User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1783865-20200302103744/@comment-28349479-20200331001346

Given the preponderance of stories which show that Hartnell's incarnation is the first, the Relic Doctor is no more "contradictory to other stories" or "highly ambiguous" than the Morbius Doctors and the Timeless Child.

The point of the "More ambiguous" section is to list major manifestations of the Doctor which are linked to the Doctor but not clearly connected via regeneration: accounts differ as to The Other's relationship with the Doctor, but most agree it was via reincarnation; different stories disagree on whether the Morbius faces belong to the Other, the Timeless Children, or the Doctor himself; and the Watcher, Valeyard, and Meta-crisis are each best understood as "spin-offs" from the Doctor's regenerations. The Relic simply does not belong in this category, whereas the Morbius faces most definitely do.

And as has been discussed at length upthread, while it might make sense one day to break the list of widely accepted incarnations along regeneration cycle lines, the distinction between Classic and New incarnations is significantly more useful to the not we and, frankly, it just looks better.

I still think LegoK9's offering at Thread:267362 is the one to beat (not least because he uses the •s correctly).