10 Doctor Who Fan Theories Better Than What We Got
The origins of the Weeping Angels: explained.
Transcript
00:00 There are literally thousands of Doctor Who fan theories out there, ranging from the sensible
00:04 to the ludicrous.
00:06 If nothing else, they're all pretty fun to read.
00:08 In some rare cases, though, these theories would be an improvement over what actually
00:13 happened.
00:14 So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 Doctor Who Fan Theories
00:18 Better Than What We Got.
00:20 10.
00:21 The Lupari are from Barcelona
00:23 Okay, let's start with the silly one.
00:25 The Lupari were introduced in Flux as the dog-faced protectors of the human race.
00:30 No literally, they had the faces of dogs.
00:32 That wasn't an insult.
00:33 While it's revealed that the Lupari have sworn to protect humanity, their exact origins
00:37 are never revealed.
00:39 Enter this incredible fan theory that references the final episode of the very first series
00:44 of New Who.
00:45 As the Ninth Doctor is about to regenerate, he asks Rose if she wants to visit Barcelona.
00:50 Not the city of Barcelona, but the planet of Barcelona.
00:53 He remarks that the world is home to dogs with no noses, before laughing about how many
00:57 times they must hear that joke.
00:59 The presence of alien dogs clearly got one Reddit user thinking, who suggested that those
01:03 noseless hounds were early ancestors of the Lupari.
01:07 Barcelona the football team was even mentioned in the Halloween Apocalypse, the episode which
01:11 introduced Carvanista, a member of the Lupari race.
01:15 This revelation wouldn't have changed anything major, but it would have been a nice nod back
01:19 to the early days of Doctor Who's revival.
01:22 9.
01:23 Clara is Jenny
01:24 Jenna Coleman turned up as two other people before appearing in her best known guise of
01:29 Clara Oswald in series 7.
01:31 This led to rampant speculation that she was more than just an ordinary school teacher.
01:35 While the truth was revealed in the name of the Doctor, there were tons of amazing theories
01:39 floating around prior to this point, including that Clara was another Time Lord, a personification
01:44 of the universe, or even the TARDIS itself.
01:47 But the one we like the most is the one involving the Doctor's daughter.
01:51 Jenny was created by a cloning machine in series 4 as the genetic replication of the
01:55 Doctor.
01:56 After earning her father's trust, she is shot and presumed dead.
02:00 She then sort of regenerated, coming back to life and stealing a spaceship just like
02:04 her dear old dad did.
02:05 And then she was never seen again.
02:07 Having her change her face after regeneration and track down her father under the name Clara
02:12 would have been a terrific way to reintroduce Jenny.
02:15 But Clara ended up being someone who jumped in the Doctor's time stream instead.
02:19 8.
02:20 The Sonic Screwdriver is Overloaded
02:22 The Sonic Screwdriver has been the Doctor's greatest and least trustworthy ally across
02:26 its long existence.
02:28 Debuting all the way back in 1968, the screwdriver is used to unlock doors, scan stuff, and for
02:33 basically everything else that the Time Lord wants it to do.
02:35 Or, more accurately, what the writers want it to do.
02:38 The Doctor's over-reliance on the tool has become a real bugbear within the WhoFan community.
02:43 Equally, the trope of the screwdriver breaking at an inconvenient time has become a tiresome
02:48 way to artificially generate drama.
02:50 But what if these two things are linked?
02:52 That's what one fan thinks over on Reddit.
02:54 They suggest that the screwdriver has had so many different alterations made to it over
02:59 the years that it's now overloaded, and as a result, it works on an extremely inconsistent
03:04 basis.
03:05 It would be great if this were true, and it really makes sense as a theory.
03:09 Equally, any answer as to why the device is all-powerful one minute and then broken the
03:13 next would be a welcome addition to the show's canon.
03:16 7.
03:17 Why the Reapers never appear A major continuity gripe over the years has
03:21 been the disappearance of the Reapers after Series 1's Father's Day.
