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When The Doctor is shot by the astronaut at Lake Silencio, he begins to regenerate, before being shot again and killed. But, at that point, he was

The Teselecta, with the real Doctor safely miniaturized inside.

So why does his body start to generate as normal, with a ton of regeneration energy streaming off of him? How did he accomplish that without actually being injured and regenerating?

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    I remember this being discussed as part of another question, and the conclusion was that the Teselecta could mimic almost anything. But I can't find that other question. (That might mean this is a duplicate.)
    – Tango
    Oct 19, 2012 at 1:37
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    @TangoOversway: The closest one I could find: What happened in 'The Wedding of River Song'?. Do you mean that one?
    – bitmask
    Oct 19, 2012 at 1:46
  • @TangoOversway I don't remember seeing that mentioned but it does make sense; I'm not sure I buy that they can replicate anything as we only ever see them replicate shapes/forms, and never creating a "light show", but I guess that isn't all that big of a technological leap :)
    – KutuluMike
    Oct 19, 2012 at 14:05
  • @MichaelEdenfield - have we seen the Teselectas other than the one that "killed" Hitler and the Doctor? (that was the same one, right?) I haven't seen all of S7 yet, so please no spoilers other than "yes" (or "no") for that please. :)
    – eidylon
    Aug 22, 2014 at 19:55

1 Answer 1

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Keep in mind, as revealed in the most recent episode:

When an event is observed or known, it becomes a fixed point in time and cannot be changed.

That being known,

The events observed by Amy and Rory are then forced to take place, and they have to think that the Doctor is dead.

Thus,

it would behoove the doctor to use the Teselecta to mimic a partial regeneration cycle to create the effect.

So we must conclude

The Doctor was not regenerating at all, merely providing all witnesses with the effect of such.

Wow this is a hard one to answer without a crap-load of spoilers.

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    I'm mostly curious if anything we've ever seen him do anything like spoiler #3; we've seen some odd things with regeneration energy from Ten and Eleven (and River) but this seems like something much more extreme with nothing to trigger it.
    – KutuluMike
    Oct 19, 2012 at 14:03
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    The Teselecta is able to reproduce the appearance of anything. Using it to create a glow from the hands wouldn't be too difficult.
    – Jared Tritsch
    Oct 19, 2012 at 17:20

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