Where does the Ruth Doctor fit into the Regenerations?

Jodie Whittaker's last season as the Doctor brought back a very welcome element of the classic series, a true serial approach to the storylines with a good old cliff-hanger ending to tease people to watch the following episode. Something not seen since the very last serial of the Sylvester McCoy years, back at the end of the classic series run in the 1980s.

Episode three also brought back the unexcepted but very welcome return of Jo Martin, as the mysterious Ruth Doctor, the Doctor we currently have no idea where she fits into with the chronology of the shows rather complex history.

Her arrival in the middle of the six part Flux series, came much to my surprise at least (and a lot of the fandom in general it seemed) in chapter three. At the very least via flashbacks as Jodie Whitakers 13th incarnation of The Doctor experienced lost memories as this earlier incarnation as she took on Swarm and Azure, the main villains of the current story long ago.

Possible long ago. This is Doctor Who after all, for all we know at the moment, that flashback might have actually taken part next week from someone else's point of view.

Yeah, things can get wibbly wobbly.

But this does bring up the issue of the as yet, unresolved Timeless Child storyline, an element that drastically retcons the Doctors already quite complex backstory as it turns out that the first Doctor (as played by the late great William Hartnell) wasn't the true first incarnation of the Time Lord. Something else that annoyed the fanbase.

Of course we have had some confusion about this in the past with the introduction of the War Doctor, then an unknown element as to where he fitted in, with two possible openings as we never saw the complete regeneration of the second Doctor (played by the also late, great Patrick Troughton) into the third (played by the again late, great Jon Pertwee) and had also at that point not seen the Eighth Doctor (played by the very much alive Paul McGann) complete his own regeneration.

That is until we got a mini episode showing just that as we finally saw Eight regenerate, not into Nine (Christopher Ecclestone) but into the secret, not heard of version known as War, or the War Doctor (played the late, great John Hurt), finally answering the question of how Eight had died and making good use of the gap between the American made TV movie and the revived BBC series and along with David Tennant's Doctor later being confirmed to have used up two regenerations. This left Matt Smith as the LAST incarnation of the Doctor, with no more to go until the Time Lords intervened and gave the Doctor a whole new set of regenerations.

But you probably are a Doctor Who fan if you are reading this and as such knew all this already. So why am I bringing this up?

Because after having mulled things over I have wondered just where the Ruth Doctor really fits in with all the ever complex personal history of the Doctor. Her inclusion came about as part of the Timeless Child storyline, which concluded at the end of Jodie's second season with the revelation that the Doctor was the Timeless Child.

The Timeless Child in question being a child from an alien race apparently lost, hailing from another reality and adopted by a Gallifreyan who having witnessed the limitless regeneration ability of the child, managed to adapt it to engineer the people of her world to copy the ability and become the Time Lords. Admitably putting a limit on so that each time Lord could have a total of13 lives. Something that was apparently forced on the Timeless Child at some point as well.

The Ruth Doctor appears to be part of that initial unlimited regenerations, and even ran around in her own Tardis which resembled the control room of the Hartnell years and even had the form of a blue police box, which does suggest some possibilities that might both support the idea she is a pre Hartnell version, and that she might be a later version.

Let's just remember one other rather important thing about the Timeless Child revelation.

It came from the mouth of The Master, one time best friend and frequent nemesis of the Doctor, himself in his second (known) set of regenerations, and lets face it, hardly a reliable source of information. But we do know from none other the Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall that the Ruth Doctor IS a bonafide version of the Doctor, the latest flashback just confirms that.

But where does this leave us with where the Ruth Doctor, and for that matter, where the Timeless Child fits. Lets look at some possibilities here.

1. The Ruth Doctor is a pre Hartnell Doctor: 
Which is the current assumption given everything we've been presented with.

But writers can and do like to pull the wool over peoples eyes and give us what seems to be the "truth" of a story, only to pull the rug away and present us with a surprise we couldn't have seen coming.

If she is a pre Hartnell Doctor, then this would be supported just fine with what we do know so far, but we don't know everything. But it doesn't explain why the Tardis always used the blue police box disguise during her time using it. And given we know that Hartnell's Doctor was advised to take that specific time machine by Clara Oswell who was trapped in the doctors personal timeline, well, that does suggest two things as well. Either Clara didn't travel far back enough to see the pre Hartnell stuff, or there is nothing before Hartnell and Clara just hadn't gotten to the Ruth stuff before she bumped into War.

2. The Ruth Doctor fits somewhere after Hartnell:
The question then becomes when? We know she is the genuine article after all, flashbacks alone confirm that. But then were would she fit? She's long before Jodie's Doctor after all, and all regenerations are accounted for.

Except one.

