The Eighth Doctor movie contains a number of strange elements. To start with, the Daleks (who sound like helium addicts), execute the Master, and then honor his last request to have the Doctor take his body back to Gallifrey. Why this was't some trap laid by them is something for the ages to ponder, but there you go. The story actually gets stupider and makes less sense from there, particularly once the Doctor regenerates. When the Master sees this new Doctor, he exposits that the Doctor is half-human. Strange, but we can just write it off as the Master getting something wrong. Later, however, the Doctor says that he's, "...half-human, on my mother's side." We could write that off as the Doctor pulling one over on the Master, except that the Master isn't around to hear it. So...what? Fans have argued over this one since 1996. It's one of the few things anyone remembers about that wretched movie which, if you haven't seen it, has exactly the level of quality you'd expect from a mid-1990s, made-for-TV movie that aired on Fox. It has great moments, and Paul McGann really does a lot with a limited role, but that half-human business...really, we're all better off pretending it never happened. But if you must have an explanation for it, we can assume that it's caused by the events of "Human Nature". A novel before it was an episode, the story had the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Bernice Summerfield traveling to a boy's school in 1914. During his time on Earth, the Doctor is, basically, human due to his genetic structure being altered. After the events of the novel are done, he goes back to Time Lord form, but perhaps some of the human DNA lingered and was brought back to the surface when the Doctor regenerated. It's a reasonable explanation, but should perhaps always take second place to the explanation of "That never happened! I can't hear you! LA LA LA LA!"
Chris Swanson is a freelance writer and blogger based in Phoenix, Arizona, where winter happens to other people. His blog is at wilybadger.wordpress.com
