Doctor Who: 10 Huge Plot Holes The Writers Hoped We Forgot

2. Incarnations Before The First Doctor

When the John Hurt Doctor was leaked to have been an incarnation before Eleven, that left two options of who he might be. Either he was a Doctor between Eight and Nine, or before the First Doctor; those were the only possible times that the Doctor could've regenerated, and we wouldn't have seen it. Any incarnation before the first Doctor sounds preposterous now, given what an icon William Hartnell was, but 'The Brain of Morbius' showed us a whole eight lives before William Hartnell landed on Totter's Lane. During a mental battle with Morbius, all four of the Doctor's incarnations flashed up on the screen, followed by another eight faces we'd never seen. Given what we know now about the Doctor's incarnations not being set in stone from birth - he's just regenerated into a face he's already met - these faces could have potentially been from his future; obviously though, history was changed, and he became different people. So that's who these Doctors must have been, right? Future incarnations? No. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe claimed that these were meant to be incarnations prior to the First Doctor. "We tried to get famous actors for the faces of the Doctor. But because no one would volunteer, we had to use backroom boys," he claimed, "And it is true to say that I attempted to imply that William Hartnell was not the first Doctor."