How many times have we heard this story? Boy meets girl, girl kills boy, girl tries to stop herself killing boy and so creates a slowly disintegrating bubble universe where all time is happening at once, boy tries to persuade girl to really kill him after all in order to save the universe, boy marries girl to seal the deal (revealing the extent of his cunning plan in the middle of the ceremony). Boy kisses girl. Girl kills boy. Boy survives by encasing himself in a robot double of his own body. They live happily ever after. (The Wedding of River Song)
But if the Doctor married River in an aborted time line, in front of alternative versions of her parents, did the wedding actually take place? Then there’s the fact that he didn’t actually tell her his name – possibly invalidating the ceremony in the first place. Nothing’s straightforward when it comes to the Doctor and weddings.
THE DOCTOR’S TWIN – THE OTHER DOCTOR
While on the run from Harold Saxon, Martha thought the Doctor was about to admit that the Master was his evil brother. However, a year later, the Doctor was about to be blessed with a brother – of sorts. And it all started with a swordfight on an alien ship…
LONDON, 25 DECEMBER 2006
The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor gets his hand chopped off by the Sycorax Leader on a spaceship hovering above London. The severed appendage tumbles down into the capital. (The Christmas Invasion)
LONDON
The hand is recovered, possibly by Torchwood, and finds itself in the care of Captain Jack Harkness, who is looking for a way to escape from Earth. He pops it in a jar and keeps it close to him – his very own ‘Doctor Detector’.
CARDIFF, FEBRUARY 2008
The TARDIS materialises in Cardiff to refuel. In Torchwood’s base beneath Cardiff Bay, the nutrients around the Doctor’s hand start bubbling, indicating that the Time Lord is nearby. Hearing the TARDIS, Jack stashes the hand’s jar in his backpack and finds the time machine just as it dematerialises. Jack clings on to the side of the Police Box and hitches a lift. (Utopia)
MALCASSAIRO, 100 TRILLION
The Doctor is reunited with his former hand, which stays on board the TARDIS after the Time Lord, Jack and Martha defeat the Master back on 21st-century Earth. (Last of the Time Lords)
LONDON, 2009
During the Dalek occupation of Earth, the Doctor is shot by a Dalek and is dragged into the TARDIS by his companions, where he starts to regenerate. As soon as the regenerative energy has repaired the damage to his body, the Doctor siphons the additional energy into his handy spare hand – a perfect bio-match. (Journey’s End)
THE CRUCIBLE THE MEDUSA CASCADE, 2009
The Daleks drop the TARDIS containing Donna and the Doctor’s spare hand into a core of Z-neutrino energy to destroy it. Instead, the hand comes into contact with Donna and, packed with all that regenerative juice, triggers an instantaneous biological metacrisis. In layman’s terms, the hand grows into a partial copy of the Doctor, part Time Lord, part human – his twin. While the new Doctor shares the original Doctor’s memories and feelings, he also inherits some of Donna’s personality, only has one heart, cannot regenerate and will age like a normal human. Isn’t that wizard?
BAD WOLF BAY ALTERNATIVE EARTH, 2009
After the new Doctor commits genocide by wiping out the Daleks, the Doctor entrusts him to the care of his former companion Rose Tyler. As the TARDIS leaves the alternative universe, the new Doctor and Rose kiss. (Journey’s End)
THE DOCTOR’S COMPANION – THE TARDIS
‘Look at you pair. It’s always you and her, isn’t it, long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box, off to see the universe.’
Amy, The Doctor’s Wife
There is one constant in the Doctor’s life – his TARDIS. When the TARDIS’s living soul was dropped into the body of the young woman Idris, we learnt a few things about his relationship with his Type 40 TT-capsule:
The TARDIS is an eleven-dimensional matrix and was already a museum piece when the Doctor was young.
The first time he touched the TARDIS console, he said she was the most beautiful thing he had ever known.
When they’re alone, the Doctor calls the TARDIS ‘sexy’.
In the past, when they’ve materialised where the Doctor didn’t want to be, it was because the TARDIS was taking him where he needed to go.
The TARDIS thinks of the Doctor’s other companions as ‘strays’. She thinks of the Doctor as ‘her thief’.
THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER – JENNY
The Tenth Doctor unexpectedly became a father again on the planet Messaline in the year 6012 (The Doctor’s Daughter). Captured by human soldiers, the Doctor was forced to give a tissue sample against his will. The soldier’s progenation machine extrapolated the Doctor’s DNA, creating a female soldier whose first words – after being handed a rifle – were ‘Hello, Dad’.
When the Doctor described his new daughter as a ‘generated anomaly’, his companion Donna christened her Jenny, a name which the Doctor thought was as good as anything. However, as they tried to unravel the mystery of the Messaline war, the Doctor began to build a connection with Jenny, only to have her cruelly snatched away when she took a bullet meant for him. He left the planet, believing her dead, but Jenny revived after his departure. Taking a shuttle, she blasted off into the universe, ready to follow in Dad’s footsteps – saving planets, rescuing civilisations, defeating creatures and running an awful lot.
HOW TO GROW SOLDIERS USING A MESSALINE PROGENATION MACHINE
Take a sample of diploid cells.
Split the diploid cells into haploids.
Recombine haploids into new diploids in a different arrangement.
Accelerate growth into full adult.
Download strategic, tactical and military protocols straight into cerebral cortex.
Give soldier gun.
EXTENDED FAMILY
Away from the television screens, the Doctor’s family gets even bigger!
Travelled with the First and Second Doctors in the pages of TV Comic. They made their first appearance in The Klepton Parasites (issue 674, 14 November 1964) and left the TARDIS in Invasion of the Quarks (issue 876, 28 September 1968) when the Doctor enrolled them at Zebadee University.
Introduced in the novel Father Time, Miranda was the daughter of an assassinated Time Lord, the Emperor. The Eighth Doctor adopted her as his daughter. She would go on to become supreme ruler of the entire universe before being killed in the novel Sometime Never…
The daughter of Miranda Dawkins.
In An Earthly Child (Big Finish audio adventure, 2009) the Doctor discovers that Susan married David Campbell and had a half-human son, Alex. He died defending the Earth from the Daleks.
First introduced in the novel Theatre of War, the Doctor’s older brother would go on to found the Braxiatel Collection, the foremost art gallery in the known universe (and according to Romana, better than the Louvre).