10 Doctor Who Fan Theories That Became Fact
7. The Morbius Faces Are Past Doctors
One of the longest-running Doctor Who theories arose from the 1976 serial The Brain of Morbius, in which Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor engages in a psychic wrestling match with the patchwork Time Lord Morbius.
During this scene, the Doctor's previous three faces appear on a nearby screen, but it doesn't stop there – we see eight more mystery gents appear, which go completely unexplained.
Though it was always the intention of producer Philip Hinchcliffe that these faces were previous incarnations of the Doctor, the fact that this was never explicitly confirmed onscreen (and the fact that nothing like the internet existed to widely circulate Hinchcliffe’s intent) meant that the Morbius faces essential languished for many years. Some fans theorised they were previous incarnations of the Doctor, while others suggested they were actually previous incarnations of Morbius – which was hardly a ridiculous idea considering Morbius was also a Time Lord.
The speculation was finally put to bed in 2020, when the Thirteenth Doctor's Matrix-busting montage showed the Morbius faces to be incarnations of the Doctor from before William Hartnell.
Hinchcliffe – who actually played one of the Morbius Doctors, along with other members of the Doctor Who production team – was reportedly very pleased when Chris Chibnall told him he was now a canonical Doctor!