POINTS OF DEBATE: WHO IS "THE RUTH DOCTOR"?

I hadn't intended, at this point, to write a POINT OF DEBATE entry. But there was a development that occurred in a very recent episode that is getting fans to postulate up a storm. I figured I should jump on board this bandwagon and post my own theories on the matter. 




THE RUTH DOCTOR

That Chris Chibnall can be a sly one, can't he? Here he is, making us think we're just going to get a story about the return of the Judoon. But he ends up giving us so much more. Not only do we get a surprise appearance from Captain Jack, but we also learn of (yet another) secret incarnation of the Doctor. This one is so mysterious that not even the Doctor knows where this surprise version of herself fits in her timeline.

Chibnall decides to be even more evil by not giving us any explanation of who this latest secret incarnation is. Unlike Moff's Hidden Doctor, it doesn't look like we're going to get a quick answer, either. Moffat gave us a full explanation of the War Doctor in the very next episode. I'm wondering if we'll even learn who this new incarnation is by the end of this season.

Since we don't have a clue as to where or, more appropriately, when this Doctor hails from - we can't assign the incarnation a specific number yet. We shall, instead, refer to her as The Ruth Doctor. Named after the identity she assumed while she was hiding away on Earth using a Chameleon Arch. Someday, when her origins are properly revealed, we can give her a better name

While we wait for that revelation, let's look into some possible theories of who she might be. There are, at least, three ideas that seem feasible to me. We'll give them a somewhat thorough examination.


THEORY 1: AN ALTERNATIVE TIMELINE DOCTOR

This one seems to make the most sense to me. It's my belief that the Ruth Doctor hails from a parallel universe and that, somehow, the walls between our reality and hers have broken down. She wanted to escape and hide on the Earth in her universe but, somehow, ended up in ours, instead. She's not even aware that she's slipped sideways into our reality. Somehow, Gat and the platoon of Judoon (near that lagoon) have also entered into our version of existence without knowing it.

This is why Gallifrey still exists for the Ruth Doctor and Gat. In their reality, there was no Time War. Nor did the Master go mad and wipe out the population of his homeworld. Gallifrey still stands in their universe. It almost seems like they're a bit more fascist, too (Gat speaks of "the Glory of Gallifrey" - which doesn't sound like the sort of rhetoric you'd normally hear a Time Lord use). Making a culture seem a bit more Naziesque is always a quick easy way of hinting at a parallel reality.

Of course, it might just be an aborted timeline rather than a fully-fledged alternative universe. Again, our key players from the aborted timeline made it into our reality without actually knowing it and think they're in a cosmos where Fascist Gallifrey still exists. Their version of events is now wiped out but they, somehow, didn't get erased with it.

Yes, Chibnall has already gone on record as saying that the Ruth Doctor does not hail from an alternate reality. But he might just be lying to put us all off the scent. Or, more specifically, he's saying she's not from a parallel universe - but he didn't say she wasn't from an aborted timeline. And there is a difference between the two.




THEORY 2: A LEGITIMATE INCARNATION WITH A MEMORY WIPE

Part of what is making the Ruth Doctor such a mystery is the fact that her and Thirteen don't seem to recognize each other. Out of sheer linear logic, whoever is the most recent version of the Doctor  should be aware of who the other is. The younger incarnation may not know how they will appear in the future, but we're assuming that the latest model has glanced in the mirror at least a few times while they were in the past body and remembers what they looked like back then.

But neither Doctor knows who the other is. It's a complete shock to either of them when they meet. Which is, of course, one more reason why I think the Ruth Doctor hails from another reality altogether. They wouldn't recognize each other if that were the case.

But suppose she doesn't come from a parallel universe or an aborted timeline. Suppose she is either a past or a future incarnation of the Doctor. How could this be possible if neither recognizes the other?

