My video on the issue of the BBC's support of Transphobia: ua-cam.com/video/aN4uc0HZrWE/v-deo.html My video on the BBC's response to complaints of its reporting: ua-cam.com/video/skh81N5lcYY/v-deo.html My short on why I'll continue to put up the note at the front of these: ua-cam.com/users/shortsHpwwzjzFXiE Shaun's 1st video, which includes some additional confirmed information: ua-cam.com/video/b4buJMMiwcg/v-deo.html Shaun’s 2nd video, which follows how the BBC is trying to dodge accountability for all of this: ua-cam.com/video/qfjTG6SVjmQ/v-deo.html Shaun’s 3rd video, following him escalating his complaints: ua-cam.com/video/fRn1UZ4fhdE/v-deo.html Shaun's 4th video, covering the BBC's response: ua-cam.com/video/3F7GW7Ro4OQ/v-deo.html Laura Kate Dale's protest speech outside the BBC offices: ua-cam.com/video/hBjGnWkwAjI/v-deo.html
While I don't hate the idea of The Doctor having lives before Hartnell, I don't like the way the Timeless Child twist was handled. Given how the twist was treated as a game changer for The Doctor but then ignored in Whitaker's final story, it created more story plot holes about The Doctor then it resolved. It also negated the significance of Whittaker being the 1st female Doctor since Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor came before Whittaker. If anything The Timeless Child would have been a more interesting twist with The Master instead of with The Doctor.
e always thought, if they were going to do this, it should have been the Master. It explains his madness. His running away. His hatred of the system and Timelords aside from the one who wasn’t directly involved. It makes waaaay more sense for it to be the Master. Plus you can preserve the Doctor’s agency.
It would also add further weight to the Master's long-running goal of acquiring additional regenerations. It would make it about more than just extending his own life. It would make it about throwing off shackles the Time Lords imposed on him and reclaiming a stolen birthright. It would still be pretty stupid. In the grand scheme of things, the Master shouldn't be any more important the Doctor, but at least it would fit better for Master.
Agreed. Plus it fits right in with the Master having all sorts of superpowers that no other Gallifreyan has demonstrated: continuing to live despite a body literally falling apart, possessing a living person’s body in order to regenerate, surviving disintegration as a liquid snake (and possessing someone _again_ ), shooting energy blasts from his hands and super-jumping,…I’m probably forgetting a couple.
I was expecting it to be both of them. Hence timeless *children*. Children as in 'more than one'. At least in that case we can have the master's anger at Gallifrey be truly personal, and that him telling the Doctor can come off as an attempt to get her to join him in this crusade of revenge against the universe.
**The Master, one of the most untrustworthy and scheming individuals known to the Doctor, shows her Matrix records that are completely devoid of any tangible connection to the Doctor herself and then claims that the Doctor is the person shown in the records** **The Doctor, having nothing to base the Master's claim off of whatsoever** Yes, this thing must be 100% true and I will therefore let it affect me deeply despite there being nothing to suggest what I just saw/heard was in any way factual.
Tom Bakers Doctor entered the matrix at the risk of dying and did not find any past lives. The Master is lying? Is The Doctors mother also lying CC has confused 60 years of Dr Who There is too much evidence that the Doctor is a Time Lord born on Galifrey and William Hartnell was the first and only Doctor until he regenerated
Excellent rant. 14/10. (Yes, that's a David Tennant joke). "That's not mystery, that's packing peanuts!" may be the best single-line assessment of Chibnall's writing I've ever heard.
The way Timeless Child throws the 50th, which was such a triumphant celebration of the show's history whilst still doing something new (and Clara's Impossible Girl arc too, now I think about it), into the fire so Chibnall can fulfil an idea he got watching The Brain of Morbius as a kid makes me feel ill. Thanks for vocalising some of that frustration.
@ThetaSigma1965 because it literally makes the entire result of the 50th pointless. Gallifrey just gets redestroyed anyway so it's a hollow victory. Council of geeks also explains why so I would think if you watched the video you would understand
@@madeleine5561TBF, it was never really about saving the planet, but it's people. And considering all the Master did was attack the planet, most of the Timelords themselves likely survived.. Between the matrix and the fact that The Master appears to have just attacked the planet with conventional weaponry it seems pretty safe to say... And we know this is true because we have seen evidence of timelords still being around since. I mean the very next season we see The Division is still kicking and has a plan to leave the universe...
I really like your point about preferring the Doctor as a bit of a nobody (or alternately, "an idiot"). I don't like the notion of either the Doctor or the Master being smarter or somehow more powerful or important than the rest of the Time Lords. I'd rather see stories where the rest of Time Lord society is mostly indifferent but terrifying when roused - if they finally choose to call you on the carpet, then on the carpet you will be called. And then you spend most of a regeneration tooling around England in a stylish roadster.
What makes the Doctor special is not their abilities but how they use them. They want to help others. The Time Lords don't. It's sort of like Kirk's line from Wrath of Khan about how Spock's soul was the "most human." The Doctor is very much like the best of us.
The Doctor should be special for what they've done and what they do, not who they are. That just gets into Chosen One crap, which is lazy storytelling.
While I don't hate the idea of The Doctor having lives before Hartnell, I don't like the way the Timeless Child twist was handled. Given how the twist was treated as a game changer for The Doctor but then ignored in Whitaker's final story, it created more story plot holes about The Doctor then it resolved. It also negated the significance of Whittaker being the 1st female Doctor since Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor came before Whittaker. If anything The Timeless Child would have been a more interesting twist with The Master instead of with The Doctor.
I don't think it negated the significance of Whittaker at all. Sure, in terms of narrative she isn't the first, but she IS groundbreakingly first in real world time, and the first and currently only to play the role in full capacity whereas Jo Martin's Doctor was functionally little more than a reoccurring character. The historical significance of Whittaker's casting matters far more than the narrative chronology. It's also worth noting that Jo Martin is Black, but her casting doesn't take anything away from the significance of Ncuti Gatwa's recent casting in the lead role either.
i also think her reaction was very out of character. she reacts with dull shock and horror, but the doctor is an explorer first and foremost, i think they would be ecstatic to learn they had so many new selves to rediscover and learn about, even if they might be upset that these past lives were kept from them.
OMG! Thank you for pointing out the cruelty of this era! And the Doctor is cruel, too. She deliberately keeps every single companion at arm’s length (hell, 35 foot pole length), none of them even know about what actually happened with the Timeless Child story except for Ryan in what could be looked at as a manipulative tactic by the Doctor to keep him traveling with her, and she’s downright abusive to Yaz throughout the entire last series and specials. I was partly hoping that we’d get a scene in Power of the Doctor where Yaz comes to realize this and decides makes a hard “eff this, I’m outta here” statement. And I’m a Thasmin shipper. But no. I don’t even think that Chibnall even realizes that he’s written the era in that way. In every interview and commentary with him, he makes it sound like they’re all one happy family, even to the point of putting in the whole “the REAL power of the Doctor is the friends she’s made” in 13’s final episode. It’s unbelievable. My god this video was satisfying to watch
Let's also not forget the utter devastation in the wake of the Flux, is never addressed in a single subsequent episode. A one off line is given by Dan that the Doctor "saved" the universe. Except nothing save Earth is shown to still be in one piece by the stories conclusion.
What's more annoying is that in the final scene in Flux, it seems like the Doctor has actually learned her lesson, and is finally going to let Yaz in and tell her the truth about everything. And then, in the very next episode, she goes right back to being evasive and dismissive, and the final episode actually confirms that the Doctor never told Yaz anything! Character development? What's that?
@@christianwise637 Character development would be another facet of storytelling Chibnall is oblivious to. Like callously glossing over how the Lupari were wiped out by the Sontarans.
@@pious83 While there are a lot of questionable character decisions, I don't think the Lupari issue is necessarily one of them. That struck me as something more along the lines of being far too dark to explore more on-screen than they did.
@@BlueSparxLPs To me, the complete lack of dramatic weight given to Karvanista being informed and the cold reaction of the Doctor. That is worse from a writing perspective than the genocide itself.
I'm still convinced that, if anyone is the Timeless Child, it's the Master. Otherwise, I was just confused why we never got any resolution for the Brendan plot.
It would make a lot more sense. The Master could be mad and furious at the time lords. Both for that and the drums. It would make his genocide so much sweeter
18:34 yep, cruel is a good way to describe Chibnal’s era. It’s what frustrated me about Rosa - the first episode where the new Doctor has her TARDIS and her (POC) companion’s first full fledged adventure with her is to the Jim Crow South. The Doctor should never be in those types of situations where they literally can’t save the day. The Doctor has landed on alien planets with a similar oppressive society and they usually free the oppressed. They don’t say “Oh, well the bad guys will eventually lose in a few decades.”
It's not entirely comparable but looking at that episode next to Planet of the Ood, it's hard to believe that's the same timelord. I mean I know Donna kinda spearheaded that episode but still
Perfect summation, Vera! And whilst I agree that this whole sorry (series of) episode(s) should be ignored, should RTD - or anyone - wish to put a lid on it and bury it a thousand feet deep, they could do it with just a couple of lines of dialogue... Doctor (to some future Rassilon): "You survived? All of you - Gallifrey, the Time Lords... How? I saw you destroyed - the Master showed me the Matrix. All of it... what you did to me, what _he_ did to _you_ ... Why would he lie?" Rassilon: "He didn't _lie_ , Doctor. D'you genuinely think that we couldn't control the Matrix? That we couldn't implant whatever we wanted in it? The Master is childishly easy to manipulate. He saw what we wanted him to see. He believed what we _wanted_ him to believe. What better way to get him out of our hair - make him believe he'd destroyed us, finally?" etc etc Or something like that.
You seem to be suggesting that even the Doctor's past would be retconned as false in this scenario, but that can't be the case because then you also have to explain Tecteun's appearance in Flux where the Doctor outright asks her if it's all true and she plainly confirms it. Then there's also the fob watch containing her past memories, and the existence of the Fugitive Doctor, the enemies in The Ghost Monument being able to see her past as The Timeless Child, and the Doctor's own flashbacks to herself being discovered as a child. Add the survival of Gallifrey as a whole on top of this, and this whole thing would either need an entire episode or two to resolve dedicated to it or it would be a very out-of-place insert into a loosely-related episode. Either way, I don't think it should be retconned. If they ever touch on this again, I think it should be explored more deeply. The Timeless Child plot has done absolutely nothing good nor bad for the series. It simply exists as a concept that nothing has been done with, and until something is actually done to make me actually care that it happened at all I'll remain indifferent on it.
@@BlueSparxLPs You could conceivably come up with some ludicrously over-complicated scenario (well hello there Mr Chibnall!) whereby it turns out EVERYONE involved in this sorry charade has had their memories tampered with, just to maintain the illusion, even Tecteun and the Doctor. But then you end up with something sillier (if possibly more streamlined) than the original guff.
@@BlueSparxLPs mostly agree with you. After this episode, I’m pretty sure we could chalk the whole thing up to the Master being the Timeless Child, since all the info we get is through him. Even the whispers in the Ghost Monument don’t “prove” that The Doctor is the Timeless Child, do they? I recall they’re vague enough that they could be explained as either warning The Doctor, or as the psychic rags having been manipulated by The Master or picking up false memories the Master had beamed into the Doctor’s head at some point? Frankly, it would make _so_ much more sense: we’ve already seen the Master do loads of stuff that no other Time Lord (or Gallifreyan) can do, he’s twice on-screen and at least once off-screen been able to keep living despite being out of regenerations, and we’ve never really gotten a satisfactory or unambiguous explanation for why he’s sociopathic and also specifically out to get the Time Lords. (I realize sociopathy doesn’t need an explanation in a real-world context-sometimes people just are. But Doctor Who isn’t exactly hyper-realistic, and sociopathy usually serves a narrative purpose and follows narrative, rather than psychological, logic.) And the Master using his own trauma to inflict trauma on the Doctor by lying (with tech) to make the Doctor _think_ its _their_ trauma? That’s like the most Master thing ever. But then The Flux made that explanation impossible, having independent parties confirm the version of events the Master gave. 😡
The Thirteenth Doctor's passivity throughout this era has always been a massive issue for me, from her refusal to interfere in acts of historical injustice to her actively letting villains get away scot free at the end of the episode. But this episode really takes it to a whole new level - this is the season finale, and I don't think she has any actions that actually impact the trajectory of the story. She gets dragged off to Gallifrey by the Master and then shoved into the exposition machine (as you aptly put it) for the majority of the episode; she's incapable of breaking herself out of said exposition machine without the help of the Fugitive Doctor; she even proves herself to be incapable of resolving the episode's story without someone else coming in to sacrifice themselves in her place. I really don't think Chibnall considered the implications of what he was writing this era, because having the first female Doctor prove herself to be so inept and lacking in agency is honestly a really bad look. As a whole, this episode was the point where I really checked out of Chibnall's era. Prior to this episode, even though I wasn't fully enamoured with it, I was still willing to keep giving it chances. After it though, I still kept watching, but always with a sense of obligation and duty as opposed to actual enjoyment, like I was saying "alright let's get this over with" before watching each new episode. It's a dull meandering mess of an episode that offers no meaningful character moments, no exciting action setpieces, nothing except loads of stupid contradictory pointless lore, which I knew was going to be dominating the rest of this era. Add to that the complete lack of cohesion this episode had with its predecessor and the way it actively discarded major plot points from Moffat's era just so it could spin its own half-baked narrative, and I was left feeling hollow and dejected and thoroughly disappointed with a series I had actually been largely enjoying up to this point
@@ThetaSigma-vu1sk the guy from Spyfall that wasn't The Master comes to mind. To be honest, I think it's less that The Doctor lets them get away and more that Chibnall put them into situations where they could easily come back. (Krasko in the past, Jack Robertson (twice), the rich guy from Ghost Monument)
@@TheGerkuman Jack Robertson was never a villain. He was just an asshole. Same with the guy from Ghost Monument. You saying the Doctor lets villains go and giving them as examples is dumb logic. By this logic, Nine let villains go by letting Henry Van Statten go. Ten let villains go by letting the dad from the Idiot's Lantern go, the racist student from Human Nature, Rickston Slade from Voyage. Want a real example of the Doctor letting villains go? Eleven let the daleks in series 5 go and did nothing to stop them afterwards. He also let Madame Kovarian go in series 6, despite kidnapping his best friends daughter and brainwashing her. Twelve let the Master go in series 10, despite the fact he's the whole reason why Bill was turned into a cyberman. And unless you forgot, Krasko was sent back to the lowest setting on his device by Ryan. He could've been sent back to the Jurassic era and be eaten by dinosaurs or killed by cavemen.
@@ThetaSigma-vu1sk regardless, I think my point that Chibnall hated killing characters in case he wanted to bring them back is well established. Also, I'm not buying the Krasko thing. If they're not dead on screen, they could come back. On a related note, sure, Vinder left that snake guy on the asteroid at the end of time, but there's nothing stopping future writers bringing him back.
100% agree! Prior to The Timeless Child 'reveal,' the Doctor was the thorn in the side of the other Time Lords - that one awkward, black sheep of the family who couldn't stick to The Rules and, once they realised they probably never would or could, decided to split and make their own way in the world. Now they're Cosmic Time Jesus, and it sucks.
I've always likened the Doctor to Gandalf. Like Gandalf, they're part of an ancient and powerful race but they can't be bothered with it and prefer to muck about with the 'lesser' races and as a result are thought of as a disappointment.
If it were up to me I’d still frame this as the Timeless Child being the Master instead of the Doctor, and in this episode the Master is making the Doctor THINK she’s the Timeless Child to torture her while at the same time get some sympathy for what he’s going through. I would make the Fugitive Doctor an early version of the Master, perhaps dating back to when he and the Doctor were friends. I just think it makes more sense for the Timeless Child to be the Master as he has always been weird. He’s been a corpse, a catman, a ghost snake. He just seems to play by different rules, so it makes sense to me that he should be the special one.
I feel like Joe Brennan explained the problem with The timeless child concept the best: that it takes the Doctor's which made the Doctor so relatable away turning them from a random outcast with a dream who ran away from their controlling people to the most important being in the Universe.
Except it doesn't. All the Doctor did was to be the involuntary donor of "regeneration genes" to the Gallifreyans... and they're not the only beings who regenerate (the Minyans and Kastrians do, and the Eternals and Guardians might also have the ability). In actual fact, the Doctor isn't particularly different to other Time Lords, because _every_ Time Lord since Tecteun's intervention has the same "regeneration genes" as the Timeless Child.
Few more things for the pile of unanswered/unaddressed points: - Why don't the companions (to my memory, anyway) react to Gallifrey being a still-burning wasteland? There's no moment after they find the Doctor where they acknowledge or offer comfort over her home being destroyed. - How are the Cyber Masters able to regenerate when they're converted from dead bodies, and it's been made clear in other stories that when a Time Lord dies, then that's it, they're dead, no regeneration. - Not really a fault of this epispde, but the Master explicitly says that regeneration is a 'genetic ability' and River Song was born with the ability to regenerate. Just think about that for a second.
I'm not a defender of this episode and I agree with your first point, but as for the two others, doctor who has never really cared too much about continuity lol
I've thought the same about the third point. Vastra specifically says "You're people developed the ability of regeneration from exposure to the Untempered Schism" as a justification for why River (aka Melody) could have that ability while having 2 human parents. But now apparently it comes from genetic experiments on a single member of a species from another dimensions and there is no other way?
