10 Doctor Who Questions That Always Confused You
10 Doctor Who Questions That Always Confused You
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00:00 Ah, Doctor Who fans.
00:02 For faithful viewers of a show all about time travel
00:05 and endless possibilities,
00:07 their understanding can very often be linear and unimaginative.
00:12 Which is why there is always a clamour of angry tweets or message board posts
00:17 each time a new bit of lore or storytelling appears to make no sense.
00:23 The answers are sometimes simple.
00:25 Bad writing.
00:26 The fact that for the first 20 years no one was expected to watch all of Doctor Who in order
00:32 and subsequently find troubling contradictions.
00:35 The rest of the time it's usually due to Stephen Moffat vastly overestimating the intelligence of his audience.
00:42 So, allow this list to pick over the questions that have been confusing you for years
00:48 in an attempt to either answer them once and for all or make them even more confusing.
00:54 With that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhoCulture and this is 10 Doctor Who questions that always confused you.
01:01 Number 10. What is the Doctor's name?
01:04 The oldest question. Hidden in plain sight.
01:08 Stephen Moffat teased us with this throughout Matt Smith's years before revealing that it's not important.
01:14 What's important is the title they chose and how it reflects their actions.
01:19 Because what name would even be satisfying for fans?
01:22 Keith?
01:24 The question of the Doctor's birth name is something that becomes more complex the more you think about it.
01:29 Gallifrey is the planet where Romanadviratralunda is a perfectly normal thing to call a child for goodness sake.
01:35 We know that the Doctor was nicknamed Theta Sigma in college and only reveal their name to those they're intimate with.
01:42 And that's about it.
01:43 Things have got even more complex now that we no longer have a clue where the Doctor is from.
01:48 A lost child abandoned in our universe, adopted by Tecteun.
01:52 What was that child's name?
01:54 And come to think of it, what was their name after they were regenerated into a child on leaving Division?
01:59 Doctor Who has never seemed like a more appropriate title for the show.
02:04 Probably best we don't dwell on it and just carry on calling them the Doctor.
02:08 Number 9. Where does Joe Martin fit into the line-up?
02:12 When Ruth was first introduced to be an unknown incarnation of the Doctor, various speculative theories were churned out by fansites.
02:20 Were they between Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee in a fresh spin on the long-held belief in the Season 6B theory?
02:27 This theory posits that the Second Doctor was a Time Lord agent,
02:31 spawned from the fact that an older Patrick Troughton didn't dye his hair black when he returned to the role.
02:37 Whilst their story is confusingly related through the prism of a cosy Sunday night TV show about an Irish policeman,
02:44 the Timeless Children makes it clear that Ruth is pre-Hartnell.
02:48 Their memories were wiped and they eventually became the First Doctor we all know,
02:52 which still confuses and outrages some corners of the fandom.
02:56 The more militant fans believe that the very idea of Doctors existing prior to the First Doctor is tantamount to heresy.
03:04 Doctor Who fans are boringly linear. Hartnell will always be the First Doctor that we as an audience encounter.
03:11 The fact that the character has a whole mysterious life beforehand doesn't desecrate Hartnell's legacy,
03:17 it ensures its longevity as the show approaches its sixth decade.
03:22 Number 8. Wait, why can't he go back and save Amy and Rory?
03:26 The ending of The Angels Take Manhattan, in which the Doctor states that he cannot return to New York to save Amy and Rory,
03:33 led to a lot of confusion and "couldn't they just meet up in another city?" on social media.
03:39 So much so that Stephen Moffat wrote a lengthy response in Doctor Who magazine.
03:44 "There is so much scar tissue and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines
03:50 that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone."
03:56 There's also a more simple emotional explanation too.
03:59 The whole of series 7A is about Amy and Rory trying to balance normal married life with adventures in time and space,
04:06 increasingly aware that one day they'll have to stop travelling in the TARDIS.
04:11 That decision is eventually taken out of their hands when a weeping angel zaps Rory back in time
04:16 and Amy decides to willingly sacrifice herself to be reunited with her husband.
04:21 The Doctor can't go back because he knows that Amy doesn't want him to.
04:25 She wants a life with Rory. It's the perfect ending.
04:29 Sadly, Doctor Who fans are so focused on the intricacies of time paradoxes
04:35 that they often miss out on the simple things like human emotion.
04:39 Number 7. What is the Valiard?
04:42 In the final stages of the trial of a Time Lord, it is revealed that the Doctor's prosecutor, the Valiard,
04:49 is actually an evil version of the Doctor himself.
