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1%% NOTE - TV Tropes does not trope content leaks. That includes WMG.
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3%% Please don't add any theories or responses based on leaked information.
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5%% If an edit doesn't mention leaks but is clearly *based* on a leak, it will be treated the same way (and cut).
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7
8!!Beware of unmarked spoilers - WMG pages are always Administrivia/SpoilersOff
9
10Specific speculation on the Classic Series and/or the TV Movie goes into
11
12[[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoClassicSeries]]
13
14Specific speculation on the Eccleston era onward goes into [[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoNewSeries]]
15
16Specific speculation on the latest series goes into [[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoWithSpoilers]] (contains '''spoilers''').
17
18Archived confirmed/Jossed speculation for the final Tennant years post-"Last of the Time Lords" is in [[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoSeries4]]
19
20Specific speculation of Matt Smith's first series goes into [[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoSeries5]]
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22Specific speculation on Matt Smith's 3rd series goes into [[AC:WMG/DoctorWhoSeries7]]
23
24----
25
26[[foldercontrol]]
27
28[[folder:The Doctor]]
29
30[[WMG: Ten's entire life is a StableTimeLoop]]
31In "The Parting of the Ways" 9 absorbed the time energy from Rose, that caused him to regenerate. What if his Time Lord cells chose a form they thought Rose would be comfortable with? The time energy was inside Rose and presumably had access to all her memories, so he regenerated into a form he thought she'd be comfortable with: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime A random stranger she met the previous New Years Eve...]]
32
33[[WMG: There is another regeneration between 8 and '9']]
34If you think about it, Eccleston!Doctor doesn't seem as shaken by the Time War as the other Time Lords were, yet it's still a clear memory for him. What probably happened is whoever the Time Lords forced Eighth to regenerate into, it wasn't Eccleston, but whoever came before him was.
35So what, you might ask? Well, this means that Matt Smith isn't actually the Eleventh Doctor, he's the Twelfth -- the last regeneration before the Valeyard is created. ''That's'' why Ten went into full blown Angst mode in "The End of Time"; because he knew that after this, he was only one step away from becoming his own Dark Side...
36* {{Jossed}} when the Atraxi scan the Eleventh Doctor and ten -- count 'em, ten -- previous incarnations are shown.
37** It's possible there could also be another "partial Doctor" (ala "The Watcher" or "the Valeyard")
38** The Atraxi didn't find out about the other Doctors by scanning the Eleventh, they found out by going through Earth history(circa 21st century), The simplest explanation being that the 8 1/2 Doctor was entirely consumed with fighting the Time War and thus didn't get recorded into Earth History.
39* This Troper has decided to put this on top considering it's a big fan theory now at the moment and it's fascinating to see somebody come up with this before the events of the Series 7 finale. Possibly not jossed now.
40* Definitely '''confirmed''' as of "The Night of the Doctor".
41
42[[WMG: The Doctor's personality when he regenerates is influenced by the people he was last around before his regenration.]]
43* Take Eleven for example, as Ten, he was last around Wilfred, the Master, and the Time Lords. Wilfred influenced his need to protect. The Master influence his madman tendencies, and The Time Lords influenced his sense of superiority.
44
45[[WMG: The last story]]
46The last story will involve the 13th Doctor (the ginger female one) discovering the true nature of his universe : a work of fiction. Thus, having discovered the final truth of the laws of nature in his reality, he will force the writers to come up with a good end.
47* So, sort-of Blade Runner then?
48** Hangonamo, ginger female one? We've had two ginger female companions lately, and this troper's felt for a while that there needs to be a definitive conclusion to Donna's story...
49* As cool of an idea as that is I doubt the show will ever [[LongRunners have a conclusive ending.]] It easily could however have a kind-of "subending" that comes right before it goes off air for however long.
50
51[[WMG: If there ever is a female doctor...]]
52It will be David Tennant's daughter. I don't really want a female doctor, but if there ever is, three Doctors in one family would be so epic. Anyway, at the very least, she should have a cameo.
53** Alternatively, if David Tennant and Georgia Moffett have a son...
54*** They did...
55
56[[WMG: The Ginger Doctor.]]
57We all know the Doctor wants to be Ginger, but who would play him? My guess, Rupert Grint.
58
59[[WMG: The 13th and "Final" Doctor will be "The Perfect Doctor", a amalgamation of all of his previous incarnations. And Ginger.]]
60The Doctor is basically a character who has a serial dissociative identity disorder- each regeneration brings a new personality (although with the raw essence of what makes the Doctor the Doctor always remaining). One of the main ways of treating multiple personalities, especially in HollywoodPsychology? Making all of the personalities merge into a single identity. So the 13th Doctor would be as if you had slammed the personalities and characters of all the other 12 Doctors together. Oh, and he'd be Ginger, because, well, it's a running gag.
61* His appearance and skills would reflect this too- Tom Baker's scarf, Sylvester [=McCoy=]'s hat (although only after his companion told him to take off a fez), Davison's celery, Tennant's suits...
62
63[[WMG: Alternatively, the 13th Doctor will be constantly switching between the 12 personalities.]]
64i.e: He'll behave like 5 one second, then switch to 11, and start a sentence the way 4 would've, but finish the sentence the way 9 would.
65* It would be awesome, but we'd all have seizures.
66* 13 incarnations. 13 episodes per season.
67
68[[WMG: The Last Doctor will be a kid]]
69Every regeneration of the Doctor gets younger, so if we're on the eleventh Doctor, who is in his twenties, when we get to the last, it should be a teen or kid, and come on, how cool would it be to see a little kid with all the Doctor's quirks?
70
71[[WMG: The Doctor is a Time Lord!]]
72* ... Nah, that's way too far fetched.
73* I am so sick of seeing these theories on EVERY WMG. You could at least leave this respectable fandom alone!
74** No Time Lords here, only us chickens.
75* Also, the TARDIS is his TARDIS and the Master is the Master.
76* Nah... see my WMG for why not.
77* WHAT? RIDICULOUS? There's no way he could be a Time Lord! He's a HYBRID, GODDAMMIT! Why would he have a British accent and wear such idiotic, un-Time-Lordish clothing? By the order of the High Council, THIS MAN IS NOT ONE OF US! [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial And we certainly DID NOT write on this page because the Master brainwashed all into doing so!]]
78* {{Jossed}}
79** Well, sort of. Technically. It's true that the Doctor is not the same species as the people who'd eventually call themselves Time Lords, but part of what *made* them powerful enough to call themselves that was reverse-engineering the power of regeneration from the Doctor. In one sense, the Doctor isn't a Time Lord; in another sense, the Doctor is the *original* Time Lord.
80* I came here looking for this. Was not disapointed.
81
82[[WMG:The reason the Doctor never revealed his name is because there was an ancient prophecy that he would destroy Gallifrey]].
83Ok, so this relies on parents not being able to name their own kids, but my theory goes thusly: as the Doctor grew up he was forever persecuted for what he would eventually do. This is why he goes on the run to avoid destroying his home planet, and this is also why he's first incarnation was so bitter: he was bullied and isolated for what he would do. This is also why Madame de Pompadour said he "was such a lonely child." Over time, however, and with the help of his companions, he realises that the best way to not destroy Gallifrey would be the sort of man who wouldn't destroy Gallifrey and hence becomes a technical pacifist. This would also be why he left Susan on Earth: he did not want to kill her, or for her to see him kill everyone else. After trying to equal out the destruction he'd cause by saving other planets, the Time War breaks out and as the Time Lords get eviler and eviler he finally finds out why he was prophesied to kill them: he was "The only one that could". But after he does he's name is no longer a symbol of what he would do but a symbol of what he failed to prevent, causing him to hide it more and more out of shame.
84* This could also be why the Doctor pursues romantic partners after the Time War: he knew before the Time War if he had a romantic partner there was a chance they would have to witness him killing his own people.
85
86[[WMG: The reason the Doctor left Gallifrey is because his child tried to kill him.]]
87Consider all the facts we know about how and why the Doctor left Gallifrey:
88* 1) He didn't just leave, he ''fled'', while being actively pursued by the Chancellery Guard. ("The Beginning", "Time of the Doctor")
89* 2) He took his granddaughter and an ancient Gallifreyan superweapon with him. ("Unearthly Child", "Remembrance...")
90* 3) His older brother Braxiatel was the Lord Burner (personal assassin) of Time Lord President Pandad VII. When ordered to Burn "and old man and his granddaughter", he tipped them off, they fled, then Pandad died in a "totally unrelated" accident. (And Brax should know, he headed up the inquiry...) ("Gallifrey: Disassembled")
91* 4) The Doctor later claimed he didn't kidnap the President's wife, but his ''daughter''. (Hell Bent, Brief History of the Time Lords)
92** '''Logical conclusion?''' For some mysterious reason the Doctor's own son tried to have him killed. Brax killed his own nephew instead, then the Doctor fled with his son's daughter, who is also, obviously, his granddaughter. (Despite guesses that she isn't his granddaughter, there's not one shred of evidence that their relationship is anything other than what they say it is, the potential existence of "the Other" notwithstanding.) Presumably, whatever Pandad's motive was, it wasn't safe for the Doctor and Susan to remain on Gallifrey after he died. And given that the Doctor took an ancient stellar manipulator with him, it was probably something bigger than a family spat.
93
94[[WMG: The Doctor's name really is Basil.]]
95
96[[WMG: The Doctor is Santa Claus.]]
97How else did he know about Rose's red bike when she was twelve? He said it in a fairly early episode, too, i think, so i don't think he went back in time without Rose just to check what present she got so he could mess with her.
98* I actually ran the Fifth Doctor's quote "A megabyte modem!" through the Bad Translator [http://www.cheatingtranslators.com/bad-translator ] and got "Santa Klaus!" as the final entry. YMMV, of course...
99* Jossed by A Christmas Carol, wherein the good Doctor shows a small boy a picture of himself with both Santa and Einstein.
100** I heard a crap theory once that Santa had a TARDIS. And I read somewhere else Santa hasn't invented a time machine, but if he invents one in the future, he can travel back and make sure everyone gets their presents in the past.
101** That means nothing. The Doctor's met himself plenty of times. If anything, that just means that the Doctor is also Einstein.
102
103[[WMG: The Doctor is ''not'' a Time Lord.]]
104He's the future son of Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya and Kyon that inherited a mix of common sense and god-like power which he uses to traverse time and space doing heroics. He pretends to be one because it provides a good cover for his powers.
105* More fuel to "not a time lord" fire. Both Romana in the old series and the Master in the new have shown some control on who they become when regenerating. The Doctor never showed such control and was explicitly said to have none when regenerating from Nine to Ten.
106** On the other hand, once he was firmly Ten, he did figure out how to control regeneration; thus, his promptly regrowing a lost hand shortly after it got cut off, and more fun with that hand later.
107** The Doctor almost always regenerates as a result of sustained injuries; Romana and the Master (usually) regenerate on purpose. Also, in the old series, the Master had run out of regenerations, which resulted in him becoming a pile of blood pudding with eyes and teeth. (He got around it at the time by possessing others; since then, he seems to have acquired another Time Lord's body.)
108* The Doctor is not a TRUE Time Lord - he was born on Gallifrey and went through their ritual to become one, but he is not a true Gallifreyan like the other Time Lords. He doesn't know this, but it could explain his utter fascination with humanity as a whole.
109** Or he's "not a proper Time Lord" in the sense that Luke is not a proper Jedi. Maybe the people who run away from the Untempered Schism aren't trained to be full Time Lords (because the "enlightenment" you get from it allows you to comprehend time travel), and that's why he later went on to steal the TARDIS. This also explains why he's [[TimeyWimeyBall unable to describe how time travel actually works]] and his navigation of the TARDIS is so haphazard. Why are all the best heroes [[BookDumb always school dropouts?]]
110** He's [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Wesley Crusher]] after Wesley left his apprenticeship with the Traveler. This also explains the whole "human on his mother's side" thing.
111*** I never thought I'd see a theory which set Star Trek and Doctor Who in the same universe that would make me angry. Damn you.
112* A Time Lord? You'll never find any evidence to support that.
113** The Time Lords are all dead.
114** In "Silver Nemesis", Lady Peinforte taunts the Doctor and Ace claiming to have knowledge of the Doctor's true nature. When Ace snaps words to the effect of "everyone knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord", Peinforte laughs and shakes her head. Not an actual denial, true, but maybe...
115
116[[WMG: The personality of each of the Doctor's regenerations is influenced by the manner of the previous incarnation's death.]]
117...Or alternatively, he subconsciously changes aspects of his personality to deal with aspects of himself that he doesn't like.
118* The First Doctor died from a combination of old age and the energy-draining effects of the planet he was stuck on; thus, he regenerated as a younger, energetic man with a penchant for running away.
119** The First Doctor was impatient and grumpy; he regenerated into a friendlier, more avuncular character who got along more easily with his companions.
120* The Second Doctor's forced regeneration at the hands of his government lead to a more forceful personality, a suave, debonair figure willing to cooperate, if grudgingly, with a government body.
121** The Second Doctor tended to panic and run away; he regenerated into a more proactive, calm, action-oriented guy, an incarnation who was ''not'' a TechnicalPacifist.
122* The Third Doctor died after a long exile on Earth working for a paramilitary organization; the Fourth Doctor was a bohemian, anti-authoritarian renegade with wanderlust, who died sacrificing his life for the universe.
123** The Third Doctor was tired of being so attached to UNIT and Earth, and wanted to be more aloof.
124* Following a difficult regeneration, the Doctor became a reserved, quieter figure with an air of tormented nobility (Fifth)...
125** The Fourth Doctor was tired of being weird and aloof and wanted to have a closer relationship with Nyssa and Adric, for whom he was now responsible.
126** Even more alternatively, the Fourth was tired of running around and ineffectively dealing with people by offering them Jelly Babies. As a result, the Fifth became more of a... well-meaning sociopath - still doing good throughout the cosmos, but with far more consequences than a piece of candy ''(as explained in a much-further-down guess)''.
127* ...that died a long, protracted death after a more personal but still valiant, and very painful self-sacrifice. This lead to an extroverted, self-righteous, and obnoxiously colourful version (Sixth)...
128** The Fifth Doctor was tired of lacking confidence and presence, and wanted to be more impressive and showy.
129* ...whose [[DroppedABridgeOnHim sudden, accidental death]] brought about a clownish yet darkly manipulative persona.
130** The Sixth Doctor's moments of defeatism made him want to be more of a planner, a bit more optimistic, and a bit more realistic about his abilities.
131* The Seventh Doctor's very long period of clinical death lead to the amnesia and the Gothic Romanticism that partially defined the Eight Doctor's personality.
132** The Seventh Doctor's complex plans made him yearn for a simpler, more childlike view of the universe.
133* The Eighth's death during the Time War lead to the grouchy and war worn "war doctor". The lost regeneration of the new series.
134* The War Doctor, being unable to remember that he eventually chose to rewrite history, left his future regeneration with the belief that in order to end the war, he had to burn the planet. This immediately lead to the much darker and enraged Ninth Doctor...
135** The Time War was no place for an idealistic and optimistic Doctor, however effective he was; and so we get Nine, who is cynical and pragmatic in most things.
136* ...who, after sacrificing himself for Rose, regenerated into the Tenth, an individual very open to love with his companions.
137** Nine was deep in love when he regenerated and was never quite able to express it. He wanted to be someone loving and lovable, someone who would say what was on his mind when he wanted to, someone whom Rose would truly enjoy being around.
138* Season 4 spoiler: [[spoiler:Tenth implies that Human Ten was "born in battle like Ninth was" and was therefore more violent than he himself. Human Ten was created because Original Ten was hit by a Dalek beam and wasn't ready to die/become Eleven]]. This seems confirmed.
139*** If this is true, then Eleven should be...aloof, calm and highly forgiving, like some weird hybrid of Three and Eight.
140*** Or he should be torn in conflict between the impulse to save everyone and a distaste for violence. Oh wait...
141** Not long before regenerating into Eleven, Ten said that he would be proud to have Wilfred as a father, and the long, meaningful looks between Ten and [[spoiler:the older timelady]] suggests that she may have been [[spoiler:his mother]]. Perhaps because Ten missed his parents, Eleven came out younger to make people feel more parental toward him. In short, he turned himself into TheWoobie because he misses his mummy and daddy.
142** I disagree because [[spoiler:He commited a Heroic sacrifice to save Wilf]] He will be a JerkAss this incarnation.
143*** Not so much a JerkAss than suicidally overconfident and a thrill-seeker; [[spoiler: he had already cheated death once (with Handy Doctor), he regenerated on the tail end of his arrogant "Time Lord Victorious" spiel, and his Heroic Sacrifice was committed ''very'' reluctantly, since he's still afraid of dying, as shown by his fear of the knocking man prophecy, his assertion that he may have lived too long, and his final words before regenerating: "I don't want to go". The violence that spawned from his regeneration was likely his stubbornness to not regenerate and "die".]] All these, plus [[spoiler: Eleven being ''happy'' that he's crashing to Earth, as well as subtle hints in the trailer]] seem to indicate his arrogance and refusal to regenerate as Ten translates to a suicidal thrill-seeker mentality for Eleven, one who doesn't care for the rules and foolishly laughs in the face of danger in order to feel alive.
144*** That makes sense, but it is also possible that Eleven is so willing to risk his life because he hates himself. A major clue supporting this theory is the Dream Lord. In "Amy's Choice", the Dream Lord keeps showing up in front of him as he is about to risk committing suicide with Amy. He may reason that if he dies, he will be rid of a genome that appears to be quite inconvenient if you look closely.
145** Alternatively - considering the above thought that The Tenth Doctor [[spoiler: had caused himself a lot of problems toward the end due to ability to get emotionally attached (i.e. his love for Rose indirectly leading to the wall between universes being made more unstable, the whole ''Time Lord Victorious'' incident nearly wrecking human history for the sake of one woman The Doctor liked and - ultimately his reluctant HeroicSacrifice to save Wilf) ]], it is not implausible that The Eleventh Doctor might regenerate as an InsufferableGenius with hardly any sense of empathy, similar to Literature/SherlockHolmes.
146** Series 5 Spoiler! [[spoiler: This would explain why The Eleventh Doctor in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E2TheBeastBelow The Beast Below]]'' was able to notice subtle clues that "any parent knows" regarding a crying child yet failed to notice that The Beast was actively sparing the children dumped in its feeding pen and why, in ''Victory of the Daleks'', The Doctor attempts to make a Dalek-programmed android feel more human (in order to stop a doomsday device) by asking it for fine details of what it remembers of its life rather than trying to awaken the stronger emotion-based memories regarding Love - a tact used successfully by his more empathic companion.]]
147* So, how's the Eleventh Doctor reinvented himself from the Tenth Doctor?
148** He's come to terms and is more at peace with the Time War (or at least is willing to put it aside a bit more). There's no way the Tenth Doctor would, upon informing someone of the Time War, his role in it and it's effect on his life, would have been able to just leave it at "a bad day."
149** He puts his companions at arms length more, and is certainly more wary of romance with them. After losing Rose, the messy fallout with Martha (caused partly by his own self-pity and thoughtlessness over losing Rose) and even painfully losing Donna, his only non-romantic companion, the Doctor seems a lot more wary of the mess that comes with getting involved with his companions in that way. For himself as well as them; whereas Nine and Ten weren't particularly bothered about the effect of his relationship with Rose on Mickey, Eleven makes efforts to mend bridges as soon as he learns that Amy has a thing for him. Related to this, while Ten was a bit more confident and knowing about this sort of thing, Eleven is a lot more naive and clueless.
150** There's that vein of self-loathing alluded to in "Amy's Choice" -- a possible reaction against the cocky and at times over-confident Tenth Doctor, who ended up as a result getting within a hop, skip and jump of the "Time Lord Victorious" and full-blown AGodAmI megalomania not long before his final end.
151** I could have sworn someone pointed this out already, but Ten spent some of his last moments shouting at Wilf that, essentially, he was more important and shouldn't be the one dying - now a major BerserkButton for Eleven is suggesting that anyone is unimportant.
152*** I dunno, that's been a common trait for all three of the revival doctors. As far back as Father's Day minimum.
153* The Eleventh Doctor was a playful, ladies man with a bit of a goofball streak. However, he could also be deceitful, impulsive and pigheadedly stubborn to not take a more pragmatic approach to his problems. This regeneration has perhaps the most baggage effecting the change. Not only did he lose 3 companions in this timeline, but also found out the truth about the end of the time war, thus ending his centuries of guilt over it once and for all. Then, he spent the last years of his life fighting to defend his people, trying, desperately trying to bring them back, keep Clara out of the fighting (by trickery twice!) and protect the town of christmas at the same time. Though the time lords saved his life and gave him new regenerations, and he regenerated saving a whole planet from the daleks in a last act of heroism, the damage was done. The Twelfth Doctor finally decided to lift the young veil he had on his face the past 3 regenerations. He fully acknowledged himself as a two millennium year old being, gained a strong dose of cynicism about who he is, and now chooses to use BrutalHonesty rather than the trickery he had to resort to with Clara before. His last moment of heroism also began to impress on him a question. "Am I a good man?"
154
155[[WMG: Related to the guess directly above: The Tenth Doctor's last words were partly an attempt at making Eleven less warlike and more cautious/self-doubting.]]
156[[spoiler: "I don't want to go"]] after [[spoiler: several days of holding in his regeneration]] instead of, say, "Screw you, Daleks and Time Lords, [[ItsAllMyFault I]] am ''locking'' this gate-of-eternal-{{Unperson}}ing for the good of the universe!" or "I just... Oh, wow, [[ATasteOfPower that was a lot of power]]... [[TalkativeLoon I always wanted to go to Barcelona...]] You know what? [[RelationshipSue You were fantastic, Rose]], and more importantly, ''[[ItsAllAboutMe so]] [[AGodAMI was]] [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem I]]''[[WellIntentionedExtremist .]]"
157
158[[WMG: The personality of each of the Doctor's regenerations is suited to the adventures he is going to face]]
159We know Time Lords have some sort of temporal awareness so when the Doctor "dies" and regenerates he uses that ability to craft a body/persona that will suit what will happen to him in the future. That's why the Doctor always wins and why his "renegade" personality is so different to other Time Lords.
160Time Lords aren't perfect precogs, however, which is why some adventures are harder than others and why he eventually needs to regeerate again.
161
162[[WMG: The Doctor is committing a form of suicide, though he's going to change the universe as much as he can.]]
163Consider how long Time Lords live. Thousands of years and then some; in theory, "forever, barring accidents." The Doctor is burning through his regenerations at a speed that would be unfathomable to an immortal. Barring possible parts we don't see (especially the 8th/9th Regeneration and the Time War), it seems that his regenerations only last a couple of years each, as judged by the mortal companions he is with during.
164* Confirmed, at least in part, by "Turn Left". In a world where the Doctor never met Donna, he died while fighting the Rachnoss, either not wanting or not thinking to get out alive.
165* There are numerous periods during which we don't see the Doctor's adventures, though: For instance, when he first left in ''Rose'', after which we get to see some pictures of him in various historic moments, which clearly happened only after that because he had only just regenerated when he met Rose. The Sixth Doctor claimed to be 900, while the Seventh said to be 953, and those wacky episodes between probably didn't last 53 years. (Though if you add in the novels...) He could've spent countless centuries between the episodes that we've seen.
166** The [[http://tardis.wikia.com TARDIS Wikia site]] ties itself in knots trying to explain the Doctor's personal timeline, including the various [[ExpandedUniverse novels, short stories and comics]]. They basically conclude that he's lied about his age, or forgotten, on multiple occasions, and the best we can say is that Ten is "about 1000 years old."
167** I quietly add 200 to the number the Doctor says in his head, making him 1,100 in "Rose" and 1,107 as Matt Smith. To me, it's like he's in denial about passing the Big 1-0-0-0.
168
169[[WMG:The Doctor's real name is exactly that.]]
170Hell, if even the ''Time Lords'' call him "The Doctor"...
171* I heard that he's called "The Doctor" because he earned the least, merest academic credential available on Gallifrey: the lowly doctorate.
172* Of course, it could be one of those ridiculously silly long names that "prove" a species is "advanced" that the closest concept/word in English is "Doctor". The Time Lords just use telepathy to "smush" it together. Is that enough air quotes, do you think?
173* Conversely, "The Doctor" could mean something entirely different in Gallifreyean.
174* Note that "The Doctor" doesn't work with Carrionite magic.
175** Hmm. I don't suppose maybe he could have some kind of an [[Manga/DeathNote L]] thing going on, where [[spoiler: "Doctor" actually ''is'' his real name, but because nobody believes that, the magic still doesn't work]]?
176* Alternatively. The Doctor is ''not'' his real name, but his real name was erased from time or otherwise removed, leaving "The Doctor" as the closest thing to a name he's got.
177** (Season 30 spoilers) Several of these theories are Jossed by "Forest of the Dead" -- River Song knows the Doctor's real name and uses it as proof of their future relationship; therefore, he does have a name other than just the Doctor, and he must know what it is. There's also the possibility mentioned below, that Time Lord names are ceremonial and are "lost" when a Time Lord abandons Gallifrey.
178* Issue #57 of the ''Doctor Who'' comic book reveals his name as " d³Σx[[superscript:2]]. Naturally, this isn't {{canon}}, but it's worth mentioning.
179** There's a Sigma in there, so it could well be Theta's real name.
180* The other Time Lord (err, Time Lady) whose real name is known is "Romanadvoratrelundar", or 'Romana' for short. It seems possible that the Doctor's real name is a similarly long and bizarre word beginning with "Doctor". That, or it starts with "who". Read [[http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Aliases_of_the_Doctor#Doctor_Who this]].
181** Compare Doctor Appleby from ''ComicStrip/JumpStart''.
182* His real name (or part of it) is John Smith, the one he usually uses for an alias. Or possibly [[spoiler:Whodoctorjohnsmith, combining all three guesses]].
183** Unlikely. "John Smith" was first used as his name when he was unconscious in "The Wheel in Space"; Jamie read the brand name [[LineOfSightName off a medicine bottle]] and used it. Two kept it first for consistency and later because he liked Jamie. Three used it because Two did, and Four used it because Three did.
184* His real name is "Rumplestiltzkin". They say all myths are based in fact: HE was the origin of that particular story.
185** "I hate good wizards in stories: They always turn out to be ''him''."
186* "Theta Sigma" was his nickname in school. Maybe that's his real name. (Some FanFic treats it like that.)
187** I heard a kind of nuts theory once that he got the nickname "Doctor" due to an irregular heartbeat (listen to the beats of the opening credits - three sets of four, then a single set of three - like a double heart beat which was missing the final pump). Heard this theory from a friend and have been unable to find any confirmation for it online, though.
188*** ...Wait. Isn't the drumming in the Master's head also from the theme song? Perhaps the time vortex gave the Doctor that same irregular heartbeat! ...Of course, considering the Doctor only gets his second heart until AFTER his first incarnation, there are some holes in these two theories...
189* Maybe not even the creators originally knew his name - he's always been the Doctor to them, they never actually ''gave'' him another one in the first place?
190* His real name is Doctor Who. End of the question.
191** Um, no. His name is not and has never been Doctor Who. No one even calls him Doctor Who, just "The Doctor".
192** Lots of the people who made the classic series, including the writers and the actors who played The Doctor referred to him as Doctor Who all the time, evidenced by the classic DVD special features.
193** Actually appears to be confirmed in a throwaway line in spinoff series ''K-9 and Company'', by K-9 himself. (See WMG further down the page).
194* Nope. He goes by "The Doctor" because that's what his original companions, Ian and Barbara, started calling him. He just kind of adopted it. However, it has been revealed that the Doctor actually invented the word doctor, which creates an ontological paradox wherein Ian Chesterton accidentally created the word "Doctor".
195** This can't be true; toward the beginning of "An Unearthly Child", before they meet the Doctor, Ian & Barbara have this conversation:
196-->'''Barbara:''' Ian, I must talk to someone about this, but I don't want to get the girl into trouble. And I know you're going to tell me I'm imagining things.\
197'''Ian:''' No, I'm not.\
198'''Barbara:''' Well, I told you how good she is at history. I had a talk with her and told her she ought to specialise. Well, she seemed quite interested until I said I'd be willing to work with her at her home. Then she said that would be absolutely impossible as her grandfather didn't like strangers.\
199'''Ian:''' He's a doctor, isn't he? That's a bit of a lame excuse.\
200'''Barbara:''' Well, I didn't pursue the point but then recently her homework's been so bad.\
201'''Ian:''' Yes, I know.\
202'''Barbara:''' Finally I got so irritated with all her excuses I decided to have a talk with this grandfather of hers and tell him to take some interest in her.
203* If the Doctor is really named "The Doctor", then wouldn't the Master also be named "The Master"? (And for the people who ship them, wouldn't that mean that if they got married they would both be named "The Doctor" or "The Master"?)
204* {{Jossed}} in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E10JourneyToTheCentreOfTheTardis "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"]]: Clara learns his real name, and she says it's something else than "the Doctor".
205
206[[WMG:The Doctor is {{God}} incarnate.]]
207Or ''a'' god incarnate, at least. He's clearly more than just another Time Lord, but they're at the apex of the [[TechnologyLevels technological ladder]]. Above them are only the various cosmic powers of that universe, gods in all but name; the Doctor is one of these. This not only explains how he can consistently defeat other cosmic powers, but also such other mysteries as the Morbius faces, why his true name is so secret, and various enigmatic comments from the seventh Doctor.
208* Amazingly, some variant of this would have become {{canon}} if the show hadn't been canceled.
209* He '''is''' known as "The Lonely God" in {{fanon}}.
210* In "New Earth", Novice Hame describes the "superstitions" regarding the Face of Boe: "...just before his death, the Face of Boe will impart his great secret, that he will speak those words only to one like himself... a wanderer, the man without a home. The Lonely God." In "Gridlock", the Face of Boe does die, and gives the Doctor a message -- '''Y'''ou '''a'''re '''n'''ot '''a'''lone.
211* While we're on that, actually, remember [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E8TheImpossiblePlanet "The Impossible Planet"]], anyone? "The Beast and his armies will rise from the pit to make war against God." Well... the Beast and his armies ''did'' rise from the pit, certainly. But I see only one man they made war with, and it ''didn't'' go too well for them.
212
213[[WMG: The Doctor is a fruit fly]]
214He likes bananas. Bananas are good.
215* This theory means that Gallifreyans evolved from insects.
216** I think that would make them ''time flies'' and they therefore like arrows.
217* Somebody needs to draw this. ''Now''.
218* Like insects, Gallifreyans have a system of tubes for breathing instead of lungs.
219** Wait- Gallifreyans breathe through the Internet?
220
221[[WMG: Unseen eons pass for the Doctor in several episodes.]]
222An alternative to the suicide theory. We know the Doctor makes a habit of bidding farewell to someone, leaving in the TARDIS, and then immediately returning to invite them to be a companion. Examples: "Rose" and "The Lazarus Experiment". Here's what's going on: he leaves; he writes down the exact time and location, a personality profile of the companion, and the last thing he said. Then he goes off and does his thing for epic amounts of time; without Companions, he never gets killed. Eventually, he gets lonely, just as he knew he would, and he picks up one of the humans he's stashed throughout history pretending no time has passed. This also explains his inconsistent age - he's forgotten how old he's "supposed" to be. What a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive, indeed.
223* Something similar explicitly happens in the ExpandedUniverse. The Eighth Doctor ''Radio Times'' comic strips all happened while the companion in the Eighth Doctor novels was at a pop concert, for instance. And in {{canon}}, "The Face of Evil" reveals that he wandered off (in the {{novelization}}, near the start of "Robot") and inadvertently created a megalomaniacal computer in the far future.
224** The Eighth Doctor Creator/BigFinish audios have him stranded for six hundred years on an ocean planet, with a broken TARDIS he doesn't have the proper tools to fix.
225* Also worth consideration are the periods that he travels without a companion (for example, between "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Face of Evil"; between "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones") or with only non-human companions (for example, between "The Invasion of Time" and "Logopolis"), making his possible age even greater. And there's the time skip at the end of "Doomsday": How much time passed with the Doctor moping around the universe until he got the idea to send his message?
226** Hopefully not long, otherwise the gap would have long since closed.
227* In "Rose," this would explain the various pictures that Clive shows Rose of his other adventures. He probably didn't have them before that episode because Nine had probably just regenerated (with the whole ear thing). So, after Rose says no, Nine goes off to the ''Titanic'', JFK's assassination, etc. and then comes back for Rose. Perhaps Nine had hundreds of adventures alone after Rose turned him down and then, one day, he suddenly slapped his forehead in a comic fashion, exclaimed "''Of course! I should have told her that it travels in time as well!''", and went back to the exact moment he left her to see if it would tempt her on board. To Rose (and us), it seemed like the TARDIS had only been gone a second; to the Doctor, it might have been ages.
228* This canonically occurs with a 200-year time-skip between "The God Complex" and "Closing Time", during which the Doctor gets up to the stuff we see him doing at the start of "The Impossible Astronaut" and at least two adventures with River Song (Easter Island and the Jim the Fish incident).
229** Not necessarily 200 years. Remember rule #1: The Doctor lies.
230
231[[WMG:The Doctor will meet a copy of himself calling himself "Doctor Who" in the future.]]
232That "Doctor Who" will have his own "infotainment" show, his own TARDIS, and a Dalek companion that he tortures regularly. And he will in fact be the Valeyard, given his own life through one of the Doctor's trips into an alternate universe (E-Space, the Parallel World of "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel"/"Doomsday", the alternate universe [[spoiler: created by the Time Beetle around Donna in "Turn Left"]]...), and given his own regeneration cycle opposite of that of the Doctor's (the Doctor's 10th regeneration is the Valeyard's third or fourth, for example).
233* This has already happened in the ExpandedUniverse.
234
235[[WMG: Due to his constant and repeated visits throughout time, the Doctor's WeirdnessMagnet has been imprinted onto Earth and on humans themselves.]]
236While instances of aliens arriving when the Doctor is present exist, there are just as many if not more instances of aliens being present on Earth or around humans long before the Doctor arrives, sometimes for centuries or more. This is due to Earth itself and its inhabitants acquiring the same attraction for weird shit as the Doctor through osmosis; his far more potent magnet is required to trigger the events, resulting in many examples of aliens making their plans for conquest or otherwise, but not executing them until the Doctor arrives.
237
238[[WMG: The Doctor Changes History Quite Often]]
239He likes to protest that he's not there to change the course of history, he's dismissed others' deliberate attempts as "time-meddling" or just plain doomed - and then there were the events of "Father's Day". Changing history ''bad'', right? Not something he'd do?
240
241On the other hand, ''he changes history almost every episode''. He dinks around the universe through various time periods, and often in the course of those travels, he tries to save lives and stop various threats, even bringing down entire societies. This can't help ''but'' change history.
242
243This serves to explain matters like ZeeRust-ed glimpses of the future from past episodes (including why Zoë’s early 21st century doesn't look much like Rose's) and inconsistencies like the UNIT dating controversy. The Doctor's travels (and those of other time-travelers) have altered galactic history quite a bit. As the Doctor seems to take a special interest in Earth and humanity, his interventions in particular have drastically shifted human history many times.
244
245Perhaps because he's a Time Lord (or perhaps out of simply greater knowledge), he's capable of changing history without summoning ClockRoaches every episode. Or perhaps simple changes in history don't endanger reality, and the events of "Father's Day" arose from other circumstances related to the change - such as his being a direct witness to his changing history.
246
247The Doctor tries to keep the ''memorable'' bits of human history consistent (the Aztec Empire, World War 2, etc.), but sometimes things change (Zoë’s world shifting into Rose's world) and he doesn't entirely notice or care enough to spend time fixing them. Sometimes, he notices the changes (like the loss of the vast human empire that he expected to see in "The Long Game") and for whatever reason, he doesn't have the resources to fix them.
248
249And sometimes, he decides to change history with six little words because he ''feels'' like it.
250* I always thought that the clock roaches were there because Rose changed her own personal history 1: [[RuleOfPerception where she had already crystalized her own time line]] (important: Not just the Doctor, but her personally. The Doctor's presence both times just gave the paradox strength through redundancy) and 2: [[GrandfatherParadox in a way that made her present changing of the timeline impossible]], in 3: a universe where the Time Lords weren't around to be ClockRoaches in place of the scythe-dragons. Had the Time Lords still been around, they would have tried to make it impossible, presumably without eating everything in sight, had Rose's father [[NeverFoundTheBody disappeared instead of dying the the road]] then [[TrickedOutTime run away after she saved him]] or [[{{Canon}} stepped out in front of the car as it was passing by later]] the timeline would have been [[CloseEnoughTimeline Close Enough]], and had Rose not been there twice, only come back once the past of that time was changed enough to have her not be there, things might have turned out differently.
251* This seems to be pretty much confirmed for the most part. The reason he hates anyone but him changing things is exactly because he knows what can and can't be changed, what points are "fixed" and which are "in flux". It's when someone changes what is supposed to be a "fixed" point that things go wrong, so since he knows that he's the only one that can tell, he just does his best to convince people that any meddling is bad to prevent them from changing the wrong thing. As to the clock roaches, it was outright said they only show up when a paradox is created that the universe/time line can't take care of on it's own. Which is why crossing your own time stream is the biggest no, no for time travellers, since that is the easiest why to create some sort of paradox.
252* The short "Good Night" has the Doctor and Amy discussing this. She has two different memories of her life, one in which she never had parents, the other in which she did, and she feels like that should bother her more than it does. The Doctor explains that history changes all the time, everyone has experienced meeting someone they feel like they've known all their lives, or remember being somewhere they couldn't have been before. "Time is being rewritten all around us, every day. People think their memories are bad, but their memories are fine; the past is really like that!"
253* This may also mean that ''every single work in the Expanded Universe'' [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble is/was/will be/will have been]] canon at some point, before being retconned, so that, for example, Gallifrey was only destroyed once-but instead of Faction Paradox, now it's because of the Daleks. Ergo, the ContinuitySnarl is just because we're limited humans who only see things in three dimensions.
254
255[[WMG:The Doctor defends Earth so much because he has to.]]
