So You Think There Have Only Been Eleven Doctors? The Other Time Lords.

By Alexander Joenks | Lists | September 12, 2013 |

By Alexander Joenks | Lists | September 12, 2013 |

As part of my ongoing belief that all fictional universes may in fact be the same fictional universe (which may or may not overlap with the actual real world), I now posit the theory that many familiar fictional characters are in fact different incarnations of the Doctor. While the series insists that there have only been eleven (soon to be twelve) incarnations, many of those regenerations occurred off screen, and thus could include any number of additional versions of that veritable Time Lord. I have therefore scoured fiction to identify the most likely candidates for being additional Time Lords scattered throughout our fictions.

Calvin:

Evidence: Time machines, healthy disrespect for authority, superhuman imagination, and the ability to invent anything using a cardboard box. And of course there’s the young and feisty traveling companion. It’s unclear whether the Doctor regenerated as a little boy and decided to live that way, perhaps with the aid of the device from “Family of Blood”, or if the raising of a Time Lord was premised on inserting them into a non Time Lord family.

Charlie Kelly

Evidence: Comprehensive understanding of cats and their disrespect for the laws of physics. Knowledge of bird law is probably unimportant, but his tendency to explore areas such as ventilation systems and sewers that end up bigger on the inside is curious. It’s highly probable that this version fell on his head mid-regeneration.

Daniel Jackson

Evidence: Travels through space and time on a regular basis. Once ascended to a higher plane of existence by turning into energy. One could interpret this as a regeneration in which the energy was redirected to a different dimension rather than immediately coalescing into a new human form.

Kenneth Calloway

Evidence: Home-built time travel. Saucy younger travel companion. Seriously angsty, and therefore was probably the regeneration right before Eccleston.

The characters of “Hot Tub Time Machine”

Evidence: Time travel, which is typically fantastic evidence. However, these are actually false positives due to the fact that it’s far more likely that Amy Pond just dragged the TARDIS’ hot tub outside and forgot about it, leaving it for the first drunk idiots to come by.

Kenneth Parcell

Evidence: Immortality, implications of not being a human, simultaneously naive and hinting at extraordinary power. However, this too is not actually the Doctor, but actually is just the Master’s slightly dim younger brother.

Enoch Root

Evidence: Immortality, endless trickiness, impossible knowledge bordering on the magical, tendency to show up out of place and time in order to provide deus ex machinas for good characters trying their best. Plus, his stories have their own Captain Jack, and Eliza puts to shame every companion the Doctor has managed to travel with on screen.

Abed Nadir

Evidence: Curiously, Abed’s obsession with a cheap imitation of “Doctor Who” is a mask for the fact that he is in fact the Doctor himself. Evidence of the knowledge and ability to manipulate the space time continuum is present in many episodes, but perhaps the simple fact that the Dreamatorium is larger on the inside is evidence enough. It is the TARDIS parked inside the spare bedroom so that the door opens into it.

Phil Connors

Evidence: The temporal loop of the movie is clear evidence that Phil is in fact the Master and has been trapped in a prison designed to hold Time Lords. The Pandorica? Please. A prison to hold a Time Lord would not have walls of stone but walls of time.