Talk:The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius)

Proposed deletion

There is no reference, direct or indirect, to The Brain of Morbius in the audio Cold Fusion. In fact, the minor reference from the original novel was removed for the audio adaptation. There is certainly nothing in the way of confirmation that the faces in the mind-bending sequence are pre-Loom incarnations of the Doctor. P&P talk contribs 04:11, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

I think the point being made here is that Patience's husband is specified as the Doctor, and one of the incarnations of her husband is given a description matching that of one of the Morbius Doctors. --Pluto2 (talk) 04:13, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Not really. The audio is no more specific than the book. The description of a dark colored beard with lighter hair is both 1) present in the original novel and 2) not enough evidence for this claim. P&P talk contribs 04:18, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Cold Fusion, but I'm fairly certain that there's a throw-away line in Original Sin that said that the Morbius Doctors were past incarnations... CoT ? 04:23, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Here's the sole reference to Morbius in Original Sin:

Hanging onto Morbius's mind-bending equipment while his past lives were dragged from him, one by one...

Also not definitive. That's an accurate description of what happens whether the other faces are his or not. P&P talk contribs 04:34, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Surely if they weren't his, it'd have said so? --Pluto2 (talk) 04:53, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Really? It might be a technically accurate interpretation, but it seems a bit biased to say that the Doctor could just be referring to a small portion of the mind battle. To give context for the quote, the Doctor is recounting various ways his mind may have been damaged in the past. Why would the Seventh Doctor think that just the first bit was damaging when Tom Baker is clearly in pain all the way through? Also, "one by one" isn't a very good choice of words for a number as small as 3. CoT ? 05:01, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

The audio adaption of Cold Fusion says that Patience is the Doctor's wife in this universe. Currently the redirect for Fifth Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) is Patience's wife. --Borisashton ☎ 10:28, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

The bit in the novelisation of the Brain of Morbius with these faces in goes like this: 'To the death, Doctor. I, Morbius, do not play games.' 'Nor I,' said the Doctor grimly. 'Are you ready? On guard!' The Doctor and Morbius braced themselves, gripping the gleaming scaffolding. Sarah saw a swirl of images on the central screen. A familiar face appeared—the face they had seen depicted on Solon's clay head. Morbius gave a cry of rage—clearly the appearance of 'his' face was a sign that he was losing. Morbius rallied, and the face of the Doctor appeared on the screen. Sarah saw that the real Doctor's face was twisted with effort. Drops of perspiration covered his forehead. Another face appeared on the screen, the debonair white-haired features of the Doctor, as Sarah had first known him. 'You are going, Doctor, going!' roared Morbius triumphantly. 'How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?' Yet another Doctor appeared on the screen—a dark-haired little man with a whimsical expression. Then another face... a proudlooking old man. Exultantly Morbius shouted, 'Your puny mind is powerless against the brain of Morbius. Back, Doctor, back to your beginnings. To your birth—and to your death!' Sarah had a confused impression of even more faces on the screen. The Doctor was groaning, clutching the scaffolding for support...

This only refers to the Morbius Doctors as 'faces'. But the way Morbius speaks (I think) proves that these are the Doctor's faces. Aside from the lines he says in the TV story he also says 'Back to your beginnings. To your birth - and to your death'. This to me proves that the faces described are the Doctor's. Why would he talk like that to the Doctor if they were his faces? Any thoughts? --Borisashton ☎ 20:29, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

If this article stays is the name correct as it seems wrong to have multiple pages called the first doctor second doctor etc 95.147.32.223^{talk to me} 22:50, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Either we stick with the established system (the current numbering), or go with "Original X Doctor", like "Original First Doctor". --Pluto2 (talk) 22:54, January 12, 2017 (UTC)

Also a paragraph from Cold Fusion also telling the events of the mindbending scene: 'A lot of what happened before my second regeneration is hazy. Great chunks of my life are missing. It was all so very long ago. Your second regeneration? ‘How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?’ An oversized claw snapped open and shut, a human hand clasped a rail. A brain within a tank, red eyestalks glaring at him. A patchwork monster with a gurgling voice. ‘your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius, Back! Back to your beginning!’ You can’t... not that far... I won’t let you.... Not even I... Here and no further.'

