Doctor Who

[Cyberman]

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this "the Doctor lies," thing. It just seems like a writing escape hatch; I want to be able to trust the main character of the damn show, after all.

The character's always had a streak of that though, whether it be straight out lying or simple exaggeration. In Pyramids of Mars Sutekh described Time Lords as "a perfidious species" and he ought to know, being one of those ancient-aliens-as-god things.

Like the thirteen regeneration limit. I'll bet anything that if the show is still profitable when the thirteenth actor leaves, they'll write around that in a heartbeat.

Back when the High Council of Time Lords wanted to co-opt the Master to look for the Doctor in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, the only way they could persuade him to rescue his arch enemy was by offering him "regeneration - a whole new life cycle". A tempting offer for someone who had exceeded his own bodily regeneration limit and was living a parasitic existence absorbing Tremas of Traken. Since we next saw him when he was being Derek Jacobi (unless Scream of the Shalka is meant to be 'canon'), and he was later able to regenerate into Sam Tyler from Life on Mars, something like that must have happened.

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In any case I like the idea of starting the series fresh once the 13th doctor is done, that way you can have the first doctor - who loathes humans - kidnapping two people as his first human companions, again!

Don't forget that later in that same original story he had no reservations about bashing an injured caveman's head in with a rock... though there's no explicit information that the story is set on Earth. It's still a shocking thing for a hero to do, by any standards.