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| “ | The Shreek is back in its hive. No need to thank me. You have to be invited into my TARDIS, Conrad. You have to be special. But you? You're special... for all the wrong reasons. You see, I am fighting a battle on behalf of everyday people, who just want to get through their day, and feel safe, and warm, and fed. And then along comes this... noise. All day long, this relentless noise. Cowards like you, weaponising lies, taking people's insecurity and fear and making it currency. You are exhausting. You stamp on the truth, choke our bandwidth and shred our patience. Because the only strategy you have is to wear us down. But the thing is, Conrad, I have energy to burn and all the time in the universe. | „ |
| ~ The Fifteenth Doctor's monologue to Conrad Clark, Lucky Day. |
| “ | I don't want to do this alone. I'm never alone with you. Joy to the WORLD! And that is exactly the word. This has been... an absolute joy. | „ |
| ~ The Fifteenth Doctor's regeneration, and his farewell to Joy Almondo, and by proxy, the audience. |
The Fifteenth Doctor is a supporting character in the 2023 60th Anniversary Special, The Giggle and the main protagonist of Series 14 and Series 15 of the revived series of Doctor Who. His Tenure lasted from 2023 to 2025
He is portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa, the first non-white actor to portray the role as a mainstream incarnation of The Doctor as The Fugitive Doctor was not a numbered incarnation.
History
The Giggle
This incarnation of the Doctor emerged in unique circumstances after his predecessor was shot by the Toymaker with UNIT's Galvanic beam. While he began to regenerate, the Fourteenth Doctor realised that things were different and asked Donna and Mel to pull his arms, and the Fifteenth Doctor split from him in a "bi-generation". The two Doctors excitedly hugged each other before facing the Toymaker. They challenged him to a game of catch and together managed to beat him, but as he was banished, the Toymaker vowed that his legions would follow him. Afterwards, the Fifteenth Doctor consoled his predecessor, urging him to go into retirement.
Using residual power left by the Toymaker, the Fifteenth is able to hit the TARDIS with a mallet, thereby creating an exact duplicate, with the only difference being his has a jukebox. After bidding farewell, the Doctor set off with a clean slate for new adventures.
Series 14/Season One
The Doctor would first travel with Ruby Sunday, an orphan who had been abandoned by her mother. The Doctor would then travel with her stopping goblins from disrupting the timeline via the baby version of her, Fought the daughter Maestro in the 1960s, nearly died to a landmine in Boom, and was erased from the timeline when he stepped out of a circle, but eventually Ruby brought him back.
In Rogue, the Doctor and Ruby visited a ball in Pemberton manor in 1813, and the Doctor encountered the bounty hunter Rogue, who was investigating an infestation of Chuldur and believed the Doctor was one of them. After proving himself, the Doctor, Rogue and Ruby teamed up to find what the Chulder were up to, and the Doctor and Rogue began to build a romantic connection. Realising the Chuldur were fans of Georgian drama, the Doctor and Rogue elected to draw them out with a "scandalous" dance. When they were ready to imprison the Chuldur in another dimension, the Doctor was horrified when Ruby had been seemingly killed and replaced. During the final confrontation, however, Ruby turned out to be the real thing, and the Doctor was torn between his friend and and Rogue. Rogue took the decision out of his hands by taking Ruby's place, and banishing himself with the Chuldur. The saddened Doctor vowed to find him, wearing Rogue's ring as a memento.
After many adventures with Ruby, they return but not alone. All this time, the God of death, Sutekh was riding on the TARDIS with them this entire time since Pyramids of Mars with the fourth doctor. He reveals that he had set up a trap for the Doctor via Susan Triad. Upon escaping along with Melanie Bush, they summon a Remembered TARDIS from the time window to escape. However after escaping, the Doctor realized that every time he landed, he had enabled Sutekh to destroy the earth again and again at those points. Now only with a whistle and a tv screen to distract him. Sutekh's final goal was to know who Ruby's mom is but instead Ruby drops the Tv, and applies a rope to him as the doctor gets back his TARDIS From the grasps of Sutekh, leading him into the time vortex where he brings Life through death. Sutekh then was cast out of the vortex as the Doctor sends Ruby back home to discover who her mum is. After this, Ruby and the Doctor departed away, leaving the Doctor alone.
