Doctor WHO?

Ok guys. This is pretty huge.

I know who he is.

I’m not even joking. Prepare yourselves.

I have discovered the Identity, possibly even the NAME of The Doctor. It took me hours of research, hours of poring through books, websites and so many other things… but here it is.

Everything that I am about to tell you comes from canonical sources from throughout the show’s history, largely from an underlying story arc that was written during the 80’s when Sylvester McCoy was still playing The Doctor.

When the show was cancelled, the story arc was abandoned, but I now feel that it is beginning to resurface with all this “Doctor WHO?” stuff from the latest series. 

Read on, and prepare to have your mind and your theories blown apart.

“The Other.” - an introduction.

Time to learn some of the history and Legends of the Time Lords! I’m relying on the fact that some of you will have knowledge about the First Doctor and his ‘Granddaughter’ Susan, from the classic TV series’ of Dr Who. Everything you are about to read is canonical and accurate, although mythological in places, by the standards of the Time Lords.

In its most ancient days (Billions of years before The Last Great Time War, when the universe was still very young), Gallifrey was ruled by an entity known as The Pythia and her cult, who ruled over the oppressed indigenous species of humanoids (who would later become Time Lords). 

The Pythia was eventually overthrown in a rebellion led by three great men called Rassilon, Omega and a mysterious third, simply called “The Other”. These three would later become the Time Lord Triumvirate, regarded as Demi-Gods in Time Lord tradition.

These three forced the evil Pythia being to kill herself and her followers were banished forever to the planet of Karn. 

Before she died, however, the powerful Pythia placed a terrible curse on the entire population of Gallifrey:

She made them immortal, granting them an almost infinite lifespan and the ability to regenerate their bodies. But she also made them completely sterile and barren, and unable to procreate ever again. It was her hope that Rassilon, Omega and The Other would grow to watch all life in the Universe wither and die, while they lingered for all eternity with no one to share their infinite lives with. 

Refusing to accept this to be the fate of his people, Rassilon, using his great wisdom and ingenuity, created The Looms, powerful machines that quite literally wove new beings out of extant genetic material.

These new predecessors to the Time Lords were limited, however, for Rassilon, Omega and The Other ensured that these new people would not suffer the same fate that they would: They imposed a genetic rule that only allowed each person 13 regenerations and then death after these had been used up.

Around this time, Omega, who was an extraordinary astro-scientist, began to carry out research and experiments to unlock the secrets of Time Travel. He worked for many thousands of years, making incredible advancements in interstellar transport and technology for his species. 

Eventually he developed “The Hand of Omega”, a stellar manipulator which could be used to control the reactions within the heart of a star. Using the Hand, Omega performed adjustments on a star near Gallifrey’s in an attempt to provide a power source for the time travel experiments he conducted with Rassilon. The two of them planned a daring manual operation that would help them finally unlock the secret of time through a controlled, but incredibly dangerous and (unbeknownst to Omega) suicidal experiment. 

The vain, ambitious Rassilon tricked Omega into believing that he would survive the expedition to the heart of the star. However, when the operation proved successful, the resulting supernova collapsed in on itself, creating a supermassive black hole and seemingly destroying poor Omega.

Rassilon and The Other subsequently captured the nucleus of the black hole and used its power to perfect Omega’s time travel technology. This became The Eye of Harmony, a gateway into the raw vortex of time. Omega’s name passed into heroic legend; his sacrifice had elevated his species into the stratosphere of advancement.

Rassilon and The Other declared that their race were now The Time Lords. Over hundreds of thousands of years, their entire culture and civilisation grew around their supreme superiority to other beings in the Universe. They were an immortal race of genii who could travel through time and space. The power of The Time Lords was without limit, and Rassilon proclaimed himself their ruler.

However, as Rassilon became ever more powerful and corrupt his rule became more and more oppressive and decadent, with such terrible things such as “The Death Zone” being created on Gallifrey - a force-shielded zone of the planet that was used as a morbid game which involved monsters and beings from across time and space being pitted against each other in mortal combat for the amusement of Rassilon and his Time Lords.

