The Doctor in Infinity War/Endgame.

[The Romulan Republic]

So, let's say the Doctor finds him/herself caught up in the events of Infinity War/Endgame. The Doctor first becomes aware of the situation when the TARDIS picks up Thor's distress signal, arriving shortly after the Guardians of the Galaxy. Things go from there.

Scenario Two: the Doctor is minding his/her own business when the Snap occurs. Among the dusted are the current companion/companions.

For the purposes of these scenarios, the Whoniverse and the MCU will be merged. UNIT is replaced by SHIELD in this timeline, and the Brigadier is the head of the British division of SHIELD. Pick whichever Doctor you want, but please specify which in your reply.

What happens next? How will the Doctor handle the reckless use of time travel in Endgame, Thanos's genocidal ambitions, and the moral dilemma of the Soul Stone sacrifice?

[Gandalf]

Presumably the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to somehow fuck with the gauntlet, neutralising the stones?

[Crazedwraith]

Oh fuck off TRR Like The Avengers' use of time travel is more reckless than The friggin' Doctor's.

The Doctor's TARDIS would give them a lot more options for stone retrieval but I have the hilarious idea of his lack of time travel accuracy popping up and the avengers having to sort put lots of random problems throughout time before getting the stones.


eta: Though to be fair, The Doctor probably being appalled by the cheap and nasty quantuam time machine they are a hypocrite like that on a lot on occasions with their Time Lord privilege.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh, the Doctor's use of time travel is reckless, absolutely. Obscenely so. Note that I didn't say the Doctor would do better, and in any case there's no call to get up in arms about it.

But the Doctor is also an arrogant hypocrite at times, and I bet you he'd go off on a "stupid humans" rant over the casual fucking with the timeline- while doing the same thing. Admittedly, Doc's got WAY more experience at it, so you could argue that the Doctor's risks are more educated/calculated.

Presumably the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to somehow fuck with the gauntlet, neutralising the stones?

I'm not sure it could. After all, the Stones seem more magic or cosmic forces than technology. And even if it could, he'd have to sonic them faster than Thanos could blast him with one of the Stones, or throw up some sort of shield with them. I mean, Strange or Wanda could theoretically have TK-d the Gauntlet off him. But Thanos didn't just sit there and let them do it.

[PREDATOR490]

The Doctor gets killed - Seriously.

SHIELD - Does not exist so UNIT etc. is gone unless you include AoS which would turn the Brigadier into Fury or General Talbot. In both cases, completely irrelevant to the MCU.

A) The Doctor tries to reason with Thanos - Doctor gets blasted so hard that he wont be regenerating from it. Even if he does, Thanos is committed and willing to throw his daughter literally over the cliff to achieve his goal. Reason is simply not possible so the only options are to KILL Thanos. The Doctor has repeatedly had issues to the point of absurdity about killing so I do not see him doing it unless pushed to the most extreme limit that would turn him into the 'War Doctor' .


B) The Doctor is going to try and impose his obscenely arrogant will on the Avengers / universe and get horribly mauled for it. I do not see the Avengers being very tolerant of The Doctor's antics. Especially, since the Doctor has a habit of being preachy about not killing people. I fully expect the Doctor would throw fits about the idea of murdering Thanos let alone what they did to him at the start of Endgame.

Killing Thanos and his army is really the only way to end this war and the Avengers know this. That leaves an unbreakable opposition from the Doctor.
I could even see the Doctor arrogantly interfering in any attempt to kill Thanos which would get everyone killed or one of the Avengers kills him.


C) I do not see the TARDIS being useful. If the Doctor could pilot the thing reliably and accurately then it could certainly streamline the time travel aspect but because of the Doctor's nature of constantly fucking things up. The TARDIS may overshoot or the Doctor makes a gigantic mess with his wacky antics.


The best thing the Doctor provides is an educated understanding of how Time Travel works and telling the Avengers how to do it / provide the means to let them do it without him interfering.
The substantial problem with putting the Doctor in a crossover is establishing if he is going to still have back-breaking writers fiat to shield him or make him behave reasonably. At his most extreme, the Doctor is on par with Loki but with a better PR approach and the ability to use the TARDIS to run away.

[Oscar Wilde]

Pretty sure that scenario two results in The Doctor turning his considerable intellect into destroying Thanos without much in the way of mercy or pity. Consider that one time that the villains only went as far as kidnapping Amy and he took out a fleet of Cyberman ships just as collateral... but then its another question of which Doctor. TARDIS vs Time Stone would be probably the most interesting part of that matchup... but that assumes that the Doctor manages to track him down before he ends up destroying the stones.