The power of regeneration can be passed genetically or be developed by exposure to the time vortex that the Tardis travels through. At least I hope so. Otherwise, Sweet Home Alabama.
If I were *forced* to write something like The Timeless Children, neither the Doctor nor the Master would be the Child. What if the Master sadistically revealed that the Child is still there, trapped, and the Time Lords have continued to siphon regenerative energy from them for millennia? All the good the Doctor has done has been made possible by the suffering of this innocent person, now what? I'll admit it's just a rough outline of an idea, but introducing a moral dilemma around the ethics of regeneration sounds more interesting to me than what we got.
The coward or killer thing in Parting of the Ways was about killing innocent humans, and the Doctor having grown so much that he didn’t want to do the whole double genocide thing again. As horrible as it is, you could make the argument that it still would have been the least bad option. This time it just comes off as the Doctor herself being scared to die to save the universe, or scared to that her friend, who had just committed genocide, would be collateral damage. And THAT is real cowardice.
Thank you for this rant. Having just sat through Chibnall crash Jodie's Gallifrey One panel half an hour ago and hearing snippets of his panel yesterday, I still cannot get behind so many of his choices as show runner. The timeless children shattered so many different aspects of cannon without having any lasting impact on her era or her character. I wish (if the storyline had to exist at all) that it was anyone other than the Doctor. Let's just have it fall into oblivion and forget it ever happened.
I love the outrage because it is so relatable to me and the people I know tell me I dont need to be that worked up about something thats just a story. Its nice to not feel alone in caring, critiquing, and not being able to "just accept it." Being told to just accept especially when it comes to major inconsistencies and bad writing just makes me feel so much the outsider. Thank you for sharing all this with us.
The sheer rage in this video is what I feel every time I think about this episode... this era wasn't all bad, but this is easily my least favourite episode ever
While I don't mind the doctor being well known to others, my issue is that the doctor shouldnt matter to the universe, outside of their actions. The whole episode was everything people complain about moffat for turned up to 11. Like okay cool she's space Jesus or whatever What does it matter? It doesn't change anything
That’s how I feel, the Doctor should be important because of what they chose to do. Now the Doctor is important just through existing and the entire history of the universe itself is the way it is because without the Doctor the Time Lords could never have become so powerful.
I think that was Vera's point too, of course The Doctor matters to the people/beings who's lives they've affected and their name will have spread across the universe because of their actions...but being some sort of chosen one? No, just no.
There's a potentially fun explanation they could have given for the police box. We know the TARDIS can remember things that haven't happened yet and has somehow archived console rooms that haven't been made yet. A similar thing can happen with the exterior and the earlier Doctor could just explain that it sometimes changes into that shape for some reason like it's preemptively changing into a shape that will be important in its future. Sometimes she just lets it stay like that for a while to get it out of its system.
How to fix the Timeless Child. Step 1: Drop the Cybermen. The new designs were cool, but they should have been in their own story separate from the timelords and the Master. Step 2: Make the Doctor being the Timeless Child a red harring set up by the timelords to protect the real timeless child. Also, don't make the timeless child responsible for regeneration. That conflicts with River Song's origins. Step 3: Profit.
_Alternate_ Step 2: Make the Master the Timeless Child. Someone who has gone to such incredible lengths to prolong his own life. To discover that none of that effort was necessary, would drive him insane. Also addressing the plot hole that is any further regeneration beyond the fate of Missy.
@@pious83 Yes! This! For the Master to discover that Time Lord society and regeneration had been built on something taken from _him_ before he was then ejected from Gallifrey and considered a bad 'un would be the perfect motive for his destruction of them.
Making the Master the timeless child would be better tbh I lowkey hope that when they retcon this whole thing they make the master be the the timeless child
@@jvictor001 That would be one way to go - but as Blue Sparx has pointed out in a comment responding to my earlier post, it would require retconning Tecteun's memory, the memories in the fobwatch, the Fugitive Doctor and the Doctor's own memories. Not that it couldn't be done, but I reckon it would be clunkier than the original, and far clunkier than just pretending it never happened.
I can think of a way to fix the climax with Ko Sharmus dying. Have the choice to die a coward or killer be _taken away_ from the Doctor. In the episode The Poison Sky, the Tenth Doctor threatens to destroy the Sontaran ship, but gives the Sontarans a chance to leave. The Sontarans basically call his bluff, but I truly believe that Ten _would_ have killed himself as well as the Sontarans in order to protect the Earth. But that choice is taken away from him, when Luke Rattigan uses the Sontaran teleporter (Doctor Who REALLY loves teleporters) to take his place. In the episode Eaters of Life, the Twelfth Doctor tries to make the sacrifice play again, by offering to step into the time dilation portal to fight off the light eaters. But again, that choice is taken away when he gets knocked out. Just have Ko Sharmus, like, materialize a TARDIS around the Doctor, then exit the TARDIS and activate the Death Particle. Ko Sharmus appearing out of nowhere to make the sacrifice play instead of the Doctor is a deus ex machina, but it could've WORKED as a deus ex machina if the Doctor had no choice in the matter. The Doctor I know would have refused to let Ko Sharmus take her place. She would've fought for her right to sacrifice herself. That's why the Doctor always needs to be knocked out and/or handcuffed so the supporting character can make the sacrifice instead. Here, it's like the writers took the path of least resistance. The sacrifice play SHOULDN'T be easy.
Thank you! This is the same person technically that wouldn't let wilf die even though he begged him not to sacrifice himself and let him die. The REAL doctor wouldn't have said "OK sounds good you do it" and just left
I rarely comment on videos but this made me laugh out loud (in a good way!) Your “WHYYY” had me in stitches 😂 And you expressed my thoughts about the Timeless Child story perfectly. Thanks for another great video
Thanks for mentioning why Moffat decided to save Gallifrey at 17:13 It bothers me whenever Gallifrey as a planet is conflated not just with the Time Lords but the Time Lord government. It’s like believing all of Earth’s population deserves to die bc of the actions of its ruling governments
How beautiful would it have been. In a very melancholy way. That the timelords did essentially steal the regeneration ability from another being. And this event being a fixed point in time, a doctor meets this being and can't stop the fate from happening. But by learning the stories of the doctor has done with this ability is okay with their own death.
Thank you for acknowledging the children on Gallifrey. It has annoyed and frustrated me that the Master has not faced poetic justice for what he did (off screen no less) to the kids on Gallifrey.
Agreed that the Cartmel Master Plan was always a bad idea, it's a funny thing about the Seven'n'Ace era: what happens on-screen is great, the underlying planned arc is not so great. It was better left as mysterious implications that went nowhere.
12:55 I think in a similar way, the death of Roger Delgado also nullified some of the plans for the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. Which all sounded quite bad in hindsight.
I think in fairness the plan with the Cartmel Masterplan was always to make this stuff subtext but never actually say it for certain. Like, they'd occasionally allude to the Doctor being older or more powerful than we thought but never explictly say how or why. The closest they got to doing that on TV was Ghost Light, which was reworked from Lungbarrow precisely because they didn't want to reveal too much. Chibnall did precisely the opposite, having the plot come out of absolutely nowhere then explaining it in excruciating detail.
@@craigcharlesworth1538 Lungbarrow was awesome! I loved that story when it was finally published. Apart from the Other and Susan, it really works. The House and his cousins and looming and the Doctor being a disappointment to the kithriarch, all of that was lovely. Badger! Innocet, just great stuff. Rework the Other & Susan or leave that bit vague and unmentioned and it would have been amazing to see on TV.
@@TheGerkuman I love the Loom idea, but then I read all the books that led up to that idea too, with the curse of the Pythia and the Sisterhood leaving Gallifrey, and the curse, I loved all of that, was so much more interesting than just making it all Earth-like.
Man, I had forgotten how bad it was as well 😅 I knew it was bad but PHEW. Me and my partner were flabbergasted watching it at the time, just in awe of how much it bungled everything. As fellow not-fans of the "most important person ever" versions of the Doctor, this was a real eye roller.
I disagree that the Fugitive Doctor is pre-Hartnell, for multiple reasons. The main one being, of course, that the TARDIS is in the shape of a Police Box, in which - as you rightly pointed out - it first became stuck in The Cave of Skulls. Q.E.D. With this in mind, the Fugitive can only be between Troughton and Pertwee. There are further examples to support this placement: firstly, the interior of the Fugitive's TARDIS appears to be an amalgam of the Second and Third Doctor's interiors. Secondly, she calls herself The Doctor, a title the character adopted in their first incarnation, as played by William Hartnell. Thirdly, when 'Ruth' fights with Judoon in Gloucester Cathedral, it is shot in a manner that's reminiscent of similar moments in the Third Doctor era, i.e. The Curse of Peladon and The Time Warrior. The inference could be made that this is where the Third Doctor picked up Venusian Aikido; it was part of the training the Fugitive received while enrolled at Division, with 3 retaining some subconscious muscle memory. I've mentioned the 68% battery on 'Ruth's' mobile phone as being a subtle clue pointing towards a 6B placement (68 and 6B looking remarkably similar at first glance), so I shan't reiterate that point too heavily here. However, I will point out that Chris Chibnall himself stated in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine that Jo Martin's incarnation does indeed fit somewhere within the Doctor's first regeneration cycle (Hartnell to Smith, for clarity), although he's reluctant to confirm exactly where. Saying that, there's only really on place she can fit, in all honesty. I'm aware there are potential flies in the ointment regarding a 6B placement, but I'll attempt to address them here: 1) she doesn't recognise the Sonic Screwdriver, despite having used it in their second incarnation. My answer to this is fairly straightforward; she'd only just got her memory back at that point, so she can be forgiven for it slipping her mind temporarily. 2) the Tenth Doctor regenerated twice, at least according to the Eleventh Doctor. However, I suggest that 11 was simply wrong. Having no memory of his Fugitive incarnation, he simply assumed he'd wasted a life, given that he was on his final life at that point. 4) the Fugitive Doctor's clothes are different to the Third Doctor's (which, if we're being honest, weren't identical to Second Doctor's clothes, but that's neither here nor there). I would suggest it's not beyond the wit of Division to change the clothes back before forced regeneration and total mind-wipe. 5) While not mentioned on telly, I know there's a comic book that appears to suggest that the Fugitive is indeed pre-Hartnell. Now, I haven't read said comic, but I have seen a few panels. From these, I think it's ambiguous enough to be dismissable; I certainly think it would be extremely weird to have such a placement confirmed outside the TV show - in an American comic, no less - especially when it contradicts Chibnall's own assertion regarding her placement. Sorry for the long post, but I do think the misplacement of the Fugitive Doctor among certain fans taints their opinion of the era as a whole; or Series 12 onwards, at the very least.
I agree that Jo Martin's Doctor fits best (or only) between Troughton and Pertwee. Not recognising the sonic screwdriver... I've not watched Fugitive of the Judoon again recently, but wasn't she confused by Jodie's Doctor doing the modern "wave it like a magic wand" routine? Pretty sure Troughton's Doctor only used it as a lockpick rather than all the other functions it's gained over the decades so that could well explain that.
The best thing about placing the Fugitive Doctor between 2 and 3 of course is that she's really the only part of this whole storyline that's likely to stick around in fans memory, so by disassociating her from the Timeless Child stuff it makes it all the easier to forget all that ever happened.
@@craigcharlesworth1538 As someone who doesn't have a problem with the Timeless Child concept as presented, that's not a position I'm coming from. However, I think the Fugitive Doctor's legitimacy is clear and is separate from the TC. I certainly don't think it's as big a deal as people seem to think it is.
Something I’ve noticed with Chibbers. To keep The Doctor pristine in her morals, any decisive conflict, violence or plot moving action is usually performed by other characters. It makes Jodie’s Doctor seem weak and ineffective.
My headcannon is that the Timelords continued experimenting on the Timeless Child long after they learned to regenerate, and actually duplicated the Timeless Child in order to get more test subjects. Most of them had their memories erased to keep them placid, something that's repeated as necessary to keep them in their place. This way they became a kind of underclass, although one only the elite of Gallifrey are aware exist as a distinct group, all originally a single person. The Master is another Timeless Child duplicate, although he kept this from the Doctor, so he is basically the same person and the Doctor could easily have ended up like him were things different. This makes the Doctor less special for being the Timeless Child, and also gives the Master more motivation for destroying Gallifrey, while maintaining much of the mystery the Timeless Child reveal was supposed to add to the Doctor.
I could only see the timeless child thing working if the timeless child was revealed to be the master instead of the doctor this wouldn't really break new who canon. It would explain the masters sheer survivability and could explain their madness if they kept getting their mind wiped and staring into the time vortex repeatedly. It could also keep the idiot in a box theme for the doctor being this rebel timelord who actually inspires the master to escape from the timelords and live their own life. Missy is the result of the master finally having closure and accepting there death but them being recalled to galifrey causes them to snap and destroy the place.
12:28 The Cartmel Masterplan was different from what you stated here. Quick summary: Time Lord society was founded by three people - Rassilon, Omega and the Other, whose name had been erased out of the history books by Rassilon. After they liberated Gallifrey from the Cult of Pythia, the followers of the cult cursed the Gallifreyans with infertility, forcing the Gallifreyans to create the Looms as a technological means to procreate. After the Other figured out that it was Rassilon who had been responsible for the apparent death of Omega as the latter was creating the Eye of Harmony, the Other tried to escape and in the end committed suicide by throwing himself into the Looms. Millennia later, his DNA was used to create a new Time Lord - the Doctor. The Doctor had subconscious knowledge of the life of the Other but had no functioning access to it until the Seventh Doctor became Time's Champion. Time being an Eternal that was part of a pantheon of higher beings which had been worshiped by the old Gallifreyans, who on the regular chose Time Lords to act as their champions on the mortal plane. The Master was also revealed to be Death's champion. No the Doctor being older than he was, no the Doctor being an actual founding father of Time Lord society, no the Doctor being the most important being in the universe.
I'll say one good thing about the title: it and the TC concept are respectively named in the plural and singular, which makes it easy to separate them if you need to discuss what you think about other aspects of the episode.
I hate this episode. I hope to God or whatever deity exists that somehow the whole situation with the Timeless Child was all an elaborate lie or a misinterpreted event from some parallel universe. I hope that Gallifrey is restored SOMEHOW in order to make all that the Doctor achieved prior to this arc not have been in vain. I hope that Russell T Davies either redirects the show's narrative as far away from this as possible OR creates a well written explanation for how the Timeless Child was an elaborate lie. I'm rambling because this episode made me so angry. This undoes so much, and yet creates nothing to replace it. It's so lazily written and so catastrophic for the lore and emotional core of the show that I just cannot acknowledge it as canon.
it was implied in flux and the irish cop flashbacks that the reason they wiped her memory was because she quit division, it does bring up a few contrivances of "why not just kill her or keep a closer eye on her afterwards" but it does at least explain why they did something like that i assume it's easier to keep your wormhole baby around hiding in witness protection in case you need them later?
No, I got that part. But why an Irish cop? Wouldn't data from Earth (a complete no-where of a planet) stick out like a sore thumb on a database of Gallifreyan data? Why disguise it instead of just wiping it for that matter, but seriously the whole "Irish cop" thing is very much a "hand of the author issue." In other words, it's something Chibnall chose to make it a bigger surprise but there's no in-universe reason for anybody involved in the story to have chosen that as the cover.
@@CouncilofGeeks agreed, the irish cop thing was stupid. but there was an explanation of "WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?!?" for wiping their memory in the first place
The funny thing about the Master killing all the Time Lords is that they were more effective than all the billions of daleks in the time war who failed to destroy the Time Lords. The Master single handedly did better than all the daleks.
Chris Chibnall used his time as Show Runner to figuratively piss over everything everyone who wasn't Chris Chibnall has ever done for Doctor Who. From core concepts to specific things, like the entirety of the 50th Anniversary, he's gone out of his way to ruin or undo them. The question I want an answer to is "Why?" Was it just his ego, or was he jealous of what the others had done? Or both?
The best thing they could do in the new series is to retcon this whole thing- it was the master manipulating the Doctor and tricking them or something.
I'm less bothered about the idea, for me the biggest issue with this story is lack of originality or commitment to the idea, it's clear it was never the plan to have it go anywhere, just to be an arc like every other modern season that doesn't go anywhere much like the Hybrid or the Impossible Girl. Ironically these game changing reveals about the status quo have happened so often, they themselves are just part of the status quo. In terms of the episodes, it's a bunch of random strands that don't come together. If I was writing this, I'd have the Fugitive Doctor be a future incarnation from a potential darkest timeline where Ashad won and the Cyberlords are the ones who destroyed Gallifrey, making them the Timeless Children tying everything together. So instead of Koshamus being the one who sacrifices themselves, it's the Fugitive making up for running away from the war. Plus it gave future showrunners to recast Jo Martin but without the pressure of writing her the same as Chibnall.
