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Science Geekism!
So, I've been wondering about the physiology of Time Lords.
We all know they're different somehow. For starters, there's the two hearts. Then there's all these acrobatics the Doctor keeps performing where radiation is concerned. How exactly does that organism work?
I'm gonna try and find a hypothesis. I can only base it on New Who, because I haven't seen the rest. If I find that this is fun, I might add to it as soon as I've watched classic Who.
Right, first of all, I went through my memories of the episodes and listed all the injuries the Doctor suffered during the last three seasons.
Right. Now, there are certain things listed that sound very human, and others that sound very alien. So, I made another table! :D
Now, before I go and figure out big hypotheses, did I forget anything? Can you think of any occasions when the Doctor got hurt/injured or reveals stuff about his physiology which I left out?
I'll be continuing this. Not right now, though, because I gotta go to bed. I've got an exam tomorrow... blergh xP.
Oh, I almost forgot: I won't be here over the weekend! Probably. I'm visiting with a friend, and I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to spare for the intarwebz. See you Sunday at the latest!
We all know they're different somehow. For starters, there's the two hearts. Then there's all these acrobatics the Doctor keeps performing where radiation is concerned. How exactly does that organism work?
I'm gonna try and find a hypothesis. I can only base it on New Who, because I haven't seen the rest. If I find that this is fun, I might add to it as soon as I've watched classic Who.
Right, first of all, I went through my memories of the episodes and listed all the injuries the Doctor suffered during the last three seasons.
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances:
The Doctor tells Rose that he burned his hand, but that the nanites repaired it. Only documentation of a lasting injury.
Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways
The Doctor absorbs the Time Vortex. It kills him, he regenerates.
The Christmas Invasion
The Doctor suffers from what I'll call Post Regeneration Syndrome, PRS. Shouldn't occur, the change "has gone a bit wrong". He mentions a neuron implosion, which is eventually cured by tea ("Superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for healing the synapses."). He keeps expelling energy in yellowish swirly clouds. Loses consciousness a lot. Cure apparently includes sleeping a specific amount of time. Poor health condition leads to one of the hearts stopping.
New Earth
The Doctor loses consciousness after inhaling some sort of chemical(?).
The Idiot's Lantern
Loses consciousness after being hit by a police man, loses consciousness after the Wire tried to suck him in.
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
He falls from a considerable height and loses consciousness on impact (he survives the fall without a scratch, though).
Fear Her
He gets drawn into the picture of the little girl (but he is able to draw something himself. Whether the others could have done that and just didn't, or whether it's something only he could have done, is unclear.)
Smith and Jones
He absorbs a for humans deadly dose of gamma radiation and expels it without harm to himself or his environment. He gets his blood sucked out by an alien and is resuscitated via CPR. Lack of oxygen doesn't seem to harm him too much (even though he does seem worried when the facial plate of his helmet breaks in The Impossible Planet). Mentions that he got electrocuted by lightning on one of his travels.
The Shakespeare Code
One of the witches stops one of his hearts. It does affect him, although not kill him.
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
He gets electrocuted with a charge that would have killed a human, loses consciousness.
The Lazarus Experiment
He plays the organ, after which his hearing is temporarily affected.
42
He gets infected with sun particles(?) that, if a human is infected with them, rewrite the complete cellular organism of the host. He can hold them off longer than humans can, it does affect him, though. He can apparently withstand very cold temperatures, as well as solar radiation, for a certain amount of time.
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
He turns himself into a human. He can't do that by himself but needs a machine to do it for him.
Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
The Master is proof that Time Lords can have psychiatric issues (psychosis, schizophrenia, megalomania). The Master cancels out the Doctor's ability to regenerate and ages him - apparently, Time Lords can make one body last almost indefinitely (if they don't go absorbing the Time Vortex or stuff like that).
Right. Now, there are certain things listed that sound very human, and others that sound very alien. So, I made another table! :D
- burns his hand, can't repair it himself - loses consciousness after inhaling unknown substance - loses consciousness after being hit by a police man - loses consciousness after the Wire tries to suck him in - loses consciousness after a fall - seems to need oxygen for something - lightning electrocutes him - loud noises affect his hearing temporarily - Time Lords can have psychiatric issues (psychoses, schizophrenia, megalomania) | - PRS: neuron implosion, can be cured by tannin and free radicals (tea), expulsion of energy, one of the hearts stops, he sleeps a lot - survives a fall that would have killed a human without a scratch - can absorb gamma radiation and expel it in a harmless form. - blood loss seems to affect him only temporarily, might be curable by CPR - lack of oxygen doesn't seem to affect him as much as humans - when one heart stops, the other one apparently is sufficient to maintain the circulation until the first heart gets restarted - extreme electrocution makes him lose consciousness, but doesn't kill him - can withstand very cold temperatures for a certain time span (10 minutes) - can withstand solar radiation for a certain time span (5 minutes) - can use technology to rewrite his organic cell structure. - can make one body last for about 900 years or more |
Now, before I go and figure out big hypotheses, did I forget anything? Can you think of any occasions when the Doctor got hurt/injured or reveals stuff about his physiology which I left out?
