History Headscratchers / DoctorWho

** We know at least one alternate Gallifrey exists with Merlin(suggested to be an alternate Doctor) in the episode "Battlefield". Also, any universe even remotely like the main one (Pete's World for an example) would ''have'' to have at the very least a heroic time traveller with Time Lord-level technology: the Doctor has saved the Earth a bazillion times, and the universe quite a lot. Granted the "universe being saved a lot" isn't that a problem since most times someone tries to end it [[NiceJobBreakingItHero has a history with him]], but about 99% of the alien invaders up to, during and beyond the 21st century both had no contact with him and lacked another group that could've helped save humanity. The Doctor or someone just like him is basically [[ForWantOfANail the nail]] of the whole world. Hell, going by the "Time Lords came first" implications you'd have to be part of a completely different fiction to find people in another universe lacking the Time Lords.

** The Master and the Doctor both fought in the Time War, but it's not at all clear from the main canon whether the Doctor regenerated into the War Doctor before the War Master fled the Time War. (They do meet at least once in the comics, but the Master is in a body that later gets erased from existence, so whether they actually remember meeting in the Time War is questionable.) Saxon in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E12TheSoundOfDrums The Sound of Drums]] does take the trouble to explain to the Doctor that [[ResurrectedForAJob he had been brought back from the dead to fight in the Time War]], so either the Master doesn't think that the Doctor knows this or was just ranting.

*** River Song wasn't in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]], but she nevertheless does [[Recap/DoctorWho2015CSTheHusbandsOfRiverSong know about the Metacrisis]], or at least has reason to believe that the Doctor only gets twelve faces instead of the Time Lord-standard thirteen. But given her friendly relationship with Eleven, that might be just from Eleven telling her about it--which also explains why she ''doesn't'' know about Trenzalore.

** Missy met Twelve (and so did Saxon in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls The Doctor Falls]]).

* In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls The Doctor Falls]]), Saxon and Missy speculate about ways to kill the Doctor, but reject throwing him off a rooftop repeatedly because they suspect he has too many regenerations left. ("We'll be up and down the stairs all night.")

* On the flip side, Missy did spend seventy years as the Doctor's prisoner, and they could have talked about all kinds of things during that time, including the Metacrisis and Trenzalore. So she could know ''about'' all thirteen regenerations/fourteen doctors.

* There are several incarnations of the Doctor who never met the Master, such as War and Nine (Ten did not know that the Master [[ResurrectedForAJob had been brought back from the dead to fight in the Time War]] and Eleven (Twelve did not know that Missy had escaped the time-freeze). Plus it is likely that Missy did not know about the Meta-Crisis regeneration. Therefore it is possible that the Master is unaware of these regenerations and thinks that the Doctor is still at his tenth life instead of fourteenth. If this is the case then it would shed a new light on the Valeyard prophecy.
* In "The Doctor Falls", Saxon and Missy speculate about ways to kill the Doctor, but reject throwing him off a rooftop repeatedly because they suspect he has too many regenerations left. ("We'll be up and down the stairs all night.") So presumably they know he has more lives than is usual for a Time Lord: else, they'd presume he has only three or four more regenerations to go, tops.
* Let's spell out the math here. They presumably know *about* regenerations they haven't been shown on-screen with, most notably the War Doctor. Judging by the reception he got on Gallifrey, from peasants and soldiers alike, stories of the "Doctor of War" were pretty well-known. If we're not including ExpandedUniverse stuff, the Master never met Nine or Eleven personally, although Eleven was, again, pretty well-known throughout the universe, so Missy likely would have come across stories of him. They definitely knew each other on their first regenerations, and were seen on-screen with Three onward in the Classic series. (Theories about the War Chief being the Master aside, we don't ''officially'' know about any meetings with Two.) So, that makes only two Doctors they might not know about, plus the Metacrisis regeneration. So, that's nine Doctors they definitely know about, meaning they should think he only has at most four left. On that tall a roof, if there are no regular elevators, throwing him off the roof, waiting for him to regenerate, then getting him back up (presumably ''not'' in a cooperative mood) and back to the edge....yeah, that might have taken the rest of the night. So no definite answer can be inferred from their comment either way.
** The Master knew about Two, as they both appear in "The Five Doctors".
** The Master might not ''remember'' all of the classic series. The Time Lords resurrected him to fight in the Time War. They had every reason to want to get Delgado or the War Chief, who are smart and relatively sane, and not Roberts, who kind of isn't. Either as part of an attempt to make him come back right, or by cloning (or paradox-fetching) a version from relatively early in his timeline, they might have produced a Master with incomplete memories. (This might have been what Dhawan was doing in the Matrix before he found the Timeless Child—finding his own lost memories—so this doesn't actually contradict the bit in ''The Power of the Doctor'' where he remembers Ace and Tegan.)
** Missy gave Clara the phone number to the TARDIS during Eleven's tenure, so either she knows about Eleven or she isn't creepily stalking the Doctor while setting him up with a new companion that she picked out. I suppose it's ''possible'' that she isn't creepily stalking the Doctor while setting him with a new companion that she picked out, but I wouldn't bet on it.
** Conversely, Missy claims to be secretly on the Doctor's side in ''The Doctor Falls'', so even if ''she'' knew about Eleven, it's entirely possible that she wouldn't tell Saxon about him. (Ditto for Nine and War, if the War Master/Saxon didn't know about them and Missy found out about them later.)
* The Master was likely on Gallifrey when the Time Lords gave the Doctor a new regeneration cycle, (this would nicely explain why Missy knew where Gallifrey was), prior to the "mutual kicking out" Saxon mentions, and so would know about it.
** While ''someone'' on Gallifrey gave the Doctor some regeneration energy, the plan to return through Trenzalore and what happened with it might be classified information that random Time Lords off the street (or in prison) wouldn't know about.

** Why assume the Rutans reproduce any more slowly than the Sontarans do? On Earth, marine jellies similar to the Rutans tend to produce ''tens of thousands'' of eggs at a go, without any technological assistance needed. For all we know, those green blobs spawn just as rapidly as the Sontarans crank out clones.

** Why assume the Rutans reproduce any more slowly than the Sontarans do? For all we know, they spawn just as rapidly as the Sontarans crank out clones.