What's in your "head canon"?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There is a "head canon" thread in General Trek and it inspired me to create one here. So I thought it would be fun. Feel free to contribute.

My head canon:

- Runcible, the reporter from "The Deadly Assassin", managed to regenerate after being stabbed in the back by the Master. (Indeed, why wouldn't he?) He was offered resettlement on any world he chose, and he chose Earth.

- The unlimited number of regenerations that the Doctor apparently possesses, are unique TO the Doctor. All other Time Lords are restricted to twelve.

- ALL Doctors - not just the Thirteenth - are fans of Liverpool FC.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Farewell, Sarah Jane
Downtime
Big Finish*
Tegan/Nyssa
My Bill and Ted crossover fanfic
The Meddling Monk is the Master

*Internet: "Even the contradictions?"
Garak: "Especially the contradictions."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Leader of the fascist alternate Britain from "Inferno" is that universe's counterpart of the Doctor.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Farewell, Sarah Jane
Downtime
Big Finish*
Tegan/Nyssa
My Bill and Ted crossover fanfic
The Meddling Monk is the Master

*Internet: "Even the contradictions?"
Garak: "Especially the contradictions."

I agree 1000% with all of this...

...except The Meddling Monk is The Master. Likewise The War Chief for either of them. They're separate characters who were grand adversaries of The Doctor's and deserve to stand on their own.

The Leader of the fascist alternate Britain from "Inferno" is that universe's counterpart of the Doctor.

Pretty sure that was either the actual intention or was one of Terrence Dicks' inventions when he novelized the serial. Or something like that. Pretty commonly held belief.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yeah, I think the Dictator being the Inferno-verse's Doctor was a thing in the novels, either the Missing Adventures or Past Doctor Adventures. Although the Lethbridge Stewart novel series made him Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart's father.

 

[kirk55555]

I agree 1000% with all of this...

...except The Meddling Monk is The Master. Likewise The War Chief for either of them. They're separate characters who were grand adversaries of The Doctor's and deserve to stand on their own.


Pretty sure that was either the actual intention or was one of Terrence Dicks' inventions when he novelized the serial. Or something like that. Pretty commonly held belief.

Yeah, the Monk is definitely not The Master, he has his own style and philosophy that don't even remotely resemble the Master, plus things are just really boring if every timelord villain is retconned into being the Master, there are other bad people with TARDISs flying around, too.

As for my head canons (at least the ones that come to mind immediately):

1). The Doctor played by William Hartnell is THE 1st Doctor, he's the original incarnation of the person we've been following since 1963, born on Galifrey as a child, growing up and eventually stealing a TARDIS with his granddaughter. There was no version of this person before him.
2). The Timeless Child is either The Master or a lie set up by The Master.
3). The Dhawan Master didn't destroy Galifrey, he doesn't have the power. He tricked The Doctor into thinking he did, while the Timelords actually just fled from The Master or for some other reason which The Master took advantage of, leaving a destroyed looking world behind.
4). 99% of spin off material is canon, especially if it doesn't heavily contradict big parts of the show. This includes Big Finish stuff, comics, books, etc. The big exception to this is the really nasty stuff, like the super edgelord early 90s books I've recently read about (Let's not have the 7th Doctor defending men in the past sexually assaulting young girls after a guy pawed at Ace be canon, for example).
5). When in conflict Classic Who takes priority over NuWho when it comes to continuity, and if The Doctor says something inconsistent about things like their age or old characters/alien species in NuWho then The Doctor is just lying, because they can.
6). The Fugitive Doctor regenerated from Troughton and regenerates into Pertwee.
7). The Shalka Doctor isn't canon, that guys device was faulty or detected some left over Great Intelligence stuff from somewhere (screw RTD and his sense of "humor").
8). The Fugitive and War Doctors are the only "secret" Doctors.

 

[Turbo]

Yeah, I think the Dictator being the Inferno-verse's Doctor was a thing in the novels, either the Missing Adventures or Past Doctor Adventures. Although the Lethbridge Stewart novel series made him Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart's father.

I've tried to follow some of the Lethbridge-Stewart stuff on TARDIS Wiki and it just makes my head hurt. I definitely prefer the Dictator being the alternate Doctor.

 

[Turtletrekker]

This one is more of a random thought that I had during an episode than a personal headcanon but...

UNIT knows more about the Doctor than even the Doctor themselves do in regards to past and possibly even future incarnations, going as far back as pre-Hartnell incarnations. I believe UNIT has a file on every Doctor that has ever visited Earth during their existence-- past, present and future. Meaning, if the theoretical Sixteenth or pre-Hartnell Doctor or beyond has visited Earth during UNIT's existence, then UNIT already has a file on them, and have trained their officers and how to deal with the Doctor when encountered and what they can reveal to them.

