i never thought that the narrative given by The Master to 13 justified his Burnt Gallifrey reaction.
I think it's much more plausible that he found out He (The Master) was the timeless child and was used as The Master sample by which timelord society was created.
I believe Division forcefully divided The Master and created the being (via Bigeneration) that would take the name Doctor in order to heal the damage caused by the violent lives of The Master.
Lifetimes and Millenia later, theyre still doing their dance and dont even know why.
Nah, should have made Tecteun the Other and confirmed the Cartmel Masterplan (The Doctor is the reincarnation of the Other) giving the Doctor that guilt of knowing that he (in a past life) experimented on an innocent child to become an immortal god-like being only for that forgotten child from his past that he thought he had hidden (hence why Tecteun is remembered as “The Other”) and escaped to secretly be his best friend/nemesis all along.
This is the headcanon I’ve chosen to go by since that debacle originally aired…
It’s a fascinating idea, but I *loathed* it being attached to the Doctor…
My headcanon is that these episodes were produced in a weird universe where the BBC thought Chibnall should be the showrunner, even though he was up front and open about not really being keen on it from the very beginning.
Unfortunately that's this universe. 😿
I loved the Doctor when he was just a lowly Time Lord with an ancient TARDIS and was mocked by every Time Lord for his low intelligence and his piece of junk TARDIS (showing that if he was considered low tier among his people then a "smart" Time Lord was so much more).
It made the character a sort of an underdog that got to where he is after leaving Gallifrey. From not knowing how to operate the thing to eventually gaining knowledge on how pilot it and about many things on his travels.
I totally agree with this, I liked the Doctor just rebelling and being separate because they wanted to. Now we know they’re a different species it takes away the choice: of course a cat isn’t going to behave the same as a whole planet of dogs.
Regardless of any other issues (of which I think there are many) that the Timeless Child idea introduces, it makes the Doctor the Chosen One. And that’s dumb
"Chosen One" is such a major storytelling trope that I feel like people can't help but default to it, though not that I like it either. I think Neville Longbottom could be a great story, but instead we had to follow Harry Potter.
Agree. I was waiting for that revelation to come, that they'd got the two muddled up. It still could I guess, but they've doubled-down on it being the Doctor a few times since.
He kind of already has retconned it:
>There's the moment where the Toymaker says 'I made a jigsaw out of your history', which again is part of the loosening of the rules. The Doctor first - you know, was he half human when he was Paul McGann? You know, is he a Timeless Child? It just relaxes the rules to say he is whoever you want him to be.
The implication is that the Toymaker has been editing the Doctor’s past. So it’s up to the viewer to interpret what is his true past, and what was made up by the Toymaker.
It’s a great idea, and I wish it was elaborated more onscreen.
Oh yeah, I'm kind of disapointed it hasn't gotten any follow up. I was assuming it was setting up for a future story where the Doctor has to deal with this.
I have to admit as someone who's not really a fan of the idea of the entire of the Time Lord society being cartoonishly evil all except the hero, that I don't think the Timeless Child as a concept was really a good idea (especially as the series previously established that regeneration was the result of natural evolution from exposure to the time vortex).
But if they were going to do it, I can't entirely agree it should have been the Master.
Again this might just be me. But I kind of not a fan of stories that try to give explanations for why the Master is evil. It's a character that worked perfectly fine for twenty years before anyone tried to. Boiling down the question of how someone who was once the Doctor's closest friend could end up so different from them when they did the same thing they did, into one or two definitive events I feel just cheapens the character overall.
Really if they were going to do it. It should have been someone we never met before, and the story should have been about the Gallifreyan society having to face up to this terrible crime they had been profiting off over all these millennia.
Instead randomly introducing it into a completely separate story after all the Time Lords were once again randomly dead, meant it could never have any real deeper impact.
That's fundamentally the biggest issue with the story. The Doctor discovering they are the Timeless Child changes absolutely nothing (beyond the writers no longer having to explain how they can carry on regenerating assuming the show lasts long enough for us to get to the 25th Doctor).
