Actor Matt Smith Will Be 11th Doctor Who

Jerry Smith was among a large number of readers letting us know that the 11th Doctor Who has been named. It's Matt Smith, 26, who will be the youngest actor to play the time-traveling Doctor. The head of drama at BBC Wales said this about Smith's audition: "It was abundantly clear that he had that 'Doctor-ness' about him. You are either the Doctor or you are not."

Comments

IMDB link

[Gothic_Walrus]

Since it wasn't included in the summary and searching for "Matt Smith" brings up page after page of listings on IMDB, here's the profile of the actor in question.

It looks like he hasn't done much in his career so far, and (other than one episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl) I don't see anything that American audiences would be familiar with there.

Re:12 Regenerations?

[TheRaven64]

The Master was given an extra set of regenerations by the Time Lords for... something. The Sisterhood of Karn had the secret to true immortality, but the Time Lords rejected it because they realised that immortality lead to a static society. Without the Time Lord rules against it being enforced, there's nothing stopping The Doctor from regenerating more than 12 times. There is a lot of evidence in the series that the limit of 12 was artificial - to encourage Time Lords to savour their lives and then move on to make way for a new generations.

Allowing infinite regenerations could easily be done without breaking continuity, but it would destroy the show by making the Doctor's death totally meaningless. There are lots of ways of extending the number of regenerations too. It is implied several times that regeneration is something that only happens to Time Lords who are joined with time capsules. The TARDIS is presumably not connected to the Eye of Harmony (the black hole contained on Galifrey) anymore, so the amount of energy it can provide for regeneration might be more or less than normal.

Re:Waiting

[retchdog]

Nonetheless, there is an overall trend to younger doctors. Correlation of age with order of appearance: r=-0.7, with each doctor an average of 2 years younger than the last. (p-value: 0.01)

Without Matt Smith, that goes down to r=-0.6, and 1.7 years younger. (p-value: 0.04)

Thanks for the data!