#[slaps non-existent season] this bad boy can fit so many continuity issues

[thirddoctor]

You posted about this a while ago, but I just realized that Susan being the Timless Child would have actually made her claim of giving the Time Lord’s time capsules the “TARDIS” name in “An Uneartly Child” fit back into canon in a way. Real missed opportunity there.

Oh, I hadn’t thought of that! I have a number of different potential headcanons to explain away the Timeless Child nonsense (because not only do I hate what it does to the Doctor’s character, I also think they’re just the least interesting person to be the TC), but I think Susan is my favourite option. I feel like it would explain so much about her. My headcanon (which I’m sure will be contradicted by canon but I’m sticking to it until then) is that Susan was the Timeless Child, she was exploited by the Time Lords, and she eventually ends up working for the Division.

Meanwhile, between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, the Second Doctor spends an unknown amount of time working for the CIA during the mysterious Season 6B. Presumably he made some kind of bargain with them to do their dirty work in exchange for not being exiled and force-regenerated. I think a significant amount of time passes in this period (I mean, Two ages enough that he goes grey, and I think it might explain why Three claims to be significantly older than later Doctors do - perhaps he has a few residual memories of this period that later fade because they don’t line up with what he actually remembers of his life). I headcanon Ruth fitting into this period as well. While working as an operative for the Time Lords, the Doctor (could be either Two or Ruth) discovers the existence of the Timeless Child. Maybe they’re sent back on a mission to Gallifrey’s past (something very much Against The Rules, which is exactly why the CIA would give the job to the Doctor) and they run into her, or maybe the Division eventually became the CIA and Susan is still working for it and that’s how they meet. Whatever the case, they find her (but probably don’t realise yet that they already know her) and agree to help her escape, because she’s desperate to be free of the Time Lords’ control, something the Doctor can relate to. They manage to get her away, but the only safe place they can think to hide her - the one place the Time Lords won’t think to look - is back along their own time stream. The Timeless Child regenerates into a young girl to disguise herself, she probably suppresses all her previous memories, and the Doctor places her in the care of their first incarnation. She becomes his granddaughter, Susan Foreman.

Because of what the Doctor has done, they know they’re in big trouble with the Time Lords, trouble they probably won’t be able to talk themself out of. Their only option is to hide too (by this point they’re definitely the Ruth incarnation, and presumably Lee has been with them this whole time as their companion - perhaps he was an agent assigned to work with the Doctor who also went rogue?), so they use the chameleon arch and hide on Earth, Fugitive of the Judoon happens, Ruth remembers who she is, leaves to have more adventures, but is eventually recaptured by the Time Lords and has to face the original sentence from The War Games. She’s force-regenerated into Jon Pertwee and exiled to Earth, with all memory of her time with the CIA wiped.

I don’t expect any of this to be confirmed in canon - quite the opposite, it’ll probably be contradicted soon enough - but it’s how I personally like to retcon things.