Doctor

"Meta-Crisis Doctor" is a title based upon conjecture.

Check the behind the scenes section, the revision history and discussion page for additional comments on this article's title.

Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor
Main aliases:	The Doctor
Species:	Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis
Place of origin:	Inside the Doctor's TARDIS
Appearance:	Journey's End
Main actor:	David Tennant
Memorable moment
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You may be looking for the Time Lord this duplicate was created from.

Incarnations of the Doctor
Widely accepted
Others / unplaced incarnations
More ambiguous

The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor was a Time Lord/human hybrid, who possessed one heart, aged as humans did and had no regenerative ability to avoid death. He was created by an instantaneous biological meta crisis.

Biography

The Doctor's hand

See The Doctor's hand for the full history of the hand.

On Christmas 2006, the newly-regenerated Tenth Doctor lost his hand in a sword fight against the Sycorax leader. (TV: The Christmas Invasion) Jack Harkness later retrieved the hand and returned it to the Doctor in a jar in the year 100 trillion. (TV: Utopia) The Doctor's hand remained in the TARDIS until the Doctor was grazed by the blast from a Dalek gunstick, triggering a regeneration. After healing the damage to his body with the regeneration energy, he channelled the excess energy into his hand, a bio-matching receptacle, allowing him to heal but not change his appearance. (TV: Journey's End) This would count among the Time Lords as the birth of a proper new incarnation of the Doctor - The twelfth incarnation, despite the lack of a change of appearance (and for that reason he still referred to himself as the Tenth Doctor until his next regeneration). The Eleventh Doctor later told Clara Oswald that his previous incarnation used up two regenerations due to "vanity issues." (TV: The Time of the Doctor)

"Birth"

After the apparent destruction of the TARDIS with her in it, Donna Noble touched the energised hand's container. The regenerative energies present within the Doctor's severed hand combined with the human DNA of Donna Noble caused an instantaneous biological Meta Crisis. The force of the reaction shattered the container, allowing the energy to regenerate the entire missing body of the Doctor. In this process, the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor was created. (TV: Journey's End)

Genocide and exile in Pete's world

After putting on a blue suit, the Doctor and Donna left the TARDIS and tried to attack Davros and the Daleks with his new weapon. Both were electrocuted by Davros. After the now-part-Time Lord Donna cleverly defeats the Daleks, she, the Meta-Crisis Doctor and the original Doctor teamed up to return all but one of the planets to their rightful places. The Meta-Crisis Doctor was then prompted by Dalek Caan to fulfil a prophecy by destroying the Daleks. He chose to do so and ignored pleas from both Davros and Donna. He proceeded to overload the Dalekanium power feeds, causing virtually the entire New Dalek Empire to explode, from individual Daleks to the Crucible itself.

Feeling his new, part-human counterpart was too dangerous to be left to his own devices, the Doctor entrusted him to Rose Tyler, taking the two of them back to Bad Wolf Bay in Pete's World. The Doctor told Rose that his part-human self needed her, that he was angry and vengeful as he himself had been when he first met Rose. He told her she had made him better, and now she had to do the same for his other, part-human self. Rose objected to this at first, insisting that the new Doctor was not really him, despite the Doctor's assurance that they were the same man and the part-human Doctor offering to spend the rest of his life with her. Rose asked both Doctors what the last thing they had said to her was when they were originally standing on Bad Wolf Bay. The Doctor was unable to give her a direct answer: "Does it need saying?" She posed the same question to the part-human Doctor, who whispered it in her ear.

Seemingly overcome with the revelation of his answer, Rose grabbed the lapels of the part-human Doctor and pulled him into a passionate kiss, which he reciprocated. The Doctor looked on sadly yet stoically for a moment before returning with Donna to the TARDIS and leaving the parallel world. As the doors of the TARDIS slammed shut, Rose and the part-human Doctor broke from their kiss. The part-human Doctor took Rose's hand and watched the TARDIS dematerialise. (TV: Journey's End)

