In the vast canon of Doctor Who, our heroic eponymous Time Lord has had many different faces and many different jobs. In addition to being a general in the Time War, at one point, the Doctor was also the Lord President of Gallifrey. But one role the Doctor has also held is perhaps one that is slightly underrated and a bit overlooked. And, in the latest season premiere of Doctor Who, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) has returned to this specific role — that of an underground resistance fighter. And if this seems very Star Wars: Andor of the Doctor (thanks to the presence of Varada Sethu), there’s actually a very classic precedent for this kind of thing.
Here’s why the 15th Doctor’s new role in the Season 2 opener, “The Robot Revolution,” echoes a similar role that the 1st Doctor (William Hartnell) held back in 1964.
Spoilers for Doctor Who’s “The Robot Revolution” ahead!
When Belinda (Varada Sethu) finds herself on a planet named after herself, she also discovers a very oppressive robot regime. Turns out there are some timey-wimey reasons for the rise of this society, but luckily, one man is there to help stop the comically over-the-top robots: the Doctor. And, in true Doctor Who fashion, different amounts of time have passed for the Doctor and Belinda; from her point of view, she just left Earth. From his, he’s been embedded with the robot resistance for months.
While the Doctor becoming part of a resistance movement might seem like a relatively new job for him, this more humble role actually mirrors one of the greatest and most famous serials from 1964: “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” In this storyline, the TARDIS lands on Earth in the 22nd century to find the planet has been invaded by the Daleks. Quickly, the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), Ian Chesterton (William Russell), and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), find themselves involved with Earth’s underground resistance movement.
This puts the Doctor central to helping this insurgency plan various attacks against the Daleks, a plot point that proved so popular that the entire story was remade as the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., which starred an alternate, non-canon, human version of the Doctor (known as “Dr. Who”) played by Peter Cushing.
While the canonicity of Cushing’s “Dr. Who” is generally considered metafiction within the regular Doctor Who universe, all versions of the Doctor’s timeline included their work as an underground resistance fighter against the Daleks in the 22nd century. So, seeing the 15th Doctor return to a similar role is not only a tribute to the classic series but also something that reinforces the idea that this is the same person, all these years later.
But there’s another interesting wrinkle here. The 1st Doctor’s time fighting the Daleks as part of an insurgency also led to his granddaughter, Susan, departing the TARDIS forever. In the context of the last installment of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” the 1st Doctor gave his famous and best-known speech to Susan, which began with the words, “One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back...”
Here’s the thing, though: the Doctor never did. As far as we know, the Doctor never saw Susan again, a fact that the 15th Doctor referenced more than once in 2024’s Season 1. In fact, last year’s last two episodes contained a massive fake-out in which the Doctor believed Susan had regenerated and was living on Earth as Susan Triad (Susan Twist). Last season also established that Susan’s exact parentage is still something of a paradoxical mystery, a fixed point in the Doctor’s future that will also impact his past.
Does the Doctor’s mysterious connection with Belinda have anything to do with this ongoing mystery? Probably not. But it is interesting that after a season in which there was a lot of talk about Susan, the following season would introduce a storyline that had some passing similarity to Susan’s last episode. Doctor Who is certainly known for having Easter eggs present just for the sake of fun, but sometimes, those Easter eggs do double-duty in setting up a bigger revelation. Time will tell what this latest tribute means in the long run.