Troughton into Pertwee. Sure we see the regeneration start, and we see the after effects of it's completion, but we never see the face change from one man to the other. Throw in various fan theories that the second Doctor went on additional missions for the Time Lord after his apparent regeneration started and teamed up with the sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) once in "The Two Doctors" and even acted alongside most of the other Doctors in "The Five Doctors" before that, in both cases looking much older then he had previously. There is scope for him having not completed that regeneration process at that point.

But what if he had and much like the Eight and Ninth Doctors there was a gap for another Doctor like the War Doctor? This very gap was even suggested as a possible space for the War Doctor before we learned the truth.

Maybe the Time Lords lied, put some sort of block on the second Doctor instead, wiped his memories, sent him off to act as an agent for the Division and somewhere along the line he regenerated into Ruth, who continued to act as their agent until they felt she had done enough and wipe her mind and let her regenerate again into the Third Doctor as we know him, and simply believed it to be a forced regeneration?

Of course we know this can't be the case as all 13 incarnations are accounted for, but there are some loopholes that could be used as exploits to explain it all.

The Tenth Doctor managed to abort one regeneration by channelling the unused regeneration energy into his chopped off hand. This is apparently still classed as a full regeneration. But what if it wasn't really? What if the Doctor only believed it did as, lets face it, this had never been done before? That would free up a regeneration that could have been used much earlier on that we've just not seen yet and that the Doctor wouldn't know about thanks to yet more fiddling by the Time Lords.

It would take a masterstroke of retconning to allow for that to workout though, but we still have some play room with the nature of the War Doctors regeneration.

This is the one that arguably we have the most freedom with. The Eighth Doctor was actually dead. Dead dead. He'd not had a chance to regenerate but was brought back to live temporally thanks to the  intervention of the sisterhood of Karn. The Eighth Doctor was given the chance to drink another elixir that would trigger a controlled regeneration of his choice.

He chose to drink the elixir that would make him War. A much needed choice for the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks.

And at least at the moment this counts as an official regeneration. But this could quite easily be treated as an additional regeneration thanks to it's partially artificial nature, again allowing for the additional secret regeneration between Two and Three. After all, we know that the Time Lords CAN bestow additional sets of regenerations, we've seen them do it twice now.

And after all, the Ruth Doctor is using a Tardis with a familiar Blue Box form and a control room very similar to the one used by the first Three Doctors, even allowing for the all changes made over all their runs, especially the Thirds, it still looks close enough to have come from within their eras.

But of course the Third Doctor was not wearing the Ruth Doctor outfit after his regeneration. But this doesn't mean the Ruth Doctor only ever had one outfit, a lot of Doctors, especially the Third and Forth have had multiple changes of clothing, the Ruth Doctor could very well choose to wear, or be forced to wear a different outfit before she herself regenerates.

3. What if the Master Lied?:
Changing track a bit away from Ruth, what if the Master (Played brilliantly by Sacha Dhawan) is lying about the Doctor being the Timeless Child and is just messing with her? And lets face it, the Master LOVES to mess around and play head games with his Rival.

And this frankly wouldn't surprise me one bit. Of course this doesn't rule out the Ruth Doctor being a genuine version of the Doctor, because by now we know she is. Too much evidence on screen to claim otherwise. But then, who is the Timeless Child if NOT the Doctor?

4. The Timeless child is some now long dead character, or simply a lost character we will never see:
Which would be rather undramatic and leave everyone feeling robbed. No, I think there is one more option to consider here, that might explain things regarding this mystery.

5. The Timeless Child IS The Master:
Now this, this would be more in keeping with the Masters character. Think about it, what did the Master do when he learned about the most guilty, dark secret of the Time Lords?

He wiped them out.

All of them.

Somehow.

Then in a somewhat twisted mirrored way, he did to them what they had done to the Timeless Child, and forced them into being something they weren't. He made them into Cybermen complete with their regeneration abilities ticking in to pick them right back up onto their feet if they got killed.

That seems an incredible personal act to do.

Almost like, revenge?

This would fit in with the Master lying to the Doctor about the true identify of the Timeless Child, just in order to mess with her head. Get one more feeling of elation by making his greatest rival think the worst of their people, and question her own very existence, and maybe even revel in her confusion if and when she figures out that he was lying.

This isn't out of character for the Master and in a way, he could somewhat justify his actions towards the Time Lords if he is the Timeless Child.

From his point of view, he would have basically been abandoned by one group of people, abducted by another, experimented on against his will, had his natural abilities limited, had his own psyche altered to hear the sound of drums to help win the Time War, faced death and had to become a body snatcher to extend his life past the imposed limits put on it, and who only knows what else he's learned or gone through?

Throw in the fact we still don't know where the Sacha Dhawan Master fits in overall with all the Masters incarnations, he's unlikely to be after Missy as John Simms Master was quite sure she was not going to be able to regenerate after a full blast from the laser screwdriver. Could he be a version between them? Or even pre Derek Jacobi's Master?

We just don't know. Yet.