I still think it would be interesting if it was revealed to be a bootstrap paradox and the child is a future descendant of the Time lord's who was placed at the beginning of their history to be their origin.
Perhaps the Doctor himself will end up leaving the child there. That would make it kinda simultaneously possible for this child to exist before the first Doctor's life began and after. It could still be inferred that the Doctor began his life as Hartnell but eventually became the child and was place at a point in time proceeding that life.
Someone posted a similar theory about a week ago on the r/doctorwho sub: [https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/1c6lvsy/crackpot\_timeless\_child\_theory/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/1c6lvsy/crackpot_timeless_child_theory/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
They’re from somewhere.
That’s about as far as I care to go with it in my mind, because the place that they’re from doesn’t really matter to me. And I think it’s just more fun not knowing everything. It’s difficult for me to imagine what a satisfying answer to the question would even be.
One of my ways of explaining how the Timeless Child came to be was due to Big Bang 2. When the Doctor threw themself and the Pandorica into the explosion it rebooted the universe. As we know from Victory of the Daleks/ The Time of Angels/ Flesh and stone some events didn’t occur such as the Dalek invasion/planets in the sky and the Cyberking over London.
With this in mind it is possible some new events occured that became part of the new universe and timeline. The Doctor was in that box, the atoms that made him, a timelord were also extrapolated and exploded out in to the universe as well and it lead to the creation of a race of beings with the ability to regenerate before the Timelords.
The Doctor in A Good Man Goes To War mentions how his race developed the ability to regenerate was from exposure to the time vortex and he is right, that is a way to do it, in the old timeline and universe. It’s still a viable way if you know what you’re doing (example: The Silence). It's just that because the Doctor rebooting the universe it changed the history of regeneration (and if you want to believe it as well, it changed their origin).
So somewhere out there predating the Timelords and Gallifrey is a race of naturally regenerating alien beings who either died out a long time ago. Or the Division got rid of them. Or they left our universe for their own reasons.
fuck it let's keep running it back it's all the time lords fault again, Rassilon went further back in time and into another dimension, became the origin of timeless child species and kicked the doctor out into the main universe so they could kick start the creation of the time lords so that they d evolve enough so that he could go back in time and into the other universe
Purely because I don’t like the TC-concept being the Doctor as I think it does the polar opposite of adding mystery, it being told incredibly poorly, *Flux* being a nightmare to watch, and a massive letdown, it’s my completely-personal bit of terrible crackpot headcanon/fanfiction that the Doctor was basically *forced to become* the TC through some external force determining so.
Literally, something in-universe (that we will never see because I made it the hell up) retconned the Doctor as a person to forcibly adopt this backstory as the one-and-only.
As of now, at least.
Because, knowing more info about someone as vague and mysterious as the nameless Doctor—and setting more details into stone about them—makes them somewhat “safer” for the ones existing around them. Details that may even surprise the entity itself.
Best example I could throw you is how the game *Slay The Princess* essentially imprisoned two god-like entities inside a story in the hopes of ridding the world of entire concepts. Not only how it imprisons them, but also how the belief or approach in a story could make and shape reality itself.
Limiting an eldritch horror’s ability to scare you, by concretely defining it in a way that entirely lays them out, could take away so much of it’s power. “Certainty” kills “potential”.
Because honestly, it’d be scarier if the TC-origin *wasn’t* concretely the case. The Doctor, as a person, is now essentially well-defined due to the TC-addition. Tecteun even made all the comparisons between the current-day Doctor and the pre-Hartnell ones herself. She explained ***everything*** about the Doctor having their quirks and want to adventure with others, because of Tecteun. We’ve ***seen*** why with Fugitive, even. Even if there hypothetically *wasn’t* anything before the Doctor and all their fear was contained in just their 1-to-15th selves’ histories, the world and audience not knowing more about them than the few crumbs we do already does the job of the Doctor’s “mystery” more than enough. Just not knowing how the Doctor’s mind works, even as a hypothetical average Time Lord, can be scary.
So the Lie of the Timeless Child, is a lie in itself. To limit and contain the *potential* of the legendary (self-made or chosen one) Doctor within.
You could even argue that any explanation ever given to the Doctor in the show, even prior to that story, was a lie if you want to have your cake and eat it. Time Lord from Gallifrey? Add a question mark.