This also shows that the Doctor was aware of regeneration before his first and was actively stopping Morbius from going there. --Borisashton ☎ 13:18, January 14, 2017 (UTC)

I just checked AHistory. It refers to Patience's husband as "The Doctor", so it looks like Parkin's intent was that Patience's husband is the Doctor. --Pluto2 (talk) 00:50, January 16, 2017 (UTC)

Are there any further arguments on this matter? --Borisashton ☎ 18:40, May 21, 2017 (UTC)

I think it's all somewhat interesting, but I still am agaainst using the Morbious Doctors as we have. All of the information discussed can be presented on pages like Patience's husband. OS25 (Talk) 20:15, June 18, 2017 (UTC)

Can we remove the delete tag? --Pluto2 (talk) 07:30, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Not without an admin decision. Shambala108 ☎ 14:18, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

If we really need an admin to close discussions like these, I think we should be doing a ton more user rights nominations, since our current team of active admins (as undeniably wonderful and industrious as they are!) are clearly just understaffed to settle discussions like this one, which has been all but totally inactive since January. It blows my mind that we've only gotten two new admins over the last four years! – N8 ☎ 14:50, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree that it'd be ignoring a preponderance of material to say that the faces in The Brain of Morbius weren't incarnations of the Other / previous incarnations of the Doctor, and that Patience's husband wasn't himself an incarnation, but I'd like to at least see a rename for this page, since this face has never been called the First Doctor, and Cold Fusion actually suggests there were further incarnations before him. – N8 ☎ 14:50, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Looking through the recent discussion, and the history of the various Brain of Morbius Doctors pages they're all broadly the same information and were created at the same time.

With no real clear statement in-universe of where on the regeneration path these incarnations are from I would suggest merging all of these articles into a single The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) page. That way we can collect all the information that's been spread out through these six pages.

Also as the Patience's husband delete tag redirects here, that should remain, as there's in-universe information supporting his existence. No need to merge that page in with these. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:22, September 27, 2017 (UTC)

I'd agree with that plan. I think The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) is definitely the best solution, and not just because they're most commonly referred to as the "Morbius Doctors". Note that the deletion tag on Patience's husband should probably change into a merge tag, since it seems like they're meant to be the same? – N8 ☎ 13:34, September 27, 2017 (UTC)

I disagree on Patience's husband being included in the merger of all of these pages.

I think we can probably link to The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) from Patience's husband but the information concerning her husband and the info on the page is too vague to say definitively one way or another. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:57, September 28, 2017 (UTC)

So Patience's husband is a Doctor from before the First Doctor, and The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius) is a Doctor from before the First Doctor, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same Doctor. Gotcha; that makes sense. I plan on rereading Cold Fusion for all the details on Patience's husband and his status as an incarnation of the Doctor, but until then I look forward to the renaming of this page and the deletion of the other Morbius Doctor pages! – N8 ☎ 20:25, October 12, 2017 (UTC)

Missing face

Why isn't the face that appeared before the Fourth Doctor in the mind-bending contest on this page? JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 02:40, February 28, 2018 (UTC)

Because no one has uploaded one or added it to the page? Shambala108 ☎ 02:48, February 28, 2018 (UTC)

You mean the face of Morbius before he became a monster? --Borisashton ☎ 18:41, February 28, 2018 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by “before he became a monster”? JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 06:16, March 1, 2018 (UTC)

As in Morbius was shown before and after he existed as the body that was created for him by Solon. --Borisashton ☎ 13:45, March 1, 2018 (UTC)

No, I mean that during the mindbending contest, a face is seen in the apparatus before the Fourth Doctor appears in it. JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 22:56, March 2, 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea what you mean then, but as Shambala suggested feel free to upload an image of said face. --Borisashton ☎ 23:29, March 2, 2018 (UTC)

This face.

This is the face I was taking about. It appears appears after Morbius's image in the machine fades, but before the Fourth Doctoer's appears. (JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 02:42, March 6, 2018 (UTC))

I thought that's what you meant. That is Morbius. It can be compared with File:Morbiushead.jpg for further proof. --Borisashton ☎ 11:44, March 6, 2018 (UTC)

Oh, well then, sorry to waste your time. (JMC Red Dwarf ☎ 01:31, March 8, 2018 (UTC))

All relevant information?