Personality

As a result of growing partially from Donna's DNA, the new Doctor inherited some of Donna's mannerisms. He claimed he had the same memories, thoughts and feelings of the original Doctor up to the point of his aborted regeneration, making them essentially the same man with physiological differences. However, the original Doctor was quick to point out that his new double was born in battle, full of blood, anger and revenge. This motivated him to commit genocide on the Daleks, an act the original Doctor condemned after the events of the Last Great Time War. This can be contrasted against the Fourth Doctor's decision that he doesn't have the right to commit genocide, that that would make him just as bad as the Daleks (TV: Genesis of the Daleks). The Tenth Doctor described his duplicate as representing the way he had been during his ninth incarnation before meeting Rose. (TV: Journey's End)

Behind the scenes

• Although he has the same appearance, memories, and basic personality of the Tenth Doctor, the new Doctor also exhibits several personality changes, in particular based upon Donna Noble. It is left deliberately ambiguous as to whether the new Doctor is actually a new incarnation of the original Doctor (if not strictly speaking a new regeneration) or a copy.
• In CON: End of an Era, executive producer Julie Gardner confirms that the new Doctor does indeed say "I love you" when he whispers in Rose's ear.
• On screen, this character is only ever referred to as the Doctor. To avoid confusion, fans have taken to referring to him by names such as the Clone Doctor, New Doctor, Meta-Crisis Doctor, Ten II, the human Doctor, Doctor 10.5, Tenth Doctor Duplicate and Handy. None of these names are considered official, particularly references to him as the 11th Doctor, though David Tennant in Doctor Who Confidential acknowledges that this is expected to be a topic of much debate as time goes on.
• The Doctor occasionally wore his blue suit even after the Meta-Crisis Doctor left the TARDIS with it, revealing that the Doctor either replaced it or owned more than one. (TV: Music of the Spheres, Dreamland, The Waters of Mars)
• The clothes that the new Doctor chooses reflect the proposed outfit Tennant was to wear in the series 3 opener, Smith and Jones, with the Doctor wearing a red t-shirt under his blue suit as opposed to the light blue shirt/tie combo that was eventually used. (DCOM: Smith and Jones)
• A number of fans have speculated whether this Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor would eventually become the enigmatic figure known to the Sixth Doctor as the malevolent Valeyard. However, among other things, dialogue in The Name of the Doctor states "Valeyard" as a future name for the Eleventh Doctor that is yet to come.
• There was lot of fan speculation as to whether the Doctor had used up one of his regenerations when he channelled the excess regeneration energy into his hand. In the 2013 Christmas Special, The Time of the Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor reflects on his regeneration cycle and confirms that these actions did indeed use up a regeneration. He dismissed the Tenth Doctor's reluctance to change his face as "vanity issues".

A "Pete's World" TARDIS

In the original script, the Doctor was meant to give TARDIS coral to the part-human Doctor on the assumption that a whole new TARDIS could be grown from it, but it was cut.

Nevertheless, the idea has popped up in several places:

• "The Doctor's Data" section of a Doctor Who Adventures magazine.
• The Fact File for the episode on the official website, which stated that it was in the original script but later removed.
• If one looks carefully at the fourth cover of the August 2008 Doctor Who Magazine, featuring Rose, Mickey, Jackie, and the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor, it appears that, although covered up by actors' names, the duplicate Doctor seems to be holding something. This may be a piece of TARDIS.
• Inside the magazine, there is an excerpt of script with a statement that this part of the scene made it all the way to the last cut, but the producers decided that it just complicated the scene too much. However, the scene was filmed and it was included in the series 4 DVD boxset. The magazine quoted Russell T Davies' opinion that the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler have a piece of TARDIS coral, which they can use to grow their own TARDIS.
• In Russell T Davies' book The Writer's Tale, the full original draft of the Bad Wolf Bay script has the Doctor stating that it takes "thousands of years" to grow a TARDIS. However, Donna uses her newfound Time Lord knowledge enhanced by human intuition to overcome this problem by suggesting: "...if you shatterfry the plasmic shell and modify the dimensional stabiliser to a foldback harmonic of 36.3, you accelerate growth by the power of 59!" Which would presumably enable a TARDIS to grow within a human lifetime.
• Additionally, if you look closely, the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor is apparently holding the coral piece in the actual episode. The image is brief, however.