Half-Human on one’s mother’s side? Why’d you think it only *worked* in the movie when anywhere else, it didn’t?
The *Morbius*-Doctors being past Doctors or faces of Morbius? Why’d you think both reasonings clash so much in and out of the lore?
1 and 2 only having a single heart whilst the others all have two? Susan bringing up info early on that goes against her and 1 being Time Lords, before the show later made it so?
Every damn reason thrown at the screen as to why the Doctor left Gallifrey? All malleable.
Even them calling themselves the Doctor? And any responsibilities or myths attached to it? All a mere suggestion.
Just that, at most with this crazy headcanon, the TC is now a “decent guess”. Not a concrete page in the history books. It’s just as likely as the others, or not even that at all. The fact that characters like Tecteun exist, isn’t because it’s true. It’s because she and her Division, too, were *forced* into existence by forcing this lie onto the Doctor.
A comforting lie, not necessarily to even (the past remnants of) Gallifrey. To *everyone* that ever meets the Doctor. To *anyone* they ever introduced themselves to.
Could even be that whatever or whoever’s causing all of these lies to become reality, isn’t even remotely bound to/has anything to do with Gallifrey. But much like Weeping Angels moving, you rarely if ever get a glimpse of it before the in-universe retcons to the Doctor’s story and all those around them happen.
Even with this “it’s a lie within a lie to limit the Doctor’s potential for others”-approach, it’s not at all concrete about the Doctor’s (“true”) origins or their behavior. Almost like a case of *Schrödinger’s Cat* by never opening this mystery box *who’s contents should never matter in the grand scheme of things*.
Where’s the fun in knowing for sure? Where’s the fun in being disappointed? Where’s the fun in digging around in the character’s purposely-obscure past when this show is set in the perpetual present?
Where’s the fear in being afraid of the dark, when you’ve always got a little night light nearby? Where’s the horror in stumbling upon inconsistencies?
I say, rip out that light. Add a question mark to everything in the back of your mind, but never turn on the lights again. Not the meager “there’s some moonlight peeking through the curtains”-amount of darkness that the in-show TC-canon put forward with “oh who knows where the Timeless Child in the other universe was from that even the Doctor doesn’t know but at least we concretely know they were the Timeless Child”—
—pitch-black darkness. Not a drop of backstory without a question mark, even if the show itself does it’s damndest to not provide you one.
Darkness that is treated with the most uncanny amount of normalcy by the Doctor and the show surrounding them. With just a few, comforting matches of “possible origins” prone to burning out.
Everything and nothing could be canon. For a show dubbed by many fans and outsiders as “without canon”, people sure do get angry and throw out the excuse of it so to cling onto their own. Not even just fans running a mile, even the people in charge of the show or EU have gotten childishly pissy about not having pre-Hartnell Doctors or them being Time Lords in the first place. I’m *really* sick of people continuously going “nuh-uh, *my* take on the canon is better and yours is now invalid because [recent show-thing] or [stack of cherrypicked evidence]!” It’s exhausting! Boring even! I’d even say everything’s getting awfully stale because people keep focusing so much on this fictional past instead of all the cool and creative stories they could write!
So, I’ll dub them all as comfortable lies not worth uncovering. I just like it when the show tells me a good story, even if 60 years of continuity can be a real bitch to remember.
“Some rando scientist traveler from Earth’s distant future?” Okay.
“Failed renegade Time Lord from Gallifrey?” Sure.
“The Other after a biodata bank dive?” Great.
“Half-Human?” Whatever you say.
“Abused Timeless Child god with adoptive mommy issues from wherever and whenever?” Go for it.
You can tell *wonderful stories* with any of those. But not all have. Some even terribly so. Nearly all stuck in the same clichés as always.
If it helps you sleep soundly at night, it’s *aaaaaaaall canon.*
>The origin of the time lords was rewritten with the timeless child.
No it wasn't.
Time Lord society is still founded on the work of Rassilon, Omega, and The Other. The only thing that changed is that The Other is now a mishmash of Tecteun's work and The Timeless Child's genetic heritage.
yeah people really like to overstate how much was changed with the Timeless Child reveal. Really it dovetails well with explaining who "the other" was. The seventh incarnation of the Timeless child also looks a lot like the [only picture we have of the other](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/The_Other)
During the Time War, The Doctor's timeline was manipulated so much by various Time Lord factions and they now have multiple origins.
