Russell T Davies on 507 regenerations

Russell T Davies, the writer of this week's Sarah Jane Adventures story 'Death of the Doctor', has discussed the highly-controversial dialogue which revealed that The Doctor can regenerate more than 507 times in an interview with SFX...

So, the Doctor can regenerate a lot more than 12 times, apparently. That was a bit of a cheeky line…
507 – I could not resist! I was hooting. It’ll never stick, though. That 13 lives is stuck in people’s heads. It is, isn’t it funny? Yet they only said 13 once or twice.

But some people do get tremendously worried by that figure, don’t they? As if when we get to the end of the thirteenth Doctor’s time, the BBC are gonna cancel the series, regardless of how well it’s doing.
They do, I know. When they came over here to launch “The Eleventh Hour”, I went along to this screening in LA and journalists put their hands up, and one of the first questions was, “What will happen when he reaches the thirteenth regeneration?” There’s a fascinating academic study to be made out of how some facts stick and some don’t – how Jon Pertwee’s Doctor could say he was thousands of years old, and no-one listens to that, and yet someone once says he’s only got thirteen lives, and it becomes lore. It’s really interesting, I think. That’s why I’m quite serious that that 507 thing won’t stick, because the 13 is too deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. But how? How did that get there? It’s fascinating, it’s really weird. Anyway, that’ll be my book in my retirement!

Click HERE to read the final part of the interview.