5 Classic Doctor Who Scenes The Timeless Children Fundamentally Changed

Back in the 1980s, Doctor Who was going through such a slump in ratings that it was about to be cancelled if something couldn't be done to revive the show's fortunes.

New showrunner Andrew Cartmel came up with a plan to bring back the mystery of the Doctor's origins, casting him as more than just another Time Lord. Hinted at through scenes in the Seventh Doctor's storylines, the Cartmel Masterplan would have placed The Doctor as The Other, a mythical figure who stands at the very beginning of Time Lord history, alongside Omega and Rassilon, and helped them to overthrow the cult of Pythia.

Sadly the show was cancelled before anything but a few intriguing hints could be dropped, but it looks like Chris Chibnall was paying attention. The Timeless Children started his own master plan, with the triumvirate reveals that The Doctor wasn't Gallifreyan, had virtually unlimited regenerations compared to regular Time Lords, and had been continually mind-wiped while working for interventionist black-ops group, The Division.

While this sets the scene for plenty of future storylines, these reveals cast a new light over these five important scenes from The Doctor's history, showing them in a brand new way.

Possibly the influence on this entire new era of Doctor Who, 'The Brain Of Morbius' features a sequence where Morbius and The Fourth Doctor are involved in a mental battle. During this scene, we see the previous incarnations of The Doctor, followed by eight other faces that are heavily implied to also be The Doctor.

This scene was shown again in The Timeless Children, during the montage where The Doctor uses her memories (enhanced by those she can access in the Matrix) to break out of her paralysis and entrapment within the Matrix of Knowledge itself.

Now we know these to be literal past faces of The Doctor, as Hartnell was never the first incarnation of the character, merely the first she remembers. But, that raises another question; if the other incarnations have been removed from The Doctor's mind, then how does Morbius access them?

Worth mentioning is that Morbius is one of the Time Lord's worst criminals, who may well have accessed knowledge beyond regular Time Lords. Also worth mentioning is that the Sisterhood of Karn were on Gallifrey before the species developed time travel. There is every chance that either of these entities had access to knowledge beyond that of The Doctor.