10 Doctor Who Mysteries That Will NEVER Be Answered
8. What Was The Watcher?
In the Fourth Doctor's swansong Logopolis, the Doctor and his companions are stalked by a being known only as the Watcher.
Appearing everywhere from the streets of Logopolis to Barnet Bypass, this ghost-like figure is eventually revealed to have been the Doctor the whole time.
Except, what does that actually mean?
The generally-accepted explanation is that the Watcher was a nascent version of the Fifth Doctor – a premonition to warn the Fourth Doctor that his time is nearly up. Similar to how Ood Sigma appears to the Tenth Doctor.
Certainly, the Watcher played a vital role in the regeneration, merging with the Fourth Doctor to create the Fifth. But can we really consider it “the Doctor” in its own right? After all, it’s very much presented as a separate entity, existing in parallel to the Doctor’s timeline rather than being part of it (more like the Valeyard than the War Doctor).
Putting the question of the Watcher’s identity aside, there’s also the matter of how it came into being, and why. No other handover has played out in this way, and no other Doctor has had their own Watcher. Why? What was it about the Fourth Doctor that merited this special treatment, other than the fact that he was played by Tom Baker?
In short, we don’t truly know what the Watcher was, where it came from, or why it actually existed. Like so many things about regeneration, it seems destined to remain a mystery.