| “ | ... I know these teeth... What? ... What?! ... WHAT?! | „ |
| ~ The Fourteenth Doctor immediately following the Thirteenth's regeneration in "The Power of the Doctor". |
| “ | I've never been happier in my life. | „ |
| ~ The Doctor telling Donna that he finally has peace for the first time in centuries |
The Fourteenth Doctor is the Fourteenth incarnation of the Doctor, and is the main protagonist of the Doctor Who 2023 60th anniversary specials.
Unlike past incarnations, this Doctor took the form of a predecessor, the Tenth Doctor, thus is also played by David Tennant.
History[]
Pre-regeneration[]
After the Thirteenth Doctor was mortally wounded by the Master, she held off regeneration long enough to have an ice cream date with Yaz and drop her off back at home; feeling it unfair to force Yaz into an awkward situation due to her feelings for the current Doctor. The Thirteenth Doctor accepted regeneration overlooking a beautiful seaside cliff.
Post-regeneration[]
Upon completing regeneration, the Fourteenth Doctor noticed that he had the teeth of his tenth incarnation, and saw that his predecessor's clothes had been transformed into a style similar to said incarnation. Confused, he felt his face on disbelief that he had turned back into an old version of himself.
One Hell of a Day[]
Immediately afterwards, in the comic Liberation of the Daleks, the Doctor was drawn by distress call to the 1966 World Cup, where he encountered temporal tourists, and a invasion by the Daleks. However, this turned out to be part of a Dalek theme park. The Doctor managed to defeat various factions of illusionary Daleks from across their history, preventing them from successfully manifesting into reality and invading Earth. Shortly after, in the 2023 Children In Need Doctor Who short "Destination Skaro" (which serves as a prequel to "Genesis Of The Daleks") the Doctor crash lands the Tardis on Skaro, inadvertently interfering with the Dalek's origins by inspiring Davros's assistant Castavillain, before making a sharp exit.
Reunion of the Best Friends[]
The Doctor lands the TARDIS in London in 2023. He crosses paths with Shaun Temple and Rose Noble, who he is surprised to realise they are respectively the husband and daughter of former companion, Donna Noble; when Donna herself is present, the Doctor avoids her sight out of fear that reminding her of him will turn her back into the DoctorDonna, which would result in her death. As her original pattern, Donna is distracted, so doesn't see the crashing spaceship streak across the sky. The Doctor rushes to the crash site.
At the crashed UFO, the Doctor meets UNIT scientist Shirley Anne Bingham; the Doctor confides in her his confusion about regenerating into his Tenth form again, as well as the coincidence of meeting Donna and her family, concluding that the two events are related. Shirley sends in soldiers to investigate the spaceship, only for them to fall under the thrall of an unknown entity.
Rose's friend tells her of an escape pod from the ship landing near her home; when alone in an alley, Rose encounters a small fluffy creature called the Meep. Rose hides the Meep amongst her stuffed toys, but Donna discovers it, and it runs off. The Doctor arrives at her house and is confronted by Donna's mother, Sylvia, who is incensed at his reappearance near Donna due to the grief his forced amnesia on Donna caused the family, and the threat his reminding presence. The Doctor defuses the situation and together they learn of the Meep's history – it states it has two hearts (like the Doctor) and claims the bug-like Wrarth warriors are hunting it for no reason.
In the neighbourhood of the Noble-Temple home, UNIT soldiers and the Wrarth begin fighting. The Doctor gets the Meep and Donna's family out via breaking into adjacent houses to flee through a gap in the battle; however, the Doctor realizes the Wrarth are not using lethal force. Upon reaching a carpark structure, the Doctor dons a judge's wig to hold a trial with the Meep and Wrarths; the frightening-looking insectoids reveal that the Meep is the lone survivor of a species that were driven insane by a sentient sun, and the creatures commenced a galactic slaughter, with plans of total conquest. The Meep briefly maintains its cute demeanour, but out of frustration, drops its façade, kills the Wrarths and reveals that it is controlling the soldiers. It threatens to kill the Doctor and Donna's family, but The Doctor suggests a link between himself and the Meep, prompting it to take them hostage instead.
The Meep plans to escape Earth by reigniting its ship, which uses an engine that achieves launch via triggering tectonic reactions, which would destroy London in the process. The Doctor and Donna's family are rescued by Shirley, but the Doctor and Donna, who is starting to remember her past, go to stop the Meep. Trapped within the ship and running out of time, the Doctor reawakens Donna's memories, who achieves the technical knowledge of the Doctor, therefore they manage to shut it down.
