The Dream Lord being the Valeyard is a solid head canon that I accept. It also fills in a couple of holes that have been bugging me for years. So thank you for that.

"I know who you are. Only one person alive hates me as much as you do." Of course, he meant himself. Anyone who knew anything about the Doctor knows that he couldn't have meant anyone else.

I do personally like the idea that the Valeyard isn't a singular character, but is more a conceptual entity: the Time Lord Victorious would have been an iteration of it just as the Dream Lord was, as would the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor if left to his worst impulses. Heck, even the Hybrid was an extension of it, albeit manifest through a semi-codependent relationship in that case.

"I know who you are, there's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do" I think that basically says it all. The Valeyard is everything The Doctor hates about himself, the darkest sides of his nature.

Valeyard has been used quite well in Big Finish audio dramas. He is one of my favorite Dr Who villains and I love how it is implied that his origin is multiple choice, kind of like Dr Who's too. He is a twisted mirror image of Theta Sigma.

It always amazes me when people say "The Valeyard is a continuity nightmare! The show will never use him!" And he keeps being brought up like this inevitable demon. Honestly he will prolly be an alternative universe Doctor if he is ever used. Multiverses are all the rage nowadays.

You know, I've been positively obsessed with the Valeyard/Dream Lord connection ever since I first saw Amy's Choice (I even wrote a song about it), but I NEVER put together him teleporting around the Tardis was a reference to the Valeyard doing it in the Matrix. Which is CRAZY because that probably means the writers were specifically thinking of the Valeyard when they wrote the Dream Lord. All this time I thought it was just a coincidence, seeing as "the Doctor's dark side" isn't too specific of a concept. And then fans just connected the dots as they're wont to do. But nope, Valeyard all along. Wild stuff.

I think it could still be written that the Master was wrong about the Valeyard and that the Valeyard is either a result of the Timelords changing the future and giving the Doctor more regenerations… Or (even though I hate The Timeless Children and would prefer it to be forgotten) that the Valeyard is an amalgamation of ALL of the Doctor’s darkest sides due to being a crime against this universe’s nature having come from outside of it. Just spitballing anyway. I love how the fandom almost universally agreed that the Dreamlord was a new Valeyard though. Something I think was absolutely Moffat’s intention. I’d love Toby Jones to come back in the role.

If the Valeyard were to ever return, I'd love to see him played by Richard E. Grant. Little known fact that Grant played the 9th Doctor in a brief flash animated series in the couple years leading up the the series' reboot in 2005, he has the presence, tone and figure to play the Valeyard well.

Clever use of phrasing by The Master of "12th and Last regeneration." He never specifies the last as the thirteenth, rather its more like all the impulses he subconsciously supressed due to his actions in the war and what he thought he had done in burning the TLs and Daleks with The Moment. Add on top of that how The Tardis always took him where he "needed to be" which often cost him and it makes sense that his Valeyard Avatar is more or less the worst of the Time Lords and the madness he experienced which almost fully turned him into the Time Lord Victorious.

The Valeyard was a character introduced when I wasn’t following the show so closely. It seemed odd that a future Doctor would be evil and want the rest of the Doctor’s regenerations…as it would be a paradox. Now that is see he is not an incarnation of the Doctor but pieces of him striving to exist apart from the Doctor, it makes sense. Add in the wibbly wobbly timey wimey aspect of causality in the Doctor Who lore, and it makes it possible for the Valeyard to both exist and never exist at the same time.

Matt smith's acting is so great, down to the smallest details. Just the way he says I had vanity issues at the time, the small waver in his voice, it's incredible

The Valeyard needs to return

I think its what would have happened in a branching timeline if the tenth doctor had never seen the consequences of his actions in the Waters of Mars, then a few regenerations later, the valeyard. But because the tenth doctor saw what his actions resulted in, he was scared away from going down the path of becoming timelord victorious.

"I'm neutral in this setup" I might use that next time I get caught in the middle at work 😅

Amy's Choice is quite amazing, I love how the ending leaves it so open. The Valeyard story with RTD and Ncuti Gatwa would be quite good. Series 5 (New Who) is may all time favourite series I have had the privilege to watch.