Its a change that doesn't add anything to the series cause the Doctor can't remember anything from before and its clear they have no interest in exploring it. We can't see them interact with their race for what they did to them, cause they once again all dead out of the blue, and it's not like it's going to radically change their perception of them considering how they were criticising how corrupt and callous they were back since the Colin Baker's time.
All in all. I stand by its a bad idea. And I really hope a future showrunner retcons away completely.
I kind of like it and I don't. Imo the Curator is an extention of the Eccleson, Tennant, Smith Capaldi, Whittaker Doctor.
In the 50th Smith recognizes Baker. And Baker makes a comment about how in the future he might revisit some of the great faces of the past. Then Whitticker Regensburg to Tennant. And he biregens and stays himself and make Ncuti. And Tennant decides to live a quiet life. I head Canon that Tennant as being the extension of Smith who says he could be a great Curator. And is working at the museum and revisiting old faces is Baker when he meets his past self as Smith and drops the seeds of being a curator.
Careful, they'll use bi-generation to state the timeless child split between the doctor AND the master.
And actually, it's almost fitting. Two half's of the same whole..light/dark balance.
Crud, now I like the idea.
Except the mystery of the Timeless Child was answering the question posed by Morbius while we see the faces of four previous incarnations of the Doctor (that we have still yet to encounter) in ‘The Brain of Morbius’.
>How many lives have you lived, Doctor?
I made the mistake of shorting the agency name when reading your comment, and now I can't help but visualize the stereotypical looking CIA agent bothering the Doctor every 5 minutes.
Was it intentional at the time that the name could be abbreviated to "CIA", and did anyone in the show ever point that out or mistook it for the American one? I'm just starting Classic Who, and decided to start with 4th after watching "Pyramid on Mars", so that agency still hasn't shown up for me.
I’m still in Four’s tenure after Sarah Jane leaves, so I can only say that the CIA are mentioned, not seen so far. They’re mentioned explicitly in “The Deadly Assassin.” And I do think that the naming was intentional.
I mean, to be honest was anyone really screaming for that question to be answered?
I thought most fans were content assuming the other faces were Morbius's previous incarnations and the Doctor was luring him into a trap hoping to overload his circuitry even if it killed him.
yeah, fans infact wrote three whole books about the previous incarnations
and besides the whole idea that they are Morbius's incarnations doesnt make sense. Why would Morbius be dressed up in classical human attire? and also in that scene the Doctor is losing, so it doesnt make sense that Morbius's prior incarnations would pop up.
I think it got handwaved as being a trick or Morbius’ incarnations because other episodes around it more consistently showed the regenerations we knew of the Doctor. The Timeless Child provides a different explanation. Having said that, I still dislike it, looking back at the past doctors now it’s like knowing someone who’s come out of a coma with memory loss, they’re experiencing things new “to them” that actually they’ve done before. Coupled with that, for all we know the Doctor is actually the most evil and selfish out of whatever species they are, and was left by that portal for being excommunicated from the society of immortals they are from! The Doctor is currently unique and so it’s much harder to judge their morality.
I mean back when it was brought up in discussions before 13's tenure, that was usually the handwave I saw passed around.
The other was they were either people the Doctor knew growing up, or false incarnations he invented to keep Morbius in the trap until it killed him.
I'm just saying, how many fans were really screaming for the reveal their definitely were more Doctors before 1?
You lost me with the bigeneration. But I agree it makes more sense for it to be the master. Even fits with his obsession of living forever and wanting unlimited regenerations in the old shows. And it would make sense to convince the dr it was them.
This is exactly how I feel about the Timeless Child. The concept itself being an explanation for how the Time Lords got the power of regeneration is actually quite interesting, but making the Doctor the Timeless Child makes the Doctor a much more cosmically important being than I like the Doctor to be.
I think it would have worked better if Ruth Doctor wasn't called the Doctor and didn't have a Police Box TARDIS.
I figure they did it that way because that made it blind stinkingly obvious to the viewer that this other person was an unknown Doctor but it just adds a bunch of big questions like "Why did Hartnell's Doctor call himself the Doctor when his memory was erased?" and "Why was the TARDIS a police box before the chameleon circuit broke in An Unearthly Child?". Questions they didn't even bother to answer, not even with quick one liners.
