10 Crazy Doctor Who Theories Fans Actually Believed

10. Donna Picked Up The Master’s Ring

We’ve seen the Master escape death countless times before. But the fate depicted in Last of the Time Lords, with the Saxon Master's body burnt to a crisp on a funeral pyre, seemed particularly final.

However, fans knew better – not least because of the cutaway scene at the episode’s end, which revealed that the Master’s ring had been retrieved from the smoking embers of the pyre by an unknown individual.

The question was, who?

In the end, the answer ended up being fairly unremarkable. It was an entirely new character called Miss Trefusis, who was only seen during the Master's rebirth sequence in The End of Time. But in the interim, fans went crazy speculating about who this mysterious woman might be.

One of the most prominent theories was that she was a character we’d met before: Donna Noble.

Quite why Donna would've picked up the Master’s ring isn’t clear – though it would've made for a pretty mind-blowing twist, with the Doctor-Donna metacrisis potentially playing a part in the Master’s resurrection.

So while it of course didn't belong to Catherine Tate, the manicured hand glimpsed in Last of the Time Lords didn't belong to Miss Trefusis actor Sylvia Seymour, either. For the purposes of this brief cutaway scene, the role was actually played by production manager Tracie Simpson.

Well isn’t that wizard!