10 Doctor Who "Plot Holes" That Really Aren't

The Doctor’s ‘death’ in The Impossible Astronaut is an interesting moment to look back on, for a host of reasons.

For one thing, we now know that it wasn’t actually the Doctor, and that he didn’t actually die – rather, it was the Teselecta taking on the Doctor’s form and simulating his death, in order to maintain the illusion and preserve a fixed point in time.

We also now know, in light of the War Doctor and subsequent developments in The Time of the Doctor, that the Eleventh Doctor was in fact the Thirteenth (i.e. the thirteenth and final incarnation of the Doctor’s original regeneration cycle).

In which case, why did the Doctor begin to regenerate when he was struck by River Song? Why didn’t he just die straight away?

The answer is obvious, but you'd be surprised at the amount of comments we've seen from people who don't understand this one.

The Doctor's ‘regeneration’ was merely another part of the Teselecta simulation. The Doctor had to make everyone (even his best friends) believe that he was actually dead, so the yellow glow was a crucial detail.

And as we saw in Let's Kill Hitler, the Teselecta is capable of adjusting all sorts of exterior settings, from skin tone, to the height of the individual. So it'd be able to whip up a regeneration effect no problem!