This past season, Doctor Who fans have been repeatedly teased about the “Hybrid,” a destructive figure of myth who strikes fear in members of many races and yet has never been mentioned until now. It happens. Several suspects have been brought up across the episodes, including the Doctor himself. The Hybrid is supposed to be the product of “two warrior races” and the Doctor is certainly one who’s been shaped by his experiences and anger towards both the Daleks of Skaro and the Time Lords of Gallifrey. But in the season 9 finale “Hell Bent,” a character suggested the hero may be a literal hybrid, one who repeatedly looks after Earth because one of his parents is actually a human being. So is the Doctor half human?
During the classic series, this was never a question. Certain writers and showrunners debated why the Doctor left his planet Gallifrey (creator Sydney Newman thought he was escaping a war whereas producer/showrunner Verity Lambert liked to think he was a criminal escaping punishment), but there was never any debate about whether he was full alien or not. The idea first came up in the 1996 Doctor Who TV-movie. The villain known as the Master examines the Doctor’s new, eighth incarnation and notices that he has a human retinal pattern. He then remarks, “The Doctor is half human.” Later in the movie, the Eighth Doctor seemingly confirms the Master’s suspicions, remarking to a person he’s trying to distract, “I’m half human. On my mother’s side.”
The TV-movie was a joint venture between BBC Worldwide, Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox. The original idea was that this movie would be a reboot of the Whoniverse rather than continue the established saga of the classic TV series that aired from 1963-1989, featuring seven incarnations of the Doctor. During the early stages of planning, it was decided that the Doctor adventuring at random for enjoyment and curiosity’s sake wasn’t a strong idea, that it would be better if he were on a specific quest and just happened to have adventures along the way. It was also believed that there needed to be a concrete reason why he protected Earth so often beyond simply saying he liked humans and that the planet tended to get in trouble more often than a lot of others.
So two things were proposed. One, that the Doctor left Gallifrey to find his father, a Time Lord named Ulysses who had vanished long ago and visited Earth several times (at one point living there as Blackbeard the Pirate). The second idea was that the Doctor’s mother would turn out to be a human native to Earth (which was also going to account for the Doctor having blue eyes, a trait apparently bizarre by Gallifreyan standards). Later in production, it was decided to alter the story of the TV-movie and keep it largely in line with the continuity of the classic TV program, but obviously the half-human idea still made it to screen.
For some fans, this idea was immediately accepted as canon. It made sense to them, seemed no stranger than the fact that the Doctor traveled through space and time in a box that defied physics, and gave a new mystery to explore concerning his heritage and upbringing. For instance, if he did have a human mother, who had she been and just when the Doctor discover this? Had they ever met?
Many other fans dismissed the idea though, arguing that the Time Lords (including the Master) would have known and remarked on the Doctor’s mixed heritage long ago if it were easily discovered by simply looking at his eyes and that this story point unnecessarily gave the Doctor reasons behind his behavior when it had been accepted for decades that he simply had a fondness for Earth people (even if they ticked him off just as often).
What about the Doctor’s remark that his mother was human? Well, the critics said, this was said while he was trying to distract the guy from realizing that the Doctor was picking his pocket, so why take a distraction technique that seriously? But what about what the Master saying the Doctor’s eyes were human? Well, the Master was, at that time, forcibly inhabiting a human corpse that was slowly decaying and that, along with his increasing insanity, means that what he thought he saw can’t be trusted. Perhaps the Doctor’s joke was just a coincidence.
During an interview on the podcast Toby Hadoke’s Who’s Round, former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies (who spearheaded the program’s revival in 2005) remarked that he had deliberately not addressed the half human idea, but also felt it couldn’t be totally ignored. He said, “I don’t like the half human thing. He certainly isn’t half human, but it’s less interesting to say it simply doesn’t count. I always wanted to put in a line where someone says to the Doctor, ‘Are you human?’ And the Doctor says, ‘No, but I was once in 1999. It was a 24-hour bunk.’ Part of the reason I never put that in was it was a bit too self-referential but also I thought, ‘I’m spoiling the TV-movie if I do that.'”
