The Fugitive Doctor is one of the greatest Doctor Who mysteries of modern times. How does this enigmatic incarnation fit into the established canon? Does she fit into the canon at all…?
The Fugitive Doctor, played by Jo Martin, made her first appearance in the 2020 episode ‘Fugitive of the Judoon.’ She was on the run, having disguised herself as a human to escape from the famous ‘rhino police.’ Soon, however, she learnt her true identity and remembered that she had a TARDIS, shaped like a police box, buried next to a lighthouse, as one does. And she called herself the Doctor. This was, to all intents and purposes, an unknown incarnation of the eponymous Time Lord.
The Fugitive Doctor’s baffling existence was given further weight by the Series Twelve finale ‘The Timeless Children,’ where the Master revealed that the Doctor had, in fact, lived myriad lives that she had long since forgotten; there were hundreds, if not thousands, of unknown incarnations of the Doctor. The Fugitive Doctor, it seemed, was just one of them.
The simplest explanation for the Fugitive Doctor’s existence is that she predates William Hartnell; she lived her life prior to the first incarnation that appeared in ‘An Unearthly Child,’ and for whatever reason, the Doctor forgot she existed, and indeed lost his memory of his true origins and all the other lives that preceded him.
However, it would be naïve of us to pretend that this is a widely cherished explanation, as many fans contend that William Hartnell is indisputably the First Doctor, as the majority of Doctor Who‘s 60+ year history attests. It’s understandable that fans refuse to accept this idea outright. So is it possible to find another explanation for the Fugitive Doctor’s existence that minimises the pain of the long-time Whovian?
Absolutely. The most obvious explanation can be found in the 2023 episode ‘The Giggle,’ where the Time Lord’s old enemy the Toymaker cryptically remarks, “I made a jigsaw out of your history, Doctor. Did you like it?” This line was deliberately inserted by Russell T Davies to give fans an ‘out’ for the revelations of ‘The Timeless Children.’ If they didn’t like the concept of there being hundreds of unknown Doctors with an alternative origin story, they could simply write it off as being an invention of the Toymaker. Thus, the Fugitive Doctor was simply one of his creations, and doesn’t legitimately belong in the Doctor’s timeline – she’s a fake Doctor, if you will.
This might not be the most palatable explanation for the Fugitive Doctor (particularly if you’re Jo Martin!) but at least it’s simple. That being said, you might have a job trying to explain it to the ‘not we’s’ when they see the Fugitive Doctor’s face beaming at them from the SF section of Waterstones. “Wait, is that the Doctor?” they’ll cry. At which point you’ll refer them to this article and take out your flip-chart.
How else, then, can we account for the Fugitive Doctor? Well, there are ‘gaps’ in the canonical Doctor’s timeline where she could, theoretically, be slotted. Technically, we never saw the changeover from Patrick Troughton to Jon Pertwee, so Jo Martin’s incarnation could appear there.
This would require a little genuflection, though, as Jon Pertwee was wearing Patrick Troughton’s clothes at the start of his first story as he began his exile, and indeed this exile had been handed to him by his own people as the result of his ‘crimes.’ The idea that the Time Lords would secretly suspend this sentence, change his body, change his clothes, send him off on a lifetime of secret missions, kill him again, wipe his mind, change his clothes back and then send him to Earth does stretch credulity, but hey, this is Doctor Who – we’ve seen far weirder stories, haven’t we ‘Ghost Light‘? So it’s possible.
A tidier explanation might be that the Fugitive Doctor is from the future. Now, this is problematic in that she didn’t recognise Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor when she met her, and from what we know of the Fugitive Doctor’s timeline, she was working for a secret organisation known as the Division on Gallifrey. This shouldn’t be possible if it’s in the Doctor’s future, as Gallifrey has been destroyed and all of the remaining Time Lords have been wiped out. So this would have to be a future where Gallifrey had somehow been restored, or its destruction had been averted, and time, essentially, had been rewritten.
However, whilst this theory is simple enough, it might not hold water in other Fugitive Doctor stories like ‘The Kaleidoscope,’ where the Time Lord meets ‘former’ companion Martha Jones. If all the writers of this multimedia arc are set on the fact that the Fugitive Doctor comes from the past, it may not be possible to apply the idea that she’s a future incarnation. It depends what the expanded universe does with this incarnation (heck, it may already have blown the ‘future Doctor’ theory out of the water… Let us know!)
This, therefore, would leave us with the parallel universe theory. What if, at some point in the TV stories, the TARDIS unwittingly slipped into a parallel universe where there was a different version of the Doctor, with a different origin story and thousands of unknown incarnations? There is certainly a precedent for this in the established canon, with stories like ‘Inferno,’ ‘Full Circle,’ and ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ showing just how easily the TARDIS can venture into alternate realities.
In this case, the switch could have happened after the Twelfth Doctor’s regeneration. Immediately after, the TARDIS went haywire, citing ‘systems crisis’ and ‘multiple operations failures’ on its screens, with the console tearing itself apart. The TARDIS was thrown onto its side and the newly-regenerated Doctor was promptly hurled into the abyss (well, Sheffield.)
Is it ridiculous to posit that, at this point, the TARDIS entered a parallel universe? Not really. When you think about it, it’s actually the simplest way of explaining why the Doctor’s origin story is so staggeringly different from what we know, and why she has no memory of it, including the Fugitive Doctor. It would also explain why the Master was alive and kicking, in a previously unseen incarnation, and why bi-generation is suddenly a thing, and why the Thirteenth Doctor changed her clothes along with her body… It was all the ‘lore’ of an alternate universe, and this means the Doctor can escape it at any time.
So tell us, reader: how do you account for the existence of the Fugitive Doctor? Which theory makes the most sense to you? Let us know in the comments below.
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