5 Timey Wimey Clues To Where Ruth Fits In Doctor Who Canon

The Second Doctor's regeneration into the Third Doctor is one of the few oddballs in the series in which the audience actually never sees the transformation take place. Instead we see Patrick Troughton falling through a void, spinning around as he shouts his protests and then later a dazed Jon Pertwee falls out of the Tardis and collapses.

Fans have long noticed this lack of a proper transition, at one point even hiring Pertwee to do a fan film to fill the gap. However, this space as it exists in canon is perhaps one of the only places where Ruth's doctor can fit without causing issues.

This largely unmapped part of The Doctor's history is referred to by fans as season 6-B. The idea being that The War Games was not the final chapter of the Second Doctor's adventures and that he had many secret adventures before finally regenerating into Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor.

This fan theory may sound far fetched at first but there is actually ample evidence for it in the series. We see in several of the crossover episodes that there is an unspecified time period in which Troughton's Doctor continues to exist following his trial in The War Games. In stories like The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors there are several implications that these events simply can't take place anytime other than after Troughton's final serial.

This gap in the story can be potentially extended to include one or more additional incarnations before Pertwee. Enter Ruth.