Doctor Who – Series 12

[Dave]

Well, that was a lot of fun, I thought. One of the good things about the show is that it can support so many different styles of story, and I thought they did a Bond-esque spy romp quite well (with a touch of X-Files thrown in).

Everyone seems a little more comfortable in their roles now and there’s a bit more meaningful character development than last series.

Plus, I liked the late reveal, which I didn’t see coming at all.

(And the ‘hiding behind the sofa’ gag made me chuckle.)

As good as anything from the last series.

Topic

[Ben Saunders]

I thought they were going to reveal the the Master was the Timeless Child, just for a second. That would have been better. I don’t like the idea of the Doctor being so important by virtue of their birth – they BECAME important via their actions, which is different. I know they had their memories erased and this TECHNICALLY doesn’t change the past 5X years of stories, but it does sort of re-frame episodes like The War Games, The Three Doctors, Genesis of the Daleks, the Key to Time arc, Trial of a Timelord… etc. Any time the Time Lords got the Doctor to work on their behalf. Again.

Where did the Cyber Time Lords get those fancy Gallifreyan helmets? Did they mass produce them in such a short span of time? They look silly.

>Why did she already call herself The Doctor and have a police box TARDIS?
This I kind of hate, if they ever bother explaining it. Hartnell’s TARDIS is a police box because he landed in a junkyard in 1960s London and the chameleon circuit broke, and he either couldn’t fix it or didn’t care to. This will not be retconned – if it is retconned, I shall ignore it.

Regen limit is unexplained, who knows if it ever will be.

>The David Tennant era is back, baby.
As I feared.

I assume Ko was a Time Lord. Why else would he touch the controls like that and use such specific language? Maybe the Doctor knew this, which is why she just let an innocent old man kill himself on her behalf.

Everything Quinn said.

[Ben Saunders]

The Doctor having infinite regens could possibly explain why he was able to give River some of his regeneration energy to heal her broken wrist, why he was able to threaten the Cyber-Planner with regeneration, why he says he’s unable to regenerate due to the poison in Let’s Kill Hitler despite not having any regenerations left, and why the Tesselecta Doctor attempted to regenerate, etc etc. But this could all be explained away before anyway – rule one: The Doctor lies, and it’s long been canon that a Time Lord on his last life has some regeneration energy left, but not enough to trigger an entire regeneration. In fact, it was old canon that some Time Lords could/did attempt to regenerate past this, with mixed results.

[Ben Saunders]

Although that could explain why the Doctor was able to use/threaten the use of regeneration energy as Matt Smith… it doesn’t explain why he would THINK he was able to do so, since he thought he was on his last life! He’s be operating under the assumption that he only had a little left, as I just described.

[Ben Saunders]

>RTD introduced the idea the Timelords are dead, Moffat undoes that and brings them back, then Chibnall goes and kills them all again?
Apologies for bringing it up, but I’m getting Star Wars 7-8-9 vibes from this. 8 throws out all of the setup 7 established, then 9 carries on as if 8 didn’t happen, openly retconning it in various places.

>Correct me if I’m wrong, but in this episode don’t they establish that their discovery of regeneration pre-dated their discovery of time travel?
Rassilon and Omega, who very annoyingly aren’t so much as mentioned in the Gallifrey historydump, invented time travel together. I can’t remember what order it comes in, but it’s all very quick, if I remember my old lore well enough.

[Ben Saunders]

It is now even more questionable that the Doctor managed to be a white man for so long. The Timeless Child is shown to be a black girl, a brown girl, a white girl, an Asian boy, a white boy, a brown girl, a black boy… and then a staggering TWENTY-ONE WHITE MALES IN A ROW (Morbius – Capaldi). What’s the in-universe explanation for this, what are the odds? Why would the Timeless Child regenerate into all these different earth-specific races? This has always been a weird thing about Who lore, it got weirder in the modern show, and now it’s downright bizarre.

[Ridley]

– The episode is called “The Timeless Children”, so who were the other ones then?

The regenerating Cybermen as a borne from the Doctor/Master is the way I took it.

