Doctor Number 23: The Seventh Doctor
Due to the recasting of The Doctor from Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor to Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh we didn’t get a proper regeneration story for the Sixth that appeared in the TV show. There is little doubt that it was the Sixth who regenerated into the Seventh though as we see The Doctor wearing the same attire as the Sixth injured fatally on the ground with the correct curly blonde hair to indicate that it is him. When making the episode this was in fact Sylvester McCoy playing the Sixth Doctor, as Colin Baker wasn’t invited back to film the regeneration sequence.
Again, this can lead to wiggle room that could be argued that an additional Doctor who looks nearly identical to the Seventh Doctor, but has the same haircut as the Sixth could exist. In this sense, it would tie into the previously mentioned Interim Doctor as a version of the Doctor who bridges a gap between two others. This however is a stretch as a theory and there is no evidence to support it as the intention of the producers of the show.
Doctor Number 24: The Eighth Doctor
OK things are going to start getting very interesting again very quickly!
The one off TV movie Doctor Who, that was made in the mid 1990s featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.
We see the Seventh Doctor in the movie and that he directly regenerates into Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, but before this happens we hear the Eighth Doctor provide the opening narration of the story. In this it’s noted that The Doctor claims that he is half human!
This was a controversial point for the character as fans were upset at the idea that the Doctor wasn’t fully Time Lord, although for the most part this has been completely ignored by all later TV stories. This plot point could indicate that there is something that makes this Eighth Doctor not part of the same continuity as the others, but there is nothing to suggest that this is so as footage from this movie is included in many later episodes.
It is of note that the Tenth Doctor, The Master and The Fugitive Doctor all used a device called the chameleon arch to rewrite their DNA to become human. Could an explanation for this be explored on the TV show in the future?
Other than this first appearance in the TV movie, the Eighth Doctor wouldn’t appear on screen in new footage until the mini episode The Night of The Doctor where we see his regeneration into the War Doctor.
Before this point it was always assumed that the Eighth Doctor would have regenerated into the Ninth, but as it was never shown on screen it meant there was room for alterations and additions to the storyline.
Which brings us to…
Doctor Number 25: The War Doctor
The existence of the War Doctor came about because the Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston wouldn’t reprise his role for the 50th Anniversary special. The story of the show was planned to show the events of the Last Great Time War where all the Time Lords and Daleks were killed as a result of the Doctor’s actions as the only thing to save the universe.
With the Ninth Doctor not returning, it was decided to create a secret Doctor, and John Hurt was hired to play this secret Doctor, who is most commonly referred to as the War Doctor, but is also known as The Other Doctor in some marketing materials.
The introduction of a secret Doctor after 50 years of the show was a mind bending thing, but has lead the way for the Timeless Children and Fugitive Doctor stories, as well as speculation around others covered in this article.
This War Doctor is shown to have been the one who fought in the Time War and because his actions of genocide were so traumatic, the Doctor hid and disowned this incarnation even from himself. This idea is explored when Clara Oswald, who went into the Doctor’s time stream and met all previous versions of The Doctor up to the Eleventh, but had not met the War Doctor.
This detail in particular leaves a lot of room for Clara to have not met the Timeless Children or the Fugitive Doctor, if it is established that versions of the Doctor can be hidden from themselves in their own timestream.
At the end of the 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, we see the War Doctor begin to regenerate, but as Christopher Eccleston declined to return we don’t see the War Doctor change into the Ninth Doctor. The only hint we get of what happens here is that there is a slight change to the shape of the War Doctor’s eyes.
This is a handy fact for this theory because…
