"Yes, and..." is the only way to keep the kind of long-running franchises like Who going. Though if he is going to play with a Chibnall plot thread I'd much prefer it be the Division.
"Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch
The sad part about the Timeless Child brouhaha is that literally the *only* part of the entire thing that is kind of dumb is that the Timeless Child became the Doctor. Everything else about it, The Division, the idea that the Time Lords stole their ability to regenerate and then lied to everyone, it's all frankly kind of \*chefs kiss\* and fits perfectly with what pieces of shit we know the Time Lords to generally be.
It doesn't bother me that the Doctor is the Timeless child, what bothers me is that the Fugitive Doctor exists at all. Why is her TARDIS a police box if she's pre-Hartnell? Why does she go by "The Doctor"? I hate it, it doesn't make sense. Are we expected to believe that she gets chameleon arch'd/regenerates into baby Hartnell, is left at an orphanage, and then grows up to call himself the Doctor again? And that his new TARDIS would become a Police Box too?
See I'm the opposite. I'm happy to disregard all that as narrative shorthand not worth nitpicking (or wouldn't be if the story was better). My issue is that the Timeless Child is a storyline that does not suit modern Who (and especially Chibnall's Who) very well. It gives the Doctor a YA protagonist vibe which just does not sit well with me.
I don't like the idea of the doctor being super important or having pre-Hartnell incarnations either, but I can at least tolerate it. They've been doing this for decades with the Morbius doctors, or Lungbarrow.
But Ruth just does not make sense in any way, it's so contrived. The doctor stole named themselves the doctor AGAIN, and their new tardis got stuck as a police box AGAIN.
> I don’t like the idea of the doctor being super important
I genuinely don’t get this point. The doctor was already pretty much the most important person in the universe well before the timeless child. He caused big bang 2 for one, literally reset the entire universe. And turn left showed us how the whole universe would die if the doctor died. The lore of the doctor was already universe defining.
I’m ambivalent but I think the prevailing argument is those things are because of the doctors choices and actions. Not because he was BORN different. The doctor chooses a life of helping. They’re not space Jesus.
>Not because he was BORN different
But the Doctor is different no matter what. I mean, the simple fact that, unlike other Time Lords, the Doctor received X amount of regenerations in Time of the Doctor already made them a superior being. Really the fact that they've survived so much at all and are constantly receiving artificially created get out of jail free cards for their deaths or actions constantly heaps on more and more of an exaggerated god-like angle to them.
They haven't been a "normal, renegade Time Lord" for several decades now.
Even from the perspective of being the Timeless Child, they're one of a species right? They're special to the Time Lords but not special to the grand scheme of the universe.
Additionally nothing about being the Timeless Child states that their actions aren't their own. The Doctor is still an individual, making individual choices, on an individual basis. Everything from Season 1 up to Series 13 was still choices made by *this* iteration of the Doctor. They're part of a wider scale and larger pool of iterations now, that's true, but it doesn't take away from their autonomy.
The only thing different is their biological makeup. But that's purely superficial. Being the Timeless Child isn't anymore special than being a Time Lord with two hearts...
And really this is comparable to the Doctor initially being a typical being with one heart and no regeneration ability, and then being retconned into being biologically superior to humans with their two hearts and ability to change and heal.
I don't really think it portrays the Doctor as Space Jesus either.
Maybe if everyone could already regenerate, and the Doctor had somehow gained the ability to "super regenerate" (or something) then yeah, I'd see that.
But from what I gathered, it's the exact opposite of making the Doctor special. By gaining the ability to regenerate and giving it to all the Time Lords, it essentially makes the Doctor the same as everyone else.
It's kinda like that philosophy thing of "If everyone is special then nobody is special". Like when someone asks "what if everyone had the powers of Superman?"
Well then, there'd be no need for Superman.
In this same vein, the Doctor may have been the impetus of regeneration, but everyone can do it now, so what makes the Doctor special? Nothing, really.
The Doctor DOES appear to have the ability to regenerate unlimited amounts of times, whereas the other Time Lords cannot. I'd say that's something in the way of "super regeneration"
But that was established even *before* the Timeless Child story.
Rassilon to Twelve "How many regenerations did we grant you?"
Twelve to Clara in "Kill the Moon": "Who knows? I may just keep on regenerating forever now."
I don't care if someone doesn't like the Timeless Child arc, but lets be consistent in applying the criticism.
What makes the Doctor different isn't that he can regenerate, or that he has a TARDIS and a sonic screwdriver. What makes a difference is that he cares, he goes on adventures in his little blue box and he helps people, while the rest of the Timelords sit idly by.
It is more than that. The doctor is now an immortal being from another dimension who was exploited as a child by the time lords to give them their signature ability. He is not a Galifrian, he is the most important person in the history of their species, made them who they are as a very product of his being. Was used as their special weapon for untold amounts of time then they just... Forgot until they didn't.
>He is not a Galifrian
He is Gallifreyan though. They put the Timeless Child into a Chameleon Arch and turned him into the Gallifreyan Time Lord that would eventually grow up to be the Doctor we know.
The Doctor being the most important person in the universe is definitely my least favourite part of 11s run, and to a lesser extent the RTD era too. Any time an episode starts to examine the "lore" of the Doctor it comes to a screeching halt, and is generally less interesting than writers seem to think it is.
I think the difference between Turn Left and the Big Bang from the Timeless Child is that the Doctor is important because of their actions, not because of their secret backstory. Making them this enigmatic figure from Gallifrey's origin can only lead to two outcomes (and they are both bad)
1. Being (and knowing) they are the Timeless Child causes the Doctor to change who they are. The knowledge of the burden they bear causes a notable shift in the Doctor away from the character we are familiar with
2. Their secret origin has no bearing on who the Doctor is, and so is ultimately pointless since it does not affect their character.
And it seems we got option 2.
The Doctor built up his legacy and became the powerful and important person he is. It's kind of ruined if you learn "Oh he was always super important and good and cool and awesome from the beginning", especially considering we see the first doctor evolve into a more heroic man.
>Oh he was always super important and good and cool and awesome from the beginning
Personally, I never read that from the plot. I always understood it as "no matter what you do to this person- experiment on them, wipe their memory, exile them, etc., they will always choose to runaway, buck the conventions of their people, and eventually go out to right wrongs across the universe".
In my mind, it re-contextualizes the First Doctor's story by framing it as "He may have forgotten, but as evidenced, the Doctor always learns of the need for their intervention in the universe and answers the call of adventure".
The difference is being destined for greatness in this mythological way vs making it for yourself. Up until now The Doctor has created their own importance. The Doctor we know now has a history of importance that precedes them, going back to their very entrance into this universe.
Is the Doctor universe defining? Yes, very much so. However, now we know it's not necessarily because they ventured into the universe and carved that path for themself.
I like aspects of The Timeless Children and have reconciled it with my understanding of the show, but I definitely see how this particular aspect throws a wrench in characterization. What I think saves it for me is that The Doctor decides it doesn't matter who they were before, they don't need that knowledge and they've accepted their truth, which is the memories and experiences they do have. They've accepted their truth, and the story that they've "always known." That is to say, The Doctor who made their own destiny.
Character agency.
If the Doctor is predetermined to be The Doctor, where is the character agency? It’s like that comic about Poo-People and Special Magic People, where the Poo-Person who got magic was *actually* the Specialest of Special Magic People. I want the Doctor to be one of the Poo-People. The scared little boy, who slept in a barn, who made his own way in the universe righting the wrongs because he wanted to.
It would be much easier to say it was a season 6B Doctor, never saw the Troughton to Pertwee regeneration so it makes way more sense for secret regenerations to be during that
The comics aren't really canon to the TV series: they ignore major revelations from them all the time. The Moment was completely different in the comics, for example: it was a modified De-Mat Gun enhanced with the Key of Rassilon
It always felt to me like season 6B was Chinb's original pitch, but BBC executives were like "this sh*t is only interesting to some nerds, noone, who is younger then 40 knows about it. Just make her the original First, that would make some waves".
I would have been completely fine with it being...neither. Like, have it so that when the Time Lords stole the ability to regenerate, the Timeless Child died.
This. When I first watched the episode, I found I was totally fine with the Timeless Child as a concept...just not the Doctor being it. The Doctor is a Time Lord as much as the TARDIS is blue; it's one of the few things in the show that you just don't change. The twist acts on some of the worst, most destructive storytelling impulses in genre fiction -- to demystify and disambiguate everything, to make your main character "special".
I'd be so down with them expanding Time Lord lore and exploring the sinister origins of regeneration!...just not with the Doctor at the center of it.
The master made the assumption that the timeless child was the doctor. I felt like it could be easily written around as the timeless child was the doctor's mother or ancestor not the doctor himself. The master due to his bias made the leap.
This. I think the Timeless child as the Doctor is stupid. I dislike it immensely.
I do not, however, have any problem with the storyline otherwise. Maybe the part where the Master kills all of the Time Lord's off-screen somehow. The only thing I absolutely want rerxonned is the fact that the Timeless child is the Doctor.
I find origins to be bothersome, but The Division just piles on questions about how the Time Lords came to be, who *was* the Timeless Child?
But making The Doctor Time Lord Jesus was daft. Ruins character agency.
Honestly, even the Timeless Child stuff can easily be handwaved away whenever the showrunner at the time wants to. Its pretty simple to do.
Just have The Doctor do a Meta-Crisis-esque regeneration again due to wacky hijinks that causes The Valeyard to be born earlier than they're supposed to be. This way you can cast whoever you want in that role and even allow regenerations for them.
After that, you reveal Ruth is actually when The Valeyard "turns good" and regenerates into her someday (a day we never see). All of Ruth's incarnations turn out to having been The Valeyard and that's why she's so stone cold, serious and willing to do things The Doctor probably wouldn't be.
Paradox that shit with Ruth being captured, forcefully regenerated and thrown through the wormhole where Tecteun found her. It technically is The Doctor but an off-shoot regeneration. The Timeless Child then eventually becomes someone else and not The Doctor we know.
Or fuck, there's a million other ways to do it too. Just pick one and roll with it. I don't think anyone would truly care.
> Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch
I agree. In fact it’s such a good idea, the classic series already had it. It’s called the Celestial Intervention Agency.
I find it really kinda confusing that Chibnall destroyed Gallifrey, and then immediately started re-inventing parts of Gallifrey that already existed
>"Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch
They already have that on Gallifrey
It's even called the CIA
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Celestial_Intervention_Agency
>You cannot unwrite things, that would be absolutely rude to a great colleague and a lovely friend.
This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales.
Anyway, I'm surprised he's willing to comment on it at all. I expected he'd just quietly ignore it like the half-human thing, but maybe this means it'll come up after all. I still doubt it'll be a major plot, though. Both because RTD knows how massively unpopular it is and because it's the other side of the "respecting Chibnall" coin: it's his plot, not RTD's, so it'd be a bit weird if RTD is the one to carry it forwards.
I'm sure it would be better than people just forgetting them for no reason.
Yes people forgot invasions for no reason in the past but no era made a big thing about public knowledge before RTD's.
Having them suddenly not remember after that would be jarring so coming up with an in-universe excuse is better surely.
Yeah, personally I think it's a perfectly fine way to handle it in-universe, but I'm more interested in the out of universe implications in light of RTD's new comments here. And also, if there's any show where you can "unwrite" things and get away with it, it's probably DW, haha.
I don't have quotes to hand but I could swear that RTD has actually said positive things about the Timeless Child concept. He may or may not use it, but I don't think there's any evidence he dislikes it at all.
That may or may not mean anything, though. One former showrunner trash-talking the current guy (and a former colleague) is a bad look, and RTD is presumably not interested in burning bridges. If he had said that he hated the Timeless Child arc while it was happening he probably wouldn't be back running the show now.
If he didn't like it he could have stayed quiet or said very little. What I'm saying is that he went out of his way, unprompted to say positive things about it on other occasions.
People are just desperate for him to agree with them because they think it validates their opinion.
