In the third installment of the podcast, I turn to the concept of identity, specifically as it refers to the Doctor’s character in the program. Having assumed so many different forms, and having various personalities, how is it possible to identify the Doctor? What would we classify as the Doctor’s “self”? Is this self a physical or immaterial entity?

 

Transcript

Is the Doctor a Mind or a Body?

“Who am I? Who am I?” Remember when Xoanon in The Face of Evil had a crisis of identity? He expressed a fundamental question of existence: What is the nature of the self? What makes me me? How am I distinctive? I’m not going to attempt to answer that question here in general sense. I’m more interested in the character of the Doctor, and how the show Doctor Who defines the Doctor’s identity. Hey, the name of the show suggests that this would be one of the crucial themes dealt with in the program. If the Doctor approached and said “Who am I?” How might we answer? What makes the Doctor the Doctor?

The answer depends quite a bit on whether persons are defined by their bodies or their minds. In other words, is biological continuity the most important part of identity? Or are psychological traits? Or a bit of both? The mind-body problem is a philosophical issue that has been discussed for millennia. How does the show Doctor Who tackle the question? Is the Doctor a mind or a body?

The Doctor doesn’t really have biological continuity, right? Some might say the Doctor does. After all, every time the Doctor gets a new body, it’s right in the very spot that the old body was. And the Doctor is always a Time Lord, always has two hearts and other physical traits, probably, that Time Lords have. But it has been established in the show that no vestige of the physical body of a Time Lord remains after regeneration takes place.

First, a regenerated Time Lord has a very different outward appearance each time it happens. Physical differences can include height, weight, hair color, skin color, eye color, voice, apparent age, sex, and perhaps even species. Species, you ask? Yes, at least on the outside. So for example, we see Romana regenerate at the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks, and a couple of the bodies she tries out are clearly not Gallifreyan in appearance. The Doctor too takes on a body resembling another species when he regenerates into the Peter Capaldi Doctor: we are told in The Girl Who Died that the body was modeled on the body of an Earth person from ancient Pompeii. We presume that it is not the same body, but only a replica, as the Doctor still has two hearts, so his internal physiology is Time Lord. But on the outside, a human. Just about any physical feature can be altered in regeneration, so that the new body need not resemble the old one in any way. We presume that the bodies must be at least humanoid, but who knows? Maybe not.

Second, even the inside of the body must be renewed upon regeneration. If, as the First Doctor says in The Tenth Planet, “This old body of mine is wearing a bit thin,” he was more likely than not referring primarily to its vital organs, which make the body function properly. Body organs, while still remaining Time Lord, are renewed during regeneration, including probably also the brain itself. It is safe to assume that the internal organs are not identical to the old ones, nor are they simply younger versions of the old ones. They’re different. Of the physical material, nothing remains. How do I know that? K’anpo tells Sarah in Planet of the Spiders that all the cells of the Doctor’s body have been devastated and would regenerate. Corroborating this statement, the Tenth Doctor tells Rose in “Born Again” (the 2005 Children in Need mini-episode) that every single cell in his body has been replaced. So we can say that the new body is new even on the cellular level.

And yet we know that, because the Doctor is the Doctor,