I'll be continuing this. Not right now, though, because I gotta go to bed. I've got an exam tomorrow... blergh xP.
Oh, I almost forgot: I won't be here over the weekend! Probably. I'm visiting with a friend, and I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to spare for the intarwebz. See you Sunday at the latest!
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I haven't seen any more than you have (and quite a bit less), so I'm no help here, but: how is his hearing affected by the organ? Since you put it in the "human" category, was it like, ringing in his ears?
And I have no idea here; the only constant seems to be that he can survive much greater extremes than humans can. And he can regenerate or rewrite his own cells, which strikes me as fairly crucial. Perhaps the Time Lords, in building the technology Ten used in "Human Nature," were just expanding on an innate ability - maybe Time Lords can rewrite their own cells naturally, in much smaller ways? A lot of our own technology was first meant to extend what our bodies could naturally do. (Of course, some of it was also meant to overcome limitations on what our bodies can do...but that's not helpful.)
Oh, also: do you want to include the fact that Time Lords have psychic powers? (They do, right? That's not just fanon?)
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Gallifreyan physiology. (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Gallifreyan_physiology)
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SO neat.
House would have a field day. LOL.
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The lung thing is interesting.
Instead of large lungs, they have a series of pulmonary tubes parallel to the lymphatic system.
Ookay... That would have to be one shitload of pulmonary tubes, and since the lymphatic system isn't all that big, it would mean that several tubes would have to run parallel. That's interesting. Also, I guess that this aspect of their anatomy would lead to them being susceptible for infections of the pulmonary system. And it means that they're more affected by a splenectomy than humans (if Time Lords have a spleen. They should have one, though, if they have a lymphatic system.).
The Doctor floats. HE'S A WITCH! XD LOL But this means that Time Lords can't dive. If they inhale, they stay above the water automatically, and if they exhale, they obviously can't stay under water for long. [ETA on reread: Wait. They're facultative anaerobic (see below). That means they can't dive except if they exhale and then use their bypass system. This makes the question whether there is a time limit to the bypass system even more interesting.]
This also means they can place themselves in a trance state which reduces the need for oxygen.
Uh, where's the causal connection in this? How does 'pulmonary tubes system' lead to 'trance state'? Someone needs to come up with an explanation, methinks.
Gallifreyan also have a respiratory bypass system, which allows them to survive strangulation
LOL AWESOME! Like facultative anaerobes. I wonder if this bypass system has a time limit.
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If he were faculataive anaerob, it shouldn' be time limited. But you could be sure that it wouldn't be as efficient a system as the aerob system. But it really could make sense, since the oxygen in the human system is nothing much but an electron donor which during the course of metabolism gets reduced to water. Knowing that and assuming he'd have a very adjustable metabolism, he could practically do with quite a number of electron donors (and he eats, right? Then he would also need a carbon source like fat, sugar or some alien molecules.), he would only need certain amounts of different enzymes in his system that match his carbon source and electron donors so he'd be able to break it all down.
Many fungi and bacteria develop spores, so maybe that's what he does? And then he's sort of regrowing from the spore and does look different because of genetic recombination? (You know, chromosomal crossing-over and such...)
It's fun speculating about this... :-D
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But then, if it's connected to his enzymes, maybe it's an adaption process. In the beginning, it doesn't work all that well but it gets better the longer he uses it, because his metabolism adapts to the new electron donor and carbon source. Meaning that he could theoretically live under water, if he had time enough to adapt to it...
I'm totally taking shots at the dark here. Biochemistry was always my worst subject xD.
Hmm, I don't think crossing over and all that jazz would lead to enough recombination to create a completely different phenotype, would it? If you're working with only one set of genes? Also, it sounds like a process that could go very terribly wrong very easily. But then, it has to be something like that, doesn't it, because where does he get his new genes from when he regenerates?