In keeping with his idea that the Doctor was not half human, Russell T. Davies introduced a clone of the Doctor, the “Meta-Crisis Doctor,” who was surprised to realize he was half-human due to the circumstances of his creation. In his final episode as showrunner, Davies also introduced a Time Lord woman from Gallifrey whom he considered to be the Doctor’s mother. However, he deliberately did not have this explained on screen and only referred to her as “The Woman” in the script, so as not to set the Doctor’s parentage in stone and prevent future storytellers from exploring different ideas.
When BBC Books released its Eighth Doctor Adventures (EDA) novel range, the half human idea was addressed a couple of times. In The Scarlet Empress, the Doctor remarks that he once mistakenly thought he had a human mother (making a joke about such a thing certainly wouldn’t be the oddest thing he’s said or done hours after a regeneration). In Autumn Mist, he joked that his heritage was “debatable.” In the seventy-third and final EDA novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, it is revealed that a Time Lord named Ulysses had a son with a human named Penelope Gate, a woman from the 19th century who had appeared once previously in the Seventh Doctor novel The Room with No Doors. Though the novel didn’t actually say who this half human son was or grew up to be, some fans decided this settled the debate and it was, indeed, the Doctor. Others felt fine with ignoring this conclusion, as it had not been established anywhere that Ulysses was the name of the Doctor’s father, that had just been an idea that never made it to screen.
There’s also been the thought that while the Doctor is not half human, his eighth incarnation was. In the novel Human Nature and its TV adaptation episodes (“Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood”), the Doctor uses Time Lord technology to alter his biology to that of a human being. The comic book mini-series The Forgotten had the Eighth Doctor remark that he had used the same technology during the Doctor Who TV-movie to trick the Master into thinking he was half human, though when he actually achieved this transformation and what advantage it gave him was never detailed.
Along with this, the Time Lord Romana indicated in the TV story “Destiny of the Daleks” that Time Lords could regenerate into seemingly non-Gallifreyan, non-human looking forms (in her case, she considered becoming a blue-skinned humanoid). This, along with the Doctor’s remark in the TV-movie that he could “change species” when he was dying had some conclude that only the eighth incarnation was half human, perhaps as a side effect of what we saw was a very difficult regeneration. Other regenerations are near-instantaneous or take a few minutes, but the TV-movie showed a three-hour gap between the Doctor’s seventh body dying and his transformation into his eighth self, and even then he was largely amnesiac. The Eighth Doctor said that anesthetic drugs that had been forced into his body had “almost destroyed the regenerative process.” The change was possibly also more difficult this time due to it being the only regeneration we’ve seen on-screen where neither Gallifreyan technology nor other Time Lords were present. Perhaps these factors led to a biological alteration that remained with him until he regenerated again into the War Doctor (thus, losing some humanity physically and not just symbolically). The War Doctor himself was born out of manipulation by the Sisterhood of Karn, who were originally Gallifreyans (an idea proposed in the novels and accepted and repeated on the official BBC web-site) and who had chemicals and “magic” that was known to control regeneration (as first revealed in “The Brain of Morbius”).
I recently chatted on this subject with Will Brooks (@WillBrooks1989), a designer who has done quite a lot of Doctor Who work, including recent covers for Titan’s DW comics, as well as art for Big Finish Productions and BBC Worldwide. Will proposed that the Doctor’s weakened and slow regeneration, happening in a morgue, was influenced by the DNA of the surrounding corpses—hence a half human eighth incarnation. This idea of the change influenced by surrounding life forms has definitely been seen elsewhere in Doctor Who. In the Big Finish audio drama Circular Time, a Time Lord regenerates into an incarnation who is a hybrid, combining Gallifreyan DNA with that of the dominant life form of the planet he chose to live on.