Joy to the World
Later on during Christmas, the Doctor lands at the Time Hotel to get some milk tracking a Silurian with a briefcase holding a star seed. He goes undercover to deliver a Ham and Cheese Toastie and a Latte to the hotel at each points in time as in the time hotel, Christmas was everywhere at the same time. During this time, he discovers Joy Almondo in her hotel room, who was confused at the alien encounter with a brief case in the aliens hand. The Siluran disintegrates with the brief case opened up revealing a countdown that if the user holding the briefcase doesn't close it in the next 20 seconds, they will die. Surprisingly, the Doctor from the future shows up to give him the code with Joy being lead to the future Doctor. The current Doctor then was forced to stay at the Sandringham Hotel with hotel proprietor, Anita Benn. Working as a handyman over the year, the Doctor grew close to Anita, and bade a sad farewell at the end of the year. He discovers that Villengard made the star seed and that it needed to be in the past to bloom. They travel to 65 Million years in the past which wasn't enough to bloom. The Doctor advises Joy to throw the star into space but Joy refuses as the plan wouldn't succeed and put the star seed in her body. She tells the Doctor she's not dying but changing into something beautiful as she disintegrates into the sky into a bright light and becomes the Star of Bethlehem.
Series 15/Season 2
The Doctor would then travel with Belinda Chandra with her being taken onto a planet named after her. After that, the Doctor attempted to return her to her home, but the TARDIS kept "bouncing off" the date she was taken, leaving them stuck together. Thus the Doctor elected to use a Vortex Indicator (which he nicknamed the Vindicator) to every subsequent destination he and Belinda ended up, to eventually lead them to 24th May 2025. Little did either of them know, Mrs. Flood, the neighbour of both Ruby and Belinda would be following them. In their subsequent adventures, the Doctor and Belinda encountered and living cartoon, Mr Ring a Ding, in 1952 Miami, who turned out to be a member of the Pantheon, the God of Light named Lux Imperator, before ending up on planet 6-7-6-7, which much to the Doctor's horror turned out to be Midnight, a planet he had visited once before, where he faced the same enigmatic being.
In Lucky Day, the Doctor and Belinda briefly landed in New Years 2007, encountering a boy called Conrad Clark. In Conrad's future, and the Doctor's personal past, he grew up to be conspiracy theorist who attempted to destroy UNIT and personally hurt Ruby. The Doctor visited him in prison, where he first discovered that he would meet Belinda. In The Story and the Engine, taking a break to visit his old friend Omo in Lagos, Nigeria, 2019 in his barbershop, the Doctor found that he and several other men, Rashid, Tunde, and Obioma, had been captured by a being known as the Barber, who was using their stories to power his Story Engine, who wished to take revenge on the Story Gods. The Doctor realised his assistant, Abby, was in fact Abena, Anansi's daughter, whom he had been unable to save while a fugitive. With her and Belinda's help, he managed to destroy the Story Engine, and convinced the Barber to abandon his delusions of revenge.
At the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest, which he and Belinda elected to attend for fun, the Doctor and the audience were flung into space, with the Doctor nearly dying in it's vacuum, before seeing a vision of his granddaughter Susan. Improvising with a confetti cannon to direct him to an airlock, the Doctor, with the help of Gary and Mike Gabbastone, found the station had been taken over by the terrorist Kid, who was planning to kill the audience watching across the galaxy. Enraged at his actions, the Doctor managed to thwart Kid, and began electrically torturing him, before Belinda managed to snap him out of it. The Doctor then had Gary and Mike rescue the audience with hard light and Rylan's cryo-chamber, and watched Cora Saint Bavier sing a tradition Hellion song to tell the universe of her and Kid's people's plight. The Doctor and Belinda were horrified to discover that Earth was destroyed on 24th of May 2025. With the Vindicator fully primed, the Doctor vowed to save Earth from whatever destroyed it, but upon trying to land on 24th May, they were caught up in the destruction. Unbeknownst to them, Mrs Flood, having been caught up in the Song Contest crisis, would bi-generate, with her other incarnation reclaiming the name the Rani.