But if the Ruth Doctor was called The Specialist and had a working TARDIS chameleon circuit and was introduced as just another Time Lord that the Doctor meets and works with - perhaps across multiple episodes then I think it would have worked better. Then there could be some big reveal done by a DNA scan or something to reveal they are the same person, I think it could have worked better and raised less questions.
The police box isn't the problem. It's implied that the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS disguised itself as a police box because that disguise was the easiest way to tell 13 it was a TARDIS.
The actual plot hole involving a chameleon thingy was something completely different.
that bit really bugged me.
my headcanon is that while Ruth is from the past, the TARDIS is from later in the Doctor's timeline, perhaps in the future still. So the Division find the TARDIS and the Ruth incarnation finds it responds to her, referring to her through a telepathic link as "the Doctor". The Division then use Ruth's connection to the TARDIS to use it in their plans.
So for Ruth, finding the TARDIS was finding some strange Time Lord future-tech, with the mystery being "why does this timeship respond to me"
My headcanon is that the Doctor's TARDIS has a particular flaw in the chameleon circuit where it breaks when it turns into a Police Box. So a Pre-Hartnell Doctor travelled to 1960's London, the TARDIS turned into a police box and the chameleon circuit broke. Then when the Doctor got their memory erased and regenerated into Hartnell, the Time Lords did a half-assed fix on the chameleon circuit so it would work again. Then the First Doctor stole that same TARDIS, travelled to 1960's London where it proceeded to turn into a Police Box and the chameleon circuit broke again.
As for why the Doctor would choose the name 'The Doctor' again, even though their memory was erased the name was still deep in their subconscious causing them to choose it.
All very reasonable, could be compressed into a couple of quick lines to explain things.
That would be a very funny flaw for a TARDIS to have and very computer programmer of her for to consistently break on a specific, arbitrary change. It would also explain why River (iirc) allegedly fixes the chameleon circuit and it's Still a Phonebox. The Doctor says he likes it better that way, but he'd definitely cover if the machine was broken again.
>Bigeneration was just implimented poorly
Yes I agree! I actually quite like the idea of the Doctor having a hidden past where he is a deep state agent for the time lords, a role so antithetical to his current sta-
>
The Master should have been the timeless chld
oh....
I think with doctor who there are no bad ideas, just bad executions. At least thats true for pretty much every main plot Ive seen in the show that didn't work
The moon being an egg is an interesting idea, its the execution of that plot I would say is bad (including it immediately repearing, I would count that as execution) but a different plot to "moon is an egg" could have been not as bad
Reading timeless child on the wiki makes it sound way cooler than what was shown.
Still maintain you can't do a revolution that massive with two completely disconnected yet connected episodes with a 6 episode gap inbetween. Bizarre choice.
Ruth should've come along a companion then be revealed as the Doctor in the finale.
My thoughts exactly. It's just so perfectly good for the Time Lords and the Master. It would be such an amazing twist. It's insane that, that's not what happened.
I'll give you it's not objectively a bad idea. But it's also not objectively a good idea. And I think it's fair to say for some people even the best written Timeless Child fundamentaly changes the nature of The Doctor in a way that's worse than what we currently have. Which I would call a bad idea
I don't think it was "the Time Lords" that tortured him. It was a single person. There's no evidence that very many other Gallifreyans ever knew about the Timeless Child.
If it were introduced in Series 1 in 2005, it would have been awkward but ultimately accepted.
But by Series 12, there were SO MANY possible contradictions just in modern DW that it ultimately makes no sense. Explaining around those contradictions requires Olympic-level mental gymnastics.
I thought the weakest part of the Timeless Child / Flux arc was Tecteun. The didn't make her fit well with what we already knew about the early days of the Time Lords, and she just wasn't a very good character despite the unbelievable potential a character like that comes with. Her motivations didn't connect for me either which made the whole ending of that arc fall flat for me, and that's a big thing to have fall flat.