To the Doctor's surprise, Donna does not die; with Rose's birth, Donna had passed down part of the metacrisis into her, transferring parts of her memories of the Doctor and the Time Lord energy to Rose. The Meep is captured by the Wrarths, but before being taken away it gives a cryptic warning to the Doctor.
The metacrisis being shared between mother and daughter delays the fatal side effects, but it would still end in early death, so the Doctor frets how to remove the energy from them, since forced amnesia would no longer work. Donna and Rose, however, explain that if the Doctor still had his female brain, he'd understand the solution, which was to simply consciously surrender the power and knowledge themselves, so they expel the rest of the metacrisis from their bodies - they lose the genius and experience of the Doctor, but are able to keep their own memories of all their time together, and for Donna, it includes the experiences she had once needed to sacrifice.
Edge of the Universe[]
The Doctor and Donna travel to a spaceship that seemed to be at the very limit of creation itself; it appeared to be completely empty, other than a robot very slowly moving, but stopping for minutes at a time, down a long corridor. From the bridge, they notice a deceased alien astronaut floating above the window.
When trying to repair the ship to discover what happened, Doctor and Donna are met by two beings that copy their appearances, however, display faults like elongated limbs and jaws, revealing their alien nature. The beings consider themselves "Not-Things," and pursue the time-traveling duo throughout the ship; as the Not-Things are learning about the "rules" of reality, they shift sizes to become impossibly larger or take a liquid state. The Not-Things state that they want to enter the universe to destroy everything as the chaos echoing from the cosmos disturbed their silent rest.
The Doctor throws down a line of salt, declaring that the Not-Things can't cross it because it is against the rules of the universe; while the Not-Things doubt this claim, they are unwilling or unable to cross the salt, due to not knowing if the claim is reality. The Doctor realises that the slow robot was programmed to detonate the ship's self-destruct mechanism, with its glacial movement making it invisible to the Not-Things.
The Not-Things blow away the salt, but the Doctor manages to reach the TARDIS, flying it through the corridor to collect Donna; however, the Donna he collected was the Not-Thing copy. The robot activates the self-destruct, triggering explosions throughout the ship. The Doctor pilots the TARDIS to drop the Donna Not-Thing out, while collecting the real Donna. The Not-Things are caught in the explosions, which destroys the malevolent creatures.
The Doctor regrets throwing down the line of salt to Donna's confusion, so he explains that invoking a superstition at the edge of existence risks inviting unfathomable danger.
When Doctor and Donna return to their present of 2023 in London, they coincidentally materialise next to Wilfred Mott; the Doctor is delighted to see him again, but Wilf pleas for help, explaining that the world has gone insane. Doctor and Donna become aware of the random, directless riots happening everywhere in sight.
Another Game[]
Since the Doctor cited a superstition at the end of creation, it allowed the Celestial Toymaker, an entity akin to a god, to access reality, escaping from the under lower dimension in which he dwelt, and was where that the First Doctor had defeated him and forced him to remain. In 1925, the Toymaker takes the appearance of a German toy shop owner, and he sells a puppet known as Stooky Bill to the assistant of John Logie Baird, who plans to shoot it with his new video camera to demonstrate his invention, television.
Meanwhile, in 2023, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and her UNIT forces escort the Doctor and Donna to a skyscraper that serves as UNIT's London headquarters (and Donna insisted that the elderly Wilf be taken to sanctuary to avoid the chaos). In the control centre, the Doctor happily reunites with Melanie Bush, who was a companion of his Sixth and Seventh lives. Kate focuses everyone by explaining to the Doctor that two days ago, a South Korean satellite was put into orbit, which completed a total global network; unlike Harold Saxon's (The Master) Archangel Network, there doesn't seem to be any directly hypnotic or hidden signals, although a seemingly innocuous pattern is detected. The pattern triggers something in human brains that make them believe that they, and them alone, are correct about everything, which unleashed chaos as everyone on Earth became belligerent at everyone else due to a perceived hostility by virtue of disagreement.
The satellite signal is blocked for UNIT forces by a Z-DEX, an invention made by a benevolent UNIT robot, the Vlinx. The Doctor is unable to feel the signal, hence proving it is specifically targeting human minds; Donna and Mel appear immune to the signal due to their status as time travelers, however, they can still feel it. Donna writes the signal's peaks as musical notes, making the Doctor understand the pattern is within every screen; using his sonic screwdriver, he brings the signal to the surface, revealing the looped video of Stooky Bill, emanating an eerie giggle. The Doctor realises the giggle has been hiding in every screen, planting a seed in human minds, waiting for the global network to trigger the suggestion that an individual alone is correct, and everyone else is wrong.