The Reality War
Within Wish World, the Doctor had no idea who he was and went by the name John Smith and was married with Belinda with a child named Poppy. All of this was constructed by the Rani, Conrad, and the baby Desiderium who was revealed to be The God of Wishes. Upon this ordinary day of giant animals walking around, he discovered that something may be off and had doubts about his reality. At midnight, "John Smith" saw a message from Rogue, who warned him that "tables don't do that", which led to him realising that the tables briefly flicker out of existence whenever anyone feels doubt. This led to "Smith" and Belinda being arrested for doubt, with them being brought to the Bone Palace. There, the main Rani managed to provoke him into regaining his identity. The Rani had in fact intended the Wish World to be destroyed, and thus destabilise reality, allowing the long lost Omega to be released. With the Doctor's part in the plan done, unwittingly speeding up the Wish World's destruction, he was left to plummet on the balcony of the Bone Palace, with him insisting that Poppy was in fact a real child.
The Doctor was rescued by Anita last minute via the Time Hotel's door, and reveals the day was looped everytime the world was destroyed. After returning to the Wish World, the Doctor took on a new, more Doctorish look and used reality from the Time Hotel to restore his friends at UNIT to normal. Confronting the Rani at UNIT Tower, she revealed she wished to bring back Omega to create a "purer" race of Time Lords. The Doctor vowed to defeat her while keeping Poppy in existence, with telling Susan Triad to make a cobbled together Zero Room for Belinda and Poppy. When the Bone Beasts were turned towards UNIT, the Doctor stole the Rani's Hoverscooter and used to fly to the Bone Palace, narrowly avoiding the Beasts. There, he was tempted into seeing Omega, whom had been transformed into a monstrous beast based on his own legend. With one Rani being devoured by him, Mrs Flood thus fled, leaving the Doctor to face Omega alone. The Doctor used the fully charged Vindictator to blast Omega back into the Underverse. With the Wish World undone, the Doctor and the others were delighted to find Poppy still alive, and he and Belinda began planning on travelling together as a trio.
However, unnoticed by anyone except Ruby, Poppy faded from existence, leading to the Doctor and Belinda to forget about her. While initially sceptical, the Doctor was convinced by Ruby that Poppy was real, and was determined to to bring her back. Elected to shift the time vortex a degree to restore her, at the cost of this incarnation, and possibly the rest of them, the TARDIS brought the Thirteenth Doctor to convince him otherwise. Quickly realising he would not back down, the Thirteenth Doctor aided him with the calculations, and the two Doctors comforted each other before she returned to her own time. Now alone, The Doctor uses his regeneration energy to zap the TARDIS and the Time Vortex and shift reality. Finding himself at Belinda's home, he saw that Poppy now existed as her fully human daughter, and he gave a bittersweetly fond farewell to the both of them. Facing his regeneration, the Doctor elected to do so in the light of the Star of Bethlehem, telling Joy that his own life had been "an absolute joy". Thus, the Fifteenth Doctor regenerated while looking at the universe for one last time.
Personality
Benefiting from his previous incarnation's rehabilitation on Earth, the Fifteenth Doctor held a much more positive and optimistic outlook on life, free from the emotional trauma held by the Doctors before him. He retained his usual sense of adventure and optimism, as well as a passionate disdain for violence and war. He had an excitability similar to his Eleventh self, and often the world weariness of his Twelfth. While the Fourteenth was heteroflexible, Fifteenth seemed to lean further along the homosexual line, as he danced at a gay bar and can become distracted by young men he found attractive, even in high stress and hazardous situations; he usually remained focused in dangerous situations, but there was a precedent with the Eleventh who often fell into flirting with River Song.
As typical for the Doctor, the Fifteenth aimed to save people from danger, becoming saddened if a life was lost; he could compartmentalise his grief, thus could remain objective and calm in a dangerous scenario, being able to focus on protecting what lives did remain. He was also pragmatic about grief of others, as he wold withhold the truth of certain losses, due to understanding that the surviving loved one would likely compromise their own safety in an active danger. If a death is exposed, he would try to comfort the bereaved, although could also be curt if time was a factor.