I think had the time war hadn't have happened, then the doctor would turn into the Valeyard, but since it did happen, the doctor turned into the person they are today, the man who regrets, and the man who forgets.

So if I'm to understand this correctly. The Dream Lord is just another version of the Valeyard? If so that's pretty cool. Though I wish they did something more with that

The Valeyard is the amalgamation of The Doctor's darker sides, implying that he's probably a split entity from The Doctor. I consider the Dreamlord to be a sort of Prototype Valeyard until he eventually becomes part of the real deal.

I don't think the Valeyard is really, actually from the future. I think the High Council were faced with a big problem after the Doctor stumbled into their Ravalox cover-up and decided not to kill him but turn him into a more useful agent who would readily do their bidding. They went through millions of projections of future projections in the Matrix, found a potential future Doctor who had developed a hard-core "ends justify the means" mentality, and made him temporarily corporeal in the present, aiming to make him a permanent replacement for the Doctor by giving him the Doctor's remaining regenerations. That never happened, and at no point did any Doctor become the Valeyard because he really was a seperate entity, a golem created by Matrix energy.

Would be fun if way down the line, when Matt Smith's older, they brought him back to play the Valeyard

Few opponents are more dangerous than the enemy within. As the Master told the 6th Doctor, "There is evil in everyone, even you." Valyard, Dreamlord, reguardless of what he's called he is the Doctor's inner Demon trying to come out.

"Somewhere between your 12th and final incarnation" Homie, that's like anyone between the Second 10th Doctor and whomever, whenever the Doctor finally decides to die.

Not sure how to describe it, but this is something that the New Who used that I like a lot. We've already met the Valeyard long ago, but now we've seen the little bits inside the Doctor that will/could eventually turn into the Valeyard through the Dream Lord. And it's seen probably the heaviest with River Song and the Doctor's marriage, each seeing the other at different points in each other's chronological timeline almost always out of order, resulting in one always knowing more than the other about what will happen.

Can I just say Toby Jones as the Dream Lord is casting perfection.

See, I know people are a bit divided on Jodie's term as The Doctor, but it does give an interesting opening for The Valeyard, in Twice Upon a Time he gets called 'The Shadow of The Valeyard,' by that logic the incarnations that worked for Division could be The Valeyard's as a shadow comes after the object casting it, Which would also be why The Valeyard tried to kill the 6th Doctor without worry of being wiped out as a result,

Yeah. I guess putting everything into perspective, the Dream Lord *technically* is the Valeyard. He's a manifestation of the darkest parts of The Doctor, so while he's not the same entity as The Valeyard we see in Trial of a Timelord, he's pretty much the same thing. I wonder if Moffat intended for The Dream Lord to be a reinvention or callback to The Valeyard. Though unlike the Valeyard, who's a darker version of the Doctor as a whole, The Dream Lord is very much a darker version of 11 specifically, taking his care and feelings for Amy and turning it against him.

The fact that the valiard was able to manipulate The matrix could mean that the timeless child storyline was a manipulation.

I would love to see The Metacrisis Doctor back for the 60th Anniversary

I’d love to see a new version of the dream lord… played by another doctors actor.

The Valeyard was a really cool villain..and Doctor, I guess?

The Dream Lord being a hypothetical next regeneration of the Valeyard, as the second Valeyard, is such a good idea I am surprised Big Finish hasn't already tried something with it.

I never related the Dreamlord to the Valeyard, and let's be honest, they're not REALLY the same person. But they do have similar aspects, and I think revealing the Dreamlord as the Valeyard properly would've been a nice touch.

The idea Solomon is like important enough The Great Intelligence remembers him is Moffat being on one and wanting to include a villain or two of his creation.

They need to bring this guy back so they can iron out who he is and what happens when the doctor becomes him. An evil doctor that’s a giant threat to time itself.