[Ridley]

Mamma mia.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> The Doctor having infinite regens could possibly explain why he was able to give River some of his regeneration energy to heal her broken wrist

if regenerations have an imposed limit, why does River have a limit at all? Why couldn’t she heal herself?

I’m struggling with my history of River here, but we only see 3 lives of River Song right? The little girl in the space suit, Melody, and River. We never actually see the little girl regen into Melody, but we’re sort of led to assume that’s what happened right?

I’m not sure where I’m going with this …

Basically, River (a huge massive important part of the last era of Who) has become an anomoly that can’t easily be explained, when before, it had fairly easily been explained and we accepted it.

> and then a staggering TWENTY-ONE WHITE MALES IN A ROW

Just copying from the Discord to add to the discussion here

well, the Doctor doesn’t have control over how he turns out does he, but there are things that can affect it (ignoring 2-3 for the time being) such as 12 being the face of the guy from Pompai, that was the Doctor’s sub-consious reminding him to be kind. So perhaps there’s other little elements that play into it, and for 21 lives the Doctor identified best as a white male.

You’d have to then try and find an explanation as to why, after all that time, that identity completely fell away and the outward expression was to become white female. Maybe 12 not wanting to regenerate at all kick started an absolutely complete overhaul and forced a completely new “identity” so to speak
to add to the 12 example … 9-11 are all the Doctor getting younger, running away from the War Doctor and the terrible things he’d done.

the getting younger thing may not be explicitely stated, but it is implied and can be inferred from interactions 10+11 have with War
but if we take 12 as the setting of the canon that subconciousness plays a role sometimes, then it can be assumed it plays a role all the time
or at least more often than has been explictely stated

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, River is a huge anomaly, now. Even if you don’t like “Amy and Rory fucked in the time vortex” as an explanation, that is at least an explanation. Now we have a sort of situation where, outside of bringing back a character who’s arc is very much over and done with, there’s no real REASON to explain it, other than to satisfy some nerd’s continuity grumbles. So I think we’re going to have to keep grumbling. It would be extremely interesting to have River and Jodie interact – do you offend people by having them avoid any sort of hanky-panky altogether, implying that lesbianism is too taboo for TV (although we’ve already had Vastra/Jenny, which did draw a few complaints), or do you invite criticism from those who would view the two women so much as kissing as oversexualisation? I know what I’d like to see, but I think we can all be glad that I am not in control of Doctor Who in any form.

[Ben Saunders]

It’d be like that TNG episode where Beverly is suddenly not attracted to her old partner because she is now in a female body. This is of course a perfectly natural reaction since you cannot just force a straight person to become bisexual, as much as certain people like to say sexuality is fluid (for everyone, it isn’t) and everybody is a little bi (they aren’t). I’ve seen a few people complain that the episode isn’t progressive enough and that Beverly should have just been fine with it, but I do enjoy the drama that her being resistant to it brings to the episode.

[Veni]

So I actually watched the finale and I was pretty insulted by it not gonna lie. Can’t see me every enjoying Doctor Who under this canon.

[Flap Jack]

I was going to throw out some headcanon regarding River here – Is the accidental way she became a Time Lord or the fact that she’s a human the deciding factor somehow? Is the “infinite regenerations” thing a guarantee if they don’t deliberately block it, or is it still conditional? – but it really doesn’t feel worth it to think about that for too long.

Because honestly, if we’re limiting the scope to “how Time Lord regeneration works”, Let’s Kill Hitler was multiple levels of canon fuckery worse than this episode was. That was the real can of worms. “Anyone can be born a Time Lord if their conception happens while their parents were time travelling” is like the “I’m half human, on my mother’s side” of the 2010s. New writers aren’t going to go out of their way to directly undo it… but they probably wish you’d pretend it never happened.

[Ian Symes]

I think you can fudge the River thing by saying that the Time Lords must have imbued TARDISes, which are living things, with the regeneration DNA. We’re told that River could regenerate because she was conceived in the TARDIS, so it’s all perfectly consistent if you assume that they spliced the special DNA into their time machines as well as themselves.