Believing that destroying the South Korean satellite would disrupt, if not stop, the giggle, Kate deploys the galvanic cannon, which can shoot something in orbit; Kate, however, notes that they are waiting on permission, as shooting down a foreign satellite would cause an international incident. Kate also notes that permission had been impossible due to every world leader also being driven insane by the giggle, thus the Doctor - as President of Earth - grants his permission.
Wanting to find the origin of the giggle, the Doctor directed UNIT to find out the source of the Stooky Bill footage, which is revealed to be 2 October 1925 in John Logie Baird's laboratory. The Doctor and Donna travel to the general location and exact date; Donna queries the Doctor about Mel, noting that he never mentioned her, which he argues that he has met so many people that it would take forever to list and he'd never get anything done. Donna reasons that he needs to slow down, but the Doctor can't consider it at the moment. The Doctor decides not to visit Baird's lab, but rather the place from which Stooky Bill was purchased, and thereby they locate the toy shop.
Through the toy shop windows, the Doctor sees the Toymaker, who playfully shifts to hide behind merchandise. Doctor and Donna enter the store, where they are greeted by the Toymaker, who mockingly suggests the origin of the ball was a rock that a prehistoric human used to kill another, declaring it fun, and then the final ball will be the skull held by the last human in the year 5 billion. Despite his different face, the Doctor recognises the Celestial Toymaker, and is so terrified that he orders Donna to return to the TARDIS; Donna is confused as the Doctor is never so instantly scared, but the Toymaker acknowledges the logic since he is being recognised, thus his powers are known and should be feared.
The Toymaker suggests a game of hide-and-seek, so vanishes behind a curtain; the Doctor and Donna chase after him, entering a hallway with a dozen doors. They enter doors, but always end up in an identical hallway. Donna mentions some previous enemies, while noting that there was some sort of logic to them, yet now there isn't any; the Doctor explains that the Toymaker is a being from beneath even the under universe, where the rules of their reality don't apply to him, which the Toymaker was able to bring into their reality because of the Doctor's use of superstition to delay the Not-Things at the edge of everything.
The Doctor and Donna become separated, and attempt to reunite, but enter different rooms; in the rooms, they both face nightmarish imagery involving puppets, the Doctor seeing Baird's assistant turned into puppet for losing a game to remove the giggle, whereas Donna fights Stooky Bill's wife and three babbies.
Doctor and Donna leave the rooms, meeting back in the hallway to their relief; the hallway transforms into a black void, while they are pushed, seated in chairs, to witness an elaborate stage. The Toymaker, one-by-one, uses puppets of Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, and Bill Potts, mockingly mentioning their deaths, reinforcing their doom by cutting the strings; the Doctor, to dispute the claims, as well as reassure Donna and himself, mentions how they all had fulfilling and/or continued lives despite their deaths, albeit the Toymaker merely sarcastically retorts, "Well, that's all right then!" The Toymaker gets to the Flux, revealing to Donna that the Doctor failed to save half of the universe. Tired and frustrated with the taunts, the Doctor challenges the Toymaker to a game.
The Toymaker accepts the challenge, conjuring a card table and a deck of cards. Donna preemptively criticises that the Toymaker will cheat, but he denies, genuinely offended, which the Doctor agrees with, as the only rules that apply to the deity are rules of the game, and thus he can't cheat. As he shuffles the cards, the Toymaker gloats about his actions he had taken upon entering the universe, from turning galaxies into spinning tops, playing with supernovas, turning God into a jack-in-the-box, and facing a dying Master, beating him at a game, then trapping him forever in his gold tooth; he also claims to have turned the Doctor's history into a jigsaw, which arguably justifies the numerous changes and contradictions. The Toymaker confesses that the only one he didn't play with was the One Who Waits, displaying actual fear of the entity; when the Doctor asks for clarification, the Toymaker refuses to elaborate, saying it is "someone else's game."
The Toymaker places the deck on the table, with the game being high card. The Doctor pulls an eight, but the Toymaker draws a king, which he labels himself as being. Before the god can take the Doctor into his consequences, the Doctor corrects that they are actually tied, due to the Toymaker's defeat by the First Doctor. The Toymaker angrily acknowledges this fact, thus invites the next challenge will be back in present day in 2023.
The Toymaker disappears, which causes the realm in the toy shop to begin collapsing into itself; the Doctor and Donna manage to escape, while the store folds into smaller and smaller sizes, until stopping as a toy chest. The Doctor takes the chest, while he and Donna return to the TARDIS to fight the god of games in 2023.
