When Patrick Troughtons time as the second Doctor was coming to an end, so much of both the nature of the Doctors ability to cheat death and change faces, as well as their relationship to their people, the mysterious Time Lords, was still unwritten. Wed only seen regeneration once, and The War Gameswhich the BBC recently announced as its next colorization project after last years anniversary release of The Dalekswould also mark the very first time we saw other Time Lords at all. But alongside that introduction, Doctor Who explored an idea it would only rarely return to across the next half-century: what if regeneration itself didnt occur naturally? The Second Doctors Forced Regeneration The second Doctors regeneration at the climax of The War Games is unique in several ways. Trapped and placed on trial by his own people, the Doctor is given a sentence for his crimes of violating the Time Lords sacred policy of non-interference: firstly, that hell be exiled to Earth without use of the TARDIS, and secondly, that he will be regenerated into a new identity as part of that exile.Its the first time we ever see the process considered less as a natural reaction to death, and instead as something that can be actively triggered in some way by the Time Lords themselves, and even more interestingly, its the first time we ever see regeneration treated as a selective process. The Time Lords offer the Doctor a series of potential faces for his next incarnation, all of which he refuses out of protestonly for his captors to then decide that theyll force a new identity on him without the luxury of choice, suggesting that not only is there the capacity for a Time Lord to have regeneration triggered by force through non-fatal means, but also that at least upper echelons of Time Lord society had devised ways to decide what future incarnations of any given Time Lord could be in that process. Its also clear in The War Games that the act of a forced regeneration is deeply traumatic and painful, even compared to the usual traumatic scenario that triggers the process. There stillreally hasnt been a regeneration presented to us in Doctor Who quite like it: the Doctor begins convulsing mid-sentence as he assails his people for their judgement of his actions, his face contorting as we see floating versions of Patrick Troughtons head spin and blur around a dark space, before seeing the Doctor himself plummet into the metaphorical abyss. But whats interesting is that its also the only time weve ever not actually seen the Doctors moment of regeneration into a new incarnation occur on screen: The War Games ends with the Doctor trapped in that black abyss, having to wait another six months until Spearhead From Space opened with Jon Pertwees freshly regenerated Time Lord tumbling out of the TARDIS onto earth, and into Doctor Whos first story broadcast in color.Forced Regeneration In OtherDoctor Who Media John Canning/Polystyle Publications That doesnt mean that the Second Doctors actual regeneration went unseen, though. Six weeks before Spearhead From Space aired, TV Comic published The Night Walkers, the last of its comics to feature Troughtons Doctor. That story established that The War Games didnt actually begin the Doctors regeneration, but instead simply whisked him away to start his exile on Earth, with the second Doctor becoming something of a celebrity in his time on the planet. However, while investigating a case of mysterious walking scarecrows, the Doctor discovers that the animated beings are actually agents of the Time Lords sent to surreptitiously draw the Doctor away from the limelight so they can well, essentially execute him. Its still technically a forced regeneration, brought on by the Time Lords edict, but its still a scarecrow firing squad fatally zapping the Doctor and dragging him back to his TARDIS as his regeneration begins! While the canonicity of the earlyTV Comics stories has never been all too important, this is at least one thing we might see being changed in the upcoming colorization. The trailer released by the BBC featured a brief glimpse of a scene with Troughtons Doctor standing in the TARDIS, glowing with the regenerative energy effect that has become a staple of regeneration inDoctor Who in its modern era, potentially suggesting that well actually get some version of the second Doctors regeneration depicted in the new version of The War Games.But The Night Walkers isnt the only ancillaryDoctor Who material to deal with the idea of forced regenerationit became a major worldbuilding aspect of the War in Heaven, a catastrophic temporal conflict between the Time Lords and a mysterious opponent known only as the Enemy in later Eighth Doctor novels and the unaffiliated spinoff novel and audio drama series, Faction Paradox. Occasionally conflated with what would become the Last Great Time War in contemporaryDoctor Who continuity, the War in Heaven saw soldiers in the Gallifreyan military (referred to inFaction Paradox simply as the House Military, the allied forces of the Great Houses of the Homeworld) eventually bioengineered to have larger regeneration cycles to keep them fighting across generations of conflict, and eventually constructed with artificial biodata to regenerate into increasingly less-humanoid organic weapons of war. Part of that forced genetic evolution would involve missions of forced regeneration that would prime troops to be regenerated into new bodies better suited for upcoming engagements. Forced Regeneration In Modern Doctor Who While forced regeneration is quite rare inDoctor Who, our most prominent examples of it after The War Games come from after the series revival in 2005. The Night of the Doctor, the 2013 short film that finally portrayed the Eighth Doctors regeneration, featured a somewhat similar regenerative process, when the grievously wounded Doctor was given an elixir by the Sisterhood of Karn that both triggered his regeneration and allowed him to select an identity and personality to participate in the Last Great Time War in: the incarnation eventually known simply as the War Doctor. But while elements of the regeneration had parallels to the process seen in The War Games, it wasnt a direct comparison. We see something much more akin to that process during Jodie Whittakers tenure as the Thirteenth Doctor. Initially first glimpsed in the controversial revelation of the Doctors true origins in The Timeless Children, the young being that will be known as the Doctor is seen as the template for the transformation of Gallifreys native people, the Shobogans, into the Time Lords, after a Shobogan scientist, Tecteun, discovers the Doctors natural regenerative capabilities and experiments on them in an attempt to splice that ability into her own peoplea process that sees the Doctors young self forcibly regenerated through multiple identities, before being forcefully regenerated with their memories lost when Tecteun and the now-Time Lords decided to make the origins of regeneration secret.It appears again in Whittakers final story, The Power of the Doctor, where the Master not only manages to forcibly trigger the Doctors regeneration, but hijacks the process so that she is regenerated into the Masters own form and psyche, trapping the Doctors true consciousness in a splinter of their own mind. Again, while there are definitely parallels to the regeneration glimpsed in The War Games here, its not wholly similar: the Doctor managed to reverse the effects of the Masters forced regeneration upon her, ousting his consciousness from her form with seemingly few side-effects until the Master managed to mortally wound her during their conflict anyway, triggering a more traditional regeneration into a new incarnation. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.