The two forms of time travel don't even really compare since one of them is multi-verse hopping (I think probably?) and hopping universes isn't quite as simple for the doctor to manage iirc, so questions of irresponsibility are... questionable. Which is par for the course.

[mr friendly guy]

1. From the knowledge gathered by the Avengers, the Doctor time travels, picks up one of the known infinity stones before Thanos does and then dumps it in his universe. And before someone goes, well what about the problems of the infinity stones, well in comics infinity stones work in their particular marvel universe, it doesn't work in an alternative marvel universe nor in another universe as we find out in a DC crossover. So the infinity stones in the MCU won't work in the main Marvel 616 universe, and vice versa. The exception to this rule seems to be the Malibu universe, but since no one remembers the Avengers / Ultraforce x-over, and since he isn't dumping it in the Malibu universe, no problem.

The TARDIS then tractor beams Thanos's ship, and dumps it into the sun. Now remember guys, the TARDIS best tractor beam feat isn't in the new series, where he moves the Earth back after the Dalek steals it. Its from the classical episode "Creature from the pit," where it manages (albeit barely) to tractor a neutron star. You know, those objects about 1.4 stellar masses. I mean before he got all the gems, Thanos manages to pull a moon down to attack Iron Man and the other heroes, I am going to say a neutron star has like several orders of magnitude more mass.

2. If it was written by RTD.... The Doctor (David Tennant version) decides Thanos must go. Takes one of the stones and lures Thanos into the TARDIS and closes the door. Thanos finds the other stones doesn't work since the TARDIS inside is another universe as per BBC's old website on FAQ. Thanos has his henchmen fire their guns, and then they find out due to technobabble a lot of weapons don't necessarily work inside the TARDIS due to "temporal grace" blah blah blah. See the Invasion of Time. When the temporal grace works, a lot of weapons don't fire, but the ones the Doctor wants to work.

Thanos then gets his more powerful goons to assault the Doctor, however they end up knocking him into the heart of the TARDIS, and he comes out with deus ex machina powers after absorbing the power of the time vortex. He then snaps his fingers and Thanos and gang disappear. Come on, we all remember that RTD episode don't we. You guys remember that one when Rose destroys the entire Dalek fleet. You know those ships individually with planet busting capability. I don't think Thanos by himself, nor his ships have that ability.

Doctor then regenerates into Peter Capaldi.

[Tribble]

The Doctor gets killed - Seriously.

SHIELD - Does not exist so UNIT etc. is gone unless you include AoS which would turn the Brigadier into Fury or General Talbot. In both cases, completely irrelevant to the MCU.

A) The Doctor tries to reason with Thanos - Doctor gets blasted so hard that he wont be regenerating from it. Even if he does, Thanos is committed and willing to throw his daughter literally over the cliff to achieve his goal. Reason is simply not possible so the only options are to KILL Thanos. The Doctor has repeatedly had issues to the point of absurdity about killing so I do not see him doing it unless pushed to the most extreme limit that would turn him into the 'War Doctor' .


B) The Doctor is going to try and impose his obscenely arrogant will on the Avengers / universe and get horribly mauled for it. I do not see the Avengers being very tolerant of The Doctor's antics. Especially, since the Doctor has a habit of being preachy about not killing people. I fully expect the Doctor would throw fits about the idea of murdering Thanos let alone what they did to him at the start of Endgame.

Killing Thanos and his army is really the only way to end this war and the Avengers know this. That leaves an unbreakable opposition from the Doctor.
I could even see the Doctor arrogantly interfering in any attempt to kill Thanos which would get everyone killed or one of the Avengers kills him.


C) I do not see the TARDIS being useful. If the Doctor could pilot the thing reliably and accurately then it could certainly streamline the time travel aspect but because of the Doctor's nature of constantly fucking things up. The TARDIS may overshoot or the Doctor makes a gigantic mess with his wacky antics.


The best thing the Doctor provides is an educated understanding of how Time Travel works and telling the Avengers how to do it / provide the means to let them do it without him interfering.
The substantial problem with putting the Doctor in a crossover is establishing if he is going to still have back-breaking writers fiat to shield him or make him behave reasonably. At his most extreme, the Doctor is on par with Loki but with a better PR approach and the ability to use the TARDIS to run away.

Although it varies from incarnation to incarnation I think you’re overstating the Doctors pacifism, especially the Nu Who incarnations. The Doctor doesn’t like killing and tries to avoid it, but nevertheless he has done so on many occasions and has a body count high enough that even the Daleks fear / admire him.

