Well, you see, the thing is.
My love for River transcends all else 
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Our benevolent master of the guide’s new pfp?
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Well I’m doing a repeat of every Fugitive doctor story soon, so I’ll be sure to gather every piece of evidence to do with her placement
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It’s beautiful thank you! I will print it out and frame it!
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I’d always thought Fugitive was pre-Hartnell and didn’t realize that was a hot topic until recently. I haven’t seen most of Classic, so I am not as connected to it as Revival and so her being preemptive to him doesn’t bother me as much.
This is just about the same as my thoughts on it as well.
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I’ve always thought it was pretty clear that she was pre-Hartnell, but maybe I need a rewatch. Either way, I don’t really care whether they clarify it even more or not. None of this is something I have a very strong opinion about.
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I hadn’t thought of it this way before, and I do think this is a lovely way of looking at the whole idea, if still not one I personally share. Speaking for myself, I’ve always loved the idea that the Doctor was “just” an ordinary individual from a stagnant and dull society, who actively made the decision to leave that world and see and experience new things, and as a consequence, grows and becomes a better and more vibrant person. To draw a comparison with your idea above, I would rather see the Doctor as a character who comes from a very insular, limiting background (which is why their first regeneration cycle is very similar the whole way through) and as a consequence of their decisions, hardships and adventures, becomes a freer and more outward-looking person, who is open to a variety of different ways of being and living (which is reflected in their new regeneration cycle being much more diverse in terms of gender, race and sexuality).
At the end of the day, each to their own - I’m glad you have a headcanon that makes you smile, as I do 
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How did I miss this image back in May!?!
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Me too!!! It is fantastic!!!
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It must have been a bad day for you…
You reacted 
to it though…
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That was now. I could still change it.
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Weird, my notifications only showed Delta reacting to it now…
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Definitely Pre-Hartnell, the issue with the idea of the Fugitive Doctor being a hidden incarnation between the Second and Third Doctor is that in Series 13, Division attempted to end the universe after the Doctor had rediscovered their existence in the Series 12 finale, where it was established that the Doctor couldn’t remember their previous Pre-Hartnell lives because Division had reset and stolen their memories after an unspecified years of service to them. And so Division ending the universe because the Doctor rediscovered their existence just shows how serious they were about the Doctor knowing.
The Fugitive Doctor being between the Second and Third Doctor would mean that Division deliberately revealed and compromised their own existence by rehiring the Doctor, when just two incarnations ago they’d mind-wiped the Doctor to hide their existence from them. In all on-screen appearances the Fugitive Doctor knew that she was working for Division and what they were about.
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She’s been confirmed as a past incarnation in the show though and 15 remembers Fugitive’s time with Abena. Also it’s been established that only the older incarnation remembers meeting themselves if Fugitive was the future incarnation she would be the one who remembers meeting 13 and 13 would forget but we know 13 remembers her.
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Welcome to the forum @ktrwho - do pop over to Introductions and tell us a bit about yourself.
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To add. As said in Once, Upon Time: when the Time Lords/The Division ended the Dark Times by imprisoning Time through the Mouri, Swarm and Azure fought back against this to undo what they did and release Time, starting the Founding Conflict/Battle between Time and Space. In the Siege of Atropos, Swarm brought up to the Fugitive Doctor that they’re still engaged in the Founding Conflict, in a tone that says it’s been happening for a long time, and we’ve already established when the battle started. And in Present Day, while two Division-Operatives are checking up on Swarm in his prison, it’s said that he was imprisoned, with embellishment in mind, since the dawn of the universe. This means that it happened after the end of the Dark Times, but when the universe, thus Gallifrey, was still in its early years. The point is, it’s clear that the Siege of Atropos and Swarm’s imprisonment happened during the early years of Gallifrey, and not anywhere near the years of Gallifrey that the First Doctor and incarnations onwards came from.