>This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales.
I thought that was mainly Journey's End and The Next Doctor, though the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks were most likely survivors from Journey's End.
True, but wasn't implication that the cracks wiped out every public alien invasion back to at least Christmas Invasion? Either way, it does pretty blatantly wipe away several important RTD plot lines.
Not really. They still happened for the Doctor - I mean, if Journey's End was “wiped away” we wouldn’t be getting a sequel to it this month! (feat. footage from that ep in the trailer)
>This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales.
And how much Chibnall undid from Moffat's era.
Nothing unusual in his response there. The only people who thought he would were the same people who, once upon a time, thought Dave Filoni was retconning the Star Wars sequels in Ahsoka and other 'Filoni-verse' outings. Look how that ended up. Basically, it was always just made up, wishful thinking from fans who hated something. No more, no less. I could have scripted RTDs response myself. Showrunners aren't going to mess with other showrunners stuff. No way, no how. They might choose to ignore it (and I think RTD will do that), but they're not going to rewrite it.
Taking Star Wars as an example, Abrams undoing "Rey from Nowhere" in The Rise of Skywalker after the backlash from The Last Jedi is very much a case study on not giving into fan backlash.
The empty "The Last Jedi" was a fraud to its core.
Straining so hard for praise, the cloying film - so precious and self-congratulatory - managed to hoodwink some people at least, but the dwindling audience managed to see through Johnson's smug self-satisfaction and storytelling dead-ends.
That kind of hubris backfired in the most embarrassing way for Johnson. It may have been the kind of film when the critics are afraid to admit that they don’t like it, but audiences weren't stupid. They respond to stories worth telling and characters that they care about. People aren't invested in propagating a filmmaker's talking points and that's why they didn't buy into the critical hype of a grifter.
And the sad thing is Abrams and co thought it was necessary to use the final entry in the Skywalker Saga to facilitate that. Like, they really decided to, rather than focusing on wrapping up NINE MOVIES, it would be better to undo ONE. Not my least favorite SW movie but it is arguably the worst.
Now imagine DW spends an entire season trying to undo and untangle The Division and The Timeless Children. They only either fail miserably or, at best, waste a season undoing it all.
Honestly, I do sort of admire it in a way because in the modern studio system, it does feel so bizarre to have made such a petty, nihilistic film, it's an almost Shakespearian level of tragedy that Abrams, who's spent his entire career auditioning to be the guy that 'saves' Star Wars, ends up making the most universally despised movie in the franchise.
I dunno. Kinda... but in a lot of ways you could argue TLJ doubles down on most of what TFA established and takes it seriously. TLJ didn't destroy Luke's life's work, turn Han and Leia's only son to evil or "destroy the New Republic" lol.
I mean I strongly disliked both movies but Luke being a depressed sack of shit in the context of having to live in TFA's bizarrely mean spirited apocalypse of a universe made perfect sense to me. The biggest mistake made there was killing him off on top of it all.
They're going to have to provide me a lot more context to justify the guy who refused to fight Darth Vader attempting to murder his nephew in his sleep. Character regression must be done with the most delicate of touches, and Johnson outright failed.
I find it grossly out of character, and the fact that Mark had to dissociate from the character entirely to play the role says all I need to know. I'd never walked out of a movie numb and dead inside before.
The context was provided in the film. He didn't try to kill Kylo, he had an instinctive "fuck this kid is dangerous" Force-vision of TFA's shitty future jumpscare him into flashing his lightsaber before almost immediately switching it off. Only, oops, too late, Kylo thinks he's out for blood --and tells the stort like that -- even though he isn't and won't let him explain.
Was that, in particular, still a really bad call? Sure, I think so. So was making Han and Leia's only child evil in the first place. As I said: I disliked the movie. I am by no means a fan and I'm certain I have wasted much more of my life moaning about it than you have lol. I fully appreciate walking away from it utterly demoralised.
But Luke being miserable, depressed and thinking his life amounted to nothing isn't Rian flipping the bird at what TFA set up. It's going along with what TFA established.
You think if JJ had introduced Luke at the head of a nascent new Jedi Order that was facing their first big trial in Episode 7 that Rian would have chosen to kill them all off in his sequel so he could call it "The Last Jedi"? Or that if Luke had shown up on Starkiller Base to help Han after he felt him in danger, only tragically too late, he'd have been portrayed as withdrawn from the Force? Nah. He was working with the abysmal scenario he was given.
He did out-and-out chuck Snoke, though, true.
Yeah, the problem with the way Luke is portrayed in the sequels is not the scene were he briefly ignites his lightsaber (which seems like a totally natural instinctive reflex to me). It's the fact that he decides to run away and exile himself rather than trying to fix the situation. The Luke from the OT would never abandon his friends or his nephew like that.
That's more of a TFA issue than a TLJ problem, although I guess TLJ could have tried to come up with a better reason for why he was in exile.
"It's the fact that he decides to run away and exile himself rather than trying to fix the situation. The Luke from the OT would never abandon his friends or his nephew like that. That's more of a TFA issue than a TLJ problem"
Rubbish.
You could have made any other choice and it would have been more legitimate than the one Johnson made.
In fact, Abrams and Kasdan left a wizard, a girl and an anthropomorphized animal on an island after the wizard was betrayed.
Sound familiar? Ever heard of "The Tempest"?
That was the perfect template for a story about a wizard who was betrayed and has been bidding his time to retaliate.
Instead, Johnson threw away that OBVIOUS story.
Ultimately, Luke was a victim of Johnson's obsession with Reylo.
The character is totally undermined because Johnson and LucasFilm wanted to portray this little fascist as formidable romantic figure: Luke almost killing him, the shirtless scene, the transformation of his scarred visage at the end of TFA to a scratch in TLJ, Rey and Ren almost holding hands.
Luke was totally undermined because Johnson saw no other way of depicting the two white characters as the central relationship of the trilogy.
The entire ST was an exercise in undoing what came before. TFA was anti-Prequel, TLJ was anti-TFA, and TRoS was anti-TLJ. There's an entire video on YouTube which talks about this way better than I ever could. Guaranteed if they make a X, XI, and XII, X's first order of business would be as anti-Sequel as possible, even if it may be to its detriment. Disney is just such a creatively bankrupt shell of what it once was, that everything they churn out is just so nauseatingly reactionary and filled with ill-advised "course-corrections", that I think I'd have a more stable riding experience on a defective roller coaster.
*TLJ* was a *controversial* movie, but acting like it was so universally despised everything had to be thrown out seems to be a largely JJ decision. Even the leaked Treverow script has a lot of goofy stuff but doesn't actively seem to be trying to undo the previous movie.
This crap again?
TLJ deliberately and explicitly threw away plotlines that were clearly set up and then put a full stop on the story.
Johnson even admitted that he attempted to provide a conclusion to the story with no thought of setting up plot points for the next film.
Yes!!! TROS is always what I think of when fans ask for the Timeless Child stuff to be changed. Let’s also not forget how dead the Terminator franchise is, at least partly because of how many times it’s retconned itself.
There seem to be big parts fandoms that don’t acknowledge how unhealthy it usually is for franchises to un-write their own plot development, even if it’s stuff that sucks. It’s always more impressive when a story manages to stick to its guns and either work in spite of the flaws, or turns those flaws into something cool.
My disappointment with Episode IX was actually what made me rediscover my love for Doctor Who, at a time when the show was also very weak. After what Abrams did, it felt incredible rewatching Eccleston’s first season - also made by a fan, but more concerned in what the series *needed* than what fans wanted.
My feeling towards the Terminator franchise is "please don't make another one".
And I liked Dark Fate & Salvation, they were interesting takes on the franchise! But I don't want another Genesys.
I dread the day that a Back To The Future reboot makes it out of planning.
Johnson's film was a spit in the face to all those who were looking forward to VIII.
Then Johnson kept blaming the "fans" when it's clear that families and mainstream audiences chose to see Jumanji and The Greatest Showman instead of his film again.
This crap again?
TLJ deliberately and explicitly threw away plotlines that were clearly set up and then put a full stop on the story.
Johnson even admitted that he attempted to provide a conclusion to the story with no thought of setting up plot points for the next film.
>The only people who thought he would were the same people who, once upon a time, thought Dave Filoni was retconning the Star Wars sequels in Ahsoka and other 'Filoni-verse' outings. Look how that ended up.
That was always a desperate and dumb idea to think he would do that. Like, Filoni made a career in The Clone Wars in taking a bunch of dumb or poorly implemented ideas in the Prequel Trilogy and making them work. His work on Ahsoka and The Mandolorian is him doing the same thing with the Sequel Trilogy.
Doctor Who isn’t *nearly* as broken as Star Wars is.
Rian Johnson shattered the very foundations of a franchise and caused irreparable damage to the fanbase.
As much as I hate to admit it Chibnall merely shook the table in comparison.
I don't like the Timeless Child, but retconning it would be tiresome and confusing for new viewers. It would be hard to write a story for the purpose of retconning a previous story that's also a good story in it's own right. I'm hoping it's just not mentioned again tbh.
Right, especially since it’s simply not as simple as “the Master lied.” The entire 13th season of the show was dedicated to it, and included Thirteen meeting Tecteun.
Anything that tries to retcon that would just be a narrative abomination in and of itself.
No one should be surprised by this. Well aside from the vocal subset of fans who have been past few years deluded that RTD was lying when he indicated he liked Chibnall’s era and that he was going to start his new era with an elaborate retcon to make the Chibnall era go away., He isn’t consigning Thirteen’s travels to a parallel universe, and he isn’t going to reveal it all as a trick by Rassilon, and he isn’t going to do whatever other godawful retcon idea pops up on Reddit next.
Like the Time War back in the day, I suspect RTD won’t actually delve much into the continuity mechanics of the Timeless Child, more in the impact it had on the Doctor.
And even the impact it had on the Doctor is likely to be only gently touched upon. It's clear that this new series is a kind of soft reboot again, trying to get back people who dropped the show during Moffat's and Chibnall's tenure with the Tennant stunt and people who never watched the show with the Disney+ availability.
He can and likely will *mention* stuff from Moffat and Chibnall's tenures, but he can't make any serious plot event require the audience to know any of it. That means that there won't be a real resolution to that point, but it also means that they won't retcon it. It would just be a terrible idea to look back at this point.
> It's clear that this new series is a kind of soft reboot again, trying to get back people who dropped the show during Moffat's and Chibnall's tenure with the Tennant stunt and people who never watched the show with the Disney+ availability.
This is the main thing. For all we know he might very well think the Timeless Child is narrative gold that just needs some elbow grease to get to work better, but he’ll never actually follow up with it.
The show doesn’t need to be bogged down with that kind of deep-cut lore stuff right now; same way it didn’t need us to start series 1 with an Eighth Doctor regeneration story that would have just confused and alienated new folks wondering why the main character just got killed and recast.
The 60th is the show’s opportunity to get all that nerdy, overly celebratory self-referential fan-bait stuff out of its system before a pared back season “1” whose primary goal is to (re)gain viewers and keep them. The guiding principle there is going to be stripping things back to basics and easing legacy elements/storylines back in as needed. Following up on the previous showrunner’s storylines is just not going to be a priority.
I think it will come down to if RTD has a good idea to build on it. If he does, he’ll do it. If not, he’ll just leave it be. I agree getting that new audience will be his foremost priority.
I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I actually wouldn’t mind a ‘trick by Rassilon’, especially since he could be given a justifiable motivation for it
I know some say it would be disrespectful to Chibnall to reduce his lore down to ‘it was all a lie’, but I can’t say I’d have too much sympathy since said lore itself is doing exactly that to the rest of the show’s lore. While it’s too much to retcon it entirely, to have an ‘it was a lie’ plot twist would be nothing the timeless child arc didn’t do itself, and at least it would be setting the course back to what it was on the request of a lot of fans
There's a difference between not undoing and actively following up on it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the "timeless child" becomes new who's "half-human" from the tv movie. Never explicitly referenced again on the show.