I had this thought during The Star Beast when Shirley believed that she was talking to the Tenth Doctor, understandable when dealing with a time traveler, but after Fourteen revealed his knowledge about Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, Shirley replied, "but that's forbidden knowledge".

That tells me that UNIT officers are trained to recognize any incarnation of the Doctor on sight, and are given at least just enough of information on his history to know where this incarnation fits into their history and what they can or cannot reveal to them. Am I making sense with this? Basically, the file on the Doctor in the Black Archive and UNIT soldiers interactions with the Doctor would have a very wibbly wobbly River Song's diary feel to it from UNIT's perspective. Spoilers, and all that.

Another example is in Day of the Doctor where we see that UNIT has interviewed all of the Doctor's former companions, even ones that never interacted with UNIT.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't like the idea of any pre-Hartnell Doctor. He said he was the first, so HE IS THE FIRST.

That Timeless Child stuff is not in my headcanon.

And should a future writer wish it, I'm sure there's a dozen ways it can be retconned away.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I don't like the idea of any pre-Hartnell Doctor. He said he was the first, so HE IS THE FIRST.

That Timeless Child stuff is not in my headcanon.

And should a future writer wish it, I'm sure there's a dozen ways it can be retconned away.

That's certainly your prerogative. I choose otherwise. Seemingly, so does RTD. That isn't my head canon, that's actual canon. And I can't see any reason why any future showrunner would choose to overwrite it. Wishing away actual canon seems more like wishful thinking than anything else.

 

[diankra]

I agree 1000% with all of this...

...except The Meddling Monk is The Master. Likewise The War Chief for either of them. They're separate characters who were grand adversaries of The Doctor's and deserve to stand on their own.


Pretty sure that was either the actual intention or was one of Terrence Dicks' inventions when he novelized the serial. Or something like that. Pretty commonly held belief.

Think it was Paul Cornell in the last Timewyrm novel.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

This one is more of a random thought that I had during an episode than a personal headcanon but...

UNIT knows more about the Doctor than even the Doctor themselves do in regards to past and possibly even future incarnations, going as far back as pre-Hartnell incarnations. I believe UNIT has a file on every Doctor that has ever visited Earth during their existence, past present and future. Meaning, if the theoretical Sixteenth or pre-Hartnell Doctor or beyond has visited Earth during UNIT's existence, UNIT already has a file on them, and have trained their officers and how to deal with the Doctor when encountered and what they can reveal to them.

I had this thought in The Star Beast when Shirley believed that she was talking to the Tenth Doctor, understandable when dealing with a time traveler, but after Fourteen revealed his knowledge about Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, Shirley replied, "but that's forbidden knowledge".

That tells me that UNIT officers are trained to recognize any incarnation of the Doctor on sight, and are given at least just enough of information on his history to know where this incarnation fits into their history and what they can or cannot reveal to them. Am I making sense with this? Basically, the file on the Doctor in the black archive and UNIT soldiers interactions with the Doctor would have a very wibbly wobbly River Song's diary feel to it from UNIT's perspective. Spoilers, and all that.

Another example is in Day of the Doctor where we see that UNIT has interviewed all of the Doctor's former companions, even ones that never interacted with UNIT.

That makes a lot of sense and I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed directly. Good thought about the Shirley conversation in particular. I hadn't regarded it in that manner but the context does feel right.

I wonder if the upcoming spin-off that may or may not heavily feature UNIT might offer a more direct suggestion on this idea, assuming that was Davies' intention with the Shirley conversation.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

My current Timeless Child headcanon is, the First Doctor is literally the first incarnation to call himself the Doctor, and is a splinter created by Tecteun (a forced bigeneration, if you will) to wander off as part of Gallifrean society and all, as a sort of experiment to the resolve of this particular strand, or whatever you could call it. Obviously the Doctor became who he became, and the incarnation he was originally a part of, that Timeless Child, is still out there - or not - and likely not to be seen anytime soon. But it explains, to me, why we're exposed to this iteration and his incarnations but not the rest of the incarnations. The "memories" on Brain of Morbius could be explained as strands of memories that the originator of the body used to have but are alien to the Doctor per se.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The "memories" on Brain of Morbius could be explained as strands of memories that the originator of the body used to have but are alien to the Doctor per se.

