User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1783865-20200302103744/@comment-28349479-20200331003510

I'd love to explain.

First off, there is no "unplaced section". There is an "Other selves & unplaced incarnations" section. As you can see in Thread:267362, this is reserved for incarnations of the Doctor who we know are linked via regeneration, and per The Timeless Children, of course the Timeless Child falls in this category.

In contrast, the "More ambiguous" section covers Doctors who are not clearly linked via regeneration: for instance, the Other was reincarnated into the Doctor, and the Watcher, Valeyard, and Meta-crisis are each best understood as "spin-offs".

The question of where The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) belongs therefore comes down to, "How are the Morbius faces related to the Doctor?"


 * The Virgin New Adventures, particularly Cold Fusion and Lungbarrow, indeed confirm that the Doctor's previous faces seen during the mindbending contest belong to the Other, and are therefore related via reincarnation.


 * On the other hand, The Brain of Morbius and Something at the Door (among other stories) confirm that the faces belong to the Doctor's previous regenerations.

Because of Tardis:Neutral point of view, we must treat these contradictory accounts as equally true, meaning that the relationship of the faces to the Doctor is not clearly regeneration related and can only be accurately described as "More ambiguous". So yes, to pick the TV show's explanation over the novels' would naturally violate T:NPOV.