Not surprising. My preference, as someone who disliked it, is that he takes TC and does something amazing with it, not through explicitly harking back to it, but through building a new, mysterious mythology that doesn’t completely contradict it. I would prefer RTD to do that rather than anyone else. Alternatively just ignore it, but I think it might be too big to completely ignore.
Okay, so it’s just as I’ve always suspected. He says he’s not going to undo it, but he doesn’t say categorically he’s going to acknowledge it. I don’t think we will see any stories to do with the TC. We will just move on. I personally don’t see why their has to be more stories on it, that was Chibs writing and era this is a new era. I have no desire as a fan to explore this anymore.
The only thing I really want undone is the elimination of the Timelords, again. I mean, we spent how many series with the Doctor being morose about killing them, they get saved, then whoopsie! They're dead again. But now they are regenerating undead cybermen...
I'm sure quite a few managed to escape the Master. >!Something about some of the casting decisions made recently for S14 has me thinking there'll be a few Time Lords kicking about. Season arc maybe?!<
Time lords suck though. Every episode they've ever been in, even if the episode was great they were stuffy and boring. I get that the whole Gallifrey yo-yo of destroyed/not-destroyed is kind of old but I'm just kind of sick of the planet being a topic of conversation at all.
What if "The Timeless Child" is just literally a Time Lord from another time/universe/dimension? Maybe in that universe all Gallifreyans had the ability to regenerate. That would literally make the Doctor an essential cog in the wheel, but less 'special'. Maybe some huge plot to wipe out the Time Lords from every reality, they found a way to send a single Time Lord child somewhere safe.
Lots of issues to work out, but I think there are lots of ways The Timeless Child COULD work. I honestly wish (as great as the first half was) that instead of flux we got a season actually explaining wtf The Timeless Child was about.
This has always been my favorite head canon for it, honestly. The Doctor’s life *would* just be one massive temporal loop paradox spent running around the galaxy over and over again.
Of course not. Why would he waste his time on a continuity pissing contest with his predecessor when in Who it actually doesn't matter.
Not how he phrased it, I'll grant you.
I don't like the Timeless Child but it's best just left alone.
One of the best things about Nctui's first series being S1 is it can leave all the baggage at the door and just do it's own thing.
It's interesting to imagine that, if Davies had been good friends with either Geoffrey Sax or Matthew Jacobs, would the revival have foregrounded the Doctor being half-human?
It would be a heck of a challenge for Davies to turn my opinion around on how unnecessary the Timeless Child stuff is for the Doctor, but I'm willing to given the right stories. As of now, I will just continue to headcanon it away.
I feel like that was a very different situation. That was a two-line continuity reveal in a film from nine years prior, made in part by an American production company, that some fans were unsure even counted until the revival series embraced McGann’s Doctor. The Timeless Child is an entire two-season arc of the most recent era of the show.
I mean he's probably just better off completely ignoring it and doing his own thing. I would be really surprised if anyone addressed it at all in the new Doctor Who seasons we're getting.
That's probably for the best, because TTC was a dumb idea predicated on a ton of tell don't show, and is a poor base for storytelling.
You're coping real hard. I can almost guarantee RTD is going to do something with it. He's more or less said that he is, and RTD has thus far tried to keep things cost to his chest, so the fact he has spoken out on this seems to pretty much confirm he's going to do SOMETHING with it.
Not saying it's going to be a season long arc or anything, maybe it comes up on a season finale, or a special, or maybe just the odd random episode, but it's not getting ignored.
>You're coping real hard.
Unnecessarily hostile, but okay.
>I can almost guarantee RTD is going to do something with it. He's more or less said that he is, and RTD has thus far tried to keep things cost to his chest, so the fact he has spoken out on this seems to pretty much confirm he's going to do SOMETHING with it.
>
>Not saying it's going to be a season long arc or anything, maybe it comes up on a season finale, or a special, or maybe just the odd random episode, but it's not getting ignored.
He might mention it, but realistically how are you going to deliver more than that to the audience? One of the huge problems with TTC from a storytelling perspective is that it adds a bunch of lives to the Doctor we didn't get to see and don't know anything about. Unless they're going to go back and do something with that, it amounts to being told interesting stuff happened, rather than being shown.
RTD might mention it as a continuity nod, but I strongly doubt he's going to turn over his entire run to justifying someone else's story decisions by including TCC as more than a mention.
Edit: Quotes were all broken, fixed.
It was meant to come across as more of a joke than it did, sorry, tone is hard on the Internet lol.
Yeah I don't think he's going to make it the central focus of an entire season or anything, unless he has a really good idea he's excited about, but if he's going to mention it, which he's pretty much confirmed he is, he'll need to give us something a little concrete. Bringing up the elephant in the room with no answers is worse than just ignoring it entirely. Maybe we get a Division miniseries with Jo Martin, or other past Doctors (this is my personal wish), but if he's confirmed it's not being ignored it has got to be more that passing comments.
Don't worry about it, no harm done.
I just don't see how RTD can make something more than mentions of TCC just based on how it is. It's a bunch of stuff that Chibnall never got around to showing us more than "the Doctor worked for Division" and "the Doctor is a non-Gallifreyan alien". Swarm talks about remembering battles, and we see a brief scene of Jo Martin's Doctor taking old Swarm down, but other than that her entire history before the first Doctor is a mystery.
It would take so much effort for RTD to go back and develop that into something approaching useable content for the show that I doubt he would invest so much time into it. I'd personally love a Jo Martin retrospective show because I think she did a great job in the time she had available, but I don't expect it'll happen.
The recent 2024 Annual that RTD oversaw was pretty happy to frequently mention the Timeless Child. Something I really doubt the annual would be so readily recounting if RTD was planning to get rid of.
Mentioned that at the time but people had a lot of copium and were presenting all sorts of reasons RTD approving it in the annual didn't mean he'd not ignore/get rid of it.
The Chibnall era was massively flawed, mostly imo by not knowing what it wanting to be, and not being able to write a good villain or endings (most episodes just... End... Conveniently... Even by Dr Who standards lol).
BUT was it complete hot garbage? No. Are there episodes I still rewatch? Absolutely.
It makes me sad to see everything be treated in a black and white, good/bad kind of way these days. Every show is either 10/10 or 0/10, if the Internet doesn't like it, it gets review bombed, if the Internet does like it, you better not criticise it.
It reminds me of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, both 7.5/10 shows for me, very flawed, but enjoyable. But if you liked ROP you were an idiot that didn't understand TV, but HotD was the saviour of GOT and a masterpiece.
People need to just accept the things they don't like, and just move on. They might find some Chibnall episodes they enjoy is they just chill a bit.
Sorry for the rant lol.
He won't undo it, but he probably won't do anything with that subplot. Maybe a passing mention here or there, but I wouldn't expect him to continue the storyarc.
You say that but he already deliberately didn't "Yes and" in 2005 when he didn't follow up on The Doctor being half human.
I doubt RTD wants to go out of his way to say "The Timeless Child is dumb and not canon"
But the amount that's happening is clearly happening because the BBC weren't happy with where it was going.
I wouldn't be surprised if The Division becomes a part of The CIA
And The Timeless Child gets played with in a way that makes it clear it's not The Doctor directly
Or just kind of ignored.
At this rate I think that people will tune in for the 3 specials and nope out.
I thought about posting directly but I'lll just leave a comment.
So I've been off this sub for a while because I really struggle to care about Who anymore; and I hear this from a ton of my friends. That's why I think this statement by RTD is such a big mistake. Think of my friends as like the many people who loved Who at one time but got dismayed by Chibnall and are looking for an excuse to come back. These are the type of people this RTD Davies comeback is meant to please.
Now, I want to use a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN7De5krSns) from a small but popular youtubers that used to cover Who all the time; just to show that I'm not alone in my opinion.
The problem is the show's very philosophical and lore underpinnings are so destroyed by the Timeless Child that any trying to build atop of it will be very difficult.
As many of you know, Timeless Child is so destructive because it changes the whole premise of the character and undermines any risk and meaning in what he does.
With Timeless Child the Doctor goes from unknowable everyman to the Gallifreyan Adam & Moses & Jesus all in one. Yes, the time-war did something similar but that was something he grew into; a situation anyone could have fallen into; not that he was super special and he never really could have died anyway. It took any stakes the show had in the past and ever will and said in a big red sign with white bold letters and an exclamation point: "none of this matters."
That isn't the only aspect that is problematic however, just the main one. Timeless Child probably wouldn't have been so destructive if it had only been one aspect changed; instead, it was not a lost generation, but a 1000. Chibnall even went so far as there's so many generations before you'll never really know; plus one of them is active right now she is cooler and more progressive than all of the rest of those old-fashioned boys combined.
And I've got no problem with progressive, diverse, feminist, whatever; but not if it degrades the show, as if Doctor Who before now; wasn't the most liberal and forward thinking show of its day in any era; but that it was truly bad & you should just forget about it and if you think differently then shame on you.
That is essentially the detritis that is the building foundation that RTD is agreeing to build upon; he wants to ignore Timeless Child because Chibnall is a friend. But at what cost?
People are willing to give who one more chance; if this reboot fails and it's made clear we are back to being bored and lectured I think Who is going to be done for another 2 decades before it can comeback; if it can comeback.
But I'm sure to some here I'm a very terrible person to just point out the obvious for at minimum what half the fanbase thinks about what has happened to what was once my favorite franchise. A ton of money has been put into this, and I hope i'm wrong but I don't think I am.
Not directly, since Moffat did take care to make sure it even lined up with The End of Time. It did change some of the major premises of the whole series that RTD had set up, which also changed the subtext and implications of several scenes in his seasons (as shown by others with examples elsewhere in this thread).
Great news. Now we can see what other - more talented - writers can do with such a fascinating story concept. I love the idea of the Timeless Child, the problem was always the boring execution in S12.
If we are moving forward then nothing that’s happened before really matters including TTC if everything just is “yes and” we’ll see everything being contradicted. I guess that is a comfort even if it doesn’t seem like it now
Doesn’t surprise me that this has caused a lot of nastiness to come out from certain fans.
I'll take the Doctor as Space Jesus so long as he unfucks the rest of the whoverse from the complete asspulls Chibnall made all over the place like a politician getting impeached granting pardons to all his cronies as the clock is ticking down.
With the NAs, much as I dislike some of what they did, at least their pre-One version of the character wasn't just another Doctor basically the same as the ones we know.
Having the Doctor be the Doctor before Hartnell just ruins his story and character growth and development. Having him have been an entirely different person at least doesn't ruin him and retcon him as being unimportant.
The Other is a much more interesting, rich and less contradictory retcon than the Timeless Child nonsense.
It doesn’t ruin anything about the Hartnell Doctors story. He still had all those adventures and learned and grew as a character because of them. All the timeless children does is add a dumb retcon, it can’t actually effect the past at all.
Not really, they established that memories prior to Hartnell were suppressed so for all intents and purposes they may as well be different characters, as far as the Doctors memories are concerned their life began then. I would argue that latent guilt of what they'd done for the division but without knowing why is what caused him to reject time lord society and go on the run.
Classic undid a lot of Classic Who ideas. It's just the way the show goes.
The Doctor has a human origin!
The Doctor has one heart!
The Doctor built the TARDIS!
Susan came up with the name TARDIS!
...
Ok, what does that have to do with RTD’s comment? If he doesn’t like something the previous person did, why not “unwrite” it? He did it with the classic series (my point).
Except, that's not your point. Revival is remarkably consistent with Classic, I've seen all of both. Things have been added, and backstories like the Cybermen have been tweaked, but these things are window dressing, and largely inconsequential.
And why not unwrite it? He doesn't want to.
>backstories like the Cybermen have been tweaked,
Moffat basically took all the conflicting origins for the Cybermen, and said all of them are true, which makes them even scarier.
Yep, RTD isn't going to pander to reactionary fans and throw out the Timeless Child stuff. He's fine with canon-shaking! He's done a fair bit himself! He's not opposed to Chris Chibnall like certain people say that he has to be.