The Other saw Rassilon’s greed and evil, and knew that his own days were numbered, but knew that there was nothing he could do against his fellow demi-god, Rassilon. 

This is where it gets really interesting, folks!

The Other first ensured that his granddaughter Susan (the last child to be naturally born on Gallifrey) was safe, sending her to the spaceport to get off the planet. Then, in a last gesture of defiance against Rassilon’s rule, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the Looms, mixing his genetic material into the banks. 

Many many thousands of years passed, and The Other was all but forgotten. Even Rassilon himself had vanished into legend, thought dead.

The Looms had become integrated into the most noble houses of Gallifrey. At some point, into the house of Lungbarrow, a Time Lord was born - the first Time Lord in millions of years to be born naturally since before Pythia cursed the original species. This meant that he was one of the only true-blood Time Lords in existence, and therefore completely immortal, like Rassilon and Omega (had the latter not been apparently destroyed). However none of the other Time Lords, save perhaps his Mother, the matriarch of the Lungbarrow house, realised this to be true.

Apart from this unique physiology, this Time Lord was seemingly unremarkable, save for a restless, maverick nature and an uncommon love and compassion for all living things. As he was born into such a distinguished family, he attended the Time Lord Academy from an early age with his good friend Koschei. The two were so close that they went as a pair to be exposed to The Untempered Schism, a traditional ritual undergone by every young Time Lord, to help them develop their own identity and to observe the true majesty and terrible power of the Eye of Harmony as Omega once did. It was widely accepted that the effect that this exposure had on the subject would determine who and what they were going to be. 

In the case of young Koschei, it was a disaster. The 8 year-old Time Boy looked into The Vortex and, unbeknownst to anyone else, silently went mad, his mind almost destroyed by what he saw and heard - a strange drum beat echoed out from the Eye of Harmony, coming from somewhere in time and space. It bored into his skull and for the rest of his days, it never left him. 

But in the case of his young friend, the pure-blood, it was as was expected. The boy fled and never once again set foot near the schism.

He did poorly at the Academy, as a result of boredom, restlessness and a desire to rebel. He barely scraped the minimum grades required to graduate, but he did succeed nonetheless. His best friend Koschei, who had never quite been the same since the Schism incident, aced every single discipline the academy had to offer, and was hailed as one of their most brilliant students ever.

Koschei, like many Time Lords before him, chose to forsake his name and chose another. 

He became known as The Master.

His young friend, who had barely passed his exams, decided to call himself The Doctor.

The two friends parted ways as they prepared to go into the wider universe and, over time, almost forgot each other.

Finally free of the academy and disenchanted with the dogma of Time Lord society, The Doctor stole a (then) state-of-the-art TT Type 40, Mark 3 TARDIS and left Gallifrey, intending to fulfil his dream of exploring time and the universe.

However, The Hand of Omega, that device that Omega had used to manipulate the cores of stars, had come to life again, mysteriously reactivated after so many eons. Without The Doctor realising it, The Hand attached itself to the TARDIS as it de-materialised for the first ever time, and took control of the ship. Being an ancient and mystical piece of technology, it had recognised in The Doctor something of the original creators of The Eye of Harmony. It recognised that The Doctor was not Rassilon and was certainly not Omega.

Time travel into Gallifrey’s past was strictly forbidden and previously thought impossible. But somehow The Hand of Omega overrode the locks that prevented TARDISes from doing so and transported The Doctor and his new TARDIS back into the Old Time, to exactly one year after The Other had killed himself by throwing himself into the great genetic Looms. 

When the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors, he discovered Susan, the Granddaughter of The Other, wandering around the streets, half starved - she had never made it to the spaceport. 

Much like The Hand of Omega, even though there was no physical resemblance, Susan recognised something of The Other in The Doctor. She felt a powerful connection and without thinking, called him ‘Grandfather.’

The Doctor, expecting to be confused, instead found himself simply accepting the term, as if he already knew. It simply felt right.