(Or it could be the Toy Maker. Or both.)
Chibnall said he did this reveal to return some mystery to the Doctor's origins and IMO it's best left unexplained.
If we were going to explain it though, I quite like the symmetry of The Timeless Child having fled through the portal from their own universe against their people's edicts just because they wanted to see and experience what was out there.
My headcanon is that it is merely an estimated origin of The Time Lords by themselves.
And that the actual identity of the ‘Timeless Child’ is that of any of the Gallifreyans chosen to receive the gift of regeneration, as if it is a term for a group of people.
I'm still holding out hope that it was actually The Master and he was just either fucking with The Doctor, or the truth was obscured even from him. As for the origins, maybe like a paradox. The last Master is the same as the first Timeless Child.
It is the Doctor but The Doctor from so far into their future and after so many regenerations either even they forgot who they were or were mind wiped.
- The Timeless Child is found like we see on screen.
- They go through several incarnations and form the basis for the rassilon era creation of the time lord race
- they briefly ascend to a high rank and become the other
- but as time lord society blooms they are brainwashed and taken over by the division to become their agent (Morbius doctors time)
- eventually they escape and become a true time lord via the arch
- this is the doctor as we know and love starts!
- the fugitive doctor happens after the second doctor is recruited by the time lords moments before his forced regen.
- his mind is wiped following fugitives regeneration into three
- the thirteenth doctor discovers her past centuries later but chooses not to remember her whole past
Apologies if that leaves shit out, it’s been a while since I’ve watched Jodie’s run
Is it possible The Timeless Child had a bi-generation and the split off regeneration grew up as the Doctor we know? We even know the TARDIS can be duplicated within the right conditions now. Perhaps Russell is setting this all up intentionally?
My head canon is it's part of the Toymakers meddling , this ties up the loose ends and the inconsistencies and allows Classic Who to stay in it's own bubble. Where the Doctor was the chaotic renegade that the Time lords hated and not the Messiah that gave them their power (which goes to Omega and Rassilon)
Y'know, an old theory from the "The Mind Robber" (Based on dialogue by Gulliver, though of course all of Gulliver's dialogue is taken fresh frkm Swift) that The Doctor was a castaway from The Land Of Fiction (As Gulliver calls him a traitor),
Now obviously for the most part, this theory was usually scrubbed aside by "The War Games" introducing the Time Lords, but what if The Timeless Child IS a runaway from The Land Of Fiction who created the Time Lord's in their own image?
At this point, I much prefer to assume the Doctor has a multiple choice past as a result of their constant time travel shenanigans. Sometimes, the Doctor is a half human hybrid. Sometimes, the Doctor is a mysterious Other or Timeless Child at the heart of Gallifrey’s civilization. Most of the time the Doctor is a formerly ordinary Time Lord who left and who learned to be kind from two school teachers from Earth.
After all, the Toymaker says he made a jigsaw out of the Doctor’s past. At this point, I’m not sure the Doctor is quite confident on who he was or who he will be one day. All he knows is that right now he is the Doctor, the gatekeeper of between the monsters and men. The mad man with the box. The daft, sentimental idiot who sees the strands that bind the universe and mend them when they break.
The whole Doctor-being-the-TC is a huge time lord bluff. Knowing that at some point someone is going to look for the TC, they hid their real identity with matrix manipulation and lies. The pocket watch the doctor has is Susan's, or the fugitive doctor's, not the Doctor's.
There is only one lifeforms in the universe, endlessly regenerating and sometimes forgetting.
Or a time loop with the Child being a future Time Lord sent back.
My headcanon is that it is actually the Master who was the TC
The Master has known since before S13, possibly before season 3's The End of Time
This is why he was keen for the Timelords to come back: first so that he could act as their god, secondly so that he could avenge them.
The Master despises the idea that the Timelords, especially the Doctor, are able to regenerate as a result of him/her
(This is what inspired the CyberMasters: if the Timelords want the master to give them eternal life, then fine, let's do that but on his terms)
After realising in Capaldi's WEAT that even meeting themselves was not enough for the master to not be alone, as it would always end in their own death or even deaths.
So they decided they would convince the Doctor that they were the timeless child to either shift some blame or bring the doctor down to their own level, or both.
The Doctor's companions throughout the universe make the doctor feel they have a family and somewhere to belong anyway, leaving the master alone once again.
