10 Doctor Who Mysteries Explained Outside The Show

3. Why Did The Sixth Doctor Regenerate?

Doctor Who The Power of the Doctor David Tennant Fourteenth Doctor
BBC Studios

Not every Doctor regenerates at the end of their final story. And not every regeneration scene features both the outgoing and incoming actors. Regrettably, Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor is the only one for whom both things are true.

Having been unceremoniously sacked, Baker was offered the chance to reprise the role for his regeneration, before handing over to Sylvester McCoy. He refused.

However, the production team still needed to show the Sixth Doctor’s regeneration take place. As a last resort, they had McCoy play both incarnations, with the help of a (not entirely convincing) wig.

Due to the hastiness of the scene, no explicit cause was ever given for the Sixth Doctor’s death. And if that wasn’t enough, his last line became, by default, the last words he’d spoken in the previous season: “carrot juice”.

Hardly Shakespeare, is it?

Fortunately, Big Finish would go on to remedy this with the 2015 audio The Last Adventure, providing the Sixth Doctor with the send-off he always deserved. His death is retconned into something much more heroic (a sacrifice to foil the latest plot of the Valeyard) and his farcical last line is replaced with the much more poetic, “our future is in safe hands."

A worthy end for a much-maligned Doctor.

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