Born Again (TV story)

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Synopsis

The Doctor has just regenerated. But can Rose trust a man with a new face?

Plot

Inside the TARDIS, Rose questions the Doctor, who has just regenerated. She finds it hard to accept the Doctor has changed into a new body and thinks that one of a number of aliens may have replaced him. The Doctor allays her doubts by telling her about the first time he met her and dismisses her concerns about having left Jack behind on Satellite 5. The regeneration, however, has gone wrong and the Doctor is slightly crazed. He decides to land the TARDIS on Christmas Eve. With Cloister Bell warning of imminent danger, the Doctor screams in pain and warns of a crash landing.

Cast

Crew

to be added

References

Story Notes

  • This is a short sketch for the charity Children in Need.
  • In addition to the broadcast, this story was available for viewing on the BBC's website until 25 November, 2005, when the link was removed.
  • This story and Time Crash are the only TV stories other than The Edge of Destruction to be set entirely in the TARDIS.
  • The pre-credits sequence for the mini-episode was a montage of the climactic scenes of The Parting of the Ways.
  • Post-regeneration instability has been present, to varying degrees, in every one of the Doctor's regenerations.
  • The online feed of the mini-episode ended with several pre-recorded inserts of Tennant and Piper appealing for donations to Children in Need. The appeals in which they both appear are flippant in tone, with Piper claiming to be Tennant and vice versa in the first, and in the second the pair introducing themselves as Letitia Dean and Nicholas Lyndhurst.
  • At 7 minutes long the Children in Need Special holds the record for the shortest 'single episode' of Doctor Who ever, just beating Time Crash, which was 8 minutes long. However, the 2009 Comic Relief mini-episode based on The Sarah Jane Adventures, From Raxacoricofallapatorius With Love, is the shortest of all at just over five minutes. In 2009, the series Tonight's the Night broadcast a 3-minute mini-episode based on Doctor Who, however the actors break character and so it isn't considered canonical.
  • The mini-episode aired the same day the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released. The film features Tennant as villain Barty Crouch Jr.

Title controversy

As the special provides no on-screen title (the only previous occasion in which this occurred being the 1996 TV movie), there has been some debate over what title to attribute to this story.

  • The title Children in Need Special is the one that has been accepted by most resources and, most significantly, is the title used by BBC Video for its DVD release of the story.
  • Russell T Davies joked that the title was the Pudsey Cutaway, a reference to Mission to the Unknown (also known as the Dalek Cutaway), with the name Pudsey referring to the Children in Need mascot.
  • The working name of this episode was reportedly Regeneration Facts[source needed].
  • According to the 2009 book Companions and Allies this episode is titled Born Again, however a review of the book in Doctor Who Magazine #409 disputes the accuracy of this claim and, as noted before, BBC Video has not used this title for its official release of the story. Precedent has previously been set, with An Unearthly Child, The Daleks and other early stories for which their overall titles were disputed, that the title used for home video releases be cited as the official title.

Ratings

to be added

Myths

to be added

Filming Locations

to be added

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • How does the Doctor know that Jack is OK? Although the fact that the Doctor not only knew Jack survived the Dalek attack, but had become immortal due to Rose's interference, is confirmed in Utopia, exactly how the Doctor was aware of these things has yet to be revealed. The Doctor mentions to Jack in Utopia that he knew he was immortal now, and left him behind because of that reason.' When the Doctor absorbed the time vortex from Rose, and could see all of time and space, he may have seen and remembered some things about people he was close to.' 'Also in Bad Wolf the Doctor mentions that he sees all of time and space "all the time," so it's possible he saw it before it happened.'
  • Why would Rose think the Doctor is a Slitheen? In World War Three, he told her that Slitheen can only fit inside the bodies of fat people A confusion because she did not understand what had happened to the Doctor, she may be remembering the Raxacoricofallapatorians from the novel The Monsters Inside in which they can fit into skinnier frames using newer slim-line skinsuits. She was grasping for explanations at this point. Slitheen were relatively fresh on her mind.

Continuity

DVD and Other Releases

  • This was released as an extra on the series 2 box set. For viewers in North America, this was the special's debut as it was not broadcast outside of the UK.
  • The Region 2 DVD release accidentally contains a rough-cut version of the special instead of the final version. The Region 1 DVD release contained the correct version.

See Also

External Links


Template:Series 2

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