My own idea for some time is in line with the belief of some fans that the Doctor’s last thoughts during regeneration will influence how the next incarnation will be. The Seventh Doctor was also known as the “master planner” and the “schemer.” He was more manipulative than many of his other incarnations and much more proactive in hunting evil and setting it up to destroy itself, leading to decisions he was not proud of and would lament in his private moments. In the audio play The Clockwork Men, the Doctor called his seventh self “obsessed with the future” and the “big picture,” adding: “The more he planned, the more he gained, the more he realized he was losing the one thing most precious to him… He only wanted to be more human.”
In his final moments, I like to think the Seventh Doctor told himself, “I became too much of a Time Lord again, too concerned with the math and the big picture rather than the individual. I hope next time I’m more human.” And regeneration granted his wish.
Is the Doctor half human? Short answer: maybe. I don’t personally think he needs to be and I like to keep his origins a mystery so that you can still rightfully call the series Doctor Who, but I also wouldn’t mind it if it brought along a new story that entertains and inspires discussion. In the Whoniverse, anything and everything is possible.
Alan Kistler (@SizzlerKistler) is the author of the New York Times Best Seller Doctor Who: A History. He is freelance writer, actor, story consultant and pop culture historian focusing on science fiction and American superheroes. Tom Baker and Paul McGann are his Doctors.
“The change was possibly also more difficult this time due to it being the only regeneration we’ve seen on-screen where neither Time Lord technology nor other Time Lords were present.”
What about the one in “Logopolis”? It happened at some distance from the TARDIS, and I’m not sure the Watcher counts as another Time Lord. And the Doctor’s regeneration in “Night of the Doctor” happened on Karn with the help of the Sisters, who are descended from Gallifreyans but not actually Time Lords (in the sense of “a high-born Gallifreyan,” as Ashildr/Me defined it).
There’s also K’Anpo’s regeneration into Cho-Je in “Planet of the Spiders,” which occurs in K’Anpo’s room at the abbey, without the Doctor present. There’s no indication of Time Lord technology there, as far as I recall. And then there’s the little girl’s regeneration at the end of “Day of the Moon,” in a back alley in New York City. Although she wasn’t strictly Time Lord. (Come to think of it, couldn’t River have been the Hybrid?)
I have a soft spot for this idea because I find the idea of him having a mother he avoids fascinating.
In The Brain of Morbius, Solon is looking for any humanoid species, warm blooded, with a central nervous system to complete Morbius’ body. Then there is River Song, who is a human being who can regenerate. I think this means that Time Lords don’t have to be Gallifreyans, and considering Romana’s case, I think they can regenerate into any “humanoid species, warm blooded, with a central nervous system”.
@1: The regeneration into the War Doctor was the most controlled there ever was, the only case where the Doctor consciously chose his next incarnation; I liked how the minisode expended on the links between Time Lords’ and Sisterhood’s form of immortality with the different cups. Melody’s first regeneration definitely counts as one done by someone with no experience in regeneration without any assistance, but we don’t know how badly it went for her). We know that some Time Lords are better than others at regenerating, so sometimes it’s not a lottery. But in the case of the Doctor, the regenerations can be more or less difficult, sometimes for no apparent reason: the Doctor might end up in a coma, forget more or less of his previous life for more or less time, or just go on with a new body without thinking much about it. Do you have a theory as to why?
Great round up, thanks.
