10 Notorious Doctor Who Urban Legends

5. The Cartmel Masterplan Was Going To Ruin The Doctor's Character

Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor in Survival
BBC Studios

The mythical Cartmel Masterplan (a term that was invented by Who fans) was an idea devised primarily by classic-era script editor Andrew Cartmel.

Supposedly, the plan was going to reveal that the Doctor had a hand in shaping Time Lord society, making the character much more powerful and important than we originally thought he was. This ultimate goal was hinted at throughout Sylvester McCoy's final two seasons, but in the end, the Cartmel Masterplan never made it to the screen due to the show being cancelled in 1989.

While this plan is famous within Doctor Who fan circles, there's a common misconception that the Cartmel Masterplan would've been an earth-shattering, "this changes everything" type of reveal, similar to the recent Timeless Child twist.

This has led many fans to bash the Cartmel Masterplan for "ruining the mystery" of the Doctor, but in reality, Cartmel never wanted to completely flip the character on his head, and he never wanted to outright reveal a massive, Timeless Child-esque backstory.

Instead, he simply wanted to drop hints that there might be more to the Doctor and his history, leaving fans to fill in the blanks - if they wished to do so.

"All I wanted to do [with the Cartmel Masterplan] is throw the Doctor back into shadow again and just give hints of what was going on. And [with The Timeless Children] there’s a lot of detail in specifics, which is the last thing you want."

Over the last few months, fans have compared Chris Chibnall's Timeless Child reveal to the Cartmel Masterplan, but the crucial difference between the two is that Cartmel only wanted to tease and hint, rather than presenting his ideas as firm canon.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!