Regarding the Valeyard, he makes a little more sense if you recall Planet of Spiders and Logopolis. (And just perhaps Destiny of the Daleks, while we’re at it.)

Recall that Time Lords can, as they near regeneration, sometimes project a corporeal future image of themselves, who will then assist in their regeneration.

Cho-Je is an independent, self-aware projection of the future incarnation of K’anpo. He exists to help K’anpo when he regenerates into the incarnation resembling Cho-Je.

The Watcher is essentially the Four-and-a-Halfth Doctor; a projection of the Doctor from halfway through his next regeneration process. He has been projected backward to help the Fourth Doctor regenerate into the Fifth, by merging with the Fourth Doctor.

By a similar logic, the Valeyard is a projection of the Doctor from somewhere in the middle of his final regeneration — except this projection has [artificially] taken on all of the bad qualities of the Doctor, and has developed its own ideas. Rather than assist his earlier self, this projection means to manipulate the Doctor in order to ensure that he becomes concrete, and real. You could say that the Valeyard is basically a Dark Watcher.

Which is a rather interesting concept. It’s just… very convoluted and strange, and it requires that you embrace the projection business, which is weird to start with.

Curiously, the Master was originally a similar concept: in Pertwee’s final serial, he was to be revealed as a projection of the Doctor’s id, who ultimately would sacrifice himself to allow the Third Doctor to regenerate. Delgado’s death prevented that plot thread from resolving itself, which has led the Master down a very different charater path. Yet thematically it still kind of ties into the discussion below.

This is all the more interesting when you add it to something I posted somewhere else, in regard to “The Forest of Death”.

This is just my reading, but it seems to me there’s an impossible sort of shame attached to the Doctor’s name. Like he did something horrible at one point, and now that name is pariah. So he took a new name, as a mask. And the new name came to define who he wanted to be, whereas the original name threatened to define who he was by virtue of who he had been and done.

I guess sort of like Human Nature. You could say that same psychology trickled up into John Smith.

If that’s what happened, I wonder if the Master was involved somehow… It sounds like Davies was implying they chose their names for similar reasons, at around the same time.

On further thought, this would explain a lot of things about the Doctor. Why he does wear this mask all the time. Why he seems so committed to righting things, even sometimes against reason. It’s as if he’s trying to redeem himself. There’s his exile, and the Time Lords’ particular suspicion of him — which seems to go beyond mere bureaucracy. The early, “bastard Hartnell” fits in pretty well.

And then there’s all that business about the Doctor’s personality being mostly a facade, that he puts on to impress others. As Moffat says, “He’s almost a charlatan… in a good way. He poses as this god-like figure, but he’s just a bloke under there.”

Shadows of the Past

So… extrapolating a bit, perhaps the Doctor and the Master were both involved in something rather horrible. They were both a little bad. As established, the Doctor was always an outsider, always rejected, always looking for meaning in his life. That can lead to all kinds of delinquency. The Master was worse, he probably was a little older, and helped to goad on the Doctor. Whatever they did, they became persona non grata to Time Lord society. The Master, having been more directly responsible, may have been more severely punished. The Doctor more or less “got away” with what they’d done, yet was shamed by his actions and marked as a renegade.

Their names went down in infamy, and effectively came to define who they were. So each took a new name. The Master was fueled by contempt; the Doctor was fueled by regret. Despite efforts and the change of name, there was no more place for the Doctor on Gallifrey — so he decided to steal an old, broken down time capsule that no one wanted — rather like himself — and go out into the wild, perhaps to find a new direction for himself. To escape, and to find himself some meaning.

He was still a bit of a nasty item, of course. Just being a Time Lord, being raised in their society, probably didn’t help. And then there were his friends… Yet being the best of bad company is still a relative thing. His granddaughter — whenever it was she came into the picture — was some voice of conscience, of course, yet she was young and naive and easy to ignore. Easy to manipulate, as the Doctor, like his friend the Master, was so adept at doing.

Then he was forced down off his pedestal, and began to interact with “lower” people, like Ian and Barbara. And gradually he found a new moral compass and meaning. And he began to remold himself. To become The Doctor, as it were. Though he knows full well that it’s mostly an act.

He really does mean well, and he really does try — yet there’s a reason for that. He’s fighting against something. Against the person who he might be, who he once nearly was before he was humanized (as it were). He takes on all of these human, very mortal companions, who take him at face value, reminding him that what matters is not who he is, it’s what he does. And who can stop him, if need be. Yet the memories of Time Lords are long.

You can see it in how defiant the Second Doctor is at trial, at how desperate he is to justify himself and his attempts to do what he considers right. All the Time Lords see is the Doctor breaking their laws again; they take some effort to convince of his sincerity. Was he really acting in good faith?

Shadows of the Future

Going with Barry Letts’ Freudian model, you could say that before he met Ian and Barbara, the Doctor was essentially a balance between an ego and an id, with the Master prodding on his worse side. Who cares about practicality: think of what you can do! Interacting with humanity imparted him with an overwhelming superego, which tipped the balance of his psyche. And it is that which has been dominant ever since.

Which is where the Valeyard comes in. All of that potential for wrong, buried and suppressed for twelve generations, that very real core to the Doctor’s personality, his burning id — and this is its last chance to assert itself, and paradoxically claim the Doctor’s future generations, and a dominant personality. The last chance for the Doctor to be who he might be, who he fears he always has been behind all the facade. The person who the Master saw in the Doctor so long ago, when they were such close friends.

It also seems to explain the Master’s resentment toward the Doctor. Beyond anything specific he might blame on the Doctor, you always get the sense that he feels somehow rejected. And in a sense, that’s exactly right. Although there is still some affection at the core of their relationship, the Doctor found his own compass, and doesn’t need the Master anymore — which only makes the Master all the more bitter, and amplifies all the feelings of despair that the Doctor has learned to fight against.

And then there’s his apparent responsibility for the loss of the Time Lords. All that time trying to redeem himself… and that’s where he ended up? That’s the decision he was forced to make? No wonder he’s so suicidal recently.

This is all just me, of course. Still, wouldn’t it be interesting to start to wrap things up around the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors? To bring all that had happened into a grander context? All this certainly ties in with the themes of the show. As I said a while back,

It’s about a man who looks human but isn’t, traveling through time and space in a ship that looks like a police phone booth but isn’t. The title is the show’s central question: who is this guy, anyway? Hints have trickled out over the show’s forty-some years, but they generally just raise more questions.

As he explores, the Doctor recruits traveling companions — usually pretty young women from modern London — and tries to show them the universe. Instead, he tends to stumble into crises that he feels obliged to put right, using little but his wits and a startling audacity. Then he takes right off again, always moving.

The point of the show is that what matters is not who or what a person is; it’s what he does right now, and how he does it. With enough curiosity and persistence, even a nobody can change the world. Yet to find that wonder, and become more than you seem, you must leave your comfort zone.

And what a story it could be… if it just had two more points: a pivot, and an end.