Doctor, Where Are Your Pants?

So recently I was watching the third Doctor Who special of 2023, AKA The One Where the 15th Doctor Shows Up. Although my wife is not, as a general rule, interested in Doctor Who, I knew that she was curious about the new Doctor, although she did have some questions.

Wife: “What number Doctor is this? Fourteen?”
Me: “No, this is Fifteen. Thirteen was Jodie Whittaker, and then they brought back David Tennant as Fourteen, so the new one is Fifteen.”
Wife: “But didn’t David Tennant already play the Doctor?”
Me: “Yes, he was Ten. But he’s also Fourteen.”
Wife: “I don’t think they should give him a new number when he was already the Doctor before. He should be like 10A or something.”

But we’re not in charge of the numbering, so Ncuti Gatwa will be Fifteen. Besides, they probably used an integer for this variable, so can’t just go slapping a string on the end of it. Oh and, by the way, in case you need it …

So anyway, the Fifteenth Doctor showed up much earlier in the show than I was expecting; usually these regenerations happen at the very end of whichever episode in which they occur, but this time, it occurred right in the middle of things, when the antagonist—in a fit of petulance―decided he didn’t want to play with the Tenth Fourteenth Doctor anymore, he wanted to play with the next one; and unlike many antagonists, this one had the wherewithal to make it happen:

Now normally when the Doctor gets killed and regenerates, we end up with one new Doctor. However in this case we ended up with two, Fourteen and Fifteen. But something was missing.

Me: “Fifteen hasn’t got any pants.”
Wife: “I can see that.”
Me: “But why doesn’t he have pants?”
Wife: “I think they just wanted to show off their new Doctor.”

Naturally the two Doctors proceed to team up (more or less) to defeat the world-shattering villain in an intense game of … Catch? And subsequentely Fifteen, after contriving to duplicate the TARDIS, departed for the stars:

Me: “Well, there he goes. I assume he will have pants in his next episode.”
Wife: “If he doesn’t, I’m sure the ladies won’t mind.”

While Fourteen sticks around to relax a while and hang with Donna and Mel and his other human friends, ostensibly because he needed a nice long vacation, although I suspected there was likely a different reason:

Me: “You know they’re just doing this so they can keep David Tennant in their back pocket if they need him again later.”

Some time later, while reading fan theories and whatnot, somebody pointed out that while the Doctor regenerates, this doesn’t cause him to get a new set of clothes, and that therefore it made sense that some of his garments would go with the new version while the rest would stay with him. I relayed this theory to my wife, whose opinion of it was thus:

Wife: “Maybe, but I still say they just wanted to show off their new doctor.”
Me: “Yeah, well, there’s a reason they gave the new guy the underwear and not David Tennant.”

As I mentioned, my wife is not, traditionally, a viewer of Doctor Who, but she is intrigued enough by the Fifteenth Doctor (“He’s certainly got flair!”) to tune in for a few more episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIXR4yQnTiQ

She’s not wrong; he does have flair to spare*. I suspect her interest will flag after an adventure or two, but who knows? Maybe if it takes Fifteen a while to find himself a nice pair of Dockers, she’ll keep watching for a while.

* And, apparently, a pretty spectacular set of gams.