Something I've been thinking about after rewatching Clever Dick Films' (CDF) Doctor Who Era documentaries is this. When covering the costume of the 6th Doctor, CDF stated that Peter Davison (5th Doctor) said he thought the loud and flamboyant coat was in part due to John Nathan Turner (The then man in charge of the show) trying to put himself in the show - or to put a part of himself in the Doctor as I translated it. Fast forward to Chibnall. I'm pretty sure he said the fact he was adopted was part of what fuelled the Timeless Child storyline? But rather than apply this adoption or orphaned background story to a companion (Which could have been interesting) he does it with the Doctor, who he probably idolised and wanted to be in someway. I don't mean the 13th Doctor specifically, but just the character in general. So maybe that's why he did all this and ultimately was content with what he did, because he got what he wanted. He turned the Doctor into him. Anyone else think this makes sense?
16:20 - 20:10 This whole section about the Master's offscreen genocide and the unnecessary cruelty of the Chibnall era is so cathartic. 21:25 - 23:15 And this section is hilarious. If Series 13 didn't exist, that line from the Master about transmitting the memories would just be more evidence that he's seriously gaslighting Thirteen.
i find it baffling when people compare this to hell bent. hate the reveals or don't, this is simply an episode of incredibly poor quality. the writing and directing and acting and cinematography in hell bent ain't the thing that divides people about hell bent. sometimes within the doctor who fandom I'm confused by how far removed people get from analysing the content critically. not talking about you, vera! loved your take on the episode-and your reviews in general. your comment just ignited a flame in me that is always there.
Does anyone else feel that it’s only now the Chibnall era has finished that real Whovians can be free to give their honest opinion. Previously we had to defend the series, in spite of its shortcomings, because of the hateful, misogynistic campaign waged by people like Nerdrotic. They deliberately split the fandom; to them it was their way or you were a “Jodie-bot”. The sad truth is, that although their reasoning was wrong, downright bigoted, some of their criticisms about the writing and the Doctor’s mischaracterisation were correct. But true Whovians couldn’t acknowledge that at the time. The division created by the hate meant we had to stick up for our beleaguered program, especially at a recognised time of weakness. But now it’s over, and we can separate the haters from the criticism, we have to admit that some of what they said was true 😢
Referring to the people who didn't like the show for the right reasons as 'real whovians' comes off badly to me, unless you're including the people who like it or are mixed about it in the true whovian category too, and it's the nerdrotics of the world that you're saying are the fake fans.
@@TheGerkuman You’re absolutely right; I did consider going in to edit out the ‘real’ part. By that, I meant basically anyone who wasn’t a ‘nerdrotic type’ but I accept that in using that wording I’m being divisive also.
I'm not sure if this is what Chibnall had in mind, but this Master's self-hatred makes sense given the context of how his previous incarnation(s) died. He presumably comes after Missy in the TV canon, and she was betrayed and killed by themself for trying to be good. According to the EU, he comes after the Lumiat, who was also betrayed and killed by themself for the same reason. I can see how the Master would've relapsed back to his evil ways, this time filled with self-hatred, in either timeline.
My thing about the Doctor not mattering is that while that might have once been true, they did both start and end the Time War which raged across all time and much of space.
For me, the reason I hate The Timeless Children is for more of a meta/realworld reason than for its story (stupid though that story is). I hate it because it reeks so heavily of being a Chris Chibnall vanity project. It feels like he decided "I'm going to leave my own indelible mark on Doctor Who" and chose to do so by completely rewriting the Doctor's origins, so that he could say "Look, everyone! I rewrote Doctor Who." So he rewrites the Doctor's history, adds in a whole raft of generations that we've never met, never heard of and know nothing about. He rewrites the origins of Gallifrey society and time travel, rewrites the whole concept of regeneration, rewrites the Master's motivation for opposing the Doctor and - just for good measure - he completely wipes out Gallifrey (literally every living atom of it). That way, future writers under his tenure have to follow Chibnall's vision of what Doctor Who now is. Now I know that every show runner wants writers to adhere to their vision for the show, but never have we had one who attempts to so fundamentally rewrite the show. It smacks of vanity, it smacks of conceit, it smacks of a lack of humility by the showrunner and it's such a disrespectful, bullshit thing to do to a seminal TV series that has been around for so long before Chibnall got his hands on it. I really hope that this story is never acknowledged again in Doctor Who history and it just ends up being the same sort of diversionary cul-de-sac as the "half human" references - a strange little curiousity that has people thinking "well that clearly didn't work".
Wait a minute Vera - just for my own clarification - what Chibnall said is that basically the Doctor is the Fons et Origo of the Timelords. So they (the Doctor) is at least 10million years old? (Trial of a Timelord)
In my head, the Fugitive Doctor exists between 2 and 3. Troughton's Doctor found out about the Timeless Child (NOT the Doctor; possibly the Master) whilst working for the Time Lords post-War-Games, Two-Doctors-style, tried to help them escape, regenerated into Jo Martin, then went on the run, and was eventually caught by the Time Lords, memory wiped + forcibly regenerated into Pertwee. Would even possibly offer an explanation then for why the Master followed him to Earth.
14:36 To further that point, addressing the elephant in the room. The Master destroyed Gallifrey. *While at the same time* killed every single Time Lord. Yet also did so in such a manner that they didn't simply regenerate or permanently expire????? This further goes to my idea (and the one I will champion forever) this character should have been Omega, _not_ the Master. Then there wouldn't have been a question as to "how" he was able to achieve any of this destruction. Because Omega had the ability to do this, without suspension of disbelief.
I agree with you on everything u say This not something I spotted, but once you hear it can't be undone. Tektaum is a Child Killer" when she starts her experiments into regeneration she has no idea how many times the regeneration works, she's a Child Killer doing it on purpose again and again and again and again. Keep shining keep ranting.
"Poorly Handled" sums up nearly everything Chibnall has ever done in Doctor Who. Even when he wasn't the show-runner, the majority of the scripts he did for Doctor Who were utter shit because he seems to "just throw in stuff he finds exciting for the sheer hell of it".
Love it! Great video 😁. You might be interested to know the original plan for the Five Doctors was to get Robert Holmes to write it. The plot? The Master teams up with the Cybermen to kidnap the Doctor and use the Doctor's innate genetics to turn the Cybermen into "CyberLords". Seems a bit familiar... In the end Holmes couldn't get it work so they got Terrance Dicks instead. "My Doctor" was McCoy and so I have a lot of sympathy for the so-called Cartmel Masterplan. But I don't think it should have ever gone to screen. Better as a weird undercurrent than explicit. I also saw a great comment on YT which said the whole Timeless Child could actually be Susan. That's one retcon I could get behind. Totally agree with all the rest of your points. The problem with this episode is that it half remembers what happened in both the recent and distant past of the series and then rewrites it with all the subtlety of someone touching up the Sistine Chapel roof with a 6" brush and a tin of emulsion.
20:05 Not fully through yet, so this may be brought up later, but what about Missys whole arc? That was an interesting character plot, Missys internal debate and ultimately deciding, “Yeah, I’ll go with the Doctor.” AND THEN DYING/REGENERATING FOR IT. All tossed! Yeah, she wasn’t good, I’m not saying she was good. But she at least seemed to be trying to give herself limits(the whole Monk thing when she was in the jail, her version of good Vs the Doctors). Mean while this master just chucked it out the window and burnt its corpse, by killing all the children.
So, I have two different answers that work for me to reconcile this. The first is: we don't know for sure that Dawan comes after Missy. We don't see her regenerate and it's fully possible that he's what Simm (or indeed another incarnation entirely) regenerated into which would set him earlier in the Master's own timeline, even though the Doctor is encountering the incarnations out of order. The second is to deal with the possibility that he does come after Missy. A big revelation for me with this particular master came right at the end of Power of the Doctor when his taking over the Doctor's body is reversed. He says "Don't let me go back to being me." This clued me in on something that I watched for on my rewatch of the 13th Doctor's era and I think holds up really well: this incarnation of the Master absolutely hates himself. That's honestly kind of new. Self loathing hasn't been much of a thing for the Master before this, but it's really evident in Dawan. And if he comes after Missy and this incarnation couldn't stop himself from sliding back into his own worst behaviors... well, I don't know if you've ever beaten yourself up for doing something you've sworn you wouldn't do again, but imagine that to like the 23rd power. That's my read on him anyway.
The thing is that there was never any point to this. It would have just introduced a new race of Not Time Lords that had no reason to not be the Time Lords
They should have made the timeless child an overarcing villain who wants revenge against the timelords for taking their regeneration or something like that
The best explanation of why the TARDIS is a police box pre-Hartnell is that the TARDIS did it deliberately. Either it wanted Thirteen to recognize it, or it was confused by her presence.
It could definitely work, but not with Chibnall writing her. Getting the right actress is key as well; don't get someone vanilla and make them 'act quirky,' get an actress we already know can do quirky and let them play with that. Two possibles: Helena Bonham-Carter or Miranda Hart. Tilda Swinton would be a good fit too.
@@writerinprogress Agreed, although I find Miranda Hart a fairly limited actress. If I may, I'll swap her for my own wild-card suggestion: Aisling Bea. We've already seen her in "Eve of the Daleks", but - as we know - it wouldn't be the first time that a supporting actor returned in the lead role.
If you're going to rewrite the Doctor Who mythos in one story, be Robert Holmes, who can do it with style and humour in an exciting and well made story. Don't be Chris Chibnall, who can't.
If I may, I ponder if you ever did a video regarding the nature of showrunners in the sense of changing hands and how... opinions on what's best for the show can be whiplash to say the least.
When you said that it would be more interesting if the child had just been some random child from another dimension the time lords found and tortured to get regeneration and time travel powers, I immediately thought "Yesssss that's so much more story shaped." It took another minute to realize that would be Dr. Who doing "The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas" but that's a very Dr. Who-shaped story. It's so much angst, and I can see so clearly how the Doctor would be so much more enraged by this child being a regular person while none of the other time lords would care, or would think they at least gave this nobody a great purpose even at a terrible cost. But the doctor would scoff at the "big picture", she'd just see a child.
Here's how I would redo the Timeless Child if I could Ok when Introducing the Ruth Doctor, don't use the Police Box TARDIS and don't have Ruth introduce herself as the Doctor, have her say that she's part of Timelord Black Op, have the Doctor say "Never heard of you " Ruth responds with "Wouldn't be very good at our job if you did. When the Doctor introduces herself as the Doctor have Ruth respond with "Who?" The Doctor is taken aback, she's never encountered a Timelord who's never heard of the Doctor. Have the episode play out roughly the same with the Doctor's idealism clashing with Ruth's ruthlessness but the two develop a begrudging respect for one another. Have the episode end with the Doctor asking for Ruth's name since she's never met a Timelord who's never heard of the Doctor. Ruth whispers her name into the Doctors ear, the Doctor face turns white, her eyes widen . After Ruth leaves one of the companions asks the Doctor who was Ruth and the Doctor replies "She's me". The Thing that Ruth had whispered was their true name. Ok next cut to the Cybermen story, have them be defeated in their episodes but keep the Cyberium. The Master appears out of the Portal and tells the Doctor to come with them and bring the Cyberium. Here's where the Master reveals two big reveals. The First is the Origin of the Timeless Child. Tecteun was a scientist and a supporter of Rassilon who after the disappearance of Omega was assigned to study the Untempered Schism to help perfect the Timelords knowledge of Time Travel while Rassilon worked to consolidate his power. During an experiment something emerged from the Schism, a baby, from their the Story plays out fairly similarly, the Child could regenerate, Tecteun and Rassilon found a way to steal the regeneration power for themselves but found that Timelords could only Regenerate 12 times naturally. Rassilon wanting Immortality for himself and his chosen followers built a machine to tap into the source of regeneration itself ,the Child, so rather than use up their own regenerations they would tap into the Child's regenerations causing the Child to feel the pain of regeneration. This is also how Rassilon is able to grant new regenerations as he sees fit. He creates a pocket dimension inside the Untempered Schism and keeps the Child in it connected to the Regeneration siphoning machine which links the Child to Timelords DNA across time and Space. Now the second Reveal, Hartnell was not the first Incarnation of the Time Lord we call the Doctor, before Hartnell, they weren't called the Doctor, their their past life their were Rassilon right hand and top enforcer , any threat to Time Lord or Rassilons rule they would take care of . However Ruth was the last of the their Incarnations and wanted a new Regeneration cycle. The Master reveals he found out this information and having been subjected to Rassilon inhumane treatment wants to help "End the child's misery " . He destroyed Gallifrey but admits that a good few of the Timelords survived and escaped including Rassilon so he needs the Cyberium as its the only other AI advanced enough to hack the Timelords Mainframe and access the pocket dimension holding the Timeless Child . The Doctor passes out from sheer shock and she enters her mind where she walks through an endless void and sees Statues of all the Past Doctors, she walks past all of them giving them each a look, eventually reaching Hartnell and saying "we've certainly come a long way ah old man " she looks into the distance and sees 12 figures covered in shadows with a 13th figure approaching her, its Ruth, she reveals that the Truth. She and her passed Regenerations did serve Rassilon because they believed his lies and believed they were doing the right thing. When the time came for Ruth to get a new regeneration cycle Rassilon trusting her revealed the Child to her, saying that she would be one of his chosen immortal Timelords. However Ruth was disgusted by what Rassilon was doing and tried to free the Child. While trying to rescue the Child , the Child ask them who they are and Ruth replies "I'm going to make things Better". However before she can free the Child she is captured and sentenced to Death However Ruth counters by saying Rassilon still owes her a new Regeneration cycle. So Rassilon decides to do both and have her reset, erasing her memories and regeneration cycle. Her last thoughts before she's reset and turned into the baby that would become William Hartnell are her own words "I'm going to make things Better" and 13's own "I'm the Doctor " . This shows why they chose the name the Doctor, they want to be the person who makes things better. The Doctor asks Ruth why the other Figures don't approach her as she's dying to meet them. Ruth reveals they're ashamed, they see the person they became and they know the person they were and believe they are unworthy . The Doctor reassures Ruth that she and any of her past versions are just as worthy of being called the Doctor as she is. The Doctor, Ruth and Shadow Figures all hug and reconciles.Waking up from her dream she joins the Master in his plan to help the Child. Once they make it into the Pocket Dimension the Master reveals what his plan is, he does want to end the Child's suffering but do so by absorbing all its regenerations, killing it and making himself immortal, his argument being that even if they free the Child its still traumatised from its experience and will never be free of its pain. As the Master starts to absorb Regenerations The Doctor manages to stop the Master and sends him into the Untempered Schism where he can be just thrown out in some random location for a Later Storyline with this you can always ensure the Master returns since the Number of regenerations he stole is never clarified . The Doctor in turn releases the Child who recognises the Doctor from all those years ago. The Doctor apologises for failing to save them and the Child Forgives the Doctor and before disappearing into the Untempered Schism gifts the Doctor with an undisclosed amount of regenerations thus ensure the Doctor can keep going on . What do you all think
21:07 the Time Lords have access to time travel so it’s possible that the Doctor is not literally billions of years old but Chibnall doesn’t tie that loop up. The story arc doesn’t address why a sociopathic Tectuen would keep the Doctor around once she cracked the regeneration code. There is no link between the child’s regenerative ability and the Doctor as a superheroic type!
I mean why *wouldn't* Tecteun keep the Doctor around after cracking the regeneration code? She's a child from another universe. Who knows what other qualities or powers she might have that Tecteun could study?
I'm guessing CoSharmas doesn't question where his people went because there's no one to ask except maybe The Master. For the most part the people meant nothing to the master so probably wouldn't care less where they went so long as it wasn't Gallefrey. I think JayExci addressed the question of why The Timelords lied in the 5 hour essay but it's been a while since I saw it. Stubagful summarised this episode as "The Master gave a Powerpoint presentation which ended with you are adopted". When it first aired I did hope it would turn out The Master lied but then her mother showed up in Flux. I agree Moffat had already resolved the whole regeneration thing. I also agree the previous episode wasn't edited properly. The whole death particle thing apparently didn't work because nearly everyone showed up in The Power Of The Doctor. For The Jadoon to appear, all I can think of is Chipnall suddenly remembered he needed a cliff hanger for Revolution Of The Daleks. Although it wouldn't make sense from a story perspective it does make sense from a filming perspective. They knew they already had the costumes in storage, and people would be able to recognise them in the last 10 minutes with little explanation.
Here's how much this episode missed for me: before watching this video, I'd completely forgotten what happened to Ashad and just assumed he was a loose end. And even after watching it, I still have no memory of actually seeing it in the episode.