Bi-generation[]
The TARDIS arrives in the UNIT tower's control room. Kate requests a debrief, which the Doctor struggles with, trying to vocalise the abstract nature of the Toymaker; he tries to reason that the perception of an order and chaos binary is inaccurate, as there is also the force of play. The Doctor becomes distracted by music, before he realises it is the Toymaker. The Toymaker sings and dances to "Spice Up Your Life," while teleporting throughout the room, dancing with then throwing Kate and Mel, then two soldiers try to apprehend him, so he transforms them into a bunch of colourful balls, which kills them; Kate commands her troops to fire, but the Toymaker effortlessly transforms the bullets into flower petals, before he disappears again.
Kate and UNIT look around the room for the Toymaker, but the Doctor notices he has occupied the galvanic cannon outside. The Doctor goes outside to confront him, and when he tells his allies to remain inside, the Toymaker demands that they remain outside to witness the Doctor's death, and threatening them with the cannon if they don't obey. The Doctor asks why the giggle was unleashed upon humanity, which the Toymaker dryly answers because life is a game, and now he has made it so everyone wins; though, the Doctor adds that everyone also loses, about which the deity smirks in agreement.
The Doctor criticises the Toymaker for being so small; he expresses how he doesn't understand how a being with such incredible powers, like turning bullets into petals, could only use those powers to be petty and cruel. The Doctor then offers that the Toymaker accompany him, to explore the universe and experience it rather than twist it, thus becoming truly celestial.
While the Toymaker seems to very briefly consider the offer of peace, he rejects it, explaining that he has found too much fun with humanity, with all of its "games," such as politics, deception, manipulation and even dating. He also notes the existence of video games, finding delight that they have such power that they can completely enthrall a player, preventing them from going outside.
The Toymaker shot the Doctor with the galvanic radiation gun, explaining he will play the third game with a new Doctor; the First Doctor won their first match, while the Fourteenth lost their second match, thus the tie-breaker will be against the next one. While accepting his very short life is ending, the Fourteenth Doctor realized he wasn't regenerating as normal and asked Donna and Mel to pull his arms outwarrds. The result was the Fifteenth Doctor splitting out of him (and vice versa) and allowing the two Doctors to coexist, to the shock of everyone, even the Toymaker.
The Toymaker is then ecstatic at the phenomena, ranting that he will never grow bored killing a "dummy that dies and divides to die again." Although, before he can enact his next shot, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth challenge him to the promised rematch; the Toymaker complains that it isn't fair, but the Doctors counter that it is his own rules, since both are technically the same person. The Toymaker acquiesces to the challenge, which they declare to be catch; despite the two versus one, the Toymaker spitefully remains confident that they are still no match for him. The ball flies between players for a while, until ultimately it slips passed the Toymaker's fingers.
Having lost the game, the Toymaker argues in disbelief, but his own nature dooms him to the Doctors' terms, which was to be sealed away; his body becomes two dimensional, and folds up into smaller squares. Before his head is folded, the Toymaker threatens that his legions are coming, after which his folded form is trapped inside his own toy chest. As he is banished within the chest, much of his influence over reality undoes, from Baird's assistant restored to his human form, startled but fortunately forgetting his ordeal back in 1925, to the rest of humanity regaining their sanity in 2023.
Kate orders the toy chest to be sealed in UNIT's deepest vault, with a ring of salt around it. With another enemy defeated, the Fouteenth finally admits he needs rest, and he is hugged by the Fifteenth and then also Donna to comfort him.
With the residual energy from the godlike Toymaker, the Fifteenth used a mallet to smack the TARDIS, which created a replica of the machine, with the only difference being one has a jukebox within. The Fifteenth almost leaves without a parting word, but Fourteenth and Donna catch him, which he cheekily smiles about; the Fifteenth explains that he is okay himself because Fourteenth will recover, since as a Time Lord, they are recuperating out of order. The Fifteenth bids farewell as he uses his TARDIS to dematerialise to his separate journey.
Retirement[]
The Doctor attends an outdoor lunch with Donna and her family, as well as Mel. During conversation, Rose Noble lets slip that she convinced the Doctor to take her to Mars, which annoyed but amused Donna. Wilf is absent from the table due to shooting moles, but the Doctor reassures that he gave energy shields to the moles because he loves them, to Donna's laughter.
The Doctor points out how he never expected to ever find a family again, yet is so grateful that he did. Donna asks if the Doctor is feeling okay now, and he emotionally claims that he is happier than he has ever been.
