Doctors Number 9-16: The Morbius Doctors
So, for anyone who hasn’t been pleased with the above mentioned Timeless Children and Fugitive Doctor pre-dating William Hartnell, here’s some news for you. The history of the Doctor was messed up all the way back in 1976.
During the Thirteenth series (interesting that controversy seems to surround the number 13…) there was a story called The Brain of Morbius where the Forth Doctor played by Tom Baker battles the Time Lord known as Morbius.
Very controversially at the time, the episode had The Doctor and Morbius battle with their minds in a kind of mind wrestling device…thing.
Anyway, whilst hooked up into this device there was a display which showed a series of images of the Doctor’s past lives. It started with an image of the Forth Doctor, before showing the Third, Second and First Doctors in that order. After this point we then see a series of eight additional faces which are implied to be past lives of the Doctor.
Many fans were horrified at the time as not only would this mean William Hartnell was not the first Doctor, but it would also mean that Tom Baker was in fact the Twelfth Doctor. In this era it was also established as a rule that a Time Lord can only have Thirteen lives, this would mean the series would be close to a finish with only one more incarnation after Tom Baker being possible.
Many fans tried to explain that the eight faces seen would have been Morbius’s past lives, but this theory has been proven untrue in various ways.
Firstly, from what we see on screen itself. The Doctor’s faces are shown in reverse order starting with the current Doctor and regressing backwards. This chain continues straight into the eight faces without first showing Morbius’s current appearance. This is important as it had shown the Forth Doctor’s face before showing his past lives, so this would imply it is still showing the Doctor.
Additionally, the producer of the episode Philip Hinchcliffe , and script editor Robert Holmes have both stated that the intention was that these were past faces of the Doctor.
It could be said that the introduction of Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor had retconned this out of the series, as Peter Davidson’s Doctor should have been his thirteenth and final incarnation following the 12 regeneration rule.
However, the producers of the show clearly weren’t done with the Morbius Doctors as their image was used again in the above mentioned Timeless Child storyline when the Thirteenth Doctor was trapped in the Matrix by the Master. The Doctor overloaded the Matrix and used memories of her past lives blow it up. Within the included memories we see the same images of the Morbius Doctors as we had seen in the Brain of Morbius story.
Of course, this could be argued to be just a memory of her interaction with Morbius as we do see shots of others who aren’t the Doctor. Considering the vast amount of footage that could have been included in this sequence, it’s clearly the intention of the producers of the episode that the Morbius Doctors are being shown as past lives of the Doctor in this instance.
In fact, if anything, their inclusion just helps the Timeless Child storyline to fit in with the history of the show. These Morbius Doctors actually create what can be considered a definitive order of eight Doctors leading up to William Hartnell.
Doctor Number 17: The First Doctor
And now this is where the numbering comes into play. William Hartnell has been known as the First Doctor for decades, but it’s worth remembering that for his entire run of the show he wasn’t known as the First Doctor. He was simply The Doctor.
The reason for this is because they never had any intention that the Doctor would regenerate, and the idea of regeneration came about only as a means to acknowledge the recasting of William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton.
Even this wasn’t called a regeneration at the time and was just seen as a ‘renewal’. The idea being that Patrick Troughton was just meant to be the Doctor having de-aged.
Interestingly in the case of the First Doctor, the character has also been played by Richard Hurndall and David Bradley. Unlike alternative versions of later Doctors, in particular the Ninth Doctor, where various actors could all claim to have played different versions of the Ninth Doctor, Hurndall and Bradley were both re-castings of the First Doctor as played by William Hartnell.
It’s also of note that Michael Jones played the First Doctor as a child in 2014 in the episode ‘Listen’ and is met by Clara. It should be noted that whilst the intention of the producers at the time was for this to be a child version of the Doctor, it could later be clarified that this child is pre-William Hartnell and is connected with the Timeless Children as an additional eighth Timeless Child.
This possibly won’t happen as it would raise questions of Clara’s understanding of The Doctor’s regenerations as her story had already explained that she knew every Doctor from the First through to the Eleventh. Therefore she may have known this was the First Doctor as a child.
If this is meant to be the First Doctor as a child, it would clarify that at some point after being the adult Fugitive Doctor, that the Doctor was able to regenerate back to being a child.
Doctor Number 17A: Dr Who
So, whilst this breakdown of all of the incarnations of the Doctor will attempt to reconcile how all of the Doctors we’ve seen on the TV show can all count within a cohesive continuity, a problem is created with Peter Cushings appearances in the movies Dr Who and The Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth.
This version of The Doctor is a human scientist who goes by the name Dr. Who, and is not currently considered an in canon incarnation of The Doctor. They are an alternative interpretation of the First Doctor and the plot of the first movie covers the same ground as the Daleks stories in the TV show.
It was common at the time for film adaptations of TV series to recast characters with actors who were believed to have a higher profile then their TV actor counterparts, and Peter Cushings fit that bill. It also simplified the story so that mainstream audiences worldwide could follow the plot without having to know all about the history of the Doctor being an alien from Gallifrey.
Despite this, it should be expected that eventually the Peter Cushings Dr Who becomes official canon to the TV show, and attempts have been made before to do this.
The Day of the Doctor story was going to incorporate the two Peter Cushings movies into canon by explaining that Peter Cushings had played the Doctor in these films even within the fictional universe of the series. Copyright over the posters, prevented their inclusion, but the novelisation of the episode retained this detail.
The Timeless Child storyline has also introduced the idea of portals to other dimensions and stories that feature Dr Who have been produced in other media such as comics and magazines. It could be made a fact of the series that Cushings’ Dr Who is simply an alternate dimension version of the Doctor. At some point it should be expected that this will happen.
If it does happen, this Doctor would not fit into the timeline of the Doctor as a separately numbered regeneration and would still be a Doctor who runs parallel to the main character.
