Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Big Questions After 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth'

4. Will The Doctor Revisit Her Past?

There was a lovely little scene following Grace’s funeral where Yaz asks the Doctor if she has any family. The Doctor replies “No. Lost them a long time ago. I carry them with me. What they would have thought, said, and done. I make them a part of who I am.”

There are two ways of reading this. It could be the prelude for further explorations into the Doctor’s backstory, or it could be a way of saying from the outset that this is an area her friends don’t need to ask about. Her family live in in her memories and the way she chooses to live her life, and that’s all that matters.

Another feature of Moffat’s era was the frequent references to the Doctor’s past, with Clara even visiting him as a child on Gallifrey. The constant teases became irritating after a while. It was pretty clear that the mystery would be preserved, however much the writers flirted with the issues. Coupled with the well repeated caveat that the Doctor lies, we could never be sure what was in-universe fact and what was in-universe fiction when it came to the Doctor’s identity, no matter how equivocal he sounded.

The scene in The Woman Who Fell to Earth is more of a callback to The Tomb of the Cybermen, when the second Doctor is comforting Victoria as she remembers her father. She suggests he cannot remember his family, to which he replies “Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they... they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will you.” With this in mind, it seems then that this is yet another break from the Moffat years.