Doctor Who’s Survivors of the Flux poses more questions about the Doctor’s origins

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 12:00 am

Last year, Doctor Who did something rather daring, throwing out the established origins of its lead character in favour of restoring a little mystery to proceedings – bringing the “Who?” back to Doctor Who, if you like.

In what was unquestionably a divisive move – hailed by some, hated by others – series 12 finale The Timeless Children revealed that the Doctor was not in fact born on the Time Lords’ home planet, but was discovered on another world entirely by Tecteun, one of the founders of Time Lord society, and was brought back to Gallifrey in order to harvest her natural ability to regenerate.

Going against everything we thought we knew, the consequences of this twist were that, for the first time in 50 years, fans had no clue where the Doctor was from, or what race they were. Prior to the premiere of Doctor Who: Flux, executive producer Matt Strevens hinted that the six-part serial would pick up “on a lot of the things the Doctor learned about herself and her history” at the end of the previous series – and we finally got said pay-off in the latest episode, Survivors of the Flux.

What we, and the Doctor, discovered might have answered some questions, but it posed far more – presenting three distinct possibilities as to where the character might have come from. Here’s what was disclosed – and the options that fandom can now debate back and forth, at least until next week…

The Doctor is from a second universe

BBC

Reunited with Tecteun (now played in her latest incarnation by Barbara Flynn) at Division headquarters, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) has it confirmed that the Master wasn’t lying – she was indeed the “lost child” found alone on that unnamed planet, stood waiting by a wormhole to another universe.

Tecteun believes the Doctor was “deposited” on this “deserted planet” by the wormhole, which is also what was implied in The Timeless Children. “The next universe holds the other end of the wormhole where I found you,” says Tecteun. “That universe may be where you’re from – where you began.”

Survivors of the Flux confirms the existence of a multiverse in Doctor Who, with the all-powerful Division able to cross the boundaries between universes and even hide themselves in the cracks in-between. (Yes, we’ve seen parallel worlds on the show before – in 1970’s Inferno and 2006’s Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel but this appears to be something different – whole new universes as opposed to mirror images of our own.)

If Tecteun is right, the Doctor originated from the universe that exists directly beyond the wormhole – let’s call it Universe Two – and somehow found herself transported into our universe, alone, as a child.

But the episode also presents another possibility…

The Doctor is from our universe

BBC

Understandably, the Doctor isn’t happy that Tecteun simply assumed she was totally alone and so bundled her into a ship back to Gallifrey – our hero suggests that, rather than having travelled through the wormhole to our universe, she might have been about to travel through it, into Universe Two.

“You assumed I came there from that wormhole, but you don’t know,” the Doctor argues. “What if I was waiting to be collected? What if I was supposed to be taken through it?”

If we’re assuming that the planet on which Tecteun found the Doctor is indeed in our universe – which isn’t actually 100 per cent clarified – then possibly that planet was the Doctor’s home all along. Perhaps the rest of its civilisation – including the Doctor’s family – had already left through the wormhole?

This theory would mean that while Doctor isn’t from Gallifrey, she is at least from our universe – and from a planet a space shuttle’s ride away from the Time Lords’ home.

There is, however, one more option…

The Doctor is from somewhere else

BBC

Let’s say Tecteun is right and the Doctor did travel through the wormhole to where she found her – there’s still nothing to say that Universe Two is where the Doctor was born.

What if this wasn’t her first trip? If a multiverse exists, and wormholes exist which enable travel from one universe to the other, then theoretically the Timeless Child could have begun life anywhere in this massive ocean of universes, hopping from place to place before finally ending up where Tecteun found her, beneath that monument.

The Doctor could be from Universe Three, or Universe Eight, or Universe 5792.

Survivors of the Flux, then, might rule out a few possibilities – the Master wasn’t lying, the Doctor is the Timeless Child and the circumstances of her discovery by Tecteun did play out as we were led to believe – but with its introduction of a multiverse, this latest episode of Doctor Who opens up far more doors than it closes.

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