The simplest explanation is that something happened to the Doctor's memory. If Thirteen is the most recent incarnation, then everything that happened to her while she was the Ruth Doctor was, somehow, erased. If it's the reverse and Ruth is a future version of the Doctor, then her experiences as Thirteen were deleted from her consciousness.  Whichever the case, they both fit in the same timeline but their memories have been tampered with in some way. More than likely, the Time Lords did it for reasons that have yet to be explained to us.


THEORY 3: RUTH DOCTOR IS A SPECIAL CREATION OF SOME SORT

We've seen an example of this theory already during the Classic Series. At the end of Season 23, it was revealed that the learned court prosecutor in the Doctor's long ongoing trial was a special distillation of all that is evil in him. As explained by the Master in a surprise appearance, he was an embodiment of the Doctor's darker side. The High Council promised the prosecuting attorney the Doctor's remaining incarnations should he succeed in having the renegade Time Lord declared guilty of a series of trumped-up charges. This strange manifestation of the Doctor that was created to ruin him was known only as the Valeyard.

What exactly the Valeyard is was never made entirely clear. I postulate about his origins in some previous entries (Classic Who Theory: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/09/fixing-continuity-glitches-who-is.html, Modern Who Theory: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/09/fixing-continuity-glitches-who-is_28.html) but no proper account of him was given on the show, itself. We only know that the Valeyard was somehow created from the Doctor. How this was done remains a mystery.

Could Ruth be something similar? Perhaps, out of some strange necessity, the Time Lords used the Doctor's bio-data as a basic template of some sort and created the Ruth Doctor. My guess would be that the Matrix predicted that the Master would wipe out Gallifrey and made the Time Lords aware of their impending doom (the Matrix has done things like this before - ie: the Lord-President's murder in Deadly Assassin or the Legend of the Hybrid that gets explored in Series Nine). The High Council feared, however, that if the Doctor discovered the scandal of the Timeless Child she might not be willing to save her people. So they, somehow, created their own special version of the Doctor. Knowing, of course, that the best way to combat the Master would be to sick the Doctor on him. They might have even tweaked their creation a bit and made her slightly more aggressive. Just to make sure she really put up a good fight against the Master. This would explain why the Ruth Doctor seems a bit more prone to violence.

The Ruth Doctor, however, copies the actions of her progenitor. She steals a TARDIS and goes rogue. It's not actually the same TARDIS as Thirteen's, but the Ruth Doctor instinctively gets it to assume the form of a police box. This would also account for the console room looking so Old School. It's a new model - white walls with roundels is the basic default setting. The console room of the TARDIS the Doctor steals in Hell Bent has a similar design - I'm guessing it was also fairly new. This is the basic look for a console room in a fresh TARDIS. It's only after extended service that modifications to the aesthetics start to happen.

The Ruth Doctor seems to have gotten close to a soldier while she was living on Gallifrey. They escape together to Earth and hide there. The High Council are embarrassed by how things have turned out and want the Ruth Doctor eradicated. They dispatch Gath to accomplish this. They also hire a platoon of Judoon (who act like buffoons) to assist in the process.

If you subscribe to the theory of Gallifreyan Mean Time, then Thirteen has jumped her own timeline a bit. She comes from a time when the Master has destroyed his own people - but she has accidentally encountered some Time Lords who have not had this happen to them, yet. This is entirely possible. Unlike the Time Wars, the Master's attack on Gallifrey isn't Time Locked. So something like this could happen. The very fact that Gallifrey will soon be falling might be causing the Laws of Mean Time to collapse a bit.

In many ways, this does seem like the tidiest explanation. The Ruth Doctor could have even been engineered to believe that she is the original version. She has no knowledge that another fourteen incarnations of herself even exist. This would account for why the two Doctors don't recognize each other. Thirteen was not aware that the Time Lords had made the Ruth Doctor. And the Ruth Doctor didn't know she's a copy of someone.


