10 Things That Must NEVER Happen In Doctor Who
3. Reveal The Doctor's Name
Of course Steven Moffat was never going to tell us the Doctor's name, but we all felt a wee twinge of anxiety back in 2013, didn't we? Instead, Moffat constructed a three-episode arc that explicitly stated why revealing the name of the Doctor was a very very bad idea.
The Doctor's name was so powerful that revealing it would've restarted the Time War and destroyed the universe itself. You don't get a bigger metaphor than that. Because let's face it, if Doctor Who ever did tell us what the Doctor's name was, it would collapse the central premise of the show.
"Doctor Who" was always a question, a hint of the character's mysterious nature. The Doctor is an unknowable alien time-traveller, and this mystique would be severely hampered if they turned out to be called Brian or Nigel.
Worse still, what if someone attributed a convoluted "alien" name to the Doctor to emphasize that they're not one of us? Romana's full name of Romanadvoratnelundar is a joke that sends up this very notion. The last thing we'd want is for someone to take that joke seriously and assign a similarly convoluted name to the Doctor.
What's the Doctor's name? It's a promise. A promise to be a Doctor.