JO MARTIN CONFIRMS THAT THE FUGITIVE DOCTOR IS PRE-HARTNELL
Ever since the Fugitive Doctor was introduced in Series 12, her placement in the Doctor’s timeline has been a source of debate within the fandom because the reveal of a hidden incarnation of the Doctor happens in the same series it’s revealed that the Doctor has hidden incarnations before Hartnell, yet some fans argue that the Fugitive Doctor can’t be before him because her TARDIS was disguised as a Police Box, which happened with Hartnell’s Doctor when he and Susan came to Earth and landed in 60s London. And so some theorised and believe that the Fugitive Doctor is a hidden incarnation between the Second and Third Doctor because we never saw the regeneration, and like the Second Doctor, the Fugitive Doctor was working for the Time Lords. But after years of debate, the answer has been given by the Fugitive Doctor herself, Jo Martin…
Who Corner to Corner Podcast
“And I think it was like, literally 24 hours later, I got the call saying, oh, the job's yours. So I was like, oh, great, great. And they said, but do you know who you're playing? And I'm like, yeah, the tour guide. And then it was, no, you're going to be the incarnation of the doctor. You're going to be the first doctor in the canon.”
Doctor Who Magazine (Issue 613)
“Quite a few want to know - where in the canon do I come? They'll come and ask me on train journeys. I'm like, 'Listen, you'll have to ask Mr Chibnall, because I didn't write this. All I know is that, when I took the job and they were trying to explain my Doctor to me, I was told how it was going to work - that I was the first Doctor.”
Whooverville Panel (2025)
“But I was told that she was, where they've put her, she's the first doctor.”
I don’t think it’s as literal as, she’s the First Doctor like we think of, it’s just an uncomplicated way of saying that the Fugitive Doctor is before Hartnell’s Doctor, and that she’s the first Doctor we’ve met before Hartnell, unlike fleeting glimpses such as the Mind-Bend Doctors in The Brain of Morbius and the Children in The Timeless Children.
So the Fugitive Doctor is Pre-Hartnell, but how can her TARDIS have been disguised as a Police Box then?
The TARDIS is a sentient Time Machine who can archive console rooms from the Doctor’s future as she said herself in The Doctor’s Wife, and so if the TARDIS that Hartnell’s Doctor stole from the repair shop was actually their former Division-TARDIS, then when she was being used by the Pre-Hartnell Doctors, the TARDIS could have seen that in the future she becomes stuck as a Police Box. I think that when the Fugitive Doctor and Lee went on the run from Division and needed to hide, the TARDIS deliberately brought them to Earth so that the 13th Doctor could meet her past forgotten self and so that she would recognise her own TARDIS, it took on the form of a Police Box when it landed at a Welsh Lighthouse in December, 1999. After Fugitive of the Judoon, the TARDIS drops the Police Box, and the Fugitive Doctor keeps on running, pushing the TARDIS right to its limits to evade Division, which wears the machine out and causes the chameleon circuit to degrade. When the Fugitive Doctor is recaptured by Division, the TARDIS escapes and goes to the repair shop to wait for the First Doctor.