256Just about every human companion the Doctor has ever had has saved his life at least once. Therefore, he has to maintain the history of Earth to ensure these companions are still born at the right time and end up in the right place to meet him. Otherwise, he'll disappear in a puff of logic. And the more he defends Earth's history, the more times his life gets saved by humans, so the more he ''has'' to defend Earth's history.
257
258As part of this strategy, he keeps a copy of the Complete Works of Creator/WilliamShakespeare in the TARDIS, and consults it frequently. If "Troilus and Cressida" goes missing, that means the timeline is broken at some point before Vicki is due to be born, and he has to go and fix it. If the entire book disappears, Shakespeare needs rescuing.
259
260[[WMG: The Doctor's name is Thedoctor.]]
261Due to a curious quirk of linguistics and language, the Gallifreyian name 'Thedoctor' sounds curiously similar to the Earth-English title 'Doctor' coupled with a definitive article. Thedoctor is quite used to it, however, and is quite happy to be addressed by the shortened 'Doctor'.
262* Curiously enough, he used "The Thedoctor" as an alias in ''Last Man Running'', one of the Literature/PastDoctorAdventures novels. (It was an acceptable way of fitting in because the culture was prone to giving "toodies" (people from Second Planet) names like Pe Pertanor, Ri Rinandor and so on).
263* Well, in "Planet of the Dead", when asked his first name and surname he simply replied "the Doctor" to both.
264
265[[WMG: Most of the Doctor's regenerations are mentally unstable.]]
266Think about it.
267* Most? Try all. Why do you think we love him so?
268
269[[WMG: The Doctor is [[EverybodyIsJesusInPurgatory Jesus in Purgatory]].]]
270This is pretty much what TV Tropes is trying to tell us.
271
272[[WMG: The reason the Doctor’s personality changes post-regeneration is a protective adaptation.]]
273His personality changes to alter whatever behaviors either caused him a lot of trouble or led to his "death". Justifications are as follows:
274* The First Doctor was secretive and crotchety, this led to his contrasting friendly and playfulness as the Second.
275* The Second was too disorganized and that led to him painting himself into a corner (metaphorically speaking) in “The War Games”. Despite this being a forced regeneration, his serious and orderly Third self resulted from that.
276* The Third Doctor’s reliance on order and rationality got him into trouble a lot, thus the manic nature of his Fourth self.
277* The Fourth Doctor’s huge ego gets him killed, so he regenerates into the more mild-mannered Fifth.
278* The Fifth Doctor is too heroically noble and ends up dying because of that, thus the more ruthless and violent Six. Also explains why Six strangled Peri, it was his subconscious viciousness blaming her for the death of Five before he realized what he was doing and stopped.
279* Six was too much of an ass, so Seven started out more fun-loving and cheerful.
280* Seven ended up being way too thoughtful and relied too heavily on observing and planning to look outside his TARDIS before stepping right out into a gunfight. Eight became more reactionary as a result.
281* Eight was not a soldier by any means, that’s why Nine became a lot more a loner survivor.
282* Nine’s loner nature and death wish caused him to leave Rose behind and him trapped on Satellite 3, directly causing both his forced regeneration upon absorbing the time energy, and his more friendly charismatic personality as Ten.
283* It’s too soon to judge Ten to Eleven, but they seem similar in personality so far, so perhaps it was just an adaptation against the “Time Lord Victorious” he was becoming, and his immediate welcoming of Amy Pond into the fold supports the fact that the loner nature he re-developed as Ten was one of the major personality flaws he faced shortly before death as well.
284** Eleven seems generally more detached and both overtly and subtly (gestures etc) more alien than Ten. This could be a reaction to Ten's very companionable nature - Eleven has become a little more distant to prevent him becoming as personally invested as Ten, while also protecting him from the severe heartache Ten suffered whenever his companions were taken from him.
285
286[[WMG: The Doctor subconsciously manipulates time]]
287Or more accurately, probabilities. I don't care how brilliant he is, he's been in plenty of situations where that shouldn't have been able to help him. Faced against impossible odds, so often it seems the fates simply align for him at the last second. Perhaps it's because, as a Time Lord, with his vague temporal awareness and attunement to psychic energy, he is constantly twisting reality toward the desired outcome, applying a psychic force on time. Basically, the 1 in a million chance becomes the 1 in 100 chance because of the Doctor's mere presence. This accounts for at least some of his enormous success rate. This also explains what River said about the man the Doctor will eventually become, able to send entire armies fleeing with relative ease. His ability to manipulate the outcome will improve as he becomes more aware of his powers, which also manifests in things like snapping to open the door of the TARDIS.
288* And yes, I do realize much of his success can out-of-universe be explained via PlotArmor and by being the main character. But in-universe, I think psychic projection makes sense.
289* You'll love this: one of the Eighth Doctor audio adventures hinges on the existence of Time Lord technology that does exactly this, so it has a precedent in Time Lord society.
290
291[[WMG: The inconsistencies with the Doctor's age are due to his lying about his age out of vanity.]]
292This would be the easiest explanation as to why he claims to be just over 900 as the New Series starts, but was 953 during "Time and the Rani".
293* It would be in character too, as he was called out over lying about his age by Romana in "The Ribos Operation".
294* A thousand years is the Time Lord equivalent of thirty for humans - he wants to stave off the dreaded fourth digit as long as possible, and instead keeps counting the early nine hundreds over and over.
295
296[[WMG: The inconsistencies with the Doctor's age are due to his changing how he keeps track of his age.]]
297Astronomically speaking, a year on one planet is highly unlikely to be the same length as a year on another planet, since one year is the length of time it take a planet to complete an orbit around its' star. Given that, there are a few possibilities of how the Doctor might keep track of his age.
298
2991) Earth Years
3002) Gallifreyan Years
3013) Intergalactic Standard Years (assuming all the civilized planets have an agreed upon standard as to what constitutes a year)
302
303* It's not only possible but highly likely that The Doctor may have converted his age from the Gallifreyan standard to Earth years for the ease of reference of his companions early on and then - with Gallifrey dead - gone on (in the New Series) to use the Gallifreyan year in charting his age. This assumes that Gallifrey has shorter years than Earth.
304** A shorter Gallifreyan year would also explain why The Third Doctor said he had been a scientist for several thousand years, but then gave his age as 748.
305
306* Alternatively, maybe he used Earth years to start with (he was rebelling against Gallifrey and it's laws for a fair bit during the Classic series, wasn't he?) and because Gallifrey got destroyed, he decided to remember his planet through little things- like using the Gallifreyan calendar. This would work if Gallifreyan years were longer than Earth years.
307
308[[WMG: The Doctor's name is Sweetie.]]
309Self-explanatory if you're familiar with River Song.
310* Jossed. The name whispered in his ear in "Forest of the Dead" and "Sweetie" are obviously two different things.
311
312[[WMG: Alternatively... the Doctor's name is Jelly Baby.]]
313The Fourth's obsession with the little candies stems from the fact that they share the same name and was also him suggesting, subtly, that the people he offers the little candies to that they need a little bit of him, in both ways that could be taken. Flash forward to when the Doctor tells River Song his name, she finds it hilarious that he has the same name as a candy and starts to call him sweetie because of it. Jump back to River Song revealing that she knows his name and Ten mentioning there is only one reason he would reveal his name, it is because he is embarrassed by his name and doesn't want people to know that he has the same name as a candy.
314* Dude, you deserve a JustForFun/MadeOfWin for [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments making my day]].
315* His name is Sweetie Jelly Baby.
316
317[[WMG: The Doctor is making a conscious effort to appear younger.]]
318He's starting to feel the weight of hundreds of years and wants to be youthful again, in a midlife crisis sort of way. This contrasts with Ten's mention of his early incarnations "trying to be old and important, like you do when you're young" in "Time Crash". All Time Lords have the power to will themselves to be younger during regeneration (see the Master), but the (chronologically) older ones, like [[spoiler: Rassilon]] have again decided that they need to be "old and important," or perhaps have not regenerated in a long time.
319
320[[WMG: The Doctor is a CharmPerson]]
321Think about it. People who have just met him begin to trust him with their lives despite the fact he is very, very odd. He often talks his way out of dangerous situations easily. Amy Pond also should not trust the Doctor the way she seems to at times in "The Beast Below". And Rory filps from "You make people a danger to themselves!" to "We can't just leave you!" in half an hour. He could easily be giving off some low level telepathic signal that encourages people to believe and trust in him.
322
323[[WMG:The Doctor absorbed the Master's personality]]
324upon the latter's death in "The End of Time". This is why his regeneration was so destructive: the Master was fighting to get out, or at least take over the body, and this inner struggle was projected onto the TARDIS, causing it to need to regenerate as well (alternatively, see below). The Dream Lord was a hybrid personality composed of both the Doctor and the Master, and will become the Valeyard.
325* Not really made evident anywhere. Care to expand on what Master personality traits are there?
326
327[[WMG:The Doctor likes the letter R.]]
328Romana, Rose, River... He likes those R-named girls. That's why he didn't go after Martha or Amy or Jack. Their names didn't begin with R... Rory might be in trouble, though.
329* Don't forget Reinette.
330
331[[WMG: The being locked inside the Pandorica... is the Doctor]]
332Most likely a future incarnation (perhaps the Valeyard?). It's stated to be "The most feared being in the cosmos", and honestly, what else can you think of that would cause Daleks, Cybermen, Sycorax and a bajillion other evil races to unite against? Obviously, defeating it somehow involves blowing up evil future Doctor's TARDIS which results in the Big Bang that led to the Time Cracks.
333Status: [[spoiler:that was the plan, anyhow. Didn't work out.]]
334* This was Jossed very quickly after being introduced. [[spoiler:There wasn't anyone inside the Pandorica. It was a trap for the Doctor created by the alliance of Daleks, Cybermen et al in an attempt to prevent the TARDIS exploding and thus creating the cracks and the end of the world. It didn't work, because River Song blew up the TARDIS anyway. Then, Rory lets the Doctor out and they put Amy in, and she and Rory wait for 1894 years, when the Pandorica is reopened by 7-year old Amy.]]
335
336[[WMG: The Doctor's final regeneration will be ginger.]]
337* ... And female.
338** Holy $#!+, Amy is the Doctor!
339*** Jossed in too many ways. Even taking into account chameleon arch theories.
340* The Doctor-Donna!
341
342[[WMG: The Doctor has never lied about his age]]
343He has, however, defined it in terms of the years of planets with increasingly long orbits.
344
345[[WMG: The Doctor was never called "The Doctor" until the first episode.]]
346Watch the first episode. At no point does he or his granddaughter Susan ever say that he's the Doctor. At first, Ian and Barbara call him Doctor Foreman with him replying "Eh? Doctor who?" which leads them to start calling him "The Doctor". Once that happened, The Doctor figured he'd just go along with it since he liked it.
347* This really makes sense when Eleven says in "The Lodger": "They call me the Doctor. I don't know why. I call me the Doctor, too; still don't know why."
348
349[[WMG: The Doctor was not one of the ones who "ran away" ]]
350When he looked into the Untempered Schism, he was one of the "inspired" but just happened to also run away, so he believes himself to fit into the latter group.
351
352[[WMG: The regeneration of the Tenth Doctor into the Eleventh Doctor was especially violent because Ten was holding it in for so long]]
353Self explanatory. He's never held it in for that long before, and he's never blown the TARDIS up with his regeneration producing ''long streams of fire'' before, so the two facts are probably related. Presumably holding a regeneration in like that causes the regeneration energy to build up the whole time you hold it in, so when it is unleashed, its more energetic proportional to how long it is held in.
354
355[[WMG: If the Doctor's real name is ever revealed...]]
356...it's going to be [[IncrediblyLamePun Hu]]. Admit it, it will be hilarious.
357* You just had to spell it that way, didn't you? Ladies and gentlemen, the thirteenth Doctor: [[WebComic/{{Precocious}} Shii Ann Hu.]] (Kaitlyn's too sane.)
358** Alternatively it could be "Hugh"...
359* You win. ''Forever.'' Although maybe his true name is Dock T Hugh.
360
361[[WMG: The Doctor is the reason why deadlock seals exist.]]
362Every single civilization in the universe that ever independently invented the deadlock seal did so with a shared goal: keeping a weird bloke with a blue box out of something.
363
364[[WMG: The Doctor is responsible for the "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" wedding meme]]
365Not intentionally, mind, the meme is just the result of someone remembering and writing down a piece of his usual rambling when he arrived at a wedding several hundred years ago in the TARDIS. It came in handy later, but was just an accident at the time.
366** Maybe confirmed in "The Big Bang", where he plants this idea in young Amy's mind and she recites it in order to bring back the Doctor during her wedding.
367*** Not necessarily; the meme existed long before Amy. If he started it, he did it ''long'' before he ever planted it in Amy Pond's mind. Er, long ago from the perspective of Earth's timeline.
368
369[[WMG: Humans fall into the Doctor's UncannyValley.]]
370We all know that the Doctor is (mostly) completely non-sexual, despite humans looking identical to Time Lords. This is because Time Lords have certain additional "psychic attributes" which are responsible for attracting mates, which humans completely lack (like how color and pattern is used to attract mates in some animals). So the Doctor possibly sees humans as slightly creepy Time Lord imitations. Maybe fun to adventure with but plain [[{{Squick}} Squicky]] to do anything else with.
371* No we don't. Nothing ever states that he's non-sexual. He's romanced ''at least'' three humans, and considered "trying again" with Nurse Redfern when he returned to being Time Lord.
372
373[[WMG:The Doctor is the origin of every Healer-Priest religion in the universe]]
374Imagine it: you are somewhat primitive cave-dwellers. A monster comes. But some weird bloke shows up too, and saves your tribe from it. His name in your language translates to "The Healer" or "The Medicine Man", because "doctor" is really a fairly modern term. He is your savior, and then he vanishes into the Heavens. Voila! Instant religion.
375* Doctor comes from the Latin word docere (to teach). Doctor is someone "who has been taught" thus a scholar.
376* Something similar is confirmed in "A Good Man Goes to War": The word "doctor" for healer and wise man is shared by many languages and many cultures, and comes from him.
377
378[[WMG:The Doctor is, wants to be or will become/pose as a vampire]]
379* Specifically a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigoi strigoi]]. Pay close attention to the 1st sentence of the 4th paragraph: "According to Romanian mythology a strigoi has red hair, blue eyes and '''two hearts'''". Puts a slightly sinister spin on [[RunningGag him always wanting to be ginger]], no? Especially considering that regeneration is a very neat Time Lord trick to come BackFromTheDead, looking different.
380And, taken with the revelations from "The Pandorica Opens" (or for that matter, "Amy's Choice" and anything involving the Valeyard), this puts a whole new level of {{Foreshadowing}} on his musings from "The Vampires of Venice": "What could be so terrible that it doesn't mind being mistaken for a vampire?" The Oncoming Storm, possibly?
381
382[[WMG: The Doctor gets younger at each regeneration because he's dying with more and more pent-up life force.]]
383His first incarnation lived hundreds of years, didn't it? His further incarnations might well have lived hundreds or thousands, but they each died after only a few years each. The leftover goes into rejuvenating him so that, barring feats of derring-do, he'll live almost as long total as he might have otherwise.
384* The Doctor has lived for hundreds of years between travels. There were at least 200 years between 4 and 7
385** It's also impossible to gauge the ammount of time he spent with Romana since they are both Time Lords.
386* This troper suspects that it's more of a defense mechanism: because the Doctor keeps dying in violent methods (falling, poison, radiation, etc.), his body regenerates to a younger and stronger model to try and protect him. The only real exception is Two's regeneration, because it was forced -- Three's the only one to end up with an older-looking body post-regeneration.
387
388[[WMG:The 12 regenerations thing is still canon ''and'' the Doctor used a regeneration up creating Handy.]]
389The Proof? In "The Next Doctor", when 10 meets Jackson Lake, calling himself The Doctor, 10 exclaims that 'he must be the next one. Or the next but one.' This would be incarnation 11 or 12, because there can no longer be a 13th.
390
391[[WMG: The Doctor's true age.]]
392Given that the TARDIS said that they had been travelling for a good 700 years, we know he's older than that. To calculate his age, you'd need to add the amount of time a Time Lord can live naturally, before exhausting their first incarnation. We know that they can live centuries. During the Leisure Hive, being aged 500 years made the Doctor old. Thus, the current Doctor is at the very least in his 1300s. He has chosen to be 900-ish because of some NoodleIncident, the Time War ate centuries off his life, or just liked to feel younger.
393** It could be a bit like lying about not yet being forty. The Doctor having a minor mid-life crisis is a rather entertaining idea, particularly in light of the minor pissing contest he has with anyone else's (Jack's) methods of time travel.
394*** I'm not following the figures here. Is it ever said that the Doctor recently stole the TARDIS in ''An Unearthly Child''.
395** Seven claimed to be 953 in "Time and the Rani", Eight spent 600 years standed on Orbis, which would make him about 1600 by the time of "The Night of the Doctor". In "The Day of the Doctor", the War Doctor claimed to be about 800. Since he didn't consider himself the Doctor because he fought in the Time War, he may have started counting his age again when he regenerated into the War Doctor. Since Eleven claims to be about 1200 in "Day of the Doctor", I think he's somewhere around 2800 as of that episode.
396
397[[WMG: The Eighth Doctor pulled the trigger on the Time Lords]]
398Having to go from dashing adventurer to soldier was very likely an upsetting process. He went through as much if not more trauma than any other incarnation, and became even more disillusioned, if that were possible, with his fellow Gallifeyans. When "the Moment" came, the only thing that gave him pause was wondering if he could live with himself after killing his own people; he went through with it when he realized that, technically, he wouldn't HAVE to. The battle Nine was born in was the last of the Time War. This also explains why
399* The Ninth Doctor didn't know what he looked like.
400* He couldn't let the Delta Wave loose
401* He struggled with how much he wanted to be his old, human liking self and his protective, "stupid ape" persona.
402
403[[WMG: Doctor Who? will be asked right before Matt Smith's end as the Doctor.]]
404It will be asked at the Fall of the Eleventh. Silence must/will fall, or The Doctor must/will die after it is asked. The question will be asked, the eleventh doctor will fall/die. None of these would be prophets mention regeneration, do they?
405* Could also explain why the attempt to kill the Doctor before this. The church seems to worship the Doctor. The Byzantine incident has him, indirectly, refereed to as a good man. If the Doctor-Donna/Handy incident theories of that being a used regeneration are true that means the Valeyard is coming. He is coming after the twelfth regeneration, not Doctor. The question being asked will herald the Valeyard's rise.
406** Not necessarily. The Valeyard, if I remember correctly, is prophesized to exist between The Doctor's Twelfth and FINAL regeneration, not his Thirteenth. Since nobody's going to limit the Doctor's regenerations anymore for fear of being personally declared an enemy of state by the Queen, all this means is that 12 is the first Doctor with the potential to become the Valeyard. And honestly, either The Valeyard will be used as a recurring villain/another reason for The Doctor to hate and fear himself, or The Doctor will briefly become The Valeyard, somehow temporarily lose his remaining regenerations, do everything that The Valeyard does canonically, get snapped back and regain his regenerations.
407
408[[WMG: The Doctor just kinda sucks at regenerating.]]
409So far, he's the only Time Lord we know who can't control his regenerations. We see that the Master, River, and Romana have all determined what they'll regenerate into beforehand. Romana goes as far as to regenerate multiple times without dying and the Master stopped his entirely one time, yet the Doctor always seems to get randomized results. Conclusion: he doesn't really have the whole process down.
410
411[[WMG: The personality of each regeneration of the Doctor derives from how the First Doctor was at the time of his death.]]
412Think about it, at the time of his death, One had pretty much established himself as someone who will always do the right thing and defend against evil. This carries over into ALL his future regenerations. Some of their traits are different, but their core personality, which was One at the time of his death remains the same.
413
414[[WMG: The Doctor will meet Susan Foreman, his granddaughter, one more time.]]
415He goes to visit her when he dies for real. His very first companion will also be his last.
416
417[[WMG: The Doctor will one day die, get trapped in another universe, get Time-Locked, hide away in his TARDIS for all eternity, etc.]]
418It's inevitable. If he literally lived forever, then eventually he would be forced to visit every single point in space and time. If the effects of crossing his own timestream don't destroy him or the universe, eventually all of the vacuum of space would be filled with regenerations of the Doctor. Thus, something has to happen that stops his travels.
419
420[[WMG: The Doctor didn't have romantic relationships in the classic series because his wife was still alive...]]
421...and she died in the Time War.
422** Well, the Doctor did have two romantic relationships, but both of them were only just flings.
423
424[[WMG: The Tenth Doctor regenerated into the Valeyard during the events of "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"]]
425The Doctor believed that diverting the energy into his severed hand prevented the Regeneration from doing more than healing him, but he was wrong. It subtly altered his mind, giving him the megalomaniacal tendencies of the Valeyard. This explains his darker turn during the 2009 Specials.\
426Alternatively, he didn't turn into the Valeyard but was negatively affected by Regenerating during a time of war, just like 10.5.
427
428[[WMG: The Twelfth Doctor will be ginger...]]
429...but he will only be alive for one episode (probably a Christmas Special), and regenerate into the Thirteenth Doctor at the end of the episode.
430* '''Completely Jossed'''.
431
432[[WMG: The Doctor's first name is The and his last name is Doctor.]]
433It is so obvious that I can not believe that no one else considered this.
434
435[[WMG: The Doctor has an {{Overly Long Name}} with an {{Embarrassing First Name}} and several {{Embarrassing Middle Name}}s]]
436
437[[WMG: What's the Doctor's favorite band?]]
438{{Music/The Who}}
439
440[[WMG: The Doctor used to be evil.]]
441The reason he uses the name "Doctor" is that he wants to forget bad things he did using his real name.
442
443[[WMG: The BondVillainStupidity of not just shooting the Doctor is because he's hypnotic.]]
444Even going by the explanation of being TheDreaded, that still doesn't explain why the Doctor didn't get shot long before he became so big. Having a certain level of hypnotic prowess may explain this-[[EvilCounterpart The Master]] seems capable of hypnotisizing people through charm alone. Perhaps its a defense mechanism of Time Lords or ability the Doctor has learnt. Since the Doctor doesn't want to go past the slippery slope like the Master, he only uses this in order to convince his enemies [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim to not just blast him immediately]], at least on a subconscious level. Yeah, Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans may try killing him, but the hypnotism means that they won't do the obvious method immediately. Note that whenever something ''traumatises'' the Doctor(Midnight Entity and Sutekh come to mind), they either catch him by surprise or have an incredible psychic power.
445** That may also explain why people can be more inclined to trust the Doctor.
446
447[[WMG: John Hurt's Doctor is also the Doctor from ''Scream of the Shalka'']]
448* They look quite similar, don't they?
449* Jossed.
450
451[[WMG: The Doctor's real name actually ''is'' "Who".]]
452* Some may deny this, but it appears to be confirmed by a seemingly throwaway joke line in ''Series/K9AndCompany'' where Brendan (Sarah-Jane Smith's aunt Lavinia's ward) asks K-9 "Who is the Doctor?" and K-9 replies "Affirmative".
453* Also in "The Day of the Doctor", [[spoiler: when the Curator- seemingly a future incarnation of the Doctor who resembles Four,]] and Eleven are tallking, one of them says (punnishly, and knowingly) "Who knows". Is this a knowing reference from one incarnation of the Doctor to another referencing his name?
454
455[[WMG: The Shalka Doctor was the Eighth Doctor from the Eighth Doctor Adventures]]
456* The Gallifrey Chronicles has three potential Ninth Doctors being seen. "[[Recap/DoctorWho50thPrequelTheNightOfTheDoctor The Night of the Doctor]]" has AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho become canon, meaning the Eighth Doctor Adventures could go elsewhere. Fitz could have died just after the end and the Doctor regenerated into Shalka Doctor. the Time Lords were still destroyed in this story which was an original idea for a series leading from "Scream of the Shalka". However, like in this story, the Time Lords would still exist in the Matrix. They guide the Doctor to areas to help.
457** The original Shada takes place in the Shalkaverse.
458
459[[WMG: The Twelfth Doctor is Caecilius]]
460* Sometime after the events of "The Fires of Pompeii", the Doctor remembers that, actually, Caecilius died in an earthquake, seventeen years earlier, so how was he there. Then he realises that the Caecilius he met looked just like him and has to go back to keep time stable. He also gets to see Rory and Amy again, as a bonus.
461
462[[WMG: The War Doctor is an aged Eighth Doctor.]]
463* The war probably took ages, right? So it's the Eighth that fights, but through it all becomes old and wearied and wizened, an entirely new man that he can't associate with (which is why the Ninth is so snarky and loving life). It would also explain how the Doctor from then on questions his age - how long was the actual war?
464** Jossed.
465
466[[WMG: Grand Unifying Guess for The Doctor, and all his incarnations (ALL OF THEM)]]
467Unifying theory:
468For the incarnations of the Doctor
469
470Count with me, kids:
471
4721, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, WAR, 9, 10, Metacrisis 10, 11, 12.
473The Watcher, The Valeyard, The Dream Lord, The Curator
474
475“Non-canon”:
476Dr. Who (Peter Cushing), The Shalka Doctor (Richard E. Grant)
477
478Now:
479
480The Time War has been confirmed to be the cause of Three 8th Doctors in Zagreus.
481The three alternate timelines: The Tv Show/Big Finish, The Comics, and The Novels.
482
483Now, roll with me:
484
485We have Clara entering the timestream to save the Doctor. Scattering her. The Great Intelligence entered. And the Doctor.
486
487We have several characters who look identical to versions of the Doctor.
488Salamander (2), Maxil (6), John Frobisher/Lucius Caecilius (12) The Curator (4)
489
490What if they are ALL from The Doctor entering his own Time Stream?!
491
492The Curator could ALSO be a version of The Watcher, a mysterious future incarnation that appears to the 4th and merges with him to become the 5th. The Curator is between 11 and 12.
493
494AND: Since the Intelligence entered... what if The Shalka Doctor is Dr. Simeon COMBINED with the Doctor? Or combined with one of the other two 8th Doctors?
495
496OR a copy of a young 1st Doctor?
497
498OR The Shalka Doctor could be the War Doctor, still young as Night of the Doctor showed us.
499
500NOW.
501
502The Peter Cushing Doctor. He is human. It's called TARDIS. Not THE Tardis. And has gone on two of the adventures the prime universe one has done. The Daleks, and The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
503
504WHAT IF.
505This guy is from Pete's World. He suffered a Metacrisis with another Time Lord and got the knowledge of their tech. The First Question was imprinted, causing him to become Dr. Who. Literally. So, Metacrisis is human too. And he's with Rose in Pete's World. What if Dr. Who is there and they meet? Metacrisis and Rose would team up with a version of The First Doctor, in a primitive, but working TARDIS.
506
507For fun:
508
509The Doctor Who Anime features Daleks, Davros, Cybermen, Sontarans, The Third Doctor, The Roger Delgado AND Ainely Master's. Plus Sutekh being released before he almost was in the 4th Doctor's Time. This was in fact, crazy shit occurring due to the Time War.
510
511** Zagreus didn't confirm the Time War created alternate timelines, it claimed the events in different continuities happened in different Universes.
512
513[[WMG: The Doctor still has 10-12 Regenerations left.]]
514He'll use his last original one to become Peter Capaldi's Doctor, but on top of that, River sacrificed her remaining Regenerations to revive the Doctor after she killed him. She'd only Regenerated twice, so still had 10+ left over. One of them went to actually bringing the Doctor back to life, but the rest can be used to Regenerate like normal.
515* Sorta played straight sorta jossed it transpires. [[spoiler: He got a new set of regenerations from the Time Lords]]
516
517[[WMG: The Fourteenth or Fifteenth Doctor will be an older David Tennant or Matt Smith.]]
518* It'll be at least 10-15 years down the road from 2013 but it'll happen. The appearance of [[spoiler:Tom Baker as The Curator]] as well as the reveal that [[spoiler:The Curator is revisiting some of his older faces]] seems to suggest that it's highly possible we'll see someone return to the role years later. As for why it won't happen for Thirteen it'll be for the simple reason that it'll still be somewhat close to Ten and Eleven and won't have as much of an impact as it will later on.
519** If they do reuse a past Doctor in a new regeneration, it most likely will result in being Paul [=McGann=], as he more or less got the short end of the stick in terms of playing the Doctor. (non-extended universe-wise, he got one movie and a seven minute short) While fans might like the idea of Tennant or Smith reappearing, it would seem like too much pandering to reuse an old actor who would probably end up giving too much of a similar performance to his previous Doctor, which would probably end up making the fans more angry. On the other hand, Paul [=McGann=] would be able to most likely play at least a somewhat different Doctor due to having less screen-time to fully develop all the possible complexities of his character the way Tennant and Smith did.
520** Confirmed. And disturbingly accurate of a prediction, at the very least.
521
522[[WMG: The Doctor calculates his age by asking the TARDIS for her age and adding his own from when he stole the TARDIS.]]
523* That's why some long periods (such as Eight's 600 years spent at Orbis) aren't included.
524
525[[WMG: The Twelfth Doctor is the Shalka Doctor.]]
526They both wear black and can look like each other if minor changes are made.
527
528[[WMG: The Doctor's Age Issue]]
529Yes yes I know it's futile. Maybe. Still going to try. Conclusions come from a few other theories I can't remember where I found them, and my own work. For now I'll ignore Expanded Universe but may come back to it)
530The basis of my theory comes from two accounts about the theft of the TARDIS. In The Ribos Operation, Romana (140 at the time) reminds the Doctor that he's 759 rather than 756, and tells him he stole the TARDIS 523 years ago, making him 236 when he stole it. In The Doctor's Wife, Sexy herself claims to a Doctor who is saying he's 909 that they've been travelling together 700 years. Now while I could believe the Doctor might forget how old he really was by that point, I doubt Sexy is even capable of forgetting anything, nor do I believe she would round up or down. How do we solve this contradiction? Simple. Romana is using Gallifreyan years (naturally), while Sexy is, for some reason, using earth years (probably she either started doing so when the Doctor started doing the same, or he changed her settings. So how do we separate further what references are in which set of years.
531* Gallifreyan Years
532** Almost all ages the Fourth Doctor gives for himself are consistent with the progression of time (though Romana does claim to be 125 sometime after regeneration, and all ages he gives are within the 700s
533** Six's 900 year old comment also falls into this category, after spending potentially centuries with her he never stopped aging himself in Gallifreyan.
534** Seven's 953 year old comment is also in Gallifreyan, and has an important piece of evidence to it. He says it's the Rani's age as well, and there's no good reason for her to be using her age in earth years as a code.
535* Earth Years
536** The 450 reference. This is given to Victoria on her first journey together, and he specifies it's in earth years.
537** All New Series references are given in human years, since Gallifreyan years would now be meaningless to anyone who wasn't him, plus he likes that it makes him seem younger. As for why the Master used them in Last of the Time Lords? He also likes they make him seems younger, or he read the Doctor's age off a screen in the TARDIS and didn't consider he'd started using earth years.
538* The mathematics.
539** Provided we believe Sexy was being precise when she gave the 700 year figure, then earth years have a 209:236 ration to Gallifreyan years. Therefore the conversion factor is 236/209. Below I'll give some conversion examples
540** I can believe the Doctor's references to ages in his youth (8 when he entered the academy, 90 when he sealed the Medusa Cascade, were in Gallifreyan since his human age needn't matter given the difference. However, if they were converted, he was 9 and 101, respectively.
541** The 450 reference (which the fandom seems to have taken as the First Doctor's final age) works out as being 508 Gallifreyan years, which may mean the First Doctor regenerated aged 500 years, making that the natural lifespan for an incarnation (unless Kembel aged him and weren't reversed)
542** The next age reference is by Four and in Gallifreyan, stating he's 749 during the events on Karn with Morbius. This would make him 663 to humans. He's then a year older by both schemes on his second adventure with Leela.
543** 9 years for a Gallifreyan pass between this adventure and his meeting Romana for the first time, making him 672 Terran years. Of course the fact he lied here could mean he's lied before, but I'm assuming he doesn't. He's 760/673 by the time they've found the Key to Time.
544** Romana II claims to be 125 later on, so presumably she's also embarrassed by her age. However, this makes one of the last pre-E-Space adventures a bit difficult. In The Leisure Hive Romana is said to be 150. If she really is that old, then the Doctor is about 770/682, however if she's still lying about her age by the same margin she was earlier, he's 785/695 at the youngest. (and what if she means in that incarnation? I doubt it though)
545** The next age reference is made during the sixth Doctor's time with Peri, he claims to be 900, otherwise making him 797.
546** And then immediately after regenerating, the seventh Doctor is 953, or 844.
547** 9 Claims to be 900, and he is, roughly from the human point of view, but if we continue the Gallifreyan trend he'd be 1016.
548** Ten makes his first precise call on the Titanic, professing to be 903, or 1019, he's 904 when he marries Liz I, some time after Waters of Mars, making him 1020, and 906 on the day Wilf knocks four times, or 1023.
549** We can't be sure how much time passes during his farewell tour, but not too long after Eleven is born, just before picking up Rory to join him and Amy, he's become 907, or 1024. He turns 909/1026 some time after leaving the Ponds after their honeymoon, and then between The God Complex and Closing Time turns 1103, or 1245. After reuniting with the Ponds in the Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe, he consistently gives his age as 1200, or 1355, right up until The Day of the Doctor, where he says 1200 and something, unless he's lying. Despite War's claim there's about 400 years between them, he's evidently closer to the 900 end given he regenerates soon after. The 900 years on Trenzalore make the Doctor at least 2100, or 2371.
550
551[[WMG:Plugging the holes and the aging issue.]]
552This follows on from the above WMG
553* One, despite being only 236 when he stole the TARDIS, already looked the same as he would in roughly 264 years time. Part of this discrepancy with 11 is probably due to, being only his first body, he didn't have any latent regeneration energy keeping the age down. As for why the remaining time didn't age him at all, perhaps the TARDIS had something to do with it?
554* Due to Sarah, the third Doctor must be in the 740s when he regenerates. But, he spends 3 years stuck on earth without a working TARDIS, so only 2 seasons can allow him some offscreen Police Box Travel. Jo and Sarah limit how much time this can have been by quite a lot, and while there is the between gap it certainly can't account for a full 230 years. And as we know, Jamie prevents anywhere near that much time from passing between Tomb of the Cybermen and The War Games. Fortuantely it's Season 6b to the rescue. Most of the 230 year interval is spent on missions for the CIA, and near the end he's allowed an older Jamie and Victoria back as companions. 230 years would also help explain his age in the Two Doctors, since Time Differential won't cop it.
555* Four doesn't spend long without Sarah after The Deadly Assassin, in fact he almost certainly meets Leela near immediately. They probably manage a few years together before The Invasion of Time. He then spends at least half a decade with just K-9 Mk II for company. His travel with Romana I can probably exceed a year, but how long he spends with Romana II is much more difficult. It's certainly possible he's a Gallifreyan 800 before she leaves him. Maybe even older. In fact since he's the Doctor with the longest tenure we should probably assume he hit 850.
556* Six's 900 figure is somewhat difficult, seeing as both he and Five spent the majority of their lives up to that point with one human or another. However, there is a gap where the only person Five is with is Nyssa, between Tegan's first departure and her return. If we assume Trakenites age at a rate comparable to Time Lords (and Tremas!Master doesn't age in a longer on-screen tenure than hers) there's plenty of time to fit in that gap.
557* Seven being 953 at 'birth' is far simpler, given we have a gap of undetermined length between Peri's death/leaving and Mel's joining, so 50 years could slot in easily. Since the Rani hasn't aged since her last appearance, there's no reason for Six to have done either
558* Seven, Eight and War slot into a roughly 50 year area. This is, admittedly, much more of a problem, given these 3 have visibly aged by the time of regeneration. Only explanation I can come up with is that stress, and for the latter 2, War, caused them to age faster than normal.
559** I just came up with a possible solution, The Doctor wilfully forgets War, so he may have wilfully forgotten how long he spent as him too.
560* Nine and Ten have no real problems (though I assume 9 may have actually been a little under 900 in reality)
561** Nine only ever said he'd been travelling for 900 years. This puts him at roughly 1100.
562* Eleven shows no sign of ageing in the same time span that Two has aged to his Two Doctors condition. Presumably, in addition to his own regeneration energy keeping age at bay for a century or two, River's regeneration energy did the same. Sacrificing energy to heal River's wrist at around 1200 caused his anti-aging to fade sooner than it would have, it still took him 1200 years to reach the condition One was win at 500.
563** Perhaps the Doctor varies which years he uses. This is implied in an audio drama, I think "The Girl that never was". Perhaps Gallifreyan years are shorter and the Doctor started using them to sound older and more important. Then he started using Earth years. Years on Orbis turned out to be much shorter is another idea.
564
565[[WMG: Doctor Who let the dogs out.]]
566The answer to one of the most mysterious questions. The answer was in plain sight. The Doctor let the dogs out.
567
568[[WMG: The Doctor is Genghis Khan.]]
569The Master told Chang Lee that the Doctor was Genghis Khan to fool him into helping him defeat the Eighth Doctor. But what if the Master was telling the truth?
570* Then why, in "Rose", did Nine claim that the TARDIS' doors had once kept out the entire hordes of Genghis Khan?
571** That was another incarnation of the Doctor.
572
573[[WMG: The Doctor's name is Gaylord Focker.]]
574Would you want to admit to ''anyone'' that this was your name?
575
576[[WMG: The Doctor's name contains profanity.]]
577It would not be allowed to appear uncensored. For all we know, it could be "Fuckity Bye".
578
579[[WMG: The Doctor's name is jinxed.]]
580Hence why it can never be spoken aloud by any living person.
581** It turns out that if he spoke his name the Time Lords would return and a new Time War would start.
582
583[[WMG: The Doctor's name is Keith.]]
584The interview with Creator/StevenMoffat was a SarcasticConfession. He thought [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments it would be completely hilarious]] if the Doctor's real name was as mundane as Keith, but knew that actually confirming it would release a fury of nerd rage greater than the Eighth Doctor saying "I'm half-human. On my mother's side." He told Catherine Tate this secret, hence her mentioning it on the DVD commentary
585
586[[WMG: The Doctor fancies blondes.]]
