The Tenth Doctor

### Cause of Death

Having aborted one regeneration to heal from Dalek gunfire, he later succumbs to radiation poisoning incurred while saving Wilfred Mott,

### Actor

David Tennant

“I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred and three years old, and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?”
—The Tenth Doctor telling the survivors of the Titanic who he is.

## Incarnations of the Doctor

1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . War . 9 . 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 The Valeyard . The Watcher . The Dream Lord . The Curator . The Meta Crisis

Benefiting from the healing undergone by his predecessor, the **Tenth Doctor** possessed an outgoing, lively and genial demeanour that hid his underlying guilt, but it was still present and would appear if the Doctor was overwhelmed.

For most of his life, the Doctor was able to successfully project a convivial and even frivolous front. However, when he had to engage in conflict, the Doctor's energies would shift to reveal a fiercely protective man who resolutely guarded what he held dear, and who could be viciously unforgiving to the forces that dared menace them.

He was unique in that he was the only incarnation of the Doctor who chose to abort one of his regenerations, channelling the energy into his spare hand without changing his appearance, something his successor would attribute to suffering "vanity issues at the time".

Many of his relationships with companions were shaped, to one degree or another, by romance; he seemed to genuinely love his first companion, Rose Tyler, as the person who helped heal some of the scars of the Time War, was completely oblivious to Martha Jones' obvious affectionstoward him, and insisted upon a platonic relationship with Donna Noble. The departure of each of these companions marked periods in his life where he would abstain from having companions at all, and on one occasion he even stopped having adventures or leaving the TARDIS, with little more than a cat for company.

When travelling without companions, the weight of being the last Time Lord became much more pronounced. If prodded too much, he would erupt in an often righteous sense of fury. Indeed, the Tenth Doctor was described by the Moment as "the man who regrets". The fact that he was instantly able to recall the number of Gallifreyan children that he believed were killed at the end the war indicated just how keenly he continually felt those horrendous memories.

He met his eventual end after he absorbed a huge quantity of nuclear radiation whilst saving the life of Donna Noble's grandfather, Wilfred Mott. Delaying the process to visit all of his companions, the Doctor finally regenerated in the TARDIS, causing a huge amount of damage due to delaying the regeneration for as long as he did, and leaving his successorcrashing straight for Earth.

## **Appearances**

### **Series 2**

* The Christmas Invasion
* New Earth
* Tooth and Claw
* School Reunion
* The Girl in the Fireplace
* Rise of the Cybermen
* The Age of Steel
* The Idiot's Lantern
* The Impossible Planet
* The Satan Pit
* Love & Monsters
* Fear Her
* Army of Ghosts
* Doomsday

### **Series 3**

* The Runaway Bride
* Smith and Jones
* The Shakespeare Code
* Gridlock
* Daleks in Manhattan
* Evolution of the Daleks
* The Lazarus Experiment
* 42
* Human Nature
* The Family of Blood
* Blink
* Utopia
* The Sound of Drums
* Last of the Time Lords

### **Series 4**

* Time Crash
* Voyage of the Damned
* Partners in Crime
* The Fires of Pompeii
* Planet of the Ood
* The Sontaran Stratagem
* The Poison Sky
* The Doctor's Daughter
* The Unicorn and the Wasp
* Silence in the Library
* Forest of the Dead
* Midnight
* Turn Left
* The Stolen Earth
* Journey's End
* Music of the Spheres
* The Next Doctor
* Planet of the Dead

### **The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 3**

* The Mad Woman in the Attic
* The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith

### **Series 4**

* The Waters of Mars
* Dreamland
* The End of Time