The Doctor’s identity is shrouded in mystery – the clue is in the show’s name! But could the eponymous Time Lord really be half human? It’s certainly possible, according to Doctor Who lore…
Ever since the Doctor Who TV movie in 1996, fans have been puzzled over the Doctor’s biological makeup. Prior to the film, Doctor Who lore had maintained that the Time Lord came from Gallifrey, and whilst his true identity was a mystery, there was little doubt that he shared the same DNA as his fellow Gallifreyans. This was reinforced in the 1983 story ‘Arc of Infinity’ when his personal data was harvested from the data banks on his home planet.
However, this piece of Doctor Who lore was shattered in 1996. In the TV movie, the Doctor – in order to create a distraction – told a confused passer-by that he was “half human on [his] mother’s side.” Now, there is every possibility that this was simply a piece of misdirection to allow him to steal a key from his jacket.
But elsewhere in the movie, his enemy the Master glimpses inside the Eye of Harmony (the power source at the heart of the TARDIS) and it gives him a close-up of the Doctor’s eye. The Master is surprised; it’s a human eye. “The Doctor is half human,” he declares. And he reiterates this towards the end of the film when he is trying to ‘crucify’ his old enemy above the Eye of Harmony. The Master points out that the Doctor has never been able to open the Eye because he was “only half human,” and it needed a full-blooded human to open it.
This, therefore, would seem to be an unequivocal piece of Doctor Who lore: the Doctor is half human. He said it himself. The Master said it. The Eye of Harmony saw it.
But things get a bit confusing when we come to the new series. In the 2008 episode ‘Journey’s End,’ there was a metacrisis in which the DNA of the Doctor’s companion Donna became mixed up with the Doctor’s. This happened when one of the Doctor’s severed hands absorbed his regeneration energy, which Donna then touched, and the energy went into her. As a result, she became half Time Lord.
The really interesting part, though, is that this hand grew into a whole new Time Lord – a new version of the Doctor, who was half human.
And according to Doctor Who lore, this shouldn’t have happened. If the Doctor had been half human to begin with, the metacrisis should have resulted in a Doctor who was three quarters human and one quarter Time Lord. Indeed, the Doctor admitted that there had never been a human / Time Lord hybrid prior to that moment, because there couldn’t be. It was biologically impossible, and Donna’s brain was burning up as a result.
The main take-away from this is that the original Doctor had to be one hundred per cent Time Lord, which contradicts the Doctor Who lore which was established in the TV movie.
And if your brain is already hurting, brace yourself, because the 2020 episode ‘The Timeless Children‘ threw the mystery of the Doctor’s origin into a complete spin. In the story, the Master uncovered a secret deep within the Gallifreyan Matrix. It turned out that the Doctor had originally been a little girl who was discovered outside the gateway to another dimension. This girl had the ability to regenerate, and a rogue scientist named Tecteun grafted her DNA into the Gallifreyans to create the Time Lord race. Thus, the Time Lords got their DNA, and their regenerative ability, from the Doctor.
And this is how Doctor Who lore currently stands. The Doctor began life as an unknown species with the ability to regenerate. She may have been half human, and she may not – we simply don’t know. If she were half human, and the Time Lords shared some of her DNA, it would follow that they too would be half human, which they aren’t, because the Master made it clear in the TV movie that it was just the Doctor who was half human.
At the same time, it shouldn’t be possible for the Doctor to be half human, as this would create an unstable metacrisis. So what are we to do with this seemingly contradictory piece of Doctor Who lore?
Well, fortunately, Russell T Davies created a new piece of Doctor Who lore as an easy get-out for past contradictions, or for storylines that fans simply didn’t like. In the 2023 episode ‘The Giggle,’ the Doctor came up against his old enemy the Toymaker – a villain with seemingly god-like powers to bend reality. And in the episode the Toymaker told the Doctor that he made a “jigsaw out of his history” – as in, he deliberately turned it into a puzzle.
So the fact that the current Doctor Who lore doesn’t make sense can be covered by this line. Past inconsistencies such as the Doctor’s apparently half human DNA and the metacrisis can be explained away by the fact that the Toymaker was deliberately planting falsehoods to mess with the Doctor’s head. This could even explain the story of the Timeless Children. It could be that the Toymaker planted a false story in the Matrix to fool the Master into thinking that the Doctor began life as a little girl.
In short, we may never know the truth about the Doctor’s origins – and if we did, it would probably negate the point of the show!
But do tell us what you think. Could the Doctor be half human? And to what extent do you think the Toymaker meddled with the Time Lord’s personal history? Let us know in the comments below.
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