@3/Athreeren: I think the Doctor’s regenerations tend to be rough because he tends to “die” violently. Also, consider: he was reputedly around 450 in “The Tomb of the Cybermen,” a year or so after his first regeneration. So we know a single regeneration can last for something close to half a millennium — and the Eleventh Doctor lived nearly twice that on Trenzalore. And yet the Doctor’s subsequent regenerations tended to happen only about 3-7 years apart — and for the most part, he had human companions traveling with him constantly, with overlap between their tenures, so unlike the modern series, there aren’t really that many gaps in which you could insert a couple of hundred years between stories. (There’s the gap between his second and third incarnations, into which many fans have inserted adventures such as “The Two Doctors” and assorted other “missions” for the Time Lords before the Doctor’s forced regeneration. There’s the gap between “The Deadly Assassin,” with no companion, and “The Face of Evil,” where Leela joins, and the gap between Leela’s departure and Romana’s arrival. With Romana being a Time Lady, there’s room to insert a century or two of unseen adventures before Adric joins. And there’s the unknown interval between “The Trial of a Time Lord” and whenever the Sixth Doctor meets Mel for the first time from her perspective. But there’s nowhere to put a centuries-long gap in the lifespan of the Third or Fifth Doctor, at least. And the Ninth Doctor seems to have been fairly recently regenerated when we met him, so his lifespan may have been only about one year.)
So at least two of the Doctor’s incarnations, possibly more, have had extremely short lifespans by Time Lord standards, and came to violent endings. It’s no wonder his regenerations started to get unstable after a while.
@1 With Logopolis, keep in kind that the Watcher was how “it [had been] prepared for,” but that the the bulk of Castrovalva still heavily involved the post-regenerative crisis that he was undergoing on account of how Four-became-Five (especially after the loss of the Zero Room).
Given the use of nearby compatible biological material in regeneration states (seemingly adjustable to Gallifreyan DNA), I can see where the specific case of the ‘dead’ Seventh Doctor (recall the point that was made recently in Heaven Sent about how long Time Lords take to die and the fear of “being buried too soon?”) – who had been pumped full of chemicals, autopsied, and cut apart in the morgue – drawing upon much more human DNA than usual in reconstructing himself into Eight and possibly not being able to convert all of it from Earthling to Gallifreyan (such that he was a chimera who needed the Sisterhood’s help to properly regenerate fully). The actual “half-human on my mother’s side” line would be a nice bit of flippancy mixed with his brain still fulling wiring itself regarding his new/old bodies’ own history, but the physical thesis is consistent with what we’ve seen on screen over the years.
The thing about the “half-human on my mother’s side” line, though, is that the scene didn’t play as though the Doctor really meant it. The Doctor was speaking seriously to Grace, about to confide a secret in her and saying she must promise not to tell anyone. Then Professor Wagg, whom the Doctor had never met before, interrupted and Grace told him the Doctor was about to share a secret with them both (which is a total jerk move, considering what he’d just asked of her). So the Doctor, in a less solemn voice, told Wagg “I’m half-human on my mother’s side.” It makes no sense to me that the Doctor would try to swear Grace to secrecy about something and then confide it to a total stranger seconds later. So whatever secret he meant to tell Grace was something else, and the “half-human” line was either a joke or a truth that he considered inconsequential. I’d dismiss it as a joke if it weren’t for the plot point about the Doctor’s retina.
And that’s another thing — the Doctor having a human retinal pattern wasn’t just a random detail, but a crucial plot point. The Eye of Harmony needed a human retinal pattern as its key before it would open. And the Doctor hadn’t been back to the TARDIS since his regeneration. So he must have set that biometric security parameter before he regenerated, which implies he had a human retinal pattern all along and kind of scuttles the theory that he became half-human upon regenerating.
Although I suppose you could rationalize that he set a human retina (any one, as we found out) as the key because he routinely traveled with human companions and preferred to trust that responsibility to them instead of himself, as a check on his own power. But then, he was traveling alone at the start of the movie, so that’s a questionable choice for a security protocol.
“And regeneration granted his wish.”
Then why is he still not ginger?
How much of the extra stuff outside of the show is considered part of the mythology I mean you spend a lot of time talking about the novels here and I have always considered those not to be part of the “official” mythology. But then I consider the American TV movie to never have existed …
@9/dwcole: Officially, there’s no formal policy about whether the novels, comics, and audios “count” or not. A lot of them are incompatible with the show’s continuity or with each other, but then, the show’s continuity is often incompatible with itself. A few of them have been the basis for new-series episodes; “Dalek” and the first Cyberman 2-parter were based on elements of audiobooks, “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” was adapted by Paul Cornell from his Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature, and both “A Christmas Carol” and “Blink” were based on ideas from Moffat prose stories, though the specifics were different. Whether that means the original stories never happened is left vague. The modern series has established that time is changeable, so there’s room for the interpretation that all the stories happened in some version of the timeline.