Due to every previous self being Anglo-Saxon in skin tone - as well as bigotry based on superficial appearances being a foreign concept to Time Lords - he can forget that he now has an Afrocentric complexion, as such can become shocked and disappointed at racism he faces from certain people now; even when facing intolerant people, he will still try to save them from death if he is able. He is able to ignore and even tolerate the racism of people, and becomes genuinely heartbroken if they refuse to let him save them due to clinging to their prejudices.
While he initially claimed to be feeling free from his lifetimes of trauma because of the Fourteenth's eventual rehabilitation, he can still fall into brief bouts of depression from experiencing so much loss and grief. Much like the Ninth and Tenth, he can suffer sorrow due to the extinction of all Time Lords (to his knowledge), and as such some of his more eccentric gregariousness is largely to cover the overwhelming feelings of loss and isolation that come from being the last of his kind.
However, behind all this kind, optimistic personality hides the true fury as he yelled in frustration after Sutekh killed all life in the universe. Then to undo the damage, the Doctor used the god's own power to reverse it, but rather than let Sutekh live afterwards, he dropped him into the time vortex unprotected by the TARDIS, which disintegrated the god; while the Doctor doesn't shy away from killing enemies, it is largely in the heat of battle, yet here he allowed an already beaten foe to die. It was perhaps a pragmatic decision, since Sutekh would only repeat his plan if left free, but the execution was still an act that distressed the Doctor, as it made him feel like he had become a monster like the god of death.
Age
Still continuing their predecessors ages, he is over 2000 or a Billion years old. He spent a Year in the Sandringham Hotel with Anita In Joy To The World and traveled 6 months before Belinda arrived to MissBelindaChandra One and has been the historian since.
Appearance
The Fifteenth looks like a relatively handsome Afrocentric young man. His hair is quite short, often a buzzcut, and he has a neat mustache; he seemed to sometimes wear wigs that gave the impression of longer hair, if it was to suit a specific era, such as the pompadour afro for the 1960's. After emerging from the Bi-generation, his clothes split from his predecessor with him wearing the underpants, socks, shoes, dress shirt and tie. He changes outfits often, but his primary attire includes bright-blue trousers with a high waistband, a really tight T-shirt with concentric stripe patterns (A Cardigan), and a 1970's retro chic orange leather jacket; he also wears a silver necklace, and around half of his fingers have featureless silver metal rings. During The Robot Revolution and his regeneration in The Reality War, he switches this out with a pinstriped vest, pant, and kilt with a white t-shirt and black boots.
Trivia
- The reason he could bi-generate the TARDIS as his prize for beating the Toymaker was because the First Doctor never claimed a prize. It wasn't because he won with the Fourteenth; the prize for that match was his predecessor's to claim. It is possible that both Doctor's were given a prize, as the Fifteenth was the one to throw the ball which the Toymaker failed to catch.
- He is unique in that he is a real version of the Doctor who divided from his previous iteration, rather than completely transform from them.
- In The Devil's Chord, the Doctor confessed that the bi-generation was akin to ripping his soul in half, and he believes that it would be impossible to accomplish again.
- While the Doctor typically has one - one occasion two - main outfits, the Fifteenth has changed his costume in almost every episode of series 14.
- He does have a fondness for leather jackets.
- However, in Empire of Death ending he wore the outfit he wore in The Church on Ruby Road. Although, at one point, wore light brown robes over the outfit.
- And he also wore the checkered attire from the said episode in the ending of Dot and Bubble.
- This Doctor planned last a very long time before regeneration again; considering his Fourteenth incarnation lasted only a few days, although he ends up dying young like most of his incarnations.
- He is the first Doctor to have a sonic screwdriver that in no way even held a resemblance to a normal screwdriver.
- Doctors 1-7 and the War Doctor were asexual; 8-12 appeared to be heterosexual; while a woman, 13 was still attracted to women; 14 was implied bisexual; whereas 15 seems solely homosexual.
- He was the only numbered Doctor to never face or interact with the Daleks.
 Heroes
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