Honestly, my biggest problem with the Timeless Child that I haven't seen _ANYBODY_ talk about -- though I know it's unpopular -- is that it erases the possibility the Doctor is half-human. Yeah, I know, that concept is "objectively bad, and you're stupid if you like it!!" I guess I'm stupid then. Honestly, the reason I loved that twist when it was revealed is because, as a mixed-race fan, it gave the Doctor more of a marginalized status I could relate to. Like, people can forget the Doctor was originally a political refugee fleeing to exile on Earth when the show started, and that marginalized status was slowly lost over the course of the series. I liked the half-human concept, because as a mixed-race person it allowed me to relate to and look up to him even more as someone I had something in common with (and I suspect that was also true of other mixed-race fans). Honestly, what always bothered me about the backlash to that idea is that the whole criticism about why it "doesn't work" is... like, just that it makes him mixed race. That's it. Just him being mixed-race. Like, I have never heard a single criticism of that idea that boiled down to a narrative or storytelling issue, and solely boiled down to the Doctor _SIMPLY BEING MIXED RACE._ That always bothered me, as if it was like the Doctor being a "genetically non-pure" being wasn't acceptable. And now that concept is gone. Like, in a world where he's the Timeless Child, that implied backstory now can't have happened. So the show has now gone and taken away that beautiful idea that allowed me, and potentially other mixed-race fans, to relate to him on a personal level. And honestly, taking that away... yeah, honestly, that's an actual thing that I think "ruins" the character, at least for a certain demographic of fans. Like, Doctor Who has always been about a "yes and" approach to adding new concepts, not taking old concepts away. So here I not only feel Chibnall disrespected a previous writers work by saying it "doesn't count," I actually think he carelessly ruined a certain amount of bare-minimum allegorical representation for some fans. At least I still have Spock, I guess. Just not my favorite character of all time. EDIT: also, to clarify in terms of the Cartmel masterplan... what many people don't understand is that _Cartmel was never going to explicitly reveal that onscreen._ Like, even he knew that was a bad idea. It's kinda like Quentin Tarantino has developed backstories he knows about for his characters, such as how Colonel Raine got his neck scar, but that doesn't mean it needs to be revealed in the plot. Cartmel developed this, so that there would be a "secret show bible" of new things to hint at about his past, but he recognized the _MYSTERY_ was what made it great and never intended to actually explicitly reveal it (just to keep in mind when writing the character). Not to say it wasn't arguably a stupid backstory, as you put it, but therein lies a crucial difference.
On the note of the Boundary, Ko Shamus says, "I've never seen it look like that before," but, if I'm remembering correctly, in earlier dialogue it's established that the Boundary opens up to a new, random place in the universe every time. So, like, Ko Shamus, baby, you've never seen it look the same twice ever. What are you TALKING about? And then for the Boundary to open on Gallifrey when the Doctor is standing there and the Master just happens to be standing on the other side, waiting to jump out like a child hiding behind the door waiting to spook their parents, is just... Why did Chibnall keep DOING that? He did it with Tzim Shah in "TBoRAK" as well, with him being sent to "a random point in the universe," but it just so happened to be next to a pair of super-powered, deeply religious, and incredibly naive beings who would accept him as their god. COINCIDENCE HAS LIMITS, MY GOD. EDIT: On the note of heartlessness and thoughlessness, honestly, this comes down to Chibnall and the writing staff being DEEPLY Neoliberal in a way that the show, at least the revival, never really was. Kerblam!, Arachnids in the UK, Spyfall, Rosa, Orphan 55, even Demons of the Punjab are all deeply Neoliberal episodes, and this trend runs through the entire era. They fulfill their representation quotas, have some Very Important Discussions, and then behave in an extremely cruel way to the most vulnerable and marginalized characters while pretending to add anything of value to the discussion they're pretending to have. That's why they don't care about the children on Gallifrey. It was more important to discuss the Doctor being adopted and her identity than to think for even a second about the implications of what they were doing with the choice to destroy Gallifrey.
I rated _The Timeless Children_ far lower than _Hell Bent_ - and I didn't enjoy _Hell Bent_ at all. I can also think of whole scenes in _Hell Bent_ that were quite good - which is why I merely rated it as "Shit" while _The Timeless Children_ got rated as "Utter Shit"...
I always thought the 12 lives things was short-sighted, but I'm sure no one ever expected the story would hast so long. But, I'm sure there was some simpler way to recon the life limit. To me the Doctor will never be a god, and only just another Gallifreyan, if special in their quirkiness.
On the one hand, I agree: the idea that Doctor Who would last long enough that they’d have to worry about justifying a 14th actor probably sounded like either foolish hubris, or just a future-writers problem. But when the limit was introduced in The Deadly Assassin, the intention was that the other faces we see in Brain of Morbius were also the Doctor, thus making Tom Baker actually the 12th or 13th [I forget, now] incarnation. The idea was to intimate that the Doctor’s continued existence was on the line, that he had either no or only 1 regeneration left. And to make him roughly the “same age” as his rival the Master, who was explicitly at the end of life, with no hope of regeneration-no safety net.
@@natbarmore Ok, good point. I had forgotten about The Deadly Assassin plot, it's been a few years since I last watched the Tom Baker era. Still, it's pretty common in scifi writing to course correct or retcon arcs, so there were basically unlimited ways they could have fixed it without turning the Doctor into a god. I know legally the fans don't own the IP, but we're just as much invested, if not more, than the writers and show-runners.
There was a simpler way to explain it. They already used it. In the 5 Doctors and in Time of the Doctor. You can get special dispensation for extra Artron, extra Lives, infused into you. They even told the Master his would be a complete new cycle of 12. So they always knew it could be extended. However, this does make Borusa's plot for immortality ring a bit hollow given there was already an easier way right there in front of him! 🤣
@@R_SENAL_WHO Why is lazy writing the norm? For all the truly talented script-writers out there, why are there so many poorly written stories in film and tv?
@@DrJaneLuciferian I think it could have a lot to do with things being rushed. There is so much to do, so many wheels moving at once to do something, and everyone expects everyone else to be on the ball too. This is how Starbucks coffee is in Game of Thrones, or a boom mic is clearly visible in Heaven Sent. Mistakes get made by rushing and writers and editors are no exception. They need someone on staff to tell them "NO, this doesn't work, do it again!" but nobody does. I've always thought long running shows needed a Continuity guy who just gets paid to review things for consistency and to point out plot holes that an ordinary editor would miss.
I'm just spitballing here, but what if the episode was the Master finding out about the timless child and he thinks it is the Doctor. The Doctor knows who the Timeless Child is but won't reveal otherwise, so on the Master's side its implied its the Doctor and on the Doctor's side it could be someone else. So it keeps the mystery of the Doctor, doesn't make him/her the centre of the universe but keeps it open ended.
I'm watching series 9-13 for the first time. And just finished this episode. I'm LOVING this review. I watched it when you originally posted it. But now I have the context and it's so much better. The timeless child is a terrible idea. But on even worse it was horribly executed. HORRIBLY. And then there's Ashad's death. Christ. Again I LOVE this.
“Umm.. why is there information about a completely unrelated planet in our Matrix? That’s very weird, we ought’a look into this… ..what the fuck?!” aaaaaand the Timeless Child is exposed instantly. So much for secrecy lol.
I forgot to mention it in my reply, but this is actually one minor point I disagree with her on. The Matrix is the depository of all Time Lord knowledge and all Time Lord Biodata extracts. Therefore it should have data on every planet any Time Lord ever has researched, been to, or even heard about, in it.
@@R_SENAL_WHO it’s more to do with the story of Brendon and him not having anything to do with the Time Lords at all. That would be useless information on the surface which should’ve led to at least one Time Lord finding it weird enough to investigate. But we’re supposed to believe that nobody before the Master did, which is absurd.
@@f-zilla7347 Ok, I can see that, but that's not how it was phrased. I would counter though, that with the vastness of Time Lord knowledge within the Matrix that the Master found it either is kind of absurd. But ya know, Chibnall isn't known for plot devices that stand up to scrutiny.
The only way I ve been able to reconcile this it’s all one big lie from the Master. One HUGE practical joke to wind up the Doctor. Can we all agree to file this with the knowledge from Paul McGann that the Doctor is half human, and just never speak of it again.
I had a random head canony explanation pop in my head, for the TARDIS as a police box prior to Hartnell. That being that perhaps where we assumed the chameleon circuit got stuck due to some kind of fault, the TARDIS actually purposely took the Doctor to the 60’s and assumed the police box appearance and then jammed its own chameleon circuit, either simply to return to its familiar look that it had travelled using with the Doctor (prior to the mind wipe and reset to the first Doctor) or perhaps as a futile way to bring back some of the Doctor’s memories of their prior travels together that the first doctor had no memories of.
I do think that the guy sending people through the portal was sending them to Gallifrey,. when he said "last time it didnt look like that" i think he meant Gallifrey. So he sent them to Gallifrey in the past. Iroinically, it would explain how the Doctor was half human from the TV movie, IF THE DOCTOR WAS FROM GALLIFREY *facepalm* But i think that's why he wasnt looking for the people. Also maaaaybe some timelords escaped? but yeah Chibnail's era is definied by cruelty. Even Flux wipes out most of the universe. *sigh*
Pretty sure it was a plot point for the longest time that humans were forbidden from setting foot on Gallifrey. Another concept Chibnall , the "classic era fan" seemed oblivious to?
@@GoofyGE3K I always took it as the classic Time Lord arrogance. Preferring not to mingle with species that are "beneath" them. It is like most of the best ideas about Gallifrey. Better to keep it vague and not overexplain. Like how the Time Lords were never depicted as more powerful or mysterious than in The War Games.
You know I actually thought they were going to imply humans settled Gallifrey even before the Dark Times and became the Gallifreyans, and then the Time Lords. That would have actually been somewhat interesting. I hated the Haunting of So&So and the Cyber story was meh apart from the new design being good and the weird police story that didn't make sense, but I actually had an inkling of hope for Timeless Children being THIS reveal, not what we got. So I was doubly disappointed.
This episode honestly feels like a first draft with too many ideas to handle. The reveal that the doctor is the timeless child really feels like a placeholder until a second draft came up with a better idea. The Master is right there to be the timeless child and for it to make at least a little more sense of a bad idea and you could see his motivation being more reasonable. The Doctor being the most important person in all of time and space is stupid when there is so much. I could buy some societies being thankful to a particular version of the Doctor but being the most important person in the universe nah. I think if this was a 3 parter things could have more things to breathe a touch more. This episode is the worst episode of new who (haven't watched much classic so I won't say of all time) it's just a mess and a sloppy first draft feeling
For me if the master was the timeless child it would have worked. It would make more sense, he blows up galifrey in response to their mistreatment. It would have worked so well.
Huh. I hadn't considered that before. I don't mind that idea at all. Something could have happened during the regeneration into Pertwee that erased the Fugitive Doctor's memories of that lifetime, which then segways into Three falling out of the TARDIS.
@@soundgal_sine_qua_non here’s my theory. We already know that season 6B is canon, so the second doctor is working for the CIA doing missions. During a mission, the doctor gets mortally wounded and regenerates into the fugitive doctor. This makes sense since we know for a fact that the fugitive doctor did missions for the CIA as well due to events we learned in FLUX. However, once the CIA is done using the doctor for missions, he still has to go through forced regeneration due to the trial at the end of the war games. His regeneration into the fugitive doctor wouldn’t count since that wasn’t a forced regeneration. So to cover their tracks (since these missions were done in secret without the rest of the time lords knowing anything about them), the CIA gave the fugitive Doctor an extra regeneration cycle so nobody would find out the doctor regenerated on o a CIA mission, messed with the doctor’s memories, gave the doctor back to the rest of the time lords, and they went through the forced regeneration, giving us the third doctor. This ties into the third doctors first episode, where his Tardis crashes into earth and he stumbles out dazed and confused, unable to remember what happened.
I’m not mad, I’m just baffled. It’s bad but Hell Bent did everything 4 billion times worse. I can say some positive things about The Timeless Children. The only positive thing I have to say about Hell Bent is I saw Farscape for the first time after I quit watching Doctor Who. Gram, the Lone Cyberman, and the Master was fantastic but were undermined by the episode repeating Hell Bent fuck ups. The overall positive thing I have to say about The Timeless Children is I saw the Legend of Korra for the first time after taking a break from Doctor Who.
It sounds like you hate the Timeless Child(ren? there's only 1??) for all the same reason I do. I quit the show after that travesty aired. Before November I'll watch Flux & the specials, but I'm not ready yet. Soon. I liked Series 11 more than 12 though, 12 was just a dumpster fire. 11 was soulless but not as incendiary. I actually liked parts of the Cartmel Masterplan. I LOVED Lungbarrow, that was Marc Platt though being the genius he is. He took a wonky Cartmel idea and polished that turd into an amazing lore building story that made the Doctor just another Time Lord, but more than that, a disappointment to his family, and established the cousins and looming and all kinds of cool concepts that fit well with existing lore and made sense!! Where it fell apart was making the Doctor somehow aware of his pre-Loomed self as the Other and picking up Susan, all that was a bit rubbish and needed a rework, but thankfully that bit was kind of hand waved with enough wiggle room you could rejigger that part to refit better again easily at some point, presumably. The Timeless Child though is Cartmel's worst ideas on Crack! It's a giant wrecking ball and I hate it. For ALL the reasons you gave and more! That said, I'm TRYING to mitigate the hate in my mind, tidying it up a bit. Maybe if the Doctor isn't aware of these other lives, then they still essentially happened to someone else, not them, with body changing and memory wipe the Doctor is essentially no more the TImeless Child than Jenny is the Doctor! She's just a clone, and the Doctor is just the current owner of the vessel? That's my Copium at the moment. Probably the only thing that is gonna get me through finally watching the rest of the Chibnall era, with it's crappy plot, hollow placeholder characters, and destruction of damn near everything in the universe (that I know of from you and others). I despise what they've done with the Time Lords, The Master, and the Cybermen though, this whole plot(?) sets fire to all of them! I love the Time Lords as enemies/rivals/sometimes allies - Gone. After YEARS of plots to bring them back, just for nothing!! The Master... we FINALLY had character development after ages, Missy was changing, becoming something Interesting Again - Gone. Now we get Snidely Whiplash tying Mel to the train tracks again. Grrrrr. The Cybermen? Moffatt started their ruination with Death In Heaven being his worst episode EVER, but this just furthers them along the path of stupidity. Remember when the Cybermen were actually Cyber cause they had to be converted from Living Beings? That was Cybermen! Now they're just robots with a skeletal fetish! The Cyber Masters/Time Lords... it's an idea I would expect from a child with too many Doctor WHO action figures! It's just LAME AF!! AND furthermore, since my blood is up now that I'm typing, I'm still ticked that Marc Platt is never given even a line in the credits of Haunting of Village de blahblahblah, when it is all the same basic plot as his audio the Silver Turk. If you steal an idea, don't even mention the original creator in the credits, I'm sorry, that's plagiarism. Chibnall & Maxine Alderton took someone else's work and passed it off as their own, and that's not cool. Yes, there are differences, but c'mon! Mary Shelley bases Frankenstein on an encounter with a damaged Cyberman? Pffffftttt!! He deserved at least a mention in the credits: "based on a story idea by Marc Platt," but no, not even that. Criminal. I only bring it up because the season finale started with that episode, and it was god awful from the start... I like Platt's original version of the same story way better. The whole season was awful. I can't think of a single episode of Series 12 that was worth watching... Maybe the Tesla one, I need to rewatch it I Guess... ugh.. 😮💨🙃😅
Chibnall is just a poor writer. When the timeless child thing first happened everyone said just wait he has a plan for this story. Recently Chibnall admitted he has no idea where the doctor/timeless child actually came from and he had no plans to ever expand on it lmao. I'm purging seasons 11-13 from canon.
For some reason it wasn't until watching this video that I had the thought that the Master had gone full 'Dark Side Anakin' off screen for Galifray to reach the state in the episode...
100% agree with you on this, all of it was just stuffed in there with no thought as to it’s possible effects…. The only time I would like to see the timeless child brought up again, would be to change it to being the master as the timeless child…. That would make so much more sense !!!!
Personally would have liked the timeless child if it was a big game for the master, like trying to convince the doctor she is something she isn't and has Gailfrey be an illusion, I could see the master destroying Gailfrey but not on his own but it's a bad idea
My video on the issue of the BBC's support of Transphobia: ua-cam.com/video/aN4uc0HZrWE/v-deo.html
My video on the BBC's response to complaints of its reporting: ua-cam.com/video/skh81N5lcYY/v-deo.html
My short on why I'll continue to put up the note at the front of these: ua-cam.com/users/shortsHpwwzjzFXiE
Shaun's 1st video, which includes some additional confirmed information: ua-cam.com/video/b4buJMMiwcg/v-deo.html
Shaun’s 2nd video, which follows how the BBC is trying to dodge accountability for all of this: ua-cam.com/video/qfjTG6SVjmQ/v-deo.html
Shaun’s 3rd video, following him escalating his complaints: ua-cam.com/video/fRn1UZ4fhdE/v-deo.html
Shaun's 4th video, covering the BBC's response: ua-cam.com/video/3F7GW7Ro4OQ/v-deo.html
Laura Kate Dale's protest speech outside the BBC offices: ua-cam.com/video/hBjGnWkwAjI/v-deo.html
While I don't hate the idea of The Doctor having lives before Hartnell, I don't like the way the Timeless Child twist was handled. Given how the twist was treated as a game changer for The Doctor but then ignored in Whitaker's final story, it created more story plot holes about The Doctor then it resolved. It also negated the significance of Whittaker being the 1st female Doctor since Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor came before Whittaker. If anything The Timeless Child would have been a more interesting twist with The Master instead of with The Doctor.
The doctor is human and so are all time lords and ladies. Tardis are real. Also th doctor is Christian and straight.
e always thought, if they were going to do this, it should have been the Master. It explains his madness. His running away. His hatred of the system and Timelords aside from the one who wasn’t directly involved. It makes waaaay more sense for it to be the Master. Plus you can preserve the Doctor’s agency.
It would also add further weight to the Master's long-running goal of acquiring additional regenerations. It would make it about more than just extending his own life. It would make it about throwing off shackles the Time Lords imposed on him and reclaiming a stolen birthright.
It would still be pretty stupid. In the grand scheme of things, the Master shouldn't be any more important the Doctor, but at least it would fit better for Master.