But the ’96 TV movie — which was a BBC/FOX/Universal co-production made in Canada, so it’s not really accurate to call it “American” — is definitely counted as part of the series canon. At least, Paul McGann is officially the Eighth Doctor, and we saw him in his movie costume and hairstyle in the Gallifrey sequence and closing shot of “The Day of the Doctor.”
@8 / Awnna Marie:
Midichlorians.
@1/Christopher – (Come to think of it, couldn’t River have been the Hybrid?) I suppose that makes a lot of sense, and we still have this year’s Christmas special yet to come… but I liked the way series 9 “resolved” the issue (as much as anything gets definitively “resolved” in Doctor Who… Oddly enough, the longer I watch the show, the less I worry about strict continuity. I find myself giving Who a pass on stuff I would never let slide when watching other shows. Not that it’s up to me, of course! Maybe because it’s so clearly in the realm of fantasy – as long as any given episode or story plays within its own rules, I’m generally happy to go along for the ride.)
@8 / Awnna Marie – Because he didn’t wish hard enough. ;)
Actually, a scenario in my head is this: When the Doctor finally regenerates as a woman (and it’s coming – I think Moffat has been incrementally preparing us for this, from the mention of the Corsair in “The Doctor’s Wife” to the on-screen regeneration of the General in “Hell Bent”), she will emerge from the glow of radiation energy, look in the mirror and say, “Why… Why, I’m… I’m a ginger!”
(Moffat, if you happen to be reading, you can have that gratis – just thank me in the end credits <g>.)
“I find myself giving Who a pass on stuff I would never let slide when watching other shows.”
I tend to feel that when other shows are 53 years old, they might have earned a pass too. Bearing in mind the big continuity errors are decades apart, rather than from one season to the next (though those can happen too, but generally not such important ones).
I’m have also been a fan of Marvel comics, so Dr Who continuity isn’t at all hard to swallow in that context.
HK, I find that there are more and more people these days becoming fans of franchises like DW or Marvel (through the films, mostly), and that they haven’t been exposed to large-scale shared universes such as Marvel, DC, Star Trek, etc, and they’re not as used as we are to these glitches.
Just stumbled on here after watching bits of the TV movie. The Eighth Doctor is one of my favorites. I need to read some of the books and get the audios. This is a great article with a lot of research. It doesn’t bother me if he’s half human or all Time Lord. I felt the half-human revelation actually made some sense as to why he’s so completely attached to Earth.
So apparently the Doctor can be anything, as in he can even change species, but he’s always chosen human form and more specifically, he prefers being British above anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother was some 19th century Human from London.
ChristopherLBennett: Regarding human retinal patterns being set in order for the eye of harmony to open it should be noted that this comes as a surprise to the Doctor when the Master says it.
The Doctor was apparently unable to open the eye himself over the previous 700 years. Therefore the eye was set to open to human retinal patterns before the Doctor had the TARDIS. Meaning that it was set by the TARDIS’s previous owner.
Presumably the movie intended that to be the Doctor’s father but thankfully that story never came about and so we can speculate as to who and why that was. There might even be a good story there.
@17/Dan: My retcon sense is tingling… We now know from “The Name of the Doctor” that it was one of Clara Oswald’s temporal duplicates living on Gallifrey who directed the First Doctor and Susan to the right TARDIS to steal. Maybe she was the source of its programming for a human retinal pattern?
The very first Dr Who that I saw was a human. He was an Earth scientist and he was played by Peter Cushing.
The very first Dr Who I saw was a human scientist. He was played by Peter Cushing in the 60’s.