I think that, rather than trying to resolve what "the truth" is behind all of the different possibly-contradictory and internally ambiguous stories, it might be better to list the relevant stories (and behind-the-scenes info) and let people come to their own conclusions:

• The Power of the Daleks (novelisation) is, I think, the earliest implication that the First Doctor had regenerated at least once.
• The Three Doctors (TV story) is, I think, the earliest implication that the First Doctor is the first.
• The Brain of Morbius (TV story) is really pretty ambiguous. Hinchcliffe and others involved certainly meant to imply that these were past incarnations of the Doctor, and have said so in interviews, but, if you watch it, even the once-popular fan theory that the faces are Morbius's isn't impossible.
• The Five Doctors (TV story) and a number of later stories ignore the Morbius Doctors, and make it pretty clear that the First Doctor is the first incarnation, but none of them even attempt to explain the Morbius faces.
• Silver Nemesis (TV story), Remembrance of the Daleks (novelisation), etc. don't answer the question. And it's pretty clear from interviews with Cartmel and friends that he was more interested in adding new mystery than in resolving old ones.
• Original Sin (novel) reopens the question, but does little more.
• Cold Fusion (novel) makes it pretty clear that the Doctor has memories of at least two incarnations from before the First Doctor. But are they his? Are they reliable? Are they the Morbius Doctors? Parkin has made it clear out-of-story that he intended the Morbius Doctors to be Patience's husband, who has some mysterious connection with the Doctor's past, but there's only the barest of hints in-story.
• Lungbarrow (novel) implies that Patience's husband was the Other, and loom-reincarnated himself into the Doctor, but it's all left pretty ambiguous. And the connection to the Morbius Doctors is even more oblique (basically just a chapter title).
• Doctor Who (TV story) doesn't really add anything. (Not surprising when you consider that Lungbarrow was written specifically to accommodate the movie's "half-human" idea.)
• The Eight Doctors (novel) implies that the Doctor was a child and had a mother, but it's not entirely clear that this is the First Doctor (and, even if it were, it wouldn't contradict him having been reincarnated from whoever the Morbius Doctors were).
• The Infinity Doctors (novel) shows that the Doctor of that novel's alternate history is the current incarnation of Patience's original husband. But the only implication that this is even connected with the Morbius Doctors is Parkin's out-of-universe statements about earlier drafts of the novel. And how that alternate history relates to the "main" one is left unclear.
• Unnatural History (novel), and the EDAs in general, make it abundantly clear that the Doctor's past actually is contradictory, and even more so as all of history, and the Doctor's in particular, is being repeatedly fought over.
• Sometime Never... (novel) "resolves" everything by replacing all of the contradictory pasts with one in which the First Doctor was actually Soul. But The Gallifrey Chronicles (novel) obliquely implies that history is soon going to be rewritten again by the Doctor restoring Gallifrey—just in time for another Time War.
• The new series shows us the First Doctor as a child (Listen (TV story)), and possibly his mother (The End of Time (TV story) and/or Hell Bent (TV story)), but that doesn't add anything new. And meanwhile, the possibility that the Doctor's history has retroactively changed is a central plot point to Clara's story, and the idea that history is contradictory is a central theme of the entire Moffat era, but again, none of that is really new.
• Big Finish, in adapting Cold Fusion (audio story) and other novels post-2013, left things as open as ever. (The most notable difference is the Doctor saying he was "unambiguously" loom-born.)

Other stories could be added, but I think that's enough to cover the fact that the Doctor may have those memories, they may be someone else's, he may be a reincarnation of or otherwise connected to that someone else, the stories really are contradictory but history may just be like that Amy, or history may have changed, or his memories may be faulty, etc. (I suppose you could also throw in things like Gary Russell implying that the EDAs are a different timeline, Lawrence Miles implying that the NAs were in a different universe, etc., but I don't think that really adds much.) Anyone looking for "the answer" should just watch/listen to/read the relevant stories. --157.131.170.189^{talk to me} 00:33, October 3, 2018 (UTC)

Rename tag

The rename tag said the following: "The article refers to multiple incarnations, rather than one singular. The Doctors (The Brain of Morbius) may seem a more apt choice of title."

