Time to make this blog a place for rants once again! Only this time, with a flavor of fandom~~.

That’s right–it’s time to rail on the latest episode of Doctor Who and how it utterly destroyed all we know and love. Exaggeration? Yes. A good lead-in to this blog post? Eh…sure.

The Lead-Up

In “The Ghost Monument” (S11E2), we’re introduced to the concept of The Timeless Child by a Remnant (a blankie version of a Dementor basically).

Here’s the important bit for those who don’t feel like watching:

REMNANT: You lead but you’re scared, too, for yourself and for others.
DOCTOR: Yeah, well, who isn’t?
REMNANT: Afraid of your own newness. We see deeper, though, further back. The Timeless Child.
DOCTOR: What did you just say?
REMNANT: She doesn’t know.
DOCTOR: What are you talking about? What can you see?
REMNANT: We see what’s hidden even from yourself, the outcast, abandoned and unknown.

We’re two episodes into the new Doctor’s first season and things have already gotten exciting. Could The Timeless Child be the series-long mystery along the lines of Bad Wolf from Series 1 or the crack from Series 5?

Um … nope. Turns out it wouldn’t come up again in Series 11. Within the scope of that series, it was nothing more than a really cool sounding name along the lines of “the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child and the Could-Have-Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres” from the Tenth Doctor’s run.

So, right off the bat, Chris Chibnall (showrunner and writer of the episode) drops the ball on properly setting up this concept. Briefly mentioning an intriguing concept and then failing to bring it back up until the next series is not a satisfying set-up for what would eventually become such a big plot point for the show. At the very least, shouldn’t the Doctor have dug deeper into what the Remnant was talking about? I thought the Doctor has consistently been the curious sort? Does that not apply to her own history for some reason??

But I digress. Let’s jump ahead. We reach Spyfall, the Series 12 premiere. There, the Master returns and tells the Doctor at the end of part 1: “Everything that you think you know … is a lie.” Cliché. But it’s Doctor Who.

In Spyfall part 2, it’s revealed that The Master destroyed Gallifrey and that The Timeless Child is “buried deep in all our memories. In our identity.”

OK, color me intrigued.

But then. Things kinda … go off the rails.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Jo Martin’s portrayal of The Doctor. I might even prefer her character to Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor in terms of attitude and gravitas. But her story (as is implied heavily by the show and stated by Chibnall) makes absolutely zero sense. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, we have a finale.

The Problems

In “Ascension of the Cybermen” we’re given a story about a redhead Captain Jack-type lad who … turns out to be none of those things because the whole story was just … a fabric of The Doctor’s imagination based off her memories????

In “The Timeless Children” we get the titular (and SINGULAR) Timeless Child, who … doesn’t seem to mind being experimented on????

Like, they just kinda … stare??? And seem bewildered by the experiments?? Um, K.

But these are just nitpicks. What are my BIG problems with this whole plotline and what it does to the canon?

1. Jo Martin’s Doctor Is Nonsense

The possibilities of when she exists in the Doctor’s timeline makes no sense as it stands. Let’s go over the facts:

Fact #1: Susan made up the name TARDIS.

SUSAN: The TARDIS can go anywhere.
BARBARA: TARDIS? I don’t understand you, Susan.
SUSAN: Well, I made up the name TARDIS from the initials, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I thought you’d both understand when you saw the different dimensions inside from those outside.

[From “The Unearthly Child”]

Fact #2: The TARDIS permanently became a police box with William Hartnell’s Doctor.

DOCTOR: It’s still a police box. Why hasn’t it changed? Dear, dear, how very disturbing.
[…]
IAN: Incredible. A police box in the midst of. Oh, it just doesn’t make sense.
SUSAN: It should have changed. Wonder why it hasn’t happened this time.
BARBARA: The ship, you mean?
SUSAN: Yes, it’s been an Ionic column and a sedan chair.
BARBARA: Disguising itself wherever it goes.
SUSAN: Yes, that’s right. But it hasn’t happened this time. I wonder why not.

[From “The Cave of Skulls”]

Fact #3: It’s heavily implied that Martin’s Doctor comes before Troughton’s Doctor (the Doctor first seen with a sonic screwdriver).

DOCTOR: No, this doesn’t make any sense. Either I should know you or you should know me.
RUTH: Agreed.
DOCTOR: So why don’t we?
RUTH: I dunno. Why don’t you try asking that cute little gizmo of yours?
(The Doctor takes out her sonic screwdriver.)
RUTH: Yeah, that’s the one.
DOCTOR: I did. I used it on you, but it couldn’t decrypt the bio-shield. If you’ve been restored… (scans Ruth then herself) Same person.
RUTH: Oh, no.
DOCTOR: But you don’t recognize a sonic screwdriver.
RUTH: Smart enough not to need one.

[From “Fugitive of the Judoon”]

Fact #4: It’s heavily implied that Martin’s Doctor is part of the whole “Timeless Child” era of the Doctor’s life.

DOCTOR: Oh, great. What are you doing here? Or are you the Matrix playing more games with me?
RUTH: Don’t ask me, I’m as lost as you are in here. Maybe you just summoned me.
DOCTOR: Where do you fit into all this? Were you me all that time ago? Were all my memories of you erased? Did they force me back into becoming a child? How many more of me are out there?

[From “The Timeless Children”]

Fact #5: Martin’s Doctor calls her ship a TARDIS and it’s a police box.

This … is all impossible. Martin’s Doctor cannot be before Hartnell’s Doctor and have a ship called a TARDIS stuck in the shape of a police box. She also can’t be between Hartnell and Troughton because we see that regeneration on screen:

And before you can say “alternate universe!”:

“The important thing to say is — she is definitively the Doctor. There’s not a sort of parallel universe going on, there’s no tricks,” explained Chibnall in an interview with Mirror.

