When interstellar bounty hunter Rogue (Jonathan Groff) meets the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) in the Doctor Who episode “Rogue,” he gets more than he bargained for. Not only does he enjoy a full-on romance with the mysterious Time Lord, but he also gets a rare peek at the many faces of the Doctor’s past.
Convinced that the Doctor is actually a shape-shifting Chuldur, Rogue is about to teleport his new frenemy to the incinerator when the Doctor makes Rogue’s ship do a full scan of the Doctor’s own rogue’s gallery of faces. A hologram of David Tennant, the Fourteenth Doctor, appears. Then a hologram of Jodie Whittaker, the Thirteenth Doctor. Then William Hartnell, the First Doctor.
And then… Whose face is that? Could it be an old, evil version of the Doctor from the classic show, newly canonized with an official regeneration? And could that ancient evil figure also be the season’s Big Bad, a.k.a. The One Who Waits?
Who Were All Those Faces?
A total of 17 faces spin around the Doctor, all of the others well known. Following the mystery face, there is Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor), John Hurt (the War Doctor), Peter Capaldi (the Twelfth), Chris Eccleston (the Ninth), Matt Smith (the Eleventh), Jo Martin (the Fugitive Doctor, apparently some time before Hartnell in the show’s recent “Timeless Child” chronology), David Tennant again (in his Tenth Doctor incarnation), Jon Pertwee (the Third), Colin Baker (the Sixth), Peter Davison (the Fifth), Paul McGann (the Eighth), Patrick Troughton (the Second), and Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh).
In other words, counting Ncuti himself as the eighteenth face, that’s all of the people to play the title role on TV in the show’s 60-year history. This is a comprehensive set of holograms. Fans are familiar with the War Doctor and the Fugitive Doctor, both of whom feature in the Big Finish series of audio adventures.
So, who’s the other face? Clearly it’s someone we’re supposed to notice, sandwiched as he is between the iconic First Doctor and even-more-iconic Fourth Doctor.
Credit: Disney+ screenshot
This being a show about time travel and all, it’s possible that this is a face from the Doctor’s future. It’s also possible that this is a face from the Doctor’s distant, pre-Hartnell past, like the Fugitive Doctor, or the former Doctors seen briefly in the classic 1976 story “The Brain of Morbius,” though the face doesn’t really resemble any of them.
But a stronger possibility, after a close study of the face in question, is that showrunner and old-school fan Russell T Davies wants to tie up one of the weirdest loose threads from the classic show and set fans’ brains ablaze at the same time.
In the same way that his predecessor Chris Chibnall created the “Timeless Child” concept partly in order to satisfy lingering questions about those “Morbius” Doctors, Davies may just have made it clear that the Valeyard was a proper regeneration of the Doctor after all.
Who is the Valeyard?
In the 1986 season-long story “Trial of a Time Lord,” the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) is put in the dock by his fellow Gallifreyans. The prosecutor is a figure known only as the Valeyard (Michael Jayston) — to whom the face in the hologram bears an uncanny resemblance.
Long story short, the Valeyard turns out to be a bad guy with intimate knowledge of our hero. The Doctor’s old enemy, the Master (Anthony Ainley), tells us that the Valeyard is actually a future version of the Doctor, an “amalgamation of the darker sides of his nature,” hailing from “somewhere between the Doctor’s twelfth and final regenerations.”
Even longer story short: The Doctor, like the Master, was only supposed to have 12 regenerations in total, but both cheated their supposed final death. At the end of 2013’s “The Time of the Doctor,” Matt Smith’s Doctor was gifted a new set of regenerations and promptly transformed into Peter Capaldi. The Valeyard did not show up then, nor in any of the Doctor’s subsequent regenerations (or in the case of Gatwa, bi-generation).
Technically, the Doctor is nowhere near his “final” regeneration, so the Valeyard could still be from his future. That means we shouldn’t necessarily get our hopes up for a return of the character — or at least not the version played by Jayston, who died in February 2024, at the age of 88.
But in a season that has already shown its willingness to delve deep into the Doctor’s past, with that mention of his long-forgotten granddaughter Susan in “The Devil’s Chord,” Davies could be signaling with this Valeyard-like face that there’s one more twist in the end.
Is the Valeyard also The One Who Waits?
We’ve been expecting this season’s major villain, The One Who Waits, since his presence was first announced by the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) in Gatwa’s first episode at the end of 2023, “The Giggle.” The Valeyard is a strong candidate for The One Who Waits — especially given that he’s been looming in the Doctor’s potential future for nearly half of the show’s existence.
Whether that face is meant to be Jayston or that of a new actor to play the villain, teasing the return of the Valeyard by hiding his image in plain sight would be an audacious move by returning showrunner Davies. The introduction of bi-generation in “The Giggle” may even mean that we get an answer for how the Valeyard came into existence in the first place — by splitting off from the Doctor at some earlier point in his many lives.
How to watch: New episodes of Doctor Who drop every Friday night at 7 p.m. ET on Disney+, where available, and simultaneously at midnight on BBC iPlayer in the UK. The season finale airs June 22, and will also be screened in UK theaters.
