The Last Regeneration was a two-page comic story pitch by Stephen Cole and Lee Sullivan to introduce the Doctor's last incarnation.
It was published in Robot #0 (July 1998), a limited run of "dummy mags" sent focus groups that was ultimately never picked up by the BBC.
Plot
An amnesiac, ginger-haired Doctor is running from the Cybermen in a cold and filthy city of tall, metallic buildings. The Doctor recognises the sound of The TARDIS as it materialises to shield him from the Cybermen's beams. He opens the door to enter the TARDIS, stating "I am a Time Lord! I am... The Doctor! And I don't belong to anyone..."
References
- The Doctor knows that he does not carry guns. He also knows the identity of the Cybermen, the TARDIS, and that he is a Time Lord called the Doctor.
- The Doctor finds an apple core, a bag of jelly babies, a sonic screwdriver and a "catapault" [sic] (slingshot) on his person.
- A Cyberman tells the Doctor that he will be like them.
Behind the scenes
The idea was that [the Doctor] didn't know who he was and was on his last regeneration: I'm sure Stephen [Cole] had an idea of where it would go, but I would doubt that he fleshed it out more than a pitch.
- Lee Sullivan's Doctor is ginger, a trait in common with "Merlin", a different future incarnation of the Doctor first seen in the 1991 Battlefield novelisation. Coincidentally, the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors would go on to express disappointment at not being ginger. In a 2013 interview, Lee Sullivan said he painted his Doctor's hair as "sandy" admitted that it is "the extreme end of the ginger scale".[1]
- Sullivan said he had Alan Rickman in the back of his mind while designing his Doctor, but he was not modelled exactly on him. He recalled being given carte-blanche for designing his Doctor and described his outfit at "Regency and Romantic looking".
- The comic was made for a BBC Publication, but it never got beyond a focus group. The concept was for Radio Times editor Matt Bookman's magazine pitch Sci-Files. It was ultimately printed in a limited "dummy mags" titled Robot #0 (July 1998) sent to focus groups of young people. Sullivan recalled that "kids didn’t rate strip art much and really didn't know much about Doctor Who".
- Sullivan recounted he was given no guidance for the design of the Cybermen, so he, Cole, and/or Bookman did a "rework of their original design".