The Doctor's ninth incarnation

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: ) and the Eighth Doctor's visions of his next incarnation included as many as ten potential bodies. (PROSE: ) Accounts differed as to whom he eventually regenerated into. (TV: ; PROSE: )
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: ) was not actually the Doctor's first incarnation; (PROSE: , ; TV: ) indeed, some suggested that the First Doctor was in fact the ninth, following eight prior incarnations. (TV: )
== The warrior ==
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: ) Later incarnations disavowed this version of themselves for breaking the promise of their shared name, not even including him in their numbering, (TV: ) with the Eleventh Doctor calling himself the "eleventh face", despite knowing it to be untrue. (PROSE: ) 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: ) 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 man with the ears ==
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: ) 
According to some accounts, the Eighth Doctor regenerated into this incarnation after using the Moment to end the Last Great Time War, (COMIC: , PROSE: , ) 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: , , etc.)
He travelled with companions such as Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler. (PROSE: , etc.)
== The balding man ==
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: ) who had previously been encountered by the Seventh Doctor at Maruthea. (COMIC: ) However, this was actually Shayde posing as the Doctor as part of a scheme agreed upon between them to bring down the Threshold. (COMIC: ) 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: )
== The listless-looking man ==
One of the faces the Eighth Doctor saw in the Tomorrow Window was "a listless-looking man", (PROSE: ) who had a companion named Emma, (PROSE: ) 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.
This Doctor was explicitly identified by the Master as the ninth incarnation and ultimately regenerated into his tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth incarnations in quick succession after being shot by various energy beams. (TV: )
== The pale aristocrat ==
Another possible future the Eighth Doctor glimpsed in the Tomorrow Window included a pale aristocrat (PROSE: ) 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: ) 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: ) they sent the Doctor and the Master on dangerous missions as punishment for the death (PROSE: ) of the Lord President's daughter. (PROSE: ) Following the Shalka invasion of Earth, they were joined in the TARDIS by Alison Cheney. (WC: ; PROSE: )
Daughter of Mine was visited several times by the "tall white aristocrat" incarnation of the Doctor. (AUDIO: )
== 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: ) whose adventures intersected the Seventh Doctor's several times; (PROSE: , , , ) and the Valeyard, (PROSE: ) who repeatedly menaced the Sixth Doctor (TV: , AUDIO: , et al.) and was described as an amalgamation of the Doctor's darker sides from between his twelfth and final incarnations. (TV: )
One possibility was that the Eighth Doctor's successor was the man with a bent nose, (PROSE: ) who was not a proper incarnation of the Doctor but the Minister of Chance, another of the four surviving elementals. (PROSE: )
Another possibility was that the Eighth Doctor's future included many men in pseudo-Edwardian dress, as well as the First Doctor. (PROSE: ) The Infinity Doctor resembled the Eighth Doctor with short hair but lived on Gallifrey and had forgotten many of his adventures. (PROSE: ) 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: )
== Behind the scenes ==
* 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 is a reference to Rowan Atkinson's Ninth Doctor in , Richard E Grant's Ninth Doctor in , and Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in Series 1. Each of these incarnations and many more had been previously depicted in .
* According to Jonathan MorrisJonathan Morris on Twitter, the appearance of a Doctor wearing eyeliner and a Doctor with curly hair in The Tomorrow Windows were based respectively on actors and , both of whom were rumoured as the Ninth Doctor in 2003 before the reveal of Christopher Eccleston. Mark Gatiss mentioned people "glibly talk[ing]" about casting Izzard or Davies in 1999. ("We're gonna be bigger than Star Wars!", DWM 279)
** The Izzard rumour was prolific enough that Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker openly spoke in favour of their hypothetical casting.Comic Izzard tipped as new Dr Who"Jonathan Creek star Alan Davies and Richard E Grant are the bookies' favourites to take the role."
* In a Radio Times readers' poll, the top five favourites to play the incoming Ninth Doctor were Ian Richardson, Alan Davies, Stephen Fry, and , with Anthony Head in 1st place.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3276905.stm
* ITV's animated comedy sketch series , 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 's position in relation to as a "glimpse of parallel events" given that "all Doctors exist [and] all stories are true".@russelltdavies63 ROSE: THE PREQUEL 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
* COMIC: 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.
== Footnotes ==
Category:Incarnations of the Doctor