If you want to be super technical here, the Master states that the Valeyard is the, "amalgamation of the darker sides of [the Doctor's] nature, [taken] somewhere between [his] twelfth and final incarnation," final likely referring to his 13th as they wouldn't have known he'd go past 13 at this point, and if you go by the incarnations and regenerations the Doctor had after the reset of his life and memories (so ignoring everything from Timeless Child to Fugitive Doctor, basically), you have Hartnell 1, Troughton 2, Pertwee 3, T. Baker 4, Davison 5, C. Baker 6, McCoy 7, McGann 8, Hurt 9, Eccleston 10, Tennant 11, Tennant 12, Smith 13. The Valeyard may very well be the amalgamation of the darkness born from Tennant's "Time Lord Victorious" moment.

I’ve always liked the idea that the Valeyard is always a part of the Doctor’s future. The Doctor will never become the Valeyard, but he’s always going to be destined to. The Valeyard is always on the horizon, always a little bit further down the track, never managing to quite arrive.

Fhwifnsifjf, DID THE MASTER REFERENCE THE WAR DOCTOR ABOUT TWENTY SEVEN YEARS BEFORE HE WAS ACTUALLY SHOWN

I had headcanon that the Valeyard was born during the Time War. Basically, the Time Lords used techniques to analyse and recreate the psyche of the Doctor and culminate a gestalt entity from their darkest thoughts, believing they could be sent into battle to anticipate the Daleks, beings also born of hate and darkness. They figured if anyone could find a way to defeat the Daleks it was the Doctor, they just needed a version that wouldn't hesitate to kill. When put to the job of finding a way of ending the war, the Valeyard theorised that the only way of ending the war was to stop it from ever happening to begin with, one that could have stopped the Time Lords' fall from grace, which was when word had gotten out that the Matrix had been breached and information taken from it, which led to the Time Lords losing face as being omnipotent, infallible beings. The conspiracy with Ravalox (Earth) and trying to charge the Doctor with crimes that would lead to his execution was just the Valeyard trying to cover up the theft; as long as the universe continued to believe the lie that the Time Lords were all powerful, none would dare challenge them.

Also with Tom Baker's doctor they showed faces of the doctor that had not been in the show so therefore they were faces of the doctor prior to the first doctor or at least a younger version of him was one of them but there were other faces too so the newer stuff where the doctor existed before Gallifrey became the home of the time Lords is incontinuity with that. Also considering they wanted to turn Ace into a Time Lord by slicing her DNA with the doctors also basically Incorporated what they wanted to make Cannon but couldn't because the show got canceled.

He is still refered to as the shadow of the valeyard

I’ve always thought that it might be cool to see the valeyard again. After all, we are now going into the third incarnation of the Doctor’s 2nd cycle but it could still be possible for the valeyard to get a body and a regeneration cycle of their own. PS. Let’s hope that we don’t have to deal with too much of 10’s vanity for the 60th. The last thing this fandom needs is another 12 years of begging for old faces back. I love 10, but regeneration should always be new, even if a particular incarnation is less popular.

"Somewhere between your 12th and final incarnation" So from Tennant to the Caretaker...

The Dream Lord wouldn't necessarily have to be the Valeyard himself, but merely the basis, the foundation, the skeletal structure for one who could, potentially, become the Valeyard.

Hey may be 86... but I'd love to see Michael Jayston appear in some capacity again... He played that role so well.

BBC, stop jerking us around and give us a Valeyard incarnation!

I like to belive that the metacrisis doctor was always supposed to happen, and he was the valyard. Which makes tennants incarnation the 12th. And the metacrisis is some inbetween the 12th and matts 13th. Seperate but the same.

I see what you did there. I never thought of the Dream Lord as the Valeyard, but maybe thought of along the same lines. They key line is "somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnations." Tennant 2 is 12, Smith is 13, and what comes between them.... hmmm... ok, go with me here, the Metacrisis Doctor that goes back to an alternate universe with Rose, who Supposedly has a normal human lifespan, but that's never tested or verified fully. SO... what if that Metacrisis Doc outlives Rose, via accident, disease, or old age, and the darkness in him grows and makes him biter and eventually he becomes the Valeyard! How does he look like Michael Jayston? He's still got the Doctor's knowledge, he still knows how to do a great many things, one of them could be how to take over someone else like the Master did w/Tremas, or he knows how to give himself enough Artron to change at least one more time? A good writer could work around it. But yeah, that's what I've been thinking about ever since the Metacrisis copy was made at JUST the right point "somewhere between" the relevant period of time.