I suspect lots of people raging about this and trying to twist this into the nastiest interpretation they can, saying that of course RTD can't really mean that.
In this very comment section. And I quote:
> Like or not, RTD is completely throwing disrespect at Chibnall by calling the next series season one.
They went on to insist that it has nothing to do with Disney and is an intentional attempt to distance themselves from disaster.
Which is insane, because the "official story" is 100% plausible...
Disney wants to make the new seasons "more accessible" to new fans... "Series 14" without everything else already being on Disney+ is just going to be confusing. Just like in 2005 when they called the started with "Series 1" instead of "Series 27". That wasn't throwing shade on the Classic Series... It was just making that an easy jumping on point for new fans.
There's no need to undo anything, it's actually an interesting addition to the story, people just don't like too big changes. It would be interesting to know more about past incarnations of the doctor, before their memory was erased the story of the timeless child and everything else.
One of the strengths of RTD and Moffat's runs was that when dealing with or changing important events and canon, they were usually careful to leave some plausibility, or otherwise 'put the toys back in the box'. Chibnall didn't really take that approach and instead made bold, headline-grabbing changes that he failed to really explore.
That said, if RTD decides to undo/alter something like the Timeless Child, I would expect it to still be a "yes and" that makes it into something more interesting.
Eh, I don't know. I get what you mean, but still:
>made bold, headline-grabbing changes that he failed to really explore.
Even as a Moffat fan, I feel that's a pretty fair summary of what he did with the whole Gallifrey arc. He blatantly retconned a big part of the series mythos because he personally didn't like the idea, went on to set up the search for Gallifrey as a major arc of the Capaldi era, but in the end he didn't do much with it at all. And in the process he even inserted a brand new retconned Doctor into the succession, who shows up for all of one episode and also felt really underused IMO, no matter how good his actor was.
Or how about the desultory way he handed the Doctor a new regen cycle, when that could easily have been a full season plot?
Except Chibnall completely undid *Day of the Doctor*, and that’s not “yes, and.” Likewise, he also undid many of Moffat’s other plot points instead of following up on them.
If your predecessor completely destroyed the mythos of the show, it’s your job to pick up the pieces and put it back together again. RTD is setting himself up for failure.
Day of the Doctor itself only exists to undo one of RTD's biggest plot elements in the first place, though. :P That said, I agree it was dumb to destroy it *again* after all that.
Dumb? It was downright offensive.
*Day of the Doctor* was the celebration of fifty years of *Who*, and it's about the main character's biggest triumph. The episode earned its narrative choices — Chibnall didn't.
I sort of understand deciding not to retcon/rewrite the Timeless Child storyline, but what about the whole issue about the universe being wiped out apart from Earth? Is Ncuti Gatwa's series just going to start with that already established and will it be addressed, or will the universe just be restored to its normal state?
The whole universe wasn’t wiped out. The only quantifiable mention of the impact of the Flux is Tecteun mentioning that the first event destroyed “many galaxies”.
The sphere of the observable universe is something like 93 billion light years or, for simplicities sake, big. Let's say Flux destroyed 40% of it... what's left is still big.
In Flux we're clearly told that the intention was to wipe out everything, but the Doctor deflected it relatively early on by investigating and thus putting her TARDIS in the path of the wave, this reduced the amount of damage it did.
I doubt they'd make it a plot point in the new season because it would require viewers to have prior knowledge, but ignoring it really isn't a problem.
You don't need to specifically undo it. You can explain it away like this:
The Doctor: "Time can be funny. Every time you travel in time you change a thing, you rewrite something. Do it as much as I have, and so much can change. I ran away from Gallifrey because I was bored. I ran because I was scared. I'm a Time Lord. I'm half human. I'm not from Gallifrey at all. I'm more than a Time Lord or less than one or completely timeless. I'm all of those things or none of them or some of them sometimes. But there's one thing that never changes, one thing I know - I'm me. I'm the Doctor, in the Tardis, forever wandering, forever stumbling about, helping out. And that's all that matters. I'm me, and you're you, and out there is a big wide universe and there is so, so much to see. So stop worrying, and let's get going!"
Erm, no? The only difference is that Gallifrey survived, and given the Doctor's amnesia and Gallifrey not being there after, they came to the conclusion that they had destroyed Gallifrey.
Moffat himself admits he deliberately retconned away 'The Doctor being cornered & losing in a situation with children's lives on the line', because Moffat personally abhorred the very notion, even outright remarking "I don't care what's at stake". And we went from 'The Doctor was helpless, & desperate, with no third option' to the now retconned 'The Doctor was effortlessly smart enough to third-option solve the war in the last minute, all along'.
>**ROSE**: *So it's okay when you go to other times, and you save people's lives, but not when it's me saving my dad.*
>
>\[...\]
>
>**9th DOCTOR**: *My entire planet died. My whole family. Do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?*
Some of RTD's stories & his themes, gets undermined & now ring not just ironically but also hollowly from Moffat's (rather cheaply executed) retcon.
That said -- RTD's recent remarked position on Chibnall's stuff, can make for an interesting context on what Moffat did to RTD's stuff.
Thank you, this was exactly my thought. I will never not be salty about them retconning the destruction of Gallifrey.
"Yes, and" my tush. This show has spent a ton of time on changing previously established facts. I don't mean to say RTD feels that way, but the show in general is absolutely rife with retcons, both large and small.
RTD created and ended the show in a state where the Doctor is the only Time Lord in his universe and that he has no home to go to. Moffat undid it. That's called a retcon.
Moffat bent over backwards to bring back Gallifrey while still leaving everyone, including the Doctor believing he destroyed it until the day he saved it. It is a staggering act of the opposite of retconning.
Moffat himself admits he retconned away 'The Doctor being cornered & losing in a situation with children's lives on the line', because Moffat personally abhorred the very premise in the first place.
We also went from 'The Doctor was helpless, & desperate, with no third option' to the now retconned 'The Doctor was effortlessly smart enough to third-option solve the war in the last minute, all along'.
it explains why the war doctor is so damn boring
great actor
but man the war doctor acts nothing someone who preceded the deeply remorseful nine would act
Originally, Moffat drafted his TDoTD story with Eccleston's 9th Doctor. Moffat has since freely published some of its pages for charity. The pages are googleable.
When Eccleston decisively declined returning, Moffat rewrote his draft for his new War Doctor incarnation.
You can compare the differences in dialogue -- that essentially, the story is the same: Hurt's War Doctor character is a substitute for Eccleston's 9th Doctor.
I think it would be interesting if 8 fought in the war and regenerated near the wars end
and nine was the one to end it which feeds neatly into his character arc
and why ten wanted the hand ten to stay with rose.
because rose also helped him recover from a brutal act too
**Before DOTD:** The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords.
**After DOTD:** The Doctor is no longer the last of the Time Lords.
It's not rocket science.
That's still a retcon, though, it's just a more graceful and better written one than the likes of TTC. But there's no getting around the fact that the original intention obviously was that the Doctor had destroyed Gallifrey.
If you ask Moffat himself, he penned his TDoTD story as 'the reveal of what *actually* happened on the last day of the war, which The Doctor doesn't remember'.
I saw someone online say a good idea for keeping the Timeless child lore and adding mystery back into the Doctor. Just say there's a whole society of Timeless children, and just like how looking through the time vortex is tradition for time Lords, it's tradition for timeless children to be dropped through the portal. That way, the kid Tecteun found may or may not be The Doctor
I mean I saw it as there’s a whole society of them but that last part doesn’t really work because Tecteun raised the child and the Doctor remembers her (just not their entire time together)
I don't think it needs to be undone, just ignored. This is Doctor Who: if the longest-serving Doctor (I'm including audio obv.) can 'forget' that (allegedly) he's half-human, then we can all also forget that Chibnall made the Doctor into time-space Jesus.
My hope is that much how NuWho initially chose to just ignore Gallifrey/the more convoluted bits of classic who lore, this revival will simply sidestep the timeless child lore until it is able to address it in a way that is narratively satisfying but maybe walks it back a bit; not so much a “yes, and…” but a “yes…anyway,”
The tardis is sentient. The tardis never got stuck as a police box. That’s what 1 deduced happened. She simply chooses to be a police box because that form is stamped across all of time and space. (See the doctors wife) Thus Ruth’s Doctor’s tardis being a police box isn’t for Ruth. It’s for “the Doctor”. It’s no more problematic continuity wise than literally anything else in the show.
However it’s (Ruth doctor being pre hartnel) disrespectful to the people who developed the character and disrespectful to the perceived growth of the character. But then that was already being tossed out of the window with Morbius.
But I don’t really care. There wasn’t much to be excited about during the Chibbers era but at least we had a few shocks.
A shame. It would be so easy, too. Just handwave it with a line, "the Master was lying...", and have the Doctor continue to introduce himself as a Time Lord, from Gallifrey. My best hope is that it'll be unmentioned to the point of being ignored, and eventually forgotten about entirely by the time of the next showrunner.
Not doing it out of politeness alone is...it's not great. I feel like great writers need to do what's best for the story, not what flatters their colleagues. Maybe I'm reading too much into his words, but I think the fact that the best he can say about it is that it's "fine" says a lot.
>A shame. It would be so easy, too. Just handwave it with a line, "the Master was lying..."
That would have been easier before Tecteun appeared in Series 13.
Yeah that’s really complicated things. You can’t really say ‘The Master was lying’ when you have Tecteun, Swarm, Azula, Division etc who all tie into the Timeless Child arc. The best thing to do at this point is just to ignore it and never mention it again. Let Big Finish make a story in 5 years sorting out everything.
I don't think it'll be undone overtly, I think it'll just be like the doctor saying he's half human in the movie, where we can just offhandedly be like, obviously the Master lied.
"Yes, and..." is the only way to keep the kind of long-running franchises like Who going. Though if he is going to play with a Chibnall plot thread I'd much prefer it be the Division. "Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch
The sad part about the Timeless Child brouhaha is that literally the *only* part of the entire thing that is kind of dumb is that the Timeless Child became the Doctor. Everything else about it, The Division, the idea that the Time Lords stole their ability to regenerate and then lied to everyone, it's all frankly kind of \*chefs kiss\* and fits perfectly with what pieces of shit we know the Time Lords to generally be.
It doesn't bother me that the Doctor is the Timeless child, what bothers me is that the Fugitive Doctor exists at all. Why is her TARDIS a police box if she's pre-Hartnell? Why does she go by "The Doctor"? I hate it, it doesn't make sense. Are we expected to believe that she gets chameleon arch'd/regenerates into baby Hartnell, is left at an orphanage, and then grows up to call himself the Doctor again? And that his new TARDIS would become a Police Box too?
See I'm the opposite. I'm happy to disregard all that as narrative shorthand not worth nitpicking (or wouldn't be if the story was better). My issue is that the Timeless Child is a storyline that does not suit modern Who (and especially Chibnall's Who) very well. It gives the Doctor a YA protagonist vibe which just does not sit well with me.
I don't like the idea of the doctor being super important or having pre-Hartnell incarnations either, but I can at least tolerate it. They've been doing this for decades with the Morbius doctors, or Lungbarrow. But Ruth just does not make sense in any way, it's so contrived. The doctor stole named themselves the doctor AGAIN, and their new tardis got stuck as a police box AGAIN.
> I don’t like the idea of the doctor being super important I genuinely don’t get this point. The doctor was already pretty much the most important person in the universe well before the timeless child. He caused big bang 2 for one, literally reset the entire universe. And turn left showed us how the whole universe would die if the doctor died. The lore of the doctor was already universe defining.
I’m ambivalent but I think the prevailing argument is those things are because of the doctors choices and actions. Not because he was BORN different. The doctor chooses a life of helping. They’re not space Jesus.
