ALSO
Considering how as far as FF knew the Doctor only Regenerated upon near-death and the fact that being hit with a Dalek laser didn't kickstart said Regeneration, the RPG Fandom doubted DW's theory quite a bit.
I was going to comment on this when this post first went up, but I forgot.
The interesting thing about this is that, in Classic Who, the Doctor didn't regenerate when he was
near-death -- he only regenerated after he was
already dead. (I mean, normally he only stayed dead for a second or two before his body would start to glow and change and all that, but still.) And then he wouldn't wake up again until after the regeneration had happened. From a conceptual standpoint, I think this actually makes a lot more sense than the way that regeneration is portrayed in New Who -- where it looks more like the regeneration saves him
before he dies, rather than reviving him afterwords. [spoili]Which would be fine,
if he actually changed bodies at the moment that the regeneration started -- after all, the whole point of regeneration is that the Doctor gets a new body to replace the dead/dying one, right? -- but that isn't what happens in New Who. When Ten and Eleven regenerated, their injuries were healed
first, and
then the actual body-changing part of the regeneration happened -- but only
after they had time to give a dramatic final speech (not to mention pop around in time and space for a while to give a quick goodbye to each and every friend and ally that he'd met over the past three seasons, in Ten's case). And if the regenerative process can restore the Doctor's dying body (not to mention
reverse aging, as we saw with Eleven), then why does he have to change at all? What does that accomplish? At least in Classic Who, it was implied that the regeneration process healed a Time Lord by creating a new body rather than fixing the old one (or it could be argued that the change in appearance was just a byproduct of the healing process), and I guess you could even interpret Nine's regeneration as doing the same thing, just with the whole thing happening while he was
dying as opposed to already being
dead -- but with Ten's regeneration healing all his injuries
first (and giving him
quite a bit of extra time before the change happened), it really just leaves no reason for the change to happen at all. [/spoili] (and then I went off on a tangent...)
But anyway!! The reason why I bring this up is -- it still makes sense for the fandom Doctor to be uncertain about whether or not he has the power to regenerate, even after living through near-death experiences such as these -- partially because, even if he
could regenerate, he still wouldn't know whether it would be a Classic-style or New-Who-Style regeneration. So like, if he was hit with a Dalek laser, and then he looked down and saw his hands glowing, then, yeah, that's a definite 'yes' for regeneration -- but there's really no way that being in such a situation could provide a definite
no. Because even if the Doctor was certain that he was dying, and could at least tell that he wasn't going to get a New-Who-Style regeneration as he felt himself slip into unconsciousness -- there's still the hope that he might get a Classic-Style regeneration and wake up again in his new body. (And, yes, I'll go ahead and say that this is pretty much exactly what the Doctor's last thoughts were in the alternate timeline.)
Additionally, there's still the fact that -- at least in the main timeline -- the Doctor
did survive, and never
needed to regenerate. The Daleks never landed a fatal hit on him. Even in New Who, a regeneration is only triggered by a would-be fatal injury (well, except for the "wearing a bit thin" regenerations, which I guess is what happened to Eleven -- but, meh), rather than just any near-death experience. Sooo... yeah, aside from encountering one of his own future-selves, and aside from seeking out information about his own future (which he normally just wouldn't do), there really isn't any way that the Doctor could've known for sure that he could regenerate (
or have ever been certain that he
couldn't), without actually dying. :P
That being said, I realize that your post is still valid as far as FF's perspective is concerned, and I'm not asking you to change it or anything -- I just wanted an excuse to ramble and show off how much thought I've put into this. :P