The Morbius Doctors

So, after the (shit)storm of the recent episode of NewWho/NewPoo, people have been referencing past events when there were secret past incarnations of the Doctor, such as the Other or the War Doctor. But the one I want to talk about is the Morbius Doctors, because, on a fundamental level, they were the ones that started this whole ordeal. So, yay or nay on the Morbius Doctors?

I think they were maybe a cool idea at the time. That the Doctor had previous lives we'd never seen before and could only guess at, (and where unlike Ruth, there wasn't some glaring agenda behind the decision). And if the show had ended on Season 17, I could've comfortably accepted it as canon that the Fourth Doctor was actually maybe the last in line.

Much of what followed however, certainly come Mawdryn Undead and The Five Doctors had overwritten that, so that Hartnell actually was definitively the original. And that seemed to become the superior master-narrative. So the Morbius faces perhaps had to be put down to a glitch instead. So they're not canon for me.

They were always a bit subject to interpretation anyway.

I fail to understand why people continually refer to the Morbius Doctors as a justification for completely fucking up the character’s history- it just comes across as a desperate bid to do down the original series as a means of looking good, as has often been the case with the NuWho apologists. Regardless, I don’t buy for a second that the Morbius “Doctors” classify as The Doctor anyway, and there are several reasons for this.

1) In The Three Doctors, the Time Lords specifically refer to being shown the “earliest” Doctor, and who appears on the screen? William Hartnell. Not Hinchcliffe, Maloney or Holmes, but Hartnell. People seem to conveniently forget about this when discussing the Morbius Doctors, and contrary to the latter, Hartnell is specifically referred to as the “earliest”- the Morbius “Doctors” are never provided with any context whatsoever within the scene in question. Therefore, an attentive audience would likely come to the conclusion that the Morbius “Doctors” were not incarnations of the Doctor but instead that of Morbius.

2) A face emerges on the screen during the battle between the Doctor and Morbius prior to Tom Baker’s face appearing. If we adhere to the sequential logic that the later images are incarnations of the Doctor (going in reverse order), who is that first image supposed to be? It’s clear that The Doctor has struck the first blow (as initiated by “En garde, Morbius”), thus causing Morbius’ incarnations to appear, whilst Morbius subsequently obtains the upper hand and ploughs through the Doctor’s remaining incarnations. After the unseen incarnations appear on the screen, Morbius is injured, indicative that said incarnations were likely his.

3) As already alluded to by Tanmann, future stories completely dispel the notion of unseen past Doctors, and this applies to TruWho and NuWho. Thus, with all the evidence suggesting as such, it only makes sense to conclude that the incarnations were indeed that of Morbius’. The story never states outright that the incarnations are that of the Doctor’s, whilst the other examples are far more explicit.

People are clearly desperate to justify the notion that the programme somehow has no canon or logistics purely to defend the absolute rubbish of NuWho via completely dismissing the context surrounding the scene in question, or via completely ignoring other sources of evidence that emerged prior to and after the release of The Brain of Morbius. The argument has always seemed spurious to me, frankly.

I think it was always intended by the production crew that the earlier faces were the Doctor. I read an interview with one of the production crew once - the director i think - who said this was so.

I never liked this - even on firstt transmission. So i have usually made up (crap) excuses to explain away the extra faces. Stupid things like the Doctor was making faces up just to win the mind game. Yeah - dumb or what.

I think nowadays i just accept that what happened in Morbius is a glitch in a programme i loved. So the difference with NuWho and that Judoon episode is that NuWho is shite and i don't care, while Brain of Morbius wasn't and i do. Which is an argument that lacks a certain intellectual gravitas. I think this is where Paul-the-twat-Cornell steps in and calls me a misogynist, racist, sexist, toxic male bully.

stengos wrote:I think it was always intended by the production crew that the earlier faces were the Doctor. I read an interview with one of the production crew once - the director i think - who said this was so.

Ah- fair enough. That’s even more frustrating, because it makes fuck all sense in the context of either the scene or past and subsequent stories, yet it’s a story I love.

It’s not canon breaking, though, due to its implicit nature. Still, NuWho fans will still turn to this as the upmost evidence that they can disregard canon completely.

