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Is the Doctor half-human after all?

January 18th, 2016 by Dave Bowling Comments

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HellBent1

Ah, there’s nothing like internet scuttlebutt.

In a recent interview, published in Doctor Who Magazine issue 491, Steven Moffat was asked to choose any alien/human/monster from the show to exist in real life. With trademark crypticness, the showrunner answered,

The correct answer is, of course, the Doctor.

Now, on its own that doesn’t really mean anything. But throw into the mix the talk of The Hybrid throughout series 9, a Gallifreyan legend of a warrior that was made from two races that would conquer Gallifrey, and things could potentially take on a new meaning. Davros had attempted to use the Doctor’s regeneration energy to infuse Daleks on New Skaro with Time Lord attributes, making them hybrids; the Doctor himself stated that the Mire healing technology he used to bring Viking girl Ashildr back to life in The Girl Who Died essentially made her a Mire-human hybrid; and of course there was River Song, a human with Time Lord regenerative abilities who was slated to appear in last year’s Christmas special. It could have been any of them, turns out it was none. According to the season 9 closer Hell Bent, the ‘warrior’ of two species refers to the Doctor and his human companion. Even though the Twelfth Doctor rubbishes the idea.

But with Moffat’s comment in DWM, the internet has predictably gone off into the realms of head canon. Is the Doctor an alien/human/monster hybrid? The Seventh Doctor once claimed to be “much more than just another Time Lord” in a deleted scene from Remembrance of the Daleks, and of course both the Master and the Eighth Doctor claimed that the Doctor was half human (on his mother’s side) in the 1996 TV movie. Theories are now abounding that Steven Moffat is dropping hints about the Doctor being half human, even though the mysterious Time Lady seen in The End of Time has been identified positively by former producer Russell T Davies as the Doctor’s mother.

So, anything concrete so far? Absolutely not. And although Moffat is well known for hiding major plot developments in plain sight, it’s still very unlikely that this is anything other than fan reaction to a simple throwaway comment that the Doctor should exist in real life. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but this is rumour control. These are the facts. No place here for head canon.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off trying to create a dubious theory whereby Peter Cushing’s movie Dr Who is actually the Valeyard. It keeps me off the streets…

Source: Cultbox

Dave was born at an early age to parents of both sexes. He has been a self-confessed geek for as long as he can remember, having been raised through the 80s on a steady diet of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Red Dwarf and (sigh) Knight Rider. Throw the usual assortment of Saturday morning cartoons into the mix and we have something quite exceptional: someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of utter tosh; a love of giant robots and spaceships fighting; and the strange desire to leap tall buildings in a single bound while wearing his underpants over his trousers. The death ray is currently in the works and one day you shall all bow to him, his giant space station and fleet of funky orange space shuttles...