Doctor Who recently made a huge comeback and the Thirteenth Doctor is flying around in the TARDIS doing what she does best. As the series is set to continue, we want to look back at some of the past series and some of the past iterations of the time lord.
Every Doctor has a number of fan theories following them around. The Eleventh Doctor is no different, although a number of these were actually confirmed to be true. Here’s 10 theories we eventually found out were completely accurate.
HE DIES OF OLD AGE
The Eleventh Doctor lived far longer than many of his predecessors. He had a long period of time where he traveled around by himself, in part because he thought he would be facing his ultimate death once his journey was complete.
Fans thought that because this was such a large part of the story, he’d ironically end up dying of old age, rather than anything his enemies could do. This, in the end, turned out to be true, with an elderly Doctor using his regeneration powers to fight off the Daleks.
THE DOCTOR GETS MARRIED
The Doctor’s love life is complicated at best. He’s had a series of romances over the years and there have always been jokes about him being married to the TARDIS. However, with the arrival of River Song during the Tennant era, everyone assumed he really had been married.
It turns out that this is true, AND the Doctor and River Song were married over the course of one of his many lives. It’s a romantic moment and one that ties the characters closer together and reveals a little bit more about this mysterious time-traveling alien.
MELODY POND IS AMY SONG
Speaking of River Song, there was a long-running rumor during the Matt Smith era that River Song could actually be the daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams. Fate had somehow brought these families together, eventually leading to the birth of Melody Pond.
This is eventually revealed to be correct, as when Melody Pond is translated through various dialects it can become River Song. It’s a huge moment in the series and one that presents Amy and Rory ironically as the Doctor’s in-laws.
HIS PAST IS LINKED TO CLARA’S
The Doctor has an extremely long and complicated past that seems to be heavily linked to the impossible girl, Clara Oswald. It’s unclear as to why she keeps reappearing in his life, but fans guessed that perhaps they were more intertwined that it was portrayed.
It turns out that Clara had actually met every iteration of the Doctor and was instrumental in many major decisions, including which TARDIS to escape in. It seems crazy now, but entering the Doctor’s time stream created an eternal link between the two.
HIDING A BIG SECRET
The Doctor is always hiding things because he feels like he must take the weight of the galaxy on his two shoulders. However, the Eleventh Doctor certainly hid more than most and as his own history started to be brought up he had the biggest secret of all.
People started to speculate that there was another version of the Time Lord that we weren’t aware of. It turns out that there was a War Doctor who was not given the same name as the rest, because of the supposed violence he caused. He was played magnificently by John Hurt.
MOST HATED IN THE GALAXY
Something was brewing in the galaxy during the Eleventh Doctor’s first series and fans started to fear that this could have been because of the Doctor himself. At the end of the season, he is locked in the Pandorica because he’s become hated across all of reality.
That’s because he causes another Big Bang that recreates reality itself, and has also been known to rectify little cracks in time that the Doctor had been experiencing throughout the series. Turns out the Doctor isn’t actually a troublemaker, though, as the cracks were caused by the Silence.
THE WORD DOCTOR COMES FROM HIM
The concept that the word Doctor actually came from the Doctor himself is a theory with much older roots than the Matt Smith era. The idea is that his achievements across time have become synonymous with his name.
This turns out to be true, with River Song herself explaining that humanity gets the word from him, as do other species. It means healer and someone who helps, much like the Doctor does across time, helping those in dire need of it.
COMPANIONS WON’T DIE
The companions of the Doctor are a key part of his story and are usually featured alongside him in every episode, book and comic. However, most of them have less than happy endings, getting killed off, forgotten about, or trapped in other dimensions.
Fans were quick to point out that they never felt like Amy and Rory would actually be killed off. It didn’t make sense for their story. It turns out that it was the Weeping Angels that ultimately send the duo back in time, stopping the Doctor from retrieving them but also allowing them to live out their lives.
DOCTOR CHOSE HIS REGENERATION FACE
There have always been rumors about how the Doctor’s regeneration actually works. Some have suggested that he can only regenerate into a face that he has seen before. While this may not be true, there’s some to behind the theory that he copies faces.
It is said that the Eleventh Doctor actually deliberately chose himself an older face, one he had seen before, in some ways to show himself he was forgiven for the Time War and to remind him to be less fiery and much kinder. He essentially sent himself a message through the mirror.
ROOM 11
The Doctor was thrown into a dangerous hotel that contained a Minotaur and a number of rooms that each had someone’s worst fear inside. Naturally, room 11 was the Doctor’s designated room and inside was something that truly haunted him.
Some suggested it was a mirror or a past version of himself, others indicated it could have been a lost love or even the Daleks. However, those who said that it was the crack in the wall were on the money, with the jagged shape still disturbing the Time Lord.