Tanmann wrote:

stengos wrote:I think this is where Paul-the-twat-Cornell steps in and calls me a misogynist, racist, sexist, toxic male bully.

Looking at that mock comic picture you posted ...

Re the 19th season quote: - at least people are buying classic series 19 on bluRay.  Contra Jodie's season 11 which i understand has had crap sales.

Re the ratings comment: Well NuWho supporters have declared the show a success for 15 years based on its ratings. Even last year Jon Blum was saying Jodie's season 11 ratings were a success despite the cliff edge decline after the first episode. And again after the small increase for that Judoon episode. All this suggests ratings are important. Yet this ratings comment in the picture post now seems to downplay ratings. But then much like continuity in a show, maybe expecting consistency in a person's argument is now considered a form of mysognistic, homophobic, racist bullying. Dunno ....

Re the "female Doctor rant" comment: Well that seems reasonable. If you can't rant about that what can you rant about. Especially now Brexit is supposedly done. Although i don't regard the views of people like Burrunjor "ranty". Its the responses he got on GB that time that strike me as being "ranty". And, by all accounts, bullying.

Apologies if i seem to be taking this too seriously. Sbdy posted a link to Cornell's twitter or facebook account recently . I looked at it and got very wound up by some of the comments. This post is what you might call the after-shock of that!

I agree with you utterly, regarding the New Who sycophants often sounding far more rabid, ranting and seeming furiously radicalized than the critics they attack.

What mainly gets to me about that picture is that it seems desperate to paint it as if the female fans or wives of fans need liberating from the male fans' 'retrograde' opinions..... as if there aren't plenty of female viewers who also hated the decision and aren't interested in the show anymore because of it.

It really speaks to Cornell's slimy, self-deluded "white knight hero" complex.

And indeed its mocking of ratings panics has not aged well at all.

Tanmann wrote:I agree with you utterly, regarding the New Who sycophants often sounding far more rabid, ranting and seeming furiously radicalized than the critics they attack.

What mainly gets to me about that picture is that it seems desperate to paint it as if the female fans or wives of fans need liberating from the male fans' 'retrograde' opinions..... as if there aren't plenty of female viewers who also hated the decision and aren't interested in the show anymore because of it.

And indeed its mocking of ratings panics has not aged well at all.

Anecdotal i know but my son's girlfriend was a fan of the show. Even in the Capaldi era. But not now - not since Jodie started.

I had always assumed those were previous incarnations of Morbius. It had never even occurred to me that those were the Doctor until I read that online ~10 years ago. Now I see how it was intended that way, but since that scene is at least somewhat ambiguous, I just prefer to keep my original interpretation of those images being of Morbius and not the Doctor.

I thought about this some more, and I really don't have as much of a problem with having those earlier versions of the Doctor as I initially thought.

It does contradict The Three Doctors - Hartnell refers to himself as "the original." Also, Mawdryn where the Doctor is shown to only have 5 incarnations. (And possibly The Five Doctors)

But in the end, my main problem with it is that according to The Deadly Assassin, Time Lords only get 12 regenerations (It's never really been clear to me if this means they get 12 lives, or they regenerate 12 times = 13 lives). So if both what's in Morbius and Assassin is true than either 4 or 5 would be the last Doctor (There were 8 pre-Hartnell 'Doctors' on the screen). But, if in Deadly Assassin they had only made the limit 15 or 16 instead of 12, or if we took away 3 or 4 of the faces on the screen in Morbius, we could end with Sylv or McGann as the final incarnation of the Doctor and it would work perfectly.

I like the fact that the Morbius sequence adds a bit of mystery to the Doctor's past. Assuming it was meant to be the Doctor, and not Morbius.
I liked the Time Lords as they were presented pre Deadly Assassin, particularly in The War Games.
As to all the NuWho stuff. I'm not particularly interested. To me, it's a different world altogether. If NuWho fans want to see it as a continuation of the real show, that's up to them. I don't care. I see it as a spin-off.

I notice they're not mentioning the most pertinent facet of the "Morbius" Doctors. They're all male.