587Pretty much all his major ShipTeasing has involved somebody blonde: Romana had a lot of chemistry with the 4th Doctor(her second incarnation was blonde), Russell T Davies had the Doctor all but outright say he loves the Master (the blonde Creator/JohnSimm Master has the most blatant FoeRomanceSubtext to date) and Steven Moffat had the strawberry blonde River all but admit she's shagged him. Sure, there's been ShipTease with gingers like Good Queen Bess and Amy Pond, but that's usually unrequited on their side, and the Doctor wants to ''be'' ginger instead. This even extends beyond the fourth wall! Tom Baker was married to Lalla Ward(said second incarnation of Romana's actor) for some time, Peter Davison's second wife was blonde and David Tennant married the blonde Georgia Moffet([[CastIncest aka Davison's daughter]]). It seems that our Doctor has a thing for blondes.
588* Let us not forget Rose and Reinette, who are also blondes the Doctor has fancied.
589
590[[WMG: There's a reason why the Doctor is running from his people and their corrupt ways: [[HeelFaceTurn Because he was one of them.]] ]]
591Long ago, a nameless man who was nicknamed "Theta Sigma" worked for the Time Lords. Not as a member of the council, mind you, but as an agent working for them. Because of his maverick nature, the High Council felt him the perfect candidate to do their dirty work. For a while, [[PunchClockVillain it worked.]] That is, until he carried out a mission [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone that he learned to regret.]] Maybe it was permanently crippling a civilization. Or maybe [[RetGone completely wiping them out.]] Whatever the action, it was so bad the man's own family [[MoralEventHorizon considered him beyond redemption.]] Witnessing this, the man declared [[HeelFaceTurn no more.]] The Time Lords had proven themselves evil. The man was motivated to better himself, making him a healer instead of warrior. With his granddaughter, who either was unaware of the act or forgave him, he decided to start over. His name was lost to divorce him from his past, and to this day keeps that sordid past secret. A new name was taken, a promise to ensure he would not be like the Time Lords. A promise that he would help others, than he would be a healer. That he would be a '''Doctor'''.
592
593[[WMG: The Doctor's name is Doctor Foreman.]]
594It makes sense.
595
596[[WMG: The Doctor isn't a Time Lord]]
597* Why?
598
599[[WMG: Curator-12th Doctor Link]]
600The Curator stated that The Doctor will be visiting some old faces, but he may not necessarily have meant only the pasts ones of the doctor. He may also have been including faces of people the Doctor saw, like the 12th Doctor's.
601
602[[WMG: One Gallifreyan year is two Earth years.]]
603In ''The Phoenix in the TARDIS'', an article published in the 1968 ''Doctor Who Annual'', it is written that the Doctor is 900 years old when he first regenerates. In "The Tomb of the Cybermen", the Second Doctor says that he is "something like" 450 years old. The article, which was not written in-universe, must have been referring to Earth years, whereas The Doctor was using Gallifreyan years. When Romana tells the Fourth Doctor that he is 759, she must have been using Gallifreyan years as well since she is a Time Lady. At that time, she tells him that he has had the TARDIS for 523 years, which means that he was 236 Gallifreyan years (472 Earth years) old when he and his granddaughter Susan started traveling in The TARDIS. The Seventh Doctor, shortly after his regeneration, states that both he and the Rani are 953. Again, he must have been using Gallifreyan years since both he and the Rani are from Gallifrey. While the Eighth Doctor's age is never stated onscreen, we know from the novels that is 1,009 during the TV movie, 1,012 during ''Vampire Science'', 1,018 during ''Autumn Mist'', and at least 1,125 at the end of the crisis detailed in ''Escape Velocity''. By "The Night of the Doctor", he would be at least 2,250 Earth years old.
604
605When he drinks the potion that turns him into the War Doctor, he must have lost his knowledge of how old he was. He may have had some vague recollections of his adventures, but he was ultimately trying to forget his life as the Doctor. Thus, he started counting the years from when he became the Warrior. According to the novel ''Engines of War'', the Time War has lasted 400 years by that point. If these are Gallifreyan years, then they would be 800 Earth years. At the end of the war, the Doctor must have decided that he would use Earth years from then on since he knew that Gallifrey would be gone. This would explain why he says that he is 400 years younger than the Eleventh Doctor, who claims to be "twelve hundred and something." After regenerating into the Ninth Doctor, he must have still not been able to remember how old he was but retained how much time he had spent as his previous incarnation. Therefore, he traveled for about a century before meeting Rose Tyler and telling her that he was 900 (in Earth years), but he is actually at least 1,625 Gallifreyan years, which would be 3,250 Earth years at that point. During "The Day of the Doctor", he would be at least 3,550 Earth years. After spending 900 years on Trenzalore during "The Time of the Doctor", he would be about 4,450 if we assume that the years are equivalent to Earth Years. That would be about 2,225 Gallifreyan years.
606
607When the Twelfth Doctor tells Clara in "Deep Breath" that he is over 2,000 years old, there are two possibilities: a) The Doctor could be referring to the 2,100 or so Earth years that he has been counting since becoming the War Doctor, not knowing exactly how many years had passed before he became that incarnation but knowing that he was somewhere north of 2,000, or b) In addition to the new regeneration, he recovered the knowledge of his true age and decided to use Gallifreyan years from then on, knowing that he would see Gallifrey again someday.
608
609As for the TARDIS stating in "The Doctor's Wife" that the Doctor (at least 909 years old according to him, at least 3,259 Earth years, and at least 1,629.5 Gallifreyan years) stating that she has traveled with the Doctor for 700 years, this may have been a measurement of time spent actually traveling in the TARDIS, just as a car would measure miles traveled. Either that, or the TARDIS was using years as a TARDIS would measure them, or perhaps she knew how years were measured on the House planetoid of the bubble universe.
610
611[[WMG: Gallifrey makes a full rotation around its sun in a little more than 2/3 of the time that it takes Earth to make a full rotation around its sun.]]
612Possibly 0.67513368984%. Here is how I came up with this figure: The Doctor says in "The Tomb of the Cybermen" that he is 450 years old "in Earth terms." In ''The Brotherhood,'' he says that he is 500, which must still be in Earth years. If you believe in the Season 6B theory, he spends nearly half a century as an agent of the Time Lords before the events of the comic strips that take place prior to his regeneration into the Third Doctor. The Third Doctor seems to have spent most of his time working with Unit on Earth, so it would be reasonable to conclude that he aged five years during that time. He would have been 505 Earth years when he regenerated into the Fourth Doctor, who said that he was 748. He must have been using Gallifreyan years at that point since Romana, a Time Lady, later says that he is 759 and has traveled in the TARDIS for 523 years (approximately 354 Earth years).
613
614When the Seventh Doctor says that he and the Rani are both 953, he must have still been using Gallifreyan years since both he and The Rani are from Gallifrey. In Earth years, they would be 643.4. The Eighth Doctor must have been using Gallifreyan years as well since it is said that he regenerated when he was 1,009. He is revealed to be 1,018 in the novel ''Autumn Mist''. He later ages as an amnesiac trapped on Earth between the late 19th century and 2001 (between the novels ''The Ancestor Cell'' and ''Escape Velocity''). In "Orbis", he is trapped on the planet Orbis for 600 years. He later says that he adjusts his age by rounding down, but we are not given precise details. He probably converted Orbis years to Gallifreyan years.
615
616As for the War Doctor, he believed that he was eight hundred and something since he claimed in "The Day of the Doctor" to be four hundred years younger than the Eleventh Doctor, who said that he was "twelve hundred and something." The War Doctor must have been using Earth years at the end of the Time War, which lasted at least 400 years according to the novel ''Engines of War'', since he knew that Gallifrey would be gone. The Eighth Doctor drank a potion that gave him a controlled regeneration. This potion may have made The Warrior forget much of his time as The Doctor so that he could focus on being a soldier. In Earth years, the 400-year Time War would be 270 years. If we add another 160 Earth years as an estimate for the time before the First Doctor took the TARDIS, then we get 330 Earth years. If we add an estimate of 110 years that the Eighth Doctor spent as an amnesiac on Earth, then we get 440 Earth years. If we include the 600 years that The Doctor spent on Orbis without the TARDIS, a time during which his memory was becoming fuzzy, then we might get to 800 and something. After all, if 600 Orbis years were rounded down when converted to Gallifreyan years, we might be getting less than 400 Earth years since 600 Gallifreyan years are approximately 405 Earth years.
617
618It is implied in the novel ''The Beast of Babylon'' that the Doctor had recently regenerated into The Ninth Doctor, and the story takes place around the time that he meets Rose Tyler. In "The Empty Child", the Ninth Doctor says that he has been using the name "The Doctor" for nine centuries and that he has had "900 years of phone box travel". If we infer that he was using Earth years at that point since Gallifrey was gone, then he must have been identifying himself as "The Doctor" for approximately 1,333 Gallifreyan years. This would exclude the century that the Eighth Doctor spent on Earth without the TARDIS and not knowing who he was. It would also exclude his time as the War Doctor, during which he did not use the name "The Doctor". We know from "The Name of the Doctor" that the earliest known point at which he was called "The Doctor" was when he stole the TARDIS at the age of 236 Gallifreyan years (159.3 Earth years). 782 Gallifreyan years pass between The First Doctor stealing the TARDIS and the Eighth Doctor's adventure in ''Autumn Mist''. That leaves 551 Gallifreyan years during which the Eighth Doctor may have travelled after leaving Orbis and before regenerating into the War Doctor.
619
620On the other hand, we could infer that the Ninth Doctor decided to keep using Gallifreyan years to honor his people and rid himself of the ways to which the War Doctor adapted by the end of the war. It could be that he traveled in the TARDIS as the Doctor for 782 Gallifreyan years up to the time that his eighth incarnation was stranded on Orbis, and that he traveled for 118 more Gallifreyan years after leaving Orbis and before regenerating into the War Doctor.
621
622As for the TARDIS' 700 years comment in "The Doctor's Wife", we could hypothesize that it is measuring years as a car may measure miles. We may also hypothesize that it was converting the years to match those of the House planetoid in the bubble universe. We may also infer that the Doctor had traveled in the TARDIS for another century without Amy and Rory sometime after "The Impossible Astronaut", during which he said that he was 909. After all, 700 Earth years would be equal to 1,037 Gallifreyan years.
623
624[[WMG: The Doctor's degree is in pan-species psychology.]]
625It would explain a lot. He's certainly not a competent medical doctor, but he cold reads people better than most detectives in all of fiction combined.
626And the Master is, as we all agree, really into bondage.
627
628[[WMG: The Doctor's reasons for leaving Gallifrey have a lot to do with both what he saw in the Untempered Schism and why he and Susan were alone.]]
629It might go a little something like this:
630* When taken to the Untempered Schism as a time-tot, the boy who would be known as the Doctor sees a vision across time of himself destroying Gallifrey at [[TrickedOutTime one possible end]] of the Time War. Terrified of this prophecy of his future actions, he began [[BrilliantButLazy slacking off at school, ignoring his studies, and running from his responsibilities]] believing he could change the future simply by refusing to take part in it.
631* At some point, this tactic changed, perhaps due to him meeting his first(?) wife, Susan's grandmother, and starting a family with her. He began to apply himself, thinking he could maybe work from the inside of the system and avert the prophecy by understanding and disassembling the tools that would allow someone like him to do something like destroy Gallifrey. To this end, he began studying and experimenting on the Hand of Omega.
632* Shortly before the series began, [[GoneHorriblyWrong something terrible happened.]] One of the prototype Hands he and his team had been working with inadvertently activated, causing mass destruction and loss of life, killing his entire immediate family, sparing only his granddaughter Susan. Now a fugitive, a scientific failure, and having thrown his life away trying to avert a prophecy only to nearly cause it to happen, the Doctor fled Gallifrey, taking Susan with him to protect her from the authorities who would no doubt have used her as leverage against him. But, just to be sure, on his way off Gallifrey, the Doctor stole the Hand of Omega as well, planning to hide it at his first convenience.
633* Upon reaching a suitable place, Shoreditch, London, 1963, the Doctor arranged to have the Hand of Omega buried safely away from prying eyes and hands. Unfortunately, on the way back from his appointment at the funeral parlor, he found two human schoolteachers lurking in the junkyard he'd hidden his stolen TARDIS in...
634* [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes The fear of planets burning never left him.]] Over the years, he would come to peace with the Hand of Omega, and eventually devise a more constructive use for it, intending to use it to wipe out the Daleks. Of course, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy that act lead to further precipitation of the Time War that he'd so long been running from.]]
635* Ultimately, this theory would mean that [[EvilCounterpart both the Master and the Doctor]], upon gazing into the Untempered Schism, made contact with the end of the Time War and were completely changed by it.
636
637[[WMG: The "Shalka" Doctor is a future incarnation.]]
638We know from the Valeyard and the Caretaker (from Day of the Doctor) that there are future versions of the Doctor we'll never get to no matter how long the show runs. What if this Doctor is another one? Derek Jacobi as the Master is canon, so what if this is a future Doctor that somehow finds himself back in the Time War and partners up with the Master? The Master said he "ran away" to escape the Time War, he never said he was alone. And given their relationship, it makes sense that if the Doctor could go back and save one person, it'd be him.
639
640Alternatively...
641
642[[WMG: "Scream of the Shalka" is canon, but that's not the Doctor.]]
643Instead, that's a Time Lord pretending to be the Doctor. It would explain why that version is friendlier with the Master than any other: it's not actually the Doctor, just someone trading on his name (and probably doing a lot of damage to it). The Master would like that.
644
645[[WMG: The Doctor has a human fetish]]
646Maybe the reason in "City of Death" why the Doctor said Countess Scarlioni was a beautiful woman "probably" was because he didn't want to admit finding an alien woman attractive. He was creeped out by the fact he might find some alien woman with *shudder* only one heart attractive. Humans to him were the equivalent of little green men for us; not something to fancy.
647
648This was long before we started hearing about him having flings with various historical figures. Long before he developed his human fetish. Maybe this is why 4/Romana fics are so common; because she's just about the only Classic companion he wouldn't have been {{squick}}ed out by had they tried to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E10TheDoctorDances "dance"]]. At some point, maybe as a result of kissing Grace Holloway, maybe as a result of spending time with Captain Jack, he decided he had a bit of a [[BoldlyComing fetish for humans]], which is why 10, 11 and 12 have so many flings with them. The Doctor just wants to mate, and he's into [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe one-hearted space babes]].
649
650[[WMG: The Doctor reacts so badly to the TARDIS being treated badly because he has a psychic link and can feel her pain]]
651
652[[WMG: The Doctor was disowned by his family]]
653Think about it. He did badly in his classes, went against the very foundation of Time Lord society (i.e. non-interference) and ran away from the untempered schism. Some of the doctor's lines suggests this. The hermit acted as a guardian parent after he'd lost his biological parents. He used to play at the Master's house alot because he had lost a real home, and what about the "it's not easy being the only child left out in the cold you know" line, that was him being rejected and forced out of the house. As he had bad grades, he couldn't get a decent life on Gallifrey and was forced to sleep rough. In the end, he got fed up and ran off to see the universe (and possibly to stop Susan from getting a terrible life on the streets like he had up to that point.)
654* And in "Listen", we see a night of the Doctor's childhood. Sleeping in a barn, and the people who talked to him clearly weren't his parents, as they would have stayed longer. Ok, this would probably indicate something closer to being orphaned.
655
656[[WMG: The Doctor doesn't look even remotely human.]]
657He uses something like the "psychic paper" device to appear human when he's around humans, but his real form is entirely different, which is why his romances never work out: if he actually got close enough to consummate a relationship it would get...awkward. He appears as a white man because he wants to look like someone who people will tend to think of as unsuspicious and trust as an authority.
658* Except this doesn't explain why ALL Time Lords look human when they're among their own kind on Gallifrey. Or why the Doctor literally says "Humans look Time Lord", implying Time Lords and humans look remarkably similar. Not to mention that there are numerous occasions where the Doctor has had implied intimate relationships with humans.
659
660[[WMG: The Doctor can't even remember his MysteriousPast.]]
661He's been travelling through time and space for thousands of years at minimum, been involved in way too many retcons and timeline alterations to count. God knows how many times [[TimeMaster the Time Lords themselves]] must have changed their own timeline in the Last Great Time War. While he has a vague idea on who and where he was, TheFogOfAges means he's unable to remember precise details about his early life and the constant changes to history exacerbate this. Most Time Lords don't have this problem because they live most of their lives on Gallifrey, not playing around the TimeyWimeyBall with wild abandon.
662
663[[WMG: The recent romances are a mid-life crisis.]]
664Hence why he started to be more open to the idea by his 8th incarnation and beyond. 10 and 11 are [[DirtyOldMan dirty old men]] by Time Lord standards.
665
666[[WMG: The Doctor's lack of social skills in regards to humans and other species is simply due to being A DIFFERENT SPECIES]] Because the Doctor is a different species, he would not necessarily understand human (or other alien) non-verbal communication (body language, etc.) and would probably be instinctively 'looking' for the non-verbal signals that he would get from his own kind, which other species probably would not produce, or at least not in a way that he can understand. Things like postures, gestures and pheromones are species-specific enough in real life on this one planet. Some of them even mean different things to different groups of humans! Now imagine how different they could be on another planet, and that pile of flashcards suddenly becomes VERY necessary.
667
668[[WMG: The Doctor's age is MetaphoricallyTrue.]]
669As we saw in "The Name of the Doctor" he disowns parts of himself he doesn't think are the "The Doctor". After the Time War the 9th Doctor decided to only count the time he was the space hero he saw himself as. The "900 years old" is the time he's had the role we're familiar with. This both excludes his existence as the War Doctor and a good portion as his time as the 1st Doctor. Not because he is necessarily ashamed, but because he has started counting on the day he became the man he is-when he first stole the TARDIS and went off exploring in space. The age the first eight Doctors was their actual age, the age Doctors 9-11 gave were the time they spent active as the Doctor. Only once he realized the truth of the War Doctor did he finally accept that part of his life. The reason the 12th Doctor gives a general age(over 2000) instead of something more specific like 2100 is that he includes his actual lifespan, he just hasn't bothered adding things up yet.
670
671[[WMG: The Doctor became the Other because he was half-human, which made him run away.]]
672This contradicts things even from the show's continuity, [[ContinuitySnarl but since the show contradicts itself,]] I don't particularly care.
673
674It begins with the Doctor's father, a Time Lord from Gallifrey's relative present, who meets a human woman, marries her, and takes her to live with him on Gallifrey. Even with looms, live births are common enough that a Gallifreyan materity ward exists (as mentioned in The Creature From the Pit), and the boy who would be the Doctor is born there. He grows up Gallifreyan, though, and he never considers himself human. Everyone else does, though, especially when he becomes a Time Lord and his human genes interfere with the process, causing him to be clumsy at the controls of a TARDIS and promising that his regenerations will grow to be very unstable.
675
676Eventually, though, he does something no other Time Lord does. He travels back to the founding of Gallifrey, the days of Rassilon and Omega. With his knowledge of the future, and certain other skills, he becomes 'The Other,' a shadowy comrade to the other two founders. He still lives in the present, but he has a home in the past. Eventually, he marries someone (possibly following in his father's footsteps and marrying someone from off-world), then has a child, who has Susan.
677
678But someone eventually catches on that Gallifreyan history has been touched from the present, either a change or a predestination paradox. The punishment for causing either: death. Knowing that the Doctor is guilty of some sort of meddling, but not sure of this particular meddling, the Time Lords begin building a case. The Doctor flees, his granddaughter refusing to let him go alone. And thus, he begins his journey through time and space. He's put aside the skills/knowledge/psychic prowess/what-have-you that helped forge Gallifrey, but he still has them, and he has them the most. Thus, future incarnations will defer to the youngest of their number as the most able, being the one who helped forge Gallifrey.
679
680[[WMG: The two Ninth Doctors played by Richard E. Grant and Rowan Atkinson are really the Ninth Doctor...]]
681
682It's just that, due to the events of the Timeless Child, they were both ninth Doctors in different sets of the Doctor's regeneration cycle before William Hartnell. Which Ninth Doctor truly came first between Grant and Atkinson, it is hard to tell. But given that the Doctor decided to model one of his later faces after Tom Baker, it is possible that the Atkinson Ninth Doctor comes after Richard E Grant Doctor because the Atkinson Ninth Doctor regenerates into the Grant Tenth Doctor due to a subconscious recollection of who he was.
683
684[[WMG: The Doctor is Stalin]]
685But not Iosib Jugashvili. He's Lenin and Shrek's biological son, Stalin Ulyanov, created by Tasha Lem and Madame Kovarian so he could replace Iosib Jugashvili as Stalin, but the weeping angels sent him to Gallifrey instead.
686
687[[WMG: Both the Cartmel Masterplan and the Timeless Child origins are canon.]]
688Eons ago, before the Whoniverse existed, a powerful and terrible being was torn in half, with both halves cast into the multiverse foam. These two halves became the Timeless Child, an innocent blank slate with the ability to change their face, and the Other, a strange being who aided Rassilon and Omega in founding Gallifrey for their own ends.
689Both halves were recompleted when the soon-to-be-Doctor peered into the Schism-but they ran from what they once were, and has been running ever since.
690* The identity of the original being that was torn in half? [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Nyarlathotep]]. The Doctor knows that if they answer the Question of what their name is, that if they acknowledge they are the Crawling Chaos, the Outer Gods and all there kin will descend upon the Whoniverse to forcibly peel the Herald of the Outer Gods from the Doctor with no regards for the people of the universe-and the Doctor cares too much for the universe to let that happen.
691
692[[WMG: The true name of The Doctor is Rotcodeht]]
693Yes, it is a SdrawkcabName. Decided to refer to themselves as Thedoctor, then discovered it's two words in the English language and has gone with that ever since.
694[[/folder]]
695
696[[folder:The TARDIS]]
697
698[[WMG: The TARDIS is the same size on the inside]]
699Everything that goes inside shrinks to fit, thus making the tiny amount of space in the TARDIS seem bigger. The Doctor just rolls with the "It's bigger on the inside" explanation because he doesn't get it either.
700
701[[WMG: The TARDIS can regenerate 12 times, just like Time Lords]]
702And we've seen it's regenerated three times so far -- at the end of "The Eleventh Hour", at the end of "The Big Bang", and at the end of "The Doctor's Wife".
703* The console has changed in the classic series before (for example, in "The Five Doctors") so it has probably regenerated more than thrice.
704
705[[WMG: The TARDIS is the house.]]
706* You know. [[Literature/HouseofLeaves That]] house. Think about it. She's potentially infinite in size, able to change her layout and appearance at will, is far older than should be possible be due to the TimeyWimeyBall, and associated with the color blue. She could also be said to contain a monster, if you want to be really hard on the Doctor -- I'm not sure Eleven would disagree with the comparison.
707** Or, maybe [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E4TheDoctorsWife House]] [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment is House]].
708*** Also, ''Series/{{House}}''.
709
710[[WMG: The TARDIS has always had a translator.]]
711However, it was as broken as everything else in the TARDIS, and skipped some languages -- like French. The Eighth Doctor finally fixed it. When he did, he used his psychic link with the TARDIS to route it through his head, learning 5 billion languages automatically. This also gave him total control over the translator, and makes it not work if he's comatose. Therefore, he can say anything he likes without it being translated. This also explains why Judoon isn't translated - the Doctor understands the Rule of Funny.
712* Come to think of it, this is proven by "The Masque of Mandragora". It does explain why French (in "The War Games") and Aborigine (in "Four to Doomsday") were not translated, though.
713** The TARDIS isn't the most reliable of machines.
714*** The translator was working fine when the First Doctor landed in "The Reign of Terror". Maybe it got broken sometime before "The War Games".
715
716[[WMG: The TARDIS is at least partially psychically controlled.]]
717Every time we see the TARDIS regenerate, all the console buttons change, down to what lever/switch/spinny thing you have to trigger to even get the thing working. Because having to read a giant instruction manual every time it regenerates would be too annoying, the TARDIS simply maps all of the buttons to what the drivers think the console should do, through the psychic link that she has with the pilots. (The same one that does the translating.) Once the pilot decides what a button should do, that is what it does for the rest of the time that console is in operation. This link is only strong with Gallifreyans, because if a human tries to pilot it, as we have seen, they are only successful if they have directions from an actual Gallifreyan pilot (as Sarah Jane, Martha, and others at the end of Season 4), or if they already have some Gallifreyan in them (as River Song and Doctor/Donna.) This also allows the TARDIS to move the buttons and switches herself, as we see explicitly at the end of "The Doctor's Wife." This does occasionally lead to some fighting between the Doctor and the TARDIS as they struggle for control of the console, but generally, the TARDIS is happy to let the Doctor do the flying. Mostly.
718** Alternately, the TARDIS flies herself and lets the Doctor play with the controls.
719
720[[WMG: The Doctor has been repairing the TARDIS over the course of the show.]]
721Or it's repairing itself. Originally, he had no control whatsoever over his destination. Three and Four could get to the right planet ("Planet of the Spiders" and the Key to Time Arc). Nine and Ten seem to be able to aim, but can be a bit inaccurate ("The Unquiet Dead" & "The Idiot's Lantern"). The TARDIS repaired itself completely in "The Eleventh Hour", and is now in perfect condition. Any inaccuracy with specific times is due to it being an out-of-date Type 40 model. Also, Eleven is the first one with working stabilizers and brakes - previously, they were stuck, and that's why they made the noise. He leaves them because he likes it. Finally, Four never actually got rid of the randomizer. He merely adjusted it so he can use it OR choose a destination. That's why even with a working TARDIS, the Doctor has to ask where and when they are.
722* Even if he manages to fix it, it wouldn't matter too much. The one that decides the destination is, according to the TARDIS herself, well... the TARDIS is the one that decides where the Doctor is going. ''Even if he doesn't want to''.
723
724[[WMG: The TARDIS is a WeirdnessMagnet.]]
725Either there are scads of monsters and alien invasions everywhere in the timestream, or there's a reason the Doctor keeps running into them. Since the TARDIS can move freely in time and space, instead of attracting weird things to itself, it goes to them. The Doctor might even have programmed it to behave this way, especially if the slow suicide theory is correct. It would explain a lot of the "mistakes" he makes with setting the destination, such as going to 1879 instead of 1979 in "Tooth and Claw". The TARDIS may also make more subtle adjustments. If the Doctor wanted to take Martha to meet Shakespeare, he had a window of several decades; what are the odds of him hitting the exact day the Carrionites made their move?
726* There's a suggestion in one of the old ''Doctor Who'' monthly comics that the TARDIS actively seeks out trouble - without letting the Doctor know of course - and deposits him where he can do the most good. This accounts for the huge number of Monsters of the Week AND why the Doctor often has trouble steering. The TARDIS simply overrides him.
727** In "The Vampires of Venice", the Doctor takes Rory and Amy to Venice, Italy. They could go to there during any time period, and they get there when there is a vampire problem. What are the odds?
728** This one seems virtually {{Canon}}, but keep in mind that the Doctor and his companions don't get into trouble ''every'' time they visit somewhere: it's only the times they ''do'' that we get to see it onscreen. It wouldn't be very entertaining to have an episode where [[{{Adorkable}} Eleven]], [[FieryRedhead Amy]] and [[NonActionGuy Rory]] go sunbathing on a beach planet, for example.
729* Confirmed as of "The Doctor's Wife". When the Doctor points out to the anthropomorphized TARDIS that "she" was never very reliable, the TARDIS responds that she always took the Doctor where he "''needed''" to go.
730** This doubles as a ShoutOut to ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'', in which Dirk, if he didn't know how to get where he wanted to go, would get behind a random car that looked like it knew where it was going and follow it. As the book said, "he didn't often get where he wanted to go, but usually found himself where he needed to be." Dirk Gently was created by Creator/DouglasAdams, who wrote for ''Series/DoctorWho'' on several occasions... and that book was intended to be a serial for the Doctor but never quite made it, so Adams just swotted it up into a book. In other words, this has been canon for decades, but it took Moffat and Gaiman to actually ''say'' it.
731
732[[WMG: The Doctor and the TARDIS have a mild psychic link, and the TARDIS influences him to home in on weirdness when choosing a destination.]]
733* This is ExpandedUniverse canon -- it's in the book ''First Frontier''.
734
735[[WMG: The TARDIS is a cranky old thing that's sick of constantly traversing the universe; it repeatedly puts the Doctor in mortal danger just so he'll ''die already'' so it can have a nice rest.]]
736The Time Lords were isolationist and rarely left the planet, and so it's unlikely that they built their [=TARDISes=] to withstand centuries of travel. And the Doctor's TARDIS was out-of-date even before he stole it.
737* Jossed by "The Doctor's Wife". If the TARDIS is to be believed, she "stole" the Doctor because she was tired of being stuck on Gallifrey and wanted to see the universe. The Doctor was the only Time Lord mad enough to take the bait.
738
739[[WMG:The true hero of the series is the TARDIS.]]
740This requires the following to be true.
741# The TARDIS is not only alive but sentient.
742# The TARDIS can detect time oddities and atrocities.
743# The TARDIS desires to correct these.
744* Confirmed, confirmed, and (via an inference of FridgeLogic) confirmed as of "The Doctor's Wife".
745
746Now, the Doctor is good at fixing this stuff, so the TARDIS just dumps him there and makes sure he fixes the mess.
747
748[[WMG:The TARDIS likes Earth.]]
749Related to above: she keeps taking the Doctor there to fix stuff. She certainly seems to enjoy being a police box.
750* Broken, remember? Then again, if she's as intelligent as we think, she might have deliberately stuck on the "police box" setting just because she likes it.
751
752[[WMG: The TARDIS has some sort of device that draws attractive women to the Doctor.]]
753The TARDIS is a chick magnet! Maybe it's trying to tell the Doctor something...
754* Some men buy fast cars to attract women. The TARDIS can travel almost instantly to any point in space and time.
755** What you mean, ''almost'' instantly? If I take five minutes to get my TARDIS from one destination to another, I can just set my destination for "the time that I just left" as well as wherever I want to get to.
756*** The only frame of reference in which "instantly" even has any meaning when you're travelling in time is your own.
757* Maybe the TARDIS is a CovertPervert, and getting a thrill out of the Doctor getting all the girls. [[YaoiFangirl And boys.]] That's why [[spoiler: River was created in the TARDIS, instead of in a hotel.]] Now that we know [[spoiler: the TARDIS is truly sentient, even on a human level,]] it's quite possible. As to why, it could be because the TARDIS can't relieve tension the way we flesh beings do.
758** That would explain why the TARDIS scanner brought the drowning Peri to Turlough's attention — she saw that bikini! And if she was aware of the rule that every Companion leaves the TARDIS wearing less than they had on when they first entered, well....
759* I'm not so sure about the "TARDIS is trying to put the Doctor in a relationship" part, but personal headcanon has a similar theory. The TARDIS knows that the Doctor needs his companions for mental stability. The TARDIS also knows that humans don't live for very long, and therefore is helping the Doctor by arranging things for his companions to be not-so-human. Examples; Rose, [[spoiler: Donna, River Song]].
760
761[[WMG: The TARDIS translates not only for the Doctor and companions, but also for the audience.]]
762And the TARDIS has a strange sense of humor, in particular a fondness for Fakesperian accents. And this explains the infamous "half-human" statement: it was a TARDIS translation error, and the Doctor '''meant''' to say that he was half Time Lord and half Ordinary Gallifreyan.
763* So the TARDIS is aware that there's an audience. That explains why it didn't translate the Doctor speaking Judoon into something we could understand -- it knew about the RuleOfFunny.
764* Say, why doesn't it translate the Doctor's British vocabulary into American equivalents for Peri?
765** Her carelessness is half the reason for Five regenerating into Six. The TARDIS knew this (possibly even before it happened) and was a little angry at her.
766
767[[WMG:The [=TARDIS=] is the Doctor's Psychic Projection.]]
768Heck, throw in the ol' Sonic Screwdriver while we're at it.
769
770[[WMG:The Doctor is the [=TARDIS=]' Psychic Projection.]]
771He allows the big T to interact with humans. The "regenerations" are just a rebooting and reset of the projector device.
772
773[[WMG:The TARDIS is not necessarily bigger on the inside.]]
774Surely, if the chameleon circuit worked, it would be able to appear as an object larger than its (presumably fixed-volume) interior? This also raises the question of what it looks like with the circuit switched off.
775* The TARDIS's natural form is "whatever would be least conspicuous in this situation". It ''has'' no 'real' form. Try to wrap your mind around that.
776** So what would it look like at a TARDIS convention?
777*** First one to arrive would try to blend in with the venue (column, pot plant, booth with TARDIS merchandise, etc.), and the rest would then take their cue from that. Simple.
778*** [[LogicBomb And what if they all]] [[TimeTravel arrive at the exact same time]]?
779*** The EU states that the default appearance of a TARDIS is a grey box with a sliding door. Technically, that's not its "real" form, but that's probably what it would look like at a TARDIS convention.
780
781[[WMG: The TARDIS is the star of the series]]
782Only one thing happens at the very beginning of the show that has any real significance in the Doctor's life overall: the chameleon circuit breaking. What other reason would the story start at that point? Because it's the only constant.
783* This troper can name two ''very'' significant things from "An Unearthly Child" that affected the Doctor's life. Firstly, he meets the two people that make him realize just how amazing the human race really is. Secondly, he acquires the alias "the Doctor". Those are some pretty big things, and are much more important than the Chameleon Circuit breaking.
784
785[[WMG: The Doctor and the TARDIS got married some time during the series.]]
786[[CargoShip It's possible.]]
787* Seeing as a human has turned into a TARDIS, I suppose the reverse is not out of the question
788** One of the episode titles calls the TARDIS "The Doctor's Wife".
789
790[[WMG:The TARDIS is...]]
791a JustForFun/TimeLord. Wait, don't hit me, at least let me explain! The TARDIS is a biological machine grown by the Gallifreyans, correct? Now, what if the title of "Time Lord" is not a name for their race, but instead for any being with a heightened consciousness and time senses? Gallifrey has an effect on beings born on it, which is why the Gallifreyans are Time Lords; this effect also causes their biotech to become Time Lords, as well. When the TARDIS' interior was destroyed during Ten's regeneration, that was actually because ''the TARDIS was regenerating at the exact same time''. This also explains why the TARDIS looks different at the start of the new series (it does, doesn't it? I haven't seen classic ''Doctor Who''): it regenerated.
792
793[[WMG: The TARDIS name]]
794Susan claims that she invented the name Time And Relative Dimensions In Space in the very first episode of the classic series.
795However, it is referred to as such numerous times by older Time Lords, and presumably, they wouldn't use a name made up from English words, since they speak Gallifreyan.
796The explanation is simple: prior to the Doctor's first visit to Earth, such thing as a time and space travelling machine was unheard of and thus didn't have a name in English.
797The TARDIS picked up the name Susan invented and updated the dictionary database used by the translation software.
798
799But, why did Susan had to come up with a name? The way she says it suggest she didn't make it up on the spot when Barbara asked about it.
800The answer is, she was probably trying to make friends with her classmates, showed the TARDIS to some of them and therefore had to come up with a name (and they ran away in fright and utter disbelief, possibly even scared away on purpose by that cranky old man).
801
802Presumably, the Gallifreyan name is not translatable, too long and pompous, not indicative enough, or alternatively, means the exact same thing in Gallifreyan and all she did was translate it and give it a catchy acronym.
803* Maybe he traveled back to the time when Gallifreyans were first working on Time Travel technology, and when they are thinking of a good name he suggests the name he has always been using.
804
805Perhaps Susan won a contest to rename the TARDIS because it was originally short for Time As Rassilon's Dominion In Space and they finally decided, OK guys Rassilon has way too many things named after him. They then spend a few millennia shortening it to TARDIS before Susan wins the contest because she had the only entry that kept the abbreviated name which the [=TARDISes=] refused to change.
806
807* The Gallifreyan word for a time machine is pronounced "tardis", and Susan coined a backronym. You know, like how "Fornication Under Consent of King" is a backronym for the f-word, and not its real etymology.
808
809[[WMG:The TARDIS is not sentient]]
810Imagine you're The Doctor. You ran way from your home planet when you were young. You have been alone for centuries, have only had the company of some members of another species who only have a fraction of your life span and your IQ; later you kill your entire species. Sooner or later you're going to try to find companionship with this thing that has been there all your life and has defined you for centuries; this is why he talks more about it being alive as the series goes on. Like the volleyball in ''Film/CastAway''.
811* The heart of the TARDIS is just a complex power source.
812* Jossed in "The Doctor's Wife" where the 'soul' of the TARDIS is placed in the body of a woman. While able to speak she reveals that 'she' was the one who stole the Doctor, that the reason she's so 'unreliable' is because she always takes him where he needs to go and that she likes it when he calls her 'Sexy' and 'Old Girl'.
813
814[[WMG: [=TARDISes=] don't break down, they evolve.]]
815Although we've always been under the impression that the Doctor's TARDIS is an out of date reject, this has never seemed to be true, as his just gets more powerful and displays more and more unexpected abilities. We know [=TARDISes=] are alive and can grow and repair, so how could the Doctor's ever be a broken reject? [=TARDISes=] weren't taken in to be tuned up, they were taken in to be tuned down and keep their capabilities in check, and then scrapped when it looked they were getting a little bit too sentient. This would mean that the Doctor's TARDIS isn't a flying screapheap, but, due to its extended period of unchecked growth, more powerful than anything the Time Lords ever cranked out.
816
817[[WMG: [=TARDISes=] regenerate along with their Time Lord.]]
818Besides the internal changes, which were somewhat explained in "The Doctor's Wife", the TARDIS' personality also changes in the same manner as a Time Lord, possibly even one intentionally compatable with their owner. It would explain the simularities between 11 and [[spoiler: Idris]] and be a handy HandWave should someone write the TARDIS differently at a later time. (As well as what's already happened in the ExpandedUniverse.)
