being-of-rain:

being-of-rain:

The Doctor was named as “Doctor Who” all the time in comics from the 1960s (that feature his 1st and 2nd incarnations). So I have a headcanon that when he was young and on the run from the Time Lords, travelling throughout the universe for the very first time, the Doctor sometimes called himself “Doctor Who” because he thought it sounded mysterious and cool. It made him feel like he was some action hero or dashing explorer.

Eventually he changed his mind and thought ‘actually, Doctor Who sounds a little silly. I think I’ll just stick with The Doctor’. Every so often he makes a joke about being “Doctor Who”, but mostly he’s a little embarrassed that he went around calling himself that unironically. That’s why, most of the time, he gets really shifty when someone asks him "Doctor Who?“; he’s mortified that someone’s going to find out.

So I posted this more than a year and a half before it was officially made canon in ‘World Enough and Time’. What I didn’t predict (but should have) is that Twelve is the nerd who no longer cares and will call himself “Dr Who” because he can admit he still likes it.