04:52 A distillation of the Doctor's darker impulses from somewhere between the Doctor's 12th and 13th lives.
04:59 But what does that actually mean?
05:01 The Master's description of the Valiard is more of a metaphorical concept, so how did it gain a physical form?
05:08 No answers are forthcoming in the trial's notoriously troubled Final Two episode,
05:13 which descends into a chase across the Matrix.
05:16 A chase all the writers Pitt and Jane Baker running away, full pelt, from trying to explain the concept
05:22 teed up by Valiard creator Robert Holmes.
05:25 Fans have tried to answer this question through spin-off novels, short stories and audio adventures,
05:30 yet these muddy the waters even more.
05:33 One story states that he's a villainous version of the Doctor plucked from the multiverse.
05:38 One audio suggests the Valiard was a by-product of an experiment by the Doctor to break the 12th regeneration limit.
05:45 Awkwardly, this was released just a week before the 11th Doctor was granted a new regeneration cycle.
05:52 All of this confusion could have been avoided if it had just turned out that the Valiard was the Master in disguise.
05:58 After all, aren't they really the Dark Doctor?
06:01 Number 6. Has Davros had his eyes closed the whole time?
06:04 Who'd have thought that a pair of eyes would be the most controversial moment in an episode
06:09 once haploid described as "Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor ponders whether to murder a child".
06:15 In "The Witch's Familiar", the Doctor and Davros sit down and have a chat about morality, ageing and legacy.
06:21 Two bitter enemies coming to an understanding.
06:24 Except that it's all a ruse by the Dalek creator to steal the Doctor's regeneration energy.
06:28 It's this that the Doctor siphons off to allow Davros to see one more Skaro sunrise.
06:33 In a moment that isn't quite as moving as it should be, Davros opens his eyes.
06:38 The eyes that have been obscured by scar tissue for the 40 years prior to this,
06:42 meaning that he's had to rely on the glowing blue eye mounted in his forehead.
06:46 Peering through the black makeup, Julian Bleach does his best to sell the emotion of the scene.
06:52 A moment that was intended to humanise the Dalek's creator,
06:56 instead led to perplexed fans joking about Davros's peepers on social media.
07:01 And yet, the answer is staring you right in the face.
07:05 That small burst of the Doctor's regeneration energy restored Davros his eyes.
07:10 Number 5. What was the Grand Serpent up to?
07:13 Those fans who were confused by the Grand Serpent scheme in the closing two episodes of Doctor Who Flux,
07:20 clearly weren't paying attention to the news during the pandemic.
07:23 When the Flux ravages the universe, he sought the perfect opportunity to dominate the Earth
07:29 and reign over the shattered remnants of the universe.
07:32 To do this, he had to meddle with units past in order to manoeuvre himself into a position
07:37 where he could control the planet's defence systems.
07:40 Then he sold the planet out to the highest bidder, the Son'tarans.
07:43 He's basically a dodgy intergalactic PPE provider.
07:47 It seems that the Doctor Who fans were too busy being outraged by the alternative unit chronology
07:53 and demotion of Lethry Stewart to actually pay attention to what the Serpent's aims were.
07:59 Kate Stewart literally spells it out to the audience before she goes into hiding.
08:03 In The Grand Serpent, Chris Chibnall is taking aim at the opportunistic chancers
08:08 who seek to profit from tragedy, even the end of the universe itself.
08:13 It's his greatest bit of satire since Unit was defunded just as a rogue Dalek is let loose.
08:19 Which, it turns out, was all part of the Grand Serpent's plan.
08:22 Number 4. When do the Unit stories take place?
08:26 The Unit's dating controversy is a running debate in the Doctor Who fandom.
08:31 Were the Unit stories of Troughton and Pertwee's eras taking place in the present day or in the future?
08:37 If in the future, then how has the Brigadier resigned to teach maths in 1976 in Mordrin Undead?
08:44 Unit's debut story, The Invasion, is set in about 1979.
08:49 So how can a man retire from an organisation that won't exist for another three years?
08:54 If that wasn't bad enough, Sarah Jane Smith states that she's from 1980 in Pyramids of Mars.
09:00 So in what year do stories like Invasion of the Dinosaurs or Robot take place?
09:05 It's a question that has flummoxed fans for decades,
09:08 with attempts to resolve it in all various novels, audios and even DVD special features.
09:14 The real answer is probably the simplest.
09:16 The Brigadier wasn't supposed to be in Mordrin Undead.
09:19 William Russell, who was originally due to return as Ian Chesterton, dropped out.
