Doctor Who’s Brendan is a massive mystery heading into season 12’s finale, but a Captain Jack Harkness theory can be ruled out. This week’s “Ascension of the Cybermen” began a two-part finale that promises to change the landscape of Doctor Who forever, and pays off season 12’s earlier appearance from John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness. In “Fugitive of the Judoon,” Jack warned the Doctor to resist giving the Lone Cyberman what it wants, but in last week’s Mary Shelley adventure, the Time Lord did exactly that, handing the villain the Cyberium, and allowing the Cyber Empire to rise from the ashes.
Half of “Ascension of the Cybermen” centered around the Doctor’s attempts to right this wrong by helping the dregs of humanity in the future’s Cyber Wars but, curiously, the other half of the episode took on a very different flavor. Instead of a science fiction spectacular, part 1 of this finale featured a side-story more in line with a quaint police drama. A baby is found in the middle of a road and adopted into a loving family as Brendan, growing up to make his parents proud as a police officer before earning a quiet retirement. One weird thing - Brendan got shot and fell off a cliff and was fine. The final scene of this plot sees an older Brendan taken into a suspiciously Gallifreyan room with his father and boss, and liberated of his memories.
Everything about Brendan is an unknown at present. Where he really is, who he really is, why he’s being mind-wiped all remain unanswered, leading to rampant speculation online. One prominent theory suggests that Brendan might somehow be Captain Jack Harkness. After all, the flirty time agent was known to be immortal, eventually aging so much and living so long he became the Face of Boe. Even more suspiciously, Jack claimed way back in Ninth Doctor episode “The Doctor Dances” that his former employers had stolen 2 years of memories from his mind. Some suspect that, due to the immortality and memory wiping parallels, Brendan is Captain Jack Harkness.
Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible, even within the context of Doctor Who, because Jack didn’t gain his immortality until after he had his memories wiped. When Jack first meets Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor, he has already been deprived of those 2 years, and then during the finale of the same season, Rose weaves TARDIS energy into Jack’s dying body, thus rendering him almost immortal. Whatever twisted experiment or scheme Brendan is being subjected to, he’s clearly already immortal when having his mind erased.
So, if Brendan isn’t Captain Jack, what is he? One of the most popular theories circulating currently suggests that Brendan is the Timeless Child Doctor Who has been teasing since Jodie Whittaker’s earliest episodes. Viewers meet Brendan as a child and although he evidently ages, his inability to die could constitute as being “timeless.” Furthermore, there are several links to Gallifrey dotted throughout the Brendan story, such as the blue clock, the TARDIS-style doors in the memory-wiping room and the fact that Gallifrey was once said in classic Doctor Who to sound like it was in Ireland - the same setting as the Brendan scenes. Assuming the old man the Doctor meets in the current timeline is also Brendan, the character resides near a portal that could’ve allowed Time Lords to infiltrate his life and make him the Timeless Child, whatever that may entail.
More: Doctor Who Theory: Brendan Is The Timeless Child
Doctor Who season 12 concludes with “The Timeless Children” March 1st on BBC and BBC America.
