Seeing double: Doctor Who doppelgängers
The Doctor Who Team
This August we’ve dedicated ourselves to investigating those pesky shape-shifting Zygons. The Zygons can mimic the appearance of other living creatures, which can leave you flummoxed as you try to distinguish the original from the Zygon. On a number of occasions we’ve seen people come face-to-face with themselves, as we try to work out who’s human and who’s a metamorphic, sucker-covered alien from Zygor.
But of course these aren’t the only occasions we’ve seen double in the world of Doctor Who, so here’s a selection of our favourite DW doppelgängers: Zygons, Gangers, androids and more…
The two Osgoods
The two Osgoods in The Zygon Inversion
As far as we’re concerned the ultimate Zygon/human conundrum is the two Osgoods. We first saw two Osgoods in The Day of the Doctor when Zygon invaders impersonated UNIT personnel in order to gain access to the Black Archive and take over the world. To stop the Zygons, Kate Stewart was willing to destroy the Black Archive, taking London along with it, but the Doctor(s) managed to avert the crisis by brokering a peace between the two species. Naturally we thought that was it for the Zygon Osgood and of course we were heartbroken to see Osgood die at the hands of Missy in Death in Heaven.
But death isn’t always final – at least not in Doctor Who – so we were thrilled to see the return of Osgood in The Zygon Invasion. Which Osgood? We still don’t know! But it was great news all the same. This remaining Osgood was instrumental in helping the Doctor prevent a human/Zygon war devised by the rebel Zygon, Bonnie. And by the end of The Zygon Inversion, one Osgood was again two, as a reformed Bonnie became the new second Osgood. Hurrah!
The Daleks' duplicate Doctor
The First Doctor and his double fight to the death…
During the First Doctor adventure, The Chase, the Daleks created a robotic duplicate of the Doctor to infiltrate the Doctor’s friends and kill them. However, Vikki overhears this Dalek plan and is able to warn her friends. But when the Doctor and his animatronic double confront each other, there is some confusion over who the impostor actually is… The two Doctors fight while both claiming that the other is the fake. Thankfully Barbara has been paying attention and correctly identifies the Doctor and the robot Doctor is destroyed!
10 x 2
The Tenth Doctor, Rose and the Meta-Crisis Doctor in Journey's End
What’s better than the Tenth Doctor? TWO TENTH DOCTORS! The Meta-Crisis Doctor was created during a biological meta-crisis in which Donna Noble’s DNA combined with the regenerative energy from the Doctor’s severed hand - which he was handily keeping in a container in the TARDIS control room! But the Meta-Crisis Doctor wasn’t exactly the same as Ten, he was part human - just one heart, no power of regeneration and the ability to age and die like you or me. He was also dangerous, born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge, so he needed someone to look after him, to keep him on the straight and narrow. And who better than Rose? So the Meta-Crisis Doctor stayed with her in the parallel universe… And they wasted no time in starting their new lives with a kiss on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, which seemed to us a little insensitive as the real Tenth Doctor was still STANDING RIGHT THERE!
Mickey and Ricky
Mickey and Ricky in Rise of the Cybermen
When the TARDIS landed in an alternate universe in Rise of the Cybermen, Rose and Mickey found a number of things were different from their own world – not least of which was Ricky, Mickey’s parallel world counterpart. Mickey and Ricky looked exactly alike, they had the same unreliable father and the same loving gran (although in Mickey’s reality his gran had died 5 years earlier), but they weren’t the same in every way. Ricky wasn’t as friendly as Mickey, and he’d assumed leadership of The Preachers, a group who recognised the danger of Cybus Industries. In The Age of Steel, Ricky was killed by a Cyberman, as Mickey looked on horrified. Once the Cybermen were defeated Mickey decided to stay on parallel Earth, to look after his beloved gran and take Ricky’s place leading the Preachers.
Meglos
Meglos posing as the Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor got himself ‘a good old-fashioned doppelgänger’ when the Zolfa-Thuran, Meglos took on his appearance in an attempt to steal the Dodecahedron, a mysterious energy providing artefact from the planet Tigella. Meglos trapped the Doctor and Romana in a time loop, while he posed as the Time Lord to gain the trust of the Tigellans and take the Dodecahedron. Once the real Doctor arrived, much confusion ensued and the Doctor was to be sacrificed as a consequence of his supposed betrayal. Throughout the adventure Meglos struggled to keep the Doctor’s appearance, sometimes accidentally showing aspects of his true, cactus-like form. Of course eventually the Doctor escaped death and outwitted Meglos, using the Dodecahedron to destroy Zolfa-Thura and Meglos along with it.
The Eleventh Doctor and his Ganger
The Eleventh Doctor and his Ganger in The Rebel Flesh
The Eleventh Doctor acquired a double when he, Amy and Rory landed on an Alpha Grade industrial facility in the 22nd century. The workers in the acid mining factory used Flesh to create Gangers of themselves to carry out dangerous work on their behalf. While investigating the Flesh the Doctor scanned it and accidentally created a Ganger of his own. Whereas the factory workers were suspicious of their Gangers, the Doctor seemed thrilled to spend some time in his own company declaring “I'm starting to get a sense of just how impressive it is to hang out with me.”
The Doctor and his Ganger worked together to try and keep a peace between the humans and their Flesh counterparts, together they hoped to get all the facility’s inhabitants – both humans and Gangers - to safety. The Doctor and his Ganger had secretly switched shoes to work out if they were truly the same and prove to Amy and the mining crew that the Gangers were legitimate lifeforms. When one of the miners Gangers became deranged, the Ganger Doctor sacrificed himself to give the real Doctor time to escape in the TARDIS with Amy, Rory and the surviving mining crew.
Romana, Strella and the androids of Tara
Romana sees the resemblance between Princess Strella and herself
In The Androids of Tara we encountered three Romana replicates as well as the original Time Lady herself! While searching for the fourth segment of the Key to Time, Romana was attacked by a native beast and rescued by Count Grendel who mistook her for an android. Why? Because Romana looked exactly like the Taran princess, Strella, and the Count had programmed a robotic duplicate of Strella to kill Prince Reynart, in an attempt steal the throne. However, the Doctor was present when the android Princess approached Reynart and he prevented the assassination. This infuriated Count Grendel, who ordered an android of Romana be made to kill the Doctor. That’s a whole lot of look-a-likes! Ultimateley the Doctor defeated the evil Grendel, who was disgraced and Prince Reynart was free to be with the real Princess Strella.
