Doctor Who: Who Is the Doctor? The Secret History of the Secret History

Hi there! Today continues this blog's series of posts I will call "Politics? I'd Rather Talk About Doctor Who". That being said, I will have some comments on Tuesday's mid-term elections but I will probably not post about that until Thursday.

For now....it's Doctor Who time!

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55 years after the debut of Doctor Who, we have a pretty good handle on the Doctor.  

A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey steals a TARDIS and assumes the name of “The Doctor” to explore the universe and have the odd adventure or two. 

We all understand it began with an “odd curiosity in a junkyard and led into quite the spirited adventure” as William Hartnell put it as the first Doctor.

But was he really the first? 

In "Arachnids in the UK", the Doctor was babbling a bit  aimlessly (as the Doctor is want to do) when she reminisced  abou she was once "a sister in an aqua hospital. Apparently, a "sister” is an euphemism for a female nurse. Does this suggest the Doctor has been female before? 

In “World Enough and Time” in Series 10,  Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor is recalling his Academy days. "I think [the Master] was a man back then. I'm fairly sure that I was, too. It was a long time ago, though."  Does the Doctor’s lack of a definitive recollection of his gender at the Time Lord academy suggest the possibility that the Doctor has been female before? 

Is it possible the Doctor has had more faces and personas than we have seen before?  

The classic series cast some doubt on who we knew the Doctor to be. "The Brain of Morbius" included a scene in which Tom Baker’s Doctor engaged another Time Lord in a psychic battle; faces of his previous incarnations flashed on the screen, running back through Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, William Hartnell - and then on to eight other faces. 

The implication is that Hartnell's wasn't the First Doctor.  after all. 

There have been instances in the show that have established what we have seen as the status quo, that the Doctor began with William Hartnell’s face.  

In “Twice Upon a Time”, Capaldi’s Doctor acknowledges the persona we know of as the 1st Doctor as the beginning. Indeed, that Doctor refers to himself as the original.  

In “Time of the Doctor”, Matt Smith’s Doctor acknowledges the limits of his regeneration cycle and that is at an end, a count that only works if you begin the count with Hartnell’s Doctor as the first.  

In the classic series “Mawdryn Undead”, Peter Davison’s count off the regenerations he’s used and the ones he has left work only if we start with Hartnell’s Doctor.  

But here’s a silly idea. What if William Hartnell’s Doctor wasn’t the first 1st Doctor?  


What if the Doctor had lived a full Time Lord life through 12 regenerations? Then the Time Lords give the Doctor a new set of regenerations, a cycle that begins with William Hartnell’s Doctor? 

Of course that presents more questions than answers.

There is also the possibility when the Doctor, when sounding mixed up about the details of his own past is just mixed up. The Doctor is well over 2,000 years old. It is a lot to keep track of.

Or the Doctor’s just being goofy for the hell of it, tossing out nonsense about their past to people off track from the real past, the real history, the real story of the Doctor’s past.   

I tend to think it’s the latter. 

But what if there is a secret history of the Doctor, a history that predates that odd curiosity in a junkyard?

Ooo-wee-ooo! 

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On Thursday: 

Doctor Who again as we look at the question of the Doctor's family.

AND my post-mortem on the 2018 mid-term elections.