To somehow have Martin’s Doctor fit into the canon despite all these contradictions would involve so much rewriting of history that I have to ask: “why?” What’s the point of it all? You can make anything work with enough retconning. Why go to the trouble for this version of the Doctor? I’m not sure how anyone could argue that’s anything but bad writing for the sake of surprise and publicity.

2. The Creation of Time Lords is Contradicted

It was previously established that Gallifreyans became Time Lords at least partially due to the time vortex/the Untempered Schism:

VASTRA: Now, I have a question. A simple one. Is Melody human?
DOCTOR: Sorry, what? Of course she is. Completely human. What are you talking about?
DORIUM: They’ve been scanning her since she was born, and I think they found what they were looking for.
DOCTOR: Human DNA.
VASTRA: Look closer. Human plus. Specifically, human plus Time Lord.
[…]
DOCTOR: But she’s human. She’s Amy and Rory’s daughter.
VASTRA: You’ve told me about your people. They became what they did through prolonged exposure to the time vortex. The Untempered Schism.
DOCTOR: Over billions of years. It didn’t just happen.

[From “A Good Man Goes To War”]

And during Tennant’s era as Doctor, it was established that the Untempered Schism was what acted as initiation for Gallifreyans to become Time Lords:

DOCTOR: Children of Gallifrey, taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. And some say that’s when it all began. When he was a child. That’s when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It’s a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad. Brr. I don’t know.

[From “The Sound of Drums”]

WILF: What does he mean? What noise?
MASTER: It began on Gallifrey, as children. Not that you’d call it childhood. More a life of duty. Eight years old. I was taken for initiation, to stare into the Untempered Schism.
WILF: What does that mean?
DOCTOR: It’s a gap in the fabric of reality. You can see into the Time Vortex itself. And it hurts.
MASTER: They took me there in the dark. I looked into time, old man, and I heard it calling to me. Drums. The never ending drums.

[From “The End of Time – Part Two”]

So under the pen of Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, we have a fairly consistent understanding of how Time Lords come about. This is all stuff we expect most of the modern fanbase has seen. No digging around in Classic Who even required. But then Chibnall rewrites history:

MASTER: [Tecteun] had to crack this code to understand regeneration. And finally, she did. And to prove herself right, she took the ultimate risk. Tested the theory on herself. Put her own life on the line. Spliced into herself the genetic ability to regenerate. […] The planet of Gallifrey evolved. Shobogans grew in knowledge and ability. They built themselves the Citadel. They discovered the ability to travel through time as well as space. With Tecteun, they became a self-appointed ruling elite. And Tecteun proposed that they gene-splice the ability to regenerate into future generations of Citadel dwellers. It would become the genetic inheritance of them and their descendants. But he would restrict the regenerative process to a maximum of twelve times. The Timeless Child became the base genetic code for all Gallifreyans within the Citadel. The civilization which renamed themselves, with characteristic pomposity, Time Lords. The foundling had become the founder. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what makes a Time Lord a Time Lord? Is it genetic inheritance or the time vortex? Can it be either one? Is it both? If Chibnall is doing nothing else, he’s complicating the lore quite a bit with this Timeless Child story.

And again … why? I’m not sure what’s accomplished here. The Doctor is now even more special than before? Does that make her a more interesting character? Personally, I’d say no. Making a main character who’s special of their own doing suddenly more special with something that’s not of their own doing … that just makes me groan. If, say, the Master was the Timeless Child, that would add complexity to their personality and motives. To have the Doctor be the Timeless Child … that just doesn’t seem to add much to the character. It makes our superhero more into a god. Um. K. Not a super engrossing story there in my opinion.

3. The Previously Debunked “Morbius” Doctors are Made Canon (For Some Reason)

*sigh*

So. “The Brain of Morbius.”

Back in Season 13 of Classic Who, Tom Baker’s Doctor encountered the brain of Morbius. Morbius was an evil Time Lord who was being brought back to life by a mad scientist. Long story short, at the end of the serial, Morbius and the Doctor engage in a deadly mindbending contest. During this, we see images of previous Doctors on a screen. But the images continue past William Hartnell — and show men we’ve never seen before!

It’s important to note that within the show, these faces aren’t explicitly said to be The Doctor. It’s possible these were previous incarnations of Morbius. But. Apparently Philip Hinchcliffe, a previous producer for the show, has stated that these faces were intended to represent previous incarnations of the Doctor. But that’s just behind-the-scenes stuff. Many, many episodes of Doctor Who have since contradicted any possibility of those faces being the Doctor. Or, heck, any faces before Hartnell being the Doctor. Most notably, we have “The Name of the Doctor.”

In the episode, Clara enters the Doctor’s time stream. She states, “All your different faces, they’re here.” And later says, “But I never saw that one [the War Doctor]. I saw all of you. Eleven faces, all of them you. You’re the eleventh Doctor.”

Clara was able to see John Hurt’s Doctor despite Matt Smith’s Doctor wanting to keep that iteration hidden. So where are all of the Doctor’s Timeless Child iterations? Because his mind was wiped of them, they don’t appear in his own time stream? I just don’t understand how this Timeless Child stuff is supposed to fit in anywhere.

I’m Tired

I could keep going. Like how the Doctor having unlimited regenerations ruins any illusion of threat from now on. Or how wiping out Gallifrey after the immense effort of bringing it back makes that whole plotline feel like a colossal waste of time. But if I dive into all of the problems from this finale, I’d be writing and researching all week. And my brain has already become jelly.

In short, this finale did so much to break the canon of the show that my faith in Chibnall’s run is essentially shattered. I can only hope another showrunner comes along soon. I’m sorry, Chibnall. (I loved Broadchurch if it’s any consolation.)