I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the Valeyard comes back even stronger now, post toymaker

They should have used the same sound effect just to set the fandom off.

IIRC, Big Finish tries to suggest all Time Lord's have their own version of the Valyard. Romana faces her version, the Imperatrix.

I'm curious about how the Timeless Child fits in, or if this will ever be addressed in the new series. Perhaps the Master got it wrong, and the Valeyard is those parts that the Division carved out when making The Doctor forget past assignments? Parts that the Doctor remembers at a very deep subconscious level, and regrets?

Doctor 11 always feared his dark side. It was the Valyard he was afraid of. The Valyard was what he thought he'd see in Room 11.

I always figured that the Valeyard is a somewhat physical manifestation of the Doctor's internal conflicts. "An amalgamation of the darker parts of your nature." There is probably a timeline where he regenerates into that amalgamation.

"The one who waits"?

The doctor knew who the dream Lord was instant he saw him.

MIND BLOWN! Excellent work!

From what i can gather, this kinda makes the Valeyard a very unique villain from other Dr who villains and even other villains in media that ive seen. And thats the fact thats hes not a being, hes a concept. An entity always tied to the doctor. And the thing about concepts is that they can change and morph without ever needing to worry ahout contradiciting what it's other variations were. Which makes it far scarier as it can never truly go away unless you kill the Doctor, which isnt worth the cost. Its an enemy that will always live with the doctor and can always afford to take its time. Hell, it doesnt even have to win, as seen with the Dream Lord variation smiling. Thats his victory. He made the Doctor play fully by his rules, even including how to wake up ("if you die in the dream, you wake up in reality")

Ive always wanted to believe that the Valeyard could be the metacrisis doctor in the other dimension. We work of the deleted scene were the 10th gave him a picece of tardis to grow his own. He loses Rose early in his adventures and without her to tether him to morality he loses it and becomes a vengeful merciless Valeyard. Some day he manages to break into our reality and seeks the doctors regenerations in order to become full time lord instead of part timelord. Thats a fan fic that i have anyway.

I like thinking about the converse of the biggest statement in this video: "There's only one person in the universe I hate as much as you."

I always wanted an anti-hero version of the doctor. Especially after the death of a companion or a failure. Like the waters of mars, sometimes the doctor is the baddie.

I half expect a "thou are I, I art thou" followed by a persona awakening XD

I remember one Doctor Who Comic where 10 and 11 met 12, and they both think he's the Valeyard.

I feel like the one line that ruined the valeyard was placing it between his 12th and final regeneration, implying he would become the Valyard at one point. But I rather like the idea that the Valyard is not a regeneration of the doctor, but rather part of his soul that's always there. It would tie in with every moment the Doctor has gotten a bit too dark.

We might be seeing The Valeyard soon since he is in between the 12th and final incarnations of The Doctor

"Just....STOP TELEPORTING FOR A SECOND!?"

The Doctor has been concretely shown to be a monster on the verge of losing controlq. The boogieman of all reality, a fixed point of death and destruction and unending plot armor for all that cross him. He has rules and good people surrounding him as a checks and balances system, but he has crossed the line before. The Timelord Victorious, the Original Battle of Trenzalore, Gallifrey Falls, Predator of the Daleks, Butcher of Skull Moon, the Valeyard, etc. etc. They're all parts of this ancient entities psyche. The darker and more malevolent and wrathful side. The narcissistic god that could break space-time. The omnicidal tyrant that chooses the easy way out. It'd be interesting to see if the Doctor becomes an antagonist, unhinged tyrant or if he remains on that edge.

I always thought the Meta Crisis Doctor was The Valeyard since he came from The Doctor's 12th incarnation and committed the atrocity of genocide against the Daleks.

I can see the dream lord as the Valeyard.

i always loved how the Master straight exposes the Valeyard in the trial

I never noticed how the dreamlord and the valyards teleporting was the same until watching this 😮

It comes from between Tennant 2.0 and Smith, which makes it all the better that 11 dealt with him

now that I hadn't connected

the interesting comment was he is you between your 12 and final incarnation. Effectively confimring more than 12 regenerations.