03:25 These flying scorpion monsters appear when Rose causes a paradox by saving her dad's
03:29 life.
03:30 The beasties begin devouring everything in sight in an attempt to sterilise the resulting
03:34 wound in time.
03:35 There have been many other paradoxes in Doctor Who since then, but no rock-solid explanation
03:40 as to why the Reapers have never reappeared.
03:42 However, plenty of fan theories have explained away their absence in a satisfying way.
03:47 One of the main theories claims that the Reapers aren't automatically dispatched to the scene
03:51 of a paradox; they're just animals who feast on time energy, going from place to place
03:55 hunting for their next meal.
03:57 The analogy of a shark in bloodied water is fitting.
04:00 If a fish is injured and sharks are nearby, it'll get eaten.
04:03 But if none are around, then it will survive.
04:05 So basically, the Doctor has been incredibly lucky to not attract any Reapers throughout
04:09 their journeys.
04:10 It's a flimsy explanation, but it's better than what we got, which is nothing.
04:14 6.
04:15 The TARDIS is synced with Gallifrey
04:17 For someone who's supposed to be the last of the Time Lords, the Doctor sure has met
04:21 a lot of them.
04:22 Gracilon, Omega, the Rani, the Master, they turn up all over the place.
04:26 And the funny thing is, the Doctor always seems to meet them in chronological order.
04:30 Why is this?
04:31 Well, SteamDelta on Reddit thinks they have the answer.
04:35 The reason relies heavily on the Eye of Harmony, a singularity at the centre of Gallifrey.
04:39 We've also seen that an Eye of Harmony exists inside the TARDIS too.
04:43 So what if this allows anyone with a TARDIS, like the Doctor and the Master, to be synced
04:47 with Gallifreyan time?
04:49 This would explain why the Doctor always meets other Time Lords in the correct order.
04:53 Compare that to River Song, who always meets the Doctor out of order, and that's because
04:57 she doesn't use a TARDIS.
04:58 It's a bit techno-babble-y, but it's a really cool explanation for how time works
05:03 in the Doctor Who universe.
05:05 5.
05:06 The Master is the Timeless Child
05:09 The reveal that the Doctor is the Timeless Child caused a fair few complications with
05:13 Doctor Who lore.
05:14 It was also a baffling decision to completely change a backstory that worked fine and that
05:18 everybody liked, but hey ho, it's done now.
05:20 One way to actually improve the twist is a theory that has been suggested ever since
05:24 the Timeless Children aired in early 2020.
05:27 That the Master is the Timeless Child, not the Doctor.
05:30 It would be perfectly in character for the Master to have lied to the Doctor about something
05:34 as monumental as this.
05:36 The Master, after all, is a dick.
05:37 It would also explain why the character keeps coming back time and time again, despite facing
05:41 certain death almost every time they appear.
05:43 It would also give a compelling reason for why the Master reverted to his bad old self
05:48 after Missy's redemption arc.
05:49 The Master, an egotistical nutcase, discovering that he's actually a god-like being from
05:53 a different universe?
05:54 Of course he'd want to lord his superiority over the Doctor, while also feeling angry
05:58 and betrayed that the Time Lords kept the secret from him.
06:01 Look, the Timeless Child concept has problems no matter which character you go with, but
06:06 the Master version is a lot better if you ask us.
06:09 4.
06:10 River Song blew up the TARDIS
06:12 The arc of Series 5 is about the Doctor's greatest enemies teaming up to put him in
06:16 a prison called the Pandorica.
06:18 Their reasoning is a lot more selfless than you might think, as they have all received
06:22 word that the TARDIS is going to explode, taking a considerable toll on the universe
06:26 when it does so.
06:27 See, they're all nice guys, really.
06:29 Turns out that it was the dastardly Silents who were responsible for the TARDIS explosion,
06:34 as they were trying to prevent the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore and inadvertently
06:37 causing the Time War II.
06:38 The precise details of how they managed to blow up the TARDIS were never revealed, even
06:42 though a solution was right there in front of Mr Moffat.
