Who is Doctor Who

Who is Doctor Who? Or rather, which of the doctors is the real doctor? Are they all real? All one? How can we determine that the one is a same as the all?

It is clear that each doctor is different. Different in personality and physically. So how can we determine what makes the doctor the same person after each regeneration? First, I think we need to look at what makes a person? What makes you, you? 

Most arguments that I have heard deal with memories, you are what your memories tell you to be, and so, the same view would hold for doctor who. He is the same person after regeneration because he contains the same memories. But can this be an adequate statement in all cases? After all, if you had a clone made identical to you down to every atom and all of the memories were exactly the same would you say that that clone is you? Or is the clone another person with the same memories?

Or, as another example, say an individual gets in a car accident and suffers complete amnesia. Because that person no longer has those memories to back their self up with are they now a completely different person, or would you say that that person is still "my brother," "my son," "my mom," etc. Same works with those suffering from Alzheimer's. 

I think at this point we can adequately rule out the idea that memory is what makes the doctors all the same person. 

The best possible explanation to this, I feel, is using time-worm theory. Rather than all of the doctors being the doctor. The doctor is doctor number one and two and three and four and five -- all the way to currently, eleven. The doctor needs to be viewed not from a physical third dimension, but from a fourth dimension--time, (fitting, as he is a time lord). Each doctor is a "time-slice" out of the whole DOCTOR. In other words Doctor ten is not the same as Doctor four, but both are the same as The DOCTOR, as a whole. Doctors one through eleven, and eventually all thirteen will make up a worm of sorts all together making up the doctor.

Likewise, we are all time worms, changing into completely different people constantly, much like the doctors regenerations. My brother Jaron and I are more alike than an eight year old version of myself and my current twenty-five year old version of myself. Yet, I am me at age eight and twenty-five. In order for this to make sense in what we have determined being a self is and is not, we must view ourselves in the fourth dimension as well. Like Doctor Who will have thirteen versions of his self, we have many versions (through time) of our selves, as well.

*For more information see, Is the Doctor Still the Doctor--Am I Still Me? by David Kyle Johnson