Doctor Who: The Mystery of the Twelfth Doctor’s Face
By Joel Getter
The upcoming series of Doctor Who is full of questions. What is the significance of the Garden? Who is Maisie Williams playing? Will the Doctor find Gallifrey?
One of the most fascinating mysteries yet to be addressed is the resemblance of the Twelfth Doctor to Peter Capaldi’s character Caecilius from the Tenth Doctor episode ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ and as John Frobisher in ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’. Showrunner Steven Moffat has stated that an answer to the Doctor’s familiar face will be explained. In the series eight opener ‘Deep Breath’, the newly regenerated Doctor asks himself why he selected that particular face. So, why did the Doctor choose a face that he has seen before? Did the Doctor do this intentionally as a means of sending himself a very important message? I have a theory, and it is quite a doozy of one that connects this puzzle to another potential storyline.
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The idea that a Time Lord can exhibit some control on appearance following regeneration has a long-standing precedent in Doctor Who. In ‘The War Games’, the Second Doctor was sentenced to a forced regeneration and exile to Earth. The Doctor was given an option to choose his new appearance by the Time Lords. After hating all of the options, the regeneration became random. In the Fourth Doctor story, ‘Destiny of the Daleks’, companion and Time Lady Romana regenerates and is able to select several potential bodies before finally settling on the character of Princess Astra who she met in ‘The Armageddon Factor’.
Peter Capaldi was not the first actor to have a different role on the show prior to playing the iconic Doctor. Colin Baker’s first appearance was in the role of the Time Lord Commander Maxil, opposite then Doctor Peter Davison in ‘The Arc of Infinity’. Although never explicitly said, I believe that the Doctor subconsciously selected Commander Maxil as the basis for his Sixth incarnation. I think that Romana was able to freely choose because she had more skill in this than the Doctor, where change is traditionally more random with some influence from his subconscious.
In ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, the Doctor is adamant that he cannot save the people of Pompeii as this is a fixed event that cannot be altered under any circumstances. After dematerializing, Donna begs him to go back and save just one person. The Doctor decides to rescue Caecilius and his family, believing that saving one insignificant family will be fine and will not alter the greater timeline. Here’s where my theory comes in to play. I believe that the Doctor will have to deal with a similar dilemma, one that will hold huge implications for him personally.
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A rumored storyline for the upcoming series is that the Doctor will meet a young Davros at a time before he created the Daleks. The Doctor will be placed in a position where he could kill Davros before he grows up to create the Dalek menace as we know it. It’s a version of the classic conundrum on whether or not it’s acceptable to kill Hitler before he became a monster. The Doctor had an opportunity to wipe out the Daleks once and for all in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ but questioned if he had the right. I think that, by meeting a young Davros, the Doctor will have another opportunity to erase his greatest enemies from history.
It may not be a matter of killing the child Davros, but maybe the Doctor comes up with another possible plan to achieve this goal. It is looking as though the Davros storyline may be true as the trailer for the next series does feature shots of Daleks and a metal city very similar to the one seen in their opening story ‘The Daleks’. I can’t even begin to imagine the ramifications of this plan as this would not only drastically alter the current Doctor Who universe but would completely change the personal timeline of the Doctor. However, this is a Time Lord who had to watch millions of his own people perish before locking the survivors away in that unknown parallel universe. This makes it a more personal issue than the events of Pompeii. The Doctor will struggle with the temptation of preventing the Time War from ever occurring.
I propose that the Doctor subconsciously chose the face of Caecilius as an important reminder to the dangers of altering the timelines. How is it possible for the Doctor to know in advance he would be dealing with the Davros issue? Regeneration is extremely tricky. I think that while in process of changing from Matt Smith, the Doctor’s subconscious received a vision of this future event and in order to safeguard himself against making the wrong choice, selected the face of the man he saved as a reminder that he still had to let Pompeii burn. The Doctor has to let the Daleks exist and go to war with Gallifrey. However, he can help his people in some small way by joining his past incarnations in locking Gallifrey away in the pocket universe. As far as the Capaldi appearance in ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’, the only explanation I could think of was that John Frobisher is simply a descendent of his other character Caecilius.
So there you have it, my insane theory explaining the multiple Capaldi appearances. I could be completely off base, but if I’m right, wouldn’t this be fun? What do you think? Is there a reason the Doctor has the face of Caecilius of Pompeii? Could there be another reason? What if it all is just a coincidence? Please sound off in the comments below.