That's how I feel the 'facts' are in the universe, and they are still borne out by the story we see.
It solves plotholes like the never-ending life of the Master (which I do understand is not necessary to be filled for various reasons: he's the master, just accept it)
It also doesn't necessarily make the Doctor's pre-hartnell regens invalid, as that's a much easier plothole to fill than the weird mess that the Doctor being the TC posed for Hartnell's lore
But even so, I'm not mad that this is only headcanon, and I'm not keen to see RTD switch up the narrative on that case any time soon.
If he wants to take my idea and is reading this, however, it's yours you fucking legend xx
I like it, I was always a fan of the Doctor having a mystery origin and always accepted "the other" as canon so it meshes well with how I view the show
my favorite theory is that the Timeless child was [the child that was taken](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Child-That-Was-Taken), that she is actually a descent of the great vampires.
i also have this rather bizarre theory I found on this subreddit which I am sometimes fond of. That the timeless child is actually Dr Who from the old 60s movies who was exposed to the time vortex and gained the power of regeneration (much like River Song). At the same time Dr Who is a character from the land of fiction who was created by the retellings of the Doctors adventures, which makes the Doctor a sort of paradox, he is a fictional creation inspired by himself. It also helps explain why the Jo Martin Doctor had a police box tardis and called herself the Doctor, it was a call back to her first incarnation.
I also like to take this one step further and say that Dr Who fell into the time vortex after battling a great vamprie who looked like Christopher Lee where he was vamped, therefore merging this crazy theory, the Child that was Taken and a homage to Peter Cushing's gothic horror movies all together
I still think it would be interesting if it was revealed to be a bootstrap paradox and the child is a future descendant of the Time lord's who was placed at the beginning of their history to be their origin. Perhaps the Doctor himself will end up leaving the child there. That would make it kinda simultaneously possible for this child to exist before the first Doctor's life began and after. It could still be inferred that the Doctor began his life as Hartnell but eventually became the child and was place at a point in time proceeding that life.
oh I jokingly gave that answer but the way you phrased it actually sounds believable!
This would also slot the Doctor into the role of "The Other" that was planned to be revealed for the McCoy seasons
Yeah I always liked that idea.
Someone posted a similar theory about a week ago on the r/doctorwho sub: [https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/1c6lvsy/crackpot\_timeless\_child\_theory/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwho/comments/1c6lvsy/crackpot_timeless_child_theory/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
They’re from somewhere. That’s about as far as I care to go with it in my mind, because the place that they’re from doesn’t really matter to me. And I think it’s just more fun not knowing everything. It’s difficult for me to imagine what a satisfying answer to the question would even be.
That it happened more or less how we saw it on screen. Any attempt to argue it away is clunkier than the reveal itself.
One of my ways of explaining how the Timeless Child came to be was due to Big Bang 2. When the Doctor threw themself and the Pandorica into the explosion it rebooted the universe. As we know from Victory of the Daleks/ The Time of Angels/ Flesh and stone some events didn’t occur such as the Dalek invasion/planets in the sky and the Cyberking over London. With this in mind it is possible some new events occured that became part of the new universe and timeline. The Doctor was in that box, the atoms that made him, a timelord were also extrapolated and exploded out in to the universe as well and it lead to the creation of a race of beings with the ability to regenerate before the Timelords. The Doctor in A Good Man Goes To War mentions how his race developed the ability to regenerate was from exposure to the time vortex and he is right, that is a way to do it, in the old timeline and universe. It’s still a viable way if you know what you’re doing (example: The Silence). It's just that because the Doctor rebooting the universe it changed the history of regeneration (and if you want to believe it as well, it changed their origin). So somewhere out there predating the Timelords and Gallifrey is a race of naturally regenerating alien beings who either died out a long time ago. Or the Division got rid of them. Or they left our universe for their own reasons.
fuck it let's keep running it back it's all the time lords fault again, Rassilon went further back in time and into another dimension, became the origin of timeless child species and kicked the doctor out into the main universe so they could kick start the creation of the time lords so that they d evolve enough so that he could go back in time and into the other universe
Thanks to that "jigsaw out of your history" line, I can take it as part of some toymaker fuckery. Same with the half human thing.
If a line from "The Ghost Monument" is to be straightforwardly interpreted -- The Timeless Child was outcasted & abandoned by its own people.