The Doctors response tends to be proportional to the threat he is facing- villains of the week are generally given a lot more leeway than universal threats like the Cybermen or Daleks. Or the occasional one off like Satan. And Lord help you if you mess with his companions- the dude will blow up fleets just for info and is willing to risk the entire universe due to his impulse to protect them.

Piss him off enough and he’ll make sure you wish you were dead, as more than one villain has found out the hard way.

Perhaps more importantly he is more than willing to manipulate people into killing for him and/or getting the villain to kill them selves. Hell, he’s even been called out for that more than once.

That being said being aware of time is part of the Doctors nature and between that and his general knowledge I think it’s likely that half the universe being wiped out then coming back is the kind of event he is going to be aware about from the outset. It could even be a fixed point in time, and between that and already knowing the outcome the only reason I could see the Doctor intervening is to try to figure out a way to spare Natasha and Tony’s lives, if possible. IMO he’s not going to care about Thanos and his army getting vaporized, especially as he likely already knows the outcome and doesn’t have to do anything to intervene. As far as he is concerned, a bad guy going down is just a part of history.

If he doesn’t want to get involved all he has to do is shift the Tardis five years in the future and his companion will pop back.

[Tribble]

Or put it this way- the Doctor with the Tardis is already pretty close to Q, and the only (in universe) reason why the Doctor isn’t equivalent to Q is because he finds immortality boring and he fears what he would do with omnipotence. That’s it - there are multiple ways where he can become equal to Q any time he wants, and so far as we know even without that he can still access the Moment (aka the galaxy eater which can break universal time locks and travel to alternate universes), though I don’t think either would be necessary.

Like I said above, the Doctor doesn’t really have to intervene at all, he would likely know that he wouldn’t have to intervene (even to save his companion) and the only reason I could see him getting involved is to try and save Tony and Natasha, if he knew about their sacrifice and cared enough to try and change it.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think this really depends on the Doctor. His pacifism and reluctant to kill is way overstated and mostly seems to be a Ten/Eleven thing as a holdover from the Time War. Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Nine, Twelve and the War Doctor would almost certainly find some way to defeat Thanos, though Two and Seven would be all chessmaster-y about it while Twelve would probably be quite a bit more brutal and direct.

Consider that Seven managed (within one series) to pull off centuries-long schemes to effectively destroy both the Daleks and Cybermen. Four also has the advantage of previously facing Sutekh the Destroyer, stated to be "all-powerful" and winning.

Sure, if the Doctor just strolls out of the TARDIS and starts demanding Thanos quit fucking about with the universe, he'll get killed. But, most incarnations are simply not that stupid/cocky/overconfident. And even the worst offenders of that style of problem solving (Ten and Eleven) always had something up their sleeves.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Doctor gets killed - Seriously.

SHIELD - Does not exist so UNIT etc. is gone unless you include AoS which would turn the Brigadier into Fury or General Talbot. In both cases, completely irrelevant to the MCU.

I'd assume with UNIT shut down (which it canonically has been as of the last season of Doctor Who), the Brigadier would join some other organization. Or, in this 'verse, maybe run his own team.

I could see him being the British wing of Coulson's new SHIELD.

A) The Doctor tries to reason with Thanos - Doctor gets blasted so hard that he wont be regenerating from it. Even if he does, Thanos is committed and willing to throw his daughter literally over the cliff to achieve his goal. Reason is simply not possible so the only options are to KILL Thanos. The Doctor has repeatedly had issues to the point of absurdity about killing so I do not see him doing it unless pushed to the most extreme limit that would turn him into the 'War Doctor' .

You haven't watched much of the show if you honestly think that. SOME Doctors have an aversion to killing, and they mostly seem to dislike guns to varying degrees, but this is far from universal. The War Doctor wouldn't hesitate. And some of the others, like Eleven, might not like to get their own hands physically dirty most of the time, but are quite happy to indirectly arrange the death (or genocide) of opponents.

Eleven in particular stands out as a ruthless fucker, the most notable example probably being when he mind-controlled the entire human race in perpetuity into exterminating any of the Silence they saw on sight.

I also doubt Thanos would immediately kill him on sight. He stopped to talk to Doctor Strange, after all, rather than immediately going straight to the ass-kicking.

B) The Doctor is going to try and impose his obscenely arrogant will on the Avengers / universe and get horribly mauled for it. I do not see the Avengers being very tolerant of The Doctor's antics. Especially, since the Doctor has a habit of being preachy about not killing people. I fully expect the Doctor would throw fits about the idea of murdering Thanos let alone what they did to him at the start of Endgame.

Killing Thanos and his army is really the only way to end this war and the Avengers know this. That leaves an unbreakable opposition from the Doctor.
I could even see the Doctor arrogantly interfering in any attempt to kill Thanos which would get everyone killed or one of the Avengers kills him.