819
820[[WMG: The TARDIS [[CovertPervert is kind of kinky.]] ]]
821From "The Doctor's Wife" we know that she's not just sentient, but able to think almost at a human level(though has major TimeDissonance). Despite being the Doctor's effective wife, she has no problem with women flirting with the Doctor and the fact that the Doctor is "married" to (and probably shagged) River Song. Either she's fine with the Doctor being polygamist, or [[RuleOfFunny better yet]] she has a fetish for it. She finds the sexual tension between the Doctor and his companions a turn-on, especially the idea of a [[TimeyWimeyBall confusing as Time War]] [[OneTrueThreesome threeway.]] Of course, since the TARDIS is an implied EldritchAbomination who's less physically compatible to the Doctor than I am to the internet ([[HotSkittyOnWailordAction though the idea of Doctor on TARDIS is so funny I'd go through a thousand Rule 34s to see it]]), it can't really express her desires normally, so she decided to just be a voyeur. I say this not just because of RuleOfFunny, but [[RuleOfSexy Rule of SWEET JELLY BABIES]] [[PerverseSexualLust I WISH I WAS HER!]]
822
823[[WMG: The TARDIS contains a room where all of the lost socks in the universe end up.]]
824Because why not?
825
826[[WMG: The TARDIS is a masochist.]]
827You know how every so often she malfunctions, and the Doctor (or a companion) has to use PercussiveMaintenance to get her back to normal? How do we know it's really a malfunction? She might just be doing it to get them to hit her.
828
829[[WMG: The TARDIS contains essence of Gallifrey]]
830Hence why [=TARDISes=] help regeneration. It also explains how River Song became Time Lord from being conceived in a TARDIS, as if it was a simple as being conceived in the Time Vortex there would be many Time Lords.
831
832[[WMG: The Doctor's TARDIS is "obsolete" exactly because of its reliance on six pilots.]]
833The progress in TARDIS technology made it possible to increase automation and allow a single person to pilot it. This essentially obsoleted the model the Doctor ended up hijacking.
834
835[[WMG: Many [=TARDISes=] have broken chameleon circuits]]
836They have all been deliberately broken by their users out of sheer frustration. Think about it: You are on a strange planet, and the TARDIS immediately blends in by matching the environment. Time Lords are just as capable of anyone else of being distracted (unless the Doctor is a freak with that as well). How hard is it to find your own car again in a large car park. Just think about how hard it would be to find a TARDIS disguised as a tree in a forest of identical trees? After the 10th time losing it and spending god knows how long tracking the damned thing down again, wouldn't you take a sonic screwdriver to the circuit with extreme prejudice?
837* Seemingly confirmed by "Hell Bent". It's worth mentioning, however, that "Logopolis" showed that the Chameleon Circuit could be controlled manually, negating the need to break it.
838
839[[WMG: The TARDIS's existence is an infinite time loop]]
840At some point after the Doctor's final death, whenever that is, the Time Lords take the TARDIS back to Gallifrey and refurbish it to be used by the Doctor for the first time. This is why the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS is stuck as a police box, even though the chameleon circuit was broken during the First Doctor's era and it's implied that the Fugitive comes from before then- the circuit had already been broken and the repairs don't stick.
841
842[[/folder]]
843
844[[folder:Companions]]
845
846[[WMG: Susan is Jenny's daughter]]
847And after she was born she sent her back in time to grow up with the Doctor, her 'Grandfather'!!!!!!
848
849[[WMG: Susan will return for the Thirteenth Doctor's last story.]]
850She will inherit the TARDIS. Whether she regenerates at the end or goes on for a season or two before regenerating will depend on Carol Ann Ford's health.
851
852[[WMG: The Doctor will keep his promise to Susan]]
853He will come back one day. Nowadays it is not like the Doctor to abandon people like he did to Susan...
854* Confirmed. Eight visits her in "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoNEDAS4SRAnEarthlyChild An Earthly Child]]".
855
856[[WMG: The Roman priestess played by Karen Gillan in "The Fires of Pompeii" is actually Amy Pond]]
857The Doctor could have thought back, realized he'd met somebody who looked just like Amy, and decided to create a stable time loop, dropping Amy off in Rome with specific instructions (while not sticking around himself, due to the timestreams-crossing thing). She could even have stayed there for a few weeks to adjust to the culture/her role in preparation for what needed to be done when 10 and Donna arrived.
858
859[[WMG: The Doctor uses the companions to keep track of his personal timeline.]]
860Besides enjoying their company, the Doctor likes to travel with different companions so that he can keep track of his own timeline within the span of a regeneration. This is particularly useful if the Doctor knows he needs to initiate certain events in his future to create a StableTimeLoop, but doesn't have an exact date for when they occur. So, for example, in Blink, Sally Sparrow gives him a folder of information to use when he gets sent to 1969. Well, it would be pain to carry around a folder for years and years if, say, he weren't to get sent to 1969 until a hundred years after meeting Sally in his subjective timeline. However, since the folder contained a transcript that referred to his current companion, Martha, he would know that the event was going to occur soon-ish and that he should keep the folder with him.
861
862Potentially the Doctor could have a whole room of stuff that he would need in order to do certain things at certain times. Using the companion system, he would just carry around whatever he needed for [[StableTimeLoop time loops]] that occurred during the tenure of a certain companion. He probably gets some info on whoever was supposed to be with him at the time (since it's likely someone he hasn't met, yet) and then files everything under certain descriptors.
863* As a bonus, perhaps the reason the Doctor travels primarily with young women is that women's fashions tend to be highly variable. The right description could point him in the direction of ''when'' a companion is from, making it even easier to narrow down their identity. Plus, if someone is dressed like a freak (for your time period) you'll notice them more and be able to give a better description.
864
865[[WMG:River Song is the Master]]
866It would explain a lot. We've never proven Time Lords can't regenerate into a different gender...
867* Wasn't there an episode of the Old Series where a female regeneration of the Doctor appears? See, totally possible!
868** You're thinking of the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM comic relief episode for Red Nose day]]. [[spoiler:The Doctor regenerates four times within about three minutes, simply because he forgot to unplug the machine, and the last regeneration was a woman. When his companion leaves out of disgust, she hooks up with the master and they live happily ever after. The end.]]
869** Jossed. She's [[spoiler:Rory's and Amy's daughter.]]
870
871[[WMG: After the Doctor's final regeneration, there will still be a Time Lord running around.]]
872Because Donna Noble ''will'' regenerate after her death and become a Time Lord.
873
874[[WMG: "Hlynia" is Menopteran for "Donna".]]
875It is known that Humanity made contact with the Isop Galaxy at some point, and Donna was one of the most famous people in the history of the universe. It is also known that the Menoptera distort Human names.
876
877[[WMG: Romana prefers "Fred" for a reason.]]
878When Romanadvoratrelundar chooses "Fred" over "Romana", could it be due to "Fred" resembling the "vorat" part?
879
880[[WMG: River Song WILL kill Eleven.]]
881What if she DOES kill Eleven, but it’s a Dumbledore/Snape thing? In order to save [insert people here], he has to regenerate. If he’s totally alone with her, and so that things happen the way that they need to, he tells her his name so that Ten will know to trust her. That gives her time beforehand to gallivant around with him, learn about the TARDIS’ brakes, gain possession of his screwdriver, “kill” him… and she could just be flirting with him the whole time simply because she wants him, not because she's his wife.
882** Jossed, confirmed [[spoiler:and then Jossed again]].
883
884[[WMG: River Song is actually the final incarnation of either Iris Widlthyme or Romana.]]
885I personally find the idea of Iris having her poor TARDIS battered beyond repair by the Last Great Time War and having to learn to live like a normal human without copious amounts of vodka rather hilarious, but I'll settle for her being actually Romana, knowing about [=TARDISes=] and the screwdriver tech full well enough in either case. The whole "killing the best man I ever knew" is going to be a convoluted mess, very likely involving a last hope for averting the fate of the Time Lords.
886* Jossed, she's the half-Time Lord daughter of Amy and Rory.
887
888[[WMG:River is going to kill... Rory]]
889** Geez Rory just can't stay alive can you?
890*** Umm, yes, he can. Do you mean "stay dead"?
891
892[[WMG: Ace is Rory's mother]]
893We never see Rory's parents (at least not yet) and Ace has apparently started a charity, but we don't know why she left.
894* Pretty quick time frame to settle down in, and that's assuming she didn't land in the mid-to-late 90s.
895** In that case, Rory's mum was one of Mels' biggest role models.
896
897[[WMG:Amy will die midway through Season 7.]]
898This series just gets bleaker and bleaker as it goes on. Moffat has dedicated his reign to shaking up the established ''Doctor Who'' tropes, so killing off a well-loved companion without some timey-wimey plot twist to bring them back just seems like the next logical step for the series, and with all of Rory's deaths so far, killing him again would just seem cheap.
899* ''Doctor Who'' has always been big on tragic irony, but this would just be brutal. Rory would have to live forever without Amy. Imagine how he'd break down if she does go. Though it'd be sad and beautiful, it's way too dark for what is essentially a kid's show. They'll probably both survive their forthcoming Angel encounter, but be separated from the Doctor forever in some way. Remember, the overarching theme of ''Doctor Who'' is the triumph of optimism.
900* Jossed. Amy and Rory both wind up stranded in the past for the rest of their lives, but they're ''together''.
901
902[[WMG: As a compromise in Amy and Rory's new bedroom]]
903They have a king sized bunk bed. [[http://images.vrbo.com/vrbo/images/2f5bbb They exist.]]
904
905[[WMG: Rory is part Time Lord]]
906Why else would he be able to come back to life so many times?
907* Taking this theory and running with it: He's a future regeneration of Jenny. We've seen that she is at least capable of coming back to life without changing forms under some circumstances, but an even more lethal way of dying (Dalek lasers for example) might force her to. As to why Rory hasn't mentioned this he may be partially chameleon arched/had memories stolen, or, considering the emotional roller coaster The Doctor went through last time s/he showed up, might be doing so to spare his feelings.
908** Actually, he doesn't. Most of his deaths are visual trickery, faking the dead, dying in dreams. Stuff like that.
909
910[[WMG: Wilf really is the Doctor's father.]]
911Some time during the Seventh Doctor's lifespan, the Doctor's father vanished. Everyone assumed he died, but in reality it was a NoodleIncident with a Chameleon Arch. Wilf was likely reverted to an child, and spent his time growing up on Earth. It would explain how the Mysterious Woman, [[WordOfGod who Russell confirmed as the Doctor's mother,]] could know Wilf so well. In order to find him, she may have used a Chameleon Arch as well. I add that only to finally explain the "half-human on my mother's side" thing.
912
913[[WMG: The Companions don't care nearly as much about the Doctor as he cares about them.]]
914I can't be the only one who's noticed that whenever one of the Doctor's friends gets the slightest bit hurt (like when Rory got knocked down in "The God Complex", the Doctor always comes running like a mother trying to protect her babies. But whenever the Doctor himself gets hurt (and he usually gets more seriously injured then his friends do), the companions are upset, but almost never to the point of running over and checking on him, unless they think he's about to die or something.
915
916I admitedly haven't seen much of the classic series at all, so it may have been different then. I'm also a little hazy as to if they were protective of him during RTD's years (I remember in "Utopia" that Jack grabbed the Doctor to keep him from falling when they opened that door that lead to a dead drop, though). And yes, I know Rory died to save him from getting shot in "Cold Blood", but like I said, it's not that they want him to die- they very much don't. But they don't care about him getting injured much at all.
917* Rose and Martha seemed really protective towards Ten. Especially considering how long Martha looked after him in "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood". Was that just me?
918** To put it in Twelve's words, they're just more breakable than him. So when he gets injured they never think it's serious. The Doctor also has to deal with the idea that if one of his companions die under his watch, he basically killed them by bringing them on these adventures while if he died, from their perspective they have no (rational) guilt to deal with.
919
920[[WMG: Susan Foreman is the daughter of the Doctor and River Song.]]
921I'm frankly surprised at not seeing this theory earlier on the list here.
922* But she's the Doctor's granddaughter.
923** Maybe she only claimed to be his granddaughter because she came from the future of his personal timeline.
924
925[[WMG: The Doctor travels with companions and leaves them in the dark much of the time to avoid Fixed Points]]
926According to Angels Take Manhattan, a Fixed Point is created when, due to time travel, you have foreknowledge of what happens. Therefore, it stands to reason that points are only Fixed with regard to specific individuals; what is Fixed for the experienced and knowledgeable Doctor won't necessarily be Fixed for the Companion. So, he purposefully takes companions with him so that, if and when there's a fixed point involved, he can have someone to nudge into changing things. He even practically admitted this to Amy in a deleted scene, where he tells her that he takes companions because everything that is old hat and boring to him is new to them.
927
928[[WMG: Susan Foreman is Jenny's daughter and River's granddaughter.]]
929Susan is the Doctor's granddaughter, and while that presumably makes her Gallifreyan, we never really see her exhibit any Gallifreyan traits (mainly because they hadn't been thought of yet, but she hasn't even exhibited them when appearing in non-canon works); this, combined with the fact that she's the same age she appears, makes her ostensibly human even if she isn't actually. We also have never met her parents, even though we've met other members of the Doctor's family.
930
931But what if we have and didn't realize it? What if her parents are Jenny and some future son of River's? This would give Susan Time Lord genetics inherited from Jenny and residual regeneration energy inherited from River, making her essentially a Time Lord, but her parents would be a human and an "echo" of a Time Lord (according to the Doctor), making her essentially human. So basically, she would be like a Time Lord/human Schroedinger's Cat.
932
933This would also make the Doctor her grandfather in two separate ways, neither of which are traditional.
934
935[[WMG: Mel Bush is some sort of incarnation of River Song]]
936Seen this theory floating around the internet; decided it deserves to be here. First of the similarities is in the (birth in River's case) names. Melody Pond, also known as "Mels", and Melanie "Mel" Bush. Barring the obvious similarity in first names, the surnames are also both four letter words relating to nature. They also both meet the Doctor in an out-of-order timeline. Thirdly, they both have ridiculously floofy hair.
937
938(One fault in this theory is their rather different characterisation - River being a TroubledButCute GoodBadGirl and Mel bordering on TheIngenue - but anyway.)
939
940[[WMG: 6th Doctor Comanion 'Mel' was Melody Pond.]]
941* Basically because why not? Mel is a curly-haired redhead, with a vague resemblance to the later River Song. Wouldn't be the first time she met the Doctor out of order.
942
943[[WMG: Susan's grandmother is the Corsair]]
944(S)he's the only person from Gallifrey that the Doctor has ever hinted at being romantically involved with, and he seems to have good memories of it. Maybe (s)he was the one who made him get a tattoo.
945
946[[WMG: The Secret Lives of River Song]]
947There's more to River Song's life than we see on screen. When I first saw "Let's Kill Hitler", I had thought that Melody Pond regenerated directly into Mels. But what if she didn't? We know that River has always been obsessed with the Doctor (she was brainwashed to be) and that she isn't anchored to any relative point like other Time Lords seem to be. There are a few stories that imply and outright show that the Doctor has spent some periods of time settled on Gallifrey (he may have been one of the first Time Lords "The Other", and he spent at least two different periods settled (Before he stole the TARDIS and later in ''The Infinity Doctors'') that show him married, so perhaps his "wife" in each of these examples has been River, prancing around the Doctor's timeline to be with him.
948* There's also an unaccounted-for regeneration between her first incarnation and Mels. She regenerated into a toddler in New York City in 1970. The next we know of her, she was growing up with (and apparently the same age as) Amy Pond, who was born in 1989. Her 1970 toddler regeneration had to live until somewhere between 1989 and 1994, make her way from New York to Leadworth, and ensure she would be raised there with her parents, before regenerating into a child the same age as her parents who was known as Mels. She may have spent that twenty-odd years as a regular human, but there's plenty of wiggle room, especially if she found a way to time travel! (For example, she could have presented herself as a dying single mother whose last wish was that her "daughter" be raised in Leadworth, then regenerated into that "daughter".)
949
950[[WMG: Susan is still alive (and dead at the same time)]]
951As the Time War is looming closer and closer, and the Time Lords are forcing all the Time Lords and Ladies scattered throughout the universe to fight. The Doctor refused to let them take Susan and turn her into a soldier (And possibly die). So in order to hide her from the Time Lords, he used the chameleon arch on her to transform her into a human, to hide all traces of Time Lady energy. Though by the time the Time War ended, he realized she was truly happy as a human, even if she had no memories of her Grandfather or who she really was. He contemplated this for a long time, whether forcing her back into a Time Lady was the right thing to do. Then came "The Family of Blood", which The Doctor aside from the normal reasons to turn himself into a human, he also secretly wanted to test to see how painful it would be to give up another life. Seeing how painful it truly was, he decided he would never ever endure that same trauma upon his own granddaughter.
952
953[[WMG: Jack was kidding about being the Face of Boe]]
954In "Utopia", Martha mentioned the Face of Boe to the Doctor, but Jack was in the room... so obviously he heard her say it, Jack probably thought it would be funny to mess with the Doctor and Martha.
955* It would explain why the Face of Boe's said to be the last of his kind in "Gridlock", even though Jack, despite his immortality, was still a human being like trillions of others across the cosmos.
956** While I hope note, that could just be like Cassandra. She claimed to be the last human because after billions of years of interbreeding with other species she felt the other remaining humans were all "mongrels". Though Jack doesn't seem like the type to have that sort of bigotry, he could have that sort of attitude and his statement would make sense.
957[[WMG: Sarah Jane is infertile]]
958In "Genesis of the Daleks" Sarah Jane is forced to load what is most definitely radioactive material into a missile. It's said to be a very trying task and the implication is that she certainly would have died from severe radiation poisoning if she had to do another round of work. However clearly it didn't have any adverse effects to her longevity since she lived on into the new series.
959
960However in "School Reunion", when asked if she ever had a family, she reveals she hasn't with a somewhat pained expression. The implicit reason seems to be that she never got over her adventures with the Doctor, yet we still see her out reporting in School Reunion so she does have a life. It's possible the exposure to the toxic waste left her sterile further explaining her lack of children or major relationships between the two appearances. Sometimes travelling with the doctor definitely has it's down sides.
961
962Note I haven't seen ''The Sarah Jane Adventures'', but I doubt anything there contradict it given it's a kid's show. I know she has a son but from what I can gather he's adopted and not entirely human.
963
964* Luke and Sky are indeed adopted and not 100% human.
965** She also was also exposed to a significant amount of radiation in "The Hand of Fear". Afterwards they couldn't detect any radiation on her because the hand had absorbed it but it's still very possible it had an adverse effect on her body before being absorbed.
966
967[[WMG: Rory's [[TheyKilledKennyAgain deaths]] is the timeline trying to re-orientate itself.]]
968When Rory died in "Cold Blood", it was his first time dying. However it shouldn't have happened. There were a future version of Amy and Rory 10 years into their future who they saw. If you know your future, your future is set. The only reason why he was able to die at all was because of [[TimeCrash the crack in time]] interfering with the natural flow of events, preventing this rule from playing out. Ever since then the universe has been trying to restore the timeline to its normal state, by saving him from death. In "The Power of Three" Amy and Rory mention they've been with him for 10 years and are aging faster than they should. Time was trying to keep Rory(and Amy for that matter) alive for ten more years of his life, so he could be seen by his younger self and thus set the future. Afterwards he could finally die permanently in "The Angels Take Manhattan". Well, at least until the Weeping Angels got hold of him and set his future again to waste his life away in the hotel, but that didn't stop Rory and Amy from making a paradox of their own. [[MemeticBadass Being Rory]], time just gave up on him and decided to give a free pass
969
970[[/folder]]
971
972[[folder:Regeneration]]
973
974[[WMG: Time Lords imprint, like ducks]]
975The Eleventh Doctor went on and on about how Amy's face was "the first face this face saw". So much so that after losing her, he practically went over the Despair Event Horizon and completely shut down. Hey, it's possible, right?
976
977[[WMG: A Time Lord's sexual orientation can change with each regeneration.]]
978Their default orientation is asexual-- possibly purposely engineered to keep the population down. For beings that can live hundreds of years, over-population could become a significant problem. However, every once in a while, after a regeneration they pop up as non-asexual. Ten is hetero, so is Eight, and we can presume One as well, since he had to get that granddaughter somehow. Eleven, I think, is gay-- he does seem to go on a bit about how good looking Jeff is. This explains, for instance, how Five traveled with so many attractive companions of both genders without a hint of temptation. Also, why Nine didn't show any romantic interest in Rose, but when he became Ten, he fell in love with her.
979* Nine is bi. He showed some interest in Rose, argued that he was not asexual, was pretty overjoyed at the 51st Century's (and therefore Jack's) pansexuality, and there were other hints between him and Jack.
980** He didn't seem to ''like'' like Rose. I think he's [[StraightGay probably gay.]]
981* I like this theory, but I think Eleven is bisexual at least. When Amy kissed him, his first instinct was to put one hand on her hip and the other in her hair.
982** The way Eleven checks out the rather hot young Venetian woman at the beginning of "Vampires of Venice" indicates that he has at least an appreciation for the other gender. I'm going with bi, personally.
983** I concur with Eleven being bisexual. Eleven's pained facial expressions in "Vincent and the Doctor" and "The Lodger" seem to indicate that he's also deeply entrenched in a TransparentCloset. Poor guy.
984* The Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures and other EU stuff made the Eighth Doctor pretty definitely bisexual.
985* Clearly [[EveryoneIsBi bisexuality is the default.]] Asexuality is a more cultural thing on Gallifrey.
986* Six is probably gay. He was never distracted by Peri's revealing clothes (and he wore a rainbow coat)
987** Have you heard of asexuality? Or is it really too much to expect that someone isn't obsessed over revealing clothes?
988* Perhaps each regeneration goes through its own version of adolescence, at different points in their lives? Nine had memories of "dancing" from his past but didn't seem to have a very strong sex drive himself, lots of intellectual flirting but little action. Ten took a while to be able to express such feelings, and let's face it, Handy seemed a lot more likely to give Rose what she wanted, while Ten was content to be best buds with Donna. Eleven seemed to react to the thought of Rory and Amy kissing or having sex in a very childish kissing-is-icky way, and he seemed to range from oblivious to looking-but-no-further at first, but around the time River kissed him he started finding such things less distasteful.
989* Or, perhaps it's just that Time Lords are only ''really'' attracted to their own species, and anything else is done out of loneliness. The only person we've seen any real lasting enthusiasm towards was River, who counts as half-Time Lord or proto-Time Lord. And possibly the Master/Mistress, depending on how easily you see slash instead of longstanding close friendship.
990** The Doctor and Romana definitely had a connection (of course nothing sexual ever happened in the show but he did take her punting).
991
992[[WMG: Regenerations get more "Explosive" and harmful every a Time Lord regenerates]]
993I have noticed a trend with regenerations, The first few regenerations are quick and easy: when the First Doctor shifted over to the Second it was quick and easy and the Doctor was back on his feet in no time. However, every following regeneration put the Doctor at risk afterwards, the Third Doctor stumbles around for a bit as does the Fourth. The Fifth Doctor almost has his mind turn on him. The Seventh Doctor couldn't remember things clearly. The Eighth Doctor forgot EVERYTHING for a short while. Then the War Doctor's regeneration was rather explosive. Ten had to rest for a while afterwards and exploded when he came through. [[spoiler: The Twelfth Doctor's regeneration was so small because he was the start of a new regeneration cycle.]] It is possible that at the end of a regeneration cycle Time Lords just explode from the regeneration energy.
994* ''Small''?? Eleven to Twelve took out an entire Dalek fleet with his overflow of regeneration energy! He just held off the actual change of appearance until he had burned off most of it and it was safe for Clara (and Sexy).
995* And now Twelve to Thirteen has managed to break the time rotor itself and prety much make the entire inside of the TARDIS into one big explosion....
996
997[[WMG: The series finale will be the Twelfth or Thirteenth Doctor comatose and stuck in a human hospital.]]
998Not damaged enough to regenerate, but too damaged for the humans to wake up. He'll be signed in as a John Doe ([[ContinuityNod John Smith]]?) because none of his companions will be there to ID him and (metafictionally) so they won't be able to identify him. The companions will be running around trying to find him, figure out if he has a regeneration left and, if not, figure out how to get around the 12 regeneration limit.
999
1000The next series will depend on how soon the show is UnCancelled. If it takes only a couple of years, or even a single season break, they will figure out how to revive him, and the Valeyard will be a result of messing about with his regenerations. If it's more than a couple of years, like when new Who fans are RunningTheAsylum and can have it revived, the series will pick up twenty years from the end of the current show's run with the companions' children and the same situation.
1001* Given that he got a new regeneration cycle, this is likely Jossed.
1002
1003[[WMG:The final Doctor Who episode will have all 13 Doctors]]
1004Seriously final, will-never-be-renewed, we mean it this time seriously really truly last episode. Because it could never be topped.
1005* And instead of calling it "The Thirteen Doctors", it will just be "The Doctor".
1006** Gonna be pretty hard to pull off since William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee are all dead.
1007*** [[SerkisFolk Computer-generated people]] are getting better all the time, though.
1008*** And it's not like they've never recast a Doctor before (Richard Hurndall playing the First Doctor in the 20th Anniversary special).
1009
1010[[WMG: The Thirteenth Doctor will regenerate into...]]
1011* A young man who looks an awful lot like the First Doctor. Time isn't a big ball or a banana...it's a wheel.
1012** Or a girl.
1013
1014[[WMG: The Doctor will have a major arc for his 'last' regeneration.]]
1015Something that occurred to me was that the Doctor is starting to run low on regenerations and I could see several things done by companions if he dies without the 'last' one.
1016
10171) Either the Doctor or his companions make an equivalent devil's deal with a being of power or the Master to get the Doctor another regeneration or another set of them. Done by the Doctor's companions to bring him back or the Doctor to save the world/a companion.
1018
10192) Somehow the Doctor gets tied to the Master's extra regenerations. In essence now if one kills the other they both are put at risk, maybe even being sympathetically injured if nearby. This would add a few interesting new potential elements for future shows.
1020* In "The Time of the Doctor", Clara manages to persuade the Time Lords to give him a new regeneration cycle.
1021
1022[[WMG: How regeneration works]]
1023River gained regeneration abilities, despite being human, simply from exposure to the Time Vortex in-utero. Therefore, regeneration is somehow vortex-driven. My theory is that regeneration works by replacing the dying individual with an alternate version of them, from a different timeline, that they potentially could have been from the beginning. It's like Quantum Immortality, but with the polarity reversed.
1024** Or it could be due to being in the TARDIS.
1025
1026[[WMG: The Method of Regeneration]]
1027The standard line is that when Time Lords regenerate they rebuild their bodies with some errors. These errors account for the changes in appearance and personality. There's usually a period of amnesia as well. Additionally there seems to be some sort of connection to the TARDIS in The Doctor's case. It either makes regeneration easier or somehow finalizes it. However, most of the understanding of regeneration comes from Rassilon, a notoriously dubious source.
1028
1029I posit that regeneration is another implementation of time manipulation technology. When a Time Lord is about to die a pocket alternative timeline is created or found. The equivalent Time Lord from this alternative continuity is extracted and replaces the dying Time Lord. The dying Time Lord's mind overwrites the new body's old memories with his or her own. The temporary amnesia is a side-effect of the overwriting.
1030
1031This neatly explains a lot of changes. Regardless of the lost memories, the other body has lived another life and the brain still contains those patterns of behavior. They may also have better knowledge and competencies that get subsumed in the transfer. Time Lords have two hearts, but only after their first regeneration (this is actually canon). The second heart is from their original body, which is carried forward into each new body to provide temporal/biological continuity and anchor the body into the reality it's been pulled into. It's not the anesthesia that messes up Eight so bad, but rather the damage to his heart, his less solid existence allowing him to pass through glass in one instance.
1032
1033[[WMG: The Doctor's Regenerations are based upon simple mathematics, his personality before regeneration, and the companions who have impacted him the most.]]
1034This doesn't seem to make sense at a glance, but it does for this troper.
1035* The First Doctor was a grumpy old man who had fun doing whatever he wanted to do with the TARDIS and obviously did not like authority-like figures. This would be one of the most recurring traits of the Doctor that we see. We also see that the Doctor wanted to be isolated from the rest of the universe, as he had no one except his gran-daughter Susan to give him company. Plus, the Master was a bit crazy. Besides, no one would know that a renegade Time Lord would be hanging out in a junkyard on Earth and that the stolen TARDIS was disguised as a human Police Box. However, when the Doctor met Ian and Barbara, he started to warm up to the two of them, and began to treat them with kindness. For a while, he was quite happy, until they decided to leave the Doctor and get married. Oh yeah, Susan left him as well, as she fell in love with some dude whose name I forgot at the moment. This obviously impacted the Doctor in a huge way, as the Doctor commented that Steven, who was a First Doctor companion, was an inferior version of Ian. He also lost several other companions in some freak accident. As a result, the Doctor wanted to change himself to become more accepting, and to be accepted, by those around him, as well as to be more careful to not lose anymore companions.
1036
1037[[WMG: Every regeneration is based on a face the Doctor has seen before]]
1038We know that this has been the case before, but it is possible that the Doctor has seen every face he will regenerate into. It has been confirmed that the Doctor has seen a good number of his future faces. For example:
1039
1040* 1 wouldn't be a face the Doctor had seen before, as he (presumably) never regenerated into 1.
1041* 2-5 all appeared in multi-Doctor episodes together, so 1 saw their faces. ("The Five Doctors")
1042* 6 has the face of Maxil, who 5 met.("Arc of Infinity")
1043* 2 apparently saw 8 during a joint adventure they had at some point, and were saved by Clara ("The Name of the Doctor")
1044* War and 5 saw 10 ("The Day of the Doctor," "Time Crash")
1045* War saw 11. ("The Day of the Doctor")
1046* 12 has Caecilius' face (this one was confirmed in-universe) ("The Girl Who Died")
1047* This only leaves 7, War, and Nine unaccounted for. The Doctor could have easily seen these faces at any point in his life, but I might be missing specific examples in the show.
1048
1049This might also be related to the fact that the brain is unable to create new faces (this is why every face we see in dreams belongs to a person we have seen before) perhaps Time Lords' brains work similarly when it comes to regeneration? Maybe another Doctor in the future will be played by someone who has previously appeared in another role?
1050
1051[[WMG: Building on the above, the "13 bodies" thing is a bureaucratic restriction and not biological.]]
1052* So, you're born, you grow up, go to school/advance to higher education, and receive your diploma. When you graduate, you are given the regeneration process, which you can use on your deathbed to reboot your whole body back to the state it was when you received your diploma. ''In theory'', thirteen lifespans should be more than enough. Problem is, the Doctor isn't sedentary enough to fully enjoy its benefits, and he burns through regenerations much faster.
1053** {{Jossed}}. In "Time of the Doctor", the Doctor can't regenerate until he is physically given more regenerative energy, at which point the process begins automatically. Besides that, the Doctor has never really been one to follow his people's rules, and for that matter neither has the Master, who was equally subject to the regeneration limit and took to stealing bodies when he ran out of regenerations in the classic series. He mentions being given a new regeneration cycle in "The Sound of Drums", explaining his regeneration in the previous episode. Furthermore, during the Sixth Doctor's era another Time Lord commits suicide by willing himself to regenerate despite not having any regenerations left. Even the IRS couldn't enforce their rules that well.
1054** That's not jossed at all. The WMG says they are given their regenerations when they become a timelord, something Matt Smith's regeneration further supports. The bureaucratic side of it is the fact that the council decides timelords get thirteen bodies. Theoretically a timelord could have infinite regenerations so long as they have access to the stock pile for want of a better term. The question is whether a timelord can only physically hold twelve regenerations inside them at once or if it's purely and arbitrary number decided by the timelord rulers to curb their people's immortality (and thus stagnation).
1055*** This actually makes a LOT of sense of something which always bugged me. When Romana regenerated from Romana I to Romana II she did so willingly (not due to injury), tried out a few different bodies in the process and treated it as casually as trying on a new haircut (the Doctor criticised her wasting her regenerations but not in a "you're basically killing yourself" kind of way). If the Time Lords issue regenerations then it makes perfect sense that renegades like the Doctor and the Master would not have access to them and therefore would be careful about using them up, whereas someone like Romana who was welcome in Time Lord society (keeping in mind this was long pre-Time War) would have no problem using them casually because she could always get more.
1056
1057[[WMG:The regenerations keep getting more unstable.]]
1058The Second Doctor just shrugged it off. The Third spent some time in bed; the Fourth babbled about random stuff for a bit. The Fifth went into a coma for a while. The Sixth attacked his companion. Both the Seventh and the Eighth had amnesia. The Tenth went into a coma. His regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" doesn't count because Ten stalled and redirected it. [[spoiler:(Doctor!Donna had ''severe,'' if time-delayed, regeneration problems...)]] Later regenerations will be even nastier.
1059* Alternatively, the regenerations ''were'' getting more unstable, but Jackie Tyler's tea fixed whatever the Gallifreyan council broke, and Ten will have it down pat when he has to regenerate for real. We know that Tylers and Ten both have special places in the new series.
1060* This one seems to be supported by the latest regeneration -- [[spoiler: so explosive it damages the TARDIS and sends it plummeting to Earth.]]
1061** I'm more convinced that this was to do with that specific Doctor's utter reluctance ''to'' regenerate having than it was to do with regenerations becoming more and more unstable. If the TARDIS is sort of psychic and gets inside your head, then it seems likely that a highly emotional reaction from the Doctor could have a knock on effect. This doesn't discredit the theory, though.
1062** Ten's regeneration nearly [[spoiler:blew up the TARDIS]] but Eleven emerged with virtually no adverse effects. His may be the most stable regeneration since the first one.
1063*** This is also the reason for his getting younger. Every time the Doctor regenerates he's burning up his life force. His first form lasted him for nearly 400 years, but then he needed to regenerate, and it cost him a lot more than anyone realised. Basically he's either going to keep regressing, or he's eventually going to just fall apart at the seams when his body can't sustain the level of power drain it needs. This can also be an explanation for his regenerations changing personality completely, because his neural pathways are getting eaten away. He's trapped in a BodyHorror cycle he can't get out of.
1064*** Alternately, the Doctor keeps regenerating into a younger body because he keeps getting older: he ''wants'' to at least appear young, even if he's anything but. Also keep in mind that the actor's ages haven't been a steady progression from old to young -- Peter Davison was 29 when he started playing Five, Christopher Eccleston 41 when he started playing Nine, Matt Smith 26, etc.
1065* Considering that other Time Lords don't seem to have similar problems with regeneration ([[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E1DestinyOfTheDaleks and have much more control over the result, if Romana is any example]]), maybe the Doctor has some kind of medical condition that interferes with it. Possibly stress-related, considering how his lifestyle compares to most Time Lords'.
1066** Or he's just really bad at regenerating. It seems like [[spoiler: River doesn't have a lot of control either. Perhaps they just don't have enough training to regenerate in a more manageable fashion. (River wouldn't have had any, of course.)]]
1067* The simplest explanation for why the Doctor gets younger with each regeneration and why he appears to have problems with it is that the process was only intended to deal with natural causes of death, like old age. If you die of old age, then regenerating at the same age would solve nothing. Conversely, a process designed to only deal with relatively mundane forms of death would naturally malfunction when confronted with things like massive radiation poisoning, eating the Time Vortex, and so forth.
1068* This might explain why the Master looked like a zombie after Roger Delgado. He already expended the 12 normal regenerations, and [[BodyHorror his Pratt/Beavers incarnation]] is what a Time Lord might degenerate into if they try to regenerate a 13th time without a new cycle being added. Time Lords technically can regenerate more than 12 times, [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} but it's not a pretty picture]], considered a FateWorseThanDeath, and only someone like [[ImmortalsFearDeath the Master]] would do something so desperate.
1069
1070[[WMG:Regenerations are a resource and can be harvested.]]
1071We know that Time Lords are given extra lives through a process not yet explained. The Master has done many things to give himself more lives. When he was given 12 more lives, this proved that the Time Lords are stingy about giving out more but will under dire circumstances. When a Time Lord kills another, it is stated that they "steal" each other's lives. They don't just hand them out every couple of years for a couple of reasons:
1072* Twelve lives is an awful lot, and most Time Lords don't travel around that much.
1073* A Time Lord who dies a lot is clumsy and a waste of resources.
1074* Time Lords may want to die eventually. When the sixth doctor was afraid he was stranded in the TARDIS, he lamented that he still had to live through his regenerations, not able to die immediately, barring suicide.
1075* Romana was able to choose what she looked like. It could be some sort of luxury that rich, important or honored Time Lords can afford.
1076
1077If it is a resource, it could be renewable or nonrenewable. If it's renewable, it's probably difficult to get hold of, and taking too many lives at once could damage the means of acquiring them. (Even renewable resources can get used up if misused. Passenger pigeons were once a renewable resource.)
1078
1079If it's nonrenewable, then it's simply a luxury.
1080
1081Romana's second regeneration suggests it's renewable.
1082
1083* Wasn't that confirmed (if not in the details) by the TV Movie?
1084
1085[[WMG:There are no limits to a Time Lord's regenerations. The Time Lords of Gallifrey have merely been putting limits on them; without them, there are no more limitations to the Doctor's regenerations.]]
1086Ok, this may take a bit of thought, but think about it for a second.
1087
1088As listed above in previous [=WMGs=], the Time Lords can grant new regenerations to any Time Lord ''(as they tried to do to the Master in "The Five Doctors", and presumably succeeded with the Master during the Time War)'', and even transfer one Time Lord's regenerations to another ''(as seen with the Valeyard during the Trial of a Time Lord saga)''. Further, the few times a limit on regenerations is mentioned, such as with Borusa in "The Five Doctors", there always seems to be a lot of resentment associated with the concept of a limit on regenerations.
1089
1090Now, consider that whenever the concept of regeneration is brought up in the new series... there's no mention of a limit to the regenerations whatsoever. Ninth doesn't bother mentioning that he's got a limit on his regenerations, nor does the Tenth ever hint at it - not even when he redirects his regeneration into his hand during the finale of the fourth season. These events, obviously, all take place after the Time War.