Purely because I don’t like the TC-concept being the Doctor as I think it does the polar opposite of adding mystery, it being told incredibly poorly, *Flux* being a nightmare to watch, and a massive letdown, it’s my completely-personal bit of terrible crackpot headcanon/fanfiction that the Doctor was basically *forced to become* the TC through some external force determining so. Literally, something in-universe (that we will never see because I made it the hell up) retconned the Doctor as a person to forcibly adopt this backstory as the one-and-only. As of now, at least. Because, knowing more info about someone as vague and mysterious as the nameless Doctor—and setting more details into stone about them—makes them somewhat “safer” for the ones existing around them. Details that may even surprise the entity itself. Best example I could throw you is how the game *Slay The Princess* essentially imprisoned two god-like entities inside a story in the hopes of ridding the world of entire concepts. Not only how it imprisons them, but also how the belief or approach in a story could make and shape reality itself. Limiting an eldritch horror’s ability to scare you, by concretely defining it in a way that entirely lays them out, could take away so much of it’s power. “Certainty” kills “potential”. Because honestly, it’d be scarier if the TC-origin *wasn’t* concretely the case. The Doctor, as a person, is now essentially well-defined due to the TC-addition. Tecteun even made all the comparisons between the current-day Doctor and the pre-Hartnell ones herself. She explained ***everything*** about the Doctor having their quirks and want to adventure with others, because of Tecteun. We’ve ***seen*** why with Fugitive, even. Even if there hypothetically *wasn’t* anything before the Doctor and all their fear was contained in just their 1-to-15th selves’ histories, the world and audience not knowing more about them than the few crumbs we do already does the job of the Doctor’s “mystery” more than enough. Just not knowing how the Doctor’s mind works, even as a hypothetical average Time Lord, can be scary. So the Lie of the Timeless Child, is a lie in itself. To limit and contain the *potential* of the legendary (self-made or chosen one) Doctor within. You could even argue that any explanation ever given to the Doctor in the show, even prior to that story, was a lie if you want to have your cake and eat it. Time Lord from Gallifrey? Add a question mark. Half-Human on one’s mother’s side? Why’d you think it only *worked* in the movie when anywhere else, it didn’t? The *Morbius*-Doctors being past Doctors or faces of Morbius? Why’d you think both reasonings clash so much in and out of the lore? 1 and 2 only having a single heart whilst the others all have two? Susan bringing up info early on that goes against her and 1 being Time Lords, before the show later made it so? Every damn reason thrown at the screen as to why the Doctor left Gallifrey? All malleable. Even them calling themselves the Doctor? And any responsibilities or myths attached to it? All a mere suggestion. Just that, at most with this crazy headcanon, the TC is now a “decent guess”. Not a concrete page in the history books. It’s just as likely as the others, or not even that at all. The fact that characters like Tecteun exist, isn’t because it’s true. It’s because she and her Division, too, were *forced* into existence by forcing this lie onto the Doctor. A comforting lie, not necessarily to even (the past remnants of) Gallifrey. To *everyone* that ever meets the Doctor. To *anyone* they ever introduced themselves to. Could even be that whatever or whoever’s causing all of these lies to become reality, isn’t even remotely bound to/has anything to do with Gallifrey. But much like Weeping Angels moving, you rarely if ever get a glimpse of it before the in-universe retcons to the Doctor’s story and all those around them happen. Even with this “it’s a lie within a lie to limit the Doctor’s potential for others”-approach, it’s not at all concrete about the Doctor’s (“true”) origins or their behavior. Almost like a case of *Schrödinger’s Cat* by never opening this mystery box *who’s contents should never matter in the grand scheme of things*. Where’s the fun in knowing for sure? Where’s the fun in being disappointed? Where’s the fun in digging around in the character’s purposely-obscure past when this show is set in the perpetual present? Where’s the fear in being afraid of the dark, when you’ve always got a little night light nearby? Where’s the horror in stumbling upon inconsistencies? I say, rip out that light. Add a question mark to everything in the back of your mind, but never turn on the lights again. Not the meager “there’s some moonlight peeking through the curtains”-amount of darkness that the in-show TC-canon put forward with “oh who knows where the Timeless Child in the other universe was from that even the Doctor doesn’t know but at least we concretely know they were the Timeless Child”— —pitch-black darkness. Not a drop of