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