Agreed. Plus it fits right in with the Master having all sorts of superpowers that no other Gallifreyan has demonstrated: continuing to live despite a body literally falling apart, possessing a living person’s body in order to regenerate, surviving disintegration as a liquid snake (and possessing someone _again_ ), shooting energy blasts from his hands and super-jumping,…I’m probably forgetting a couple.
We can hope its actually the master lying to acree with the Doctor
I was expecting it to be both of them. Hence timeless *children*. Children as in 'more than one'. At least in that case we can have the master's anger at Gallifrey be truly personal, and that him telling the Doctor can come off as an attempt to get her to join him in this crusade of revenge against the universe.
Going to be honest Gallifrey being destroyed again annoys me more than anything timeless child related, I hate it, I hate it so much
Like, from a writing standpoint, this is so much harder to fix because it already took 10 years to bring back Gallifrey once.
**The Master, one of the most untrustworthy and scheming individuals known to the Doctor, shows her Matrix records that are completely devoid of any tangible connection to the Doctor herself and then claims that the Doctor is the person shown in the records**
**The Doctor, having nothing to base the Master's claim off of whatsoever** Yes, this thing must be 100% true and I will therefore let it affect me deeply despite there being nothing to suggest what I just saw/heard was in any way factual.
👏👏👏👏
The Master WAS just lying. In fact, the Master wrote these episodes. That's what I believe. Thank you.
Tom Bakers Doctor entered the matrix at the risk of dying and did not find any past lives.
The Master is lying?
Is The Doctors mother also lying
CC has confused 60 years of Dr Who
There is too much evidence that the Doctor is a Time Lord born on Galifrey and William Hartnell was the first and only Doctor until he regenerated
Excellent rant. 14/10. (Yes, that's a David Tennant joke).
"That's not mystery, that's packing peanuts!" may be the best single-line assessment of Chibnall's writing I've ever heard.
Brilliant.
The way Timeless Child throws the 50th, which was such a triumphant celebration of the show's history whilst still doing something new (and Clara's Impossible Girl arc too, now I think about it), into the fire so Chibnall can fulfil an idea he got watching The Brain of Morbius as a kid makes me feel ill. Thanks for vocalising some of that frustration.
how did it do that?
Yes!
@ThetaSigma1965 because it literally makes the entire result of the 50th pointless. Gallifrey just gets redestroyed anyway so it's a hollow victory. Council of geeks also explains why so I would think if you watched the video you would understand
@@madeleine5561TBF, it was never really about saving the planet, but it's people. And considering all the Master did was attack the planet, most of the Timelords themselves likely survived.. Between the matrix and the fact that The Master appears to have just attacked the planet with conventional weaponry it seems pretty safe to say...
And we know this is true because we have seen evidence of timelords still being around since. I mean the very next season we see The Division is still kicking and has a plan to leave the universe...
I really like your point about preferring the Doctor as a bit of a nobody (or alternately, "an idiot"). I don't like the notion of either the Doctor or the Master being smarter or somehow more powerful or important than the rest of the Time Lords. I'd rather see stories where the rest of Time Lord society is mostly indifferent but terrifying when roused - if they finally choose to call you on the carpet, then on the carpet you will be called. And then you spend most of a regeneration tooling around England in a stylish roadster.
What makes the Doctor special is not their abilities but how they use them. They want to help others. The Time Lords don't. It's sort of like Kirk's line from Wrath of Khan about how Spock's soul was the "most human." The Doctor is very much like the best of us.
The Doctor should be special for what they've done and what they do, not who they are. That just gets into Chosen One crap, which is lazy storytelling.
While I don't hate the idea of The Doctor having lives before Hartnell, I don't like the way the Timeless Child twist was handled. Given how the twist was treated as a game changer for The Doctor but then ignored in Whitaker's final story, it created more story plot holes about The Doctor then it resolved. It also negated the significance of Whittaker being the 1st female Doctor since Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor came before Whittaker. If anything The Timeless Child would have been a more interesting twist with The Master instead of with The Doctor.
I don't think it negated the significance of Whittaker at all. Sure, in terms of narrative she isn't the first, but she IS groundbreakingly first in real world time, and the first and currently only to play the role in full capacity whereas Jo Martin's Doctor was functionally little more than a reoccurring character. The historical significance of Whittaker's casting matters far more than the narrative chronology. It's also worth noting that Jo Martin is Black, but her casting doesn't take anything away from the significance of Ncuti Gatwa's recent casting in the lead role either.
I’ve always thought it would have been a better twist for The Master too.
i also think her reaction was very out of character. she reacts with dull shock and horror, but the doctor is an explorer first and foremost, i think they would be ecstatic to learn they had so many new selves to rediscover and learn about, even if they might be upset that these past lives were kept from them.
True, while the basic idea of the timeless child is actually not that bad at its core, the execution was really bad.
The Master would’ve been a much better candidate, and it could also have tied into why the time vortex screwed him up so badly.
OMG! Thank you for pointing out the cruelty of this era!
And the Doctor is cruel, too. She deliberately keeps every single companion at arm’s length (hell, 35 foot pole length), none of them even know about what actually happened with the Timeless Child story except for Ryan in what could be looked at as a manipulative tactic by the Doctor to keep him traveling with her, and she’s downright abusive to Yaz throughout the entire last series and specials. I was partly hoping that we’d get a scene in Power of the Doctor where Yaz comes to realize this and decides makes a hard “eff this, I’m outta here” statement. And I’m a Thasmin shipper.
But no.
I don’t even think that Chibnall even realizes that he’s written the era in that way. In every interview and commentary with him, he makes it sound like they’re all one happy family, even to the point of putting in the whole “the REAL power of the Doctor is the friends she’s made” in 13’s final episode.
It’s unbelievable.
My god this video was satisfying to watch
Let's also not forget the utter devastation in the wake of the Flux, is never addressed in a single subsequent episode. A one off line is given by Dan that the Doctor "saved" the universe. Except nothing save Earth is shown to still be in one piece by the stories conclusion.
What's more annoying is that in the final scene in Flux, it seems like the Doctor has actually learned her lesson, and is finally going to let Yaz in and tell her the truth about everything. And then, in the very next episode, she goes right back to being evasive and dismissive, and the final episode actually confirms that the Doctor never told Yaz anything! Character development? What's that?
@@christianwise637 Character development would be another facet of storytelling Chibnall is oblivious to. Like callously glossing over how the Lupari were wiped out by the Sontarans.
@@pious83 While there are a lot of questionable character decisions, I don't think the Lupari issue is necessarily one of them. That struck me as something more along the lines of being far too dark to explore more on-screen than they did.
@@BlueSparxLPs To me, the complete lack of dramatic weight given to Karvanista being informed and the cold reaction of the Doctor. That is worse from a writing perspective than the genocide itself.
I'm still convinced that, if anyone is the Timeless Child, it's the Master. Otherwise, I was just confused why we never got any resolution for the Brendan plot.
Huh, cool idea 🥰🥰
i thought it should’ve been Susan
@@toasterroast7678 Ok the master or Susan. Either of them could have been the timeless child and it build the character
It would make a lot more sense. The Master could be mad and furious at the time lords. Both for that and the drums. It would make his genocide so much sweeter
18:34 yep, cruel is a good way to describe Chibnal’s era. It’s what frustrated me about Rosa - the first episode where the new Doctor has her TARDIS and her (POC) companion’s first full fledged adventure with her is to the Jim Crow South. The Doctor should never be in those types of situations where they literally can’t save the day. The Doctor has landed on alien planets with a similar oppressive society and they usually free the oppressed. They don’t say “Oh, well the bad guys will eventually lose in a few decades.”
I'm honestly glad we're getting a Man of Colour to play the Doctor after the second set of David Tennant specials.
It's not entirely comparable but looking at that episode next to Planet of the Ood, it's hard to believe that's the same timelord. I mean I know Donna kinda spearheaded that episode but still
Perfect summation, Vera!
And whilst I agree that this whole sorry (series of) episode(s) should be ignored, should RTD - or anyone - wish to put a lid on it and bury it a thousand feet deep, they could do it with just a couple of lines of dialogue...
Doctor (to some future Rassilon): "You survived? All of you - Gallifrey, the Time Lords... How? I saw you destroyed - the Master showed me the Matrix. All of it... what you did to me, what _he_ did to _you_ ... Why would he lie?"
Rassilon: "He didn't _lie_ , Doctor. D'you genuinely think that we couldn't control the Matrix? That we couldn't implant whatever we wanted in it? The Master is childishly easy to manipulate. He saw what we wanted him to see. He believed what we _wanted_ him to believe. What better way to get him out of our hair - make him believe he'd destroyed us, finally?"
etc etc
Or something like that.
You seem to be suggesting that even the Doctor's past would be retconned as false in this scenario, but that can't be the case because then you also have to explain Tecteun's appearance in Flux where the Doctor outright asks her if it's all true and she plainly confirms it. Then there's also the fob watch containing her past memories, and the existence of the Fugitive Doctor, the enemies in The Ghost Monument being able to see her past as The Timeless Child, and the Doctor's own flashbacks to herself being discovered as a child. Add the survival of Gallifrey as a whole on top of this, and this whole thing would either need an entire episode or two to resolve dedicated to it or it would be a very out-of-place insert into a loosely-related episode.
Either way, I don't think it should be retconned. If they ever touch on this again, I think it should be explored more deeply. The Timeless Child plot has done absolutely nothing good nor bad for the series. It simply exists as a concept that nothing has been done with, and until something is actually done to make me actually care that it happened at all I'll remain indifferent on it.
@@BlueSparxLPs Hmm... good point, Blue! Hadn't thought of all of that... Hey ho, back to the drawing board - LOL
@@BlueSparxLPs You could conceivably come up with some ludicrously over-complicated scenario (well hello there Mr Chibnall!) whereby it turns out EVERYONE involved in this sorry charade has had their memories tampered with, just to maintain the illusion, even Tecteun and the Doctor. But then you end up with something sillier (if possibly more streamlined) than the original guff.
@@BlueSparxLPs mostly agree with you.
After this episode, I’m pretty sure we could chalk the whole thing up to the Master being the Timeless Child, since all the info we get is through him. Even the whispers in the Ghost Monument don’t “prove” that The Doctor is the Timeless Child, do they? I recall they’re vague enough that they could be explained as either warning The Doctor, or as the psychic rags having been manipulated by The Master or picking up false memories the Master had beamed into the Doctor’s head at some point?
Frankly, it would make _so_ much more sense: we’ve already seen the Master do loads of stuff that no other Time Lord (or Gallifreyan) can do, he’s twice on-screen and at least once off-screen been able to keep living despite being out of regenerations, and we’ve never really gotten a satisfactory or unambiguous explanation for why he’s sociopathic and also specifically out to get the Time Lords. (I realize sociopathy doesn’t need an explanation in a real-world context-sometimes people just are. But Doctor Who isn’t exactly hyper-realistic, and sociopathy usually serves a narrative purpose and follows narrative, rather than psychological, logic.)
And the Master using his own trauma to inflict trauma on the Doctor by lying (with tech) to make the Doctor _think_ its _their_ trauma? That’s like the most Master thing ever.
But then The Flux made that explanation impossible, having independent parties confirm the version of events the Master gave. 😡
The Thirteenth Doctor's passivity throughout this era has always been a massive issue for me, from her refusal to interfere in acts of historical injustice to her actively letting villains get away scot free at the end of the episode. But this episode really takes it to a whole new level - this is the season finale, and I don't think she has any actions that actually impact the trajectory of the story. She gets dragged off to Gallifrey by the Master and then shoved into the exposition machine (as you aptly put it) for the majority of the episode; she's incapable of breaking herself out of said exposition machine without the help of the Fugitive Doctor; she even proves herself to be incapable of resolving the episode's story without someone else coming in to sacrifice themselves in her place. I really don't think Chibnall considered the implications of what he was writing this era, because having the first female Doctor prove herself to be so inept and lacking in agency is honestly a really bad look.
As a whole, this episode was the point where I really checked out of Chibnall's era. Prior to this episode, even though I wasn't fully enamoured with it, I was still willing to keep giving it chances. After it though, I still kept watching, but always with a sense of obligation and duty as opposed to actual enjoyment, like I was saying "alright let's get this over with" before watching each new episode. It's a dull meandering mess of an episode that offers no meaningful character moments, no exciting action setpieces, nothing except loads of stupid contradictory pointless lore, which I knew was going to be dominating the rest of this era. Add to that the complete lack of cohesion this episode had with its predecessor and the way it actively discarded major plot points from Moffat's era just so it could spin its own half-baked narrative, and I was left feeling hollow and dejected and thoroughly disappointed with a series I had actually been largely enjoying up to this point
Sums up a lot of my feelings perfectly, this comment, thank you
the doctor has never gotten with historical injustices. and when did she let a villain get away?
@@ThetaSigma-vu1sk the guy from Spyfall that wasn't The Master comes to mind.
To be honest, I think it's less that The Doctor lets them get away and more that Chibnall put them into situations where they could easily come back. (Krasko in the past, Jack Robertson (twice), the rich guy from Ghost Monument)
@@TheGerkuman Jack Robertson was never a villain. He was just an asshole. Same with the guy from Ghost Monument. You saying the Doctor lets villains go and giving them as examples is dumb logic. By this logic, Nine let villains go by letting Henry Van Statten go. Ten let villains go by letting the dad from the Idiot's Lantern go, the racist student from Human Nature, Rickston Slade from Voyage. Want a real example of the Doctor letting villains go? Eleven let the daleks in series 5 go and did nothing to stop them afterwards. He also let Madame Kovarian go in series 6, despite kidnapping his best friends daughter and brainwashing her. Twelve let the Master go in series 10, despite the fact he's the whole reason why Bill was turned into a cyberman.
And unless you forgot, Krasko was sent back to the lowest setting on his device by Ryan. He could've been sent back to the Jurassic era and be eaten by dinosaurs or killed by cavemen.
@@ThetaSigma-vu1sk regardless, I think my point that Chibnall hated killing characters in case he wanted to bring them back is well established.
Also, I'm not buying the Krasko thing. If they're not dead on screen, they could come back. On a related note, sure, Vinder left that snake guy on the asteroid at the end of time, but there's nothing stopping future writers bringing him back.
100% agree! Prior to The Timeless Child 'reveal,' the Doctor was the thorn in the side of the other Time Lords - that one awkward, black sheep of the family who couldn't stick to The Rules and, once they realised they probably never would or could, decided to split and make their own way in the world. Now they're Cosmic Time Jesus, and it sucks.
Just the simple premise of the _Cosmic Hobo_ travelling through time and space, helping people. That was enough.
I've always likened the Doctor to Gandalf. Like Gandalf, they're part of an ancient and powerful race but they can't be bothered with it and prefer to muck about with the 'lesser' races and as a result are thought of as a disappointment.
"Cosmic Time Jesus." I've not heard that one before. Not sure how any of this makes the Doctor that, but sure...
If it were up to me I’d still frame this as the Timeless Child being the Master instead of the Doctor, and in this episode the Master is making the Doctor THINK she’s the Timeless Child to torture her while at the same time get some sympathy for what he’s going through. I would make the Fugitive Doctor an early version of the Master, perhaps dating back to when he and the Doctor were friends. I just think it makes more sense for the Timeless Child to be the Master as he has always been weird. He’s been a corpse, a catman, a ghost snake. He just seems to play by different rules, so it makes sense to me that he should be the special one.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: The Timeless Child is to Doctor Who what Highlander 2 was to Highlander.
That's a really good way of putting it. Nice one.
“There should have been only one!”
@@speakgeekstudio1867 Damn, why didn't I think of that. 🙂
Oh, no! I still remember my frustrated bafflement walking out of the cinema after seeing Highlander 2.
It will probably be entirely ignored going forward just like highlander 2 as well 😂
I feel like Joe Brennan explained the problem with The timeless child concept the best: that it takes the Doctor's which made the Doctor so relatable away turning them from a random outcast with a dream who ran away from their controlling people to the most important being in the Universe.
Except it doesn't. All the Doctor did was to be the involuntary donor of "regeneration genes" to the Gallifreyans... and they're not the only beings who regenerate (the Minyans and Kastrians do, and the Eternals and Guardians might also have the ability). In actual fact, the Doctor isn't particularly different to other Time Lords, because _every_ Time Lord since Tecteun's intervention has the same "regeneration genes" as the Timeless Child.
Few more things for the pile of unanswered/unaddressed points:
- Why don't the companions (to my memory, anyway) react to Gallifrey being a still-burning wasteland? There's no moment after they find the Doctor where they acknowledge or offer comfort over her home being destroyed.
- How are the Cyber Masters able to regenerate when they're converted from dead bodies, and it's been made clear in other stories that when a Time Lord dies, then that's it, they're dead, no regeneration.
- Not really a fault of this epispde, but the Master explicitly says that regeneration is a 'genetic ability' and River Song was born with the ability to regenerate. Just think about that for a second.
I'm not a defender of this episode and I agree with your first point, but as for the two others, doctor who has never really cared too much about continuity lol
I've thought the same about the third point. Vastra specifically says "You're people developed the ability of regeneration from exposure to the Untempered Schism" as a justification for why River (aka Melody) could have that ability while having 2 human parents.
But now apparently it comes from genetic experiments on a single member of a species from another dimensions and there is no other way?
