I saw a scene a while back, which I think was from the brain of morbius story (although I have not seen this story in it's entirety) where someone has the doctor hooked up to a machine which goes back through his faces, and goes about three or four past hartnell as though hartnell is not the first. I've wondered for a while why this seems to be ignored when the whole fact of the 13 regeneration limit is taken so seriously otherwise?. apologies if Im just misunderstanding something about it, but thats why I'm asking really, to find out

At the time Brain of Morbius was made the idea was that they were earlier Doctors but later stories such as Mawdwyn Undead and The Five Doctors made it clear that Hartnell was indeed the first Doctor.


The usual retcon is that they were some of Morbius's faces though another theory is that they were faces of The Other (an ancient Time Lord that the Doctor was a reincarnation of).



In reality the faces were of various crew members wearing hats

Three years prior it was also stated that Hartnell was the earliest by the Time Lords. So that would have been a quick change.

Throwing faces of the crew on screen and saying "this is also The Doctor" is a bit of disservice to the character though If you want to do something like that, you need a special regeneration scene and over 75 minutes of John Hurt

so it's kind of like the 'half human' thing from the movie where we just quietly sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen?

Pretty much.


The 13 Incarnations rule didn't even exist at that point and once it was introduced (the season after Morbius) they probably did not want to be on the 9th (or whatever it would have been) Doctor.



Plus as CD93 has said it contradicted an earlier statement about Hartnell being the original Doctor (from the Three Doctors I'm guessing).



It's a bit easier to ignore than the Half Human thing though as it was never actually stated on screen that they were earlier Doctors even if that had been the Production Teams intention at the time.



It's similar to the Woman in White from The End of Time, RTD intended her to be the Doctors mother but in the end there was no onscreen confirmation of this so if she ever returns to the series she can just as easily be some one else.

when you think about it, this whole thing raises an interesting point in general about how we perceive clashing information given in the show.

Take this scene were talking about for example, on it's own, it was clearly showing that the doctor had faces before hartnell and if this had been stuck to later, we would have classed it as real but because later episodes contradict it, we ignore it or explain it away, as if the newer episodes have the right to update the ongoing story, and yet if you take the whole regeneration rule issue, what if moffat had made the doctor say he had unlimited regenerations, or 40 left or something, would people who watched the classic episodes, or knew about them just be happy to accept that what the newer episode had said was now right and they should disregard what they had heard in classic who? Im pretty certain they wouldn't, so it really seems to show that when two pieces of information contradict each other, the way in which what is seen as 'real', seems to be just what people liked best, rather than what came first or most recent.

Im almost imagining some dark secret meeting place where the head's of doctor who fandom meet whenever there is a piece of info that clashes with something old to decide which one will be deemed official

RTD did have the Doctor say he could regenerate 507 times.


We now know he was lying but If Moffat had later added a line about Time Lords being given hundreds of extra regenerations in the Time War then I doubt many fans would have a problem with it.



But as I said earlier the Morbius Doctors are easy enough to ignore because it was never stated on screen that they were previous incarnations of the Doctor whereas things like being Half Human and having a limit of 12 Regenerations were.

The regeneration limit proved to be a plot point for several stories over Classic Who, and was mentioned multiple times. If McGann had had a full series, and several episodes had relied on the half-human thing to work, we'd probably have had a problem with that being ignored, too.

Although had the regeneration limit been ignored with no explanation, just think of the fun we could've had spinning McCoy being "more than just a Time Lord", Eight being "half-human on his mother's side" and The Doctor having more regenerations than he should into a single cohesive theory ;-p

True, although it's odd when people ignore it in the actual film. I can understand disregarding it as part of the ongoing character of the Doctor and making it exclusive only to Eight, but the half-human thing is important to a certain plot point!

You could potentially say that he was confused after his regeneration but there is a point where he's clearly regained his wits.

I think the half human bit is easily explained away as just a lie he told to the security guard and kept going for Grace. Could also partly be due to some kind of post regeneration idiocy he was going through (probably more due to script writers having a stupid idea they wanted to use to make the show 'more reachable' to American viewers in the hopes of the series getting picked up- but I'd rather ignore that hehe)

I also remember a line from the 2nd Doctor, who said he could go on living indefinitely, barring accidents. When talking to 2 of his companions. I suppose he could have been simplifying things for them or something. And there must have been cases in the past of the time lords granting 'more lives' too.

But The Master recognises The Doctor as half-human. At a big stretch, you could say that he is teasing The Doctor for favouring earth so much, but he states that The Doctor can't open the Eye because he is only HALF-human.

Maybe it was to give a sort of explanation as to why he kept visiting Earth and hanging out with humans.

I think that's what the script writers were trying to put across at the time. But now we have to come up with alternate reasons

Another possibility I just thought of is that the doctor wanted the master to believe this, for whatever reason. Perhaps part of an adventure we never saw- just before the film? We may have had the explanation if the series was picked up- OR on the other hand they may have stuck with him really being half human.

So he must have STILL wanted the master to believe he was half human for some reason. Part of some plot or plan that we never got to see. I've not heard every Big Finish audio only some, does anyone know if the matter comes up again?

It would be interesting to see- if McGann did get a mini-series at some point. Or sharing a Christmas episode would be cool, or be part of the 'Doctor Light' episode- this would be a good topic to address. Just a line or 2 that takes 10 seconds could probably clear it all up. He could just tell someone he was with somethign like...
"You have to trust me. Sure, I tell lots of lies, I even went around telling a bunch of people I was half-human for absolutely ages, all to play a trick on an old enemy. But I'm not lying now, so please trust me"
...Actually- that line could be spoken by any Doctor after 8 really. I'm sure the real writers could tidy that up a bit though- lol

I wonder what the Time Lord position on cross-species breeding is? I would have thought that the child would be outcasted and would become infamous.

Or it doesn't even need to be a lie. We know that a half-human Time Lord can be created using regeneration energy and human DNA (the meta-crisis Doctor), so the fact that Seven had a load of human blood pumped into his veins could have been enough to force a regeneration into the half-human Eight.

Maybe the "on my mother's side" bit was figurative? The "mother" in question referring to the human blood donor(s).

Of course, the real reason was because Segal was planning a load of convoluted nonsense about the Doctor's family. (The Master would have been revealed as his fully Time Lord half-brother.) Let's just be grateful we never got to see a Dallas/Dynasty-style bitchfest with Time Lords in big shoulder pads slapping each other and revealing dirty family secrets.

Ooh, yes I saw the audition tape on YouTube. Intergalactic Jeremy Kyle!

I know it's a common SF TV trope, but interspecies breeding is in reality so unlikely as to be impossible.

I think (theorizing), a good explanation - which avoids that problem - is that Timelords evolved from humans at some point in the distant future, perhaps affected by exposure to the time vortex.

If Timelords did develop from humans and it's helped along by exposure to the time vortex, it makes it easier to explain quite a few things:

a) how the metacrisis human Doctor is even possible
b) the fobwatch ability
b) Amy and Rory getting it on in the TARDIS conceiving a human+ baby (half Timelord?)
c) The Doctor's apparent obsession with Earth
c) The Master's remark in the movie is possibly a taunt about the Doctor's fondness for humanity
d) Other Timelord's disdain for the Doctor's obsession (I mean most of us don't socialise with any of the apes).

Just my 10 cents.

I quite like your theory! It explains a lot. And the Time Lords' pompousness would never admit to it.