By most accounts, the Doctor's ninth incarnation was the one who followed the Eighth Doctor's regeneration.
When examining the Doctor's timeline, Marnal exclaimed to Rachel Rowley that the Doctor had "three ninth incarnations", (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) and the Eighth Doctor's visions of his next incarnation included as many as ten potential bodies. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) Accounts differed as to which one he eventually regenerated into. (TV: The Name of the Doctor; PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War)
In addition, some accounts of the Doctor's early life suggested that the so-called First Doctor, from whom the numbering allotted to the conventional Eighth Doctor started, (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) was not actually the Doctor's first incarnation; (PROSE: The Power of the Daleks, Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius; TV: The Timeless Children) indeed, some suggested that the First Doctor was in fact the ninth, following eight prior incarnations. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)
The warrior
- Main article: War Doctor
By many accounts, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into a ninth incarnation who renounced the title "Doctor" while fighting in the Last Great Time War. (TV: The Night of the Doctor) Later incarnations disavowed this version of themselves for breaking the promise of their shared name, not even including him in their numbering, (TV: The Name of the Doctor) with the Eleventh Doctor calling himself the "eleventh face", despite knowing it to be untrue. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) However, after it was learnt that his final act was to actually save Gallifrey with many of his other incarnations, he was embraced as a true incarnation, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) though his decision to disavow the "Doctor" title meant he was still not counted in the numbering, meaning the Eleventh Doctor still considered himself the eleventh incarnation. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
The man with the ears
- Main article: Ninth Doctor
After the Eighth Doctor saw several visions of his future in the Tomorrow Window, a single figure solidified out of the blur: one with a gaunt, hawklike face that gave him a broad, welcoming grin. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows)
According to some accounts, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into this incarnation after using the Moment to end the Last Great Time War, (COMIC: The Forgotten, PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War, Have You Seen This Man?) but many later accounts held that he was the successor to the War Doctor; as such, the "man with big ears" was the Doctor's tenth incarnation, but the ninth to use the name "Doctor". (TV: The Day of the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor etc.)
He travelled with companions such as Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler. (PROSE: Dr. Ninth, etc.)
The balding man
- Main article: The Doctor (Party Animals)
During his travels with Izzy Sinclair and Fey Truscott-Sade, the Eighth Doctor seemed to regenerate into a balding incarnation who liked to wear bowties and dark jackets, (COMIC: The Final Chapter) who had previously been encountered by the Seventh Doctor at Maruthea. (COMIC: Party Animals) However, this was actually Shayde posing as the Doctor as part of a scheme agreed upon between them to bring down the Threshold. (COMIC: Wormwood) In reality, the balding man eventually severed himself from his past as part of a deal with the man in black to restore his homeworld. As a result, he lost his memories and continued to wander the universe, taking the name of "Fred"; a different version of himself took over the place he had occupied in his original timeline. (PROSE: Cyber-Hunt)
The listless-looking man
- Main article: Ninth Doctor (The Curse of Fatal Death)
One of the faces the Eighth Doctor saw in the Tomorrow Window was "a listless-looking man", (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) who had a companion named Emma, (PROSE: Who's After Your Cash) with whom he fell in love and decided to stop adventuring and settle down. The Doctor and Emma met the Master on Tersurus to inform him, but the Master brought the Daleks.
The Doctor ultimately regenerated into his tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth incarnations in quick succession after being shot by various energy beams. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death)
The pale aristocrat
- Main article: Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka)
Another possible future the Eighth Doctor glimpsed in the Tomorrow Window included a pale aristocrat (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) who fought the Shalka. This incarnation of the Doctor had formed an "alliance of sorts" with the Master, who was confined to the TARDIS in an android body (WC: Scream of the Shalka) after losing his original body assisting the Doctor in defeating an alien race which had invaded Gallifrey and killed nearly all other Time Lords, including the Lord President's daughter, with whom the Doctor had fallen in love.