1091
1092The Time War where the entire planet of Gallifrey burned to a cinder, as the result of... oh, wait.
1093
1094* Tenth once said to Rose that he doesn't die: he simply regenerates. This seem to imply that he has no limit on how many times he can do it. That, or the Time Lords gave him a really long (or infinite) cycle in the Time War.
1095** He says he doesn't ''age''. Different thing.
1096
1097** A small thing, but it does reinforce the idea that the limit on regenerations was set by the Time Lords deliberately. In The Brain of Morbius, the Doctor scolds the Sisterhood of the Sacred Fire for trying to live forever, saying without death there can be no change and progress to a society. Sounds like he's talking from an informed position, that may be the belief that caused a limit to be set in the first place.
1098** Alternately, the limit on regenerations might have been imposed because Time Lords who'd lived through too many different incarnations are prone to become more and more unstable with each life. Consider how the Master has become progressively more bonkers since he exceeded the 13-life limit.
1099
1100[[WMG: Regeneration causes Time Lords to develop a resistance - but not an immunity - to what killed them]]
1101* This explains how Ten was able to [[spoiler: fall from such a great height and survive, considering that's how Four died]]. But wait! you say. Ten died of [[spoiler: radiation poisoning, same as Three!]] Well, yes, but perhaps it took a good deal more the second time. So Four died by falling (or rather, the sudden stop at the end), but Five onwards would have to fall from a much greater height before it killed him. Six would take longer to succumb to spectrox poisoning - or might survive it. Seven wouldn't be prone to concussion. This would be a natural self-preservation method for Time Lords, allowing them to overcome their weaknesses. (And given the terrible ways the Doctor tends to die, he's gonna end up indestructable.)
1102** Would this mean that after Seven's death the Doctor is ImmuneToBullets ... or to medical malpractice?
1103*** It's quite common for people to survive ridiculously high falls if they have something stopping them on the way down -one woman supposedly survived a parachute jump where her 'chute failed with only one or two broken bones because she hit a (single!) telephone wire on the way down. And Ten hit glass. It's not impossible to survive that fall. Depends how you land.
1104
1105[[WMG: Regenerations are powered by sacrificing lives.]]
1106In a cross between ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' and the resurrection gloves from Torchwood, regenerations are actually powered by sacrificing the lives of random strangers across the universe. The 13 regeneration limit was imposed by the Time Lords to limit the sacrifices made in their name, and the mechanism is a limit on the number of time-energy bridges between the sacrificed person and the receiving Time Lord. Naturally it's a secret closely guarded by the Time Lords, but it's one the Doctor will have to face when he reaches his thirteenth regeneration and realises that he can continue living, but at a cost...
1107
1108[[WMG: The last regeneration of a Time Lord is their last because they hit a negative "age"]]
1109The Doctor gets younger with every regeneration, starting from the very old first Doctor and all the way down to the youngest actor yet. Additional regenerations can be "acquired" by aging naturally (or having an accelerated aging effect).
1110* If this is true, then the events of "The Leisure Hive" and "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords" mean the Doctor is set for quite a long time.
1111
1112[[WMG: There is no natural limit to how often a Time Lord can regenerate.]]
1113There is nothing naturally stopping a Time Lord from regenerating more then 13 times, that limit was placed on them by themselves somehow. Either Time Lord society as a whole, or the ruling council impossed a limit on regenerations, the reasons for this could be any, or any combination of several, ranging from population control, averting WhoWantsToLiveForever, limiting overly ridiculous behaviour, making Time Lords a bit more sympathetic to non-immortals, even just straight up so they can better control other Time Lords by removing/extending there regenerations left. This explains how they would be able to grant The Doctor's remaing regnerations to the Valeyard, grant The Master new ones during the Time War. All it would take is for them to alter whatever mechanic they put in place to limit regenerations in the first place. Now that the rest of the Time Lords are gone The Doctor either is no longer under this limitation (even if he doesn't know it), or will find a way to remove it prior to what he things will be his final death.
1114* When the Time Lords first discovered how to manipulate time, they might have found a power source that they could draw on to regenerate their bodies at death. The power source could only regenerate a limited number of Gallifreyans (or at least the Time Lords believed it would) so they imposed a limit on how many times the energy source could be used. But now there's barely any Time Lords left...and the regeneration power source is still there.
1115** This also explains why the Doctor's pre-Time War regenerations were pretty simple (glowing light and then 'poof', new body) and the post-Time War ones all involves him EXPLODING. He's overloading!
1116
1117[[WMG: Regenerating is part of Time Lord Puberty]]
1118Time Lords are born and during their first generation age similarly to, though at a much slower rate than, humans. Hence the young Doctor and Master shown in "The Sound of Drums". Upon reaching a certain age they start regenerating, on a cycle or whenever injured. Each regeneration tends to be younger in appearance and more libidinous than the last, though not as an absolute rule. After 13 regenerations a Timelord has reached sexual maturity, and will continue to age at the "normal" rate but will not regenerate again. Of course this all takes so long and it's so hard to get enough mature Time Lords in one area at a time to effectively propagate the species that a bunch of first generation Time Lords, not seeing the point, said "Screw it, (or not) we're gonna be asexual" and came up with a better way to procreate through science.
1119* The young Master at the age of 8? Sure it could be a Gallifreyan 8 but still.
1120
1121[[WMG: The Time Lords gave everybody increased regenerations during the War]]
1122We know from the old series that they can give more regenerations than the usual 13; sometimes they need to take them from somebody else, but given the casualties, deserters, and psychological breakdowns associated with war, that isn't going to be much of a problem for people like the Time Lords. The Doctor was among those who got an increased regeneration count, which is why he now claims to have a total count of 507.
1123
1124[[WMG: The Time Lords altered regeneration during the Time War.]]
1125In the old series, regenerations were not as violent, with some of the earliest ones appearing as just a change of face. In NuWho, they use a much more explosive effect, one that is first seen chronologically with the Eighth Doctor in "The Night of the Doctor." It would make sense that the Time Lords would alter regeneration energy during the Time War to use as a weapon, like 11 did in "Time of the Doctor." This would affect all Time Lords, as it seems they all fought (such as the Master and the General).
1126* However, the trailer for "Twice Upon a Time" shows the First Doctor with a glowing hand, similar to the modern effect. So this may soon be jossed.
1127
1128[[WMG: Regeneration is an ability bestowed upon Gallifrey citizens by the Academy as a disguised punishment for those who reject their authority]]
1129
1130
1131Right off the bat, a preface – this troper has only watched the revival, and fully admits that their knowledge of the classic series, while not vacant, is sordidly lacking. The following WMG is merely a hypothesis put forward with the limited information gathered.
1132
1133
1134
1135From what has been observed of Time Lord society, a heavy case of segregation is in play – as documented in Hell Bent, outside of the domed city, the people of Gallifrey, a species which achieved mastery over space and time, live in shacks in the desert. The powers that be in Gallifrey obviously enjoy a form of power that is all-encompassing, and if Rassilon is a safe template to apply, they seem to have zero tolerance for any methods though which that power may be undermined, or even questioned.
1136
1137
1138
1139Before this goes any further, it will be assumed that the popular fan theory follows, that being that there is a difference between Gallifreyans and Time Lords.
1140
1141
1142
1143Throughout both the classic and revived series, the reason for the Doctor’s renegade status is stated as being down to the fact of them breaking one of the Time Lord’s highest rules – a policy of non-interference with other realms in either time and space. The Time Lords place such a high value upon this policy that once they finally apprehend a guilty 2nd Doctor, they force a regeneration upon him, in addition to disabling his ability to pilot the TARDIS.
1144
1145
1146
1147Shifting the topic onto the subject of this WMG, regeneration, one of the more well-documented side effects of regeneration is a personality shift – the Doctor’s various incarnations have all retained key personality traits, but to what extent these traits manifest over each other is highly variable. Linking into this, a prominent trait of regeneration is a brief period of mental instability. However, most known incidences of regeneration have focused upon the Doctor, a renegade who not only regenerates in instances away from Time Lord society, but often due to grievous injury over elements such as old age. During the few instances when the Doctor experiences a regeneration due to old age (1st, War) or a regeneration forced by Time Lords or affiliated organisations (2nd, 8th), the Doctor has come to cope much quicker.
1148
1149
1150
1151So, to focus upon the items of note –
1152
1153- A ruling class that is highly powerful and ardent in defending this fact
1154
1155- A policy of non-interference, and severe punishment for breaking this policy
1156
1157- Regeneration a feature of those who have been subject to upper Society, such as the Academy
1158
1159- Traumatic regeneration absent during instances of artificial induction or old age
1160
1161
1162
1163The hypothesis from the observation is as follows –
1164
1165''Regeneration is an artificial feature, absent among Gallifreyans as a whole, that is bestowed upon Time Lords, nominally to bestow them with the privilege of longer life, but with an understated purpose of punishing those who do not abide by the laws of the Time Lords''
1166
1167
1168
1169Gallifreyans only possess a single life – albeit one that is seemingly still longer than Humans, several centuries long – but Time Lords are provided with regeneration, enabling a life lengthened much further than that. However, unless under proper medical conditions, regeneration will leave the Time Lord not only with an altered physical appearance, but an altered personality as well.
1170
1171
1172
1173If a Time Lord abandons the society, and/or breaks the rules, the options before them are twofold –
1174
1175- Leave Gallifrey entirely, exploring the stars, and experience not only unknown worlds where they may not adapt, but experience a universe of danger, where you will most likely wind up in an accident severe enough to trigger regeneration, and upon which, you become even more vulnerable in your state of mental trauma
1176
1177- Return to the Gallifreyans in the desert shacks from which you came, but all they will see is a person who walks around claiming to be their loved one, yet looks nothing like them, and acts differently as well, albeit just enough like them to be insulting and disturbing. Enjoy it while it lasts though, because you’ll outlive them all, anyway.
1178
1179[[WMG: Going off of two theories above about the Doctor’s new bodies being adaptations to his previous form’s faults, and influenced by his needs at the time of the regeneration, ALL Time Lords account for these things during their regenerations.]]
1180
1181* The Doctor:
1182
1183** 1-2: The First Doctor, influenced by the younger and hipper companions around him, felt that he needed to be more welcoming to those who traveled with him in the future. So he became younger and hipper himself. Goofier (but still using that goofiness with competence) and more physically able to run around and exert himself, he changed to be what he felt his companions needed.
1184
1185** 2-3: Angry about his forced regeneration and now feeling that his goofier personality became a fault, he returned to being a little older and more prickly. He still wanted to keep himself physically able to run around, hence his expertise in martial arts and action-hero like antics, but otherwise he wanted to go back on what he had made himself into as 2. Which also explains his hostility to 2 in particular whenever they met up during anniversary specials.
1186
1187** 3-4: The Third Doctor eventually softened up after getting his TARDIS working again and growing such strong bonds with Jo, the Brigadier, UNIT, even The Master to an extent, and Sarah Jane (Liz Shaw isn’t counted because she wasn’t around long enough to get him out of his prickly phase.) He was finally willing to give a younger and goofier personality a go again. However, Jo leaving him clearly hurt him quite a lot. Influencing him to become more aloof and distant as 4, despite otherwise becoming more laid-back.
1188
1189** 4-5: Now having three companions traveling with him again, after spending most of his life with just one at a time, he felt he needed to become more accessible for their sake going forward. He needed to become more of a family-man and more human in personality to be there for all of them. So he became the even younger 5, who was more like an older brother to his companions rather than a father or grandfather.
1190
1191** 5-6: As a result of so much going wrong during this incarnation: Adric’s death, most companions leaving him on very poor terms, Peri almost dying immediately after meeting him, the Fifth Doctor felt that he had become far too soft and vulnerable to be of any real help to his companions anymore. He resented his personality choice, just as 3 resented 2’s, and became a far more abrasive, aggressive incarnation as 6 to regain what he felt was his lost ability to be a competent leader to his companions.
1192
1193** 6-7: While not fully over his mistakes as 5 yet, 6 did soften up a bit by the time of his regeneration. So he wanted to reach a middle-ground between his last two forms. His body became slightly older again, but he made his personality less abrasive and more (competently) goofy like 2 and 4. He still wanted a personality that would keep him in control of situations, but he felt he didn’t have to be so aggressive anymore. So he chose to become more tactical instead. TheChessMaster.
1194
1195** 7-8: The Seventh Doctor lived a long life, visibly aging by the time of the Doctor Who movie. He had time to mellow out and forgive himself for his failings as 5. So when he regenerated into 8, he gave another go at being younger and more open and human in personality. Part of him had begun to miss those days.
1196
1197** 8-War: He became exactly what he needed to be for the Time War after the Sisterhood of Karn convinced him. Still, he held on to his kindly personality deep down, as seen by the extreme hesitance of the War Doctor to use The Moment. He never really wanted to lose his humanity despite his need to become a gritty warrior.
1198
1199** War-9: The War Doctor knew that, based on what his future incarnations told him, he would be misremembering events and believe that he had caused a double-genocide as his next incarnation. So he made himself into someone tough and very guarded, both in personality and appearance, to be able to handle the brunt of it.
1200
1201** 9-10: Heavily influenced by Rose’s innocence, he desired a return to that innocence himself. So he made his next incarnation younger and more romantic again, like he was as 8. In other words, he wanted to become good boyfriend material for Rose. Still, the trauma of the Time War carried on in his memories and left some major lingering darkness in his personality too.
1202
1203** 10-11: Seeing how his vulnerability in this form led to several traumas similar to what he faced as 5, he saw the need to become more alien in personality and guarded again as 11. However, he still appreciated his youthful appearance, leading 11 to return to the kind of youthful competent goofiness 2 and 4 had, rather than the more vulnerable youthfulness 5 and 10 did. In other words, he wanted to keep his youth but not his vulnerability.
1204
1205** 11-12: Gradually aging into a grandfatherly figure again during “The Time of the Doctor”, he had come to realize he really missed those days as incarnations 1 and 3 and probably 7 later on, and wanted to start as someone older than he had last time. At the same time, he saw the need to remain active and fit, due to the action and chaos chasing him into his final days. So he went with an appearance and personality similar to 3, as he felt it best suited his needs.
1206
1207** 12-13: He became so fed up with everything toward the end of this life that he didn’t even want to regenerate at all for a while. When he finally decided to, he knew he would need to soften up again to be able to accept that and regain his appreciation for life. Enter the much younger and goofier, more playful, and even for the first time, feminine 13.
1208
1209* The Master:
1210
1211** 13-Crispy: Delgado’s Master clearly went through some kind of horrible accident and was out of regenerations. He needed ThePowerOfHate to stay alive at all, and so that’s what he did. Leading to a far more ruthless, more desperate, and much less friendly incarnation.
1212
1213** Crispy-Tremas: By the time The Master found a new body, he really missed his days as 13. The friendly rivalry he had with the Third Doctor, the charm and the good looks. So he made Tremas’s form into someone very similar. Still, his time spent as an incarnation living in total desperation scarred him a bit, making him more insane and more like a cartoony villain than he was as 13. And a bit less fond of The Doctor himself as well.
1214
1215** Tremas-Bruce: The Master knew he was in danger for his life again, like he was as Crispy. So, while he still had a more human appearance, he went back to the more no-nonsense “do whatever it takes to survive” mentality he had previously been able to relax on as Tremas. In other words, he abandoned the “suave gentleman” look he had as 13 and Tremas in favor of someone who looked tougher and could look more genuinely menacing to increase his likelihood of survival.
1216
1217** Bruce-Yana: We know that the Time Lords gave him a new regeneration cycle, but it is unclear how many regenerations he really went through during the Time War. In any case, Yana says that he was found as a child with just a watch by the time of the revival series. If that was truly the case, then he chose the form of a child to appear more innocent in his attempt to escape the war, aging over time into his appearance when he encounters the Tenth Doctor. If that was not the case, then he still may have chosen a more kindly-looking appearance anyway to be more acceptable to a community he could hide in outside of the war.
1218
1219** Yana-Saxon: Yana outright says “if The Doctor can be young and strong, then so can I!” So he clearly chose the Saxon form to match the Tenth Doctor’s youth and energy.
1220
1221** Saxon-Missy: When we last see Saxon, he has been outwitted and stabbed by Missy herself. While he is clearly upset at her desire to help The Doctor, he does express genuine admiration at her ruthlessness otherwise. After being misogynistic in at least his previous two incarnations, based on his treatment of Chantho as Yana and Lucy Saxon as Harold Saxon, he most likely finally gained a true admiration for the strength of women here. So he followed that admiration through his regeneration into the more feminine Missy, and befitting her/his character, very performatively so.
1222
1223** Missy-O: Assuming Missy died the way that we saw, at the hands of her Saxon incarnation, she most likely spent her dying moments regretting the vulnerability she had developed over time. Due to The Master always valuing strength and power at her/his core, she felt that allowing The Doctor to influence her was what made her weak enough to fall to the ruthlessness of her own past self. So when she became O, he embraced several of the Saxon mannerisms she had abandoned, hence his similar behavior to that incarnation in particular, and his return to being The Doctor’s enemy completely.
1224
1225* Romana:
1226
1227** Romana I-Romana II: While Romana states that she deliberately chose the form of Princess Astra because she really liked her look, her personality also softened and she evolved into a DistaffCounterpart to the Fourth Doctor. This was most likely due to her feeling that being more stuck-up around him wasn’t helping, and she wanted to be more like him to work together more effectively. And similar to how 9 became 10 to suit Rose because he loved her, Romana may have actually done the same exact thing for The Doctor due to their implied romantic love for each other (even if Romana II made that love much more obvious than Romana I.)
1228
1229* Rassilon
1230
1231** During the 5th Doctor’s time-During the 10th Doctor’s time: He clearly went through several incarnations during this time period due to the Time War, meaning that this wasn’t a direct transition. But seeing how physically intimidating and ruthless 10th Doctor’s Rassilon is, he clearly chose to be that way to best suit himself for the needs of the Time War.
1232
1233** During the 10th Doctor’s time-During the 12th Doctor’s time: 12th Doctor’s Rassilon seems to have come directly from the Saxon Master killing him with lightning. The passage of time seems to account for his increased age, but his stubborn-old-man form was most likely chosen in the first place to regain respect from the other Time Lords after the “End of Time” debacle. In other words, he chose an appearance to inspire respect from his own people this time, rather than his previous regeneration’s choice to focus on looking tough and powerful to his enemies.
1234
1235* River Song:
1236
1237** Melody Pond-Mels: From what little we see of Melody Pond’s original form, she seems to be struggling on the streets. So she chose Mels, someone just a little older, with a tougher personality and appearance, to account for this need to properly protect herself.
1238
1239** Mels-River Song: Infatuated with The Doctor, and empowered by her increased respect from those around her as Mels compared to Melody, she chose to become much older to surpass him in physical age, and [[MsFanservice just a little bigger (hence her comment during regeneration on choosing a dress size)]] to account for this wish. In other words, she wanted to become someone who would look more mature and inspire more respect from those around her.
1240
1241[[/folder]]
1242
1243[[folder:The Valeyard]]
1244
1245[[WMG: Madame Vastra ate the Valeyard.]]
1246In "A Good Man Goes to War", Madame Vastra mentions that she ate Jack the Ripper. But if you remember from the ''Doctor Who'' novel ''Matrix'', ''The Valeyard was Jack the Ripper.'' So . . .
1247
1248[[WMG: the Doctor will split in the last regeneration]]
1249One will be the Valeyard and the other will be the regular Doctor.
1250** The Doctor splitting from regeneration? What a [[TakeThat silly idea]] oh wait...
1251
1252[[WMG: The Ginger Doctor will be the Valeyard]]
1253Any concurrent Doctors, as well as preceding and succeeding Doctors, will ''not'' be ginger. The good Doctors will be hilariously irate about this.
1254
1255[[WMG: The Valeyard's origins.]]
1256In the Big Finish story "The Trial of the Valeyard", he says that he was created on a planet orbiting Eta Rho by the Thirteenth Doctor, who was experimenting ways to break the regeneration limit. The Doctor suspects that there is at least some truth to this possible lie. We already know that, as a result of "The Time of the Doctor", he may not need to worry about breaking the regeneration limit (assuming that he got a dozen more regenerations). The parts that may be true may be that The Valeyard was created on a planet orbiting Eta Rho, and it may actually be witnessed by the Twelfth Doctor, not the Thirteenth Doctor but rather the thirteenth incarnation of The Doctor.
1257
1258[[WMG: The Doctor's more questionable actions have a reason]]
1259They're to prevent the Valeyard from becoming TOO powerful, or maybe even trying to keep him from existing. Obviously this failed/will fail/ fails.
1260
1261[[WMG: There will be no Valeyard]]
1262He appeared in one story and hasn't even been hinted at since. By ''Doctor Who'' standards, that makes him a reasonably minor villain. Plus, there's very little to do with him. The Doctor has his dark could-be selves in the Master and the Dream Lord. Writing-wise all the Valeyard's bases have been thoroughly covered, and using him would be redundant.
1263* As good as a counter point to the Doctor the Master is, there's a difference between "childhood friend gone evil" and "you yourself are destined to go evil". As for the Dream Lord, what is he other than an earlier non-manifest version of the Valeyard? Personally, I like the idea of the Valeyard being an internal war more than an external character. The Doctor struggling with his own inner darkness has been a theme of much of the new series, and I think it catches people's imagination because of the personal nature of this struggle to the protagonist. The Doctor can fight any enemy he can confront...but if the Valeyard/Dream Lord/Time Lord Victorious exists to confront like any other enemy, it's already too late because the Doctor no longer exists. Your Milage May Vary, of course, but I think an angle like this has a lot of potential to explore.
1264
1265[[WMG: Things like the Valeyard are exactly why the Time Lords enforced regeneration limits in the first place.]]
1266They noticed that after a certain amount of regenerations (13), they started getting crazy/evil "side effects." The higher-ups figured out the maximum amount of regenerations an average Time Lord can have without completely losing it (12) and put in place whatever technology stops regenerations after the 12th time so that they can't regenerate a 13th time. The problem is that they figured the average, which of course would not be true for every single Time Lord- some might get their evil self sooner (like after the 12th instead).
1267
1268[[WMG: The Valeyard is the result of another hand!Doctor incident in the future.]]
1269This one is accidental, like regeneration entry leaking into a nail clipping. He has no one like Rose to guide him onto the right track, and he is ''not happy'' about his human lifespan and wants to take it out on the privileged bastard, timey-wimey paradox be damned. Whatever got him through the Time Lock [[FromBadToWorse couldn't have helped matters]], either.
1270
1271[[WMG: The Valeyard's background is vague on purpose, in-universe and out.]]
1272The Time Lords state he is "the Doctor's darker side between his 12th and final incarnation", however are rather vague about it. The Valeyard himself explicitly state how he came to be. This is intentional from a writing perspective, since no set backstory means they have more freedom when it comes to writing future stories and avoid any plotholes. In-universe, it's because the Valeyard is afraid the Doctor might go out of his way to prevent his existence. So he's vague about which incarnation he came from, just some time after incarnation number 11. He can be an actual future self, a split-off entity like Handy or whatever, but if he reveals which of those he is specifically it means the Doctor will try to find a counter. [[ParanoiaFuel Being vague means the possibility the Valeyard will emerge will always exist]].
1273
1274[[WMG: MultipleChoicePast is a power the Valeyard has.]]
1275As a consequence of a being from the Doctor's future, the Valeyard's origins change as the Doctor's future becomes more solid. Since he shows up in at least "Trial of A Time Lord", and plays some role in the Doctor's known timeline, he has to exist to keep a paradox. But the origins can vary so long as he's some iteration of "[[EvilMeScaresMe an evil Doctor]]". So anything that gets the results of the Valeyard could be true, it just depends at what's happening. The Master calls him an EnemyWithout between the Doctor's 12th and final incarnation because that's the current origin that makes sense. He could be the Meta-Crisis Doctor, a real future Doctor or something else but time is in flux so the only concrete history is "something leads to an EvilMeScaresMe situation for/with the Doctor".
1276
1277[[WMG: The Valeyard is the result of an Elysian Field.]]
1278In ''Missy: Series Two'', the Lumiat was revealed to be the incarnation after Missy despite the latter having been killed beyond regeneration by the Saxon Master thanks to an Elysian Field, whereby Missy distilled all of her goodness into the Lumiat. It's logical that it can be used for the opposite end, and it fits perfectly with how the Valeyard was described as the embodiment of the Doctor's inner darkness.
1279[[/folder]]
1280
1281[[folder:Time Lords]]
1282
1283[[WMG: The Time Lords aren't actually that advanced, they just cheat]]
1284It has been noted on many ocassions that the Time Lords are staggeringly incompetent given their level of technology, I propose a simple justification for this. The Time Lords cheat. This really isn't that much of a stretch given what we know about them.
1285
1286The Time Lords were the first race in the universe to invent time travel, this was their one and only 'true' invention, every other thing they have was stolen from (or at least based on principles stolen from) other races or future versions of themselves, through the use of time travel.
1287
1288The first time lord either invented a time machine, or got one from a future member of his race (possibly the doctor himself), he then used this machine to travel to the future, where he stole a copy of all the future technology (as the Daleks would later do) then brought it back to his time. So that at the very dawn of Gallifreyan history they were as advanced as other races were at the end of their own.
1289
1290Only why stop there? Now armed with the superior time machines of future Time Lords, this First One would be able to travel the universe, going to the end of each races timeline and scooping up any tech that looked useful, then erasing his actions from the timeline (or just putting a perception filter over it to keep people from noticing).
1291
1292No race will ever be as advanced as the timelords, because if they were the Time Lords would have already stolen their inventions, making them more advanced still.
1293
1294If no race invented what they needed, Gallifrey could simply create a timeline dedicated to developing that technology, skip a few million years for them to actually create it, then travel back to before they created it with the finished product already done.
1295
1296As a result, Gallifrey would have every possible piece of technology, no matter how advanced, but none of the wisdom attained in aquring them. They would never need to learn to be clever in how they used them, since any threat could be countered with that one trick.
1297
1298The reason the timelords became stagnant, the reason they are incompetent, the reason old gallifrey is more advanced than modern gallifrey, and the reason they were so unprepared for the Daleks, is that they were nothing more than a temporal kleptocracy. An ironic mirror of the Daleks who would later steal from them.
1299
1300And the reason the Doctor is special is that being the Thief that stole the TARDIS, he is the closest to the old ways that the others have forgotten.
1301
1302* Partly confirmed: The Time Lords didn't invent regeneration, but reverse-engineered it from the Timeless Child which Tecteun found in her travels.
1303
1304[[WMG: Gallifrey is BiggerOnTheInside]]
1305When we see it in "The End of Time", it appears to be a few times the size of the Earth. But it uses similar technology as [=TARDISes=]: once you get past the atmosphere, it gets bigger. Much, ''much'' bigger. The actual surface area of Gallifrey is bigger than whole solar systems, possibly even whole galaxies.
1306
1307[[WMG: The humanoid Time Lord bodies in the physical universe aren't their true forms]]
1308Time Lords are actually [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] who exist in some other plane of reality, possibly related to the Time Vortex. Because there isn't really anything there besides themselves, they invest all their attention into the Whoniverse, creating physical humanoid bodies there that are connected to their consciousnesses. However, their physical bodies are still very important to them. Think of the humanoid bodies as the skin, and their true forms as everything beneath the skin. When the bodies are fatally injured, they are able to create new ones, while their actual forms stay the same. This explains their god-like powers, how they can warp reality, and how they perceive incomprehensible things in incomprehensible ways, while still looking so... well, so not-like-something-that-could-do-that.
1309
1310[[WMG: Time Lords and Gallifreyans are NOT the same thing]]
1311But rather a becoming a Time Lord is a side effect of absorbing enough Time Energy and surviving. The Gallifreyans have mastered this process, and Time Lords are more like Jedi in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' prequels. At a young age, a Gallifreyan child is taken by the Time Lords and taught the rules of time travel. When they are deemed ready, the are made to look into the Untempered Schism, and if they survive the exposure to the Time Energy they are given regenerative abilities. In theory, any species can become a Time Lord, hence River Song, who was conceived in the TARDIS and as a fetus absorbed enough energy to become a Time Lord, but not enough to transform Rory and Amy.
1312* We know there are non-Gallifreyan Time Lords. Take a look at episodes like "The Invasion of Time."
1313
1314[[WMG: Jelly Babies are drugs for Time Lords]]
1315This is why the Fourth Doctor was so eccentric, while the Fifth was so sober like as he was mainly recovering from a drug induced hangover. This is also why Simm!Master was so crazy as he's seen eating Jelly babies. This would also explain the Time Lords' shock when he asks him to pass him a jelly baby, not that the president would ask for a sweet but shocked he was a drug addict.
1316
1317[[WMG: The Weeping Angels are Time Lords]]
1318The Time Lords fought the Great Vampires who have been shown to have the ability to convert other species, perhaps during the war a number of Time Lords were captured/converted but instead of feeding on blood, a converted Time Lord fed on Time Energy. somehow they all got quantum locked(possibly by the Time Lords themselves) and evolved into the Weeping Angels. This could explain why being forced to act like a Weeping Angel is such a shameful punishment for Time Lords and why they were so sickened by the War.
1319
1320[[WMG: One of the Characters is a Time... oh, wait.]]
1321* A Timepiece? I'd have to say the clock from "The Girl in the Fireplace", but the tower that got hit by the spaceship in "Aliens of London" also has a lot of evidence going for it.
1322** Romana gets a portrait of herself drawn in The City of Death with her face replaced with a timepiece. Coincidence? I think not!
1323** Maybe one of the characters that ''isn't'' a Time Lord is a Time Lord?
1324*** As of the midseason six finale, [[spoiler: confirmed! ...sort of...]]
1325** Maybe one of the characters that is said to be a Time Lord, actually is one?
1326** Or maybe a Time Lord isn't actually a Time Lord? Maybe none of the Time Lords are Time Lords!
1327* Shows you how much ''Doctor Who'' has entered popular culture.
1328
1329[[WMG: This is the only work of fiction in the past hundred years in which ''none'' of the characters is a WMG/TimeLord.]]
1330It had to be said.
1331* Nope. [[Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency Reg is Dr. Chronotis, isn't he?]]
1332
1333[[WMG: One or more of the characters is a WMG/TimeLord.]]
1334Bear with me here. AsYouKnow, the planet Gallifrey belongs to the Time Lords, who run the planet and do their Time Lordy stuff there. Now, as some sort of in-joke, Gallifrey cameos in several ''Doctor Who'' serials throughout the show's history. For example, the Ninth and Tenth Doctors occasionally mention Gallifrey by name, and ''way'' back in "The War Games" it's subtly implied that the Second Doctor's trial takes place there. From these references, it's almost certain that Gallifrey exists in the ''Doctor Who'' universe. Now, why is this relevant? ''If Gallifrey exists in the Doctor Who universe, so do the Time Lords''. Logically, there has to be at least ''some'' Time Lords on this show. As for ''which'' characters are Time Lords? I'm ... not sure, but if I had to choose one person, it'd have to be Mickey Smith.
1335* [[JustForFun/MadeOfWin Win.]]
1336* Wait, what series is Gallifrey from originally?
1337** Well, it involved a guy and his human companion traveling through time and space in a time machine disguised as a small 1950's phone booth. Oh, ''duh'', it's from ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure''!
1338* Wait. Captain Jack Harkness can travel through time. He practically comes back to life every time he gets "killed", but while his face never changes, you can tell from the Rani and the Master that more experienced Time Lords can control the results of their regenerations. It's been theorized that a time lord can "eat" the remaining regenerations of another time lord thaat he's killed, or (far more reasonable) that the number of regenerations is merely a bureaucratic restriction and not some sort of "[[ManaMeter mana points]]". Since the time lords have supposedly been locked away in the Time War, their enforcement of the final death may not be in effect... And Jack's a rogue anyway, and a liar, so we figure he's probably not from the 51st century anyway, and quite possibly a ''rogue time lord''. That thing he wears on his wrist must be a TARDIS, but it had the chameleon circuit break while he was in the 51st century. That's also how the blonde girl who's always with Mickey Smith or that northerner found a source of vortex energy on an entertainment satellite.
1339* Obviously, [[NightmareFuel Angel Bob]] is a Time Lord.
1340
1341[[WMG: The Whoniverse's Earth is not that of our own.]]
1342Our Earth is in fact a primitive Gallifrey. On the ''WMG/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' page, there is a guess stating that that earth is primitive Gallifrey. Also true. There will be a nuclear holocaust in the far future that will mutate the surviving humans so that they have bending powers. Reincarnation will be channeled into one being, the Avatar. The Avatar's soul is made up of four different benders, each with a different bending type, who were all going to be reincarnated, but became one being because of even more mutation. The Avatar will then become the first Time Lord, and so on and so forth. Our Earth is the [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy H2G2]] [[strike: Multiverse]] whole-sort-of-general-mish-mash Earth, and changing Earth enough to make it the earth of WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender will effectively make it an entirely different planet, one that will someday be called Gallifrey.
1343* Unquestionably Jossed. For ''starters'', the Gallifreyans were one of the old empires that fought the Great Vampires and Racnoss eons ago. Also, why would the Ninth Doctor be so redundant about mentioning the death of his own planet in "The End of the World"?
1344
1345[[WMG:All the Time Lords are still alive]]
1346The first Time Lord, Omega, was hit in the face with a supernova and dropped into a black hole. He(?) survived...and built his own "antimatter" universe. The Master is a second example. There's no reason to think any of the others are easier to kill.
1347** Furthermore, not only are all the Time Lords alive, but most of them, after the Time War, escaped to other realities, hence why so many characters in other works are seen as Time Lords.
1348* [[Recap/DoctorWho50thASTheDayOfTheDoctor Day of the Doctor]] confirms the matter once and for all.
1349
1350[[WMG: There are a race of human Time Lords somewhere.]]
1351They "regenerate" by having a copy of their Gallifreyan counterparts' memories transferred from one person to the next. Therefore, the Human!Doctor's regenerations are; Peter Cushing!Doctor, Jackson Lake, possibly Doctor!Donna, and then Hand!Doctor.
1352
1353[[WMG: Time Lords really do exist, but they're living normal lives here on planet Earth.]]
1354[[http://notalwaysright.com/elixirs-of-everlasting-life-are-on-aisle-5/3741 Consider the following.]]
1355** Alternatively, they [[BroughtDownToNormal all used Chameleon Arches to give themselves normal lives]] due to being sick of the way Gallifrey was being run.
1356
1357[[WMG: A Time Lord's previous incarnations become creatures of consciousness upon "dying"/regeneration.]]
1358This could explain where [[spoiler: the other Time Lords in "The End of Time"]] got the idea from. It would also mean none of the previous Doctors are truly gone. Hey, Ten [[HesJustHiding could have stuck around in the TARDIS]]!
1359* Nonsense. Why would they need to make the sanction to end time to begin with if they were fine after dying? Why would Rassilon defiantly claim he "Will. Not. Die."?
1360
1361[[WMG: The Time Lords are highly evolved Britons]]
1362Why do all the Time Lords have British accents, and the Doctor focus so heavily on the human race (and prefers human companions)? Because it is from them that his own race is evolved. At some point in the future, as the people of earth spread, those from the what we call the UK settle on Galifrey, evolve somewhat, and discover time travel. They use this to go back to the beginning of time, and over the millennia they forget or conveniantly hide their origins (which the Doctor and perhaps the Master discover). The Doctor needs to save the human race in order to cause himself to exist.
1363* Jossed: The Doctor (11): "No. You look Time Lord. We came first."
1364** That doesn't Joss it. Even ''if'' he's telling the truth, they came "first" by time traveling back to before Humans evolved before they founded Gallifreyan culture.
1365* Humans and Time Lords are EACH OTHER'S originators. Humans evolve into Time Lords and go back in time to sire the first humans, who go on to become the Time Lords, and so on. It's a stable time loop, like Kirk's glasses. FERPECT.
1366* Let's add to this: Remember "Utopia"? The dark, inhospitable world that the humans found was actually Gallifrey (rendered inhospitable by the Doctor's actions to end the Last Great Time War). Some humans, rather than becoming the Toclafane, braved the Untempered Schism. This sent them back in time, where they started Gallifreyan society... as well as the legends of the Toclafane.
1367
1368[[WMG:There are no such things as Time Lords.]]
1369Times Lords are just a product of the collaboration of deranged tropers
1370* [[InsaneTrollLogic Which means that Crazy Eddy (or whoever it was that made this site) works for the BBC.]]
1371
1372[[WMG: Time Lords have a very low tolerance for sugar.]]
1373In fact, the sugar found in a single Jelly Baby is enough to put a Time Lord on a sugar high akin to that of a human child after a full bag of Halloween candy.
1374* As evidenced by Simm!Master.
1375* The Fifth Doctor spending most of his first serial in a coma? Sugar crash.
1376* This also explains Ten doing exactly the same thing - that tea had a load of sugar in it, I'll bet.
1377** If it was ''that'' bad, he'd be on a CrazyIsCool, near-psychotic sugar high every time he ate a [[TrademarkFavoriteFood bana]]- ...You know what? This could be right.
1378
1379[[WMG:Related to the above theory, Time Lords undergo continuous tooth replacement, like sharks]]
1380Assuming their teeth are structured anything like those of Earth mammals (and remember, a dentist couldn't tell the difference, though he was probably drunk at the time), they would wear down to nothing in less than a century, simply through use. Any creature wishing to live longer than that must replace them (as Greenland sharks do) or do without teeth altogether. The latter is clearly not the case, so the former, logically, has to happen. This would also explain why, according to AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho, they never invented toothpaste. If damaged teeth get replaced, why would maintaining the current ones be a concern?