I always assumed those were the past regenerations of Morbius, not the Doctor.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Doctor actors are playing the Doctor in non-Doctor roles. Examples: Hartnell in The Mouse That Roared, Hurt in Contact.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Doctor actors are playing the Doctor in non-Doctor roles. Examples: Hartnell in The Mouse That Roared, Hurt in Contact.

I like that! How about David Tennant in Harry Potter?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

My current Timeless Child headcanon is, the First Doctor is literally the first incarnation to call himself the Doctor, and is a splinter created by Tecteun (a forced bigeneration, if you will) to wander off as part of Gallifrean society and all, as a sort of experiment to the resolve of this particular strand, or whatever you could call it. Obviously the Doctor became who he became, and the incarnation he was originally a part of, that Timeless Child, is still out there - or not - and likely not to be seen anytime soon. But it explains, to me, why we're exposed to this iteration and his incarnations but not the rest of the incarnations. The "memories" on Brain of Morbius could be explained as strands of memories that the originator of the body used to have but are alien to the Doctor per se.

I could see that working. It's only a matter of time if Davies or a future showrunner decides to go down that route.

Lots of different pieces the puzzle are out there now that different pictures could emerge (and then change again with new pieces).

Which is precisely why I don't fret too much about Lungbarrow, the Timeless Child, Bigeneration, etc. The story keeps changing.

 

[The Wormhole]

This one is more of a random thought that I had during an episode than a personal headcanon but...

UNIT knows more about the Doctor than even the Doctor themselves do in regards to past and possibly even future incarnations, going as far back as pre-Hartnell incarnations. I believe UNIT has a file on every Doctor that has ever visited Earth during their existence-- past, present and future. Meaning, if the theoretical Sixteenth or pre-Hartnell Doctor or beyond has visited Earth during UNIT's existence, then UNIT already has a file on them, and have trained their officers and how to deal with the Doctor when encountered and what they can reveal to them.

I had this thought during The Star Beast when Shirley believed that she was talking to the Tenth Doctor, understandable when dealing with a time traveler, but after Fourteen revealed his knowledge about Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, Shirley replied, "but that's forbidden knowledge".

That tells me that UNIT officers are trained to recognize any incarnation of the Doctor on sight, and are given at least just enough of information on his history to know where this incarnation fits into their history and what they can or cannot reveal to them. Am I making sense with this? Basically, the file on the Doctor in the Black Archive and UNIT soldiers interactions with the Doctor would have a very wibbly wobbly River Song's diary feel to it from UNIT's perspective. Spoilers, and all that.

Another example is in Day of the Doctor where we see that UNIT has interviewed all of the Doctor's former companions, even ones that never interacted with UNIT.

RTD has certainly entertained the idea that there is information on future Doctors on Earth. In his novelization of Rose published in 2018, he modified the bit where Rose met with the conspiracy theorist who was studying the Doctor so that he had information on and pictures of future Doctors, including all the ones we the audience knew to that point and even a few we know nothing of. Certainly if a some random guy has that information on his website in 2005, UNIT must most certainly know something.

And should a future writer wish it, I'm sure there's a dozen ways it can be retconned away.

While it's true a future showrunner could theoretically retcon the Timeless Child away (just as RTD did the whole half human thing from the 96 TV movie) I find it's becoming less and less likely now. If such a retcon were to be done, the most logical time to do so would have been under the term of Chibnall's direct successor. But with RTD keeping it and incorporating it into the Doctor's backstory, with some rumors indicating it could play a major role in next season's arc, it's probably time to accept that the Timeless Child and pre-Hartnell Doctors are here to stay.

Certainly there's logic to hold onto the idea of pre-Hartnell Doctors. Aside from leaving the door open for more Jo Martin appearances in the future, they can even do the whole thing of bringing another celebrity in as a one-off Doctor without worrying about where to place them among the line-up.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I like that! How about David Tennant in Harry Potter?

I don't really see that one... but Matt Smith is definitely playing the eleventh Doctor in Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

Oh. And Lis Sladen is playing Sarah Jane Smith in the Gerry and the Pacemakers film, Ferry Cross the Mersey. (It's early Sladen work, she's an extra.) Sarah Jane loved the Mersey sound!

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I could see that working. It's only a matter of time if Davies or a future showrunner decides to go down that route.

Lots of different pieces the puzzle are out there now that different pictures could emerge (and then change again with new pieces).

Which is precisely why I don't fret too much about Lungbarrow, the Timeless Child, Bigeneration, etc. The story keeps changing.

It'd be cool if the body from which he originated, if we go by my head canon, were a person who went bad in life and is basically a really smart bad guy. I'd love to see that, even if the Master fills that bill essentially.