Personally, I’m kind of OK with everything that was revealed about the Doctor, although I do prefer the idea of her being some random renegade to her being an integral part of Gallifreyan history that was always destined to be special. But ultimately I don’t care much about canon, or continuity changing, or things we thought we knew being wrong, because it’s all just bollocks that’s been made up by somebody, and the next person who comes along will just pick and choose what they want to keep and discard the rest. But it was all so fucking BORING. That’s the problem.

[Lily]

Fuck everything about this.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

[Nick R]

I wrote a post but I think it got eaten by the spam filter. Probably because I put three links in it.

[Nick R]

In the heartfelt conversation between Graham and Yaz, I couldn’t help myself filling in the blank:

Graham: “You ain’t got a time machine… or a sonic…”

Me: “Or a character…”

It may be due to my high tolerance for expository infodumps, but I didn’t hate the finale. At least, I didn’t dislike it anywhere near as much as Elizabeth Sandifer and her commenters. Earlier in this topic some Star Wars comparisons were posted, but nothing that compares to “Finally, we can all see what The Rise of Skywalker would have looked like on a shitty BBC budget.” Wow, don’t pull your punches – that’s harsh!

I’m not keen on making the Doctor the origin of all regenerations on Gallifrey, and as people have pointed out, it definitely didn’t live up to the Master’s claims of how devastating the news would be (though I suppose it provides motivation for the Master’s renewed hatred of the Doctor). But I don’t think it’ll permanently damage/break the show as some of the critics are saying. I don’t mind the revelation that the Doctor had pre-Hartnell regenerations – even ones in which they acted as a morally questionable Gallifreyan secret agent, doing things of which a modern Doctor would not approve.

It might be beneficial: as with John Hurt, the introduction of previously unseen regenerations could give us a chance to see how other actors might play other versions of the Doctor in one-off events, without those actors needing to commit to doing a full series. I suppose that option was always available to them – but until now, one-off guest star regenerations had to be from some unspecified time in the future, as with Tom Baker’s Curator, and what The Next Doctor initially looked like it was going to do.

[Ian Symes]

(I published it, but due to the unique way G&T is built, it’s now below your comment about your previous comment)

[Nick R]

Thanks! How appropriately timey-wimey.

[Pete Part Three]

Is Chibnall under the impression that he’s still writing Broadchurch and the final episode of the season has to be a bunch of flashbacks and explaining? Only problem here was that he set up bugger all in the way of a mystery all season beyond saying “There is a mystery”.

30 minutes boring of tedious fanwank that did nothing except extend the possibilities of storytelling in a show which had no real limits anyway. And once we start to wonder why any ANY of this matters, the main character comes to the realisation it doesn’t. So, um, that was a worthwhile use of time.

All that stuff that Moffat did with the Doctor’s real-name (which this new twist probably contradicts but fuck it); it was tiresome, but at least there was always an acknowledgement there that the show would never be so bold as to reveal it, as nothing could quite live up the hype. With this Chibnall twist, I get the impression that we’re intended to want The Doctor to go on some quest to find out her original home planet and who her real parents were. It’s been over 50 years. WE DON’T CARE. Just give us a fun show with nice sci-fi writing and decent characters.

Meanwhile, some tiresome stuff with the Cyberman, the promise of yet more revelations next year that will swap illogical nonsense exposition for story, some desperate mugging by The Master and a truly embarrassing scene where Chibnall tries to convince us that Yaz is a well-written character by having another character remark on some characteristics the writers have never seen fit to give her.

A truly terrible piece of television.

[Dave]

I know from experience that Yaz has quite a lot of kid appeal, and is a good gateway character role model type for young girls.

I’ve heard adult fans moan a lot about how thin her characterisation is, and while I think that’s true to some extent, it doesn’t prevent her functioning as a good companion for the series from a child viewer’s POV.

The nature of the show means there has to be something for everyone in there, and it’s worth remembering that it might not all be for you. (Just the same as a lot of the jokes and references sprinkled throughout often mean nothing to children watching.)