1381
1382[[WMG: Gallifreyans eventually become humans via a temporal loop]]
1383There's a theory which has been around in one form or another for a long time that humans eventually evolve into Time Lords. Possibly, though, it may work the other way around. At some point they'll work out how their holier than thou attitudes were basically the root of their own destruction. Maybe Time Lords, after their near extinction in the timewar, had to find some other way to bring their species back into existence: they knew that the only way they could do this would be if they came back without the hyper evolved abilities that they believed made them superior to other species - their time senses, etc. That "ascension" thing that [[spoiler:Rassilon]] was going on about in "The End of Time" might be adaptable so that it's less an ascension and more of a simple ''change''. The Doctor will probably be involved in this in some way, probably during his last incarnation or something dramatic like that. Nothing like helping your own extremely arrogant, over-supremiscist race turn into your favorite species. (Of course, we humans have quite a bit of arrogance and superiority in our make up ourselves - maybe that came from the part of us that used to be Time Lord. Heck, you can take the man out of the Time Lord, but you can't take the Time Lord out of the man.)
1384
1385Via some kind of [[AppliedPhlebotinum weird highly advanced science]] applied to the timeline at the end of the universe, the Time Lord DNA will be split, from a triple strand, to a simplified double helix, and inserted into the the early days of planet earth: Humans and Time Lords will evolve and develop, together in the same universe during the same timeline, utterly unaware that one is a future version of the other - ironically, the humans are, chronologically at least, more advanced than Time Lords.
1386
1387[[WMG: Alternatively, humans are the distant ancestors of the Time Lords.]]
1388They're descended from humans who managed to survive the end of the universe, by fleeing into the distant past. Determined to survive at any costs, they spent eons making sure time could not kill them. This was done by becoming the masters of time, aka Time Lords. At this point, however, the Time Lords have completely forgotten of their human origin. This is why [[HumansAreSpecial humans are indomitable]]: they have to be, since their entire existence is one big StableTimeLoop. Not to mention how screwed up the timeline would become. And this is why the Doctor has such hefty PlotArmor-he is the crux, preventing it from all collapsing inwards.
1389** Given that we now know that you can get a (near) Time Lord by exposing a human fetus to the Time Vortex radiation . . .
1390** Surprisingly more possible than one thinks. Assume the whole Neutrinos-faster-than-light thing pans out, opening the door to time travel in some way. That explains the time-travel aspect. Now add in the astounding rate at which humanity is advancing medical technology, ''including regrowing limbs.'' ''Regenerations, if given enough advance.'' And finally, a good old fashioned wormhole generator, or something of that sort, to bring Humans across the stars... to Gallifrey, billions of years in the past. Now, add back on those few billions of years advancing in technology, (and the eventual chaos that woud bring) alongside the invention of the TARDIS (All of humanity's achievements into one convienient device) and finally remove their "humanity" with liberal doses of erased and forgotten history, alongside egos the size of planets. That is Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and in it's own special way why the Doctor and so many other beings are so damn interested in little ol' Earth. Time Lords are like humans? Humans are like Time Lords? No... Time Lords '''are''' humans.
1391*** Stable time loop? Too easy. How about a stable OSCILLATING META TIME LOOP!? Humans ''are'' the precursors of the Time Lords but ''only'' on the final iteration of the timeline in which Time Lords were wiped away from history by the Time War. Once set up, the Time Lords use an awesomely powerful paradox machine to protect themselves from enemies that would try to wipe them out through their weaker human ancestors and deliberately change the course of human history to disguise their origins. They do this so well they eventually forget about their true origins themselves. Eventually, of course, the Time War occurs... wiping every Time Lord (barring the exceptions) from history and getting the ball rolling again. And, yes, the Doctor is "the Other". (River, on the other hand, may well be the Time Lord answer to Eve)
1392
1393[[WMG: Time Lords are born with caffeine in their blood]]
1394That's why so many of them are so hyperactive.
1395
1396[[WMG: The Time Lords are really StarfishAliens.]]
1397The Doctor's appearance is, among other things, a disguise so his human companions won't be disgusted beyond belief at his true form. The various regenerations are actually updates to the Time Lord's holographic disguise. In some ways, this can explain why he gets younger with each transformation: with each update, the Doctor becomes a face that the current generation can trust enough to time-travel with.
1398* StarfishAliens is child's play. Time Lords are [[EldritchAbomination cosmic horrors.]]
1399
1400[[WMG: There's a Time Lord named "The Bachelor" and he's an epic fail.]]
1401In the UK (dunno about other countries), the three levels of univerity degrees you can attain are "Bachelor", which is the basic university-level qualification; "Master", which is a higher qualification and "Doctorate", the highest degree level that gives you the title of "Doctor".
1402
1403Anyway, to actually get to the point, the Doctor is (arguably) the most awesome character in the show, beating baddies and generally winning stuff. The Master is much less successful, usually being absolutely humiliated on the brink of victory. One thing I've learned through watching ''Doctor Who'' is that a coincidence is NEVER just a coincidence. No matter what. Therefore, there is another Time Lord around somewhere, named the Bachelor. And he is not only Genre Blind, but also made of Epic Fail.
1404
1405* Or he just goes around as a pimp, like the Doctor and the Master's theme. (The Doctor fixes stuff. The Master tries to take over the world.)
1406
1407[[WMG: The Bachelor is the reason why the Doctor always has to fix history.]]
1408Wherever Bachelor goes, because of his Fail he will end up setting history out of the original flow. Like "Voyage of the Damned". Bachelor brought the owner of Titanic to the idea of crashing the cruiser. Or prior to "Aliens of London" he inspired them to their buisnessplan of destroying Earth.
1409** The show inverted this trope in "The Fires of Pompeii" as the Doctor ruined everything.
1410
1411[[WMG: Time Lords experience time backwards, the TARDIS allows them to experience time forward like the rest of the universe.]]
1412The Time Lords experience their lives backwards.
1413* Each incarnation of the Doctor is younger than the previous one.
1414* The Time Lords cannot do anything to stop the Time War
1415* The Doctor was originally exiled for SOMETHING.
1416* The Time Lords knew the Doctor was going to cause the Time War and exiled him so he could get his punishment.
1417* He knows when history goes wrong for Earth.
1418** Actually, the actors who played 6 through 10 were all older than Peter Davison when he took the role of 5, so bullet point 1 here is moot.
1419
1420[[WMG: Time Lords were conscripted in the Time War.]]
1421Hence why none of them survived. All Time Lords not on Gallifrey or taking a vacation anywhere were summoned to the very beginning of the Time War. This was done by the Time Lords because a) they needed everyone they could get and b) it was [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope the beginning]]. If anyone refused, [[MoralEventHorizon they were fed to House.]] Indeed, House may be one of the monsters created during the Time War-thrown back half a million years to avoid suspicion. This is the reason why the Master used a Chameleon Circuit: humans weren't part of the Time War, [[LoopholeAbuse so his Yana personality could get out.]]
1422
1423[[WMG: Time Lords change their name in the Academy.]]
1424Hence why the Doctor is referred to this, even by his fellow Time Lords. When a Time Lord passes the Academy, they change their name. This is a common practice, and fellow Time Lords hide their original names. Only those closest to them know. "Doctor" is his Academy name. The real mystery is his birth name.
1425** All but confirmed.
1426
1427[[WMG:Time Lords change their names to protect themselves from Carrionites]]
1428Before the Cybermen, the Daleks, and just about everybody else, before they even figured out Time Travel, there was an epic war between the Gallifreyan and the Carrionites. Gallifreyan warriors adopted new names to do battle, so they could not be magicked, and when the Carrionites lost, it brought on the dominance of science as we know it, instead of magic. After the war had passed into legend, the tradition of taking a new name was continued.
1429
1430[[WMG: Time Lord DNA is as adhesive as superglue]]
1431The Doctor [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E1SmithAndJones kisses Martha]] so the Judoon's mouth-scan declares her in-human, and this is sufficient to fool the device. More notably, Lucy Saxon's lips apparently could provide enough of the Master's DNA to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime bring him back]] quite a while after [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords she last kissed him.]] Maybe to do with the fact that Time Lords are designed to live long lives?
1432
1433[[WMG: Time Lords change sex during regeneration based on the sex of the people around them.]]
1434Certain fish change into the opposite sex of the fish around them. This keeps the male-female ratio balanced. Time Lords have a similar adaptation. The reason the Doctor keeps regenerating into a male is because most of his companions are females.
1435* Jossed in "Twice Upon A Time," when he changes into a woman despite being alone.
1436** Not exactly Jossed...aside from glass people, the Doctor spent the last hours of his life surrounded by the Captain, the First Doctor, and a battlefield full of male soldiers. And if you do count the glass people, then he spent a lot of time with Bill (a lesbian) and a little with Nardole (male), even less time with Clara (who is bi). This seems to be the first time the Doctor has regenerated under such circumstances!
1437** Or, maybe their sex ''is'' affected by the people around them, and being female is the Doctor's natural inclination when ''not'' surrounded by women!
1438
1439[[WMG: The reason many Time Lords hid their names was to protect their childhood selves. How did they do it? By dying.]]
1440While most Time Lords are "dry, dusty intellectuals" as one villain put it, their wanderings and occasional interference could still gain them powerful enemies. And when is a time traveller most vulnerable? During their youth, before they became a time traveller.
1441
1442So after looking into the Untempered Schism and spending a few years, decades or centuries at the Gallifreyan equivalent of Hogwarts, young candidates for the rank of Time Lord are taken in large batches somewhere outside of time and space to face an ultimate trial by fire. The only way to "survive" is to die and successfully regenerate for the first time. When the remaining students emerge they are literally unrecognizable, full-fledged Time Lords. All ties to their childhood are cut, their names are replaced with titles of their choosing, and they are assigned to a TARDIS crew and sent on research missions. The only place in the universe that contains a record of their childhood is inside their head. And they guard that final secret above all else, because to tell it to anyone who won't protect it as intensely as them is to risk being wiped from existence and rewriting the timeline.
1443
1444The issue of powerful enemies is particularly relevant to three individuals: The Doctor, the Master, and one of the few Time Lords who's name is actually known; Rassilon, who by all accounts was just too scary to mess with. After all he was the "final boss" of the Tenth Doctor's tenure.
1445
1446* Wouldn't it mean that the First Doctor had already regenerated?
1447* Yes, in this WMG Time Lords are granted 12 regenerations after the initial one which "graduates" them.
1448** Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a Time Lord gain their second heart after their first regeneration? I seem to remember that being an excuse for inconsistent biology between the 1st and the rest of the series, which would mean that the First Doctor is indeed his first body.
1449*** Hmm, combining this with an above guess, perhaps he did look into the Schism, but ran away immediately afterwards, for whatever reason?
1450** The "gaining two hearts" thing is fanon. And the 12 regenerations=13 incarnations
1451
1452[[WMG: Gallifrey is locked in a linear time stream]]
1453* When the Time Lords were first developing their ability to travel through time, they limited their travel to Gallifrey. This created a huge snarl of paradoxes, random bouts of overpopulation in certain time zones, future and past Lord Presidents arguing over who had more authority, etc. So to solve this, they locked Gallifrey into a single linear timeline to keep anyone from changing Gallifreyan history. Anytime you travel to Gallifrey, no matter what year it is in the outside universe, it is always the "current" year on Gallifrey. That's why the Doctor never has to ask WHEN he arrived on Gallifrey, or who's on the High Council, etc. The only time you can time-travel on Gallifrey is when the Time Lords themselves bring you forward, such as "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors".
1454** So when Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War, that's why it ceased to exist anywhere throughout time.
1455** And River Song isn't Gallifreyan, which is why she isn't a part of their SanDimasTime and can meet the Doctor out of order chronologically!
1456
1457[[WMG: Time Lords and [=TARDISes=] evolved symbiotically.]]
1458It has been stated that [=TARDISes=] are grown, not built (and said many times that they're alive). It's also been shown that Time Lord characteristics can be easily developed simply from exposure to the Time Vortex (but beware of sprouting Time Heads), plus, as a bonus, at least the Doctor's TARDIS has sentience and a "soul". Following from that, we can assume that wild [=TARDISes=], or at least components of them (the final product may be an artificial lichen-like creature), may have evolved naturally on Gallifrey. Maybe [=TARDISes=] gave shelter or food to the Gallifreayans eons ago, perhaps so effectively that they were given complete protection from predators, thus boosting their development of civilization. As both species were exposed to the natural time anomalies on the planet, they developed some of their weird capabilities. When they became sentient (and [=TARDISes=] may have influenced Gallifreyan culture), they were both artificially augmented to produce the state they're in today, with [=TARDISes=] capable of uninhibited travel through time and Time Lords capable of piloting them.
1459
1460Of course, this only applies in the original metaphorical "trunk" of the branching tree of time, at the purest beginning of the universe. Inevitably, once the Gallifreyans became true Time Lords, they went back to the beginning of their history to learn how they began and also to meddle with it, teaching their past selves all the secrets of the future, giving themselves much more time to develop and evolve. They probably repeated this many times, each time superimposing the newer iteration over the previous one, until they reached pretty much the pinnacle of evolution and civilization (like the Chozo) and began to settle down.
1461
1462[[WMG: Gallifrey is really Earth, far into the future]]
1463* The Time War hasn't yet started.
1464** Would explain why the Doctor loves Earth so much...
1465* How are there Time Lords, though?
1466** Simple - from people like River and Jack and Jenny and U.N.I.T. with the DNA from the Time Vortex. Shut up, paradox.
1467
1468[[WMG: Time Lord Marriages regularly don't last after regeneration of one party]]
1469We know that each regeneration can be considered a 'new' guy in a way, and also that it's possible for regeneration to change gender, which could lead to incompatible orientation. I'm not suggesting It happens every time, but is a reasonably common occurrence. It could be it's something as simple as this that happened to the Susan's Grandmother, she regenerated and they split up (1 was apparently criticized for not regenerating for as long as he did)
1470* If you go by Moffat's comments of Time Lords not having preferences, then the 'incompatible orientation' shouldn't be a problem.
1471
1472[[WMG: Time Lords have little to no concept of mental or psychiatric disorders]]
1473* Just about every Time Lord we know about (Susan being a notable exception)seem to have some ambiguous disorder. And the Time Lords don't seem to realize or care that they essentially traumatize a portion of their children by having them look into the Untempered Schism.
1474** I'm gonna say Susan was no exception.
1475
1476[[WMG: Time Lords sleep, or more properly, need to sleep, only once every few centuries,]]
1477And then need to for like a decade at a time.
1478Let me elaborate. The Time Lords have vast reserves of energy, and would never really have to sleep, but for the fact that they need a certain amount to safely regenerate. So if they stay awake for say, two hundred years, they might be cutting it a little close if they had to regenerate.
1479The Doctor's general personality type changes vastly depending on how tired he is, and if he's slept in this regeneration or the last or whatever. He was well rested enough for most of the mid-old-series, but in the new he's very tired. This is why, during his regeneration from Ninth to Tenth, he goes into shock and sleeps for days, and why Eleventh meets the Dream Lord, his deeply repressed subconscious or dream self. Ninth is so dour because he [[spoiler: believes, not entirely correctly, that he killed all the Time Lords,]] and because he hasn't slept since possibly, Eighth, [[spoiler: and thus did not sleep at all while he was the War Doctor, which was a very long lived one.]] Sometime in Seventh or Eighth he slept for longer than normal, because he put it off, explaining why his age jumps between the series.
1480This would make Odin (at least the comic book version) almost definitely a Time Lord. The Odin-sleep, man.
1481
1482[[WMG: There are no Time Lords, they really are humans from the future that have time travelled into the past.]]
1483I know this is really strange, but bear with me.
1484We know that in the far future, humans develop time travel. We also know that humans changed themselves many a time (at least once going all the way to beings of pure energy).
1485Also, memories can be transferred.
1486What each iteration of the Doctor is is a Genetically Modified Human with each "regeneration" being a (poor) ReplacementGoldfish that is given the same memories over any that the person previously had.
1487This explains how in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E8HumanNature "Human Nature"]] the Doctor can implant his memories in a human. It's because he '''is''' a human.
1488
1489[[WMG: Time Lords don't look remotely human.]]
1490The Doctor and other Time Lords appear human because they use their technology to distort how other beings see them and make them look like "normal" people of whatever species the viewer is. So the Doctor appears human to his human companions not because he is but because they are. This distortion is so strong that it bleeds over into "real life" and makes the viewers see him as human as well.
1491* And what about regeneration?
1492** Jossed; the Doctor says to humans that "they look Time Lord."
1493
1494[[WMG: Gallifrey has decades-long super-seasons, like Solos.]]
1495The Doctor's and others' fond descriptions of Gallifrey portray it as lush and beautiful, yet on-screen it invariably looks like a desert and/or the BBCQuarry. We never get to see the plains of red grass or the silver-leafed trees described; instead, it looks completely barren, even near the Citadel and the old barn where one would expect farmland. This doesn't make sense if Gallifrey's climate was as stable as Earth's, but if its orbit periodically takes the planet closer to its second sun, then the arid conditions we've seen could be temporary: a hundred-year dry season that just happens to coincide with the era of Gallifreyan history in which the Doctor is running around having adventures. The native vegetation from his and Susan's childhood is still present, just burnt down to soil-level by seasonal wildfires and waiting as rhizomes underground until the rains come back.
1496
1497[[WMG: [[MultipleChoicePast All origin stories of the Time Lords]] are canon.]]
1498Thanks to numerous Time Wars and general TimeMaster stuff, they ended up changing their own history; either because it benefited them or [[NiceJobBreakingItHero as a side-effect of screwing with time]]. It's gotten to the point even they aren't sure how much they impacted time and what their original origin was before altering the timeline.
1499
1500[[WMG: Santa Claus is a Time Lord.]]
1501He's an old buddy of the Doctor, who stole a TARDIS to explore Earth. However he only kept to one planet, so that the Time Lords don't find him, and it was good enough that he avoided conscription in the Time War-helped there was another, more (in)famous Time Lord who spends most of his time there. The sleigh is his TARDIS, which is how he both fits all those presents and gets to all the kids in one night. The elves are aliens. Other Santa figures like St Nick and Father Christmas are different incarnations of the same Time Lord. The Krampus might be a companion of his. He tries to make it seem Santa isn't real so nobody comes looking for him.
1502
1503[[WMG: Gallifrey's MultipleChoicePast is them modifying their own history.]]
1504Given their TimeMaster status, would it be so hard? Of course changing things enough that the present is altered is next to impossible, which leads to people believing that Gallifrey's history is time locked. However it just means that while some constants remain, the destination can shift.
1505
1506[[/folder]]
1507
1508[[folder:Timey-Wimey Stuff]]
1509
1510[[WMG: Beware, following paragraph contains brain-melting HandWave Physics that even the Troper posting it doesn't really comprehend]]
1511In the Whoniverse, there are three dimensions of time. There's first-order time, which is what we experience and the TARDIS can move freely in. There's second-order time, the source of not only all the space inside the TARDIS, but also explains how the Racnoss Queen was able to bring the TARDIS back to the present day despite it being ''four and a half billion years in the past'', as well as how the passengers inside the TARDIS continue aging at their normal rate rather than regressing to infancy as they move into the past; when they step into the TARDIS, they become protected from the effects travelling backwards in regular time would have, because they are standing in second-order time. Finally, the Heart of the Tardis contains third-order time, explaining its absurd power; it can disrupt the effects of the other two forms of time, making it an ultimate weapon if used properly, but its effects corrode the second-order protection on human and Time Lord cells. (Clutches head)
1512
1513UPDATE: This is basically a TechnoBabble explanation for SanDimasTime, but with added "Ow, my head".
1514* I thought of something similar for the way time runs in the Whoniverse, with there being ''two'' dimensions of time rather than one (why not, after all, we have three dimensions in space). If you graph the two temporal dimensions on an axis, you'd see that reality runs like a diagonal line between the two, moving in one direction (lets say to the left, for this discussion). The TARDIS moves along this "line of reality" when it time travels. Hence how the TARDIS can be a "second out of sync with the rest of the universe", and how time can "run out". One can measure time based on the movement of the universe through the secondary dimension in space (what is used in the TARDIS), or one could use their position on the "line of reality", due to each X point on the line having a different Y point, to tell time.
1515** Note: There is actually a real life scientific theory that time works like this.
1516
1517[[WMG: Memories and Multi-Doctor Stories: An Explanatory Theory]]
1518Every time the Doctor meets himself, his later selves don't remember the adventure from the perspective of their past selves. This is not simply to serve the story, nor is it because they're acting out what they saw their future (now current) selves do (that only happens in the event of a 'Time Crash', which I'll expand upon momentarily). It is instead because they won't remember the adventure from any perspective until the latest temporal incarnation has experienced it. This is one of the things the Time Lords regulate when bending the First Law of Time. For example, in "The Five Doctors", logically Two, Three, and Five should know that Borusa's behind the whole thing and as such prevent the Castellan's death, at the very least. Instead, they don't realize what's going on until after Five has discovered the treachery. Nor do Two or Three know what solution One is going to come up with for Rassilon's riddle because they haven't heard their past self say it yet. Why is this the case? To prevent paradoxes and protect the universe from shorting itself out, of course! (See "Father's Day" for more details on what would happen otherwise.) As for how the memories work when there's no one regulating them, we need look no further than the poor old Brigadier's misadventure in "Mawdryn Undead". His 1983 self doesn't remember at first, mostly because he shorted out part of his brain when his 1977 self touched his 1983 self (though his 1983 self hasn't been touched by his 1977 self yet), but upon re-meeting the Doctor, he starts to get vague memories as well as a discomfort with facing knowledge of his own future. Would Time Lords be more or less susceptible to this? I'd wager 'more' since they are more aware of the shape of Time itself. Now, while we're discussing the Brig's own personal paradox, I think we should look into the Blinovich Limitation Effect. This is the discharge of temporal energy that occurs in an uncontrolled meeting between a person and themself from a different point in their own timeline. It has been theorised (and demonstrated in "Father's Day") that such a discharge would be catastrophic. This brings up the question of why the Brig didn't destroy the universe when he touched his temporal double. The fact is that had it not been for the mutants' machine being prepared to siphon off a large amount of temporal energy already, the blast would've been far more catastrophic. This is a digression from the main point, however. As for the companions in such scenarios, I suspect their memories are purposely clouded as well. This isn't an issue in "The Three Doctors" or "The Five Doctors" since Jo was traveling with the latest Doctor in the former, and all companions were taken out of time concurrent to Five's timeline in the latter (aside from Ramona, but she was stuck in the time vortex, so that's a moot point for her). In the case of Rich Morris's brilliant fan comic "The Ten Doctors", however, things are a bit stickier as nearly every companion comes from a time before Ten's part in the timeline, so were they to remember, they'd discuss the adventure with their Doctor and he'd act to prevent many of his own future selves' mistakes next time around causing a universe-destroying paradox. Therefore, until further evidence is shown, I'll assume that companions' minds are clouded from the memories until after the latest Doctor at the time of the story has passed it in their timelines.
1519
1520Now, a Time Crash (as seen in the mini-episode of the same name) is an uncontrolled meeting and as such, the memories are left unaffected since they are required to create a closed paradox. The result of a Time Crash is that knowledge is created spontaneously as you need to witness your future self knowing what to do in order to know what to do when you become them. While this results in a shorter, more intelligently managed situation, it increases the risk of catastrophe since Time has cracked and your meeting with yourself is the result. If you don't solve the problem and repair the crack very quickly, Time will shatter. The Time Lords struggle to prevent such occurances, which is why none happen until Ten's timeline after they've been Time-Locked. As for Five, he's only there because Ten remembers being there when he was him.
1521
1522* As far as the Ten Doctors fancomic is concerned: this question comes up, and the answer is that the Doctor's memories are edited by the universe to fit his proper timeline after he leaves the multi-Doctor event. They also point out that if some of the Doctors switched companions (such as Susan joining Seven and Ace joining One, for example), they'd get an edited memory of meeting that companion that fit with the timeline the companion had joined. So in essence, the Doctor's timeline is apparently self-correcting, and in most cases he doesn't get to have any future knowledge...unless it comes from a closed paradox, like Time Crash.
1523
1524[[WMG: The only fixed points in time are the ones a time traveller is personally involved in]]
1525To put it another way, you can't go to any event you are involved in, or you interfere with your own present. This is why the Doctor can't change the eruption of Pompeii (he already caused it) but can stop Sutekh from destroying the world (it isn't connected to his own past).
1526
1527This ensures that effect follows cause, so time can exist without paradox. Also the stem of the "never cross personal time stream" rule.
1528
1529[[WMG: Time Locks happen when time gets too [[TimeyWimeyBall wibbly]]]]
1530Too many instances of crossing timelines, and the universe says F it
1531
1532[[WMG: There are two dimensions of time in the Whoniverse.]]
1533
1534Think of it this way. The first dimension of time is linear, unaltered time; the one the Doctor is ''in'' when he steps outside the TARDIS. This is what the TARDIS can move through. The second dimension of time is a bit trickier to explain. Let's take Amy Pond's parents as an example. Timeline A is the timeline in which Amy's parents existed, and always existed, and were never absorbed by the Time Field. Timeline B is the timeline in which they never existed, as they were erased by the Time Field. Timeline C is the timeline in which Amy's parents were returned to existence. Timeline D is the timeline in which the ''Doctor'' is brought back into existence. The version of Amy's wedding we see is in this timeline. The second dimension of time moves in that fashion, going from Timeline A, to Timeline B, to Timeline C, to Timeline D. [=TARDISes=] can't travel through it in a non-linear order, but they can be used to recreate earlier timelines artificially. Although the TARDIS wasn't used in the above example, what I mean is that Timeline C is almost a recreation of Timeline A, but with bits of Timeline B left over. This also explains why the Doctor and the Master always meet in the right order; their [=TARDISes=] are moving linearly on the same dimension, if you will.
1535
1536[[WMG: What "fixed points in time" really are...]]
1537Is times the Doctor has already been through and messed with things. He can't change something after he's already screwed with it once.
1538
1539[[/folder]]
1540
1541[[folder:The Time War]]
1542
1543[[WMG: Time War Monsters]]
1544* The Could've-Been King was a great leader that the War erased from history. The Meanwhiles and Neverweres are other people who were [[RetGone unhappened]].
1545** Alternatively, the Could've Been King is another name for Omega. The vague shreds of evidence certainly lean in that direction, as pointed out by one troper already.
1546** Alternatively; far from being some glorious military leader, the Could've Been King was just some pathetic, bitter [[Series/RedDwarf Arnold Rimmer]]-like anonymous inadequate who never really did anything or accomplished much in 'life'. The Meanwhiles and Neverwheres were either as noted above people who were 'unhappened' by the Time War or ghostly 'potentials' of people who never existed -- the sperm that never made it, the eggs that were never fertilized, the directions people never took in life, the people who never lived -- and the Could've Been King's bitter and self-deluding regard that he 'could have been king (i.e. great, somebody, etc)' was so powerful that he somehow managed to gain control over them and decided to put his theory to the test.
1547** The Could've-Been-King and his army were probably weaponized paradoxes. Neverweres sound like a GrandfatherParadox - beings who went back in time to successfully kill their own grandparents. The Time Lords could then use them as soldiers (since it's very hard to kill something that ''has'' to exist yet ''can't exist'' at the same time). Meanwhiles could be temporal clones - as soon as one dies, it's replaced with the version of itself from an alternate timeline that ''didn't'' die. Maybe the Could've-Been-King was a Reverse Grandfather Paradox that the Time Lords tampered with so that the future version couldn't save his past version from a deadly event.
1548** The Could've Been King and his Army of Meanwhiles are the WhatCouldHaveBeen for the universe. Eg: what if the Silurians became Time Lords, what if humans became Time Lords ect. The Could've Been King is the embodiment of all species' potential for being Time Lords. The Neverwheres are those who the Time Lords wiped out/eradicated from history to prevent the rivalry of non-Gallifreyan Time Lords
1549* The Horde of Travesties were people whose very biology had been twisted by the changes in time, devolved and re-evolved in strange ways. They were, however, time-aware enough to know what had been done to them, that they were in the wrong bodies, and they couldn't cope.
1550** They're people who attempted to alter the history of the Time War, or non-combatants like the Sontarans who tried to break through.
1551** They're the Toclafane or other species at the end of the universe trying to avert Heat Death.
1552* The Skaro Degredations were obsolete--and often alternate--Daleks used as cannon fodder.
1553** That, or the Time Lords mucking about with Skaro's history to produce different kinds of Daleks within the invasion force - which was probably supposed to trigger a bloodbath and get the Daleks to wipe themselves out.
1554*** Asylum of the Daleks-related WMG: There's a deeper section of the Asylum where the Skaro Degredations are still screaming...
1555* The Nightmare Child was the Master, post-End of Time. When he returned to the War he was still in freaky-hungry-energy being mode, and Simm!Master does tend to have a childish glee. I can see him eating Davros and Rassilon and anyone else he runs across.
1556** Alternatively, The Nightmare Child was/is The Nightmare Child from the Music/{{KISS}}: Psycho Circus video game.
1557** Or else the Nightmare Child was an infant Time Lord that got tossed into the Untempered Schism and mutated.
1558** Alternatively it's a true, pure, distilled and well-flavoured {{EldritchAbomination}} summoned by the Daleks by genetically engineering a horrific monster and allowing the Nightmare Child to possess it.
1559** Or the Time War Monsters were the results of individuals on both sides of the war attempting to become Bad Wolf-style living gods by overexposing themselves to the Vortex. This technique has been shown to be unpredictable, maybe this was the "crossing the streams" of the Whoniverse. The Time Lords did it first, obviously, having more immediate access to the Vortex via the Untempered Schism, but then The Daleks figured out how to do it, and both sides basically had Time Gods, [[RealityWarper warping reality]] and rewriting timelines at will, then rewriting what the other side had rewritten, over and over again. The Skaro Degradations were obviously Daleks who did it, the others are probably all Time Lords, since Time Lords are more individualistic than Daleks. The Nightmare Child could have been a case where someone gained the godlike powers, but was ''also'' regressed, a la Margaret Slitheen, into a childlike form. This is also why the Time War became so destructive and dangerous to the very universe itself, and necessitated a weapon that not only destroyed both sides, but removed them from the timeline altogether. This is also why The Doctor was so horrified when Rose did it...it's not just that he was concerned for her safety. He had seen what can happen to someone who does it. This is best exemplified by his line after she destroys the Daleks, "alright, you've done it, now stop!" He didn't want her to go too far down the slippery slope of Vortex Gazing.
1560** This is nonsense: the Nightmare Child was obviously Adric.
1561** The Nightmare Child is TheHeartless of time travel-everyone who [[RetGone no longer exists]] because of time travel coalasced into an EldritchAbomination.
1562* In terms of locations and other oddities of the Time War:
1563** The Gates of Elysium were one of the few ways to get out of the Time War. Elysium happened to be one enormous fixed point of a galaxy, where Davros planned to hide in order to escape the effects of the Time War
1564** The Cruciform is the Axis of Time, which if used properly would allow you to alter the direct history of time travellers, completely reversing the TimeyWimeyBall(for instance, erasing the Doctor's victories and making it stick)
1565
1566[[WMG: The Nightmare Child was created through the power of both Time Lords and Daleks]]
1567It's an uncontrollable, super powerful black hole which destroys everything on its way.
1568
1569[[WMG: The missing serials from the Classic Series were lost in the Time War]]
1570The New Series Doctor claims to be 906 years old. However, he claimed to be over 1000 in the Old Series. If the Doctor is not lying about his age, maybe because of the TimeyWimeyBall, he lost some of his years. And it just so happens that many tapes from the original series have been lost as well. Coincidence? I think not.
1571* Suddenly, my life makes so much more sense.
1572** [[FridgeHorror This means]] [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the Time War affected our universe as well.]] Creator/StevenMoffat, is this you?
1573** Going by the fact that the only room for substantial gaps in time is Season 6B (due to him constantly travelling with human companions, i.e. Jamie)...and even then that's extremely unlikely to be nine decades...jossed?
1574*** Actually, there are plenty of opportunities for time to pass. There's the gap in between Seasons 10 and 11 where he has a functional TARDIS but no travelling companion. Same with the gap between Deadly Assassin and Face of Evil and between Invasion of Time and Ribos Operation. And of course, 4 and Romana II could have travelled together for centuries for all we know, since neither would age much.
1575
1576[[WMG: The canon of the Time War is time-locked]]
1577It's not just in-universe: the reason we've seen so few expanded universe works dealing with the Time War is that its events are as inaccessible to the writers as they are to the characters. This is why we haven't been able to 'travel' to the Eighth Doctor's regeneration into the Ninth. Our understanding of the Time War is exactly the same as that of most species in the universe: we know it happened, we could name some events and participants, but we're unable to observe it directly to any significant degree.
1578* [[FridgeHorror You do realise]] [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou that is ''bad news'' for us all...]]
1579
1580[[WMG: The Last Great Time War was the first event after the Big Bang]]
1581
1582Two civilizations with time travel technology are at war. Civilization D launches an attack on Civilization G on Friday afternoon. The forces of G go back to Friday morning to pre-empt it. So D goes back to Wednesday, prompting G to launch a counterstrike the preceding Monday. As this goes on history is subtly rewritten, causing collateral damage to pan-dimensional beings and those that feed off temporal energy. Eventually every surviving fighter will arrive at the one moment in history which cannot be preempted; the first instant following the Big Bang in which the universe is big enough and cool enough to safely contain the combatants. In the post Time War continuity it is this epoch in which the final clash between the Time Lords and the Daleks took place, and which has been time-locked by the Doctor. Non-living remnants of these civilizations which survived down the ages informed advanced civilizations of these events, while beings that exist outside of normal time experienced it as another part of their "history".
1583
1584[[WMG: The Time War has fundamentally screwed up the Eighth Doctor's timeline.]]
1585While the Time War itself could not be altered, that doesn't mean everything before it wasn't. The radical alterations to history would've affected even the Time Lords' own histories. One of the most affected was the renegade Time Lord, the Doctor. Given his experience on other planets, it could amount to a lot. Since the Eighth Doctor was the one who entered the Time War, it altered his history the most.
1586* Is this related to his timespan in comics, novels and audio?
1587
1588[[WMG: The Time War led to the Doctor meeting other versions of himself]]
1589* Hence why in Mary's Story he references companions from different ranges but in TNOTD he only mentions Big Finish companions. He is confused by his experiences, but by the end of his life he is a bit more coherent and only mentions companions from his Universe.
1590
1591[[WMG:The Time War was started by The Master...deliberately]]
1592* The Master was the Daleks' initial source of Time Travel technology, and he may have fed them more and more useful bits to speed up their development. He did this to destroy the "Web of Time" thus making the past, present, and future malleable, since as a Time Lord his desire to rule the universe would include not only the present and future but the past as well.
1593
1594
1595[[/folder]]
1596
1597[[folder:Villains]]
1598
1599[[WMG: Mavic Chen is the Master]]
1600He has the same lust for power, and could've regenerated after being shot by the Daleks. It would make sense that the First Doctor would've met the Master at some point (something {{Creator/Big Finish}} is well aware of).
1601
1602[[WMG: The Master is [[InvertedTrope Satan in Purgatory]].]]
1603As a guest, not the host, since the Doctor is Jesus. This is pretty much what the end of the [[spoiler: 29th]] series is trying to tell us.
1604
1605[[WMG: The Master's drums alter with enough time.]]
1606Self-explanatory, really. This is why the Master never showed signs of the drums back in the Classic series (out-universe, it's because Creator/RussellTDavies wants). Before becoming the villain we know and love, the drums would have been subtle. During the last of his original regenerations, they shifted into high gear. To the Master's mind, they sounded something like "You will rule all" or "Master of All." So the Master planned to do that. The first time he came back to life via GrandTheftMe, the drums became louder. This caused the Master [[CardCarryingVillain to become more open about it.]] The sheer LargeHam and camp nature of the TV Movie Master is the result of yet another resurrection. When the Time Lords resurrected the Master, this caused the drums to become full-circle. Alternatively, the drums have been getting louder and more noticable as his personal timestream nears "The End of Time", where he finally snaps enough for it to be used by the Time Lords.
1607* I always assumed that either he would've turned out bad anyway and the drums simply didn't exist until post-time-war or that they were always there but he never saw any need to mention it since The Doctor already knew. Admittedly the second one is a stretch...
1608** Except they were sent back to him as a little boy before the Time War.
1609*** TimeyWimeyBall. The Drums didn't exist in the first place until the Time War.
1610** A minor amendment to the above -- he never mentioned it because he ''assumed'' the Doctor knew. In the New Series, it's possible to read the Master's obsession with the Doctor based on his apparent belief that the Doctor hears the drums as well (since they're both equal-but-opposite not so different renegade Time Lords), but the Doctor clearly has no idea what the Master's talking about until he does a brief psychic link with the Master in "The End of Time" and freaks out about hearing the drums.
1611* Something related to this, but worth considering: the Master gets increasingly more bonkers as the classic series progresses, and he also starts transferring into non-Time Lord bodies as well. When we first meet him, apart from his obvious megalomania the Delgado Master is a smooth, urbane operator with little indication of the kind of psychosis that the Jacobi and Simm Masters apparently were inflicted with. His next incarnation, however, is a charred, melted wreck -- and following that his consciousness is then transferred into two non-Time Lord bodies (Nyssa's non-Time Lord father and a human as transferred via some slime-snake thing) before he gets a new Time Lord body. And with each of these body alterations, he gets steadily more insane and destructive as a consequence. The logical inference is that the Delgado Master was able to manage the drums, or they at least acted as a subtle conditioning he didn't really notice, because at that point he was a more-or-less healthy Time Lord at the height of his physical and mental powers -- but the more stresses he put his mind and body through as his original body decayed and he forced himself into a series of non-Time Lord bodies and minds that were not meant to handle a Time Lord consciousness, the more his sanity degraded and consequently the more power the drums had over him until they had become symptoms of a full-blown psychosis. By the time he was put back into a Time Lord body, the damage had already been done.
1612
1613[[WMG: The "drums" heard by the Master is a twisted version of the "Doctor Who" theme]]
1614
1615On the last day of the Time War Rassilon broadcast the sound of a Time Lord's heart beats into the vortex so it would reach the Master no matter where he was in time and space, loud and insistent enough to drive him insane.
1616
1617These four notes are also the bass line for the show's theme music, usually shown against a backdrop of the vortex.
1618
1619doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo...
1620
1621[[WMG: The Master is in the closet.]]
1622It's clear as day.
