10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Doctor Who

Clearing up the confusion surrounding Doctor Who's biggest misconceptions.

By Danny Meegan /

Doctor Who is like a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. It's been running for so long that tons of myths, misconceptions, and urban legends have sprung up around it, like a massive game of "he said, she said" that has been running for almost 60 years at this point.

Advertisement

The rise of Twitter and Reddit has greatly contributed to this massive vortex of untruths, with fans primarily re-experiencing Doctor Who through GIFs and short comments. Meaning becomes lost, facts are whittled down. It also doesn't help that different fans have their own ideas about what's canon and what's not - there are those who consume every single expanded media release, while others are content with the main TV show, and its three modern spinoffs.

Hell, there are people who don't even think the 1996 TV movie should count. Come on you lot, what's not to love about Paul McGann?

Anyway, let's drop a reality bomb on some of the most common "facts" people always get wrong about Doctor Who, from a misattributed Chris Chibnall quote, to a strange belief involving the Twelfth Doctor's naked bod...

10. Jenny Regenerated In The Doctor's Daughter

The Doctor's Daughter was designed to challenge the Doctor in a unique way. It paired him with a character who, for all intents and purposes, was his daughter, but gave her a military mindset that was very much at odds with the Doctor's values.

Advertisement

Despite this, the two characters came to understand one another over the course of the episode - so it was a particularly cruel twist of fate when Jenny was killed via gunshot by the rather insensitive General Cobb. Believing her to be gone for good, the Doctor took his TARDIS and left, only for Jenny to spring back to life in a final pre-credits tag, with a stream of golden energy emitting from her mouth.

Because Jenny was created from the Doctor's DNA, some people believe that this was her regenerating, just like any Time Lord would after succumbing to a bullet wound. That golden energy - which looks similar to regeneration energy - would seem to back up this train of thought, but that's not actually what's going on here.

Rather, it's energy from the Source - the terraforming device that the humans and the Hath are fighting over - that brings Jenny back to life.

BBC Studios

The Source's green-tinted energy is the same stuff that emits from Jenny's mouth, and considering that it has the power to rejuvenate an entire planet's ecosystem, bringing someone back from the dead would be child's play for it.

Plus, if Jenny was actually regenerating, she would've done so straight away - not several hours later - and her appearance might have changed.

Advertisement