[Ridley]

I liked the regenerating Cyberman (wish it had changed appearance though) and the Master.

I can lol no the Doctor being the Chosen One while awaiting the undo but it is another example of, I presume, Chibnall’s dodgy politics. Had taken the Time Lord Cybermen to be reanimated corpses inside so thought it was good way to avoid the death particle being a mass killing by the Doctor if she was just oblierating dead tissue then the show made a point of saying they were people. So… oh.

Murdering Cybermen also cures dyspraxia.

[Ben Saunders]

Isn’t it really problematic to imply that people with dyspraxia can just get over it when it’s really important for them to do so? It trivialises their condition, right?

[Dave]

No, as I understand it most sufferers of dyspraxia don’t experience it consistently and it’s a condition that can come and go, not being a problem for every activity. And it affects every sufferer differently.

(Which makes it a hard thing to write as a character trait without making the writing seem wildly inconsistent, especially in a show that requires your character to be leaping atop trains and throwing bombs long distances with precision.)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

“Anyone can be born a Time Lord if their conception happens while their parents were time travelling” is like the “I’m half human, on my mother’s side” of the 2010s.

I see the “half human” line as an example of something we’re ready to forget quickly when picking and choosing canon quite often, but I think there is a fundamental difference between a line like this and something like how River born with Regeneration capabilities.

Firstly it was one single line. It can much more easily be read as The Doctor lying or sort of joking about it. We don’t really know his motivation for saying it, and it is never again expanded upon, so it is much easier to write off as, even at the point of being said, not being the case and not being canon in any respect.

Secondly, the context of that line is that it is delivered in a one of TV movie that had the express ambition of rebooting the show and making it more palatable to American audiences. We understand it was trying to fuck around with the show a little, and we understand it failed quite badly. It didn’t succeed in its mission and none of the events of that movie are ever really expanded upon again. The most we can take from it is that the 8th Doctor exists. As a one off, writers have largely ignored everything else.

With the River thing, that is a much more prominent part of the shows history, appearing in the middle of the current shows run, and is used multiple times and is a fairly important story detail that spans several episodes. It much harder to ignore and isn’t something I would expect anyone could be as flippant with.

There was ways of working River and The Timeless Child’s origins and abilities in together (all we need to establish is that the Child was born in a time vortex/that boundary and her abilities were what led her race to abandon her, because it scared them – this also then undoes the potential issue of there being a race of beings out there that regenerate infinitely by birth)… and perhaps that will happen at some point. Perhaps it will be ignored entirely, but I don’t think if that is the case, that River’s abilities become something we ignore as non-canon when re-watching the show, as that is far too much to ask.

[Flap Jack]

Well, I didn’t really mean that the circumstances were identical. The River Song thing does indeed have a bigger importance in the story, Segal did have more of an excuse than Moffat etc., I agree with that. But either way, they’re both new continuity details that don’t fit well with the rest of the show, and writers covering the topic would prefer you not to remember them even if you wouldn’t explicitly class them as “non-canon”.

Also, just to be clear, the “half-human” thing is not only one line. It’s a plot point. The Master can’t get into the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS (another bizarre continuity confusion that the Moffat era doubled down on for some reason) because it needs a human eye to open it. He even says “Ah, of course, The Doctor’s half-human” or something along those lines.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also, just to be clear, the “half-human” thing is not only one line. It’s a plot point. The Master can’t get into the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS (another bizarre continuity confusion that the Moffat era doubled down on for some reason) because it needs a human eye to open it. He even says “Ah, of course, The Doctor’s half-human” or something along those lines

I’ll admit its been years since I watched the film, I thought it just a throw away line.

But this doesn’t make sense, as the Master in the movie has taken over a human host hasn’t he? He’d be more human than any half-human Doctor.

Maybe I should re-watch the film (god help me) before I comment any more on this.

