Doctor Who Headcanon No More, Season 10: The War Doctor

Last season we saw the end of Torchwood's story arc, the satisfying and optimistic end of Amy & Rory's time with The Doctor. This season should be a clean slate of adventuring with no continuity or storyarcs hanging over The Doctor's head except for his own. Ahhhh, glorious new beginnings.

The new face of The Doctor seems to be...slightly different than the previous ones.

Season 10: The War Doctor
(Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, John Hurt, more)

Episode 1: Asylum Of The Daleks
​(11, Amy, Rory, Clara, Daleks)
45 minutes

It turns out that we're not done with Rory & Amy yet, and their lives have turned Bleak. And full of Daleks. The Doctor is reunited with his former companions by a Congress of Daleks who need The Doctor to go to the surface of Skaro, their home planet, and save them from their own maddest Daleks. It turns out, due to the whole cracks in time thing from Season Eight, they don't appear to have any idea who he is. And that's not the biggest surprise in this episode.


Episode 2: Angels Take Manhattan
(11, Amy, Rory, River, Weeping Angels)
45 minutes

Rory, Amy, and their precocious time-traveling daughter, River Song, get sucked into mid-twentieth century Earth where The Weeping Angels are seriously mucking up the timeline. I'm sure their involvement will mean everything ends up a-ok, and no one will be sad.


Episode 3: The Snowmen
(11, Clara, Vastra, Flint, Strax, The Great Intelligence)
60 minutes

The Doctor has gone all broody sadsack again, and he's living in the nineteenth century with The Paternoster gang, occasionally helping them solve mysteries. But a giant mystery in the form of Soufle girl from "Asylum of The Daleks" lands in his path, and he must discover how this Impossible Girl has come back into his life.


Episode 4: The Bells Of Saint John
(11, Clara, Great Intelligence)
45 minutes

Clara is alive. Again. And in modern times. Someone gave her The Doctor's number, and now he is determined not to let her die again again. The main plot of the episode involving wifi is on the extra cheesy side, but this is a good introduction to Clara in her finalish form. And it fits into a smooth, if not very interesting, Great Intelligence arc.


Episode 5: Name Of The Doctor
(11, War Doctor, Clara, River, Vastra, Flint, Strax, Great Intelligence, Whisper Men)
45 minutes

The Doctor, Clara, The Paternoster Gang, and River Song all end up on Trenzalore, which is where The Doctor is said to be buried.  The Great Intelligence, from the last two episodes, need the Doctor's name so they can go into the timestream and wreak havoc on The Doctor's timeline. We also find out why Clara is The Impossible Girl, which was a huge, exhausting, and complex season long storyarc if you were watching all the episodes she appeared in, but distilled down to the three episodes in this continuity is a satisfying, fun mystery.


Episode 6: The Day Of The Doctor
(10, 11, War Doctor, 4, Clara, Bad Wolf, Osgood, Kate Stewart, Elizabeth, Zygons, Daleks, Timelords)
77 minutes

Waaaaaay back in Season Six, there started to be allusions to The Time War, a big terrible battle between Time Lords and Daleks that seeded chaos throuugh the entire universe. Since then, we've seen The Daleks a bunch of times, but only had to deal with Those Time People (apart from The Master) once. Welllll, welcome to The Time War. It's going to take three of The Doctors to figure out how to save Gallifrey and undo the damage they did in The Time War originally. Or...hold up...is THIS the damage they did in the Time War that they've been grumbling about? Unlike classic multi-Doctor episodes, we don't get every Doctor showing up with one of their companions to fill us with nostalgia, but there are some surprise cameos, including The Zygons, who we've not seen since Season Two.


Episode 7: Time Heist
(12, Clara, Danny)
45 minutes

WOAH THERE! This time The Doctor really did regenerate offscreen? For our purposes, yes. There was actually an episode after Day Of The Doctor where we see The Doctor regenerate into this new face, but it is AWFUL, and we don't have time for that crap. We're also mainly skipping over the whole The-Doctor-has-a-new-face-and-doesn't-know-how-to-be-who-he-used-to-be-how-will-we-ever-get-used-to-him trope. We're launching right into an adventure where The Doctor and Clara have to rob a bank or else be slaughtered by the bankers. Weird twists abound!


Episode 8: The Caretaker
(12, Clara, Danny, Missy, Seb)
45 minutes

The Doctor goes Deep Undercover. In the school where Clara and Danny work. Which just so happens to be the school that Barbara and Ian worked out way way way way way back in Season One.  Nothing unusual could ever happen there. Also, The Doctor and Danny get along about as well as The Doctor and Mickey, or The Doctor and Rory.


Episode 9: Dark Water/Death In Heaven
(12, Clara, Kate Stewart, Osgood, Danny, Missy, Seb, Cybermen) 
90 minutes

Clara's got a boyfriend! Clara's got a boyfriend! Annnnnnd, he's dead. Sad Clara and Cantankerous The Doctor go to the afterlife to find out what happened to him, and end up running into Cybermen and an old foe with a new face. You're not the only one who can regenerate, Doctor face.


Episode 10: The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar
(12, Clara, Kate Stewart, Missy, Davros, Daleks)
​90 minutes

Clara ends up teaming up with The Doctor's foe from the last episode in order to survive Davros and The Daleks. This episode actually reaches all the way back to an off-hand remark from "Genesis Of The Daleks" to explain why The Doctor didn't just kill All The Daleks and put an end to this millennia ago (although I guess he did, temporarily, in The Time War, but we've dealt with that already, get over it).


Holiday Special: Under The Lake/Before The Flood
(12, Clara, Tivolans)
90 minutes

The Doctor, Clara, and...ghosts...under water? It's another adventure where The Doctor tries to save a bunch of people from something he doesn't understand. And Clara is trying to get this The Doctor to be less cantankerous. He is, seriously, Colin Baker/William Hartnell rude, not at all the modern Doctor we had gotten used to. Maybe solving this mystery will make him more agreeable. Probably not.