The two of them returned The Hand of Omega to its rightful place in the planet’s present day, left Gallifrey (to flee the repercussions of having stolen a TARDIS as well as driving one without a license) and began their adventures in time and space.

The overall implication is that The Other was reincarnated as The Doctor, meaning that true to the suspicions of many, The Doctor is far more than a normal time-lord: He is one of the first, an immortal demi-god who is NOT bound by the normal laws of Regeneration. He can live forever, is immensely powerful and has a tremendous (though as yet) unknown destiny. He helped bring Time/Space Travel to the Gallifreyans.

It is unclear as to how much, if anything, The Doctor (who’s first name has never been revealed but who’s surname is most definitely LUNGBARROW!) remembers of his past life as The Other. 

Well? Are you impressed/convinced yet?!

Want some more proof? Ok!

What follows explores an abandoned but canonical story arc concerning The Doctor’s true identity. These words are taken from an official source:

“The Other was intended to be part of the backstory of the television series during the Seventh Doctor’s tenure and part of script editor Andrew Cartmel’s intention now known to fans as the “Cartmel Masterplan” to restore some mystery to the character of the Doctor. Cartmel felt that years of explanations about the Doctor’s origins and the Time Lords had removed much of the mystery and strength of the character of the Doctor, and decided to make the Doctor “once again more than a mere chump of a Time Lord”. Elements of this effort were liberally scattered through Seasons 25 and 26 of the series, and occasionally included hints about the Doctor’s past; for example, in Silver Nemesis, when Ace and the Doctor discuss the creation of validium, the Doctor mentions that it was created by Omega and Rassilon. Ace asks, “And…?” and the Doctor is silent. Cartmel has written that this was meant to indicate that the Doctor was “more than a Time Lord”:

…Omega and Rassilon were the founding fathers of Gallifrey. They towered above the Time Lords who followed. They were demigods. And Ace’s nifty dialogue “And…” coupled with the Doctor’s neatly evasive response, are a subtle attempt to say that there was a third presence there in the shadowy days of Gallifrey’s creation. In other words, the Doctor was also there. So he’s more than a Time Lord. He’s one of these half-glimpsed demigods.

The suspension of the Doctor Who television series in 1989 meant that the “master plan” never paid off on screen. Elements of it, however, were used as part of the background for the Virgin New Adventures line of original Doctor Who novels. Eventually, most of the details were revealed in the last Seventh Doctor New Adventure, Lungbarrow by Marc Platt.

More information about the Other is revealed or implied in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Cold Fusion, by Lance Parkin. In this novel, the Fifth Doctor encounters a Gallifreyan woman, whom he dubs Patience (though her real name is never said), who it is implied is the Other’s wife. She appears again in Parkin’s BBC novel The Infinity Doctors, where she was once married to that novel’s version of the Doctor, who may be separate from normal continuity. She is a naturally born Gallifreyan, who is apparently immortal, barring accidents, and has lived for over two million years. She was first married to Omega and then to the Other or the Doctor and they had 13 children. In flash back, the description of her husband matches one of the faces seen during the mindbending contest in The Brain of Morbius.^[3] At some point, the Lord President turned against her family, as they were naturally born, rather than from a loom, and ordered the Chancellory Guard to kill them all. Somehow the First Doctor was able to help her escape in a prototype TARDIS. How this account fits with the information on the Other given above is deliberately kept vague and in some cases appears to contradict it. Lance Parkin has indicated that the reason for the contradictions is that he was working from a different version of the Cartmel Masterplan than the version used by Marc Platt when writing Lungbarrow.^[3]

The Virgin New Adventure Human Nature, by Paul Cornell, obliquely implies that the Other was a Victorian scientist who built a TARDIS-like craft and travelled to Gallifrey when its people were still primitives.”

That last bit basically means this:

At the very beginning of this story, there was a Victorian scientist who discovered the secret of time/space travel! He was transported to Gallifrey and became one of the mighty Time Lords, a being called The Other! That part is just a theory, but its a really awesome theory nonetheless!

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU ALL THINK!!!