We've seen in the past that RTD snuck an "alternate" Doctor into the accepted lineage of Incarnations with a sketch of Paul McGann from the Fox TV Movie in the mid-1990s. This made his Doctor officially the Eighth Incarnation. (There were some who ignored his one appearance, despite Big Finish audio dramas and the appearance of Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Incarnation to hand off the role in a particularly violent regeneration sequence.)
And this past season, another... Rogue Doctor... has been embraced into the club.
We just don't know exactly where he fits in....
From Marisa Williams
For Collider
While many fans were watching the 'Doctor Who' episode "Rogue" for the Regency Era 'Oh my Bridgerton' feel of the episode or seeing just how things would play out between The Doctor and Rogue, there was an important cameo that viewers may have missed in the excitement. Richard E. Grant is not an unfamiliar face to Doctor Who, playing Dr. Walter Simeon, associated with The Great Intelligence, the big bad of Season 7B of Doctor Who. Grant has also lent his voice to the decades-long franchise, and that brings us to the man, who is affectionately nicknamed, The Shalka Doctor.
During the scene where The Doctor is trapped on Rogue (Jonathan Groff)'s ship, he reveals himself, including all of his past faces. And if you thought they'd be in order, to finally have a definitive answer to where Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor sits in canon, that opportunity would not present itself. In a seemingly randomized order, holograms of the Doctor's previous faces float around him, including Grant's.
"Just fun, a joke. It's funny. It's that simple. I sat here in this office with them and they just thought 'an unknown Doctor' – that's what the script said because we had to work out who to get and how we could get him."
So, no, there wasn't a bigger reason to re-introduce the character, according to Davies, other than "really, it’s not just fun, it’s a nice thing to do."
The biggest issue with fitting the series into the main Doctor Who canon was, as Davies says "we completely replaced [The Shalka Doctor] with Christopher Eccleston as the [Ninth] Doctor." He goes on to say "how nice [it was] all these years later, to take a little lean back and sort of say, the door’s open now, thanks to 'The Timeless Child', and you can come in and own your Doctor again." This is also not the first time that Davies is reiterating that he will be carrying the threads of Chris Chibnall's 'The Timeless Child' and how it's changed canon into his second tenure as Doctor Who showrunner.
The animated series aired before the rebooted live-action 'Doctor Who' (2005) began. Cornell wrote Grant's Doctor intending him to be the Ninth Doctor after Paul McGann's Eighth's. The rebooted 'Doctor Who', as Davies said, effectively erases Grant's Doctor from the canon, with Christopher Eccleston taking on the designation instead. To keep the two separate, Grant's is often nicknamed 'The Shalka Doctor', referencing the main antagonist of the series. Grant's Doctor finds himself in 2003 Lancashire and must team up with a barmaid, Alison and The Master (yes that Master) to defeat The Shalka.
We've seen in the last season that RTD has embraced the 'Timeless Child' concept. I was hoping it would just be forgotten, but so it goes. I'm in this for the ride and always ready to see where it leads.
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