The power of regeneration can be passed genetically or be developed by exposure to the time vortex that the Tardis travels through. At least I hope so. Otherwise, Sweet Home Alabama.
If I were *forced* to write something like The Timeless Children, neither the Doctor nor the Master would be the Child. What if the Master sadistically revealed that the Child is still there, trapped, and the Time Lords have continued to siphon regenerative energy from them for millennia? All the good the Doctor has done has been made possible by the suffering of this innocent person, now what?
I'll admit it's just a rough outline of an idea, but introducing a moral dilemma around the ethics of regeneration sounds more interesting to me than what we got.
The coward or killer thing in Parting of the Ways was about killing innocent humans, and the Doctor having grown so much that he didn’t want to do the whole double genocide thing again. As horrible as it is, you could make the argument that it still would have been the least bad option. This time it just comes off as the Doctor herself being scared to die to save the universe, or scared to that her friend, who had just committed genocide, would be collateral damage. And THAT is real cowardice.
Thank you for this rant. Having just sat through Chibnall crash Jodie's Gallifrey One panel half an hour ago and hearing snippets of his panel yesterday, I still cannot get behind so many of his choices as show runner. The timeless children shattered so many different aspects of cannon without having any lasting impact on her era or her character. I wish (if the storyline had to exist at all) that it was anyone other than the Doctor. Let's just have it fall into oblivion and forget it ever happened.
I love the outrage because it is so relatable to me and the people I know tell me I dont need to be that worked up about something thats just a story. Its nice to not feel alone in caring, critiquing, and not being able to "just accept it." Being told to just accept especially when it comes to major inconsistencies and bad writing just makes me feel so much the outsider. Thank you for sharing all this with us.
The sheer rage in this video is what I feel every time I think about this episode... this era wasn't all bad, but this is easily my least favourite episode ever
While I don't mind the doctor being well known to others, my issue is that the doctor shouldnt matter to the universe, outside of their actions. The whole episode was everything people complain about moffat for turned up to 11. Like okay cool she's space Jesus or whatever
What does it matter? It doesn't change anything
That’s how I feel, the Doctor should be important because of what they chose to do. Now the Doctor is important just through existing and the entire history of the universe itself is the way it is because without the Doctor the Time Lords could never have become so powerful.
I think that was Vera's point too, of course The Doctor matters to the people/beings who's lives they've affected and their name will have spread across the universe because of their actions...but being some sort of chosen one? No, just no.
There's a potentially fun explanation they could have given for the police box.
We know the TARDIS can remember things that haven't happened yet and has somehow archived console rooms that haven't been made yet. A similar thing can happen with the exterior and the earlier Doctor could just explain that it sometimes changes into that shape for some reason like it's preemptively changing into a shape that will be important in its future. Sometimes she just lets it stay like that for a while to get it out of its system.
How to fix the Timeless Child.
Step 1: Drop the Cybermen. The new designs were cool, but they should have been in their own story separate from the timelords and the Master.
Step 2: Make the Doctor being the Timeless Child a red harring set up by the timelords to protect the real timeless child. Also, don't make the timeless child responsible for regeneration. That conflicts with River Song's origins.
Step 3: Profit.
_Alternate_ Step 2: Make the Master the Timeless Child. Someone who has gone to such incredible lengths to prolong his own life. To discover that none of that effort was necessary, would drive him insane. Also addressing the plot hole that is any further regeneration beyond the fate of Missy.
Ah the Underpants Gnomes! Yummy Tai Yummi Tai Yay!
@@pious83 Yes! This! For the Master to discover that Time Lord society and regeneration had been built on something taken from _him_ before he was then ejected from Gallifrey and considered a bad 'un would be the perfect motive for his destruction of them.
Making the Master the timeless child would be better tbh
I lowkey hope that when they retcon this whole thing they make the master be the the timeless child
@@jvictor001 That would be one way to go - but as Blue Sparx has pointed out in a comment responding to my earlier post, it would require retconning Tecteun's memory, the memories in the fobwatch, the Fugitive Doctor and the Doctor's own memories. Not that it couldn't be done, but I reckon it would be clunkier than the original, and far clunkier than just pretending it never happened.
I can think of a way to fix the climax with Ko Sharmus dying. Have the choice to die a coward or killer be _taken away_ from the Doctor. In the episode The Poison Sky, the Tenth Doctor threatens to destroy the Sontaran ship, but gives the Sontarans a chance to leave. The Sontarans basically call his bluff, but I truly believe that Ten _would_ have killed himself as well as the Sontarans in order to protect the Earth. But that choice is taken away from him, when Luke Rattigan uses the Sontaran teleporter (Doctor Who REALLY loves teleporters) to take his place. In the episode Eaters of Life, the Twelfth Doctor tries to make the sacrifice play again, by offering to step into the time dilation portal to fight off the light eaters. But again, that choice is taken away when he gets knocked out. Just have Ko Sharmus, like, materialize a TARDIS around the Doctor, then exit the TARDIS and activate the Death Particle. Ko Sharmus appearing out of nowhere to make the sacrifice play instead of the Doctor is a deus ex machina, but it could've WORKED as a deus ex machina if the Doctor had no choice in the matter. The Doctor I know would have refused to let Ko Sharmus take her place. She would've fought for her right to sacrifice herself. That's why the Doctor always needs to be knocked out and/or handcuffed so the supporting character can make the sacrifice instead. Here, it's like the writers took the path of least resistance. The sacrifice play SHOULDN'T be easy.
Thank you! This is the same person technically that wouldn't let wilf die even though he begged him not to sacrifice himself and let him die. The REAL doctor wouldn't have said "OK sounds good you do it" and just left
I rarely comment on videos but this made me laugh out loud (in a good way!) Your “WHYYY” had me in stitches 😂 And you expressed my thoughts about the Timeless Child story perfectly. Thanks for another great video
Thanks for mentioning why Moffat decided to save Gallifrey at 17:13
It bothers me whenever Gallifrey as a planet is conflated not just with the Time Lords but the Time Lord government. It’s like believing all of Earth’s population deserves to die bc of the actions of its ruling governments
How beautiful would it have been. In a very melancholy way. That the timelords did essentially steal the regeneration ability from another being. And this event being a fixed point in time, a doctor meets this being and can't stop the fate from happening. But by learning the stories of the doctor has done with this ability is okay with their own death.
Thank you for acknowledging the children on Gallifrey. It has annoyed and frustrated me that the Master has not faced poetic justice for what he did (off screen no less) to the kids on Gallifrey.
Agreed that the Cartmel Master Plan was always a bad idea, it's a funny thing about the Seven'n'Ace era: what happens on-screen is great, the underlying planned arc is not so great. It was better left as mysterious implications that went nowhere.
12:55 I think in a similar way, the death of Roger Delgado also nullified some of the plans for the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. Which all sounded quite bad in hindsight.
I think in fairness the plan with the Cartmel Masterplan was always to make this stuff subtext but never actually say it for certain. Like, they'd occasionally allude to the Doctor being older or more powerful than we thought but never explictly say how or why. The closest they got to doing that on TV was Ghost Light, which was reworked from Lungbarrow precisely because they didn't want to reveal too much. Chibnall did precisely the opposite, having the plot come out of absolutely nowhere then explaining it in excruciating detail.
@@craigcharlesworth1538 Lungbarrow was awesome! I loved that story when it was finally published. Apart from the Other and Susan, it really works. The House and his cousins and looming and the Doctor being a disappointment to the kithriarch, all of that was lovely. Badger! Innocet, just great stuff. Rework the Other & Susan or leave that bit vague and unmentioned and it would have been amazing to see on TV.
@@R_SENAL_WHO but it tried to make looms canon. Yuk.
@@TheGerkuman I love the Loom idea, but then I read all the books that led up to that idea too, with the curse of the Pythia and the Sisterhood leaving Gallifrey, and the curse, I loved all of that, was so much more interesting than just making it all Earth-like.
Man, I had forgotten how bad it was as well 😅 I knew it was bad but PHEW. Me and my partner were flabbergasted watching it at the time, just in awe of how much it bungled everything. As fellow not-fans of the "most important person ever" versions of the Doctor, this was a real eye roller.
I disagree that the Fugitive Doctor is pre-Hartnell, for multiple reasons. The main one being, of course, that the TARDIS is in the shape of a Police Box, in which - as you rightly pointed out - it first became stuck in The Cave of Skulls. Q.E.D.
With this in mind, the Fugitive can only be between Troughton and Pertwee. There are further examples to support this placement: firstly, the interior of the Fugitive's TARDIS appears to be an amalgam of the Second and Third Doctor's interiors. Secondly, she calls herself The Doctor, a title the character adopted in their first incarnation, as played by William Hartnell. Thirdly, when 'Ruth' fights with Judoon in Gloucester Cathedral, it is shot in a manner that's reminiscent of similar moments in the Third Doctor era, i.e. The Curse of Peladon and The Time Warrior. The inference could be made that this is where the Third Doctor picked up Venusian Aikido; it was part of the training the Fugitive received while enrolled at Division, with 3 retaining some subconscious muscle memory.
I've mentioned the 68% battery on 'Ruth's' mobile phone as being a subtle clue pointing towards a 6B placement (68 and 6B looking remarkably similar at first glance), so I shan't reiterate that point too heavily here. However, I will point out that Chris Chibnall himself stated in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine that Jo Martin's incarnation does indeed fit somewhere within the Doctor's first regeneration cycle (Hartnell to Smith, for clarity), although he's reluctant to confirm exactly where. Saying that, there's only really on place she can fit, in all honesty.
I'm aware there are potential flies in the ointment regarding a 6B placement, but I'll attempt to address them here: 1) she doesn't recognise the Sonic Screwdriver, despite having used it in their second incarnation. My answer to this is fairly straightforward; she'd only just got her memory back at that point, so she can be forgiven for it slipping her mind temporarily. 2) the Tenth Doctor regenerated twice, at least according to the Eleventh Doctor. However, I suggest that 11 was simply wrong. Having no memory of his Fugitive incarnation, he simply assumed he'd wasted a life, given that he was on his final life at that point. 4) the Fugitive Doctor's clothes are different to the Third Doctor's (which, if we're being honest, weren't identical to Second Doctor's clothes, but that's neither here nor there). I would suggest it's not beyond the wit of Division to change the clothes back before forced regeneration and total mind-wipe. 5) While not mentioned on telly, I know there's a comic book that appears to suggest that the Fugitive is indeed pre-Hartnell. Now, I haven't read said comic, but I have seen a few panels. From these, I think it's ambiguous enough to be dismissable; I certainly think it would be extremely weird to have such a placement confirmed outside the TV show - in an American comic, no less - especially when it contradicts Chibnall's own assertion regarding her placement.
Sorry for the long post, but I do think the misplacement of the Fugitive Doctor among certain fans taints their opinion of the era as a whole; or Series 12 onwards, at the very least.
I agree that Jo Martin's Doctor fits best (or only) between Troughton and Pertwee. Not recognising the sonic screwdriver... I've not watched Fugitive of the Judoon again recently, but wasn't she confused by Jodie's Doctor doing the modern "wave it like a magic wand" routine? Pretty sure Troughton's Doctor only used it as a lockpick rather than all the other functions it's gained over the decades so that could well explain that.
The best thing about placing the Fugitive Doctor between 2 and 3 of course is that she's really the only part of this whole storyline that's likely to stick around in fans memory, so by disassociating her from the Timeless Child stuff it makes it all the easier to forget all that ever happened.
@@craigcharlesworth1538 As someone who doesn't have a problem with the Timeless Child concept as presented, that's not a position I'm coming from. However, I think the Fugitive Doctor's legitimacy is clear and is separate from the TC. I certainly don't think it's as big a deal as people seem to think it is.
Something I’ve noticed with Chibbers. To keep The Doctor pristine in her morals, any decisive conflict, violence or plot moving action is usually performed by other characters. It makes Jodie’s Doctor seem weak and ineffective.
My headcannon is that the Timelords continued experimenting on the Timeless Child long after they learned to regenerate, and actually duplicated the Timeless Child in order to get more test subjects. Most of them had their memories erased to keep them placid, something that's repeated as necessary to keep them in their place. This way they became a kind of underclass, although one only the elite of Gallifrey are aware exist as a distinct group, all originally a single person. The Master is another Timeless Child duplicate, although he kept this from the Doctor, so he is basically the same person and the Doctor could easily have ended up like him were things different.
This makes the Doctor less special for being the Timeless Child, and also gives the Master more motivation for destroying Gallifrey, while maintaining much of the mystery the Timeless Child reveal was supposed to add to the Doctor.
I could only see the timeless child thing working if the timeless child was revealed to be the master instead of the doctor this wouldn't really break new who canon.
It would explain the masters sheer survivability and could explain their madness if they kept getting their mind wiped and staring into the time vortex repeatedly.
It could also keep the idiot in a box theme for the doctor being this rebel timelord who actually inspires the master to escape from the timelords and live their own life. Missy is the result of the master finally having closure and accepting there death but them being recalled to galifrey causes them to snap and destroy the place.
12:28 The Cartmel Masterplan was different from what you stated here. Quick summary: Time Lord society was founded by three people - Rassilon, Omega and the Other, whose name had been erased out of the history books by Rassilon. After they liberated Gallifrey from the Cult of Pythia, the followers of the cult cursed the Gallifreyans with infertility, forcing the Gallifreyans to create the Looms as a technological means to procreate. After the Other figured out that it was Rassilon who had been responsible for the apparent death of Omega as the latter was creating the Eye of Harmony, the Other tried to escape and in the end committed suicide by throwing himself into the Looms. Millennia later, his DNA was used to create a new Time Lord - the Doctor. The Doctor had subconscious knowledge of the life of the Other but had no functioning access to it until the Seventh Doctor became Time's Champion. Time being an Eternal that was part of a pantheon of higher beings which had been worshiped by the old Gallifreyans, who on the regular chose Time Lords to act as their champions on the mortal plane. The Master was also revealed to be Death's champion. No the Doctor being older than he was, no the Doctor being an actual founding father of Time Lord society, no the Doctor being the most important being in the universe.
I'll say one good thing about the title: it and the TC concept are respectively named in the plural and singular, which makes it easy to separate them if you need to discuss what you think about other aspects of the episode.
I hate this episode. I hope to God or whatever deity exists that somehow the whole situation with the Timeless Child was all an elaborate lie or a misinterpreted event from some parallel universe. I hope that Gallifrey is restored SOMEHOW in order to make all that the Doctor achieved prior to this arc not have been in vain. I hope that Russell T Davies either redirects the show's narrative as far away from this as possible OR creates a well written explanation for how the Timeless Child was an elaborate lie. I'm rambling because this episode made me so angry. This undoes so much, and yet creates nothing to replace it. It's so lazily written and so catastrophic for the lore and emotional core of the show that I just cannot acknowledge it as canon.
it was implied in flux and the irish cop flashbacks that the reason they wiped her memory was because she quit division, it does bring up a few contrivances of "why not just kill her or keep a closer eye on her afterwards" but it does at least explain why they did something like that
i assume it's easier to keep your wormhole baby around hiding in witness protection in case you need them later?
No, I got that part. But why an Irish cop? Wouldn't data from Earth (a complete no-where of a planet) stick out like a sore thumb on a database of Gallifreyan data? Why disguise it instead of just wiping it for that matter, but seriously the whole "Irish cop" thing is very much a "hand of the author issue." In other words, it's something Chibnall chose to make it a bigger surprise but there's no in-universe reason for anybody involved in the story to have chosen that as the cover.
@@CouncilofGeeks agreed, the irish cop thing was stupid. but there was an explanation of "WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?!?" for wiping their memory in the first place
If the "wormhole baby" can't be killed (infinte regeneration) witness protection or imprisonment are the only options.
The funny thing about the Master killing all the Time Lords is that they were more effective than all the billions of daleks in the time war who failed to destroy the Time Lords. The Master single handedly did better than all the daleks.
Chris Chibnall used his time as Show Runner to figuratively piss over everything everyone who wasn't Chris Chibnall has ever done for Doctor Who. From core concepts to specific things, like the entirety of the 50th Anniversary, he's gone out of his way to ruin or undo them.
The question I want an answer to is "Why?" Was it just his ego, or was he jealous of what the others had done? Or both?
The best thing they could do in the new series is to retcon this whole thing- it was the master manipulating the Doctor and tricking them or something.
I'm less bothered about the idea, for me the biggest issue with this story is lack of originality or commitment to the idea, it's clear it was never the plan to have it go anywhere, just to be an arc like every other modern season that doesn't go anywhere much like the Hybrid or the Impossible Girl. Ironically these game changing reveals about the status quo have happened so often, they themselves are just part of the status quo. In terms of the episodes, it's a bunch of random strands that don't come together. If I was writing this, I'd have the Fugitive Doctor be a future incarnation from a potential darkest timeline where Ashad won and the Cyberlords are the ones who destroyed Gallifrey, making them the Timeless Children tying everything together. So instead of Koshamus being the one who sacrifices themselves, it's the Fugitive making up for running away from the war. Plus it gave future showrunners to recast Jo Martin but without the pressure of writing her the same as Chibnall.
