Those who saw Sunday’s Doctor Who episode will probably be wondering when, not if, we’re going to lay eyes on time-meddling teddy boy Krasko again. While the Doctor and her companions might have foiled his plan to prevent Rosa Parks from kicking off the Civil Rights Movement, being blasted into past with his own time displacement weapon will probably prove to be a setback rather than an end for him. After all, if you have a villain who wants to mess with the course of history, then the last place they should be is in the distant past.
But Krasko was such an enigmatic antagonist that some fans have started to dig a little deeper and wonder whether he might be a new incarnation of someone we’ve seen before. One theory I think we can discard right away is that this is a version of Captain Jack Harkness. Sure, there are surface similarities, and both characters use a ‘quick n’ dirty’ vortex manipulator to travel through time, but Captain Jack was a good guy. In fact, given his extremely wide range of paramours, one thing he’s certainly not is a mass-murdering space-racist.
The next theory goes way back to the past – right back to William Hartnell’s first Doctor. In The Time Meddler serial from the show’s second season, The Doctor went up against a character known as Mortimus (or simply, ‘The Monk’), a rogue Time Lord whose MO is screwing with the established order of history.
Working in the theory’s favor is that Krasko seemed to have a thorough knowledge of TARDIS technology and operation and that he was sent into the past. Ryan’s action could, theoretically, have sent him back to where the First Doctor encountered him. Working against this though is that new showrunner Chris Chibnall has said that he doesn’t want to spend time wallowing in the show’s convoluted history.
Finally and most enigmatically we have the phrase the Remnants pulled from the Thirteenth Doctor’s mind in the previous episode: “The Timeless Child.” Although we have no idea who or what this might be, Krasko is essentially timeless (though he’s not a child).
One way or another, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of the villain by the end of the season, and based on his actions in “Rosa,” I hope he gets what’s coming to him.
