Fugitive Doctor

Jo Martin

Holby City (2019-2022, most episodes)

Dreaming Whilst Black (2023)

* I decided to watch this on a total whim one day, and unexpectedly it was a total delight. Honestly felt my life was better for having seen it. Wonderful.

David Bradley

Harry Potter (2001-2011)

Game of Thrones (bits)

* No, never seen an episode of this either. I do occasionally feel like the only person in the world who hasn't, but "what if Tolkien had written a porno?" wasn't a question I'd ever considered worth asking, let alone producing eight series to answer.

Broadchurch

* Again. But only series 1.

Richard E. Grant

Withnail and I (1987, bits)

* With Paul McGann.

This (from 7:23)

Michael Jayston

Emmerdale (various episodes, 2007-2008)

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

* I didn't think this was brilliant when I watched it the other week, but anyone who likes Jayston as the Valeyard will appreciate his performance. He's fine, the film itself is just a bit boring.

Peter Cushing

Star Wars (1977)

Many Hammer horror films

* Including but not limited to Dracula (1958, and excellent), The Blood Beast Terror (1968, and dreadful), Island of Terror (1967, and occasionally both), and The Abominable Snowmen (1957, and nowhere near as good as the Troughton story). There will be others I've seen. He was a very good actor, Cushing, who I'm afraid is now more or less only remembered for being Moff Tarkin. He was also in The House that Dripped Blood, which featured in the Pertwee list too.

John Hurt

10 Rillington Place (1971)

Champions (1984)

The Elephant Man (1980)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

* Normally when people say they have "controversial opinions", they mean being a closet racist or homophobe. For me it means this is my favourite Indiana Jones film. Unfortunately, I think that's genuinely seen as worse.

Harry Potter etc.

Whistle and I'll Come to You (2010, bits)

* Back in the 70s and 80s the BBC used to do a show called "A Ghost Story for Christmas", which I've mentioned many times on here, usually in connection to 73 Yards. The early episodes, usually based on M.R. James stories, are absolutely superb. Don't let production limitations sway you from thinking they can still be scary. Very very good indeed. Unfortunately something unusual happened to the series in more recent years, where they stopped being made every year, and when we did (eventually) get a new one, they were often absolutely terrible. But this one looked very chilling, so I was delighted when we settled down at Christmas last year to watch this when it was shown on TPTV...only for our "guests" (nothing to do with me) to choose something else instead. Still, every villain needs an origin story, and it's important to exercise misanthropy every now and then or you might lose your touch.

For anyone unaware, John Hurt is basically one of the greatest actors of all time. Anything at all with him in it is worth a look if convenient. Must admit I also have a soft spot since he's from around the same parts as I am.

My completionism would normally tell me to include Sacha Dhawan for his brief stint as Dr. Who in The Power of the Doctor, but it'd be much more obvious to do him for a Masters one (at some point), so I'll do that instead. An honourable mention also goes to the brilliant Tim Treloar, who does Pertwee for Big Finish. He pops up in virtually everything, but I'm only doing the TV series here.

I understand Davies isn't going to retcon the Timeless Child arc, but in a few years time, a future writer/showrunner could use my theory.

We know Ruth comes before the 13th Doctor, and 2 popular theories include her being pre-Hartnell, and the other being her being in between the second and third Doctor. However, both of these are flawed as Ruth's TARDIS is stuck as a police box, and the first Doctor was the one who first realised this, while Ruth being between 2 and 3 doesn't work as it would mean that David Tennant wouldn't be able to regenerate into Matt Smith since his aborted regeneration in The Stolen Earth was supposed to be the last one, rather than 11's regeneration in Time of The Doctor.

So, here is my idea. We never saw the old 11th Doctor deaging back to his younger self at the end of Time of The Doctor, so this could very well have been where the Fugitive Doctor appeared. She might have flew the TARDIS out of Trenzalore, lived her secret life then regenerated. The Time Lords never disclosed how many extra regenerations the Doctor got in Hell Bent, so who knows if Ruth had regenerated several times before regenerating back into Matt Smith's Doctor, returning to Clara where he would become Peter Capaldi's Doctor. This would also mean that the Curator's promise of revisiting old faces in the 50th anniversary special would be fulfilled a lot sooner!