Something I've been thinking about after rewatching Clever Dick Films' (CDF) Doctor Who Era documentaries is this. When covering the costume of the 6th Doctor, CDF stated that Peter Davison (5th Doctor) said he thought the loud and flamboyant coat was in part due to John Nathan Turner (The then man in charge of the show) trying to put himself in the show - or to put a part of himself in the Doctor as I translated it.
Fast forward to Chibnall. I'm pretty sure he said the fact he was adopted was part of what fuelled the Timeless Child storyline? But rather than apply this adoption or orphaned background story to a companion (Which could have been interesting) he does it with the Doctor, who he probably idolised and wanted to be in someway. I don't mean the 13th Doctor specifically, but just the character in general. So maybe that's why he did all this and ultimately was content with what he did, because he got what he wanted. He turned the Doctor into him.
Anyone else think this makes sense?
16:20 - 20:10 This whole section about the Master's offscreen genocide and the unnecessary cruelty of the Chibnall era is so cathartic.
21:25 - 23:15 And this section is hilarious. If Series 13 didn't exist, that line from the Master about transmitting the memories would just be more evidence that he's seriously gaslighting Thirteen.
i find it baffling when people compare this to hell bent. hate the reveals or don't, this is simply an episode of incredibly poor quality. the writing and directing and acting and cinematography in hell bent ain't the thing that divides people about hell bent. sometimes within the doctor who fandom I'm confused by how far removed people get from analysing the content critically.
not talking about you, vera! loved your take on the episode-and your reviews in general. your comment just ignited a flame in me that is always there.
Does anyone else feel that it’s only now the Chibnall era has finished that real Whovians can be free to give their honest opinion.
Previously we had to defend the series, in spite of its shortcomings, because of the hateful, misogynistic campaign waged by people like Nerdrotic.
They deliberately split the fandom; to them it was their way or you were a “Jodie-bot”.
The sad truth is, that although their reasoning was wrong, downright bigoted, some of their criticisms about the writing and the Doctor’s mischaracterisation were correct.
But true Whovians couldn’t acknowledge that at the time.
The division created by the hate meant we had to stick up for our beleaguered program, especially at a recognised time of weakness.
But now it’s over, and we can separate the haters from the criticism, we have to admit that some of what they said was true 😢
Referring to the people who didn't like the show for the right reasons as 'real whovians' comes off badly to me, unless you're including the people who like it or are mixed about it in the true whovian category too, and it's the nerdrotics of the world that you're saying are the fake fans.
@@TheGerkuman You’re absolutely right; I did consider going in to edit out the ‘real’ part.
By that, I meant basically anyone who wasn’t a ‘nerdrotic type’ but I accept that in using that wording I’m being divisive also.
I'm not sure if this is what Chibnall had in mind, but this Master's self-hatred makes sense given the context of how his previous incarnation(s) died. He presumably comes after Missy in the TV canon, and she was betrayed and killed by themself for trying to be good. According to the EU, he comes after the Lumiat, who was also betrayed and killed by themself for the same reason. I can see how the Master would've relapsed back to his evil ways, this time filled with self-hatred, in either timeline.
I feel like a broken record here, but the whole thing would be fixed if the Timeless Child had just been the Master!
I'm fine with The Doctor being special to their actions like under RTD and Moffat but not to be literal space Jesus due to effectively their birth.
I found out about this video way too late. this is just so on point.
My thing about the Doctor not mattering is that while that might have once been true, they did both start and end the Time War which raged across all time and much of space.
For me, the reason I hate The Timeless Children is for more of a meta/realworld reason than for its story (stupid though that story is). I hate it because it reeks so heavily of being a Chris Chibnall vanity project. It feels like he decided "I'm going to leave my own indelible mark on Doctor Who" and chose to do so by completely rewriting the Doctor's origins, so that he could say "Look, everyone! I rewrote Doctor Who."
So he rewrites the Doctor's history, adds in a whole raft of generations that we've never met, never heard of and know nothing about. He rewrites the origins of Gallifrey society and time travel, rewrites the whole concept of regeneration, rewrites the Master's motivation for opposing the Doctor and - just for good measure - he completely wipes out Gallifrey (literally every living atom of it). That way, future writers under his tenure have to follow Chibnall's vision of what Doctor Who now is.
Now I know that every show runner wants writers to adhere to their vision for the show, but never have we had one who attempts to so fundamentally rewrite the show. It smacks of vanity, it smacks of conceit, it smacks of a lack of humility by the showrunner and it's such a disrespectful, bullshit thing to do to a seminal TV series that has been around for so long before Chibnall got his hands on it. I really hope that this story is never acknowledged again in Doctor Who history and it just ends up being the same sort of diversionary cul-de-sac as the "half human" references - a strange little curiousity that has people thinking "well that clearly didn't work".
Wait a minute Vera - just for my own clarification - what Chibnall said is that basically the Doctor is the Fons et Origo of the Timelords. So they (the Doctor) is at least 10million years old? (Trial of a Timelord)
Gallifrey falls no more -- no more.
In my head, the Fugitive Doctor exists between 2 and 3. Troughton's Doctor found out about the Timeless Child (NOT the Doctor; possibly the Master) whilst working for the Time Lords post-War-Games, Two-Doctors-style, tried to help them escape, regenerated into Jo Martin, then went on the run, and was eventually caught by the Time Lords, memory wiped + forcibly regenerated into Pertwee. Would even possibly offer an explanation then for why the Master followed him to Earth.
14:36 To further that point, addressing the elephant in the room. The Master destroyed Gallifrey. *While at the same time* killed every single Time Lord. Yet also did so in such a manner that they didn't simply regenerate or permanently expire?????
This further goes to my idea (and the one I will champion forever) this character should have been Omega, _not_ the Master. Then there wouldn't have been a question as to "how" he was able to achieve any of this destruction. Because Omega had the ability to do this, without suspension of disbelief.
I agree with you on everything u say
This not something I spotted, but once you hear it can't be undone. Tektaum is a Child Killer" when she starts her experiments into regeneration she has no idea how many times the regeneration works, she's a Child Killer doing it on purpose again and again
and again and again.
Keep shining keep ranting.
"Poorly Handled" sums up nearly everything Chibnall has ever done in Doctor Who. Even when he wasn't the show-runner, the majority of the scripts he did for Doctor Who were utter shit because he seems to "just throw in stuff he finds exciting for the sheer hell of it".
Love it! Great video 😁.
You might be interested to know the original plan for the Five Doctors was to get Robert Holmes to write it. The plot? The Master teams up with the Cybermen to kidnap the Doctor and use the Doctor's innate genetics to turn the Cybermen into "CyberLords". Seems a bit familiar... In the end Holmes couldn't get it work so they got Terrance Dicks instead.
"My Doctor" was McCoy and so I have a lot of sympathy for the so-called Cartmel Masterplan. But I don't think it should have ever gone to screen. Better as a weird undercurrent than explicit. I also saw a great comment on YT which said the whole Timeless Child could actually be Susan. That's one retcon I could get behind.
Totally agree with all the rest of your points. The problem with this episode is that it half remembers what happened in both the recent and distant past of the series and then rewrites it with all the subtlety of someone touching up the Sistine Chapel roof with a 6" brush and a tin of emulsion.
20:05 Not fully through yet, so this may be brought up later, but what about Missys whole arc? That was an interesting character plot, Missys internal debate and ultimately deciding, “Yeah, I’ll go with the Doctor.” AND THEN DYING/REGENERATING FOR IT. All tossed! Yeah, she wasn’t good, I’m not saying she was good. But she at least seemed to be trying to give herself limits(the whole Monk thing when she was in the jail, her version of good Vs the Doctors). Mean while this master just chucked it out the window and burnt its corpse, by killing all the children.
So, I have two different answers that work for me to reconcile this. The first is: we don't know for sure that Dawan comes after Missy. We don't see her regenerate and it's fully possible that he's what Simm (or indeed another incarnation entirely) regenerated into which would set him earlier in the Master's own timeline, even though the Doctor is encountering the incarnations out of order.
The second is to deal with the possibility that he does come after Missy. A big revelation for me with this particular master came right at the end of Power of the Doctor when his taking over the Doctor's body is reversed. He says "Don't let me go back to being me." This clued me in on something that I watched for on my rewatch of the 13th Doctor's era and I think holds up really well: this incarnation of the Master absolutely hates himself. That's honestly kind of new. Self loathing hasn't been much of a thing for the Master before this, but it's really evident in Dawan. And if he comes after Missy and this incarnation couldn't stop himself from sliding back into his own worst behaviors... well, I don't know if you've ever beaten yourself up for doing something you've sworn you wouldn't do again, but imagine that to like the 23rd power. That's my read on him anyway.
The thing is that there was never any point to this. It would have just introduced a new race of Not Time Lords that had no reason to not be the Time Lords
They should have made the timeless child an overarcing villain who wants revenge against the timelords for taking their regeneration or something like that
The best explanation of why the TARDIS is a police box pre-Hartnell is that the TARDIS did it deliberately. Either it wanted Thirteen to recognize it, or it was confused by her presence.
Sure would be nice if the episode said or even implied that.
Lmao your tone during the shouting in the rant was so spot on to Jack Black's vocal style when he shouts, could legitimately be an impersonator
You're so right on this you're giving me whole new ways to look at this episode I hadn't thought about
I’m hoping we get more female doctors in the future someday
My picks would be Tilda Swinton or Olivia Colman
Oh, we will! :) And at some point we'll get unashamedly non-binary Doctors and trans Doctors and, quite probably, totally non-"human" Doctors.
We will.
It could definitely work, but not with Chibnall writing her. Getting the right actress is key as well; don't get someone vanilla and make them 'act quirky,' get an actress we already know can do quirky and let them play with that. Two possibles: Helena Bonham-Carter or Miranda Hart. Tilda Swinton would be a good fit too.
@@writerinprogress Agreed, although I find Miranda Hart a fairly limited actress. If I may, I'll swap her for my own wild-card suggestion: Aisling Bea. We've already seen her in "Eve of the Daleks", but - as we know - it wouldn't be the first time that a supporting actor returned in the lead role.
If you're going to rewrite the Doctor Who mythos in one story, be Robert Holmes, who can do it with style and humour in an exciting and well made story. Don't be Chris Chibnall, who can't.
Great video! Very well-made points. This rant was honestly so Cathartic to hear. Thanks you!
If I may, I ponder if you ever did a video regarding the nature of showrunners in the sense of changing hands and how... opinions on what's best for the show can be whiplash to say the least.
When you said that it would be more interesting if the child had just been some random child from another dimension the time lords found and tortured to get regeneration and time travel powers, I immediately thought "Yesssss that's so much more story shaped." It took another minute to realize that would be Dr. Who doing "The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas" but that's a very Dr. Who-shaped story. It's so much angst, and I can see so clearly how the Doctor would be so much more enraged by this child being a regular person while none of the other time lords would care, or would think they at least gave this nobody a great purpose even at a terrible cost. But the doctor would scoff at the "big picture", she'd just see a child.
Here's how I would redo the Timeless Child if I could
Ok when Introducing the Ruth Doctor, don't use the Police Box TARDIS and don't have Ruth introduce herself as the Doctor, have her say that she's part of Timelord Black Op, have the Doctor say "Never heard of you " Ruth responds with "Wouldn't be very good at our job if you did. When the Doctor introduces herself as the Doctor have Ruth respond with "Who?" The Doctor is taken aback, she's never encountered a Timelord who's never heard of the Doctor. Have the episode play out roughly the same with the Doctor's idealism clashing with Ruth's ruthlessness but the two develop a begrudging respect for one another. Have the episode end with the Doctor asking for Ruth's name since she's never met a Timelord who's never heard of the Doctor. Ruth whispers her name into the Doctors ear, the Doctor face turns white, her eyes widen . After Ruth leaves one of the companions asks the Doctor who was Ruth and the Doctor replies "She's me". The Thing that Ruth had whispered was their true name. Ok next cut to the Cybermen story, have them be defeated in their episodes but keep the Cyberium. The Master appears out of the Portal and tells the Doctor to come with them and bring the Cyberium. Here's where the Master reveals two big reveals. The First is the Origin of the Timeless Child. Tecteun was a scientist and a supporter of Rassilon who after the disappearance of Omega was assigned to study the Untempered Schism to help perfect the Timelords knowledge of Time Travel while Rassilon worked to consolidate his power. During an experiment something emerged from the Schism, a baby, from their the Story plays out fairly similarly, the Child could regenerate, Tecteun and Rassilon found a way to steal the regeneration power for themselves but found that Timelords could only Regenerate 12 times naturally. Rassilon wanting Immortality for himself and his chosen followers built a machine to tap into the source of regeneration itself ,the Child, so rather than use up their own regenerations they would tap into the Child's regenerations causing the Child to feel the pain of regeneration. This is also how Rassilon is able to grant new regenerations as he sees fit. He creates a pocket dimension inside the Untempered Schism and keeps the Child in it connected to the Regeneration siphoning machine which links the Child to Timelords DNA across time and Space. Now the second Reveal, Hartnell was not the first Incarnation of the Time Lord we call the Doctor, before Hartnell, they weren't called the Doctor, their their past life their were Rassilon right hand and top enforcer , any threat to Time Lord or Rassilons rule they would take care of . However Ruth was the last of the their Incarnations and wanted a new Regeneration cycle. The Master reveals he found out this information and having been subjected to Rassilon inhumane treatment wants to help "End the child's misery " . He destroyed Gallifrey but admits that a good few of the Timelords survived and escaped including Rassilon so he needs the Cyberium as its the only other AI advanced enough to hack the Timelords Mainframe and access the pocket dimension holding the Timeless Child . The Doctor passes out from sheer shock and she enters her mind where she walks through an endless void and sees Statues of all the Past Doctors, she walks past all of them giving them each a look, eventually reaching Hartnell and saying "we've certainly come a long way ah old man " she looks into the distance and sees 12 figures covered in shadows with a 13th figure approaching her, its Ruth, she reveals that the Truth. She and her passed Regenerations did serve Rassilon because they believed his lies and believed they were doing the right thing. When the time came for Ruth to get a new regeneration cycle Rassilon trusting her revealed the Child to her, saying that she would be one of his chosen immortal Timelords. However Ruth was disgusted by what Rassilon was doing and tried to free the Child. While trying to rescue the Child , the Child ask them who they are and Ruth replies "I'm going to make things Better". However before she can free the Child she is captured and sentenced to Death However Ruth counters by saying Rassilon still owes her a new Regeneration cycle. So Rassilon decides to do both and have her reset, erasing her memories and regeneration cycle. Her last thoughts before she's reset and turned into the baby that would become William Hartnell are her own words "I'm going to make things Better" and 13's own "I'm the Doctor " . This shows why they chose the name the Doctor, they want to be the person who makes things better. The Doctor asks Ruth why the other Figures don't approach her as she's dying to meet them. Ruth reveals they're ashamed, they see the person they became and they know the person they were and believe they are unworthy . The Doctor reassures Ruth that she and any of her past versions are just as worthy of being called the Doctor as she is. The Doctor, Ruth and Shadow Figures all hug and reconciles.Waking up from her dream she joins the Master in his plan to help the Child. Once they make it into the Pocket Dimension the Master reveals what his plan is, he does want to end the Child's suffering but do so by absorbing all its regenerations, killing it and making himself immortal, his argument being that even if they free the Child its still traumatised from its experience and will never be free of its pain. As the Master starts to absorb Regenerations The Doctor manages to stop the Master and sends him into the Untempered Schism where he can be just thrown out in some random location for a Later Storyline with this you can always ensure the Master returns since the Number of regenerations he stole is never clarified . The Doctor in turn releases the Child who recognises the Doctor from all those years ago. The Doctor apologises for failing to save them and the Child Forgives the Doctor and before disappearing into the Untempered Schism gifts the Doctor with an undisclosed amount of regenerations thus ensure the Doctor can keep going on .
What do you all think
I assumed Ko Sharmus was referring to the city being *in* *ruins*, which he'd never seen before.
21:07 the Time Lords have access to time travel so it’s possible that the Doctor is not literally billions of years old but Chibnall doesn’t tie that loop up.
The story arc doesn’t address why a sociopathic Tectuen would keep the Doctor around once she cracked the regeneration code. There is no link between the child’s regenerative ability and the Doctor as a superheroic type!
I mean why *wouldn't* Tecteun keep the Doctor around after cracking the regeneration code? She's a child from another universe. Who knows what other qualities or powers she might have that Tecteun could study?
I'm guessing CoSharmas doesn't question where his people went because there's no one to ask except maybe The Master. For the most part the people meant nothing to the master so probably wouldn't care less where they went so long as it wasn't Gallefrey. I think JayExci addressed the question of why The Timelords lied in the 5 hour essay but it's been a while since I saw it. Stubagful summarised this episode as "The Master gave a Powerpoint presentation which ended with you are adopted". When it first aired I did hope it would turn out The Master lied but then her mother showed up in Flux. I agree Moffat had already resolved the whole regeneration thing. I also agree the previous episode wasn't edited properly. The whole death particle thing apparently didn't work because nearly everyone showed up in The Power Of The Doctor. For The Jadoon to appear, all I can think of is Chipnall suddenly remembered he needed a cliff hanger for Revolution Of The Daleks. Although it wouldn't make sense from a story perspective it does make sense from a filming perspective. They knew they already had the costumes in storage, and people would be able to recognise them in the last 10 minutes with little explanation.
