Doctor Who: EVERY Regeneration Story Ranked Worst To Best
How does the Fifteenth Doctor’s final adventure compare to those that came before?
Doctor Who’s enduring success can largely be attributed to regeneration: a conceit whereby the central character is able to change their face, and thus cheat death.
Initially conceived in 1966 as means of keeping the show going beyond William Hartnell, regeneration has since allowed fifteen other actors to play the Doctor – and maybe now Billie Piper too (though that’s a topic for another day).
The Doctor’s not the only fictional character to have been played by multiple actors. However, unlike James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, they’re exactly the same person underneath, with each incarnation physically transforming into the next.
In most cases, these handovers take place in dedicated regeneration stories. Most of these are big, era-ending finales. Some are more low-key. And some are simply regeneration stories by default.
But which of the twelve we’d had so far has been the best?
13. Honourable Mentions
Before the main ranking, some honourable mentions have to go to the regeneration stories that didn't quite make the cut.
The Sixth Doctor’s regeneration didn’t occur at the end of his own era but at the start of his successor’s, in 1987's Time and the Rani. And to add insult to injury, it didn’t even feature Colin Baker, but rather Sylvester McCoy in a curly blonde wig! Though Baker’s reason for not coming back, having essentially been sacked, was entirely justified.
Likewise, the Seventh Doctor departed twenty minutes into The TV Movie, which was the Eighth Doctor’s first (and only) full-length adventure.
Both stories should be commended for actually featuring regenerations in the first place, when they could so easily have ignored the previous Doctor altogether.
That’s exactly what happened when the show returned in 2005, with the Eighth Doctor’s own regeneration left purely to the imagination. Thankfully this was remedied in 2013 with the excellent minisode The Night of the Doctor, which gave Paul McGann six more minutes of fame.
2013 also introduced John Hurt’s War Doctor, whose regeneration was incorporated into the closing sequences of The Day of the Doctor.
And now, onto the twelve actual regeneration stories in the show, starting with...