1623* The Master is in love with the Doctor, despite their opposing moralities. And the same for the Doctor. The moment the Doctor [[GenderBender became a woman,]] they hooked up and lived happily ever after. IfItsYouItsOkay...
1624* When he was Harold Saxon, he had to get the women on his side. He could not let his preferences damper his sexiness. [[PerverseSexualLust And it]] [[{{Squee}} worked.]]
1625* His wife is TheBeard. It's likely he never touched her, and was busy having delicious FoeRomanceSubtext with the Doctor. Possibly even psychic sex, since the Doctor [[FetishRetardant became really old.]] Lucy killed him because of this.
1626** Almost canon; in Time Crash, Five asks Ten if the Master's still has that beard (referring to the literal beard both Delgado!Master and Ainley!Master have). Ten replies: "No, well, a wife."
1627* FoeRomanceSubtext. The kind that gives us plenty of Rule34 Master/Doctor.
1628
1629[[WMG: The Master is the Doctor's son.]]
1630Look at the Third Doctor serial 'The Sea Devils' - after the Master is imprisoned, the Doctor goes to see him...almost as though he were looking after him. Not only that, but the Fifth Doctor - the (physically) youngest regeneration, almost certainly younger than the Master would have been - was the only one who legitimately ''killed'' him. Because of his youth, Five didn't have the same fatherly affection the other Doctors had for his progeny.
1631
1632Yes, this makes the end of ''Last of the Time Lords'' even sadder.
1633* Considering [[FoeRomanceSubtext how the Doctor and Master are practically gay for each other]], [[ParentalIncest this is really squicky.]] Unless you're into that, mind you.
1634* The FoeRomanceSubtext is ''really'' YMMV. I personally think this could make a lot of sense.
1635
1636[[WMG:The Master killed the Doctor's first wife and child out of political jealousy.]]
1637
1638Pretty self explanatory, really. The Master had been raised from birth to be Heir to the Other, but his best friend was chosen instead. Then he snapped and killed Susan's mother and grandmother, traumatizing the poor girl and leading to her Damsel In Distress tendencies. The Doctor decided to run away from the whole mess, taking Susan with him.
1639
1640[[WMG: What The Master saw that drove him evil/insane...]]
1641He saw his own future, he saw the monster he would become. That not only would murder countless people but constantly try to kill his best friend. Though unlike The Doctor who feels that nothing is set in stone, The Master didn't think there was anyway around it, and gave in tragically accepting his fate creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even then, any chance of him mentally trying to keep himself sane was fruitless because of the constant drumming. Though even today, deep inside him he still feels a kinship and respect for the Doctor which his evil side constantly tries to bury.
1642
1643[[WMG: The Master and the Doctor didn't fall out because the Master turned evil, but because the Doctor turned good]]
1644The Doctor's always been hinted to have not been very good academically, and Moffat's era has hinted even more strongly that his whole childhood was very unhappy. My theory is that the Doctor and the Master were both misfits at school, and that when they got together they became a couple of nihilistic juvenile delinquents doing petty crime together. But as they got older the Doctor developed more of a conscience and broke things off with the Master, and the Master without the Doctor restraining him escalated further from small-scale hooligan to interstellar supervillain.
1645
1646[[WMG: The Master is a sci-fi [[OurLichesAreDifferent lich]].]]
1647We know with Missy s/he has access to a slice of the Time Lord Data Matrix, a device that can contain the consciousness of the dead. We don't know how long s/he has it, but it could be a lot longer than the Missy incarnation. The reason for the Master's JokerImmunity is that he has a SoulJar somewhere. The real issue is getting new and longer-lasting bodies.
1648
1649[[WMG: The Master is Susan's grandfather.]]
1650His daughter married the Doctor's son, resulting in Susan Foreman. Thus making them in-laws. Part of their falling out was because [[PutOnABus what happened to their granddaughter]].
1651
1652[[WMG: The Master never actually did have the drums in his head before the revival series. This is because the William Hughes Master that we see in flashback was only his first post-classic series incarnation, not his first incarnation ever.]]
1653The Master wasn’t in the best shape at the end of the classic series, to say the least. Stealing bodies to cheat the regeneration limit and, the last time we see him on screen, eaten by the Tardis itself. Then the Time Lords gave him a new lease on life. Unlike The Doctor, who was given his new cycle just before his old cycle ended, The Master was well beyond that point. It seemed that he wouldn’t have even had a body to use at all at this point. So his revival was much more complicated. Whereas The Doctor could simply regenerate into his new form, The Master had to be given an entirely new Time Lord body, meaning he had to be completely reborn and grow up from the state of a baby again. During this time, as the entirety of his 15 incarcerations were gradually restored to his mind through childhood (too much at once into the mind of a child would cause an overload), he had to look back into the time vortex once more as a part of regaining his Time Lord identity. THIS was when Rassilon implanted the drum beat as a failsafe in case the Time Lords needed to use him to return to reality. This is why he clearly didn’t have it during the classic series but it had suddenly always been there as Yana and Saxon. Because it WAS always there for him when speaking in terms of this specific regeneration cycle.
1654
1655[[WMG: The Master and the Doctor are half-siblings]]
1656* They're very close, and have a clear Cain and Abel relationship (or FoeRomanceSubtext, YMMV). However, in "The End of Time," the Master mentions "my father." So they were half-siblings, possibly one of the founding reasons for their antagonistic relationship. When Martha asks if they're brothers...well, Rule 1: The Doctor lies.
1657
1658[[WMG: The Dalek Time Controller has been intervening in more stories then seen]]
1659* To manipulate history to the point where he can be created. He helped Caan get back into the Time War and twisted their mind so that they would give false information to the Daleks. All this so a small force of Daleks would survive, find a Progenitor and create a new race. After generations more Dalek work the Time Controller would be created.
1660
1661[[WMG: The Dalek Eternal is responsible for keeping the purity of the Daleks]]
1662Episode 3 of Eleven's first series introduces five Dalek castes, one of which is named the Eternal. The rest have obvious roles, but not this. However, none of the others seem to deal with the whole race-purity thing- so maybe the Eternal is a historian and Inquisitor-type, who ensures that they don't change- they stay ''eternally'' pure.
1663* Daleks have always reminded me a little of white blood cells. In which case the Eternal would be like a memory B-cell, who’s role is to live a really long time and reproduce when need be.
1664
1665[[WMG: The Dalek language is syllabic.]]
1666Like Japanese, basically. Explains their MAN. NER. OF. SPEA. KING.
1667* EX-PLAIN! EX-PLAIN!
1668* Japanese isn't any more syllabic than English. You may be thinking of Chinese, where every individual word is a monosyllable.
1669
1670[[WMG: Daleks are actually pitiful.]]
1671This is based the psychological theory of ''Reaction Formation'' that some people, to cover up their weaknesses, try to exaggerate the opposite. A {{narcissist}} or OmnicidalManiac, for example, might try to cover up [[FreudianExcuse a dismal childhood]] through dangerous amounts of {{Pride}} and destroying everyone else except himself. First consider the Dalek anatomy. On the outside they seem to be tough, oppressive, unfeeling, evil robots bent on the oppression and extermination of everyone else. Then we have episodes such as ''Dalek'', where we realize Daleks were not true combat automata, and instead see their true form: a pitiful helpless mutated blob, a former shadow of the Kaleds. They were a dying race, who made a dangerous contract with mad scientist and TheSociopath, Davros, to ensure the preservation of their legacy, but it was a trap. Instead, he enslaved and mutated them beyond recognition. The process of Enslavement and implantation mutated the Kaled body into a fragile and pathetic invertebrate and the Kaled soul into a mindless idiot infected with Davros' sociopathy, resulting in a cold EmptyShell and a former shadow of itself trapped in an endless and eternal AndIMustScream in both body and soul. Because of their perpetual torture and misery, the physical and mental AndIMustScream that they cannot escape from ever, they became envious of species capable of touch, feeling, sex and independence from their cold machines, became envious of such beings like us humans, and this envy became manifest in the instincts of Hate that Davros forcibly implanted into them, the instinct to Exterminate everyone else because [[IfICantHaveYou if they cannot feel happiness, then no one else will]].
1672
1673This began a cycle of hate where they earned the hatred of other species, such as the Time Lords who want to exterminate them in return, but this only led the Daleks to further believe that they will be forever alone in existence. They even agreed to create a Reality Bomb, which will also wipe out themselves because there will be no longer any resources or energy to gather to sustain themselves, and it is entirely possible for the Reality Bomb to cancel out the Daleks' force fields because otherwise it can't be a true reality bomb. The Reality Bomb project may imply a subconscious tendency for a SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum that goes in conflict with their programming to survive (an Eros vs Thanatos conflict), leading to the conclusion that they can only satisfy these two opposing desires by exterminating everyone else in reality under the rationalized pseudo-justification that it was for their own survival.
1674
1675There were also implications that there could be a HopeSpot to reverse the curse Davros imposed onto them, and make the Daleks a benign and friendly species, as these instances show: In the episode "Dalek", when Rose infected a Dalek with her DNA, it enabled him to learn the meanings of empathy which was why he was unable to kill Rose, and before he commits suicide, he admits that all he wants is freedom, such as the freedom to escape his shell and appreciate the rays of the Sun. And on "Evolution of the Daleks", when Dalek Sec merged with a human, he realized that it was the Daleks' hatred of all things empathic that led to their downfall.
1676* This also gets some traction in "Into the Dalek", where the doctor learns that their mechanical shells help keep them conditioned to suppress all un-daleklike emotions and memories. Once those safeguards are removed, the lifeform within actually experiences things like awe and even a desire to protect others. This gives a chance that perhaps (very slimly), there's a chance that the dalek race might even be redeemable at some point.
1677
1678[[WMG: Stopping Davros wouldn't have stopped the Daleks.]]
1679By the time Davros came to be, Skaro was a CrapsackWorld that was filled with mutants and barely habitable due to the [[ForeverWar Thousand-Year War]]. They already had a semi-Dalek life support which allowed Davros to survive his horrific injuries. Had he been stopped, the Kaleds would end up resorting to becoming Daleks anyway. Davros just sped things up.
1680
1681[[WMG: The Silence were in the Library.]]
1682Think about it.
1683* No, the Silence '''was''' in the Library. In ''Day of the Moon'', Amy was told she would "bring the Silence". As of ''A Good Man Goes to War'', we know that [[spoiler: Amy is the mother of Melody Pond, a.k.a River Song]].
1684* Do Silents not count as "basic humanoid life"? According to "Silence in the Library" that was just the Doctor and Donna. Bringing the Silence seems to have more to do the the as-yet-revealed "fields of Trenzalore" deal.
1685
1686[[WMG: The Sontaran clone race is a warrior caste GoneHorriblyWrong.]]
1687Okay, here's my theory. Millennia ago, the Sontarans and Rutans started their war. The Rutans were surpisingly overpowering, and the Sontarans needed to deal with them. So what did they do? Make their army [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy proud warrior clones]] of their finest men with no fear of death. However [[GoneHorriblyWrong they were too good at military strategies,]] and quickly overran Sontar. Over time, this has led them to lose sight of why their fighting, [[BloodKnight focusing on the glory.]] Why are there no women Sontarans? Sontar is sexist.
1688
1689[[WMG: The Cybermen from "Blood of the Cybermen", "The Pandorica Opens", "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Closing Time" are of Mondasian origin]]
1690* Partially confirmed. While they look almost exactly the same as the Cybusmen, with minute differences, the Cybermen from "Closing Time" were painstakingly pointed out to be of the Mondasian variety.
1691* Alternatively, the Cybermen from "The Pandorica Opens" are of dual origin. Whilst the Cyber-Leader was a Cybus Cyberman, it was a Mondas Cyberman ship used. Ergo, both Cybus and Mondasian Cybermen were part of the Alliance. We saw the Cybus Cybermen at Stonehenge and a Mondasian ship in the sky. The Cybus Cybermen escaped the Void due to the Time Cracks and the Mondasian Cybermen had probably already joined the Alliance.
1692
1693[[WMG: Omega is the Could Have Been King.]]
1694Omega could have been the head honcho of the Time Lords, but ended up being thrown into an antimatter universe, supposedly by Rassilon himself. While in his realm of nothingness, he built his army of Meanwhiles and Neverwheres (their names being plays on the idea of nonexistence) out of antimatter and jumped into the Time War to get back at his enemies while they were busy fighting.
1695* And because major villains never die in this show, he'll be back for a season finale... played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
1696** And not just any season finale, but the season finale for the 50th anniversary. They've set up the pieces with the Church having an Omega as their symbol. Think about it; [[spoiler: the Church, the Silence, the Headless Monks, Omega, River Song, the Fields of Trensalore, the Fall of the Eleventh, and the First Question. With all this going on, it seems kind of obvious that it's all for the 50th anniversary.]]
1697** Omega didn't come back for the 50th, but otherwise this is pretty good.
1698
1699[[WMG: The Beast is connected to Fenric]]
1700* The Doctor says that at the beginning of the Universe was Good and Evil, Fenric being that Evil. The Beast claims to have been from before the Universe. Perhaps Fenric is his child, or a part of his consciousness.
1701
1702[[WMG: The Weeping Angels are from the Land of Fiction]]
1703* River Song theorises they are from ideas becoming real. Isn't this the Land of Fiction? This could explain their strange powers, such as becoming real from an image, and the fact that they keep changing for the plot.
1704
1705[[WMG: The Rani in Something Borrowed is from after Time and the Rani]]
1706* Hence why she tells the 6th Doctor he might regenerate sooner then he thinks.
1707
1708[[WMG: The Master has JokerImmunity because the Doctor keeps saving him/her, even if we don't see it.]]
1709
1710For one thing, they are childhood friends, if not [[FoeRomanceSubtext more than that]]. For another, we have seen the Doctor save the Master several times, and likewise a couple times as well, so it's not unprecedented. The wibbly wobbly ball makes the whole thing more complicated, because their timelines might not always perfectly sync up, meaning that, an older version of the Master might wind up saving a younger version of the Doctor, or likewise. This causes fixed time, forcing the Doctor to save a younger Master in order to stick to the established timeline. It's a given at this point that the Master will survive certain death situations (this could be applied to Davros and the Daleks as well, incidentally), to the point where writers don't even always bother to explain how. This theory could potentially fill in the gaps caused by a lot of unexplained villain survival.
1711
1712[[/folder]]
1713
1714[[folder:Crossovers]]
1715
1716[[WMG: The Doctor's final incarnation will be Flavor Flav!!!]]
1717* Oh good gods no. [[BileFascination Despite how much I don't want to hear it]], please elaborate?
1718* Possibly because of that ancient symbol of the might of the Time Lords, a giant clock medallion.
1719
1720[[WMG: The Sontarans were created by the Kaminoans]]
1721The Kaminoans are expert cloners, and describe the Grand Army of the Repuablic as the finest they've ever made, suggesting there were others. We know the Sontarans are a clone army.
1722
1723[[WMG: The Doctors final regeneration will be Conan O'Brien]]
1724The ultimate crazy ginger.
1725
1726[[WMG:The Doctor is the Literature/{{Discworld}}'s Death.]]
1727The Doctor is Death; his House is his TARDIS, and Susan is Susan.
1728* His domain is said to be outside of time, although IIRC [[AC:Death]] never actually goes ''back'', just slows and stops it. His favorite tools (the Scythe, the Sword, the Screwdriver...) give off a blue glow and slight hum and can manipulate molecules. He's [[ObstructiveCodeOfConduct officially supposed to be an impartial observer]], but [[HumansAreSpecial something about humanity]] has made him gradually grow more and more fond of it. And yes, he has a grandaughter called Susan. The First Doctor could have crashlanded on Discworld and taken up the mantle of Death. The only problem is that [[AC:Death]] has been Death since at least the creation of the Discworld, whereas Susan is still a child when he first comes to Earth - this implies that at least the First Doctor's tenure, if not all the Doctor's adventures so far, take place during one very long period of DeathTakesAHoliday during Susan's infancy.
1729
1730[[WMG:The Time Lords' homeworld was, in a distant past, the world of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII''.]]
1731As the Doctor explained, [=TARDISes=] are organic beings that are "grown". They are bigger on the inside, and can travel through space and time (so it could be argued that they don't exist between the time when they start traveling and their destination). All these properties apply just as well to ''FFIII'''s Fat Chocobo -- they can carry a large amount of items, disappear when not needed, and snap back to reality in different places (we know it's the same chocobo because it carries the same stuff). It can be concluded that Fat Chocobos are untamed [=TARDISes=], and that the heroes from ''FFIII'' are ancestors of the Time Lords. They are immortal, barring accidents, can come back from near-death through regeneration, and sometimes change appearances (or Jobs), looking younger (like summoners) or older (like scholars). Their descendants probably inherited the ability to change appearance only through regeneration, as they were a mix between light warriors and mortals. Xande might also be the Master's first form.
1732
1733[[WMG:The series is in the ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Planescape]]'' multiverse]]
1734The "Arcadia" and "Elysium" that the Doctor mentions as battlefields of the Time War are actually the ''Outer Planes'' Arcadia and Elysium. Besides that:
1735* They have thematic similarities of exploration, wonder at the infinite, and weirdness
1736* The Doctor used ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve at the third season finale
1737* The Lady Of Pain must have a colony of Vashta Nerada living in her shadow
1738* The Nameless One is a Time Lord with a really weird regeneration process
1739* The Weeping Angels are a very Planescape-y threat (the monster manual supplements for that setting are /weird/)
1740* The void that he banishes the Daleks and Cybermen to could be the Astral, or maybe the [[http://www.mimir.net/mapinfinity/ordial.html Ordial]]
1741* "The Elemental Plane of Ash" is a phrase I can easily imagine rolling off David Tennant's tongue
1742* The TARDIS is already shown to be able to travel to other realities (at least if the Time Lords are still around)
1743* A TARDIS powered by a spelljamming helm, despite the fact that that's probably not the case, would just be ''[[RuleOfCool awesome]]''
1744
1745(There is almost certainly more evidence in Old Who.)
1746* While Nameless One's whole story makes him unlikely to be a Time Lord, he is one of those ''wrong'' fixed points in time, much like Jack Harkness.
1747* His namelessness exists for the same purposes and by the same method as the Doctor's.
1748** ''Ravel'' is a Time Lord. She's been mazed by the Lady, but has apparently been outside it several times, despite mazes collapsing after their prisoner escapes. Actually, she hasn't left(or her "maze" is actually her TARDIS), those are just other regenerations that [[ContrivedCoincidence all showed up in Sigil]] at the same time because she's a StalkerWithACrush. And she's pretending to be a Night Hag.
1749*** And she's every "night hag" ever, all pretending to be different people. The Night Hag is actually her renegade Time Lord name, similar to the Doctor, the Master, and the Rani. Because [[JustForFun/YouKnowYouReadTooMuchTVTropesWhen everyone is a Time Lord.]]
1750* Continuing with this idea, Ood are the original stock from whom the mind flayers evolved. Let's face it, they have [[strike: an elder brain]] a central consciousness shaped like a brain, and they come with psionics and tentacles. We can therefore assume aboleths are what happens when a ''species'' derives from a Jack Harkness fixed point, given their near-immortality (but watered down from the first, Piscaethces the Blood Queen, by removal of the automatic return to life when killed).
1751
1752[[WMG: The entire series takes place within Franchise/TheMatrix]]
1753Yes, the other Matrix from the one above.
1754
1755The Doctor (connected to the TARDIS) is an alien computer program hacked into the Matrix by aliens. The reason he can regenerate his body, travel through time and space at will, and all that is because he has control over the Matrix. Now he, like the humans in the Matrix, doesn't realize what he's in, but the alien code making up his program means he can control it to a far greater extent than humans, or even most programs can. When he travels out through space and time, he's entering the ExpansionPack for the Matrix that the machines are creating for the humans in the Matrix to explore once their virtual world ages to the point where space travel is possible. At this point though, it has many buggy programs (evil alien creatures), and because the Doctor is fighting them, the machines have learned to turn a blind eye to the Doctor as his programming seems to make him inherently out to do good (and because he hasn't realized he's a program), though they are trying to reverse engineer him without him knowing and are trying to find some way to control or delete him (perhaps as part of this, they created the Master and the other Time Lord enemies for The Doctor? Alternatively, the other Time Lords are other programs hacked into the Matrix by the same or different aliens). The machines at a point even manipulate The Doctor program into destroying the bugs they need him to destroy the most by, say, throwing his control of the TARDIS off enough, or by messing with the random number generators in the Matrix enough to make it so that The Doctor always ends up where he's most needed.
1756
1757The companions are humans in the Matrix, but every so often the machines get involved and PowerUp a companion (like the [=DoctorDonna=] or when Rose looked into the time vortex) to help the Doctor defeat an especially destructive/bugged program. They immediately remove these program enhancements once these threats are over, hence why these companions all end up reverting to a purely human form afterward, often causing damage of some kind.
1758
1759Travelling to alternate universe means traveling to back-up or older archived versions of the Matrix (or a past Matrix)
1760
1761The Daleks appear to be especially dangerous bugs (perhaps created by another alien race hacking programs into the matrix in the form of Davros and company), seen by the fact of their Reality Bomb. As it would destroy all the "alternate universes", it would mean that the bomb was a bug/virus of such power and destruction to be able to shut down the entire Matrix, as well as all the backup copies! This scares the Machines so much that they go beyond even the powerups they gave Rose with the Time Vortex, and they actually try to turn Donna into/combine the human Donna with the code of The Doctor (essentially creating a Human/Software cyborg), as well as copying (imperfectly) The Doctor, in order to stop Davros and the Daleks. Once the threat is over, they quickly make the Doctor's knowledge start destroying Donna's brain, as they absolutely don't want a Program/Human combination running around, especially as such she would be both extremely powerful and would probably be a bizarre enough combo to realize what The Matrix is, even when the alien programs of Davros and The Doctor were unable to. Because none of the characters realize they're in the Matrix, they all rationalize away any bizarre coincidences, ret-cons, or continuity errors much in the same way the humans rationalize away deja-vu. Dalek Caan went insane not because he saw into the time vortex or anything like that, but because he realized what the Matrix is and that they are all trapped in it, but knowing no way out (and now insane) he just turns on the other Dalek and Davros programs.
1762
1763[[WMG: [[VideoGame/StarFox James McCloud]] is The Starfox Universe Master.]]
1764Because he's too much like Eric Roberts, the Cat Nuns seemed familiar, and the final boss in the first two games was very similar to the Determinant from Destiny of the Doctors.
1765
1766By creating a Generic Bad Guy that he based off of Davros, the Master was able to stage a "Film/WagTheDog" war against Venom so he could be seen as a Hero to the Cornarians when he kicked Andross' Kaled ass. Fortunately, James was betrayed by some pig and was destroyed before he could reap his rewards. Having worn out his regenerations, the Master went to the planet Sauria to steal the body of anyone he could find via that transparent shape-shifting snake ability he used in the movie. A metal imprint and a functional robot still remained on Venom complete with mind control powers, resulting in frantic hallucinations to any who dared trespass on his domain.
1767
1768[[WMG: The 1960s Movies are canon.]]
1769This explains why Creator/BernardCribbins is so excited about the Doctor. Clearly, there was some Chameleon Arch thing going on, but it can all be explained with a little determination. This also means he helped the Thals against the Daleks twice, thus getting the Daleks thoroughly annoyed.
1770* When did Bernard Cribbens help the Thals against the Daleks? He's only in the second movie, and the Thals are only in the first.
1771** No, The Doctor assisting the Thals twice, not Bernard. Bernard clearly portrays two separate characters. Unless he's a Time Lord as well. But then........[[LogicBomb ouch!]]
1772** Excited? When they "reunited" during the ''Titanic'' incident, he just nonchalantly caught the Doctor up to speed about why central London is abandoned.
1773* This is what WOTAN meant by "Doctor Who is required": the human inventor Dr. Who. Dodo hadn't heard of him, so she assumed it meant her Doctor. WOTAN, for its part, decided that he was just as good and decided to go with that instead.
1774
1775[[WMG: Timelords are [[VideoGame/CityOfHeroes a Nemesis Plot]]]]
1776* <looks at other WMG pages> It seems he's doing a pretty good job.
1777* No, Nemesis himself is a Time Lord. The Seventh Doctor ''did'' drop off Ace on Gallifrey because he knew that she would be sent back to the beginning of Gallifreyan history and become the mother of all Time Lord society, thus making them more aggressive and able to resist the Daleks. Ace, who we know from the ExpandedUniverse to be sexually adventurous (even if it never happened on-page, Benny said it flat-out) not only made the Time Lords aggressive enough to fight the Daleks but also altered the doctor's DNA so that he would be more open to interspecies romance. When the Time Lords were destroyed in the Time War, the Doctor realized his mistake and used the Key to Time...
1778
1779[[WMG:''Series/TopGearUK'' is a ''Doctor Who'' spin off show in the style of a Car Magazine show]]
1780The Stig is obviously a Timelord; he's even regenerated once on the show already from Black Stig to White Stig. He has access to aircraft carriers and military equipment, obviously through UNIT, and The Sixth Doctor (looking a bit different due to the TimeyWimeyBall) and the Daleks have made crossover appearances. Jeremy Clarkson must be Davros in disguise.
1781* Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant have also made appearances on the programme. Eccleston's appearance also featured the car he was driving phasing in a la the TARDIS. Hmm...
1782
1783[[WMG:The Master exists in this universe, and he is Philip Zimbardo]]
1784[[http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00018/zimbardo_wintermeyer_18030t.jpg Look at this guy]] or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo his wiki]] or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment his prison]], and then consider the fact that he's a social scientist who continually performs experiments upon people in the name of science. Someday, a blue police box will be spotted on the campus of Stanford University.
1785* Zimbardo once wore a cape to a psychology conference. That's some serious Ainley!Master fashion sense right there...
1786** A CAPE?! Oh my god...mad scientists are real... Woohoo!
1787* Just look at the titles of his books -- ''The Lucifer Effect'' and ''The Time Paradox'' are ''excellent'' titles for Who-pisodes.
1788
1789[[WMG: Each TARDIS is powered by a [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Chaos Emerald.]]]]
1790It explains the glow. Back when Time Lords weren't an endangered species, they got enough through time travel and alternate universes. The Doctor's TARDIS uses a Yellow Chaos Emerald.
1791* My Sonic lore's limited, but aren't there only seven chaos emeralds total? Plus, when did the Doctor's TARDIS ever have a yellow glow?
1792* There are only seven in Sonic's world and time... but other realities and time travel are confirmed for Sonic's universe as well. They could easily have gotten emeralds from various realities and even have the same Emeralds powering different [=TARDISes=] thanks to the Chaos Emeralds being indestructable.
1793** Also didn't Rose see a yellow glow when she triggered her Chaos Control state by absorbing all that Chaos Energy from the core of the TARDIS?
1794
1795[[WMG: The Time Lords evolved from [[Franchise/StarTrek Trills]].]]
1796When the host body grows weak, or is injured, they simply change to a new one. The new form remembers its previous lives, but is still a different person in the long run. There are some key differences, but technology, and millenia of evolution solves that problem. Makes sense, doesn't it?
1797* Aren't Trills symbiotic lifeforms?
1798
1799[[WMG: The Doctor is the eighth Endless]]
1800He's really old, his regenerations are very similar to [[ComicBook/TheSandman Dream's]] death and "replacement", and his "name" ''does'' begin with a "D".
1801He is the anthropermophic personifercation of Deus Ex Machina. After all he is a god in a machine.
1802
1803[[WMG:The Valeyard was created by the explosion of the Series/RedDwarf]]
1804In the episode [[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVDemonsAndAngels Demons and Angels]][[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aeaac7s1dhienmzwwhuqqhb8y0jxlneb6exirkudxms.jpg the TARDIS can be seen]] just before the red dwarf explodes. The red dwarf exploded in that episode because the crew made a device that accidentally splits the ship, and everything on it, into its good and evil halves after it explodes. In theory just after the red dwarf exploded, the TARDIS could landed there and before the doctor could get out the explosion destroyed both and created two versions of the TARDIS and the doctor. One good,the regular doctor and one bad,The Valeyard.
1805
1806[[WMG:The Doctor regenerates because of Mushi]]
1807The golden sparks coughed out by the newly "cooking" Doctor are very similar to the spores coughed out by those effected by some forms of [[Manga/{{Mushishi}} Mushi]] (Obscure and ludicrous but just crazy enough to be considered).
1808
1809[[WMG: The series (especially later episodes) is an AU of Literature/PeterPan.]]
1810To start off, we have the title character who never grows up (technically, the Doctor ages but incredibly slowly; and regenerates into a younger form every time he dies, effectively gaining immortality). Even the Fourth Doctor has said that there's no point in growing up if you can't be childish sometimes.
1811
1812Before the story begins, the main character runs away from home and meets a magical creature (the TARDIS could be compared with Tinkerbell) who gives him the ability to "fly," or travel through time and space. Occasionally they pick up a few hitchhikers (Lost Boys/companions) and have wild, fantastical adventures while thwarting the evil schemes of the murderous army (pirates/Daleks) and their ruthless, handicapped leader (Hook/Davros).
1813
1814Oh, there's more -- Tinkerbell and the TARDIS are both imagined as women, and both are scornful of his temporary companions (it is implied in Peter Pan that adventures like Wendy's have happened before) and possessive of the protagonist. A protagonist who, though doomed to be separated from normal humans because of his unusual life cycle, enjoys bringing mortals to his magical world of adventure, excitement, and of course, pirates. Yet this is also the tragedy of Peter, and the Doctor -- no matter how much fun they have, in the end, his friends always want to grow up. Leaving the protagonist alone once more, with only his unkillable nemesis and the faithful affections of his eternal pixie-and-or-type-40 friend.
1815** Or the other way around...
1816
1817[[WMG:The Eighth Doctor died at the hands of a massive meth overdose...]]
1818...inflicted by [[ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison The Black Glove]]. (I wasn't sure which of those things to put after the other.) Anyway, I got this idea after noting that while the Doctor has always been eccentric and lively to certain degrees, the last three in particular have been increasingly ooh-what's-that energetic. Now rather than being, say, the result of rising standards in the media of what can hold our attention as a quirky, quick-thinking hero, or something to that effect, a friend of mine (not too up on ''Doctor Who'') suggested offhandedly that he had discovered meth. Now, of course, our friend the Doctor would never turn to drugs like that, but what of a sinister organization known for weaponizing drugs and using them to push the boundaries of succeeding at killing the hero? Well, that it should be the villains of a comic I've never read is strangely-fitting icing on the cake, but the point is he died of too many uppers and is still working through it.
1819* Original editor here: We've seen what happened in detail and the Black Glove wasn't involved. On the other hand, if any meth was involved, it's worn off now.
1820* If River Song truly is the Doctor's future wife, she will obviously also be Susan's Grandmother.
1821** Jossed, given the whole time lock thing and the Tenth Doctor ''not recognising River''.
1822* If Susan does indeed return to the show (it could happen!), it will be a regeneration. Last I heard, Carole Ann Ford (who originally played Susan for those who haven't read the Character Sheet yet) hasn't been in the best of health.
1823* River Song has met the other Doctors, we just haven't seen those encounters. That's how she knows so much about the Doctor.
1824** Jossed. The Tenth Doctor has no idea who she is. She recognises the faces because she's been collecting images.
1825*** Not necessarily. In episodes with multiple Doctors, the later incarnations don't remember the events despite already having lived through them. Except for the minisode "Time Crash", in which Ten remembering being there as Five is the only way he knows what to do. The Doctor's memory is as wibbly-wobbly as everything else.
1826
1827[[WMG: The Doctor is really a Ctan in disguise.]]
1828He's the Deceiver. The TARDIS is his personal vessel. He's facilitating the Pariah breeding program.
1829
1830[[WMG:River Song is [[Literature/MagicSchoolBus Miss Frizzle]]]]
1831[[http://pics.livejournal.com/smiling_gurl/pic/0000aye1 See?]]
1832* And if River Song/Miss Frizzle is a Time Lord, then that means the Magic School Bus is a TARDIS. Makes sense to me.
1833
1834[[WMG: Creator/StevenMoffat needs to watch ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets''.]]
1835And give us a {{crossover}}. [[RuleOfCool Because]] [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slender Man]] vs. the Doctor [[CoolVersusAwesome would be]] '''[[SugarWiki/SoCoolItsAwesome awesome]]'''.
1836* It would also be even more terrifying than [[NightmareFuel B]][[NightmareFuel l]][[ParanoiaFuel ink]]
1837* Perhaps the Slender Man was the one behind the TARDIS's destruction. That's right. That's ''him'' saying "SILENCE WILL FALL". When he's faced with The Doctor he doesn't screw around.
1838* Uhh...uhhh...guys? You know the series 6 trailer? Did you see that thing at the end?
1839** Oh god. [[http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt132/DoctorWoodAdventures/Series%206/Trailer1/cap127970802.jpg Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god!]]
1840*** I think that's one of TheGreys, but yeah, I actually had the exact same reaction when I first saw it.
1841*** No, it's the Silence. [[http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Doctor-Who-Insider-silence-570-300x168.jpg and it's even WORSE than the Slender Man]].
1842Original poster here, with an updated variant:
1843
1844[[WMG:Slender Man is one (or a few) of the Silence]]
1845Related to the above, but taken a step further. At the end of the second part, the Doctor splices shots of one of the Silence into the moon landing footage, shots of it saying "You should kill us on sight." Humanity proceeds to kill them, but some survive. These survivors are the Slender Man. This explains why he/it/they kill people (revenge), how there's one in Iraq (''Blog/JustAnotherFool'') while apparently ''silmultaneously'' at least two in the US. For every Slender Man blog out there, the people writing it have their own Silence following them around, waiting to kill them or drive them mad with something they can't quite explain.
1846
1847[[WMG: Rassilon was possessed by [[Literature/TheSilmarillion Morgoth]] ]]
1848When Morgoth was thought to have been cast through the Doors of Night, he actually went through The Time Lock and into the last days of the Time War. Because of his absurd power and TimeyWimeyBall he was also able to possess Rassilon before the time lock and attempt to initiate the final sanction, which he knew would end his enemies back on Arda. Dagor Dagorath will be the hell that inevitably breaks loose when The Lock is broken (As it must be since The Master has JokerImmunity), The Doctor manages to stop the Final Sanction but not the return of the Time Lords and the war's other atrocities, and "Rassilon" brings the full force of the Last Great Time War to Arda to the greatest extent that he can. Eventually, because of his Time War related mucking about in Ardan history, the Free Peoples will develop space travel, Turin will siege The Citadel on Gallifrey (Any time travel related issues with it having been defeated because of captured technology and everyone being distracted by the Daleks) and slay "Rassilon" thus fulfilling the prophecy. Alternatively...
1849* The Doors of Night? The entrance to the antimatter universe. This, of course, means that Gallifrey is Arda. I'll let you think about that for a few minutes.
1850** WIN. All of it.
1851
1852[[WMG: The Doctor is a Goa'uld.]]
1853The REAL Doctor whom the show is based on is a [[Series/StargateSG1 Goa'uld]] who took Janus (the inventor of Time Travel in the Gateverse) as host. Proof? You need proof?
1854
1855Okay... well that seems reasonable for such an outrageous claim:
1856
1857* He deems himself a God. (And is bit of an arrogant jerk about it, and rather patronizing toward lowly humans.)
1858* He continously takes new bodies. (Standard fare for a parasite that outlives its hosts and completely seizes control. Perhaps the blending effects personality.)
1859* He clearly prefers one gender. (If it were truly random I doubt he would, but the Goa'uld tend towards a prefered gender for their hosts.)
1860* He likes to keep a few servants around incase he needs an emergency host, but like Ba'al he admits to being an alien so the humans can contribute effectively.
1861* He's developed a personality cult on Earth (by the same tactic the SGC used to prepare us for any potential invasions) but did so before the SGC even existed to avoid suspicision. Surely such a MagnificentBastard could only be a Goa'uld version of The Doctor.
1862
1863This also means that he is also real... [[OhCrap and a baddie.]] Actually does that make the Pandorica a more polite version of what was done to Marduk?
1864
1865[[EnemyMine Call the Daleks, we may need reinforcements.]]
1866
1867[[RuleOfCool Plus you gotta admit its a nice twist to all the "X is a Timelord" theories in other fictions WMG sections if the most iconic Timelord himself isn't even one.]]
1868
1869[[WMG: [[Manga/DeathNote Mello]] is the child of the Doctor and River Song]]
1870* This would explain the gun thing and why when a [[spoiler: god of death]] shows up, everyone else tries to kill it, but Mello? He just calmly hands it a bar of chocolate. That is ''so'' Doctor.
1871** This also explains why he [[spoiler: showed Takada his face]]- he knew the Death Note wouldn't work on him!
1872** Plus, he physically looks like both River and the eleventh Doctor, as well as [[spoiler: Amy]] and [[spoiler: Rory]]
1873* Since he is the child of the Doctor and River, [[spoiler: also a Time Lady]], that would mean...
1874!! Mello is a Time Lord. (It's already on the WMG.TimeLord page, I am just posting a logical conclusion.)
1875* He could have regenerated into [[Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory Willy Wonka]].
1876
1877[[WMG: The Doctor is a [[JustForFun/InspectorSpaceTime Space Master]]...]]
1878...and the Police Box is his DARSIT.
1879
1880[[WMG: ''JustForFun/InspectorSpacetime'' was the show that was premiering during ''Remembrance of the Daleks.'']]
1881Though it sounds like the announcer is about to say "Doctor Who", it's actually just the name of the first actor, whose name happens to start with sounds somewhat like "Doctor".
1882* But that was Leslie French.
1883
1884[[WMG: River Song spent some time in New York City posing as a defense attorney called Ms. Pond.]]
1885While there she used psychic paper to fake her law license. She came into conflict with the city’s ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit Special Victims Unit]]'' a number of times. At first she did not know much about the American legal system leading to her clients getting railroaded by the police and the ADA’s, but she later took some time off to study law and became a much better lawyer.
1886
1887[[WMG: The video game ''VideoGame/{{Antichamber}}'' is set in the Doctor Who Universe.]]
1888The player is a JustForFun/TimeLord trying to fix his Tardis.
