Was Hartnell first?

[Sindatur]

As far as The Master goes with Regenerations, he Regenerated from Derek Jacobi into John Simm, so he got Regenerations from somewhere.

Professor Yana could've been a stolen body ala Tremas or Eric Roberts, but, the John Simm body was definitely a Regeneration.

 

[Nagisa Furukawa]

As far as The Master goes with Regenerations, he Regenerated from Derek Jacobi into John Simm, so he got Regenerations from somewhere.

Professor Yana could've been a stolen body ala Tremas or Eric Roberts, but, the John Simm body was definitely a Regeneration.

Simm said the Time Lords resurrected him and in The Five Doctors, they offered him a new cycle of regenerations, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume that when they brought him back to life, they gave him a new cycle for the front line.

 

[Sindatur]

As far as The Master goes with Regenerations, he Regenerated from Derek Jacobi into John Simm, so he got Regenerations from somewhere.

Professor Yana could've been a stolen body ala Tremas or Eric Roberts, but, the John Simm body was definitely a Regeneration.

Simm said the Time Lords resurrected him and in The Five Doctors, they offered him a new cycle of regenerations, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume that when they brought him back to life, they gave him a new cycle for the front line.

Absolutely, that's my point, since we know he Regenerated, the Timelords must have been capable of providing Regenerations as they claimed to be able to do

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

Looks like some people need to pay better attention next time they read Lungbarrow.

I've read it three times.

 

[diankra]

Since the faces in The Brain Of Morbius were abiguous they can viewed either way, even though it was the intent of Terrence Dicks from what I understand that the faces were the Doctor's own. However I don't know how much weight that carries since Robert Holmes rewrote the story.

FWIW, Terrance Dicks's book write-up of Morbius fudges the issue: "The debonair white-haired features of the Doctor as Sarah had first known him... Yet another Doctor appeared on teh screen - a dark haired little man with a whimsical expression. Then another face... a proud-looking old man. Sarah had a confused impression of even more faces on the screen." (I've skipped copying the bits that are simply quoting the dialogue as onscreen).

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Did they specify the faces were supposed to be past incarnations?

 

[Christopher]

Did they specify the faces were supposed to be past incarnations?

They accompanied Morbius asking "How far, Doctor? How long have you lived? Back to the beginning!" So yeah, they were pretty clearly meant to be past, pre-Hartnell incarnations of the Doctor. Sure, that's incompatible with how both earlier and later producers of the show approached things, but there's no doubt it's what was intended here. Continuity and Doctor Who have always had a tenuous relationship.

 

[DWF]

Did they specify the faces were supposed to be past incarnations?

No, they didn't.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Did they specify the faces were supposed to be past incarnations?

No, they didn't.

Yes, they did. If you watch the story with no preconcieved notions it is obvious that the faces were meant to be pre-Hartnell Doctors. And no, it doesn't fit neatly with previous or later continuity, but it is what it is.

 

[DWF]

Did they specify the faces were supposed to be past incarnations?

No, they didn't.

Yes, they did. If you watch the story with no preconcieved notions it is obvious that the faces were meant to be pre-Hartnell Doctors. And no, it doesn't fit neatly with previous or later continuity, but it is what it is.

Until I learned of the intent I always thought those were Morbius' faces since right after they appeared Morbius lost. I never watched it wtih any preconieved notions. The scene is ambiguous.

 

[Turbo]

Agreed. It's really not very clear in the episode, and it works fine with them being Morbius's incarnations.

 

[Sketcher]

Do we honestly know enough about the Doctor's past to say they might not be past incarnations? He is a Time Lord with a boatload of secrets after all.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Mt theory was, if they weren't past Doctors, they might have been an attempt at showing future Doctors.

What Diankra was saying about Terrence Dicks' take on it put the thought in my head that the original idea could have gone either way.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Do we honestly know enough about the Doctor's past to say they might not be past incarnations? He is a Time Lord with a boatload of secrets after all.

No we don't. He's said some things about his previous incarnations, but it's been said that the Doctor lies quite a lot.

 

[JoeZhang]

Do we honestly know enough about the Doctor's past to say they might not be past incarnations? He is a Time Lord with a boatload of secrets after all.

No we don't. He's said some things about his previous incarnations, but it's been said that the Doctor lies quite a lot.

The problem with that is that the Timelords themselves seem pretty clear which Doctor is the first incarnation, now you could argue that they are lying but who to? They reveal this information while talking to each other.

 

[The Doctor]

Hartnell's Doctor may have been first, but was possibly not. Or something.

In a series about time travel, getting hung up on continuity is kinda silly. Wibbly-wobbly and all that.

 

[The Wormhole]

Do we honestly know enough about the Doctor's past to say they might not be past incarnations? He is a Time Lord with a boatload of secrets after all.

Well, in The Five Doctors when the Fifth and First Doctors first meet.

First: "Regeneration?"
Fifth: "Fourth."
First: "Ah, so there are five of me now."

Pretty sure the Doctor doesn't lie to or keep secrets from himself.

 

[Andrew_Kearley]

The thing is, just because the Time Lords believe that Hartnell was the first, it doesn't make it a fact. They could have been fooled along with everyone else. The infamous sequence in "Brain of Morbius" opens up a tantalising glimpse into something we'd never suspected before. What if the Doctor was reborn, and perhaps doesn't even remember his earlier incarnations himself - except when his mental barriers were broken open during the mind-wrestling contest.

 

[Christopher]

Do we honestly know enough about the Doctor's past to say they might not be past incarnations? He is a Time Lord with a boatload of secrets after all.

He's also a fictional character whose adventures have been related by many different writers and producers with different sets of assumptions about the character and the series' continuity. Every story except this one has agreed that Hartnell was the first incarnation of the Doctor. Even in the Cartmel Masterplan, where the Doctor was a reincarnation of the Other, Hartnell was still the first incarnation of the reborn individual who knows himself as the Doctor. If one story claims something that every other story disagrees with, I don't think we should ignore the preponderance of evidence in favor of a single anomalous data point. Particularly since it's such a minor element of the story, just an odd bit of trivia.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

.....What if the Doctor was reborn, and perhaps doesn't even remember his earlier incarnations himself - except when his mental barriers were broken open during the mind-wrestling contest.

Hmmmmm... :

[The Doctor watches his original self on the laptop screen]

Hauser:
Howdy, stranger! This is Hauser. If things have gone wrong, I'm talking to myself and you don't have a wet towel around your head. Now, whatever your name is, get ready for the big surprise. You are not you, you're me.