This is not a valid reason...The Doctor also refers to multiple incarnations but is named singular. That's just the basic rule on this wiki. The overwhelming majority of articles are named in the singular. Removing the tag. Shambala108 ☎ 01:28, March 1, 2020 (UTC)

But The Doctor is about "the Time Lord in general, across their incarnations". Whereas this page is not about a Time Lord in general, it is about eight particular incarnations of a Time Lord who already has a general page — The Doctor. Heck, it might make more sense to split it into The Doctor 1 (The Brain of Morbius), etc., like we do for the Doctors in the Rose novelisation. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 10:52, March 1, 2020 (UTC)

That used to be the state of affairs but the pages were all merged into this one, since it’s much more useful to have a page for the Morbius Doctors in general. – N8 (☎/👁️) 13:41, March 1, 2020 (UTC)

In light of further precedent and the emergence of more specific information about incarnations, I propose we split the page according to Scrooge's naming proposal. – n8 (☎) 19:34, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

You may want to have a look at #Split below, which postdates the above. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:28, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Cheers! – n8 (☎) 21:06, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

How many faces in TTC?

The legacy section notes that all eight faces appear in the Matrix segment in The Timeless Children, but the behind the scenes section says that seven of the eight faces appear. When watching the episode, I can't tell due to the speed of the montage. Does anyone have the ability to slow the montage to check this, and amend the page as appropriate? JDPManjoume ☎ 21:10, October 1, 2020 (UTC)

Harper incarnation's origins

As written in the behind the scene section fans publicly discovered the origin of the Harper's picture: (Spoilers for those awaiting Babelcolour's upcoming fan film)

It is the exact same picture of Martin Jurgens, the adjudicator impersonated by the Delgado master in 'colony in space': there is no doubt about it if you check the fax with his credentials in Episode 5. (note that we also see a blurry colour version when Jo picks up his credentials in the Master Tardis in the same episode). In the novelisation, he is called Martin Jurgen with no 's' and the Third Doctor presumes that the master killed him.

Surprisingly we currently don't have a page for this character but i am not sure what we should do with it. Personally, I see two options:

• we consider them the same character and cover him on this page with a redirect from "martin jurgens". (the mindbending sequence order puts Harper as the incarnation Camfield directly regenerates into) But, if we do this, should we still title it 'the doctor (the brain of morbius)' since one their incarnation is from the previous 'colony in space'?
• We create the "Martin Jurgens" page while in 'the doctor (the brain of morbius)' we create a new section about him and use the "main article" template directing to this page to avoid a naming conflict

Personally, I prefer the first option while keeping the current title as it is the most common one and we did not create a distinct page for the Timeless Child incarnation who appeared in flashbacks before the big reveal season finale. RingoRoadagain ☎ 11:51, October 22, 2020 (UTC)

Split

As the page's main image is already split 1-8, perhaps it is time that this page is split completely? First Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), Second Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), etc, seem like good enough titles. Some may argue that there isn't enough information per Doctor to warrent individual pages, but I think that the Doctors with more information - such as the Douglas Camfield incarnation - suffer as a result of only having a joint page. With individual pages it would allow editors to add more in-depth BTS information from sources like Forgotten Lives. RadMatter ☎ 16:08, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

This proposal certainly has some pros. Equally I can see some cons. It is easy to link to a gestalt "Morbius Doctors" page on {{doctors}}; it would perhaps be trickier to find room for eight different Doctors, some of them with very little narrative to their name. Yet if we split, I don't think policy would allow for an overall page on the eight Morbius Doctors to remain.

Naming is also problematic, given that the Morbius Doctors appear in reverse order of their timeline. By First Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), do we mean the first Morbius Doctor seen on-screen — George Gallaccio? Or do we mean the diegetically earliest of the Morbius Doctors, the one who (in a pre-Timeless reading of the scene) might be the one purported to be the real First Incarnation of the Doctor — Christopher Barry? Whichever one we settled on, a more casual editor might well assume the opposite. Hence, confusion.

Should the split happen, something like The Doctor 1 (The Brain of Morbius, using on-screen order and making no claims about in-universe order, would have to be the way we went, using the precedent of such pages as The Doctor 1 (Rose). And that's quite cumbersome. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 16:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Addressing your concerns in turn;

{{doctors}} could simply be listed as "Morbius" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) • "Muldwych", etc.

There is a whole appearance section on the article which lists the individual appearances as "First incarnation", "Second incarnation", so I don't understand why it would be an issue for the page name?