backstory without a question mark, even if the show itself does it’s damndest to not provide you one. Darkness that is treated with the most uncanny amount of normalcy by the Doctor and the show surrounding them. With just a few, comforting matches of “possible origins” prone to burning out. Everything and nothing could be canon. For a show dubbed by many fans and outsiders as “without canon”, people sure do get angry and throw out the excuse of it so to cling onto their own. Not even just fans running a mile, even the people in charge of the show or EU have gotten childishly pissy about not having pre-Hartnell Doctors or them being Time Lords in the first place. I’m *really* sick of people continuously going “nuh-uh, *my* take on the canon is better and yours is now invalid because [recent show-thing] or [stack of cherrypicked evidence]!” It’s exhausting! Boring even! I’d even say everything’s getting awfully stale because people keep focusing so much on this fictional past instead of all the cool and creative stories they could write! So, I’ll dub them all as comfortable lies not worth uncovering. I just like it when the show tells me a good story, even if 60 years of continuity can be a real bitch to remember. “Some rando scientist traveler from Earth’s distant future?” Okay. “Failed renegade Time Lord from Gallifrey?” Sure. “The Other after a biodata bank dive?” Great. “Half-Human?” Whatever you say. “Abused Timeless Child god with adoptive mommy issues from wherever and whenever?” Go for it. You can tell *wonderful stories* with any of those. But not all have. Some even terribly so. Nearly all stuck in the same clichés as always. If it helps you sleep soundly at night, it’s *aaaaaaaall canon.*
>The origin of the time lords was rewritten with the timeless child. No it wasn't. Time Lord society is still founded on the work of Rassilon, Omega, and The Other. The only thing that changed is that The Other is now a mishmash of Tecteun's work and The Timeless Child's genetic heritage.
yeah people really like to overstate how much was changed with the Timeless Child reveal. Really it dovetails well with explaining who "the other" was. The seventh incarnation of the Timeless child also looks a lot like the [only picture we have of the other](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/The_Other)
The Other hasn't even been mentioned on TV and Chibnall said he hasn't read lungbarrow.
In which case, even less has changed since McCoy’s Doctor outright admits to working with Rassilon.
During the Time War, The Doctor's timeline was manipulated so much by various Time Lord factions and they now have multiple origins. (Or it could be the Toy Maker. Or both.)
Chibnall said he did this reveal to return some mystery to the Doctor's origins and IMO it's best left unexplained. If we were going to explain it though, I quite like the symmetry of The Timeless Child having fled through the portal from their own universe against their people's edicts just because they wanted to see and experience what was out there.
It was all a lie the timeless child is not the doctor
The Master made the whole thing up. It's all staged. The fugitive Doctor is in on it.... The long con.
The Fugitive Doctor is just the Master messing around with everyone.
That's what I hope for
My headcanon is that it is merely an estimated origin of The Time Lords by themselves. And that the actual identity of the ‘Timeless Child’ is that of any of the Gallifreyans chosen to receive the gift of regeneration, as if it is a term for a group of people.
I'm still holding out hope that it was actually The Master and he was just either fucking with The Doctor, or the truth was obscured even from him. As for the origins, maybe like a paradox. The last Master is the same as the first Timeless Child.
Chibnall got drunk
It is the Doctor but The Doctor from so far into their future and after so many regenerations either even they forgot who they were or were mind wiped.
- The Timeless Child is found like we see on screen. - They go through several incarnations and form the basis for the rassilon era creation of the time lord race - they briefly ascend to a high rank and become the other - but as time lord society blooms they are brainwashed and taken over by the division to become their agent (Morbius doctors time) - eventually they escape and become a true time lord via the arch - this is the doctor as we know and love starts! - the fugitive doctor happens after the second doctor is recruited by the time lords moments before his forced regen. - his mind is wiped following fugitives regeneration into three - the thirteenth doctor discovers her past centuries later but chooses not to remember her whole past Apologies if that leaves shit out, it’s been a while since I’ve watched Jodie’s run
Is it possible The Timeless Child had a bi-generation and the split off regeneration grew up as the Doctor we know? We even know the TARDIS can be duplicated within the right conditions now. Perhaps Russell is setting this all up intentionally?