Before you ask, Ruth could have changed the TARDIS interior to the one seen in Series 12 back to 11's before she returned to Clara. As for 13 not recognising Ruth, the Doctor could always have lost his/her memory after Ruth's incarnation died.

Any flaws you find in this idea are welcome to be shared so I can improve the idea.

Alright, The votes are locked in! These Doctors will face off in round two:

Second Doctor vs Fourth Doctor

Fifth Doctor vs Seventh Doctor

Ninth Doctor vs Tenth Doctor

Eleventh Doctor vs Fugitive Doctor

(I was notified that you’re only supposed to post 3 polls a day, so my polls will be more spaced out in the future.)

May the best Doctor win!

Why can't the doctor remember anything pre-Hartnell?

I'm coming back after years and I'm lost

"The Timeless Children" is an episode which has been hated on quite a lot because of the plot twist. Before we start‚i'd like to say there are no pre-hartnell doctors‚only pre-hartnell incarnations. The Fugitive Doctor is an incarnation of the doctor and it's one of those incarnations where we dont know where the hell to put her on the timeline,like that of the Curator. There are many theories,but I'd say that the Season 6B theory is most plausible. In The War Games,we never see the second doctor regenerate,we only see faces of him fly around himself as he falls into the void. The second doctor could've had a regeneration like the tenths,with him not actually changing. This leads us to the second second doctor and also Season 6B with the multi doctor specials. The second doctor eventually gets caught and regenerates into the fugitive and is forced to work for the Division as a punishment.

The Fugitive Doctor is not pre-hartnell,only post-troughton and pre-pertwee. So now we've proved the pre-hartnell fugitive theory isn't true,let's try and fix the actual problem itself:The Timeless Child.

How did the eleventh get a new set of regenerations if he had infinite? Because he didn't. The Timeless Child was used to give Time Lords regeneration abilities,but they only had 12 regenerations and 13 bodies. Why would The Timeless Child not also get 12 regenerations? The first face of morbius seen in their debut serial is eventually found and turned into the first doctor. The first doctor is very young at first but eventually has a grandchild called Susan. He takes on the alias "The Doctor",making him the first doctor. He got limited to 12 regenerations (those being him,troughton,pertwee,baker,davison,baker,mccoy,mcgann,eccleston,tennant and smith) and his memory was wiped.

This was until the Thirteenth Doctor (with a new ongoing regeneration cycle,with the only ones apart of it currently known being Capaldi,Whittaker,Tennant & Gatwa) re-met the Master and he trapped her in the Matrix,leading to her learning a lot of things about herself including The Timeless Child & The Faces Of Morbius (the fourth doctor might've had a slight memory of the faces of morbius as he exclaims "no not that far back" or something like that).

Theory 1: Lee from Fugitive of the Judoon is Karvanista.

Think about it, in the most recent episode, the Doctor theorised that in her past life, Karvanista was her “companion”, and that’s what Lee presumably was too. He could’ve been using a perception filter when he was hiding on Earth with the Fugitive Doctor, making him look like a human, and yes, Lee was killed by Gat, but he could’ve survived somehow…

Theory 2 (kinda borrowed from Mr TARDIS on YT): Karvanista, Lee & Gat we’re all the Doctor’s companions once.

So in Once, Upon Time, we see the Fugitive Doctor breaking into the Temple of Atropos to stop Swarm & Azure, accompanied by three figures represented by Dan, Yaz and Vinder. We see one of those figures (Dan) is actually Karvanista, so could the other two perhaps be Lee and Gat? Gat did call Lee “faithful companion” in Fugitive of the Judoon, and Karvanista did say the Doctor once “left [him]” in her past life, so the same thing could’ve happened to Gat, but not Lee perhaps…

I have a theory that the ‘Scream of the Shalka’ Doctor is in fact a previous Doctor working for the Division (ie. before the Fugitive Doctor), and another about the Master in it as well, but I’ll get to that in a bit. The ‘Shalka’ Doctor says to himself as he arrives that “they” (almost definitely the Time Lords) had sent him there, and has a feel of reluctance about it; definitely doing his job, but not entirely comfortable being ordered around all the time - very much like the Doctor. There’s nothing mentioned in the story that directly contradicts this theory, which is more that can be said for a lot of established aspects of the show.

