Doctor Who: 8 Stories That Would Have Made Wonderful Regeneration Stories

2. "Survival"

What if the final episode of Classic Who had ended in a regeneration from Sylvester McCoy into some new Doctor? Being the final serial, it has just about every quality needed for a regeneration episode: timeliness, emotion, surprise, this episode had it all - including the return of the Doctor's nemesis, the Master. There are a few ways "Survival" could have played out as a regeneration story. For one, just about everyone important in this episode got turned into a humanoid cheetah thing. This could easily have led the Doctor to altering his body composition, effectively ridding himself of the curse, but changing his appearance. Of course, had this been the case, the new Doctor would have had to fill the role for, at most, 20 minutes. That's considering the fact that this was the final episode of the classic series, which was then not expected for renewal. Another way this might have worked would have been to have McCoy go out the same way he came in. By that I mean: the regeneration from the sixth Doctor to the seventh was filmed by using McCoy in a Colin Baker wig and blurring out his face. Perhaps the regeneration from the seventh to the eighth could have gone the same way - McCoy puts on some wig and gets his face blurred. This would have to come at the very end of the serial and would require a quickly resolvable explanation as to why he is regenerating. But featuring a regeneration in the last seconds of the series would leave the whole story open-ended, and it would have left fans feeling as though the Doctor's story would continue, whether or not the show did.