I felt the Valeyard should have been used during jodies run. Hopefully we will see him in the future

i would love a series where the doctor becomes the valeyard if what the master said is correct of course, some series of events that leads the doctor into such despair that makes him/her abandon their morals

Minor thread, and it doesn't really relate to the Valeyard, but I like that the whole "The Doctor hates himself" thing is how the Doctor found out who the Architect was in "Time Heist".

I always thought that the "darker side" ended up being the doctor during his Timelord Victorious phase

Honestly going off the clips presented I wonder if the Valeyard is actually nonlinear (wouldn't be out of place in a time travel show) and is like the Dream Lord more evolved, since 11 is the 12th regeneration it would make sense that the Dream Lord if the Valeyard _starts out_ here and then echos back across time and he grows and changes into his final Valeyard form we see in the 6th's era

So the Valeyard is basically an eldrich being that manifests when Matt Smiths doctor is hanging due to all the all the dark things that happened in his life and seeks to somehow kill him to take a form of his own and then is pulled back in time by the master to torment the previous Doctor (dont know his name sorry). this is one of the really creepy and interesting Doctor Who villains that could have their own stories written about them based off of just this because it begs the question is the valeyard a specific thing to the doctor and again like i said some kind of eldrich monster like energy floating through space that found the doctor and decided to put everything into getting a body of its own (probably a timelord body right? maybe he could get his own set of regeneration through killing him and that's why he wants it so badly?) or is this something all gallifreyans are at risk of? like dawg i could talk about this guy for hours

Except the Valeyard isn't psychic pollen. The Dream Lord is a mind parasite that *fed upon* The Doctor's darker aspects by giving them form. The Valeyard *is* those aspects incarnate. I get why people love to compare them and lump them together but they're just fundamentally different.

Honestly the Valeyard is a boogeyman. Existed pre Time War and excised to fight. But he still lingers as a memory to haunt the Doctor about… What If…

Good video.

The Valeyard was made the same way as the Curator and the meta crisis doctor a lost Variant or a rouge Variant

I like to imagine that the valeyard is what 10 would have become after going down the whole time lord victorious thing timeline works out too as 10 at the time was the 12th regeneration so the line somewhere between your 12 and final incarnation

Ok so, I've seen this happen alot so I'm gonna explain this The Doctor has had 13 incarnations, 12 faces and 12 regenerations We all know about the War Doctor so I won't go in-depth, but he is the 9th face and 9th incarnation which also makes him the 8th regeneration Now 10 regenerated in Journey's End and kept the same face, so he's still the 11th face, however he DID regenerate and just siphoned the energy away so his face wouldn't change, meaning that Tennant is the 11th face, 12th incarnation, 11th regeneration and the 10th Doctor It's not about his face, the Doctor DID regenerate he just kept the same face Matt's Doctor literally says "it was a regeneration" and he meant fully, it counted and therefore Tennant is 2 incarnations

Maybe Missy is the Master’s “Valeyard” showing an amalgamation of the lighter sides of their nature

Your 12th and final. Smart future proofing there

And then there's episodes like the time when Rose saw her father die and tried to prevent it where we just ignore episodes like that after we watch them for the first time because well they're not actually Canon and they happened in a parallel universe because well they're consequences never come back up.

From which episode are the dream lord scenes?

“Somewhere between your twelfth and final regeneration.”? Or perhaps, “Somewhere between your twelfth, and final, regeneration.” Because sometime between the twelfth, and the final, well… that’s anytime between Matt smith and wherever this ends

that and even though he wasn't evil the Meta Crisis Doctor was made in between the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor's his Twelfth and Thirteenth Incarnations