How exactly does that spore thing work? It sounds intriguing.
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Yeah, I guess. :-) (To be frank, I've never been that good at biochemistry either. *g*). I just heard that oxygen is in fact the electron acceptor, so I was wrong about that, but the principle stays the same, right?
With bacteria, the only problem with the alternative metabolism often is that they produce some (semi)toxic byproducts (like ethanol in Gärung) which kills stupid bacteria because they can't excape their surroundings fast enough (or because evil people put them in petri dishes), but the Doctor can actually move, so that wouldn't be a problem. And we don't know of anyone ever dying because of his toxic waste? Well, so this is probably all just bullshit. :-)
No, it probably wouldn't, not to that extent. I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same? He still remembers his past life and everything.
It could also be the same mechanism that enables us to have a huge diversity in antibodies in our immune system. They are made of several components that are separately encoded in the genome. In total, you have about, say, 10 genes for heavy chains and 20 for light chains which enables you to have 200 possible combinations. All this genes are arranged after one another in the genome, with the heavy chains being read in 5'-3' direction and the light chains in 3'-5'. The dna then folds back unto itself, cuts everything out in between that is not needed, and so the enzymes are able to read and translate every combination of heavy and light chains possible (because thorugh folding back, everything goes into the same direction again, which is some kind of failsafe, I guess). So that activates genes that were silent before and silence others. This leads to this high adabtability of the immune system to respond to before unknown threats. And I can imagine, if the doctor only changes his appearance, that this mechanism could be responsible. (We just did that properly last week in uni, that's why I just thought about that now.)
Ok, so microbiology was a little while back, so I don't remember the exact thing. But when bacteria etc. notice a change in their environment that threatens their survival, some of them are able to produce spores that have a very thick, unpenetrable membrane around them that can withstand extreme conditions (cold, heat, radiation and stuff) practically only contains dna and they have only the most minimal metabolism. Like that, they can survive and wait for the outside condition the get better, before the spore than starts regrowing bacteria. (It was somehow like that. *g*). But now that I think about it, it doesn't sound that possible anymore... ;-)
(I hope you get my babbling about all that stuff. It's gotten so late again today...*yawn*)
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Huh, really? I always thought oxygen was a highly negatively charged element, which is why it made sense to me that it'd be the donor. Or is it only negatively charged when it has already accepted the electrons? Grar, Chemistry. It always fails to make sense to me.
Ahaha, the Doctor polluting his environment by fermentation. I love it. Maybe that's why he can't do it for long. I mean, bacteria are tiny tiny things that don't need a lot of energy, but a huge, complicated metabolism like the Doctor's would probably put out a rather high amount of toxic waste. So even though he could avoid getting killed by moving and leaving the polluted area, his ethics forbid him to use his anaerobe metabolism too often, or for too long.
I just thought about haircolor, eyecolor, you know, just the superficial stuff, because inside, he stays the same
I thought that's what the phenotype is? The exterior looks of an individual? Can the exterior looks be changed as extensively as they were when Nine regenerated into Ten by things like crossing over etc alone? I've no idea, last time I thought about this was in grade 12, lol ;).
Oy, you lost me on the immune system. I know about heavy and light chains, but I've no idea about the whole genes thing. So you're saying the heavy chains are read 5'-3' and the light ones 3'-5'? I thought everything was always read 5'-3'? Hah, they always lie to you in uni. So what you're saying is that every variety of the 10 different heavy chain types can be combined with any variety of the 20 different light chain types, which makes for about 200 combinations? I think I got it so far - correct me if I'm wrong. But I didn't quite get the part about the silent genes. How does that activation thing work exactly? I think I like the theory - it would make sense. But I don't quite get it yet ;).
Hmm, the spores are fascinating, but I agree, it doesn't really fit for the Doctor. It's not his environment that changes when he's about to regenerate, but his own body that is failing. Usually, anyway. The spores sound like life pods that are jettisoned and wait out the danger, but the regeneration is something that happens quickly and without a lot of forewarning.
Babble on! It's highly fascinating :).
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About the organ: he played it extremely loudly because he wanted to blast some alien creature down from the clocktower (or something, lol), and afterwards, he was temporarily deaf xD.
maybe Time Lords can rewrite their own cells naturally
That's pretty much a given, and not even in "smaller ways". I mean, they can regenerate, rewrite every single cell in their body. However, if that applies, how come that the Doctor couldn't heal his burned hand himself? How come Time Lords can get hurt at all? How come the Master would have had to regenerate after Lucy shot him, and it wouldn't have been sufficient to simply fix up the cells in that area of his body? It must be more complicated.