DISPELLING A FEW OF THE POPULAR THEORIES I'M ALREADY SEEING

"But Rob!" some of you might be saying (some of you always seem to be saying something of this nature!), "You never mentioned the theories most fans seem to be talking about! What about Brain of Morbius or Season 6b?!" 

I haven't discussed these theories because neither seem all that tight to me. Let's go into why:


DISPELLED THEORY 1: MORBIUS' BRAIN

With the appearance of the Ruth Doctor, fans are suddenly siting that famous moment in the story Brain of Morbius where it's alluded to that there were incarnations before William Hartnell. There's a famous scene where Morbius and the Doctor are mind-bending: a process where two opponents try to regress a Time Lord down their timeline and, basically, wish them out of existence. The Fourth Doctor is in the fight. Images appear on a screen during the battle of Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Good 'Ole Bill The Original. And then, suddenly, we see more images of other people (they were, technically, headshots of various members of the production team that were working on the show at the time). 

"How far, Doctor?" Morbius proclaims as the images appear, "How far back do you go?!" (or words to that effect - I'm terrible with quotes!).

Fans that are familiar with the scene are claiming the Ruth Doctor, somehow, belongs in this rogues' gallery of inconsistency. That if Morbius had kept regressing the Doctor, her image would have appeared. He just didn't manage to get that far before the game abruptly ended due to a malfunction.

There's a tonne of faults with this idea. Even before the Ruth Doctor existed, many fans pointed out that the show clearly displays all the incarnations of the Doctor that a Time Lord is permitted to have. According to the rules of regeneration, there could be no incarnations before Hartnell. Some fans suggest, of course, that Time of the Doctor is not the first time we see the Doctor get an extra regeneration cycle. A bonus regeneration cycle was given to him prior to Hartnell, too. This does get all those faces in Morbius and the Ruth Doctor to make sense.

There are, however, other inconsistencies that make this idea unworkable. The biggest one being that the TARDIS gets stuck in Police Box form for the first time in An Unearthly Child. So any adventure involving the TARDIS as a Police Box can only take place after that story. The Ruth Doctor is meant to be before Hartnell so she should not be in a Police Box. I suppose, if you try real hard, you can say that the TARDIS has been stuck in Police Box mode a few times over the years -  but it's still a bit difficult to swallow. I'm more inclined to believe that this theory just doesn't hold water.

Incidentally, I don't even believe that the mysterious faces we see in Brain of Morbius are actually the Doctor's. For my actual theory on what they were, you can read about it here: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/08/fixing-continuity-glitches-quick-fixes.html. It's the final point that I cover in the essay. 


DISPELLED THEORY 2: SEASON 6B

This one is definitely a bit more solid. It's based on the fan theory that the Second Doctor went on a series of secret missions for the Time Lords after his trial but before he was sentenced to exile on Earth. It gets certain inconsistencies in stories like The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors to make better sense.

Some fans who believe in this concept now think that the Second Doctor had an adventure that forced him to regenerate into the Ruth Doctor. The Ruth Doctor continued doing missions for the Time Lords. Eventually, Jamie and Victoria stopped travelling with her (or, perhaps, this still happened with the Second Doctor) and she was assigned an actual Time Lord as a companion. The two of them eventually decided to hide on Earth using a Chameleon Arch. The events of Fugitive of the Judoon now take place.

Sometime after Fugitive, the Time Lords will catch up with the Ruth Doctor and sentence will be properly carried out. She will begin her exile as Jon Pertwee. Because, on paper, this is meant to only be the Doctor's second regeneration - the High Council and/or the CIA must do a little bit of a cover-up.They erase the Doctor's memory of the time he spent as Ruth and assign him an extra regeneration to get everything to look as it should.

It is difficult to poke any holes in this theory. It does get everything to line up pretty nicely. Thirteen forgetting Ruth now makes sense. As does Ruth having a Police Box TARDIS. Even Gallifrey seeming a bit more fascist gels well. This is the Time Lords from two thousand years previously. Maybe they were a bit more militant back then.

