If the Doctor Who revelations of the past few years have made you uneasy, there’s a wonderful moment in The Night of the Doctor, the mini episode where Steven Moffat brought back the Eighth Doctor and provided him a regeneration scene to lead into the 50th anniversary story, The Day of the Doctor. 

Specifically, it’s the moment where Ohila, from the Sisterhood of Karn, tells the Doctor that he has been killed. He thinks he’s survived, but Ohila tells him that he had to be revived and that he’s only got four minutes left. In hindsight, and because of recent events in Doctor Who, this sequence has become quite significant. 

I’m one of those old fans where the Timeless Child scenario has spoiled Doctor Who. We are now meant to believe that the Doctor is an immortal who had thousands, if not millions, of previous incarnations prior to William Hartnell’s “First” Doctor. But the fact that the Eighth Doctor got killed – and Ohila specifically says “you’re dead” — is a direct contradiction of the Timeless Child. If the Doctor is indeed an immortal, then he wouldn’t have died; he would have regenerated instantly after Cass’s spaceship crashed. 

Russell T Davies recently uttered the line, “It’s all canon!” So what do we take from this? Simply, the Eighth Doctor is a half-human who got killed trying to save Cass. His deceased body had to be temporarily revived by the Sisterhood of Karn so that he could take the Elixir of Life, triggering a regeneration, which would enable him to transform into the War Doctor. It certainly sounds mortal to me. 

But this goes a little further with the bi-regeneration idea that Davies put forward after The Giggle was broadcast — more specifically, where every regeneration was supposedly retconned so that each Doctor survived their regeneration and begat a new Doctor as well. 

But how does this work with the Eighth Doctor to the War Doctor? This regeneration was forced by the Sisterhood so the War Doctor would have walked away, but the Eighth Doctor wouldn’t have because he was dead. Does the Eighth Doctor have a grave on Karn now? 

Continuity errors are inevitable in a long-running series. We could all name several if we think about it. But they also provide a small bit of defence, should a storyline go in an unpopular direction. The Timeless Child is certainly that. 

But it also gives the Doctor Who Luddites (like me, I admit it) a get out; a way of compartmentalising “my” Doctor and to ring-fence him from the whims and ideologies of future showrunners who want to stamp their size elevens on proceedings.