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The son thing isn't exactly new - I mean let's be clear, right at the beginning of the series he had a female companion called Susan who called him Grandfather, and although there's been debate about whether that's actually the case or not, it's never been demonstrated that it's not true. And by my reckoning, having a grandchild suggests you've had a child somewhere along the way - even if it is a long time ago.
I have this theory about regenerations which is that it really is like a part dies and a new part emerges in the Timelord in question. There's continuity and memory, but you lose a chunk and grow a chunk. That's how they manage to remain youthful and engaged and how they can get over horrible things that have happened to them. Eccleston -> Tennant releases a whole lot of the burdens that he's been carrying with him, and gives him a new lease of life. He doesn't forget that stuff, but the scars evaporate. But his first incarnation lived a long time - a long time - and grew old and died. It's not weird to me that he had a child then, or that he's a bit disconnected from the idea now.
I'd really really love them to do an episode in which the Doctor relives at accelerated speed some of the things that happened to him before he started travelling. Not necessarily an origin or whatever, but kind of snippets - the first doctor appearing as a twenty something rebelling or being frustrated and absconding off into the universe, travelling for a couple of hundred years having relationships, settling down with someone and watching them get old and die, his son rebelling and charging off into space, his son's child having a child and then another child, each generation getting shorter and shorter lived, until they're practically human. Conflicts arising on the planet and the old Doctor is left running away from his home with his great-great-grand-daughter or something and starting a more transient way of life.
Or perhaps his daughter inherits regeneration abilities but without the control of the Time Lords and when near death regenerates and changes but has almost no memory of her previous life.
I think you could do all of that, sketchily and briefly, in a forty minute episode, leaving gaps all over the place and making it understandable why the doctor doesn't get attached to people, and why he had such a strong relationship with Romana and why being the last Time Lord is such a big deal. |
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