Here's how much this episode missed for me: before watching this video, I'd completely forgotten what happened to Ashad and just assumed he was a loose end. And even after watching it, I still have no memory of actually seeing it in the episode.
Honestly, my biggest problem with the Timeless Child that I haven't seen _ANYBODY_ talk about -- though I know it's unpopular -- is that it erases the possibility the Doctor is half-human. Yeah, I know, that concept is "objectively bad, and you're stupid if you like it!!" I guess I'm stupid then. Honestly, the reason I loved that twist when it was revealed is because, as a mixed-race fan, it gave the Doctor more of a marginalized status I could relate to.
Like, people can forget the Doctor was originally a political refugee fleeing to exile on Earth when the show started, and that marginalized status was slowly lost over the course of the series. I liked the half-human concept, because as a mixed-race person it allowed me to relate to and look up to him even more as someone I had something in common with (and I suspect that was also true of other mixed-race fans). Honestly, what always bothered me about the backlash to that idea is that the whole criticism about why it "doesn't work" is... like, just that it makes him mixed race. That's it. Just him being mixed-race. Like, I have never heard a single criticism of that idea that boiled down to a narrative or storytelling issue, and solely boiled down to the Doctor _SIMPLY BEING MIXED RACE._ That always bothered me, as if it was like the Doctor being a "genetically non-pure" being wasn't acceptable.
And now that concept is gone. Like, in a world where he's the Timeless Child, that implied backstory now can't have happened. So the show has now gone and taken away that beautiful idea that allowed me, and potentially other mixed-race fans, to relate to him on a personal level. And honestly, taking that away... yeah, honestly, that's an actual thing that I think "ruins" the character, at least for a certain demographic of fans. Like, Doctor Who has always been about a "yes and" approach to adding new concepts, not taking old concepts away. So here I not only feel Chibnall disrespected a previous writers work by saying it "doesn't count," I actually think he carelessly ruined a certain amount of bare-minimum allegorical representation for some fans.
At least I still have Spock, I guess.
Just not my favorite character of all time.
EDIT: also, to clarify in terms of the Cartmel masterplan... what many people don't understand is that _Cartmel was never going to explicitly reveal that onscreen._ Like, even he knew that was a bad idea. It's kinda like Quentin Tarantino has developed backstories he knows about for his characters, such as how Colonel Raine got his neck scar, but that doesn't mean it needs to be revealed in the plot. Cartmel developed this, so that there would be a "secret show bible" of new things to hint at about his past, but he recognized the _MYSTERY_ was what made it great and never intended to actually explicitly reveal it (just to keep in mind when writing the character). Not to say it wasn't arguably a stupid backstory, as you put it, but therein lies a crucial difference.
On the note of the Boundary, Ko Shamus says, "I've never seen it look like that before," but, if I'm remembering correctly, in earlier dialogue it's established that the Boundary opens up to a new, random place in the universe every time. So, like, Ko Shamus, baby, you've never seen it look the same twice ever. What are you TALKING about?
And then for the Boundary to open on Gallifrey when the Doctor is standing there and the Master just happens to be standing on the other side, waiting to jump out like a child hiding behind the door waiting to spook their parents, is just... Why did Chibnall keep DOING that? He did it with Tzim Shah in "TBoRAK" as well, with him being sent to "a random point in the universe," but it just so happened to be next to a pair of super-powered, deeply religious, and incredibly naive beings who would accept him as their god. COINCIDENCE HAS LIMITS, MY GOD.
EDIT: On the note of heartlessness and thoughlessness, honestly, this comes down to Chibnall and the writing staff being DEEPLY Neoliberal in a way that the show, at least the revival, never really was. Kerblam!, Arachnids in the UK, Spyfall, Rosa, Orphan 55, even Demons of the Punjab are all deeply Neoliberal episodes, and this trend runs through the entire era. They fulfill their representation quotas, have some Very Important Discussions, and then behave in an extremely cruel way to the most vulnerable and marginalized characters while pretending to add anything of value to the discussion they're pretending to have. That's why they don't care about the children on Gallifrey. It was more important to discuss the Doctor being adopted and her identity than to think for even a second about the implications of what they were doing with the choice to destroy Gallifrey.
I rated _The Timeless Children_ far lower than _Hell Bent_ - and I didn't enjoy _Hell Bent_ at all. I can also think of whole scenes in _Hell Bent_ that were quite good - which is why I merely rated it as "Shit" while _The Timeless Children_ got rated as "Utter Shit"...
I always thought the 12 lives things was short-sighted, but I'm sure no one ever expected the story would hast so long. But, I'm sure there was some simpler way to recon the life limit. To me the Doctor will never be a god, and only just another Gallifreyan, if special in their quirkiness.
On the one hand, I agree: the idea that Doctor Who would last long enough that they’d have to worry about justifying a 14th actor probably sounded like either foolish hubris, or just a future-writers problem.
But when the limit was introduced in The Deadly Assassin, the intention was that the other faces we see in Brain of Morbius were also the Doctor, thus making Tom Baker actually the 12th or 13th [I forget, now] incarnation. The idea was to intimate that the Doctor’s continued existence was on the line, that he had either no or only 1 regeneration left. And to make him roughly the “same age” as his rival the Master, who was explicitly at the end of life, with no hope of regeneration-no safety net.
@@natbarmore Ok, good point. I had forgotten about The Deadly Assassin plot, it's been a few years since I last watched the Tom Baker era. Still, it's pretty common in scifi writing to course correct or retcon arcs, so there were basically unlimited ways they could have fixed it without turning the Doctor into a god. I know legally the fans don't own the IP, but we're just as much invested, if not more, than the writers and show-runners.
There was a simpler way to explain it. They already used it. In the 5 Doctors and in Time of the Doctor. You can get special dispensation for extra Artron, extra Lives, infused into you. They even told the Master his would be a complete new cycle of 12. So they always knew it could be extended. However, this does make Borusa's plot for immortality ring a bit hollow given there was already an easier way right there in front of him! 🤣
@@R_SENAL_WHO Why is lazy writing the norm? For all the truly talented script-writers out there, why are there so many poorly written stories in film and tv?
@@DrJaneLuciferian I think it could have a lot to do with things being rushed. There is so much to do, so many wheels moving at once to do something, and everyone expects everyone else to be on the ball too. This is how Starbucks coffee is in Game of Thrones, or a boom mic is clearly visible in Heaven Sent. Mistakes get made by rushing and writers and editors are no exception. They need someone on staff to tell them "NO, this doesn't work, do it again!" but nobody does. I've always thought long running shows needed a Continuity guy who just gets paid to review things for consistency and to point out plot holes that an ordinary editor would miss.
I actually snorted at 'exposition machine' 😂
I'm just spitballing here, but what if the episode was the Master finding out about the timless child and he thinks it is the Doctor. The Doctor knows who the Timeless Child is but won't reveal otherwise, so on the Master's side its implied its the Doctor and on the Doctor's side it could be someone else. So it keeps the mystery of the Doctor, doesn't make him/her the centre of the universe but keeps it open ended.
Davies can fix it simply by just saying the master lied. It’s a tacky retcon but I’ll accept it
I'm watching series 9-13 for the first time. And just finished this episode. I'm LOVING this review. I watched it when you originally posted it. But now I have the context and it's so much better. The timeless child is a terrible idea. But on even worse it was horribly executed. HORRIBLY. And then there's Ashad's death. Christ. Again I LOVE this.
“Umm.. why is there information about a completely unrelated planet in our Matrix? That’s very weird, we ought’a look into this…
..what the fuck?!”
aaaaaand the Timeless Child is exposed instantly. So much for secrecy lol.
I forgot to mention it in my reply, but this is actually one minor point I disagree with her on. The Matrix is the depository of all Time Lord knowledge and all Time Lord Biodata extracts. Therefore it should have data on every planet any Time Lord ever has researched, been to, or even heard about, in it.
@@R_SENAL_WHO it’s more to do with the story of Brendon and him not having anything to do with the Time Lords at all. That would be useless information on the surface which should’ve led to at least one Time Lord finding it weird enough to investigate. But we’re supposed to believe that nobody before the Master did, which is absurd.
@@f-zilla7347 Ok, I can see that, but that's not how it was phrased. I would counter though, that with the vastness of Time Lord knowledge within the Matrix that the Master found it either is kind of absurd. But ya know, Chibnall isn't known for plot devices that stand up to scrutiny.
The only way I ve been able to reconcile this it’s all one big lie from the Master. One HUGE practical joke to wind up the Doctor. Can we all agree to file this with the knowledge from Paul McGann that the Doctor is half human, and just never speak of it again.
I had a random head canony explanation pop in my head, for the TARDIS as a police box prior to Hartnell. That being that perhaps where we assumed the chameleon circuit got stuck due to some kind of fault, the TARDIS actually purposely took the Doctor to the 60’s and assumed the police box appearance and then jammed its own chameleon circuit, either simply to return to its familiar look that it had travelled using with the Doctor (prior to the mind wipe and reset to the first Doctor) or perhaps as a futile way to bring back some of the Doctor’s memories of their prior travels together that the first doctor had no memories of.
I do think that the guy sending people through the portal was sending them to Gallifrey,. when he said "last time it didnt look like that" i think he meant Gallifrey. So he sent them to Gallifrey in the past. Iroinically, it would explain how the Doctor was half human from the TV movie, IF THE DOCTOR WAS FROM GALLIFREY *facepalm* But i think that's why he wasnt looking for the people. Also maaaaybe some timelords escaped? but yeah Chibnail's era is definied by cruelty. Even Flux wipes out most of the universe. *sigh*
Pretty sure it was a plot point for the longest time that humans were forbidden from setting foot on Gallifrey. Another concept Chibnall , the "classic era fan" seemed oblivious to?
@@pious83 I wonder if it's because they found humans living among them from there old man sending them throug
@@GoofyGE3K I always took it as the classic Time Lord arrogance. Preferring not to mingle with species that are "beneath" them. It is like most of the best ideas about Gallifrey. Better to keep it vague and not overexplain. Like how the Time Lords were never depicted as more powerful or mysterious than in The War Games.
You know I actually thought they were going to imply humans settled Gallifrey even before the Dark Times and became the Gallifreyans, and then the Time Lords. That would have actually been somewhat interesting. I hated the Haunting of So&So and the Cyber story was meh apart from the new design being good and the weird police story that didn't make sense, but I actually had an inkling of hope for Timeless Children being THIS reveal, not what we got. So I was doubly disappointed.
This episode honestly feels like a first draft with too many ideas to handle. The reveal that the doctor is the timeless child really feels like a placeholder until a second draft came up with a better idea. The Master is right there to be the timeless child and for it to make at least a little more sense of a bad idea and you could see his motivation being more reasonable.
The Doctor being the most important person in all of time and space is stupid when there is so much. I could buy some societies being thankful to a particular version of the Doctor but being the most important person in the universe nah.
I think if this was a 3 parter things could have more things to breathe a touch more. This episode is the worst episode of new who (haven't watched much classic so I won't say of all time) it's just a mess and a sloppy first draft feeling
For me if the master was the timeless child it would have worked. It would make more sense, he blows up galifrey in response to their mistreatment. It would have worked so well.
I actually think the fugitive doctor comes between 2 and 3. No form of doctor who media has ever shown the second doctor completing his regeneration.
Huh. I hadn't considered that before. I don't mind that idea at all. Something could have happened during the regeneration into Pertwee that erased the Fugitive Doctor's memories of that lifetime, which then segways into Three falling out of the TARDIS.
@@soundgal_sine_qua_non here’s my theory. We already know that season 6B is canon, so the second doctor is working for the CIA doing missions.
During a mission, the doctor gets mortally wounded and regenerates into the fugitive doctor. This makes sense since we know for a fact that the fugitive doctor did missions for the CIA as well due to events we learned in FLUX. However, once the CIA is done using the doctor for missions, he still has to go through forced regeneration due to the trial at the end of the war games. His regeneration into the fugitive doctor wouldn’t count since that wasn’t a forced regeneration. So to cover their tracks (since these missions were done in secret without the rest of the time lords knowing anything about them), the CIA gave the fugitive Doctor an extra regeneration cycle so nobody would find out the doctor regenerated on o a CIA mission, messed with the doctor’s memories, gave the doctor back to the rest of the time lords, and they went through the forced regeneration, giving us the third doctor.
This ties into the third doctors first episode, where his Tardis crashes into earth and he stumbles out dazed and confused, unable to remember what happened.
I’m not mad, I’m just baffled. It’s bad but Hell Bent did everything 4 billion times worse. I can say some positive things about The Timeless Children. The only positive thing I have to say about Hell Bent is I saw Farscape for the first time after I quit watching Doctor Who. Gram, the Lone Cyberman, and the Master was fantastic but were undermined by the episode repeating Hell Bent fuck ups. The overall positive thing I have to say about The Timeless Children is I saw the Legend of Korra for the first time after taking a break from Doctor Who.
It sounds like you hate the Timeless Child(ren? there's only 1??) for all the same reason I do. I quit the show after that travesty aired. Before November I'll watch Flux & the specials, but I'm not ready yet. Soon. I liked Series 11 more than 12 though, 12 was just a dumpster fire. 11 was soulless but not as incendiary.
I actually liked parts of the Cartmel Masterplan. I LOVED Lungbarrow, that was Marc Platt though being the genius he is. He took a wonky Cartmel idea and polished that turd into an amazing lore building story that made the Doctor just another Time Lord, but more than that, a disappointment to his family, and established the cousins and looming and all kinds of cool concepts that fit well with existing lore and made sense!! Where it fell apart was making the Doctor somehow aware of his pre-Loomed self as the Other and picking up Susan, all that was a bit rubbish and needed a rework, but thankfully that bit was kind of hand waved with enough wiggle room you could rejigger that part to refit better again easily at some point, presumably.
The Timeless Child though is Cartmel's worst ideas on Crack! It's a giant wrecking ball and I hate it. For ALL the reasons you gave and more!
That said, I'm TRYING to mitigate the hate in my mind, tidying it up a bit. Maybe if the Doctor isn't aware of these other lives, then they still essentially happened to someone else, not them, with body changing and memory wipe the Doctor is essentially no more the TImeless Child than Jenny is the Doctor! She's just a clone, and the Doctor is just the current owner of the vessel? That's my Copium at the moment. Probably the only thing that is gonna get me through finally watching the rest of the Chibnall era, with it's crappy plot, hollow placeholder characters, and destruction of damn near everything in the universe (that I know of from you and others).
I despise what they've done with the Time Lords, The Master, and the Cybermen though, this whole plot(?) sets fire to all of them! I love the Time Lords as enemies/rivals/sometimes allies - Gone. After YEARS of plots to bring them back, just for nothing!! The Master... we FINALLY had character development after ages, Missy was changing, becoming something Interesting Again - Gone. Now we get Snidely Whiplash tying Mel to the train tracks again. Grrrrr. The Cybermen? Moffatt started their ruination with Death In Heaven being his worst episode EVER, but this just furthers them along the path of stupidity. Remember when the Cybermen were actually Cyber cause they had to be converted from Living Beings? That was Cybermen! Now they're just robots with a skeletal fetish! The Cyber Masters/Time Lords... it's an idea I would expect from a child with too many Doctor WHO action figures! It's just LAME AF!!
AND furthermore, since my blood is up now that I'm typing, I'm still ticked that Marc Platt is never given even a line in the credits of Haunting of Village de blahblahblah, when it is all the same basic plot as his audio the Silver Turk. If you steal an idea, don't even mention the original creator in the credits, I'm sorry, that's plagiarism. Chibnall & Maxine Alderton took someone else's work and passed it off as their own, and that's not cool. Yes, there are differences, but c'mon! Mary Shelley bases Frankenstein on an encounter with a damaged Cyberman? Pffffftttt!! He deserved at least a mention in the credits: "based on a story idea by Marc Platt," but no, not even that. Criminal. I only bring it up because the season finale started with that episode, and it was god awful from the start... I like Platt's original version of the same story way better.
The whole season was awful. I can't think of a single episode of Series 12 that was worth watching... Maybe the Tesla one, I need to rewatch it I Guess... ugh..
😮💨🙃😅
Chibnall is just a poor writer. When the timeless child thing first happened everyone said just wait he has a plan for this story. Recently Chibnall admitted he has no idea where the doctor/timeless child actually came from and he had no plans to ever expand on it lmao. I'm purging seasons 11-13 from canon.
It says it all when the Doctor finally got hold of that fob watch and effectively dropped it into the Tardis' bin.
For some reason it wasn't until watching this video that I had the thought that the Master had gone full 'Dark Side Anakin' off screen for Galifray to reach the state in the episode...
100% agree with you on this, all of it was just stuffed in there with no thought as to it’s possible effects….
The only time I would like to see the timeless child brought up again, would be to change it to being the master as the timeless child….
That would make so much more sense !!!!
It almost seems that Chibnall knew how to write every character except the Doctor…a bit of a problem when she’s the main character.
I know what you mean but, to be honest, none of the "Fam" nor Dan were particularly rounded or well-written characters either.
@@ftumschk Yeah, they weren’t really. But there still seemed a sense of intention to their story as opposed to the Doctor’s…and Yaz was there too.
Personally would have liked the timeless child if it was a big game for the master, like trying to convince the doctor she is something she isn't and has Gailfrey be an illusion, I could see the master destroying Gailfrey but not on his own but it's a bad idea