3 Ups & 2 Downs From Doctor Who Series 12 - Fugitive Of The Judoon

1. The Established Lore Is At Risk

With the introduction of Jo Martin's Doctor, 57 years of established Doctor Who lore could be chopped and changed to fit this supposed incarnation in. This Doctor, (known as Ruth prior to regaining her identity), doesn't recognise Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, and vice-versa. This places Ruth's Doctor either before William Hartnell's first Doctor, or after Jodie Whittaker's thirteenth.

The Doctor's life prior to Hartnell was something never really explored, but it never needed to be. Based on the number of regenerations a Time Lord can have, we know that Hartnell was the first Doctor, or at least, the first of that set of regenerations. Why would the Time Lords have granted pre-Hartnell a new set of regenerations, but wiped the memory of his previous lives?

However, continuity dictates that Ruth's Doctor can't exist prior to Hartnell, simply because her TARDIS resembles a Police Box. In Series 7's The Name of The Doctor, we see Hartnell's first Doctor steal a cylindrical, 'default skin' TARDIS, which blends in as a Police Box in the sixties, then the chameleon circuit gets stuck- this we already know. So how was Ruth's Doctor's TARDIS also a Police Box if she existed before Hartnell fled from Gallifrey, and arrived in Gloucester in 1999?

Maybe Ruth's Doctor is from a parallel world, or she's part of a grand plot to bring down The Doctor since she's actually another Master, or the Rani, or Rassilon, or the Valeyard- the possibilities to explain her existence are endless. However, if Chibnall attempts to shoehorn this incarnation into the preset lore of the show, things could go very, very wrong.