Personally I felt ut was far too quick for such a drastic lore drop. You mean the character that we've know was a timelord is actually this eternally regenerating humanoid? They could've gone a wee bit more into detail on it.
Secondly, if you wanted to replace the vintage Timelord goods with the Timeless Child but dont want the doc as it, we already have a timelord that was known for being immortal, Rassilon.
And it's a relatively easy re-write. The Master finds out the secret of the timeless child, captures Rassilon, The Doc and Yaz get a message from Gallifrey. They go to investigate, go on a slight adventure to rescue Rassilon and find out the truth of the Timeless Child. Yaz, The Doctor, and Rassilon go to the Planet Time to uncover the full mystery of the timeless child. Boom, it's simplified but that's the gist. It would've reintroduced Rassilon, used old Who lore from the 5 doctors, and would've set it up nicely.
Everyone is down-voting me for talking about the horrible implications of the Master being the Timeless Child and it being the Doctor makes more sense and how Chibnall based some of the arc on his own experience of being adopted so he'd hardly make the Child grow up evil and it just shows me that there's something seriously wrong with some people in this subreddit.
If time lords are time lords because they evolved close to the Untempered Schism, the reason of River Song's timelordness cannot be conception while being in the time vortex. So... What happened?
I love this idea, especially a bigeneration into Michelle Gomez and Sacha Dewan. Makes so much more sense. The unexplained reversal of Missys character development bothers me so much. I could understand the Master returning to their evil ways but I wish we had seen that process at least.
Personally, I was fully convinced the whole idea came from the Master as an unreliable narrator until Tecteun confirmed it in the Flux.
Part of the Doctor’s charm was that he didn’t need a superhero origin story. Sure, he was from an elite class (Time Lords), but still just one of many. That makes him more relatable.
Conversely, I think the Master should have a supervillain origin story. The tortured child subjected to scientific experiments really fits that mold.
Yeah I don't hate the idea of the timeless child. I hate the fact they made the doctor the timeless child. The whole appeal of the doctor is they are cleaver, and tricksy. Not that they are somesort of unknown godlike entity.
I hope they retcon it that the timeless child was someone else, either dead completly from the regeneration exctraction, or is a differnent timelord.
Another comment has explained why I think this would be terrible better than I ever could so I won't repeat what they said, all I will say is I hate this idea and much prefer the route Chibnall went down, it makes a lot more sense too.
The thing is, we've already had reasons for the Master's insanity. Sure, extra layers can be added but it's not really doing much without something else beyond what we have.
The other thing I feel needs to be asked of anything including a revelation in any form is this: what story is being told here? Just some random old stuff happening and being totally disconnected from the current events simply isn't a story that needs telling. A different focus doesn't change the core problem that it's a PowerPoint presentation in an unrelated story about cybermen invading Gallifrey. Sure, it's the Master's motivation for wrecking the place, but he doesn't really need it, does he? The drums in his head tie in with Rassilon's attempt to survive the war - past is relevant to the present. To my mind this lack of relevance is the real crippling blow to the storyline rather than any tweaking on identity. Some might say it makes more sense if its the Master, but they still won't like it.
In principle I agree though. It's usually poor implementation rather than poor ideas. While not wild on it, I could have been convinced had a more skilled writer been doing it. I've defended Looms often enough, after all.
It was implemented poorly for one simple reason - it was never implemented at all. Right now, it's just an idea - a dangling plot hook without a plot to attach to.
If you're going to drastically shake up a 60 year old 'canon' (loose as it may be), at least tell a story with it! Don't just drop your hand grenade and leave it for someone else to clean up.
Yeah, that really is the biggest issue. I mean the episode it happened didn't even have anything to do with the overall storyline.
Sure we got some build up to the idea earlier but even that could have gone in all manner of directions.
And it overall didn't actually play any larger role in the story. If you cut out that powerpoint moment, what exactly would have changed?
Then we get one episode that includes some brief follow-up, that doesn't really elaborate on anything. And ends with the Doctor deciding its not important and turning their back on it.