Right, the psychic powers! I tend to forget about them, mostly because every time I see him do his mind meld, I start looking for the pointy ears, lol ;).
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He plays the organ, after which his hearing is temporarily affected.
I don't think it really was. I always see this scene as him joking with Martha, because he doesn't want to answer the question. But maybe that's just my version.
Only other thing I can remember is, that they evidently have some sort of normal childhood till they're eight and get shown this time vortex thingy. Maybe they only change into timelords afterwards at school/academy?
And yeah, the mind melt.
And about the regeneration question: Maybe the 'rewriting cells' only works if you rewrite all of them at the same time. You know, change the whole being so it fits again. If you only rewrite parts you have a different code (DNA) in different bodyparts in the end, and that wouldn't work. So maybe that's too, why he can't just heal himself. Because either you do the whole thing, or you don't do it at all.
Also, I think healing yourself and rewriting your biology are two different things, no? So maybe he can only do one, but not the other.
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Could be. I don't think it is, though, because the Doctor usually doesn't need to pretend to be deaf to evade questions. He manages quite well without that. But that's a matter of interpretation, I guess.
Maybe they only change into timelords afterwards at school/academy
I'm not sure. I always thought Time Lord was the name of the Doctor's people. Like 'humans' or 'Vulcans'. If that's the case, it'd be seriously weird if their kids were of a different species until a certain age. If Time Lord, however, is something like a title, then that would make sense.
The TARDIS wiki said some interesting stuff. Apparently there's a differentiation between oldblood and newblood Gallifreyans. Maybe that's got something to do with it?
Maybe the 'rewriting cells' only works if you rewrite all of them at the same time.
That's a nice theory, but 42 pretty much kills it dead. The Doctor is overtaken by this sun particle thing, and that, as we learn early in the episode, changes the whole biological makeup of an individual. As soon as the sun particles were gone, however, the Doctor returned to full health within seconds. The sun particles probably didn't rewrite enough of his organism to kill him, but I'm sure they did something - consider the glowy eyes and the weird voice, for one thing. The Doctor must have some sort of cellular repair mechanism to reverse these changes.
Then there's the occasion where he drops so-and-so many feet and doesn't get killed. The fall should have resulted in massive cellular damage, but all it did was knock him out. If his body had a function to super-quickly repair damaged cells, that would be explained by that.
healing yourself and rewriting your biology are two different things, no
I don't quite know what you mean by that. The Doctor states in - I think it was the post s1 CIN special - that regeneration is the process of changing every single cell in his body. That's rewriting your biology, right there. New body, new cells, new genes, new everything. Personality doesn't have a specified location, so we can only assume that its basic coding is located somewhere in the cells of a person's body - because there is nothing in a person's body except cells and fluid.
ETA: Whoops, got side-tracked there. Healing yourself is fixing damamged cells. If your body has the capacity to change cells on a scale like complete regeneration, I don't think the step to assuming that this ability can be used on a smaller scale as well is a too big one.
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*really needs to watch old Who*
(rest, see in other comment)
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What I'm trying to say, Gallifreyans could be the same as Time Lords ;).
Yeah, I think we really need to watch classic Who. Or get a few people who've seen it to join the conversation.
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Perhaps that's something that happens automatically/involuntarily in response to large threats to his system (extreme cold, great falls), but not lesser ones because it takes up too much physical energy. So he can be burned or knocked out, but still be able to fall a great distance without being killed.
I don't know. I'M TOTALLY MAKING SHIT UP HERE.
Also, I like
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That can't be, though. If that were the case, the Doctor's phenotype would always be the same with each new regeneration.
I get what you mean, though. The Doctor has a mechanism that allows him to adapt his cells to certain environmental circumstances. I wouldn't call it rewriting, because that's what he's doing when he's regenerating. Maybe "modulating"?
I really like that theory. It could also explain why sudden shocks to his system - the punch of the police man, the loss of consciousness after Rose!Cassandra made him inhale that chemical stuff etc - have a 'normal' effect (meaning, the same effect they would have on humans), while shocks that he can anticipate - a great fall, the solar radiation, the gamma radiation, the cold etc - don't affect him all that much, since he had time to adapt his organism. That would mean that this adaption or modulation would be an arbitrary act, or at least could be an arbitrary act. Maybe it's a combination of reflexes/coded programs and willpower.
I'M TOTALLY MAKING SHIT UP HERE.