The reason why I don't support this idea much is due more to its actual complexity. This would be very difficult to explain to fans of the New Series who aren't familiar with this particular aspect of the show's Classic Lore. In many ways, it would be a nightmare of exposition to reveal this all in an episode. I suppose it could be done. But it would be pretty difficult. More than likely, it would bring the story to a huge screeching halt and still alienate a lot of viewers. Yes, Old School Hardcores like me would just nod understandingly. But I can't see this being all that interesting or satisfactory for a newer fan that hasn't gone back and done their homework. And there are still a lot of fans like that out there. 



SPECIAL APPENDIX: IF RUTH IS A PROPER INCARNATION OF THE DOCTOR BUT ISN"T FROM 6B - WHERE DOES SHE COME FROM?

Since I'm dispelling the Season 6b theory, I figure I should try to pinpoint where exactly the Ruth Doctor hails from. As I have stated previously, it could be possible that she's from the future. Maybe she's the next incarnation after the Curator. Wherever she fits, she has had her memory altered so that she no longer remembers what she did in her thirteenth body. Quite possibly, the mind wipe extends to further than just that. Perhaps she's forgotten everything before her Ruth incarnation. Or perhaps it's something in between those two extremities. We won't know for sure until more answers are provided for us.

But what if Ruth is a hidden incarnation from before Thirteen? If that's the case - but I don't think she's from Season 6b - where does she fit? 

My guess is that she's very recent. I'm going to take some of the ideas I had in Theory 3 and apply them here, too. Sometime when the Twelfth Doctor was nearing regeneration, the Time Lords started receiving Matrix predictions about the Master's visit that would destroy them all. Rather than create a special version of the Doctor like I stated in Theory 3, they went to the Doctor for help. He had just finished regenerating from Twelve to Ruth. For reasons unknown, the regeneration does some serious damage to the console room (just as it does in Twice Upon a Time). The Ruth Doctor decides to go retro and changes the desktop to white with roundels. The Time Lords approach Ruth shortly after the regeneration and ask her to help with the preventing of their impending doom. They assign her a Time Lord to assist her. Ruth does help for a while but, eventually, the deal goes sour. Perhaps the Time Lords actually want her to kill the Master and she refuses to. Her Time Lord assistant agrees with her decision and they both go into hiding on Earth.

The Time Lords will eventually catch up to the Ruth Doctor after Fugitive of the Judoon and wipe her memory of all her experiences in that incarnation. They will bring her right back to that fateful moment in the console room in Twice Upon a Time and force her to regenerate into Thirteen. Thirteen will believe she went straight from Twelve to her with no Ruth in between. Two regenerations in one moment, however, is a bit too much for the TARDIS to handle and she flings Thirteen out of her and becomes the Ghost Monument for a while until the Doctor is able to retrieve her. Again, some redecoration of the console room was done when she is found.

Personally, that's where I think the Ruth Doctor fits best. She and Gath and Lee might not have been given the fullest of briefings about why they have to take out the Master once and for all - which is why Gath and Ruth Doctor are shocked when they hear of Gallifrey's destruction from Thirteen.



Okay, those are all the theories that I think are sound regarding the true identity of the Ruth Doctor. I'm not willing to commit entirely to one of them which is why I made this a POINT OF DEBATE rather than a FIXING CONTINUITY GLITCHES essay. There's just too much mystery, here. I would rather entertain several ideas and wait for the show to provide me with the proper answer. I still remember the embarrassment I suffered during a certain post where I swore the Master survived The End of Time - Part 2 by escaping through the Gallifrey Falls No More painting. Only to discover several seasons later that it was far less complicated than that! I've learnt my lesson and would rather stay a bit more wishy-washy about the whole thing.

For all I know, though - none of these theories are correct. Or one that I dispelled was actually spot-on. We'll have to wait and see... 

Or, as the Doctor once put it: 

"Time will tell. It always does..." 

(Think I actually got that quote right, for once!)