Wow, you really hate pacifists, don't you?

Never mind that several incarnations of the Doctor are perfectly willing to engage in mass murder, if not with their bare hands then with technobabble or by proxy.

C) I do not see the TARDIS being useful. If the Doctor could pilot the thing reliably and accurately then it could certainly streamline the time travel aspect but because of the Doctor's nature of constantly fucking things up. The TARDIS may overshoot or the Doctor makes a gigantic mess with his wacky antics.

The accuracy of the Doctor's piloting is highly variable. Sometimes he can nail precision feats. Other times, not.

As per "The Doctor's Wife", it is very heavily implied that the TARDIS deliberately takes him to times and places he needs to be, so what matters here may be what the TARDIS wants/knows needs to happen.

The best thing the Doctor provides is an educated understanding of how Time Travel works and telling the Avengers how to do it / provide the means to let them do it without him interfering.

A lot would depend on whether Strange's one time is still in effect despite the Doctor's involvement. If so, then the Snap and its undoing are likely fixed points in time, which will limit the Doctor's actions.

The substantial problem with putting the Doctor in a crossover is establishing if he is going to still have back-breaking writers fiat to shield him or make him behave reasonably. At his most extreme, the Doctor is on par with Loki but with a better PR approach and the ability to use the TARDIS to run away.

Which is to say that he's at least a mid-tier hero by MCU standards, but not a guaranteed game-breaker. Yeah, I think that's fair. The Loki parallel is apt, as the Doctor (while clearly possessing greater durability and reflexes than a human, by far, as well as some hand-to-hand combat training) shines primarily as a trickster, not a brawler.

[Tribble]

A lot would depend on whether Strange's one time is still in effect despite the Doctor's involvement. If so, then the Snap and its undoing are likely fixed points in time, which will limit the Doctor's actions.

If it is a fixed point in time the Doctor would probably be aware of it, if not know the exact details. In which case, like I said earlier the Doctor's solution to his/her dead companion would be trivial - just take the Tardis 5 years into the future when the undoing occurs and watch as said companion pops back into existence.

[SpottedKitty]

Eleven in particular stands out as a ruthless fucker, the most notable example probably being when he mind-controlled the entire human race in perpetuity into exterminating any of the Silence they saw on sight.

I can't remember right now (and all my box sets are in a box somewhere) — was Eleven the one who had the adventure with dinosaurs on a spaceship? The bad guy in that one came to a very messy and thoroughly well-deserved <kaboom> ending.

And the current Doctor has had her moments as well...

[TimothyC]

I can't remember right now (and all my box sets are in a box somewhere) — was Eleven the one who had the adventure with dinosaurs on a spaceship? The bad guy in that one came to a very messy and thoroughly well-deserved <kaboom> ending.

Yes, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was with Eleven.

[Solauren]

Somehow, I see this ending up as 'Thanos now has a TARDIS....'

[Vendetta]

Somehow, I see this ending up as 'Thanos now has a TARDIS....'

Unlikely.

Despite Thanos' great power with the Infinity Gauntlet he is a being of profoundly limited imagination and great ego, given to self aggrandizing speeches on the brink of victory.

That's so far in the Doctor's comfort zone he's still got his slippers on.

Also, given that the Doctor canonically a) exists in and b) can freely travel the Marvel multiverse* he almost certainly already knows who Thanos is.



* Death's Head still appears in Marvel 616, having been deposited in that universe by the Doctor back when Marvel still published Doctor Who comics. (The Whoniverse is Earth-5556 in the Marvel multiverse)

[FireNexus]

That being said being aware of time is part of the Doctors nature and between that and his general knowledge I think it’s likely that half the universe being wiped out then coming back is the kind of event he is going to be aware about from the outset. It could even be a fixed point in time, and between that and already knowing the outcome the only reason I could see the Doctor intervening is to try to figure out a way to spare Natasha and Tony’s lives, if possible.

At least in NuWho, I can’t imagine Tony’s sacrifice not being a fixed point in time. In fact, I’d bet any use of all the stones in a gauntlet creates a fixed point just because of the amount of power being channeled and the universe-spanning consequences.

[Tribble]

That being said being aware of time is part of the Doctors nature and between that and his general knowledge I think it’s likely that half the universe being wiped out then coming back is the kind of event he is going to be aware about from the outset. It could even be a fixed point in time, and between that and already knowing the outcome the only reason I could see the Doctor intervening is to try to figure out a way to spare Natasha and Tony’s lives, if possible.