06:45 What if one of the Silents creatures was on board the TARDIS during the Pandorica Opens,
06:50 and was using its powers of post-hypnotic suggestion to brainwash River into blowing
06:54 the machine up?
06:55 It's a theory that could definitely be true, but was never explicitly stated.
06:59 Considering that River was conceived on board the Blue Box, maybe destroying it would have
07:02 gotten a bit too weird for her.
07:05 3.
07:06 Regenerations build up energy over time
07:08 The Doctor's regenerations have varied wildly over the years.
07:12 In the early days of the show, his face changed with very little fuss.
07:15 However, after its 2005 revival, regenerations became huge spectacles of light and sound,
07:21 often destroying the TARDIS in the process.
07:23 Reddit user SkunkWaffle has a theory for why this might be.
07:27 They suggest that regenerations build up energy over time.
07:30 As the Doctor reaches the end of their regeneration cycle, their transformations become more and
07:34 more spectacular, as more energy is released every single time.
07:38 There's even an answer as to why 11 into 12 was such a low-key change.
07:42 The Doctor had just used his regeneration energy to destroy the Dalek ship, so he had
07:46 very little left while inside the TARDIS.
07:48 And similarly, on that same note, he'd just been given a whole new cycle of regenerations,
07:53 and so technically this was his first regeneration of that new cycle.
07:57 Another cool theory as to why modern regenerations are more explosive than classic ones is because
08:02 the Time Lords weaponised them during the Time War.
08:04 So when a Time Lord suffers a fatal injury, at least they might be able to take a couple
08:09 of Daleks with them.
08:10 2.
08:11 The Peter Cushing Doctor is a Torchwood Agent
08:13 Though the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies from the 1960s aren't canon with this show,
08:19 that hasn't stopped fans from trying to work them into Doctor Who lore with some impressively
08:23 creative theories.
08:24 One of the best of these is the idea that the Cushing Doctor is actually a Torchwood
08:28 Agent who, like Jackson Lake in the next Doctor, suffered some sort of memory problem that
08:32 made him believe he was the Doctor, even scavenging together some sort of alien tech to build
08:37 his own TARDIS.
08:38 It's also been suggested that the Cushing Doctor is an older version of the Metacrisis
08:43 Doctor, who loses his mind with grief after Rose is killed while out on a mission.
08:47 He loses his memories, but retains his scientific know-how, adopting this new identity to cope
08:52 with the pain.
08:53 Yeah, they're pretty dark theories, but watching the Cushing movies with something
08:57 like this in mind gives them so much more weight.
08:59 If nothing else, it would be cool to see them folded into Doctor Who canon somehow.
09:03 1.
09:04 The Weeping Angels are Dead Time Lords
09:07 First introduced in the excellent episode Blink, the Weeping Angels are truly sneaky
09:11 assassins that can only move when they're unobserved.
09:15 Nobody actually knows where they came from, at least according to the Doctor, but some
09:18 have theorised that they actually share a link with the TARDIS's best pilot.
09:22 No, not River.
09:24 One idea suggests that the Angels are actually Time Lords in one form or another.
09:28 In some theories, they're from the distant future, sent backwards through time by a cosmic
09:32 event.
09:33 In other explanations, becoming an Angel is what happens to a Time Lord when they die.
09:37 Both entities are ancient, both use the energy of time to live, and both are known and revered
09:42 across the universe.
09:44 The Angels are even referenced when the Time Lords return in The End of Time.
09:48 I mean, just look at how those Time Lords are standing, with their hands covering their
09:51 faces.
09:52 It's entirely out of the question that they're actually one and the same.
09:55 Some argue that revealing too much of the Angels' backstory would kill their mystique,
10:00 and yeah, that's probably true, but just imagine the chills you'd feel if a theory
10:04 like this was ever actually confirmed.
10:07 And that concludes our list.
10:08 Now if you know of any cool theories, then do let us know in the comments below.
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10:29 I've been Ellie, with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,