When the BBC aired a special, colorized edit ofThe Daleks to celebrateDoctor Whos 60th anniversary last year, aside from the actual edit down to a shortened runtime, the serial was largely left as-is, aside from a cute trailer at the end to tease the next 60 years of adventures in time and space. With its second takethis time on Patrick Troughtons iconic exit as the Second Doctor in The War Gamesthings got very different. Very different. Airing on BBC 4 in the UK earlier this week, the special colorized TV movie take onDoctor Whos final black-and-white storytaking a four-hour saga and trimming it down to just 90 minutestook the opportunity to weave in answers to questions Who fans have had for years at this point, creating something of an insane checklist of pointed references and acknowledgements to the shows future that are now, in some ways, definitive parts of Doctor Whos ever-evolving continuity. Heres three of the biggest tweaks and changes added to the proceedings. The War Chief and the Master BBC Arguably the biggest theory played with, The War Games in color made in particular one connection between the original story andDoctor Whos immediate future much more explicit: that one of the serials major antagonists, the War Chief, was none other than an incarnation of the Master himself. Throughout the War Chiefs appearances in the colorization, the newly updated soundtrack incorporated contemporary Who composer Murray Golds iconic Master Vainglorious themeand when the War Chief is executed by the Time Lords upon their arrival in the climax of The War Games, you can even briefly hear the telltale sound of Doctor Whos modern regeneration SFX as his body is being dragged away. While it was always established in the original story that the War Chief was a renegade Time Lord, for years ancillary material and novelizations have bandied back and forth over the idea that he is an early incarnation of the Time Lord that would eventually take on the mantle of Master (the implication now being that he did so initially with Roger Delgados incarnation of the character). Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, who wrote The War Games, went on to note in their own Doctor Who Target episode novelizations that the Master and the Doctor were the only renegade Time Lords to ever flee Gallifrey with their own TARDIS, implying that the War Chief and the Master were, indeed, one and the same. But later original novels as part of the Virgin New Adventures books would also treat the War Chief as a distinct character, one who survived the events of The War Games and would eventually regenerate into different incarnations, as would Big Finish audio dramas that established earlier incarnations of the Master separate from the War Chief.The Trial and the Faces of the Doctor BBC Once particularly random alteration in the climax of the story comes during the Time Lords trial of the Doctor. After concluding in agreement with the Doctor that there were many perils across the universe worth confronting in spite of their non-intervention policies (embellished here from the original with extra clips from other Doctor Who stories), the Time Lords still choose to punish the Doctor with exile on Earth and a forced regeneration, offering the Doctor several choices of potential visages. However, in the colorization, these facesall of which the Doctor still refuses for various reasonsare no longer just random unknown identities. Instead, the Doctor is offered the chance to regenerate into the faces of several of their future incarnations beyond the third Doctor, as the Time Lords project images that we know are in fact the Twelfth (rejected as too old), Tenth (too skinny), Thirteenth (too young), and Eleventh (simply described as that wont do at all!) Doctors. This one is a particularly weird addition, considering there wasnt really any particularly theorization or desire that these faces had a particular connection to the Doctor beyond the Time Lords offering them up to him in the moment. Its not likeDoctor Who hasnt explored the idea of the Doctor having incarnations beyond ones we were already familiar withweve had plenty of examples from the infamous faces glimpsed in The Brains of Morbius to contemporary Whos addition of incarnations like John Hurts War Doctor between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors, or Jo Martins Fugitive Doctor and other incarnations prior to William Hartnells Doctor. But its a funny joke in the moment that the Doctor has little desire to have any of several faces we know they eventually end up with later on in life.The Second Doctors Regeneration (and UNIT Dating) BBC The War Games colorization climaxes with an almost completely new addition, using rotoscoped footage of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwees Doctors to establish the actual moment of the second Doctors regeneration. Here, after the trippy sequence of the Doctors face contorting across a shadowy void from the original serial, the action cuts to inside the TARDIS, where, sitting in a chair as he hears flashes of his departed companions, the Doctor braces himself as he glows with regenerative energy, transforming into his next incarnation. As we recently covered, the second Doctors off-screen regeneration has been covered in other ancillary material outside of the show itself (no Time Lord-sanctioned scarecrow execution squads this time, alas), but now the moment itself has been brought in line with depictions of regeneration as seen in Doctor Whos modern era, for better or worse. But that canonization isnt the only fannish nod the new scene makes. As the newly regenerated Doctor checks to seewhen exactly hes landedbefore we cut to Pertwees first scene from Spearhead From Space, collapsing out of the TARDIS into the Oxley Woodsthe TARDIS displays briefly flicker back and forth between the years 1970 and 1980. This in and of itself is a nod towards another long-running Doctor Who fan theory, the so-called UNIT Dating Controversy. Although many of the Third Doctors adventures appear to be contemporary to their broadcast in the early 1970s, two mentions of dates surrounding the career of one of his closest allies, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewartthe 1968 Second Doctor story The Invasion, which establishes the existence of UNIT and promoted Lethbridge-Stewart to his famous rank of Brigadier, which is set around 1979; and the 1983 Fifth Doctor story Mawdryn Undead, which states that Lethbridge-Stewart retired from UNIT in 1976throw continuity into disarray.Theres been several attempts to at least acknowledge, if not exactly fix, the perceived continuity error over the years across both the TV show itself as well as other tie-in media (Doctor Who at the time, for the most part, largely treated the Third Doctors time on Earth as taking place in a similar timeframe to its broadcast), so while this isnt the first time theres been nods on-screen to the controversy, its the first time in a while weve seen it explicitly addressed, even if the answer is, hilariously, to have the TARDIS throw its metaphorical hands up in confusion. What Do These Changes Mean forDoctor Who? At least in the case of both stories adapted so far so far, the colorizations are not the only way to experience these serialsboth the original versions of The Daleks and The War Games are available on physical media and streaming at this point, so despite the confirmations this latest colorization has brought with it, anyone who wants to see the original stories sans-embellishment can do so.While on the surface a lot of these changes and retcons are minor in the grand scheme of things, the fact that the scope of these colorizations has quickly grown between The Daleks and The War Games beyond cosmetic embellishment and condensation paints an intriguing picture for what future colorizations could tweak, as each new colorization brings with it an attempt to make even more connections acrossDoctor Whos vast, and often contradictory, continuity. Just what stories could come nextand what changes could come with themremains to be seen. As always with Doctor Who, time will tell. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.