At least in NuWho, I can’t imagine Tony’s sacrifice not being a fixed point in time. In fact, I’d bet any use of all the stones in a gauntlet creates a fixed point just because of the amount of power being channeled and the universe-spanning consequences.

In which case the Doctor is in the position of not having to do anything at all, apart from travelling to the point where Tony’s snap undoes things so s/he can bring his companion back and go on his merry way. Being a fixed point and such a major event in history means s/he’d probably know all about it.

I find it pretty funny that Thanos’ snap is kinda irrelevant for a time traveler; bringing a companion back from the dead has rarely been so easy:

Companion: I died!
Doctor: I know. And?
Companion: How did I die? Why am I alive?
Doctor: A big purple guy snapped his fingers. Not to worry, I just travelled 5 years to the future and you popped back. Just took a few seconds, honestly. Where to next?

[Solauren]

Question, if the Doctor go Thanos inside the Tardis somehow (say materializing it around him), would that protect the rest of the universe from the Snap?

Also, Doctor Who can travel the Marvel multi-verse? Holy shit, the firepower he could bring to bare on Thanos if need be....

[mr friendly guy]

Question, if the Doctor go Thanos inside the Tardis somehow (say materializing it around him), would that protect the rest of the universe from the Snap?

Also, Doctor Who can travel the Marvel multi-verse? Holy shit, the firepower he could bring to bare on Thanos if need be....

Well according to marvel the infinity gems only work in their respective universes. So the inside of the TARDIS is another universe, so it wouldn't just protect the rest of the universe, it would strip the gauntlet of its power.

[The Romulan Republic]

Or put it this way- the Doctor with the Tardis is already pretty close to Q, and the only (in universe) reason why the Doctor isn’t equivalent to Q is because he finds immortality boring and he fears what he would do with omnipotence. That’s it - there are multiple ways where he can become equal to Q any time he wants, and so far as we know even without that he can still access the Moment (aka the galaxy eater which can break universal time locks and travel to alternate universes), though I don’t think either would be necessary.

Though its worth noting that the Moment is a sapient super weapon, and its very doubtful that anyone can use the Moment in a way it doesn't want to be used.

Like I said above, the Doctor doesn’t really have to intervene at all, he would likely know that he wouldn’t have to intervene (even to save his companion) and the only reason I could see him getting involved is to try and save Tony and Natasha, if he knew about their sacrifice and cared enough to try and change it.

If he happened to be there, he'd probably try to save Natasha and Tony unless their deaths constituted fixed points in time. Then he'd probably let them die and spend the rest of the episode feeling guilty about it.

Somehow, I see this ending up as 'Thanos now has a TARDIS....'

Unlikely.

Despite Thanos' great power with the Infinity Gauntlet he is a being of profoundly limited imagination and great ego, given to self aggrandizing speeches on the brink of victory.

That's so far in the Doctor's comfort zone he's still got his slippers on.

Also, given that the Doctor canonically a) exists in and b) can freely travel the Marvel multiverse* he almost certainly already knows who Thanos is.



* Death's Head still appears in Marvel 616, having been deposited in that universe by the Doctor back when Marvel still published Doctor Who comics. (The Whoniverse is Earth-5556 in the Marvel multiverse)

Huh, didn't know that the Whoniverse was part of the Marvel multi-verse (though I don't know if that applies to the MCU). Guess there was no need to stipulate that the universes merge in the OP.

[FaxModem1]

Second Doctor. Why? Because his solution to Thanos would be the same solution as his solution to the War Lord. Call the Time Lords and have them erase him from existence, because clearly, this person is a huge threat to the universe.

[The Romulan Republic]

Second Doctor. Why? Because his solution to Thanos would be the same solution as his solution to the War Lord. Call the Time Lords and have them erase him from existence, because clearly, this person is a huge threat to the universe.

Hmm, yeah.

Maybe I should have limited it to post-Time War, pre-restoration Doctors (so Nine-Eleven). Because at any time where the Time Lords are active, then they'll probably put Thanos down hard, at least if the Gauntlet is capable of dusting Time Lords through whatever defenses Gallifrey has.

[mr friendly guy]

Second Doctor. Why? Because his solution to Thanos would be the same solution as his solution to the War Lord. Call the Time Lords and have them erase him from existence, because clearly, this person is a huge threat to the universe.

The second Doctor defeated the War Lord and the War King. He called the Time Lords because he couldn't return all the kidnapped people back to their respective times.

[Eternal_Freedom]

He still recognised it was a problem too big for him to deal with alone. Thanos threatening to wipe out half the universe's population (which would presumably include Time Lords) makes him a big enough threat for him to call for help - assuming of course they haven't intervened themselves.