I think that the TARDIS being a Police Box in this as well kind of works in a way since the Fugitive Doctor also had a Police Box TARDIS - something which I think was very much overlooked on Chibnall’s behalf. This, however, kind of gives it a bit more credibility, in that the TARDIS was stuck as a Police Box for the Division Doctors (probably issued to them brand new), but one day got stuck as a Police Box, but when - centuries later - the First Doctor stole it, it reverted back to that as a kind of memory or continuation. This goes back to the idea that the TARDIS is sentient and knows what’s best for the Doctor, as shown in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’.

Now for the Master…

The ‘Android’ Master in ‘Scream of the Shalka’ said that he was given the choice to die or become, essentially, the Doctor’s pet. What if the Division contacted the Master just at the moment of death (as the Time Lords did Clara), and offered him this choice. Then suppose that this moment was in fact when Missy ‘dies’ on the Mondasian ship. This would mean that the ‘redeemed’ Missy was offered to help a previous version of the Doctor or face death. Knowing the Master, the non-death option would always be taken, but it seems almost perfect that Missy is given this chance to do what she was working for over millennia to do. This also explains that when we see the Master next in ‘Spyfall’, he’s back to his mad old self - the Master was ‘recruited’ and therefore learned about the Division and the Timeless Child and so on, explaining how he came across the information in the first place (I know it says he hacked the Matrix, but how or why he did that, and especially at this point in time, is beyond me). I feel like this ties in nicely with the already established Timeless Child timeline, but also gives Missy’s ‘redemption arc’ the send off it deserves. It’s also just nice to be able to fit ‘Scream of the Shalka’ into the Doctor Who timeline because it’s just great.

If you’ve made it this far, I have to say thank you and also well done. Let me know what you make of this if it hasn’t just been paragraphs of sheer nonsense.

The Doctor, in this scenario, has no special origin story, they're just a regular old Gallifreyan/Time Lord who happened to go on and do amazing things.

...one of said amazing things just so happens to be paradoxically becoming the template for their own society.

Long into the Doctor's future, they end up regenerating into a child with amnesia. Separated from the TARDIS and with no memory of who they are, the child is eventually discovered by Tecteun, takes them under her care, discovers their regeneration ability, and the child becomes the biological template of the Time Lords. The child goes on to regenerate multiple times, but with their initial amnesia still remaining. Sometime after their seventh incarnation, however, memories of their past lives as the Doctor gradually begin to return. By the time they regenerate into the incarnation that would also be known as “Ruth Clayton”, they’ve reunited with their TARDIS, and they now have a pretty good, but not perfect idea of who they are meant to be, but they still haven’t fully recovered their memories (hence why “Ruth” doesn’t recognise her Thirteenth incarnation).

So i had this idea that the fugitive doctor aka Ruth might be a "proto-doctor". Basically she's the doctor in name but she is still developing into the future time lord. She regenerates into William Hartnell and has scant memories of her prior life one of which is the name "doctor". I don't intend to be divisive. Just leave your thoughts below.

Just a theory I came up with for how Jo Martin could be the 14th Doctor: So she regenerates from 13 who has managed to uncover all of her redacted memories. The strain of having so many new memories cause 14s mind to become fragmented. She remembers being Hartnell and troughton but then her memories fracture and she thinks her immediate predecessor is one of the "timeless children" incarnations who may have worke for the time lords. It could explain why she doesnt remember being 13 or the sonic but thinks that she worked for the time lords. As for gat and the judoon. Maybe she travels back to the era of gallery where one of her incarnations did work for the time lords and so thats how g At got after her. Just an idea I had. Feel free to share your own below 🙂.

I like Jo Martin as the Doctor and hope she's cast as the 14th Doctor. Just on her character does anybody besides me enjoy her performance?

So the doctor was reincarnated from the other and you know THAT story and the Morbius doctors exist and Brendan Bildbriain and the fugitive doctor (what I’m calling her) commence as well and possibly 3 other incarnation(s) or that the first 3 doctors are the last in the first cycle but 10 more are added (with the materialism circuit) to I don’t know compensate for the 10 incarnations before hartnell and history goes on

Oh by the way in the expanded media the sixth doctor said that his memory was bad before his second regeneration and you might ask “how is Ruth’s doctor tardis a police box” well the tardis got damaged and lands on gallifrey and goes back to its default look (somehow) and the 10 incarnations before hartnell are forgotten and he steals the tardis again without him knowing it was his all along