To play Devil’s advocate, yes the Fugitive Doctor could still be an incarnation between the Second and Third Doctor because she could’ve just time travelled back to the early years of Gallifrey by TARDIS. But that seems pointless when the Pre-Hartnell incarnations of the Doctor existed during the early years of Gallifrey and were working for Division, while the Founding Conflict was ongoing. In The Timeless Children, it was a Pre-Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor that we saw being recruited into Division, which would’ve been right before or soon after the Mouri were established, which is when the Founding Conflict began and the Doctor would’ve become engaged in. This all says for itself that the Fugitive Doctor is an incarnation from early Gallifrey, and thus is Pre-Hartnell.
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I think those two things that make it seem like the Fugitive Doctor is Post-Hartnell, her using the title Doctor and her TARDIS being a Police Box, do fit Pre-Hartnell.
With the Fugitive Doctor using the title Doctor, that doesn’t mean it has the same meaning to her as it does to the First Doctor and the incarnations after him, because for them the title means to help and save people, to never be cruel or cowardly, but this doesn’t fit with the Fugitive Doctor’s behaviour or lifestyle that we’ve seen on screen. A meaning of the title Doctor is the Doctorate of a Subject, which would fit with the Fugitive Doctor, because she has the memories from her prior incarnations when she was a Time Lord pioneer.
The Fugitive Doctor’s TARDIS being a Police Box before it became a Police Box around An Unearthly Child, no problem when you remember that the TARDIS is a sentient Time Machine. If you run with the idea that the TARDIS the Doctor stole from the repair shop was the TARDIS his hidden incarnations used, that means the TARDIS could’ve deliberately taken on it’s future Police Box shape in Fugitive of the Judoon, which makes a lot of sense as that shape means something to the 13th Doctor, who dug up the Fugitive Doctor’s TARDIS.
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I think her placement should remain ambiguous, amongst other things because I personally like to think of her as either pre-Hartnell or Season 6B depending on the context.
When viewing her as part of the Thirteenth Doctor’s era and the Timeless Child story arc, she’s definitely pre-Hartnell to me, because it makes the most thematic sense (especially considering Flux). First, she realises there’s a past incarnation of her that she doesn’t know about and who’s a fugitive from the Time Lords (Fugitive of the Judoon). Then she learns that she’s a lot more about her own history that she doesn’t know, and that she was there at the very beginning of Time Lord history, with a lot of shady stuff going on (The Timeless Children). After that, she still knows who she is in that moment, who she’s SUPPOSED to be as the Doctor, and that allows her to stand as herself against immediate threats (The Timeless Children, Revolution of the Daleks), but she’s still freaked out about all the stuff she doesn’t know about herself (Flux). What is it exactly that she did as an agent for Division? Could she live with herself if, in the past, she had been just as terrible as Rassilon, Omega or Tecteun, given that those were her contemporaries and she was apparently working for Division back then? Who even are Division? And she gets somewhat of an answer through the little that Karvinista is able to tell her, through her interactions with Swarm and Azure and, most importantly, through seeing herself in the Time-Storm (Once, Upon Time). Seeing herself being exactly the same Doctor that she is now, facing the same problem the same way, is enough for her to be convinced that she truly has always been herself, that there isn’t a secret past evil or morally bankrupt verion of her for who’se actions she needs to atone. After that she gets teased further with more info about Division and about her, but that moment is when she decides she knows herself well enough, and the reason she decides to throw the pocket watch into the centre of the TARDIS. That, for me, only works if we consider the Fugitive Doctor to really be the answet to “who was the Doctor in their pre-Hartnell incarnations”.
But, once we leave Thirteen’s era behind and look at the Whoniverse as a whole, then the fact that she’s an agent for the Time Lords who gets her mind wiped… that’s Season 6B, between Troughton and Pertwee. It just fits too well.
So my answer is: it could be both, and it should never be specified.
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Seems odd to me to go from the second Doctor using a sonic screwdriver to Fugitive not recognising it to the third Doctor extensively using it to me, though…
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