This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who: Free Comic Book Day 2022.
Doctor Who has confirmed Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor was the real First Doctor. For years, viewers believed William Hartnell's First Doctor to be the very first incarnation of the wandering Time Lord known as the Doctor. Evidence to the contrary - such as glimpses of apparent past Doctors in a psychic battle in 1976's "The Brain of Morbius" - was generally disregarded. Chris Chibnall's tenure as Doctor Who showrunner has changed that, however.
Chibnall has revealed the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all. Rather, she is the Timeless Child - a being who potentially predates the universe itself, who was discovered by a Gallifreyan explorer and who became the base genetic code for every Gallifreyan who lived within the Citadel. There is no limit to the Doctor's ability to regenerate; indeed, she has lived for over a billion years so far. The Chibnall era hasn't simply rewritten the show's lore, though; it has also introduced a forgotten Doctor, played by Jo Martin. Even more surprisingly though, it seems this so-called "Fugitive Doctor" is in fact the first Doctor to be recognizable.
The story of the Fugitive Doctor is being told in a miniseries written by Jody Houser, with art by Roberta Ingranata and Warina Sahadewa - and, significantly, the arc is called "Doctor Who Origins." According to teasers, this is the true story of the Fugitive Doctor; why she wound up on the run from the Gallifreyan black ops group called the Division, why she hid on Earth, and how she became the Doctor viewers know and love.
The significance of this story has already been confirmed by the Doctor Who Free Comic Book Day special, by the same creative team, which serves as a prelude to the miniseries. It reveals the first time the Doctor visited Earth, hinting at why the planet would come to have such significance to the time traveler, and it even sees the TARDIS turn into a police box for the first time. Clearly this is indeed the incarnation of the Timeless Child who became the Doctor.
It's something of a surprise to see such an important story told in a tie-in comic, especially when Chibnall's time as showrunner is yet to come to an end. This probably reflects the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which led Chibnall to cut Doctor Who season 13 down to just six episodes - and presumably meant he told less of Jo Martin's story than he intended. Still, Martin is confirmed to appear in the Centenary Special, so her live-action story isn't quite over yet. It will be thrilling to learn more about this forgotten chapter of Doctor Who history.