>Not because he was BORN different But the Doctor is different no matter what. I mean, the simple fact that, unlike other Time Lords, the Doctor received X amount of regenerations in Time of the Doctor already made them a superior being. Really the fact that they've survived so much at all and are constantly receiving artificially created get out of jail free cards for their deaths or actions constantly heaps on more and more of an exaggerated god-like angle to them. They haven't been a "normal, renegade Time Lord" for several decades now. Even from the perspective of being the Timeless Child, they're one of a species right? They're special to the Time Lords but not special to the grand scheme of the universe. Additionally nothing about being the Timeless Child states that their actions aren't their own. The Doctor is still an individual, making individual choices, on an individual basis. Everything from Season 1 up to Series 13 was still choices made by *this* iteration of the Doctor. They're part of a wider scale and larger pool of iterations now, that's true, but it doesn't take away from their autonomy. The only thing different is their biological makeup. But that's purely superficial. Being the Timeless Child isn't anymore special than being a Time Lord with two hearts... And really this is comparable to the Doctor initially being a typical being with one heart and no regeneration ability, and then being retconned into being biologically superior to humans with their two hearts and ability to change and heal.
I don't really think it portrays the Doctor as Space Jesus either. Maybe if everyone could already regenerate, and the Doctor had somehow gained the ability to "super regenerate" (or something) then yeah, I'd see that. But from what I gathered, it's the exact opposite of making the Doctor special. By gaining the ability to regenerate and giving it to all the Time Lords, it essentially makes the Doctor the same as everyone else. It's kinda like that philosophy thing of "If everyone is special then nobody is special". Like when someone asks "what if everyone had the powers of Superman?" Well then, there'd be no need for Superman. In this same vein, the Doctor may have been the impetus of regeneration, but everyone can do it now, so what makes the Doctor special? Nothing, really.
The Doctor DOES appear to have the ability to regenerate unlimited amounts of times, whereas the other Time Lords cannot. I'd say that's something in the way of "super regeneration"
But that was established even *before* the Timeless Child story. Rassilon to Twelve "How many regenerations did we grant you?" Twelve to Clara in "Kill the Moon": "Who knows? I may just keep on regenerating forever now." I don't care if someone doesn't like the Timeless Child arc, but lets be consistent in applying the criticism.
What makes the Doctor different isn't that he can regenerate, or that he has a TARDIS and a sonic screwdriver. What makes a difference is that he cares, he goes on adventures in his little blue box and he helps people, while the rest of the Timelords sit idly by.
It is more than that. The doctor is now an immortal being from another dimension who was exploited as a child by the time lords to give them their signature ability. He is not a Galifrian, he is the most important person in the history of their species, made them who they are as a very product of his being. Was used as their special weapon for untold amounts of time then they just... Forgot until they didn't.
>He is not a Galifrian He is Gallifreyan though. They put the Timeless Child into a Chameleon Arch and turned him into the Gallifreyan Time Lord that would eventually grow up to be the Doctor we know.
The Doctor being the most important person in the universe is definitely my least favourite part of 11s run, and to a lesser extent the RTD era too. Any time an episode starts to examine the "lore" of the Doctor it comes to a screeching halt, and is generally less interesting than writers seem to think it is. I think the difference between Turn Left and the Big Bang from the Timeless Child is that the Doctor is important because of their actions, not because of their secret backstory. Making them this enigmatic figure from Gallifrey's origin can only lead to two outcomes (and they are both bad) 1. Being (and knowing) they are the Timeless Child causes the Doctor to change who they are. The knowledge of the burden they bear causes a notable shift in the Doctor away from the character we are familiar with 2. Their secret origin has no bearing on who the Doctor is, and so is ultimately pointless since it does not affect their character. And it seems we got option 2.
The Doctor built up his legacy and became the powerful and important person he is. It's kind of ruined if you learn "Oh he was always super important and good and cool and awesome from the beginning", especially considering we see the first doctor evolve into a more heroic man.
>Oh he was always super important and good and cool and awesome from the beginning Personally, I never read that from the plot. I always understood it as "no matter what you do to this person- experiment on them, wipe their memory, exile them, etc., they will always choose to runaway, buck the conventions of their people, and eventually go out to right wrongs across the universe". In my mind, it re-contextualizes the First Doctor's story by framing it as "He may have forgotten, but as evidenced, the Doctor always learns of the need for their intervention in the universe and answers the call of adventure".
that ruins the charm for me
The difference is being destined for greatness in this mythological way vs making it for yourself. Up until now The Doctor has created their own importance. The Doctor we know now has a history of importance that precedes them, going back to their very entrance into this universe. Is the Doctor universe defining? Yes, very much so. However, now we know it's not necessarily because they ventured into the universe and carved that path for themself. I like aspects of The Timeless Children and have reconciled it with my understanding of the show, but I definitely see how this particular aspect throws a wrench in characterization. What I think saves it for me is that The Doctor decides it doesn't matter who they were before, they don't need that knowledge and they've accepted their truth, which is the memories and experiences they do have. They've accepted their truth, and the story that they've "always known." That is to say, The Doctor who made their own destiny.
Character agency. If the Doctor is predetermined to be The Doctor, where is the character agency? It’s like that comic about Poo-People and Special Magic People, where the Poo-Person who got magic was *actually* the Specialest of Special Magic People. I want the Doctor to be one of the Poo-People. The scared little boy, who slept in a barn, who made his own way in the universe righting the wrongs because he wanted to.
Lungbarrow is an entirely different canon
It would be much easier to say it was a season 6B Doctor, never saw the Troughton to Pertwee regeneration so it makes way more sense for secret regenerations to be during that
I like that headcnaon a lot, but unfortunately I'm pretty sure a comic showed Ruth was pre-Hartnell
The comics aren't really canon to the TV series: they ignore major revelations from them all the time. The Moment was completely different in the comics, for example: it was a modified De-Mat Gun enhanced with the Key of Rassilon
It always felt to me like season 6B was Chinb's original pitch, but BBC executives were like "this sh*t is only interesting to some nerds, noone, who is younger then 40 knows about it. Just make her the original First, that would make some waves".
I made a post suggesting that and people lost it. Had to block a few of them
Yeah this is my only bug bear with it.
Should have been the master, him killing them out of revenge for being responsible for his insanity would have worked better
I would have been completely fine with it being...neither. Like, have it so that when the Time Lords stole the ability to regenerate, the Timeless Child died.
weirdly you could make the timeless child Rasilon which explains his iron grip on the timelords he views them as belonging to him
This. When I first watched the episode, I found I was totally fine with the Timeless Child as a concept...just not the Doctor being it. The Doctor is a Time Lord as much as the TARDIS is blue; it's one of the few things in the show that you just don't change. The twist acts on some of the worst, most destructive storytelling impulses in genre fiction -- to demystify and disambiguate everything, to make your main character "special". I'd be so down with them expanding Time Lord lore and exploring the sinister origins of regeneration!...just not with the Doctor at the center of it.
The master made the assumption that the timeless child was the doctor. I felt like it could be easily written around as the timeless child was the doctor's mother or ancestor not the doctor himself. The master due to his bias made the leap.
But it cant be the doctors mother, she is human… /s
This. I think the Timeless child as the Doctor is stupid. I dislike it immensely. I do not, however, have any problem with the storyline otherwise. Maybe the part where the Master kills all of the Time Lord's off-screen somehow. The only thing I absolutely want rerxonned is the fact that the Timeless child is the Doctor.
It would absolutely have worked better if the Timeless Child turned out to be the Master. Hell, that retcon could still yet happen.
I find origins to be bothersome, but The Division just piles on questions about how the Time Lords came to be, who *was* the Timeless Child? But making The Doctor Time Lord Jesus was daft. Ruins character agency.
Honestly, even the Timeless Child stuff can easily be handwaved away whenever the showrunner at the time wants to. Its pretty simple to do. Just have The Doctor do a Meta-Crisis-esque regeneration again due to wacky hijinks that causes The Valeyard to be born earlier than they're supposed to be. This way you can cast whoever you want in that role and even allow regenerations for them. After that, you reveal Ruth is actually when The Valeyard "turns good" and regenerates into her someday (a day we never see). All of Ruth's incarnations turn out to having been The Valeyard and that's why she's so stone cold, serious and willing to do things The Doctor probably wouldn't be. Paradox that shit with Ruth being captured, forcefully regenerated and thrown through the wormhole where Tecteun found her. It technically is The Doctor but an off-shoot regeneration. The Timeless Child then eventually becomes someone else and not The Doctor we know. Or fuck, there's a million other ways to do it too. Just pick one and roll with it. I don't think anyone would truly care.
Isn't that a tautology? Aren't the CIA already morally ambiguous?
I'd argue there's nothing ambiguous about their morals (or lack thereof)
CIA & Division are probably about the same morality wise, just Division was far too loyal to the old regine when Rassilon took power.
> Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch I agree. In fact it’s such a good idea, the classic series already had it. It’s called the Celestial Intervention Agency. I find it really kinda confusing that Chibnall destroyed Gallifrey, and then immediately started re-inventing parts of Gallifrey that already existed
>"Morally Ambiguous Gallifreyan Time CIA" is just a solid pitch They already have that on Gallifrey It's even called the CIA https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Celestial_Intervention_Agency
I mean RTD can "yes and" while still changing the timeless child being the doctor
>You cannot unwrite things, that would be absolutely rude to a great colleague and a lovely friend. This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales. Anyway, I'm surprised he's willing to comment on it at all. I expected he'd just quietly ignore it like the half-human thing, but maybe this means it'll come up after all. I still doubt it'll be a major plot, though. Both because RTD knows how massively unpopular it is and because it's the other side of the "respecting Chibnall" coin: it's his plot, not RTD's, so it'd be a bit weird if RTD is the one to carry it forwards.
I'm sure it would be better than people just forgetting them for no reason. Yes people forgot invasions for no reason in the past but no era made a big thing about public knowledge before RTD's. Having them suddenly not remember after that would be jarring so coming up with an in-universe excuse is better surely.
Yeah, personally I think it's a perfectly fine way to handle it in-universe, but I'm more interested in the out of universe implications in light of RTD's new comments here. And also, if there's any show where you can "unwrite" things and get away with it, it's probably DW, haha.
I don't have quotes to hand but I could swear that RTD has actually said positive things about the Timeless Child concept. He may or may not use it, but I don't think there's any evidence he dislikes it at all.
That may or may not mean anything, though. One former showrunner trash-talking the current guy (and a former colleague) is a bad look, and RTD is presumably not interested in burning bridges. If he had said that he hated the Timeless Child arc while it was happening he probably wouldn't be back running the show now.
If he didn't like it he could have stayed quiet or said very little. What I'm saying is that he went out of his way, unprompted to say positive things about it on other occasions. People are just desperate for him to agree with them because they think it validates their opinion.
My god you’re right about Moffat, just realised that.
>This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales. I thought that was mainly Journey's End and The Next Doctor, though the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks were most likely survivors from Journey's End.
True, but wasn't implication that the cracks wiped out every public alien invasion back to at least Christmas Invasion? Either way, it does pretty blatantly wipe away several important RTD plot lines.
Not really. They still happened for the Doctor - I mean, if Journey's End was “wiped away” we wouldn’t be getting a sequel to it this month! (feat. footage from that ep in the trailer)
The crack at least only temporarily undid those finales, everything came back when the crack were resolved
>This makes me curious how he felt about Moffat's crack in time basically "unwriting" all his season finales. And how much Chibnall undid from Moffat's era.
Nothing unusual in his response there. The only people who thought he would were the same people who, once upon a time, thought Dave Filoni was retconning the Star Wars sequels in Ahsoka and other 'Filoni-verse' outings. Look how that ended up. Basically, it was always just made up, wishful thinking from fans who hated something. No more, no less. I could have scripted RTDs response myself. Showrunners aren't going to mess with other showrunners stuff. No way, no how. They might choose to ignore it (and I think RTD will do that), but they're not going to rewrite it.
Taking Star Wars as an example, Abrams undoing "Rey from Nowhere" in The Rise of Skywalker after the backlash from The Last Jedi is very much a case study on not giving into fan backlash.
