10 Things Nobody Wants To Admit About Doctor Who

The moral of 2020's Timeless Child storyline was that it didn't matter how many Doctor or Fugitive or War incarnations there had been – the only thing that was important was who the Doctor was now.

But rather than detonate the numbering, The Timeless Children had the opposite effect and led to increasingly headache-inducing conversations about where Jo Martin sits in established canon, and how many incarnations we need to fit in our lists of every actor to play the Doctor.

The numbering of the Doctors only matters when it comes to rating your favourite ones, or marketing Blu-Ray box-sets. In terms of the show itself, whoever our lead actor is should always be playing The Doctor, the definite article. The mad person with the box and the screwdriver and the penchant for kidnapping humans.

Otherwise, audiences could reasonably assume that they'd be utterly insane to jump onboard with the adventures of the Fifteenth Doctor, when they've never seen the other 14. But that's not insane at all! Ncuti Gatwa was a brand-new Doctor, who kept talking about his granddaughter Susan, bumped into his old companion Mel Bush, and then did battle with a villain we hadn't seen in almost 40 years!

Okay, bad example.