One Thing Doctor Who Never Explained (& One Character It Should Bring Back)

Doctor Who loves to see its season arcs through, but some storylines are just left hanging for years.

Doctor Who’s season 3, which premiered in 2007, memorably included a two-episode story titled Human Nature and The Family of Blood where the Doctor turned himself human to hide from the aliens who wanted to use his Time Lord life force to escape death. While the Doctor is a clueless John Smith and Martha is too busy trying to save him, the viewers can’t help but empathize with a passerby character, Tim Latimer.

If your memory fails you, Tim is the kid who has a telepathic ability that allows him to access the Doctor’s Time Lord essence that is contained in the watch. He even steals the watch at one point, though he later returns it. The watch also shows Tim a vision that would save his life during World War I.

Tim’s whole life story is touching, especially as the audience gets a glimpse of his future as an old man who is a survivor and veteran of WWI (and the Doctor and Martha visit him once more). That is all well and good, but the show still owes the fans a few explanations, like how on earth does Tim, a human boy, have telepathic abilities?

We see that his future-foretelling game is pretty strong even before the Doctor’s watch comes into play. Tim is able to “guess” details about his roommate’s personal life, seemingly without difficulty, and at one point he even confirms that he can sometimes know things that he isn’t supposed to. What’s up with that?

The only information that Doctor Who has about Tim’s backstory is not even in the show. In a corresponding Doctor Who Confidential episode, it is revealed that Tim is a low-level telepath due to “an extra synaptic engram,” which is, frankly, not good enough.

We need a better explanation, and that’s why Doctor Who should bring Tim back for a sequel story of sorts. Maybe even for a nostalgia-filled ride that the 60th-anniversary episodes are going to be? Besides, Tim immediately became one of the most beloved characters among the fans, and many would love to see him pop up in the series again.