[Dave]

Reports that Graham and Ryan will leave the show after the upcoming special:

Doctor Who’s Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole ‘quit series and will leave at Christmas’

Makes sense given their other commitments.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

If they did leave, I’d hope Chibnall would do at least one series with just Yaz. See how he is writing a show with just 2 main characters. Might force him to actually characterise them and give them shit to do.

[Dave]

Yes, with them gone, for Yaz the only way is up.

[Ben Saunders]

>However, having the Eye of Harmony on board the TARDIS contradicted the idea that the Eye itself was on Gallifrey. To reconcile this, fan speculation held that this was not the real Eye, but merely a name applied to a remote link to the actual Eye that powered the craft (possibly in the same way the Time Lords transmitted energy from Gallifrey to the TARDIS in The Three Doctors), or alternatively, the Eye had been somehow transferred to the TARDIS. The former conjecture became established fanon, and was taken up in the spin-off media and was eventually confirmed by the official BBC website.

[Flap Jack]

But this doesn’t make sense, as the Master in the movie has taken over a human host hasn’t he? He’d be more human than any half-human Doctor.

YOU’D THINK. But man, when you consider the sheer chaos of that film’s production, it’s a miracle it was even halfway coherent or at all enjoyable.

And despite these snafus, Philip Segal was actually champion of continuity by fighting so hard to bring Sylvester McCoy back to regenerate, arguably to the detriment of the actual quality of the movie.

[Pete Part Three]

Give me the TVMovie over anything Chibnall has ever done with Doctor Who.

[Ben Saunders]

Anthony Ainley’s Master took over a “human” (Tremas of Traken), too. It’s just treated like another body/”regeneration” for him.

I would rather watch the TV Movie than any episode of Chibnall Who, as well. I wonder how the fuck Fugitive/Timeless will hold up on rewtach, given that the only interesting thing about those episodes was the mystery, although I don’t intend to find out – I’ve still only seen most of S7 onwards of New Who once each, and there are so many others I’d rewatch sooner.

[Ben Kirkham]

Ok. Time to vent my spleen. I’ve been a Doctor Who fan all of my life. I’m 34 now. The series has given me so much wonder, hope, humour, scares, thrills etc. But not anymore.

I struggle to see how anybody can see what Chibnall has done as anything other than vandalism. Aside from the idea of Pre-Hartnell Doctors (which I’ve never liked anyway), Chibnall has ripped the very hearts and soul out of the character of the Doctor. To say that he/she wasn’t really someone that left Gallifrey to rebel against the hierarchy and help people *just because he cared,* he’s turned the character into the Sci-Fi Mary Sue cliché; a version of the baby Jesus that is the key to everything. It’s an awful development. By introducing a seemingly endless plethora of early Doctors, the character has been diluted and the other Doctor’s feel compromised as a result. “This adds to the mythology,” I’ve heard people say. You add to mythologies by moving forwards and creating new characters, new stories and new situations, not by crowbarring in some poorly-conceived origin. But Chibnall is creatively bankrupt and sees this as innovative. Said “origin” by the way leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A mother repeatedly torturing, murdering and experimenting on her child (adopted or not) in what I’ve always believed is a television series for the whole family, leaves me slack jawed in disbelief. There’s something really sick about how casually it was dealt with, too. This whole obsession the series has now with regeneration. It was supposed to be some quirky thing to allow for a change of lead actor, but now it’s the focus of the show. To be fair, that did start with Moffat.

Hideous, franchise-damaging retcon aside: Jodie Whittaker isn’t very good. I’m sure she’s a good actress but she is woefully miscast as The Doctor. This isn’t a gender complaint either; a female Doctor can and should work. But Whittaker is not up to the task. She is irritating in the extreme, lacks emotional depth and the quirky moments seem incredibly forced and childish. She hasn’t helped herself in interviews as it’s clear that she has a distain for the classic series, in particular. Not every Doctor has to be a rabid fan of the show, sure, but Whittaker seems to regard the legacy of the series as an embarrassment and is keen to rewrite it, from what I can gather. To be fair to her performance, the script gives her nothing to work with. No Doctor has ever felt so badly detached from the others.

