Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Talking Points After The Timeless Children
4. Was Brendan The Doctor?
After a week of furious speculation it was finally revealed that Brendan, the abandoned baby we saw grow up somewhere in Ireland, was indeed a version of the Doctor. Sort of. Unlike Jo Martin’s Doctor, the countless children we saw in the Matrix memory bank, or the various faces that flashed through the Doctor’s mind as she broke out of the paralysis field, Brendan was not real.
According to the Master, Brendan’s story was buried deep inside the Matrix by Tecteun, waiting to be discovered by the Doctor. It was to be used as a key for unlocking the truth of the Doctor’s origins and hidden past. We don’t know why she did this, but the Master suspects it could be out of guilt for what she had done. This part of the episode gets extremely confusing since the Doctor already has those memories of Brendan inside her. Did she connect to the Matrix in one of her visits to the destroyed Gallifrey, or have they always been there?
Brendan is a fairytale based on the Doctor’s life. An abandoned baby, brought up on alien soil, who grows up to serve his people as a police officer, wanting to make a difference. After he falls to his death from a cliff, just like the child Doctor on Gallifrey, he miraculously comes back to life and becomes an experiment. He is the secret to the eternal youth of those around him in Ireland. When the day of his retirement comes, his memories are violently wiped by the people he trusted – his father and his commanding officer. No wonder the police station was TARDIS-like when the doors to the backroom opened. It’s a dream sequence as The Doctor tries to understand her past.