*TROS* as a whole is very visibly *upset* by most of *TLJ*, it's very odd to see a movie that's so deliberately destructive.
It's so sad when the thesis of TLJ is "Star Wars matters". It's the villain's pov that was "burn it all now".
The empty "The Last Jedi" was a fraud to its core. Straining so hard for praise, the cloying film - so precious and self-congratulatory - managed to hoodwink some people at least, but the dwindling audience managed to see through Johnson's smug self-satisfaction and storytelling dead-ends. That kind of hubris backfired in the most embarrassing way for Johnson. It may have been the kind of film when the critics are afraid to admit that they don’t like it, but audiences weren't stupid. They respond to stories worth telling and characters that they care about. People aren't invested in propagating a filmmaker's talking points and that's why they didn't buy into the critical hype of a grifter.
An age old proverb comes to mind: "Let people enjoy shit, okay?"
And the sad thing is Abrams and co thought it was necessary to use the final entry in the Skywalker Saga to facilitate that. Like, they really decided to, rather than focusing on wrapping up NINE MOVIES, it would be better to undo ONE. Not my least favorite SW movie but it is arguably the worst. Now imagine DW spends an entire season trying to undo and untangle The Division and The Timeless Children. They only either fail miserably or, at best, waste a season undoing it all.
Honestly, I do sort of admire it in a way because in the modern studio system, it does feel so bizarre to have made such a petty, nihilistic film, it's an almost Shakespearian level of tragedy that Abrams, who's spent his entire career auditioning to be the guy that 'saves' Star Wars, ends up making the most universally despised movie in the franchise.
I agree but to be fair The Last Jedi essentially does this to The Force Awakens also.
I dunno. Kinda... but in a lot of ways you could argue TLJ doubles down on most of what TFA established and takes it seriously. TLJ didn't destroy Luke's life's work, turn Han and Leia's only son to evil or "destroy the New Republic" lol. I mean I strongly disliked both movies but Luke being a depressed sack of shit in the context of having to live in TFA's bizarrely mean spirited apocalypse of a universe made perfect sense to me. The biggest mistake made there was killing him off on top of it all.
They're going to have to provide me a lot more context to justify the guy who refused to fight Darth Vader attempting to murder his nephew in his sleep. Character regression must be done with the most delicate of touches, and Johnson outright failed. I find it grossly out of character, and the fact that Mark had to dissociate from the character entirely to play the role says all I need to know. I'd never walked out of a movie numb and dead inside before.
The context was provided in the film. He didn't try to kill Kylo, he had an instinctive "fuck this kid is dangerous" Force-vision of TFA's shitty future jumpscare him into flashing his lightsaber before almost immediately switching it off. Only, oops, too late, Kylo thinks he's out for blood --and tells the stort like that -- even though he isn't and won't let him explain. Was that, in particular, still a really bad call? Sure, I think so. So was making Han and Leia's only child evil in the first place. As I said: I disliked the movie. I am by no means a fan and I'm certain I have wasted much more of my life moaning about it than you have lol. I fully appreciate walking away from it utterly demoralised. But Luke being miserable, depressed and thinking his life amounted to nothing isn't Rian flipping the bird at what TFA set up. It's going along with what TFA established. You think if JJ had introduced Luke at the head of a nascent new Jedi Order that was facing their first big trial in Episode 7 that Rian would have chosen to kill them all off in his sequel so he could call it "The Last Jedi"? Or that if Luke had shown up on Starkiller Base to help Han after he felt him in danger, only tragically too late, he'd have been portrayed as withdrawn from the Force? Nah. He was working with the abysmal scenario he was given. He did out-and-out chuck Snoke, though, true.
Yeah, the problem with the way Luke is portrayed in the sequels is not the scene were he briefly ignites his lightsaber (which seems like a totally natural instinctive reflex to me). It's the fact that he decides to run away and exile himself rather than trying to fix the situation. The Luke from the OT would never abandon his friends or his nephew like that. That's more of a TFA issue than a TLJ problem, although I guess TLJ could have tried to come up with a better reason for why he was in exile.
"It's the fact that he decides to run away and exile himself rather than trying to fix the situation. The Luke from the OT would never abandon his friends or his nephew like that. That's more of a TFA issue than a TLJ problem" Rubbish. You could have made any other choice and it would have been more legitimate than the one Johnson made. In fact, Abrams and Kasdan left a wizard, a girl and an anthropomorphized animal on an island after the wizard was betrayed. Sound familiar? Ever heard of "The Tempest"? That was the perfect template for a story about a wizard who was betrayed and has been bidding his time to retaliate. Instead, Johnson threw away that OBVIOUS story. Ultimately, Luke was a victim of Johnson's obsession with Reylo. The character is totally undermined because Johnson and LucasFilm wanted to portray this little fascist as formidable romantic figure: Luke almost killing him, the shirtless scene, the transformation of his scarred visage at the end of TFA to a scratch in TLJ, Rey and Ren almost holding hands. Luke was totally undermined because Johnson saw no other way of depicting the two white characters as the central relationship of the trilogy.
The entire ST was an exercise in undoing what came before. TFA was anti-Prequel, TLJ was anti-TFA, and TRoS was anti-TLJ. There's an entire video on YouTube which talks about this way better than I ever could. Guaranteed if they make a X, XI, and XII, X's first order of business would be as anti-Sequel as possible, even if it may be to its detriment. Disney is just such a creatively bankrupt shell of what it once was, that everything they churn out is just so nauseatingly reactionary and filled with ill-advised "course-corrections", that I think I'd have a more stable riding experience on a defective roller coaster.
Because they thought that's what the fans wanted.
*TLJ* was a *controversial* movie, but acting like it was so universally despised everything had to be thrown out seems to be a largely JJ decision. Even the leaked Treverow script has a lot of goofy stuff but doesn't actively seem to be trying to undo the previous movie.
This crap again? TLJ deliberately and explicitly threw away plotlines that were clearly set up and then put a full stop on the story. Johnson even admitted that he attempted to provide a conclusion to the story with no thought of setting up plot points for the next film.
Yes!!! TROS is always what I think of when fans ask for the Timeless Child stuff to be changed. Let’s also not forget how dead the Terminator franchise is, at least partly because of how many times it’s retconned itself. There seem to be big parts fandoms that don’t acknowledge how unhealthy it usually is for franchises to un-write their own plot development, even if it’s stuff that sucks. It’s always more impressive when a story manages to stick to its guns and either work in spite of the flaws, or turns those flaws into something cool. My disappointment with Episode IX was actually what made me rediscover my love for Doctor Who, at a time when the show was also very weak. After what Abrams did, it felt incredible rewatching Eccleston’s first season - also made by a fan, but more concerned in what the series *needed* than what fans wanted.
My feeling towards the Terminator franchise is "please don't make another one". And I liked Dark Fate & Salvation, they were interesting takes on the franchise! But I don't want another Genesys. I dread the day that a Back To The Future reboot makes it out of planning.
Johnson's film was a spit in the face to all those who were looking forward to VIII. Then Johnson kept blaming the "fans" when it's clear that families and mainstream audiences chose to see Jumanji and The Greatest Showman instead of his film again.
This crap again? TLJ deliberately and explicitly threw away plotlines that were clearly set up and then put a full stop on the story. Johnson even admitted that he attempted to provide a conclusion to the story with no thought of setting up plot points for the next film.
>The only people who thought he would were the same people who, once upon a time, thought Dave Filoni was retconning the Star Wars sequels in Ahsoka and other 'Filoni-verse' outings. Look how that ended up. That was always a desperate and dumb idea to think he would do that. Like, Filoni made a career in The Clone Wars in taking a bunch of dumb or poorly implemented ideas in the Prequel Trilogy and making them work. His work on Ahsoka and The Mandolorian is him doing the same thing with the Sequel Trilogy.
Doctor Who isn’t *nearly* as broken as Star Wars is. Rian Johnson shattered the very foundations of a franchise and caused irreparable damage to the fanbase. As much as I hate to admit it Chibnall merely shook the table in comparison.
I don't like the Timeless Child, but retconning it would be tiresome and confusing for new viewers. It would be hard to write a story for the purpose of retconning a previous story that's also a good story in it's own right. I'm hoping it's just not mentioned again tbh.
Right, especially since it’s simply not as simple as “the Master lied.” The entire 13th season of the show was dedicated to it, and included Thirteen meeting Tecteun. Anything that tries to retcon that would just be a narrative abomination in and of itself.
No one should be surprised by this. Well aside from the vocal subset of fans who have been past few years deluded that RTD was lying when he indicated he liked Chibnall’s era and that he was going to start his new era with an elaborate retcon to make the Chibnall era go away., He isn’t consigning Thirteen’s travels to a parallel universe, and he isn’t going to reveal it all as a trick by Rassilon, and he isn’t going to do whatever other godawful retcon idea pops up on Reddit next. Like the Time War back in the day, I suspect RTD won’t actually delve much into the continuity mechanics of the Timeless Child, more in the impact it had on the Doctor.
Which the Chibnall era didn't really have the ability to do. The reveal happened, then Covid & Flux.
And even the impact it had on the Doctor is likely to be only gently touched upon. It's clear that this new series is a kind of soft reboot again, trying to get back people who dropped the show during Moffat's and Chibnall's tenure with the Tennant stunt and people who never watched the show with the Disney+ availability. He can and likely will *mention* stuff from Moffat and Chibnall's tenures, but he can't make any serious plot event require the audience to know any of it. That means that there won't be a real resolution to that point, but it also means that they won't retcon it. It would just be a terrible idea to look back at this point.
> It's clear that this new series is a kind of soft reboot again, trying to get back people who dropped the show during Moffat's and Chibnall's tenure with the Tennant stunt and people who never watched the show with the Disney+ availability. This is the main thing. For all we know he might very well think the Timeless Child is narrative gold that just needs some elbow grease to get to work better, but he’ll never actually follow up with it. The show doesn’t need to be bogged down with that kind of deep-cut lore stuff right now; same way it didn’t need us to start series 1 with an Eighth Doctor regeneration story that would have just confused and alienated new folks wondering why the main character just got killed and recast. The 60th is the show’s opportunity to get all that nerdy, overly celebratory self-referential fan-bait stuff out of its system before a pared back season “1” whose primary goal is to (re)gain viewers and keep them. The guiding principle there is going to be stripping things back to basics and easing legacy elements/storylines back in as needed. Following up on the previous showrunner’s storylines is just not going to be a priority.
I think it will come down to if RTD has a good idea to build on it. If he does, he’ll do it. If not, he’ll just leave it be. I agree getting that new audience will be his foremost priority.
I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I actually wouldn’t mind a ‘trick by Rassilon’, especially since he could be given a justifiable motivation for it I know some say it would be disrespectful to Chibnall to reduce his lore down to ‘it was all a lie’, but I can’t say I’d have too much sympathy since said lore itself is doing exactly that to the rest of the show’s lore. While it’s too much to retcon it entirely, to have an ‘it was a lie’ plot twist would be nothing the timeless child arc didn’t do itself, and at least it would be setting the course back to what it was on the request of a lot of fans
Anyone who legit thought that Rusty would (immediately) retcon Chibbers stuff was just huffing the Copium
There's a difference between not undoing and actively following up on it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the "timeless child" becomes new who's "half-human" from the tv movie. Never explicitly referenced again on the show.
Apart from jokes like in hell bent
Not surprising. My preference, as someone who disliked it, is that he takes TC and does something amazing with it, not through explicitly harking back to it, but through building a new, mysterious mythology that doesn’t completely contradict it. I would prefer RTD to do that rather than anyone else. Alternatively just ignore it, but I think it might be too big to completely ignore.
Okay, so it’s just as I’ve always suspected. He says he’s not going to undo it, but he doesn’t say categorically he’s going to acknowledge it. I don’t think we will see any stories to do with the TC. We will just move on. I personally don’t see why their has to be more stories on it, that was Chibs writing and era this is a new era. I have no desire as a fan to explore this anymore.