I find the character of the 13th Doctor to be fraudulent. This is supposed to be the same character that wouldn’t destroy the Daleks at birth because he saw the bigger picture of their existence. This is the same character that very quietly decided to take Wilfred Mott’s place to save the life of an old man because it was the right thing to do. A hero. This is the same character that argued with the Master about staying to stand and fight to protect a small community from the Cybermen, even though he knew it was almost certainly futile. This is the same character who sacrificed his life to save Peri, a young girl who he hardly even knew at that point. But the 13th Doctor isn’t like that. She doesn’t comfort her friend when he worries about his cancer returning, even though we’ve seen the “socially awkward” Doctor have tender and emotionally resonating moments with his companions throughout the history of the series. She is prepared to let another person take the fall so that she can escape. This isn’t the Doctor.

I’ve stuck with Chibnall’s era out of a loyalty and hope that it would get better. I’ve felt through every episode that this series isn’t welcoming me anymore. Telling people to feel emotions doesn’t work. All of Chibnall’s emotional scenes ring hollow. I don’t believe or understand the Doctor’s attitude toward her “fam” (groan) or believe that she really cares about them.

Chibnall is a terrible choice of showrunner. I watched ‘World Enough and Time’ and ‘The Doctor Falls’ the other day. Moffat made many mistakes but he clearly adored the show and when on top form, he delivered brilliant Doctor Who. I also watched ‘The Waters of Mars,’ and marvelled at how a show so clever and emotionally complex that featured characters I could root for and believe in has degenerated into such a pitiful mess. It’s also telling how he views the series pre-Whittaker. In Spyfall, Stephen Fry’s character is corrected on the Doctor’s gender by her saying “I’ve had an upgrade.” Awful. What’s wrong with her just saying that she wanted a change? It’s hard not to think Chibnall has an agenda with dialogue like that.

I refuse to let this retcon change the way I view Doctor Who 1963-2017. Hopefully someone will do a fan edit of ‘Twice Upon A Time’ where the screen fades to the credits when Capaldi starts regenerating. It’s a far more fitting end, the First Doctor and the final Doctor in one final episode together.

I’m devastated. I like to believe that I’m a positive, progressive person that has always adapted to changes in the series over the years. But this is it for me. Series 13 can come and go, and then the best thing at the moment would be to give the series 10 years off. Then bring it back, just like RTD did with Rose (those were the days) and give me a hero I can believe in again. In 1989, Doctor Who ended with dignity. Now it’s ending screaming.

It’s been painful yet cathartic to write this and I’m going to my DVD shelf to enjoy REAL Doctor Who now.

[Flap Jack]

To say that he/she wasn’t really someone that left Gallifrey to rebel against the hierarchy and help people *just because he cared,* he’s turned the character into the Sci-Fi Mary Sue cliché; a version of the baby Jesus that is the key to everything.

I don’t think it actually does this? They’re sure to make it clear that the Doctor lost all her pre-Hartnell memories when she became Hartnell, and the secret of her origin was suppressed so heavily that most of the Time Lords wouldn’t have known about it. The reason the Doctor left Gallifrey and the reason she became a hero have not been changed. She even makes a speech and has a speech made to her saying how this doesn’t change who she is. (Which of course raises a different major criticism of “why even bother including this twist, then?”, but that’s an individual story complaint, not a series-vandalism complaint.) From a meta perspective, The Doctor is important to Gallifreyan mythology because she’s important now, but in-universe it’s just a coincidence.

Heck, they even manage to miss out the explanation of how The Master even deduced that The Doctor was The Timeless Child in the first place, which smacks of “we can undo this if we change our minds about it”.

Ultimately the canon of Doctor Who is rewritten all the time and the formula of the series means that these details are rarely that important anyway. This really isn’t as monumental a deal as everyone is determined to declare it is.

Hideous, franchise-damaging retcon aside: Jodie Whittaker isn’t very good.

I couldn’t disagree more. Inconsistently written, yes, but Jodie has given some amazing performances as the character. She has her quirks that some people find annoying, but they’re essentially Tennant or Smith-esque quirks, not something un-Doctorish.

