Doctor Who’s Bi-Generation Twist May Solve A 40-Year Plot Hole
Summary
- Doctor Who’s bi-generation twist allows for multiple past Doctors to exist, explaining how the Second Doctor had foreknowledge about his companions’ fates in “The Five Doctors.”
- Showrunner Russell T Davies revealed that every incarnation of the Doctor splits in two, creating the opportunity for old friends to reunite and for spinoff projects like Tales of the TARDIS to exist.
- The bi-generated Second Doctor theory suggests that he was captured by Borusa and sent to the Death Zone, providing an explanation for his knowledge of Jamie and Zoe and his appearance at the Brigadier’s retirement party.
Doctor Who‘s historic bi-generation could help solve several plotholes, including one from over 40 years ago. David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor bi-generated into Ncuti Gatwa during Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials. It was a fresh spin on regeneration in Doctor Who that touchingly enabled David Tennant’s Doctor to process millennia of trauma. Doctor Who’s bi-generation twist was a further acknowledgment that the rules of regeneration are not, and should never be fixed. The bi-generation innovation also explains spinoff projects like Tales of the TARDIS and why the classic Doctors look much older.
Discussing why the Doctor regenerated like this, showrunner Russell T Davies revealed that every incarnation split in two. This means there are now fourteen past Doctors traveling the universe, able to meet old friends. This could help to explain how the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) appeared to have foreknowledge about the fate of his companions in “The Five Doctors”. Fans have spent decades trying to square how the Second Doctor knew what happened to Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury), and Doctor Who’s bi-generation may have finally solved it.
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The Five Doctor’s Second Doctor Doesn’t Fit With The Main Timeline
When the Second Doctor and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) make it to the Dark Tower in “The Five Doctors”, they encounter phantom versions of Jamie and Zoe. The Second Doctor knows that it’s not his companions because they had their memories erased by the Time Lords. This particular moment in Doctor Who’s 20th anniversary special has always stood out for fans, who haven’t been able to explain how the Doctor can have this knowledge. One possible explanation is that, because the Second Doctor’s future incarnations are also in the Tower, he briefly shares his successors’ knowledge of what happened to Jamie and Zoe.
Another solution is Doctor Who’s missing Second Doctor season, otherwise known as Season 6B. “The Five Doctors” writer Terrance Dicks even entertained this theory in several of his Doctor Who novels during the 1990s. The Season 6B theory proposes that, just before he regenerated into the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), the Second Doctor was saved by a shadowy Time Lord organization called the Celestial Intervention Agency. They then recruit the Second Doctor to fulfill certain missions for them, such as the investigation of Dastari’s time experiments in 1985’s “The Two Doctors.”
The Celestial Intervention Agency is not to be confused with The Division, another secretive Time Lord organization, introduced during Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who era.
Could The Five Doctors Feature A Bi-Generated Second Doctor?
Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot remember the Second Doctor while on the Memory TARDIS in Tales of the TARDIS.
Both existing answers as to how the Second Doctor fits into “The Five Doctors” have holes in them. For example, if the Second Doctor and Jamie were on a mission for the Celestial Intervention Agency in “The Two Doctors”, then how did he get his memories back? Doctor Who’s bi-generation twist now gives a third answer to how the Doctor knew about Jamie and Zoe. He’s a bi-generated Second Doctor who’s captured by Borusa and sent to the Death Zone.
A bi-generated Second Doctor at a UNIT retirement party isn’t that different from a bi-generated Fourteenth Doctor having lunch with the Nobles. The Doctor Who spinoff Tales of the TARDIS revealed that Jamie and Zoe had their memories restored by the mysterious Memory TARDIS. If the Memory TARDIS is how each Doctor copes with their trauma after bi-generation, then it would make sense for the bi-generated Second Doctor to send it to pick up an older Jamie and Zoe after meeting their phantoms in “The Five Doctors.”
Doctor Who returns to BBC1 in the UK and Disney+ worldwide in May.
Doctor Who
Originally premiered in 1963, Doctor Who is a sci-fi series that follows a powerful being known as a Time Lord, referred to as the Doctor. Using an interdimensional time-traveling ship known as the TARDIS, the Doctor travels time and space with various companions as they solve multiple problems and help avert catastrophe as much as they almost cause it. Though the Doctor is always the same character, they experience regenerations, allowing them to be recast every few seasons as a unique immortal being with new personality traits.
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