09:24 Writer Peter Grimwade hastily rewrote the serial by slotting Lethbridge Stewart in,
09:29 adding some lines about Unit, Axons and Daleks, etc.
09:32 But he forgot to adjust the dates accordingly.
09:35 More simply, time is always being rewritten and reshaped in Doctor Who.
09:39 So it's probably for the best that Chris Chibnall upturned the apple cart
09:43 with the Grand Serpent's meddling with Unit's chronology in flux.
09:48 Number 3. Who is the Woman?
09:51 The mysterious woman in white who appears to Wilf in The End of Time
09:55 inspired many different theories on her possible identity.
09:59 Was she Romana? Susan?
10:01 The dialogue makes no clear distinction on who exactly the woman is,
10:05 which fed into the endless speculation.
10:08 Russell T Davies has stated exactly who she is though in his marvellous book The Writer's Tale.
10:14 It's the Doctor's mother, and this was obviously made clear to both David Tennant and Claire Bloom
10:19 and comes across in their performances.
10:21 By 2020 it was accepted that this was indeed the Doctor's mother.
10:26 And then the Timeless Children came along.
10:28 Presumably the woman is the adoptive mother of the Doctor
10:31 after the Ruth Doctor had their memories wiped.
10:34 Or is it Tecteune?
10:35 We saw in The Brain of Morbius that the Doctor does have repressed memories
10:39 of their previous pre-heartnal selves.
10:41 Could that go for Tecteune too?
10:43 It's so confusing, right? Except it's not. Not really.
10:46 The woman is the Doctor's mother.
10:48 It doesn't matter that she's clearly not his birth mother.
10:51 It doesn't even matter if she's a version of Tecteune.
10:54 She is the woman who raised him as he remembers.
10:57 And that is all that matters in that moment.
11:01 Number 2. What is the hybrid?
11:04 The supposed big bad of Series 9 kept fans guessing
11:07 and then predictably left them angry and confused.
11:10 Because, as with all ominous prophecies,
11:13 the answer is never as satisfying as the one you concoct in your fan brain.
11:18 The hybrid is not some terrible combination of
11:21 Viking and Mer or Dalek and Time Lord or Zygon and human.
11:27 It's a metaphor, an allegory.
11:29 That's what most prophecies are. They're stories.
11:32 They're not to be taken literally.
11:34 We learned all that from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right?
11:36 The hybrid is a metaphor for the Doctor and Clara's relationship.
11:40 That's what it always was.
11:42 And the various red herrings scattered throughout the series feel half-hearted.
11:46 It's a far more satisfying conclusion than if the hybrid
11:49 had been revealed to be Maisie Williams' me.
11:52 The hybrid is Time Lord and human,
11:54 more specifically the Doctor and his unwavering devotion and loyalty to Clara.
11:59 Look at what he does to save her life.
12:01 He returns to his home planet as a villain and a tyrant.
12:04 Regeneration or not, he kills someone.
12:06 The big bad of Series 9 is the Doctor himself,
12:09 and it's a gripping, devastating performance by Peter Capaldi.
12:13 Can you honestly say that a Dalek/Time Lord hybrid would have been better?
12:17 You've seen the Cyber Lords, right?
12:20 Number 1. Who is the Curator?
12:22 Whilst you may not have been able to hear the dialogue between the Curator and the 11th Doctor
12:27 over the joyous cheers and applause at the return of Tom Baker,
12:31 there have been plenty of opportunities since the day of the Doctor aired to go back and listen.
12:37 So the raft of "Who is the Curator?" think pieces and tweet threads in the months after
12:42 seemed like a willful ignorance of the written dialogue.
12:46 "I can only tell you what I would do if I were you."
12:49 "Oh, if I were you."
12:50 "Oh, perhaps I was you, of course."
12:52 "Or perhaps you are me."
12:54 He's very plainly a future, retired version of the Doctor
12:58 who's chosen the aged face of his fourth incarnation.
13:01 It's an allusion to Douglas Adams' Shada, and yet people were still in doubt.
13:07 It's taken Stephen Moffat's novelisation of "Day of the Doctor"
13:10 and several big finished box sets to further assert the identity of this future incarnation.
13:17 And yet, did we really need all of this to explain a sweet, lovely, not at all ambiguous nod
13:24 to the show's past and future to confused fans?
13:27 Who knows, eh? Who knows?
13:30 And that concludes our list.
13:32 If there are some Doctor Who moments that confused you that weren't mentioned in this list,
13:36 then comment them below.
13:37 And while you're there, like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
13:42 I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself,
13:47 goodbye, sweeties.