Warning: spoilers ahead for Doctor Who season 14, episode 6, “Rogue.”
Summary
By process of elimination,Doctor Who’s new canon Doctor can only fit into the existing timeline at one or two points in the character’s line of regenerations. Ncuti Gatwa is the Fifteenthofficial Doctor actor inDoctor Whohistory, but the franchise’s winding canon also accepts John Hurt’s War Doctor as an additional regeneration between Eight and Nine, as well as Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor from the blank period before William Hartnell’s First Doctor. “The Timeless Children” and “The Brain of Morbius” both highlighted other faces the Doctor adopted early in their existence, albeit only in brief flashes.
AfterDoctor Whoseason 14, episode 6, “Rogue,” another face has joined that prestigious list. When the Doctor is scanned by the episode’s eponymous charmer, a procession of holograms listing all previous canon Doctors curls around Gatwa’s torso. Aside from the main 15, Hurt, and Fugitive, the holograms include another, far less familiar, visage. Exactly where this mystery Doctor slots into the regeneration timeline is unknown, but there are only a select few explanations that actually work.
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Doctor Who’s New Doctor Likely Came Before William Hartnell’s First Doctor
The Most Logical Space For New Doctors Is At The Very Beginning
WhenDoctor Whoreturned in 2005, Paul McGann had regenerated into Christopher Eccleston entirely offscreen, and that omission was later exploited to introduce John Hurt’s War Doctor as a secret iteration that occurred between them. By the end ofDoctor Who’s 50th anniversary, however, audiences had witnessed both McGann’s transformation into Hurt and Hurt’s transformation into Eccleston, leavingno timeline gaps that could accommodate an extra Doctor anywhere between William Hartnell and Ncuti Gatwa.
The mystery Doctor’s hologram looks suspiciously like Richard E. Grant, who portrayed the Ninth Doctor in 2003’s animated “Scream of the Shalka.”
The new holographic Doctor also cannot be a future incarnation. The other 17 Doctors shown in “Rogue” are all past faces, so it would be very odd to toss one single future Doctor into the mix. More importantly, Rogue’s ship registers the other regenerations because it scans the Fifteenth Doctor’s body to determine whether the Time Lord is a shape-shifter.It makes no sense that the scanner could somehow see into the futureand predict what physical shape the Doctor will adopt in centuries to come.
The most logical explanation is, then, a pre-Hartnell Doctorthat lived somewhere betweenDoctor Who’s original Timeless Childand the Doctor being memory-wiped by the Division for the last time.Doctor Whostill hasn’t revealed how many regenerations the Doctor burned through during this period, but the scanner’s ability to pick up Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor suggests the technology is at least capable of detecting regenerations before Hartnell.
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IfDoctor Who’s new Doctor precedes the First, a sizable canon retcon may have occurred. The mystery Doctor’s hologram looks suspiciously like Richard E. Grant, who portrayed the Ninth Doctor in 2003’s animated “Scream of the Shalka.” The so-called Shalka Doctor was ejected from canon thanks toDoctor Who’s 2005 TV reboot, which installed Eccleston as the true Ninth Doctor,so it’s possible that Grant’s Shalka Doctor is now being treated as a pre-Hartnell regeneration.
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Anything Is Possible In RTD’s Post-Toymaker Doctor Who
Since the Toymaker breachedDoctor Who’s universe in a hail of camp ’90s choreography, the show’s landscape has become notably more fantastical and malleable - as demonstrated by the arrival of Maestro,Ruby’s altered timeline in “73 Yards,” and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s confirmation that UNIT has noticed an increase in supernatural phenomena. The Toymaker also informed the Fourteenth Doctor that he “made a jigsaw” out of the Time Lord’s timeline, and Russell T Davies elaborated on this line in the episode’s official commentary, explaining how the reference was designed to loosenDoctor Whocanon and allow any and all possibilities to coexist.
With this in mind,the unidentified Doctor shown in “Rogue” - Shalka or not - may hail from a parallel universe or alternate reality, with traces of their existence inside the Fifteenth Doctor being picked up by the scanner aboard Rogue’s ship. It’s even feasible that the Toymaker’s meddling is directly responsible for bringing this Doctor intoDoctor Who’s timeline of regenerations, with his jigsaw-like activities resulting in the existence of an entirely new iteration that wasn’t present before. And if the new Doctor is indeed Richard E. Grant, the Toymaker may have been responsible for the whole Shalka escapade too, creating a totally separate Ninth Doctor.
The New Doctor May Be The Result Of Bi-Generation
Has A New Line Of Regenerations Already Started?
Bi-generation is still a new concept forDoctor Who, and the mechanics of how it works are not fully fleshed-out. Speaking in the official BBC commentary for “The Giggle,” however, Russell T Davies did reveal that in the aftermath of Fourteen’s bi-generation, every past Doctor retroactively bi-generated also, meaning all former Doctors were able to continue adventuring after their respective deaths, just like Fourteen himself.
After “Rogue,” Richard E. Grant may be the alternate Ninth Doctor that came from the bi-generated Paul McGann.
Doctor Whohas not yet clarified what happens to these reborn Doctors when they next bite the dust. If, for example, David Tennant’s retired Fourteenth Doctor left Donna’s house one day and was immediately struck down by a big red bus, nobody knows quite what would happen next. Fourteen might simply stay dead, having passed his regenerative abilities onto his successor, but could just as easily regenerate into another Ncuti Gatwa, leaving the world with two separate versions of the Fifteenth Doctor.
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A third possibility is that the dying Fourteen, from under the wheels of his double-deckered nemesis, would regenerate into an entirely new Doctor, which would be another way to account for the unknown holographic face in “Rogue.” This explanation is especially intriguing if the new Doctor is supposed to be Richard E. Grant’s Shalka Doctor. Originally, Grant was the Ninth Doctor before being displaced by Christopher Eccleston. After “Rogue,” Grant may be the alternate Ninth Doctor that came from the bi-generated Paul McGann, which would allow the Shalka Doctor to keep his place inDoctor Who’s timeline, but without upsetting Eccleston.
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