She is prepared to let another person take the fall so that she can escape. This isn’t the Doctor.

Let’s be real here: Six would 100% do this.

Hopefully someone will do a fan edit of ‘Twice Upon A Time’ where the screen fades to the credits when Capaldi starts regenerating. It’s a far more fitting end, the First Doctor and the final Doctor in one final episode together.

Someone? Fading out and then cutting to the credits is one of the simplest edits you could do. Be the change you want to see in the world, Ben.

But really, if you see The Doctor regenerate rather than die, that confirms that Twelve is not “the final Doctor” then, doesn’t it. I guess you mean “final” from a meta perspective, that if you don’t see Thirteen, you can just pretend the show ended there. But if Series 11 weren’t confirmed, they wouldn’t have cast a new Doctor or done a regeneration in the first place. So the real goal should be a fan edit where Twice Upon A Time has no regeneration in it all. Now that’s a challenge.

In 1989, Doctor Who ended with dignity. Now it’s ending screaming.

It isn’t ending.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

“This adds to the mythology,” I’ve heard people say. You add to mythologies by moving forwards and creating new characters, new stories and new situations, not by crowbarring in some poorly-conceived origin.

Ellard has made the observation that the show has now moved away from Doctor Who, and become Doctor What. Because now we’re (or at least the characters within the show) not left questioning who this person is, we’re (and some of the characters in the show) are left asking what this person is. Because she isn’t Gallifreyan and she isn’t by nature it seems, The Doctor.

Whatever the pre-Hartnell version of this person is, The Division element and the stuff with Ruth seems to suggest more of a secret agent or sorts, thats willing to kill etc. Which is the antithesis of The Doctor. We had that once, with War Doctor. And that was meant to be a mental, one off version that chose that life because it needed to be done to end war and save life/the universe etc. The War Doctor was meant to be the anomaly. But now, of all the potential lives The Doctor has had, it seem the version that is the Doctor has only be a part of this person for a short space of time their life, (12/13 regenerations that we’ve seen) vs the untold number of Ruth like agents that came before Hartnell. So this isn’t a person that is ultimately caring, but for a little blimp if their endless life has done some good, whilst the rest has done god knows what.

a female Doctor can and should work

And ironically, Ruth sort of proves that that is somewhat possible, given the right script, dialogue, and direction to work with.

I don’t believe or understand the Doctor’s attitude toward her “fam” (groan) or believe that she really cares about them.

I’ve been rewatching some old episodes recently (End of series 3, 9 and 10) and in every scene, there is a caring bond and a familiarity between the Doctor and his companion that just is not replicated anywhere in Chibnall’s era. That’s in part probably due to too many companions to build on those relationships and probably because they always get booted off to the side of the story and don’t get to interact with the Doctor too much. And there isn’t any room in the story for the Doctor to sit down with these people and eat a plate of chips and have a chat about their lives and what is going on.

“I’ve had an upgrade.” Awful

I don’t think this is a comment on pre-Chibnall who or gender or anything. I think it is genuinely meant to just be a witty come back to someone being confronted by what they didn’t expect to see, which is within keeping with the character of the Doctor. If it had been a male Doctor saying it to someone who expected to meet someone else, then it would have a) still worked and b) we wouldn’t be talking about it.

[Ben Saunders]

It’s not even the Timeless Child nonsense which killed the show for me, it was series 11; I only watch out of some sense of sunk cost fallacy/brand loyalty and boredom now, and to not miss out on the fabulous discussions online.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The only good things to come out of this Timeless Child stuff is that it has generated a lot of discussion which I’m quite enjoying. Picking apart the idea of it and trying to make it all make sense, even if that is a futile endeavour

[Pete Part Three]

I wouldn’t bother to try to fit it in with the continuity of the Moffat era, as Chibnall certainly couldn’t be arsed.

[Ridley]

Time can be rewritten.

[Pete Part Three]

Shame Chibnall’s scripts couldn’t be.

[Author]

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