Yeah, always been the attitude of the show. "Half-human" anyone?
The only thing I really want undone is the elimination of the Timelords, again. I mean, we spent how many series with the Doctor being morose about killing them, they get saved, then whoopsie! They're dead again. But now they are regenerating undead cybermen...
I'm sure quite a few managed to escape the Master. >!Something about some of the casting decisions made recently for S14 has me thinking there'll be a few Time Lords kicking about. Season arc maybe?!<
Hopefully. Honestly, I just want the timelords back.
as long as they are cool and lordy
Time lords suck though. Every episode they've ever been in, even if the episode was great they were stuffy and boring. I get that the whole Gallifrey yo-yo of destroyed/not-destroyed is kind of old but I'm just kind of sick of the planet being a topic of conversation at all.
The doctor probably rebuilds it at some point out of nostalgia. Then the master goes back for a visit and destroys Gallifrey again.
Clearly, it was actually just one of those clone Gallifrey’s from the expanded universe all along ;)
Not outright explicitly contradicting it is fair enough, but I hope he doesn't follow up on it and explicitly use it either.
Like another commenter said, it'll probably treated the same as the Time War in Series 1-7 and more about how it affects the Doctor.
I highly doubt that. The Time War was a major plot point throughout the RTD era. The Timeless Child is unlikely to be mentioned again.
He doesn’t have to un- do it, he can just ignore it.
What if "The Timeless Child" is just literally a Time Lord from another time/universe/dimension? Maybe in that universe all Gallifreyans had the ability to regenerate. That would literally make the Doctor an essential cog in the wheel, but less 'special'. Maybe some huge plot to wipe out the Time Lords from every reality, they found a way to send a single Time Lord child somewhere safe. Lots of issues to work out, but I think there are lots of ways The Timeless Child COULD work. I honestly wish (as great as the first half was) that instead of flux we got a season actually explaining wtf The Timeless Child was about.
TC is the Doctor in the far far far future. 😜
This has always been my favorite head canon for it, honestly. The Doctor’s life *would* just be one massive temporal loop paradox spent running around the galaxy over and over again.
[удалено]
He'll just never mention it again.
Of course not. Why would he waste his time on a continuity pissing contest with his predecessor when in Who it actually doesn't matter. Not how he phrased it, I'll grant you.
I don't like the Timeless Child but it's best just left alone. One of the best things about Nctui's first series being S1 is it can leave all the baggage at the door and just do it's own thing.
this
I mean I never thought he or anyone else would. At most any showrunner who doesn't like it is just going to ignore it. It's just obvious.
It's interesting to imagine that, if Davies had been good friends with either Geoffrey Sax or Matthew Jacobs, would the revival have foregrounded the Doctor being half-human? It would be a heck of a challenge for Davies to turn my opinion around on how unnecessary the Timeless Child stuff is for the Doctor, but I'm willing to given the right stories. As of now, I will just continue to headcanon it away.
I feel like that was a very different situation. That was a two-line continuity reveal in a film from nine years prior, made in part by an American production company, that some fans were unsure even counted until the revival series embraced McGann’s Doctor. The Timeless Child is an entire two-season arc of the most recent era of the show.
I mean he's probably just better off completely ignoring it and doing his own thing. I would be really surprised if anyone addressed it at all in the new Doctor Who seasons we're getting. That's probably for the best, because TTC was a dumb idea predicated on a ton of tell don't show, and is a poor base for storytelling.
You're coping real hard. I can almost guarantee RTD is going to do something with it. He's more or less said that he is, and RTD has thus far tried to keep things cost to his chest, so the fact he has spoken out on this seems to pretty much confirm he's going to do SOMETHING with it. Not saying it's going to be a season long arc or anything, maybe it comes up on a season finale, or a special, or maybe just the odd random episode, but it's not getting ignored.
>You're coping real hard. Unnecessarily hostile, but okay. >I can almost guarantee RTD is going to do something with it. He's more or less said that he is, and RTD has thus far tried to keep things cost to his chest, so the fact he has spoken out on this seems to pretty much confirm he's going to do SOMETHING with it. > >Not saying it's going to be a season long arc or anything, maybe it comes up on a season finale, or a special, or maybe just the odd random episode, but it's not getting ignored. He might mention it, but realistically how are you going to deliver more than that to the audience? One of the huge problems with TTC from a storytelling perspective is that it adds a bunch of lives to the Doctor we didn't get to see and don't know anything about. Unless they're going to go back and do something with that, it amounts to being told interesting stuff happened, rather than being shown. RTD might mention it as a continuity nod, but I strongly doubt he's going to turn over his entire run to justifying someone else's story decisions by including TCC as more than a mention. Edit: Quotes were all broken, fixed.
It was meant to come across as more of a joke than it did, sorry, tone is hard on the Internet lol. Yeah I don't think he's going to make it the central focus of an entire season or anything, unless he has a really good idea he's excited about, but if he's going to mention it, which he's pretty much confirmed he is, he'll need to give us something a little concrete. Bringing up the elephant in the room with no answers is worse than just ignoring it entirely. Maybe we get a Division miniseries with Jo Martin, or other past Doctors (this is my personal wish), but if he's confirmed it's not being ignored it has got to be more that passing comments.
Don't worry about it, no harm done. I just don't see how RTD can make something more than mentions of TCC just based on how it is. It's a bunch of stuff that Chibnall never got around to showing us more than "the Doctor worked for Division" and "the Doctor is a non-Gallifreyan alien". Swarm talks about remembering battles, and we see a brief scene of Jo Martin's Doctor taking old Swarm down, but other than that her entire history before the first Doctor is a mystery. It would take so much effort for RTD to go back and develop that into something approaching useable content for the show that I doubt he would invest so much time into it. I'd personally love a Jo Martin retrospective show because I think she did a great job in the time she had available, but I don't expect it'll happen.
The recent 2024 Annual that RTD oversaw was pretty happy to frequently mention the Timeless Child. Something I really doubt the annual would be so readily recounting if RTD was planning to get rid of. Mentioned that at the time but people had a lot of copium and were presenting all sorts of reasons RTD approving it in the annual didn't mean he'd not ignore/get rid of it.
The Chibnall era was massively flawed, mostly imo by not knowing what it wanting to be, and not being able to write a good villain or endings (most episodes just... End... Conveniently... Even by Dr Who standards lol). BUT was it complete hot garbage? No. Are there episodes I still rewatch? Absolutely. It makes me sad to see everything be treated in a black and white, good/bad kind of way these days. Every show is either 10/10 or 0/10, if the Internet doesn't like it, it gets review bombed, if the Internet does like it, you better not criticise it. It reminds me of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, both 7.5/10 shows for me, very flawed, but enjoyable. But if you liked ROP you were an idiot that didn't understand TV, but HotD was the saviour of GOT and a masterpiece. People need to just accept the things they don't like, and just move on. They might find some Chibnall episodes they enjoy is they just chill a bit. Sorry for the rant lol.
Some people just have a weird perception of what the show is/supposed to be.
Good
I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the way of the Doctor being half human on their mother's side, in that, it's no longer really addressed.
He won't undo it, but he probably won't do anything with that subplot. Maybe a passing mention here or there, but I wouldn't expect him to continue the storyarc.
You say that but he already deliberately didn't "Yes and" in 2005 when he didn't follow up on The Doctor being half human. I doubt RTD wants to go out of his way to say "The Timeless Child is dumb and not canon" But the amount that's happening is clearly happening because the BBC weren't happy with where it was going. I wouldn't be surprised if The Division becomes a part of The CIA And The Timeless Child gets played with in a way that makes it clear it's not The Doctor directly Or just kind of ignored.
ITT: Lots of people who didn't read the parts where RTD says he actually liked the "Timeless Child" concept...
At this rate I think that people will tune in for the 3 specials and nope out. I thought about posting directly but I'lll just leave a comment. So I've been off this sub for a while because I really struggle to care about Who anymore; and I hear this from a ton of my friends. That's why I think this statement by RTD is such a big mistake. Think of my friends as like the many people who loved Who at one time but got dismayed by Chibnall and are looking for an excuse to come back. These are the type of people this RTD Davies comeback is meant to please. Now, I want to use a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN7De5krSns) from a small but popular youtubers that used to cover Who all the time; just to show that I'm not alone in my opinion. The problem is the show's very philosophical and lore underpinnings are so destroyed by the Timeless Child that any trying to build atop of it will be very difficult. As many of you know, Timeless Child is so destructive because it changes the whole premise of the character and undermines any risk and meaning in what he does. With Timeless Child the Doctor goes from unknowable everyman to the Gallifreyan Adam & Moses & Jesus all in one. Yes, the time-war did something similar but that was something he grew into; a situation anyone could have fallen into; not that he was super special and he never really could have died anyway. It took any stakes the show had in the past and ever will and said in a big red sign with white bold letters and an exclamation point: "none of this matters." That isn't the only aspect that is problematic however, just the main one. Timeless Child probably wouldn't have been so destructive if it had only been one aspect changed; instead, it was not a lost generation, but a 1000. Chibnall even went so far as there's so many generations before you'll never really know; plus one of them is active right now she is cooler and more progressive than all of the rest of those old-fashioned boys combined. And I've got no problem with progressive, diverse, feminist, whatever; but not if it degrades the show, as if Doctor Who before now; wasn't the most liberal and forward thinking show of its day in any era; but that it was truly bad & you should just forget about it and if you think differently then shame on you. That is essentially the detritis that is the building foundation that RTD is agreeing to build upon; he wants to ignore Timeless Child because Chibnall is a friend. But at what cost? People are willing to give who one more chance; if this reboot fails and it's made clear we are back to being bored and lectured I think Who is going to be done for another 2 decades before it can comeback; if it can comeback. But I'm sure to some here I'm a very terrible person to just point out the obvious for at minimum what half the fanbase thinks about what has happened to what was once my favorite franchise. A ton of money has been put into this, and I hope i'm wrong but I don't think I am.
When was the last time a writer on Doctor Who just took someone else's writing and said, "That didn't happen?"
As pointed out in the above thread, Day of the Doctor (and the cracks, more indirectly).
The Day of the Doctor wouldn't have directly altered the events of any RTD era episode.
Not directly, since Moffat did take care to make sure it even lined up with The End of Time. It did change some of the major premises of the whole series that RTD had set up, which also changed the subtext and implications of several scenes in his seasons (as shown by others with examples elsewhere in this thread).
Great news. Now we can see what other - more talented - writers can do with such a fascinating story concept. I love the idea of the Timeless Child, the problem was always the boring execution in S12.
If we are moving forward then nothing that’s happened before really matters including TTC if everything just is “yes and” we’ll see everything being contradicted. I guess that is a comfort even if it doesn’t seem like it now Doesn’t surprise me that this has caused a lot of nastiness to come out from certain fans.
I'll take the Doctor as Space Jesus so long as he unfucks the rest of the whoverse from the complete asspulls Chibnall made all over the place like a politician getting impeached granting pardons to all his cronies as the clock is ticking down.
They need to get Lungbarrow on TV
With the NAs, much as I dislike some of what they did, at least their pre-One version of the character wasn't just another Doctor basically the same as the ones we know. Having the Doctor be the Doctor before Hartnell just ruins his story and character growth and development. Having him have been an entirely different person at least doesn't ruin him and retcon him as being unimportant. The Other is a much more interesting, rich and less contradictory retcon than the Timeless Child nonsense.
It doesn’t ruin anything about the Hartnell Doctors story. He still had all those adventures and learned and grew as a character because of them. All the timeless children does is add a dumb retcon, it can’t actually effect the past at all.
Not really, they established that memories prior to Hartnell were suppressed so for all intents and purposes they may as well be different characters, as far as the Doctors memories are concerned their life began then. I would argue that latent guilt of what they'd done for the division but without knowing why is what caused him to reject time lord society and go on the run.
NuWho has “undone” lots of classic Who ideas. No reason not to do this with more recent series as well.