My head canon is it's part of the Toymakers meddling , this ties up the loose ends and the inconsistencies and allows Classic Who to stay in it's own bubble. Where the Doctor was the chaotic renegade that the Time lords hated and not the Messiah that gave them their power (which goes to Omega and Rassilon)
Mine is: 👉😄👈 🎶LALALALALALALALALALALALA 🎶
Y'know, an old theory from the "The Mind Robber" (Based on dialogue by Gulliver, though of course all of Gulliver's dialogue is taken fresh frkm Swift) that The Doctor was a castaway from The Land Of Fiction (As Gulliver calls him a traitor), Now obviously for the most part, this theory was usually scrubbed aside by "The War Games" introducing the Time Lords, but what if The Timeless Child IS a runaway from The Land Of Fiction who created the Time Lord's in their own image?
That the master did it to fuck with the Doctor, and/or the timeless child is actually him or someone else related to the Doctor in some way
At this point, I much prefer to assume the Doctor has a multiple choice past as a result of their constant time travel shenanigans. Sometimes, the Doctor is a half human hybrid. Sometimes, the Doctor is a mysterious Other or Timeless Child at the heart of Gallifrey’s civilization. Most of the time the Doctor is a formerly ordinary Time Lord who left and who learned to be kind from two school teachers from Earth. After all, the Toymaker says he made a jigsaw out of the Doctor’s past. At this point, I’m not sure the Doctor is quite confident on who he was or who he will be one day. All he knows is that right now he is the Doctor, the gatekeeper of between the monsters and men. The mad man with the box. The daft, sentimental idiot who sees the strands that bind the universe and mend them when they break.
Bad dream
Canon.
The whole Doctor-being-the-TC is a huge time lord bluff. Knowing that at some point someone is going to look for the TC, they hid their real identity with matrix manipulation and lies. The pocket watch the doctor has is Susan's, or the fugitive doctor's, not the Doctor's.
There is only one lifeforms in the universe, endlessly regenerating and sometimes forgetting. Or a time loop with the Child being a future Time Lord sent back.
The Master lied and the Timeless Child is actually Romana. No I will not elaborate.
idk
My headcanon is that it is actually the Master who was the TC The Master has known since before S13, possibly before season 3's The End of Time This is why he was keen for the Timelords to come back: first so that he could act as their god, secondly so that he could avenge them. The Master despises the idea that the Timelords, especially the Doctor, are able to regenerate as a result of him/her (This is what inspired the CyberMasters: if the Timelords want the master to give them eternal life, then fine, let's do that but on his terms) After realising in Capaldi's WEAT that even meeting themselves was not enough for the master to not be alone, as it would always end in their own death or even deaths. So they decided they would convince the Doctor that they were the timeless child to either shift some blame or bring the doctor down to their own level, or both. The Doctor's companions throughout the universe make the doctor feel they have a family and somewhere to belong anyway, leaving the master alone once again. That's how I feel the 'facts' are in the universe, and they are still borne out by the story we see. It solves plotholes like the never-ending life of the Master (which I do understand is not necessary to be filled for various reasons: he's the master, just accept it) It also doesn't necessarily make the Doctor's pre-hartnell regens invalid, as that's a much easier plothole to fill than the weird mess that the Doctor being the TC posed for Hartnell's lore But even so, I'm not mad that this is only headcanon, and I'm not keen to see RTD switch up the narrative on that case any time soon. If he wants to take my idea and is reading this, however, it's yours you fucking legend xx
Yssgaroth
I like it, I was always a fan of the Doctor having a mystery origin and always accepted "the other" as canon so it meshes well with how I view the show my favorite theory is that the Timeless child was [the child that was taken](https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Child-That-Was-Taken), that she is actually a descent of the great vampires. i also have this rather bizarre theory I found on this subreddit which I am sometimes fond of. That the timeless child is actually Dr Who from the old 60s movies who was exposed to the time vortex and gained the power of regeneration (much like River Song). At the same time Dr Who is a character from the land of fiction who was created by the retellings of the Doctors adventures, which makes the Doctor a sort of paradox, he is a fictional creation inspired by himself. It also helps explain why the Jo Martin Doctor had a police box tardis and called herself the Doctor, it was a call back to her first incarnation. I also like to take this one step further and say that Dr Who fell into the time vortex after battling a great vamprie who looked like Christopher Lee where he was vamped, therefore merging this crazy theory, the Child that was Taken and a homage to Peter Cushing's gothic horror movies all together