DUDE, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT! XD
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I'm sticking to my idea, though, that if you regenerate/rewrite, you can only do so as a whole.
So basically, what I'm saying is: He can modulate his body, if he can anticipate any future damage (can be subconsciously). If he can't anticipate, he's as vulnerable as a normal human to supreficial/short term 'injuries'. If the injury is serious, he has the possibility of regeneration to 'heal' himself.
oh, and about the newblood/oldblood - there's some more on this in the article about Gallifreyan physiology/ Anatomie. I only scanned over it, because of time-shortage, though, so I can't say any more. It's basically that some are born with two hearts, others only get the second one after the first regeneration.
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How do you explain 42, then? His organism was apparently changed by the sun particle whatever blah thing that possessed him. And yet, seconds after Martha saved the day, he was back to normal.
Yeah, I read that on the wiki page, too. It doesn't make a lot of sense, though, if you don't know the canon.
I'm going with
Bean said something about maybe the regeneration of cells takes too much energy to use it for stuff like healing burns. That would make sense. But then, I don't get why the Doctor told the Master to regenerate. Healing a bullet wound must cost less energy than a complete regeneration.
And then, we also have the watch thing to consider. Completely forgot about that. Lol.
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*admits that we have a problem here*
What if, he didn't change back by himself, but it just happened naturally, because the particle thingy (which was a lifeform) left him before the change was complete. So by leaving the Doctor he just went back to being normal. But it had nothing to do with his regeneration abilities. Does that make sense?
I like the idea of healing no/regeneration yes, because it would explain the Master's death and the other small injuries.
Healing is just recreating the 'same' cells again (DNA wise), while regeneration is rewriting the code of the DNA. So they are two different things. (at least to my layman-opinion)
But if you come up with another working theory, I'll happily follow you! :-)
And, well, the watch thing... yeah, that's... mmmhhh. Maybe he needs it, because regeneration is still rewriting TIME LORD DNA, while changing into a human involves becoming a different SPECIES. Which is even more complicated. That's why he needs the machine. (???) And maybe that's why he loses his memory too. Because it's much more invasive. Like trauma or something???
*is dloading classic Who every time she can*
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Hmm, I don't think that was what happened. That sun was fucking angry, it was walking around killing people for no reason other than revenge. I don't think it would have fixed the damage before leaving the host.
Healing is just recreating the 'same' cells again (DNA wise), while regeneration is rewriting the code of the DNA.
That's a very valid point. I actually hadn't considered that. I still think he can do both, though, because he does it. And we already established that he must have some sort of ability to modify his cells and cellular structure. Maybe he can modify working cells and adapt them to his needs, but when they're dead, he cannot revive them. He can only write new ones. That would make sense, because in 42, his organism was changed to work on hydrogen, but it was still a working organism with functioning cells. When the Master was shot, all the bullet did was rip a big old hole into his intestines, so there was nothing left there to modify. The only option was to write new cells, and since it's not exactly healthy to have cells of two different sets of DNA in one body, he'd have had to regenerate completely.
Well, yeah, obviously he needs the machine because he's not only writing a new set of DNA of his own species, but a completely different one. I meant, though, that we need to consider that Time Lords apparently have the ability to intentionally remove their consciousness from their bodies - but they seem to need a storage place for it. That's another interesting aspect of his physiology.
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When the master stops his regeneration ability, he AGES! So does that mean that normally a Time Lord doesn't age? Does his regeneration ability also stop the aging process? If so, then shouldn't he also be able to heal himself easily?
*gets confused, because of lacking medical background*
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Anyway, what I wanted to say: I think Time Lords do age, but a lot slower than humans. Maybe they have a certain time span in their lives in which they have the ability to regenerate (a bit like fertility in humans - humans aren't fertile their whole lives, but only for the forty-odd years in the middle). Maybe they can only regenerate between, oh, I don't know, 20 and 800 years or something. So it's either live in one body for 900 years - which doesn't look like a lot of fun, considering what the Doctor looked like in the end - or it's regenerating now and again and getting a new body.
And that could be a reason why the number of regenerations is restricted.
That's a very interesting point! I'll have to think about this.
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And that could be a reason why the number of regenerations is restricted.
Is it? I didn't know that. How many does he have??
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The serial The Deadly Assassin established that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen incarnations (although at least one Time Lord, The Master, has managed to circumvent this.)
So, don't fret. Logic will not keep them from continuing the show xD.
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Also, there's always an exception to every rule. Especially for the Doctor. So, I'm not worried.