The Doctor Time Line

Birth of the Doctor                     Final Regeneration     Death of the Doctor
                                                          \
|--------------------------------------....------|-------------------|


Separation Event                                                                                     Death of the Final Doctor
[-----------------------------------------------------------------------......--------------------]


Consider these as two SEPARATE timelines.  It is very important to remember this:  Each Doctor will ONLY be able to access to memories from the FIRST (Red) TIMELINE, things that happened to the Doctors BEFORE their regenerations.  Furthermore, they will NEVER have or obtain memories from the Doctor’s final regeneration, as that Doctor WILL NOT REGENERATE.

You used straight lines? Lol

Wait, sorry, kinda confused here... More detail, please? Sorry if I sound like a big ol' noob.

Let's take the first Doctor for an example. The first Doctor goes through his lifetime, then regenerates. Upon regenerating, he finds himself still alive, as he was, and with all of the memories from all of the other Doctors. However, after that moment, where he knows everything the other Doctors know, he no longer has a connection to the rest. So in other words, if the First Doctor after the Separation event writes a letter on a piece of paper, the other Doctors, no matter where they are in their timeline, will not remember it.

A couple of times I'd seen in threads that a future version of The Doctor claimed that they were remembering things that a post-separation Doctor was doing at that moment: That CAN NOT happen. After the separation, each incarnation of the Doctor is their own person and they no longer add their memories to that red timeline. The red timeline is effectively the canonical stories: Everything that happens to a Doctor between their regenerations. THAT is the knowledge that all post-separation Doctors (I.E. the characters we build on this site) have at the moment of that separation. Nothing more, and nothing less. And that INCLUDES earlier versions of the Doctor: So the First Doctor will hold memories of the Tenth Doctor's adventures, and so on.

So... Basically, they only have the memories of their own Doctor? Like, Eleven doesn't remember Rose?

>.> No. Eleven has all the memories of the past doctors up to the point when each of them regenerated. When 10 regenerated, he split off from the timeline. Think of it as when the Metacrisis Doctor was created. They no longer have the same timeline, and thus they will no longer have the same memories or same adventures. BUT they have the same memories right before the point when the Meta was created!

10, you need to make your timelines more like this.

First Doctor   2nd Doc Regen    Etc etc    Final Regen     Death
|-----------------|-------------------------|--------------|-----------|
........................\...............................\
.........................\................................\     Death of etc
..........................\                                --------|
............................\        Death of 1st
                             ------------|

Cause it's different from 10's, everyone remembers the not colored part, nobody remembers the colored bits but themselves, and definitely nobody else remembers the red bit (but the last guy).

That's a bit closer, but still not quite what happens, only because all of the timelines of the different incarnations of the Doctor start at the same point. They're all gathered there, where the Junkyard....er...Valeyard explains the situation to them.

The only place where this falters a bit is anyone past the 11th Doctor. The event description mentions the 11th Doctor running to find all of his previous incarnations there, but it makes no mention of the future incarnations. But for all intents and purposes, all of the Doctors share the same memories (again, weighted as they are) from that single point of separation, and then they go on to make their own memories that are NOT connected unless a specific connection is made amongst themselves.

It's confusing, but it basically just avoids having our 10th Doctor do something, and then later have our 13th Doctor somehow remembering what the 10th Doctor did, or even remembering it as it happens. The characters on this site, unless otherwise stated, are completely independent of the chain of regenerations for anything they do on the site.

Careful Espen, or I am going to find an excuse to make a circular diagram that somehow meets in the center as the divergence event, and splits off into 12+ different timelines. >.>

But yeah, my line works more from a linear timeline perspective, while the actual event is more...wibbly wobbly timey wimey...

Ok, I suddenly just thought...if the Doctor regenerated, and the new regeneration took on the Tardis, and the old ones split up and went off elsewhere...how come each of them have a Tardis?

They don't split lke ameobas lol. They just come from their own timelines.