What's in your "head canon"?

[Emperor-Tiberius]

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.

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.

I mean, there's ways around it. This "shock" reveal didn't occur until nearly sixty years after the premiere, a good 50+ years after we witnessed the second regeneration and learned of his planet of origin. No matter how long it'd take, it could be retconned - it'd just be like a comic book retcon at this point, clunky and awkward and the viewer would really need to know what the fuck is happening on-screen...

...a major reason why the Timeless Child doesn't work, also, by the way, but I digress.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

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.

Yeap, mine is similar but a less cluttered, Hartnell is the first doctor, set in stone, done and dusted, then everything right up until the end of Capaldi, and that is where Who ends for me, as there will never be any timeless child lore sitting soiling my Dr Who restorations DVD and Blu rays boxset shelves. lol

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Its also possible the Timeless Child is the result of a multiverse merging onto one single universe ala Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

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.

See, that's where you lose me again. The Master is their own person. There's no reason to connect them with The Doctor, The Meddling Monk, The War Chief, etc. I've always loathed any theory that connects people to one grand unifying person. There's just no need for it and robs them of the individuality.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

See, that's where you lose me again. The Master is their own person. There's no reason to connect them with The Doctor, The Meddling Monk, The War Chief, etc. I've always loathed any theory that connects people to one grand unifying person. There's just no need for it and robs them of the individuality.

I didn't mean to connect the original self from whom the Doctor with the Master or something. Sorry if it came of like that. I'm saying, the Master is already the mirror image of the Doctor in a storytelling way, but not in a literal way.

So basically, what I did mean to say is, it might be cool (or it mightn't) if the person he originated from is actually the Doctor but Evil. That's it.

And for the record, the Meddling Monk is NOT the Master. Never thought he was either, ever. The War Chief is a bit different, but the Monk has been succinctly different from the Master from almost the start.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, I see what you're saying but even the idea of the two splitting from an original but as opposites doesn't appeal at all to me. Thematic parallels are best left at that level.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Fair enough. I don't even think so, I'm just entertaining the idea is all.

 

[Starkers]

The worst thing about the Timeless Child is that it doesn't really change anything. The Doctor, like all of us, is made up of their memories and experiences. Since for the most part those memories start with Hartnell then he is still technically the first Doctor.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The worst thing about the Timeless Child is that it doesn't really change anything. The Doctor, like all of us, is made up of their memories and experiences. Since for the most part those memories start with Hartnell then he is still technically the first Doctor.

Exactly. It only adds more backstory to a character who has had backstory added on as a necessity of a show that has kept going for sixty years or so. So in the "attempt" to fix the problem (which I really doubt was Chibnall's intent, but anyway) it only added to it.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Two Star Trek things in my Doctor Who head canon...

The Temporal Cold War in Enterprise is a front in the Time War bleeding into another universe.

Jean-Luc Picard traveled with the sixth Doctor after the loss of the Stargazer, and it was those events that put him in contention for command of the Enterprise-D.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The worst thing about the Timeless Child is that it doesn't really change anything. The Doctor, like all of us, is made up of their memories and experiences. Since for the most part those memories start with Hartnell then he is still technically the first Doctor.

This right here is exactly why I roll my eyes at all of the kerfuffle over The Timeless Child. It makes absolutely no difference to the stories being told right now. If the situation were reversed and the Doctor was originally an immortal transdimensional being and then they became a Time Lord of Gallifrey after the fact, that still would not change the stories being told right now. It's an irrelevancy that people are losing their minds over.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Jean-Luc Picard traveled with the sixth Doctor after the loss of the Stargazer, and it was those events that put him in contention for command of the Enterprise-D.

Why Old Sixie?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Why Old Sixie?

I think they'd mesh well.

 

[kirk55555]

This right here is exactly why I roll my eyes at all of the kerfuffle over The Timeless Child. It makes absolutely no difference to the stories being told right now. If the situation were reversed and the Doctor was originally an immortal transdimensional being and then they became a Time Lord of Gallifrey after the fact, that still would not change the stories being told right now. It's an irrelevancy that people are losing their minds over.

The Timeless Child is a complete insult to everything that came before NuWho, and (like so much of NuWho) tries to degrade and destroy Classic Who. RTD and Chibnall absolutely hate the fact that Doctor Who existed before they worked on it, and will do everything to tear down the stuff pre-2005.

Who gives a crap if it doesn't effect the 15th Doctor's stories, I care about how it effects the FIRST Doctor, and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th. The 1st Doctor was born as a child on Galifrey just like any other Galifrean Timelord, he had no lives before that, screw Chibnall's BS and RTD's as well. Moffat was fairly reasonable when it came to Classic Who references and never seemed to have the active disdain for Classic Who that RTD and Chibnall have, even when he was at peak burn out he still seemed to at least care about the show outside of his own bubble. Even adding Clara into The Doctor's timestream was basically nothing compared to what RTD/Chibnall have done, and Moffat only created a secret Doctor because he couldn't get Eccleston back, he didn't do it to literally troll people or to try to ruin the timeline (plus, RTD is one of the reasons Eccleston left Doctor Who early in the first place, something RTD's fanbase seem to glance over a lot...).


Oh, also, another head canon that I had forgotten about (because I only had to create it recently):

Davros always looks like Davros, he's a mummy looking motherfucker in a futuristic wheel chair (or sometimes a disembodied head), anything else is just an imposter or a trick devised by Davros.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Sure. Whatever.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I think they'd mesh well.

Its funny, I could see seasons 4-7 Picard interacting well with post-Evelyn Sixie, where he's mellower and kinder than season 22 or strict but more standard Six in season 23 and during his time with Evelyn. But early Picard and early Six would more likely clash, wouldn't they?

 

[diankra]

I didn't mean to connect the original self from whom the Doctor with the Master or something. Sorry if it came of like that. I'm saying, the Master is already the mirror image of the Doctor in a storytelling way, but not in a literal way.

So basically, what I did mean to say is, it might be cool (or it mightn't) if the person he originated from is actually the Doctor but Evil. That's it.

And for the record, the Meddling Monk is NOT the Master. Never thought he was either, ever. The War Chief is a bit different, but the Monk has been succinctly different from the Master from almost the start.

IIRC, an idea for The Final Game was to reveal that the Doctor and the Master were Jekyll and Hyde, the same person in good and bad forms.

 

[C.E. Evans]

My head canon is that there are multiple timelines. In one, the Doctor is the Timeless Child. In another, they aren't. In another still, the Doctor is actually half-Human. There's even one in which he is completely Human. As a result of the Celestial Toymaker's recent meddling, some of these timelines have converged, indeed making a jigsaw of the Doctor's past.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I'm down with that.

Kind of like Hypertime in DC Comics.

And it would fit with all that "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" stuff, wouldn't it?

 

[Captaindemotion]

My head canon is that there are multiple timelines. In one, the Doctor is the Timeless Child. In another, they aren't. In another still, the Doctor is actually half-Human. There's even one in which he is completely Human. As a result of the Celestial Toymaker's recent meddling, some of these timelines have converged, indeed making a jigsaw of the Doctor's past.

I like that.