1889
1890[[WMG: The 12th Doctor is the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 Final Cylon!]]]]
1891There are 12 models. As of June 2013, we don't know who the 12th is, but we have certainly already seen him/her somewhere, in a different role, not knowing that they are actually The Doctor.
1892* And indeed, we had seen Peter Capaldi before in Pompeii!
1893
1894[[WMG: The Weeping Angels moved into the ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' series and cut off the power worldwide.]]
1895This lets them move around more freely.
1896
1897[[WMG: The Weeping Angels are [[Literature/TheBible Fallen Angels.]]]]
1898After they were cast out of heaven for their rebellion, the Demons were cast into hell but they weren't finished rebelling. They soon figured out how to [[DemonicPossession posses living beings through sight]] and partially escaped into the universe by disguising themselves as religious carvings made by man.([[FridgeBrilliance Why else would they look like they're from the bible if they're supposedly an alien race?]]) This wasn't a complete victory however, God knew what they were planning and gave his creations a subconscious defense mechanism and made it so any demon that has ever been observed by anything [[BlessedWithSuck including themselves]],[[AndIMustScream would be trapped in the universe and hell simultaneously]], forever dooming their efforts to invade heaven again.
1899
1900[[WMG: The Doctor destroyed Gallifrey by speaking the [[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia Deplorable Word.]]]]
1901Unable to think of another way to stop the Time War, the Doctor used this ancient and evil "magick" to freeze forever everyone involved. Then he had one of his companions ring the bell to wake him. Alternatively, the idea of the Doctor doing one thing on an old, red-sunned planet with a noble, stagnant culture to stop the fighting could simply have been INSPIRED by Charn... you know, in Russell T. Davies mind.
1902** Jossed by Day of the Doctor.
1903
1904[[WMG: All media that involves or mentions time travel takes place in the Whoniverse.]]
1905Dorium mentions that the Doctor's death became a fixed point in time because Lake Silencio is a "still point". This implies that fixed points in time can be created. Once created, they can't be altered. The Doctor has so much freedom in time travel because at the moment most time is in flux. More and more time will become fixed until, eventually, changing anything of the past will cause a paradox. That's why other time travelers in other media have to be more careful; they run a much greater risk of a paradox.
1906
1907[[WMG: The entire thing is just one really, really elaborate Tabletop campaign.]]
1908The players and DM just change a lot.
1909
1910[[WMG: The Led Zeppelin song Kashmir is about the Doctor's visit to the planet Dune.]]
1911IU, I mean. In universe the Led Zeppelin all know the Doctor.
1912
1913[[WMG: The Doctor is Muhammad.]]
1914This is why The Doctor's real name will never be revealed. The revelation that Doctor Who contains a visual representation of the prophet Muhammad would cause an uproar since it is offensive to Muslims.
1915
1916[[WMG: The Master is Lord Voldemort.]]
1917It is his real name, and speaking it only provokes bad things.
1918
1919Alternatively...
1920
1921[[WMG: The Doctor is Lord Voldemort.]]
1922He would not want anyone to know that he was someone so evil, and the name "Voldemort" is jinxed.
1923
1924[[WMG: The closest related species to Time Lords are angels]]
1925No, not Weeping Angels- the angels from Supernatural. Regeneration evolved from the ability to heal wounds via touch, and in the episodes where the Doctor becomes human we see his Time Lord-y self trapped in the watch acting very much like his grace. Time Lords live a very long time, much like angels do. The rules for time travel (don't change certain things, etc.) are a lot like the rules angels follow when interacting with humans (before season five).
1926
1927[[WMG: Any future female incarnation of the Doctor will closely resemble MediaNotes/JennyEverywhere.]]
1928Due to the resemblances- you have a slightly crazy, slightly unconventional character who is known for wandering time and space having adventures and wearing a ScarfOfAsskicking. The character type is pretty much perfect. We already know of at least two occasions where Time Lords have been shown to have the ability to gender-flip in successive regenerations, so there's always the possibility.
1929
1930[[WMG: Or possibly Jenny the Doctor's daughter is the Whoniverse's version of MediaNotes/JennyEverywhere.]]
1931The standard Jenny Everywhere appearance and character traits might have to wait for a subsequent regeneration, though.
1932
1933[[WMG: Doctor Who takes place in Star Trek's Mirror Universe]]
1934
1935In Doctor Who, the future of humanity is frequently shown as a conquering empire (often with different names) which is consistent with the Terran empire from Star Trek. At one point, the Mirror Universe had humans enslaved. Plenty of Doctor Who episodes had humanity conquered or even at the brink of extinction (See "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" or "The Sunmakers") only to end up making a come back. Most future Doctor Who stories don't give clear dates or are quite far in the future so I don't recall any which would contradict including the Star Trek events.
1936
1937The ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode "In A Mirror, Darkly" credits also included a shot of the moonlanding but the flag was the Earth flag and the space suit was more advanced than in reality. This is consistent with the Unit years of Doctor Who which hinted not only at a more powerful United Nations but at a more advanced space programme, suggesting it's quite believable there would have been an early united Earth space landing (even if it had to be kept secret from the population). The episode also showed people attacking the Vulcans when they landed and taking their guns, which would make sense if you were as used to alien invasions as the people of the Doctor Who universe are.
1938
1939The lack of interbreeding with other species and the fact that a peaceful Federation never occurred between us would go some way to explaining why notable Star Trek species don't turn up (there are after all countless worlds where we only see the species once on both of these shows and it's only major ones that repeat). As for the lack of Doctor Who species on Star Trek, perhaps some were. Plenty of species look basically human in both cases. The "Overlookers" from Series/StarTrekVoyager do actually look rather Sontaran and could be from the species the Sontarans were originally from before they became a clone race. ForWantOfANail the Borg may have been more successful in one universe and prevented the rise of the Daleks and Cybermen (both of whose genocidal ways handily could have eliminated many of the Star Trek species post 24th century which humans never had much contact with before the 22nd century anyway, explaining why we never really see them). By contrast, in the Mirror Universe the Borg never got off the ground.
1940
1941[[WMG: Series/{{MacGyver|1985}} was a companion of the Doctor]]
1942It explains his TechnicalPacifist GadgeteerGenius ChronicHeroSyndrome DoesntLikeGuns nature. He learned it all from his mentor, the same way Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, etc did.
1943** Possibly they worked together during the UNIT era, when the Doctor was confined to Earth. The Phoenix Foundation might've allied with UNIT on a few cases.
1944
1945[[/folder]]
1946
1947[[folder:Meta]]
1948
1949[[WMG: The final episode will involve a new Universe being created.]]
1950* Which is our Universe, where the events of the Whoniverse are turned into a show.
1951** Alternatively, the Whoniverse is the previous universe before ours, and the Doctor's exploits have leaked through the very end of that universe to be "written" and remembered by us, via the TV series.
1952
1953[[WMG:The Master is compelled to see the Doctor as his enemy because he has NoFourthWall.]]
1954The drumming sound in his head? It's actually the bass line for the ''Doctor Who'' theme. He is subconsciously aware that he is a fictional character in a fictional universe and meant to be a DesignatedVillain for the series, which the constant theme stuck in his head keeps reminding him of, and it compels him to fight against The Doctor and be evil. How did he get this way? By seeing into the rift that all Time Lords look into as kids, in reality a rip in their fictional dimension into ours; those who look into it either run away in denial of seeing "the real world", go mad upon realizing they're nothing but fictional constructs, or become GenreSavvy (AKA "inspired") as a result.
1955* When the Master looked into the vortex as a kid, he saw the ''Doctor Who'' opening credits, and it drove him mad. Imagine looking through a rift in time and space and seeing Colin Baker's terrifying disembodied head flying toward you. You'd vow to kill that guy, too!
1956** Speak for yourself. Colin Baker is BADASS.
1957* Jossed. The sound's a white point star emitting a signal to take Gallifrey out of the Time War. Rassilon sent that message through the rift.
1958
1959[[WMG: Real life time travel will be used to make a team up movie with all incarnations of The Doctor]]
1960* And it will be ''awesome.''
1961
1962[[WMG: David Cameron acts out the "It's a gas mask" scene when no-one else is around.]]
1963Just because I can see the [[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem Leader of the Opposition]] doing that when no-one's watching. I can see UsefulNotes/GordonBrown imagining himself gassing the Cabinet, too.
1964* This WMG even funnier now, because David Cameron has been appointed Prime Minister (bullet point written in June 2010).
1965
1966[[WMG: All actors, who played the Doctor, are not actors]]
1967They really are the Doctor. The reason he can be seen in other shows is that he's trying to wave to us out of Television and Audio Books.
1968* So... [[Creator/DavidTennant he]] married [[Creator/PeterDavison his]] own [[Creator/GeorgiaMoffett daughter]], then?
1969
1970[[WMG: The show ''Doctor Who'' is run by the Master]]
1971It's all a scheme to distract the brightest young minds of each generation from doing their homework, so they won't grow into potential members of the Resistance against his universe domination. We know it works because you're here, so desperate for more Who that you're reading this, and not doing whatever you should be doing.
1972But why, you ask, would the Master make the Doctor the hero of the show? Because the Master is a CardCarryingVillain, aware that it's much easier to write what you know and recount actual happenings. BUT each actor who plays the Doctor has actually been a near twin of some regeneration of the Master, and vice versa for the actors of various villains looking like actual regenerations of the Doctor. Thus, if a fan were to meet the real Master, they would react as though he were the Doctor they knew and loved, and if they met the true Doctor, they would mistrust and fear him. Because the Master is CrazyPrepared!
1973
1974[[WMG:The Doctor aided in bringing down Osama bin Laden.]]
1975Proof? [[http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54151.html One of the Navy SEAL teams]] that raided Osama's compound captured a trove of computer drives and disks, yeilding a lot of important intelligence. They reported the capture with a pre-arranged signal: “Geronimo!”
1976
1977[[WMG: The LiteraryAgentHypothesis is correct, and is in fact why The Doctor habitually picks up Companions from years in which the show is being broadcast]]
1978The Doctor sells his stories to the BBC, and, in exchange, the BBC makes sure ex-Companions[[note]] whose names are changed in the show, for obvious reasons[[/note]] get enough royalties to live comfortably on and are looked after if need be.
1979
1980[[WMG: The show isn't fictional; it's a dramatization of events which occurred in another dimension.]]
1981Obviously our world is another alternate universe that is somehow sealed up and completely separated from the Whoniverse...well, almost completely. Some people from the Whoniverse came here through a rift and, knowing that people would never believe their crazy stories, created ''Doctor Who'' in order to subliminally warn people about what lay in the other universe. That way, if another rift ever opens and aliens start pouring in, the loyal and informed fans will know what to do.
1982
1983[[WMG: Our version of the Universe is a "perfected" version of the Whoniverse.]]
1984After the Doctor will have used up all his regenerations in righting every wrong in the Universe that's not a fixed point in time, everything will be at peace in the grand scheme of things. The TARDIS will live on, though, telling stories about his adventures via psychic link to the BBC. LiteraryAgentHypothesis, anyone?
1985
1986[[WMG:The Whoniverse Earth IS our own, and the Series 3 climax definitely happened.]]
1987When the countdown happened in "Last of the Time Lords", you can't honestly say you didn't start thinking, "Doctor. Doctor. Doctor." You know you did. The number of people watching that episode was equal to or greater than the number of people left alive at that point, so the trick worked. Unfortunately, not just the time of Saxon was erased, but all the obvious alien encounters we'd had up till that point.
1988
1989[[WMG: Sarah Jane Smith can break the fourth wall.]]
1990In "School Reunion," she told the Tenth Doctor, "The TARDIS needs a Smith." It may have seemed like she was referring to Mickey Smith, but she was actually referring to Matt Smith. She got her wish when he played the Eleventh Doctor.
1991
1992[[WMG: There are 200 missing 7th and 8th Doctor episodes.]]
1993Because what makes more sense: The Time of the Doctor, with how it ended, being the 800th episode or the 1000th? And if you do the math, 200 episodes (plus the '96 movie) gives us a 14 episode season each year from 1990 to 1995 - the same as previous 7th doctor seasons had - and then a 13 episode season each year from 1996 to 2004.
1994
1995I suppose the missing 7th Doctor serials finish the Cartmel Master Plan, delving into Gallifreyan history and the Other and how these things relate to the Doctor, along with Ace becoming a time lord and why/how she's human again by the time The Sarah Jane Chronicles mentioned her. As for the 8th Doctor episodes, those mostly survived (thankfully) as his Big Finish episodes, with some gaps here and there. The Susan episodes specifically were part of the 2003 season to celebrate the 40th anniversary. It seems like the overarching theme of 8's era is how the Time War (which started back in Remembrance of the Daleks) is happening more and more blatantly around him but he either doesn't see it or chooses not to until it's too late.
1996
1997And those things we thought were noodle incidents? They're just references to past episodes we can't see. Heck, I bet the Name of the Doctor reveal was this too! It wasn't the fact that John Hurt was the Doctor that was supposed to be surprising, it was the fact that a character we already knew (or were supposed to, anyway) was the Doctor! It would be the same as if we saw Fenric standing there or something, it just so happens that his original appearances are missing. I'm sure BBC has an official episode list somewhere with detailed synopses they just haven't released to the public. But where did the episodes go if no one's seen them? That's the real question.
1998
1999[[WMG:When the copyright on the Daleks expires, they will become a popular heraldic charge.]]
2000Other fictional creatures appear on coats of arms, so...
2001
2002[[WMG: History is repeating itself.]]
20033 and 9: Revolutionary new technique (1970: colour TV - 2005: Show coming back), young, naive blonde companion (actors get on well along off-screen), first episode features Autons, Earth-centred stories, a high-ranking government official as a 'not-quite companion'.
2004
20054 and 10: Most memorable. K-9. Sarah Jane. The Master and Time Lords come back. First season features a male and female duo for a short while. Series-long arcs. Three well-known female companions in a row.(Sarah, Leela, Romana I and II - Rose, Martha, Donna) Regeneration caused by the Master.
2006
20075 and 11: Youngest actor so far to play the title role. Mostly travels with a female whose main feature is her legs. One companion is made to attempt to kill the Doctor by his enemies, but fails out of their relationship with him. Often travels with just two companions, a man and a woman, which causes the TARDIS trio to consist of a blonde, brunette and redhead. Anniversary series with Gallifrey. The Doctor dies with a brown-haired female close by, who he met a few episodes prior. He also hallucinates his former companions before he dies.
2008
20096 and 12: Actor appeared as another character prior to taking on the role. Travels around with brown-haired female from his regeneration. Meets the Master after thinking he had died. In the final episode of the season, he confronts the Time Lords over their actions, calling them out over their behaviour. His companion is revealed to have 'survived', although she can't travel with him again, instead spending her life with another. Ridiculed by others on-screen. His next female on-screen companion is a frizzy-haired woman with a unisex name, who eventually leaves him to travel the universe with somebody else from a prior adventure.
2010
2011[[WMG: One of the missing Cybermen episodes[=/=]serials has been discovered, and will be released soon.]]
2012''The Web of Fear'' and ''The Enemy of the World'' were first re-discovered in late 2011[[note]]Though not released until October 2013[[/note]], long before production on ''The Snowmen'' and the second half of Series 7, which featured the return of the Great Intelligence. Now, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E11WorldEnoughAndTime the Series]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls Ten finale]] features the return of another classic villain whose earliest episodes were mostly wiped: the [[spoiler:Mondasian]] Cybermen.
2013
2014[[WMG: "Doctor Who", in-universe, is a show that Amy and Rory inspired.]]
2015After ending up in 1938, the Ponds were inspired by their adventures to write a book about a quirky time-traveller with a magic box. It started out as written text, but in 1963 BBC was impressed and asked if they could adapt it for TV.
2016** Actually, one of the books implies that Churchill inspired it. Though it's possible they had a hand in it too...
2017
2018[[WMG: The Master is responsible for the creation of the song "Hey Missy."]]
2019The Master is a narcissist with a time machine. Isn't it obvious?
2020
2021[[WMG: Everything is canon]]
2022Everything that's in every single episode, novel, comic, audio and even the film is canon. Including the Curse of Fatal Death. As characters like the the Time Lords and the Time Agency move throughout time, they're forever changing the course of history. This could be small things like changing when the Doctor first met the Daleks to how Time Lords reproduce. [=AUs=] are canon in the Whoniverse, so even if something isn't canon in whichever Dr Who work you're currently enjoying, it is canon somewhere else.
2023* Though this does make it even harder to figure out what's canon right now. All we can know is that what we're currently experiencing is canon. That exact moment. Everything else is in flux.
2024** Seems to have been confirmed by the "Nights" shorts from the Season 6 set:
2025''“Y’know, the thing is, Amy, everyone’s memory is a mess: life is a mess. Everyone’s got memories of a holiday they couldn’t have been on, or a party they never went to, or met someone for the first time and felt like they’ve known them all their lives. Time is being rewritten, all around us, every day. People think their memories are bad, but their memories are fine. The past is really like that.”'' In short, there's no reason not to think that the Doctor doesn't remember being loomed, being half-human and also being born to two Time Lord parents... even if the last is that which he acknowledges as his "canon" history. Until even that's rewritten.
2026
2027[[WMG:Many inconsistencies are explained by the LiteraryAgentHypothesis]]
2028Many fan theories are based on slight inconsistencies somewhere in the show's long run. Some of them are just for fun--not a lot of people ''really'' think that every story takes place in the Matrix--but some of them are meant to be serious theories. While these theories do explain away the inconsistencies, they also help lead to ContinuitySnarl, which isn't good. It may make more sense to interpret these as LiteraryAgentHypothesis--the inconsistencies didn't happen; it's just a mistake in how the production depicts the Doctor's life. Some such theories include:
2029* Season 6B
2030* Any theory which tries to explain why we never saw something before the writers dreamed it up (Torchwood, the Doctor's second heart, etc.)
2031* Explanations of why the Doctor gives inconsistent ages.
2032* Any attempt to explain the faces in ''The Brain of Morbius''.
2033** Aww, but we like the ContinuitySnarl! It's a TimeTravel series -- it's not complete without one!
2034
2035[[WMG: The classic series and the modern series are separate continuities, and in the modern series continuity, "The Curse Of Fatal Death" actually happened.]]
2036In the classic series, Time Lords did not randomly change sex. In the modern series, they do. Conclusion: classic and modern are different realities/continuities. "The Curse Of Fatal Death" has never been seriously considered as canon with regard to the classic series, but it is not inconsistent with modern canon, and given that it's written by Steven Moffat, who has worked very hard on welding it into canon, it seems like a good place to trace the modern series canon as starting from. The one snag is that even if we treat all the "different" Doctors in that story as temporary instabilities in the Doctor's appearance and personality resulting from a single regeneration (Romana's "try-on" regeneration may or may not be canon anymore, but if she is experimenting with different forms ''within'' the window of a single regeneration event, The Doctor could be doing the same in a less controlled way in ''Fatal Death''), and dismiss Tennant-Doctor's not-regeneration as... well, not a regeneration, assuming The Master is right that Rowan Atkinson's Doctor is the ninth, that still leaves us with the Doctor running out of regenerations before Smith, not Capaldi. But since the previous Doctors are no longer canon (except 1, and possibly 4 and/or 5), let's say The Master has simply miscounted. So we get the following... 1-7 not yet established in this continuity (though some version of Hartnell's Classic Series Doctor as 1 looks like being confirmed in this continuity in the 2017 christmas special), 8 Atkinson, 9 all the unstable doctors seen in The Curse Of Fatal Death, resolving into [=McGann=] offscreen minutes later, 10 Hurt, 11 Eccleston, 12 Tennant, 13 Smith, 14 Capaldi, 15 Whittaker. Either that, or the 12-regeneration limit from the classic series is, say, a 13- or 14-regeneration limit in the modern series (has a specific number ever been mentioned in the modern series? If not, we can keep the principle and just tweak the details).
2037* This theory has numerous flaws. For one thing, the classic series never indicated that it was ''impossible'' for Time Lords to change sex. More importantly, ''all the classic Doctors have been referenced in the new series''.
2038
2039[[WMG: Literature/FactionParadox is responsible for continuity errors.]]
2040Self-explanatory, really. Their devotion to create paradoxes has royally screwed up parts of the continuity. Examples include the "Looming" origin (despite the fact Eleven has a baby cot) and the Eighth Doctor's timeline.
2041
2042[[WMG: ''WebAnimation/ScreamOfTheShalka'' is the timeline pre-Last Great Time War.]]
2043There's the meta that it was released a couple years before the revival and the Time War arc was made. Without the temporal mess of the war, this would've been the future for the 8th Doctor and he would've regenerated into looking like Richard E Grant instead. Dr Simeon and the Great Intelligence being played by Richard E Grant was some sort of temporal echo/remnant of the natural timeline that the Last Great Time War mutilated and paved over.
2044
2045[[WMG: ''Death Comes to Time'' is canonical.]]
2046The Doctor is clever; it's not outside the realm of possibility that he'd fake his own death to try and slip into obscurity. In fact, that's exactly what he did in [[spoiler: series 6. Sort of.]]
2047
2048[[WMG: The Watcher was supposed to tie into the Morbius Doctors.]]
2049The production staff had admitted the pictures that show up [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius in Morbius and the Doctor's mind battle]] were meant to be pre-Hartnell Doctors, but pretty much all material afterwards vetoed this and made it clear the 1st Doctor is ''the'' 1st Doctor. If they kept it, however, that adds 8 incarnations and makes Tom Baker's Doctor the 12th incarnation. And next season [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin it was established Time Lords can regenerate 12 times]]. The Morbius Doctor idea wasn't wholly scrapped or deemed non-canon, but with the 12 regeneration limit introduced if they kept those Doctors the 4th Doctor could only regenerate, at most, once. Then there's the Watcher never gets a proper explanation for why he shows up and is never involved before or since, and merges with the 4th Doctor. So what if the solution to the Morbius Doctors bogging up the regeneration was the Watcher? Originally it was meant to be how a new regeneration cycle was introduced; a literal new man was added so the 4th Doctor's regeneration isn't his last(or if there's a pre-Morbius Doctor, he's out of luck without the Watcher). The cut explanation for why is that after "The Deadly Assassin" the Time Lords decided it's in their best interest to keep the Doctor alive as long as possible(or less cynically they were rewarding him), so set up this ghostly entity that is a walking regeneration cycle to go up to 4 and add them, then not worrying again until he's at number 17/18. Maybe it only works when a Time Lord nears regeneration/death, but that was the purpose. The Doctor was told about this which is why he knows his regeneration was impending. However the "pre-Hartnell Doctors" became an AbortedArc once the Watcher was formally introduced. [[spoiler:If Ruth is pre-Hartnell like some speculate, they might revive this old idea]].
2050
2051[[/folder]]
2052
2053----
2054
2055[[WMG: The Technobabble is caused by limitations on the translation circuit.]]
2056Or rather, the translation circuit trying to work around limitations in the ''English language''. Every time the Doctor gives an explanation that doesn't make sense, or misuses a term, he's ''actually'' giving a very detailed and logical explanation of the phenomenon, he's just using terms that exist in Gallifreyan but not English. The TARDIS does its best to translate that into the words that do exist in English, but none of them quite fit (at least within the time-constraints of the conversation) so the explanation the companions (and audience) hear sounds like gibberish. - Imagine trying to translate a complex explanation using modern physics terminology into ancient Sumerian, you'll give it your best but they still aren't going to ''really'' understand, they lack the proper context and vocabulary needed to do so.
2057
2058[[WMG: The Sonic Screwdriver is Not What it Seems.]]
2059The sonic screwdriver is not a miracle piece of technology, but rather a conduit for the Doctor to channel his innate psychic power through. As seen in previous episodes, the Doctor has telekinetic and telepathic abilities, which take an intense amount of concentration to use, making them almost useless in high-stress situations. To compensate for this, the Doctor created the sonic screwdriver to focus his abilities into short bursts of psychic manipulation. This is not to say that the Doctor did not install some additional technology in the device to perform certain tasks, but if you notice, it never works as well for other people when they use the screwdriver.
2060* Possibly Jossed by the Season 30 premiere, when [[spoiler: a new non-Time Lord character]] is seen to have a sonic screwdriver [[spoiler: of their own, capable of matching the Doctor]]'s.
2061** Yes, but does it work as flexibly and omnipurposely as the Doctor's? Yes, this theory has weight, especially after they introduced the "psychic paper," which essentially works the same way. The Sonic Screwdriver is a MagicFeather. The Doctor made it for himself, then [[MemoryGambit erased his memory]] of doing so to give himself a psychological crutch to use his otherwise problematic PsychicPowers.
2062** Note that Ten says in the Five/Ten Children in Need special that Five didn't replace his sonic screwdriver because he was showing off. Also note that, when Ten broke his own sonic screwdriver, he built a new one ''fast.''
2063** It's possible the sonic screwdriver does run on psychic energy because in season 6 [[spoiler: the 'non-Time Lord character' who used a sonic screwdriver is revealed to be part-Time Lord.]]
2064*** No? Who? Amy? She's not part-Time Lord. She and Rory are 100% human. [[spoiler:River's part Time Lord due to the quirk of her conception]].
2065*** Explaining time? *sigh* [[spoiler: River used a sonic in Silence in the Library. The non-Time Lord character referred to though, is Miss Foster, who has a sonic pen. While she and Amy using the sonic seem to disprove this, it can be noted that since River is a human Time Lord, and not a Gallifreyan Time Lord, she should not have psychic powers, so she disproves this too.]]
2066* Another possibility is that the sonic screwdriver is just an easy name; its real Gallifreyan name (unpronouncable or incoherent to humans and other primitive species) means something in terms of atomic/molecular manipulation, that, also as best as the TARDIS can translate it, is the Gallifreyan equivalent of a screwdriver.
2067* When it originally appeared, it was used to unscrew screws. The ability of the device to do anything is a PlotTumor.
2068** You mean an ''awesome'' tumor.
2069*** Well, there is a reason they wrote it out of the show during Five's tenure in the old series. It didn't return until the TV movie. One of the first things they did on the new series was establish that it simply can't open certain things, just to keep it from being too easy.
2070*** Not especially. I don't think deadlocks appeared until the season finale.
2071* The sonic screwdriver is far more powerful than a device of that size could normally be. They'd need to pack a lot of technology inside that little wand for it to do half the things it does. [[FridgeBrilliance If only Time Lord technology could make things bigger on the inside...]]
2072* It has been confirmed that Eleven has a psychic (telepathic, in this case) connection and interface with his sonic screwdriver, so there's that. This means that there is no use for buttons any more, since all commands can be given mentally, instantly, and the sonic can do anything within its limits.
2073* The Sonic Screwdriver is a "screwdriver" in the same sense that a Swiss Army Knife is a "knife." Thirteen even explains early on that it's "more of a Sonic Swiss Army Knife".
2074
2075
2076[[WMG:Sometime during 11 or 12's run, we will have "The Four Doctors" special.]]
2077If I Recall correctly, there have been Two, Three, and Five Doctor episodes, but not Four. It will include his Ninth through Eleventh incarnations. The last one will either be Eighth (during Eleventh's run) or Twelfth (during his own run).
2078* That would be an awesome story for the 50th anniversary in 2013. They could maybe get 4th through 7th back in some form. Davison and [=McCoy=] would be capable of doing it at least...
2079* Slightly less likely to due a new Audio Adventure Special being titled The Four Doctors. Not that they haven't reused titles for completely different stories, End of Time, or remade the stories into a new version, The Lodger, or something completely new.
2080* Even better, release it during Eleven's run, and have Doctors 9-12. There's already plenty of suspense built up around 11's death and having his successor show up would only fan the flames.
2081** Jossed AND confirmed: It appears as a comic, but not on TV.
2082
2083[[WMG: Ostriches really did have fifty-foot wingspans and fire breath.]]
2084Or rather, they will in the future- what, you think the ostrich is going to go on for billions of years without any evolutionary changes and/or humans fiddling with genetics?
2085
2086[[WMG:Trakenites live approximately as long as a single Gallifreyan regeneration.]]
2087That is why the 14th Master had only aged as much as the 7th Doctor by the time the Fell Saltshakers blasted him in the TV Movie.
2088* How long is a "single Gallifreyan regeneration"?
2089** Several centuries, at least.
2090
2091[[WMG: Dorium's species is not naturally blue]]
2092Rather, it's either a skin condition, the side-effect of a disease he has, or a natural consequence of unhealthy living. His saying that the Doctor can't need him because he's blue isn't saying that the Doctor only needs species that look exactly like Time Lords, but that the fact that he's been turned blue should indicate that he's less than useful.
2093** Or he's just being facetious.
2094
2095[[WMG: the Haitches were devoured by the crack in Aemilia's wall.]]
2096* 'Whibbly, whobbly, timey-whimey ball' is NOW spelt 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey ball'. Where did all the haitches go? They were devoured by the crack in time, tlc.
2097** When was it EVER given any spelling?
2098** Quick! Somebody check how Larry's transcript spelled it.
2099
2100[[WMG: The Doctor's last and most fearful opponent will be mankind itself.]]
2101Considering the Doctor's affection for humans, it seems fitting to have him oppose it in a grand, spectacular way at some point. Basically, after one invasion too many, humans will look at the stars and say "well, fuck you too." Thanks to retroengineering various aliens' technologies, we'll get a massive technological boost, and then we'll abuse time travel for 1) speeding up our evolution and 2) implant in the mind of the first humans the fear and the hatred of everything not human. By the time the Doctor realizes something is really, really wrong, we'd have already enslaved and/or slaughtered every single sentient race in the universe, if not erasing them from existence before they can become a threat (Davros? Killed before he engineered the Daleks. Mondas? Torched before its inhabitants became Cybermen, etc etc). The only alien this brutal regime would respect would be the Doctor, as we know he's the only reason we survived for so long despite everything trying to kill us, but we'd still make everything in our power for stopping him from opposing us. Of course, the Doctor would be horrified to see his pet race succeed where the Daleks always failed and would try to stop this and bring back mankind on the right path... But on the other hand, he'd have to deal with the idea that we did reach our full potential, and that he did teach us that the universe is an extremely dangerous place for us.
2102* The Doctor vs a time-traveling version of the [[{{TabletopGame/Warhammer 40000}} Imperium of Man]]?
2103
2104[[WMG: The Light Bulb Theme in Season 7 is Building Up to a Really Creepy MindScrew.]]
2105Every episode so far has featured some problem with flickering light bulbs, and as we all know, the Weeping Angels depend on not being seen. What if it isn't just foreshadowing? Maybe the Angels have been here the WHOLE TIME. If that's not creepy enough, watch the new opening sequences in order. Each one is darker than the last.
2106
2107[[WMG: William Shakespeare is a Time Lord.]]
2108The different people reputed to be the "real" authors of Shakespeare's works are actually different regenerations of the same Time Lord, The Bard--they just keep traveling to the Elizabethan/early Jacobean era over & over again until he will have used up all 13 lives, making trips to places like Tyre, Athens, the Forest of Arden, Denmark, Scotland, etc. every once in a while to research a new play.
2109
2110And since Time Lords can always tell when they meet another Time Lord, why wouldn't the Doctor recognize him as such in that episode? The Bard was using a Chameleon Arch. Maybe to avoid the Time War.
2111
2112[[WMG: Humans survive so long through time travel]]
2113* Eventually humans will time travel to near the end of the Universe and stop there. Hence how they survive to the end without looking too different.
2114
2115[[WMG: The Doctor and the Master aren't Time Lords.]]
2116Or even Gallifreyans. They are two post-earth humans who were thrown back in time to the big bang, possibly by their later selves, in a closed time loop; and they became the ultimate archetypes of good and evil by being exposed to infinite energy at the moment of the universe's creation. They hid on Gallifrey, using their cosmic powers to become Time Lords, but eventually, due to being in the billions of years old, they become forgetful and begin to believe they are The Doctor and The Master. The Doctor's true name is the actual name of the ultimate good in the universe itself, and he only remembers it because it's everything it is. Although the Master makes a really disappointing ultimate archetype of evil. If the Doctor (or the Master) ever dies for real, then he will be reincarnated into a being of the same potential for good as the original.
2117
2118* And the mysterious woman in The End of Time who's supposed to be the Doctor's mother is like some manifestation of the entire universe itself. When we see her being shamed by the other Time Lords and being made to pose like a weeping angel, it's symbolic of the maternal universe deferring to its inhabitants, because an important battle between good and evil is too important for a higher force to intervene.
2119
2120[[WMG: Humankind is destined to evolve again and again.]]
2121Human form is some constant of the universe. All other alien lifeforms that approach it are merely echoes and shadows, Gallifreyans included. Humanity in one of its iterations will eventually evolve into a higher form than the Time-Lords, but will decide not to meddle in time at all. And these are what The Doctor fears and venerates above all.
2122The humans at the end of the universe are the last flicker of a once mighty flame.
2123
2124[[WMG: Humanity is destined to become the new Old Ones.]]
2125In Doctor Who, the Old Ones are a species of god-like beings who survived the destruction of the previous universe, and due to different physical laws became [[EldritchAbomination Lovecraftian beings]] to the survivors. Humanity is confirmed to survive all the way up to 100 trillion AD, and while [[DownerEnding their fate seems to be that of the Toclafane]], the sheer vastness of the universe suggests there might be other humans (and whatever little alien life still exists at that point.) At the end of the universe, what little of humanity is left will survive into the next reality. There, [[HumansAreCthulhu we will be just as alien as the Old Ones]], with the various sub-species of our descendants being different Old Ones. [[HistoryRepeats Perhaps, one day, they may be thwarted by that reality's Doctor]].
2126
2127[[WMG: Timelines of the alternate Doctors!]]
2128
2129He got exiled but this 3rd doctor was evil so he became a dictator!
2130
2131And Pete's World could be the world where the Doctor fixed the TARDIS back in his first incarnation before the age he would be in An Unearthly Child, meaning that the TARDIS went where the Doctor and Susan wanted.
2132
2133Which means Susan didn't go to Coal Hill and instead, after the Time Lord Academy, started travelling on her own TARDIS with John and Gillian.
2134
2135Which also means Ian and Barbara didn't meet the Doctor. Which means he's known as Theta Sigma instead.
2136
2137Vicki and Steven just weren't born. Neither was Zoe - or even Leela or Jack Harkness. Instead their ancestors married other people. This is because the Doctor had other adventures and thus changed the flow of time.
2138
2139The Doctor also regenerates shortly after fixing the TARDIS and while Susan's at the Academy, this also before the age he would be in An Unearthly Child. So he's a 2nd Doctor but not Troughton, since he regenerated into different circumstances.
2140
2141Though he does still get a Sonic Screwdriver and a K9. He also has a Space-Time-Visualizer, keeps 500 year diaries for each incarnation, even jelly babies, psychic paper, and undershirts with question mark lapels. Basically he's a mix of various Classic Doctors but also [=NuWho=].
2142
2143Dodo still exists, and has like a few adventures with this 2nd doctor but then goes back to Earth, where Ben and Polly join instead.
2144
2145Eventually Ben and Polly leave after marrying each other, Polly becomes pregnant a while later. They don't last long as 2nd Doctor companions either.
2146
2147Since this 2nd Doctor isn't the 2nd Doctor we know, he doesn't meet Jamie and Victoria. His companions are a boy from the 26th century and a girl from the 17th. Both are around 22 when they start travelling with the Doctor. Both are about 25 when they leave.
2148
2149Sometimes after they leave, the Time Lords exile this 2nd Doctor still to Earth, but with Torchwood in the USA instead of with UNIT. (Brig, Benton, Yates, Liz, and Jo exist, but they have their own adventures instead. They might have met the Doctor like, once, at a UNITTorchwood gala affair thing, but not talked to each other much.)
2150
2151This alternate 3rd Doctor has a Torchwood Team of 2 men and 2 women. All of them are from the 1970's. Initially he seems to be their ally, but eventually they lock him in the basement and experiment on him so the Torchwood Team can get regenerations. They also manage to copy TARDIS technology.
2152
2153Eventually they leave an alternate 5th Doctor (Yes. 5th.) alongside K9 and the TARDIS in the basement.
2154
2155Sarah Jane resques them, and travels with Alterna!5th and K9. She is 22 when that happens, and is 29 when she eventually leaves. K9 leaves with her, and she is also given a Sonic Lipstick. She goes on to marry Harry Sullivan.
2156
2157The Fifth Doctor goes to Gallifrey again, becomes Lord President, and goes with Romana on the quest of the Key to Time. After the Key to Time is completed, it causes them to regenerate. Alterna!Fivey into an Alterna!Sixie, and Romana into a Romana II different from Lalla Ward's. But both have similiarities to Princess Astra's bloodline. They marry each other and go to live on Gallifrey, they have a son and daughter together, and eventually Romana becomes Lady President herself!
2158
2159Time passes. The son and daughter graduate from the Academy. Alt!Romana II is still Lady President, and Alt!Sixie is still vice-president. This is while our Doctor would be the Eighth Doctor and travelling with Charley Pollard and C'Rizz.
2160
2161A lot of other time passes. Theta Sigma VI and Romana II manage to stop the Time War. (Meanwhile in our timeline, Eighth is travelling with Molly.)
2162
2163A lot of yet other time passes. Meanwhile the Ninth Doctor travels with Rose, Theta Sigma regenerates into Theta Sigma VII.
2164
2165Theta Sigma VII also manages to repair the TARDIS' chameleon circuit. He travels with his own K9 as well as teen alien girl and boy, from a different planet each. The two teens are about 11 when they join, and about 17 when they leave.
2166
2167[[WMG: Kathleen Dudman was Charley Pollard's one true love.]]
2168
2169[[WMG: Claire is Dan and Peri's daughter]]
2170
2171[[WMG: Claire is a Sarah Jane echo]]
2172
2173[[WMG: The Cronolock Guy was actually a runaway Luvic.]]
2174
2175[[WMG: The Doctor never uses their (Gallifreyan) name because it sounds silly, or means something silly.]]
2176The Doctor's name is the Gallifreyan equivalent of [=KVIIItlyin=], Jaeysin, or Abcde. Alternatively, it translates to "Fart-face".

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