Personally I think Moffat intended to go 100% into a full Valeyard show, and the BBC pulled him back. The setup for the darkest doctor we have seen on screen, Capaldi's, his capacity for acting the villain and being terrifying, and the death of Clara, Hell Bent, and Heaven Sent. The fact the following series had a redemption arc for Missy, which had already kinda begun. I think Moffat originally planned to have Heaven Sent go mostly the same, but the Doctor to _fail_ outright. Clara dies. He cannot save her. The last scene of that series would be Capaldi cradling her broken body in the Vaults, cut to the surrounding Time Lords, looking increasingly scared, cut to the Sisters of Karn looking terrified out if their mind, cut back as the doctor looks up with eyes full of unbridled rage, and then cut to black. The following year, announce that instead of Doctor Who, we have a new two-series show called The Valeyard. The premise is we enter a few years later into a universe where an entity called The Valeyard has been rampaging through the universe, all through time and space, killing _trillions_ in its wake. The Doctor hasn't stopped it, and nobody knows why. We start with River Song, who has figured out why, and what's happened, and who is responsible, and the first couple of episodes are her recruiting help to go and save the Doctor from himself. First Ashildr, then Nardole, Vash, Strax, then the bigger surprises - Captain Jack, and finally Missy. Missy would join upon seeing what her friend has become, realising that this is what she would have been had he not always been there to stop her, and has that final change of heart. This whole series is her redemption arc. We go from there, I think plenty of material for a good season or two. The setup was perfect, I just think the BBC said no.

holy crap I never noticed that it makes alot of sens why the Dream lord is considerd to be the Valeyard we need more of him he can even replace the master giving a new Vilian like how about the Valeyard or the dream lord being imortal like the doctor is since they are the doctors bad sides of him they would always exist with in the doctor thus he will never get rid of them always hunting him like the ghost of cristmas past always there at the back of the doctors mind lurking feeding of off his negative emotions trying to make the doctor do things that he wouldnt do otherwise like letting someone die on purpose thus he needs to confront his bad sides all of his pain and suffering in one entity that he needs to defeat but the doctor knows he cant get rid of the Valeyard aka the dreamlord just like that he needs to either contain it or accept it as a part of him and letting all this pent up anger out in one single move what that move might be well I dont want to spoil it.

I think an interesting way to bring back The Valeyard is to have him be an Alternate universe Doctor. What if the Doctor was wrong about the half-human Metacrisis Doctor's ability to regenerate, and that version watched Rose die before he himself continued to live, now on his final incarnation, wanting more of the Doctor's lives.

There really is a sneaky workaround in the wording of the original introduction. If the Valeyard is pulled from "somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation," that doesn't NECESSARILY mean he fits between 12 and 13. It could be any time between Tennant's cancelled regeneration and the end.

5:23 no one tell him bout 14

Wait a second- The Doctor was lying about the psychic pollen! I never understood fully until now, why the Dream Lord was shown in his reflection. I thought it symbolised the Doctor's fear of going bad and reminder for him to constantly keep his evil side at bay. But now I get it. The Dream Lord was not a figment of his imagination

Vakeyard is everything that the Doctor loves about the master and dislikes greatly ofl his own ends justifying the means by which he achieved success.... How many species did the doctor destroy or how many time hasbhe destroyed Gallifrey and the universe....

I still wish they would've continued the Valeyard arc, I was always interested in how he would be created and how the Doctor at the time would react. In my mind, the Valeyard is an amalgamation of the Doctor's darker half (like the Dream Lord), but unlike the Dream Lord, the Valeyard is actually able to achieve some semblance of corporeal manifestation in the real world. Before Twice Upon A Time was released, I really thought that David Bradley's Hartnell Doctor might actually be the Valeyard posing as his first incarnation, or simply just the default version of the Valeyard. Before that encounter, Capaldi's Doctor had actually died, but was only revived back to life by... space-ghost tears? Don't get me started lol. But anyway, he was ACTUALLY DEAD, then he wasn't, and he also was refusing to regenerate as the ominous Tardis cloister bells were ringing... I'm not sure how exactly the Valeyard could be created, but a scenario along these lines is at least a start. It really felt like a perfect set up as any for the Valeyard to be revealed, and then... literally another version of the Doctor showed up calling himself "the original" Doctor! And then they actually referenced the Valeyard again in that same episode, so I still was expecting that twist, but alas. I guess I'll have to resort to writing my own fan-fictions on the Valeyard for his appearance to be truly realized for me. Such a fascinating concept wasted, in my opinion.