Doctor Who: Six Reasons To Revive The 6th And 7th Doctors

5. Neither Doctor Ended Well

Whilst both Doctors eventually had their demise shown onscreen, neither did so under the best circumstances. The Sixth Doctor's infamous "bump on the head" stands as the biggest final middle-finger to a great actor shafted by terrible scripts... but that's jumping ahead. The Sixth Doctor's cause of death was never explicitly given on screen, but was intended to be the result of injuries sustained when the TARDIS crash landed. Given the lack of any visible harm on Six's body or conspicuously obscured face as the regeneration set in, many have been led to assume that the Doctor simply bumped his head on the console or fell off the exercise bike seen toppling in the backdrop. The Seventh Doctor's final bow wasn't much better: Sly McCoy played the Doctor as an arch-manipulator in a silly jumper; the chessmaster playing the fool, making silly faces while thinking twenty moves ahead. Also, he was Merlin... again a point to revisit soon. Yet for all his schemes and intricate plots, he didn't bother to check the TARDIS monitor and spot the three armed men before jaunting out. Being gunned down in San Francisco isn't the worst way for a Doctor to go, but that wasn't even what really killed him. Instead, the surgeon (and future companion) patching him up got muddled up and bumped him off by accident. If Seven's harrowing death scream wasn't bad enough, the audience had to watch his corpse being wheeled around for ten minutes before the regeneration mercifully set in. Though we can't rewrite their fates, or at least we shouldn't, minisodes featuring each of these Doctors can be a final (in real-world terms) exit for that incarnation that better suits their characters. Just as 'Time Crash' gave the Fifth Doctor fan praise he never really got during his run, let Colin Baker play the hero that Six was meant to be and let Seven finally complete his grand plan.