After the Time Lords retreated into the Matrix, (PROSE: Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor) they sent the Doctor and the Master on dangerous missions as punishment for the death (PROSE: Scream of the Shalka) of the Lord President's daughter. (PROSE: Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor) Following the Shalka invasion of Earth, they were joined in the TARDIS by Alison Cheney. (WC: Scream of the Shalka; PROSE: The Feast of the Stone)
Daughter of Mine was visited several times by the "tall white aristocrat" incarnation of the Doctor. (AUDIO: Shadow of a Doubt)
Others
Other possible future selves the Eighth Doctor glimpsed in the Tomorrow Window included a figure in a velvet suit and eyeliner; a man with curly hair and a lopsided smile; a ginger incarnation (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) whose adventures intersected the Seventh Doctor's several times; (PROSE: Battlefield, Transit, Birthright, Happy Endings) and the Valeyard, (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) who repeatedly menaced the Sixth Doctor (TV: The Mysterious Planet, AUDIO: The Brink of Death, et al.) and was described as an amalgamation of the Doctor's darker sides from between his twelfth and final incarnations. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)
One possibility was that the Eighth Doctor's successor was the man with a bent nose, (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) who was not a proper incarnation of the Doctor but the Minister of Chance, another of the four surviving elementals. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Another possibility was that the Eighth Doctor's future included many men in pseudo-Edwardian dress, as well as the First Doctor. (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) The Infinity Doctor resembled the Eighth Doctor with short hair but lived on Gallifrey and had forgotten many of his adventures. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) By one account, the old man and young girl who landed their spaceship in the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane were Soul and Zezanne in the shape-shifting Jonah; in their amnesiac states, Zezanne believed that Soul was her grandfather. (PROSE: Sometime Never...)
Behind the scenes
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- In the 1989 board game Battle for the Universe, a distinct incarnation of the Doctor is depicted as having access to four remaining regenerations.
- The reference to the Doctor having "three ninth incarnations" in The Gallifrey Chronicles is a reference to Rowan Atkinson's Ninth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death, Richard E Grant's Ninth Doctor in Scream of the Shalka, and Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in Series 1. Each of these incarnations and many more had been previously depicted in The Tomorrow Windows.
- According to Jonathan Morris[1], the appearance of a Doctor wearing eyeliner and a Doctor with curly hair in The Tomorrow Windows were based respectively on actors Eddie Izzard and Alan Davies, both of whom were rumoured as the Ninth Doctor in 2003 before the reveal of Christopher Eccleston. The Izzard rumour was prolific enough that Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker openly spoke in favour of his hypothetical casting.[2][3]
- In a Radio Times readers' poll, the top five favourites to play the incoming Ninth Doctor were Ian Richardson, Alan Davies, Stephen Fry, and Alan Rickman, with Anthony Head in 1st place.[4]
- ITV's animated comedy sketch series 2DTV, which preceded the introduction of Eccleston's Ninth Doctor, featured a pair of grey Daleks announcing their return, vowing to exterminate "the new Doctor", "whoever he is" before one of the Daleks is intercepted by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine. Incidentally, the introduction of the Time War and resulting developments in Doctor Who lore furthered the idea that the Daleks held a particular conviction towards exterminating the Eighth Doctor's successor.
- Russell T Davies introduced Doctor Who and the Time War's position in relation to The Night of the Doctor as a "glimpse of parallel events" given that "all Doctors exist [and] all stories are true".[5] Although the specific mention of "ears" as the new Doctor feels his face references Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor, the story does not positively identify the Doctor into whom the Eighth Doctor regenerates. In the comments of the Instagram release of Doctor Who and the Time War, Russell T Davies liked a suggestion by a fan that
…the Ninth Doctor here could also be interpreted as the Shalka Doctor or the Rowan Atkinson Doctor for the hat trick of alternative Ninth Doctors.
- COMIC: The Flood was originally going to end with the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor, with the BBC approving the plan. However, a condition imposed by the BBC and Russell T Davies (namely, that the Ninth Doctor could not be seen to travel with any companion other than Rose) rendered this unworkable, and the idea was abandoned. Thought was given to a storyline that would have seen Destrii travel with a Doctor who was 'trapped' mid-regeneration, with a flaming head and hidden features that the writers and artists compared to Dormammu of Marvel Comics, but this idea was considered too much effort for too little reward, considering the main purpose of a regeneration storyline was to see how the companions reacted to the new Doctor.
- For the graphic novel release of The Flood, Martin Geraghty illustrated the Ninth Doctor after his regeneration as it was originally scripted by Scott Gray.
- In AHistory, Lance Parkin revealed that a deleted line from his 2009 novel The Eyeless would have revealed that the Eighth Doctor was betrayed by his companions during the Last Great Time War, leading to him ending his life alone.