Appearance[]
The Fourteenth Doctor looks exactly like the Tenth, albeit slightly more aged; reflecting the weariness that had built up in him since that incarnation. He had the exact same teeth and body structure, but was not genetically the same as the Tenth.
His clothing was created by regeneration energy from his predecessor's outfit. While resembling the Tenth's suit, the Fourteenth actually wears a vest instead of a jacket.
Personality[]
The Fourteenth Doctor has a similar personality to the Tenth, albeit tempered by the experiences of their intervening incarnations. However, he is more open with his feelings and is willing to permit violence when he deems it appropriate. Unlike the Tenth, the Fourteenth shows signs of heteroflexibiity; much to his own surprise, he found Isaac Newton hot.
Although the Doctor is more open in expressing his emotions, even openly crying on occassion, he is also more blunt with his negative emotions; while he had been critical of human flaws before, he is particularly harsh in The Giggle, as he notes that despite the hypnotic suggestion driving everyone mad, it is only using dark impulses that already exist in humanity. Despite his criticisms, he still holds high value over human life, though he is more willing to acquiesce to death, at least when it is from a deity like Toymaker.
This Doctor respects his immediate predecessor, calling the Thirteenth "a really brilliant woman"; showing some of her kind and accepting nature stayed with him. This contrasts most of the past Doctors whom find some kind of fault with each other; the Second, Third and Twelfth always found something to dislike. He and the Fifteenth are the first separate iterations to meet on a friendly and immediately cooperative note.
Despite maintaining the jovial nature of the Tenth, the Fourteenth held a lot of emotional and spiritual exhaustion accumulated by his three predecessors, feeling immense guilt for the deaths of Amy, Rory, Clara and Bill, along with having been the instigating factor that caused the Flux to destroy half the universe. When the Toymaker taunted him with a puppet show displaying each companion death, the Doctor would try to rationalise the silver lining of each death, which was for threefold: to dispute the Toymaker's derision, to reassure Donna, and trying to reassure himself, too.
The Doctor was terrified of the Toymaker, but he still dove into conflict with the almighty entity, since he carried his long-standing sense of obligation that he has to defend the Earth, as well as his own morality and justice. The Doctor wasn't afraid to challenge the Toymaker, however, whether it be in games or conversation. While wearier, he maintained a similarity with his Tenth version, which was a profound capacity for forgiveness; much like how the Tenth tried to dissuade the Master with an offer of friendship and traveling together, the Fourteenth made the same offer to the Toymaker; even though both antagonists had done and planned to do awful things, the Doctor was willing to forgive if a peaceful solution could be reached.
After just 15 hours of life, along with a forced bi-generation that caused the Fifteenth Doctor to split off of him, Fourteen was helped to realize that he needed to retire for a couple of decades; to start healing from all the pain and trauma that had built up his centuries of travel had given him.
Gallery[]
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Trivia[]
- Unlike his predecessors, the Fourteenth didn't chose his clothes; they were transformed from the Thirteenth Doctor's by regeneration. Though he does chose later to go with the look, having needed to replace the clothes that split off with the Fifteenth Doctor.
- Russel T Davies said he wanted to avoid offending anyone by implications of a male Doctor being in drag. Plus David Tennant wouldn't be able to fit in Jodie Whitaker's costume.
- Presumably, in-universe, the vest and tie were created from the extra material that Thirteen was wearing at the time, like the suspenders and jacket hood; law of constant mass would still apply even to something absurd as regeneration.
- There needs to be sufficient matter to reform into new clothing, hence why his outfit was shared from the bi-generation, since not enough material was close to reshape into new outfits.
- The Fourteenth Doctor took on his job at UNIT on a more permanent basis; being surprised by the amount of pay that accumulated since the Fourth Doctor departed the job in the 1970s.
- The house the Fourteenth has lunch with the Nobles and Mel is actually his own home; according to the novelization he paid off the entire price for a lovely manor in the country.
- He is first Doctor to gain the face of a past incarnation; the Sixth and Twelfth Doctors both took the appearance of someone they've met (Maxil and Caecilius) but they weren't his past faces. While the Sixth was coincidental, the Twelfth was also a face his subconscious chose for him to give him an important message he may have set aside due to fatigue.
- His comment about his teeth feeling familiar is an inversion of the joke line when he originally became the form of the Tenth.
- Amusingly, the Fourteenth Doctor's single outfit was divided between him and the Fifteenth Doctor due to the bi-generation.
- He was unaware that Sarah Jame Smith had died by 2023, which his successor made him aware of.
- He also experienced memory loss as his Eleventh self due to the multitude of memories being impossible to retain as equally memorable.
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