10 Dropped Doctor Who Plot Threads We'll Never Get Answers To

3. The Mystery Of The Valeyard

Doctor Who Sleep No More Ending
BBC Studios

The Trial of a Time Lord - Colin Baker's final series - introduced the mysterious Valeyard, a Time Lord prosecutor who, according to the Master, is a sinister future incarnation of the Doctor, a physical manifestation of his darkest impulses.

Considering how important this reveal was in relation to Doctor Who canon, the Valeyard seemed primed to become a recurring character in the Whoniverse (perhaps like the Master) allowing the show to fill in some of the blanks that his brief stint left wide open: how was he created? Where, specifically, does he stem from in the Doctor's timeline? Heck, when we last saw him onscreen at the end of Trial of a Time Lord, he was laughing right into the camera, hinting at more villainous antics to come.

But nope. We haven't seen him since.

The Valeyard is one of those characters who's brought up every single time a new Doctor Who series is about to be broadcast, with people saying that he should be the new overarching villain, and many theories being posited about how he could return.

But at this point - over 30 years after his last appearance - it just feels like the creators don't care about the Valeyard as much as the fans do.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.