O médico é um verdadeiro médico de alguma forma?

É essencialmente um problema de galinha / ovo:

Para citar River Song de Um bom homem vai à guerra (Série 6; ênfase minha):

This was exactly you. All this. All of it. You make them so afraid. When you began, all those years ago, sailing off to see the universe, did you ever think you'd become this? The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name. Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means mighty warrior. How far you've come. And now they've taken a child, the child of your best friends, and they're going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.

O site da BBC aborda isso muito bem;

The Doctor has made many conflicting statements about his qualifications. He certainly studied human medicine, and in The Moonbase he says that he gained a doctorate under Joseph Lister in Glasgow in 1888. However, Lister left Glasgow years before that date, so the Doctor is either being vague or is lying.

He can carry out such basic tasks as resetting dislocated fingers (The Smugglers), but perhaps the archaic nature of his knowledge (he gives incorrect advice on fever treatment in The Ark and can't so much for blood poisoning in The Myth Makers) leads him to deny being a doctor of medicine (An Unearthly Child, The Krotons). His advanced medical efforts in The Sensorites rely largely on chemistry skills, and he has local medics to help him.

The other possibility is that he failed to get an attempted medical degree (as stated in The Rescue) and, knowing the condition he was treating in The Moonbase, exaggerated his achievements. In Robot, knowing he has a doctor on board, he renounces all claims to a degree save a 'purely honorary' one, which turns out to have been acquired from St Cedds, Cambridge, in 1960 (Shada).

However, at some point the Doctor does gain the advanced medical knowledge he uses in The Twin Dilemma and The Trial of a Time Lord. Perhaps the gap between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil (see The Doctor's Age) is the most likely place for this to happen, as he's uncertain about a broken arm in The Seeds of Doom, but familiar with 50th century medicine by The Invisible Enemy. By the time of Remembrance of the Daleks he's learnt to diagnose by touching someone's ear.

Before leaving Gallifrey, the Doctor gained a doctorate of some sort from the Prydonian Academy (The Hand of Fear, The Deadly Assassin), qualifying, with Drax, in the class of '92 (The Armageddon Factor). His teachers included Borusa and Azmael (The Twin Dilemma), the latter possibly being the tutor who understood artron energy (Four to Doomsday). Since he knows so much about law (The Deadly Assassin, The Stones of Blood) it is possible that he qualified in this area.

However, on many occasions the Doctor has called himself a scientist (Planet of Evil) and engineer (The Aztecs, The Mind of Evil). Perhaps he's telling the truth about a combined degree when he calls himself a doctor of many things (Revenge of the Cybermen).

Na série moderna, o Doutor é mais vago, simplesmente referindo-se a si mesmo como um "Doutor de tudo", especializado em "tornar as pessoas melhores".

Eu acho que os criadores originais do programa significaram "The Doctor" no sentido acadêmico de ter um grau avançado, ou seja, um doutorado (veja link ), baseado na perícia do personagem em muitos campos, especialmente os científicos. Como mencionado na p. 5 do livro Doctor Who: Uma História , Sydney Newman foi quem primeiro surgiu a idéia do personagem, e sua concepção original era de que o personagem era um cientista alienígena que não conseguia lembrar seu próprio nome, que se chamava "The Doctor". Na primeira história da série, "Unearthly Child" , houve essa troca:

IAN: All right, now we're helping them. You're a doctor, do something.

DOCTOR: I'm not a doctor of medicine.

O artigo "The Doctor" do Doctor Who wiki fala sobre o que o Doutor pode ter feito em:

The title "Doctor" was not undeserved; he did hold one or more doctorates of some sort, (TV: The Armageddon Factor, The God Complex) formally studied medicine on at least 19th century Earth, (TV: The Moonbase) and frequently displayed detailed medical knowledge. (TV: The Ark, Frontios, The Empty Child, New Earth, The Time of Angels, The Curse of the Black Spot) At least some versions of his sonic screwdriver performed medical scans and healed minor wounds. (TV: The Empty Child, The Vampires of Venice, A Good Man Goes to War) He showed knowledge on how to help someone thrown by an explosion recover quickly. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Although his first, (TV: "The Forest of Fear", "Mighty Kublai Khan"), fourth (TV: The Ark in Space) and fifth incarnations (AUDIO: Red Dawn) had claimed not to be a doctor of medicine, and his third (TV: Spearhead of Space) and tenth incarnations (TV: Utopia) claimed to be a doctor of practically "everything", by his eleventh life the Doctor claimed to hold doctorates in at least medicine and cheese-making. (TV: The God Complex)

E note que The Master (um de seus principais rivais de longo prazo que você pode não ter visto se você assistiu a série Eccleston) também tem um título acadêmico tradicional, embora menos avançado (editar: mas veja O comentário de Armb abaixo, o título também poderia ser uma referência para o Mestrado de um Colégio, em vez de apenas alguém com um mestrado).

No Spearhead from Space , quando Liz Shaw pergunta ao Terceiro Doctor do que ele é médico, ele responde: "Praticamente tudo." Isso pode implicar uma inclusão da medicina, mas isso contradiz a declaração do Primeiro Doutor em Uma Criança Sobrenatural de que ele não é um médico.

Além disso, em A Arca no Espaço , o Quarto Doutor observa que seu diploma é honorário.

Apesar de qualquer conhecimento médico que o médico tenha, é incerto se ele tem ou não um MD real. É provável que ele não seja um médico "real" no sentido MD, mas isso é subjetivo, dada a natureza da viagem no tempo (o conhecimento anatômico comum de um americano do século XXI pode exceder o conhecimento médico de um médico do século XVII).

Cientificamente falando, ele demonstra consistentemente uma tremenda aptidão. Mais uma vez, as qualificações para um doutorado são subjetivas, dependendo da época e do planeta. Em A Cidade da Morte , o Dr. Kerensky fala de si mesmo como sendo o principal especialista em ciência temporal na Terra de 1979, mas seu conhecimento com um doutorado claramente empalidece comparado ao do Doutor.