Who Was The Valeyard? Doctor Who’s Biggest Unsolved Mystery Explained

The Valeyard remains a criminally unexplored character in Doctor Who canon, but who was he, and what might the future hold? In 1986, viewing figures and critical opinion on Doctor Who were on the decline, while the BBC were infamously losing faith in their long-running science fiction flagship. In response, Colin Baker’s sophomore season took the innovative step of using the overarching story of The Doctor’s trial on Gallifrey as a framing device. Split over four adventures, “The Trial of a Time Lord” saw the Sixth Doctor defending himself in court against a prosecutor known as The Valeyard, who had tampered with the records of the Matrix to ensure The Doctor was found guilty and executed.

Ultimately, The Valeyard is revealed to be an amalgamation of The Doctor’s inner darkness that arose sometime after the twelfth regeneration. By killing his good-guy counterpart, The Valeyard wished to free himself from any lingering morality and win his opponent’s remaining regenerations at the same time by serving the High Council. Although The Doctor put a stop to this nefarious plan, the season’s closing shot revealed that The Valeyard had not only survived, but was now posing as the keeper of the Matrix. The villain hasn’t been seen on TV since, with only a handful of dialogue references to go on. Thankfully, The Valeyard’s story has been extended thanks to a series of novels and audio adventures, but TV remains the heart of Doctor Who canon and hasn’t touched The Valeyard since his initial defeat at the hands of Colin Baker.

With many questions still unanswered, The Valeyard is arguably the biggest unresolved story in all of Doctor Who. Despite being revealed as an evil version of The Doctor in “The Ultimate Foe,” many question marks still hang over The Valeyard’s creation and mythology. Is the villain an offshoot of The Doctor’s dark thoughts, or a full-blown evil regeneration? Moreover, when in the timeline does The Valeyard appear? After the Timeless Child retcon, it seems The Doctor’s twelfth regeneration happened a lot earlier than the audience previously thought, so The Valeyard could appear at literally any moment. According to script drafts from the “Trial of a Time Lord” era, The Valeyard was certainly intended as a future regeneration at the time.

In addition to his origin story, The Valeyard’s movements after The Doctor’s trial also remain unexplored. As previously mentioned, wider media has picked up some of this slack, but it’s still unusual that “The Ultimate Foe” ends with the dramatic tease of The Valeyard’s survival, only for the character to remain absent from the Doctor Who TV series for the next 34 years. In the Big Finish audio stories, The Valeyard is captured by the Time Lords and put on trial himself, but his schemes still predominantly center around prolonging life and breaking the regeneration limit. The Valeyard fought ruthlessly for Gallifrey during the Time War, but was left trapped on a planet after being tricked into believing he was the normal, kind-hearted Doctor.

The absence of The Valeyard in the main Doctor Who narrative is curious – there seems such value in a dark iteration of The Doctor who is just waiting to pop out and wreak havoc. Alas, ever since the Steven Moffat era, the villain has been somewhat of an elephant in the room. Fans expected The Valeyard when Peter Capaldi became the Twelfth Doctor, but the BBC clearly have no desire to venture down that particular rabbit role. With the Timeless Child now in play, however, 2021 could be the perfect time to introduce The Valeyard into Doctor Who‘s modern era. The villain’s motivations revolve so heavily around stealing regenerations and cheating death because, just like The Doctor, he believed Rassilon’s regeneration limit was final. Now the truth has been revealed, The Valeyard, wherever he is in the universe, has a right to be very annoyed indeed that immortality was actually his birthright from the very beginning.

With that said, there may be a fundamental reason why The Valeyard has been ignored by New Who. Perhaps the idea of fully embracing an evil Doctor rubs against the increasingly messianic aura Doctor Who has built around its lead character. Alternatively, producers may view The Valeyard as too similar to The Master in terms of the “evil genius Time Lord does bad things” trope. In either case, The Valeyard left a strong impression on Doctor Who, and questions of his return will continue for as long as the villain is absent.

Doctor Who returns with “Revolution of the Daleks” this Christmas on BBC.

About The Author

Craig Elvy
(3631 Articles Published)

Craig first began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016, several years after graduating college, and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. Having previously written for various sports and music outlets, Craig’s interest soon turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally came into its own.
Craig has previously been published on sites such as Den of Geek, and after many coffee-drenched hours hunched over a laptop, part-time evening work eventually turned into a full-time career covering everything from the zombie apocalypse to the Starship Enterprise via the TARDIS.

Since joining the Screen Rant fold, Craig has been involved in breaking news stories and mildly controversial ranking lists, but now works predominantly as a features writer.
Jim Carrey is Craig’s top acting pick and favorite topics include superheroes, anime and the unrecognized genius of the High School Musical trilogy.

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