I personally wouldn't mind how the pages are named, or in what order, for now. However, it is something that I think needs to happen for best coverage on this site. RadMatter ☎ 17:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

No, we couldn't quite do that on {{doctoes}}, because again, we can't split off all the incarnations and retain the page The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius), at least in its current form. But even if we could do what you suggest, my point is that this would take up a lot of space; more than the importance of the individual Morbius Doctors warrants.

As for the names, it is one thing that people already on a page explaining the Morbius Doctors will know in context what we mean by "first incarnation"; and another to have page names using those terms. I forgot to mention that in the absence of context, if I see a link to a page called First Doctor (something something), I'm going to assume it's a page about an alternative counterpart to Hartnell's First Doctor. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Given the recent interest in splitting Time Lord pages, I think Radmatter's proposal seems very do-able. As they say, splitting would allow for more specific and organized coverage of each of the faces. As the page is now, we need this big table to clearly convey who plays each Doc, and lots of the incarnation-specific info is quite scattered. Plus, we have the fact that some stories, like Cold Fusion, only feature appearances by a few of these Doctors, and distinctions like that cannot be as easily conveyed on a single page, arguably lessening the distinctness of the few Morbius Doctors we know a bit about. Plus, when it comes to the Doctor, significance has never been a factor anywhere else in which incarnations get their own pages; this is a main character and pages with little information other than "There was this face, which looked like this and appeared between two other faces. Here's some BTS." are still quite informative.

If we are to separate, the issue of keeping this main page could also be important precedent for other Time Lord incarnation splitting. I think that pages for distinct sets of incarnations would make a lot of sense, with an example adjacent to this issue being the distinct Life cycle of incarnations from the First to Eleventh Doctors. However, there are several sources by which we could say that this "Doctor" is a distinct Time Lord from the individual we cover on The Doctor, possibly being either The Other or the Doctor's father, so I think that alone justifies keeping the current page.

Also, using [The Doctor 1 (The Brain of Morbius)] in a diegetic numerical order is IMO the way to go, and if these guys are in a template they can be displayed like |"Morbius" (8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)|. Treat 'em like they're BCE. CoT ? 19:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I like Champion's solution for the numbering.

Concerning keeping the overall page, I think a good rationale to keep it, without wading into the minefield of regeneration cycles, would be to, going forward, consider it not so much a page about an individual as an overview on the possible identities given in valid sources for the eight "Morbius faces" — in a similar spirit to the likes Time Lord messenger (Genesis of the Daleks). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with everything Champion had to say. I do think that this page should be retained and so appreciate Scrooge's rational too. RadMatter ☎ 19:55, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the plan of action proposed by Champion and Scrooge. It makes sense to retain this page as an overview alongside the individual incarnation pages: there's already some precedent for this in "era of a Time Lord's life" pages, like what The War Chief is to The Master, or what K'anpo Rimpoche is to Ansillon or The Hermit. – n8 (☎) 21:06, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm contributing to this discussion in favour of a split; the new illustrated edition of the Rose novelisation has just been released and the scene with Clive Finch's photographs has been updated to included the first and fifth seen Morbius Doctors. I went to add information to this page, and I found the experience throughly confusing, as it wasn't clear which incarnation was which, and the numbering the incarnations section doesn't align with the numbering in the infobox. As these Doctors are getting more appearances, it makes sense to split them so we can have more fleshed out biographies for each Doctor, instead of this weird solution we currently use.

Furthermore, if we do a split, we absolutely should have a table displaying which Doctor is which, accompanied by a photograph to clearly identify them; this is a departure from other similar pages where we just have a list, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to do it.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

02:42, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the split. These should all have separate pages, as per precedent, and because this would make it easier to cover the appearances we already have and any theoretical new ones. CoT makes good points above, and I agree with their numbering solution. This page, I think, should be retained solely for the BTS info, although I also see the benefit in using it as a page akin to Time Lord Messenger (Genesis of the Daleks) or the Doctor's reality (Death Comes to Time). Aquanafrahudy 📢 🖊️ 07:38, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Also in favour of both splitting and retaining this page. --MrThermomanPreacher ☎ 21:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I too am in favour of the above. I guess in a sense this page'd become a ""group"" page? Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 22:01, 22 December 2024 (UTC)