What's the main concern of the average Who fan sitting down to watch a new episode? The correct answer is whether it'll be a fun forty-five minutes or not, but some more die-hard Whovians would say it's how what's happening now ties into the series' fifty-year continuity. Unfortunately the show seems to invest much more in the latter. The notion of a regeneration limit had existed since a Tom Baker story in 1976, but back then the idea of the character reaching the point when he'd worked through all thirteen of his lives seemed ridiculous. It got a couple of references since, with the new series not only establishing it could easily be circumvented (see The Master), but also The Sarah Jane Adventures retconning the limit to actually be 507. That didn't stop fans getting antsy around last Christmas, when Matt Smith's regeneration episode, The Time Of The Doctor, aired, wondering how on Gallifrey this could be explained. And while the standard response would be to point out the fluid rules of Time Lord mythology (as Russell T. Davies had done in that Sarah Jane episode), instead the episode spent much of its time dwelling on the mechanics of the Doctor getting more lives, just so the 1% who knew the rule would be happy. As the show becomes increasingly popular it's listening more and more to what the fans want in favour of the quality of individual episodes. The regeneration limit is one of the most perplexing, but it's just the tip of the berg. Peter Capaldi had appeared before as Caecilius in The Fires Of Pompeii and because Whovians picked up on it we got confusing introduction to the Twelfth Doctor with endless babble attempting to justify similar appearances. Both Freema Agyeman and Karen Gillan had starred in the show before being cast as a companion and while there was some tongue-in-cheek explanation in the former's case, it wasn't a dominating part of the show. There's nothing wrong with balancing the fan bases, but recent decisions seem totally geared to the overly vocal fans. How are you finding Series 8 so far? What do you think about the future of Doctor Who? Discuss all things Time Lord in the comments below.