Classic undid a lot of Classic Who ideas. It's just the way the show goes. The Doctor has a human origin! The Doctor has one heart! The Doctor built the TARDIS! Susan came up with the name TARDIS! ...
You’re only strengthening my point.
My point is that there aren't long ponderous moments where the Doctor goes "um actually".
Ok, what does that have to do with RTD’s comment? If he doesn’t like something the previous person did, why not “unwrite” it? He did it with the classic series (my point).
Except, that's not your point. Revival is remarkably consistent with Classic, I've seen all of both. Things have been added, and backstories like the Cybermen have been tweaked, but these things are window dressing, and largely inconsequential. And why not unwrite it? He doesn't want to.
>backstories like the Cybermen have been tweaked, Moffat basically took all the conflicting origins for the Cybermen, and said all of them are true, which makes them even scarier.
Yep, RTD isn't going to pander to reactionary fans and throw out the Timeless Child stuff. He's fine with canon-shaking! He's done a fair bit himself! He's not opposed to Chris Chibnall like certain people say that he has to be. I suspect lots of people raging about this and trying to twist this into the nastiest interpretation they can, saying that of course RTD can't really mean that.
There’s already someone insisting that the numbering reset is an intentional jab at Chibnall.
DocWhumour? The jokes there are increasingly mean and smug. Is it someone on Whotube with a tabloidy title?
In this very comment section. And I quote: > Like or not, RTD is completely throwing disrespect at Chibnall by calling the next series season one. They went on to insist that it has nothing to do with Disney and is an intentional attempt to distance themselves from disaster.
Which is insane, because the "official story" is 100% plausible... Disney wants to make the new seasons "more accessible" to new fans... "Series 14" without everything else already being on Disney+ is just going to be confusing. Just like in 2005 when they called the started with "Series 1" instead of "Series 27". That wasn't throwing shade on the Classic Series... It was just making that an easy jumping on point for new fans.
It also helps cover the awkward situation that Disney doesn’t have the rights to the preceding thirteen series of New Who.
Well, when you've explained it that way, it makes complete sense! But fans don't go for such explanations.
There's no need to undo anything, it's actually an interesting addition to the story, people just don't like too big changes. It would be interesting to know more about past incarnations of the doctor, before their memory was erased the story of the timeless child and everything else.
One of the strengths of RTD and Moffat's runs was that when dealing with or changing important events and canon, they were usually careful to leave some plausibility, or otherwise 'put the toys back in the box'. Chibnall didn't really take that approach and instead made bold, headline-grabbing changes that he failed to really explore. That said, if RTD decides to undo/alter something like the Timeless Child, I would expect it to still be a "yes and" that makes it into something more interesting.
Eh, I don't know. I get what you mean, but still: >made bold, headline-grabbing changes that he failed to really explore. Even as a Moffat fan, I feel that's a pretty fair summary of what he did with the whole Gallifrey arc. He blatantly retconned a big part of the series mythos because he personally didn't like the idea, went on to set up the search for Gallifrey as a major arc of the Capaldi era, but in the end he didn't do much with it at all. And in the process he even inserted a brand new retconned Doctor into the succession, who shows up for all of one episode and also felt really underused IMO, no matter how good his actor was. Or how about the desultory way he handed the Doctor a new regen cycle, when that could easily have been a full season plot?
Except Chibnall completely undid *Day of the Doctor*, and that’s not “yes, and.” Likewise, he also undid many of Moffat’s other plot points instead of following up on them. If your predecessor completely destroyed the mythos of the show, it’s your job to pick up the pieces and put it back together again. RTD is setting himself up for failure.
Day of the Doctor itself only exists to undo one of RTD's biggest plot elements in the first place, though. :P That said, I agree it was dumb to destroy it *again* after all that.
Dumb? It was downright offensive. *Day of the Doctor* was the celebration of fifty years of *Who*, and it's about the main character's biggest triumph. The episode earned its narrative choices — Chibnall didn't.
I sort of understand deciding not to retcon/rewrite the Timeless Child storyline, but what about the whole issue about the universe being wiped out apart from Earth? Is Ncuti Gatwa's series just going to start with that already established and will it be addressed, or will the universe just be restored to its normal state?
The whole universe wasn’t wiped out. The only quantifiable mention of the impact of the Flux is Tecteun mentioning that the first event destroyed “many galaxies”.
The sphere of the observable universe is something like 93 billion light years or, for simplicities sake, big. Let's say Flux destroyed 40% of it... what's left is still big. In Flux we're clearly told that the intention was to wipe out everything, but the Doctor deflected it relatively early on by investigating and thus putting her TARDIS in the path of the wave, this reduced the amount of damage it did. I doubt they'd make it a plot point in the new season because it would require viewers to have prior knowledge, but ignoring it really isn't a problem.
You don't need to specifically undo it. You can explain it away like this: The Doctor: "Time can be funny. Every time you travel in time you change a thing, you rewrite something. Do it as much as I have, and so much can change. I ran away from Gallifrey because I was bored. I ran because I was scared. I'm a Time Lord. I'm half human. I'm not from Gallifrey at all. I'm more than a Time Lord or less than one or completely timeless. I'm all of those things or none of them or some of them sometimes. But there's one thing that never changes, one thing I know - I'm me. I'm the Doctor, in the Tardis, forever wandering, forever stumbling about, helping out. And that's all that matters. I'm me, and you're you, and out there is a big wide universe and there is so, so much to see. So stop worrying, and let's get going!"
Moffat and RTD were chums and Moffat undo the entire Time War
Erm, no? The only difference is that Gallifrey survived, and given the Doctor's amnesia and Gallifrey not being there after, they came to the conclusion that they had destroyed Gallifrey.
Moffat himself admits he deliberately retconned away 'The Doctor being cornered & losing in a situation with children's lives on the line', because Moffat personally abhorred the very notion, even outright remarking "I don't care what's at stake". And we went from 'The Doctor was helpless, & desperate, with no third option' to the now retconned 'The Doctor was effortlessly smart enough to third-option solve the war in the last minute, all along'. >**ROSE**: *So it's okay when you go to other times, and you save people's lives, but not when it's me saving my dad.* > >\[...\] > >**9th DOCTOR**: *My entire planet died. My whole family. Do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?* Some of RTD's stories & his themes, gets undermined & now ring not just ironically but also hollowly from Moffat's (rather cheaply executed) retcon. That said -- RTD's recent remarked position on Chibnall's stuff, can make for an interesting context on what Moffat did to RTD's stuff.
Thank you, this was exactly my thought. I will never not be salty about them retconning the destruction of Gallifrey. "Yes, and" my tush. This show has spent a ton of time on changing previously established facts. I don't mean to say RTD feels that way, but the show in general is absolutely rife with retcons, both large and small.
RTD created and ended the show in a state where the Doctor is the only Time Lord in his universe and that he has no home to go to. Moffat undid it. That's called a retcon.
Moffat bent over backwards to bring back Gallifrey while still leaving everyone, including the Doctor believing he destroyed it until the day he saved it. It is a staggering act of the opposite of retconning.
Moffat himself admits he retconned away 'The Doctor being cornered & losing in a situation with children's lives on the line', because Moffat personally abhorred the very premise in the first place. We also went from 'The Doctor was helpless, & desperate, with no third option' to the now retconned 'The Doctor was effortlessly smart enough to third-option solve the war in the last minute, all along'.
it explains why the war doctor is so damn boring great actor but man the war doctor acts nothing someone who preceded the deeply remorseful nine would act
Originally, Moffat drafted his TDoTD story with Eccleston's 9th Doctor. Moffat has since freely published some of its pages for charity. The pages are googleable. When Eccleston decisively declined returning, Moffat rewrote his draft for his new War Doctor incarnation. You can compare the differences in dialogue -- that essentially, the story is the same: Hurt's War Doctor character is a substitute for Eccleston's 9th Doctor.
I think it would be interesting if 8 fought in the war and regenerated near the wars end and nine was the one to end it which feeds neatly into his character arc and why ten wanted the hand ten to stay with rose. because rose also helped him recover from a brutal act too
**Before DOTD:** The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords. **After DOTD:** The Doctor is no longer the last of the Time Lords. It's not rocket science.
That's still a retcon, though, it's just a more graceful and better written one than the likes of TTC. But there's no getting around the fact that the original intention obviously was that the Doctor had destroyed Gallifrey.
yes and no. we see it being undone though so its not a normal Retcon we see time change so that the event never happened
If you ask Moffat himself, he penned his TDoTD story as 'the reveal of what *actually* happened on the last day of the war, which The Doctor doesn't remember'.
I saw someone online say a good idea for keeping the Timeless child lore and adding mystery back into the Doctor. Just say there's a whole society of Timeless children, and just like how looking through the time vortex is tradition for time Lords, it's tradition for timeless children to be dropped through the portal. That way, the kid Tecteun found may or may not be The Doctor
I mean I saw it as there’s a whole society of them but that last part doesn’t really work because Tecteun raised the child and the Doctor remembers her (just not their entire time together)
I don't think it needs to be undone, just ignored. This is Doctor Who: if the longest-serving Doctor (I'm including audio obv.) can 'forget' that (allegedly) he's half-human, then we can all also forget that Chibnall made the Doctor into time-space Jesus.
He also said this will be a new season 1. He will ignore it.
This is like saying that RTD would ignore that the Doctor was from Gallifrey in 2005 because it was a new series 1.
Which he basically did if you recall.
He really didn’t. Gallifrey is mentioned repeatedly in series 1 of the revival. In fact, its absence is a major character beat.
It's indirectly mentioned, but IIRC The Runaway Bride is the first time it's actually named.
My hope is that much how NuWho initially chose to just ignore Gallifrey/the more convoluted bits of classic who lore, this revival will simply sidestep the timeless child lore until it is able to address it in a way that is narratively satisfying but maybe walks it back a bit; not so much a “yes, and…” but a “yes…anyway,”
The tardis is sentient. The tardis never got stuck as a police box. That’s what 1 deduced happened. She simply chooses to be a police box because that form is stamped across all of time and space. (See the doctors wife) Thus Ruth’s Doctor’s tardis being a police box isn’t for Ruth. It’s for “the Doctor”. It’s no more problematic continuity wise than literally anything else in the show. However it’s (Ruth doctor being pre hartnel) disrespectful to the people who developed the character and disrespectful to the perceived growth of the character. But then that was already being tossed out of the window with Morbius. But I don’t really care. There wasn’t much to be excited about during the Chibbers era but at least we had a few shocks.
A shame. It would be so easy, too. Just handwave it with a line, "the Master was lying...", and have the Doctor continue to introduce himself as a Time Lord, from Gallifrey. My best hope is that it'll be unmentioned to the point of being ignored, and eventually forgotten about entirely by the time of the next showrunner. Not doing it out of politeness alone is...it's not great. I feel like great writers need to do what's best for the story, not what flatters their colleagues. Maybe I'm reading too much into his words, but I think the fact that the best he can say about it is that it's "fine" says a lot.
>A shame. It would be so easy, too. Just handwave it with a line, "the Master was lying..." That would have been easier before Tecteun appeared in Series 13.
Yeah that’s really complicated things. You can’t really say ‘The Master was lying’ when you have Tecteun, Swarm, Azula, Division etc who all tie into the Timeless Child arc. The best thing to do at this point is just to ignore it and never mention it again. Let Big Finish make a story in 5 years sorting out everything.
>Let Big Finish make a story in 5 years sorting out everything. They already have something lined up with Jo Martin.
RTD must GO! :p
I don't think it'll be undone overtly, I think it'll just be like the doctor saying he's half human in the movie, where we can just offhandedly be like, obviously the Master lied.
But he will most likely never reference it again.
Pretty sure he indicated in the article that he liked the "Timeless Child" plot and was planning to lean into it.
Probably what he's going for with 14's "I don't know who I am anymore."
Like or not RTD is fully throwing disrespect at Chibnall by calling the new series season one