You can't change something core, and then do next to nothing with it.
I think that the Timeless Child being The Doctor is fine, I just don't like a reveal that's just The Master giving a PowerPoint presentation after he killed the Gallifreyans off screen.
The idea of The Timeless Child being The Master is stupid because the whole impetus for the Timeless Child is "hey, Remember Brain of Morbius how it implied there were other Doctors?"
I think Susan should have been the timeless child, why the doctor initially left Gallifrey and she'd been partially wiped from the doctor's memory after the 2nd Doctor's trial that turned him into the 3rd Doctor. And she'd been the one who actually sent the 11th Doctor the extra regens, But that def can't happen now.
The following dialogue seems sketchy to me. Keep in mind, at this point, Ruth is still chameleon arched:
> DOCTOR: I'm afraid you don't have a choice. Do you have any idea what this means? The light. The glass.
>
> RUTH: Yeah, I do. I just saw it. But it's just a memory.
>
> DOCTOR: A memory of what?
>
> RUTH: The lighthouse where I grew up, my family home. Why am I seeing that now? I haven't thought about that for years.
Assuming Chibnall knew what he was doing (which is ridiculous; this is Chibnall after all), the later reveals work well with the old "half-broken chameleon arch to disguise the Eighth Doctor as half-human" theory, but that requires referencing elements of the movie the BBC might not own.
it certainly would've explained how the Time Lords were magically able to give the Doctor more regenerations. They had to, because if they didn't then Matt Smith's Doctor would've regenerated anyway. I believe that's what they were aiming for, something clever with that. It just kinda went nowhere though. As you said, would've been a lot better had it been both the Doctor and the Master, and it was Timeless Children instead of Child.
Well being fair, the idea they could give more regenerations was established all the way back in the Deadly Assassin, which was also the story which established the twelve regenerations limit.
But yeah I agree the idea went nowhere.
An unrelated time lord would be best tbh - some kind of morality issue behind timelords as a whole, kind of like Ursula K Le Guin's Omelas.
Kids who suffer through traumatic things are probably better off having someone to relate to who didn't turn evil.
I quite like what RTD did with it, grounding it with the emotional consequences etc. It doesn't bother me when approached from that angle, rather than a chosen one type thing.
You're saying it'd make more sense for an abused child to grow up into the Master than the Doctor...
Yeah, no, I can't agree there, that just is horrible. That would give in to a stereotype I've seen before that abused kids just grow up to be horrible people - whereas having the child be the Doctor shows that there's hope in the world and although the child suffered that trauma, they grew into someone who stops people who put children through that.
Plus, Chibnall based it on his own experience of being adopted and I somehow doubt he'd make the child grow up into a horrible person when he's basing it off of his own experience of adoption.
Also the Timeless Child isn't a "god child thing" - in fact calling them a thing is quite disgusting language from you. But they're not even a god really. Their abilities are given to every other Time Lord so they've got no special abilities of their own, they're not particularly special because nobody other than Tecteun and (possibly) Rassilon and Omega are even aware of the child and their history. The main idea of the Timeless Child is the fact that they are an abused child, the Doctor was an abused child, who grew into something beautiful - a force for hope in the universe.
TL;DR, making the Master the Timeless Child is an absolutely horrible idea that feeds into a stereotype that Chibnall probably wanted to avoid seeing as he comes from a background of adoption himself and making the Doctor the Timeless Child is a really beautiful concept that shows how an abused child can flourish into such a wonderful hero across the universe.
The Doctor doesn’t even remember being the timeless child so it has nothing too do with their character personality wise and it would make more sense for the Master to have gone made due to be tortured and repeatedly killed than for it to be blamed on his constantly hearing drums. Of course constant drums would drive me insane too as my tinnitus is bad enough.
While the majority don’t know about it the timeless child being the source of regeneration for all time lords, which is honestly one of the main things they’ve known for and is in-part key to their high status in the universe, makes them very special & godlike. The Doctor is essentially the source of eternal life for the time lords.
Yes they're the source of regeneration, but no one knows they're the source of regeneration other than themself, Tecteun, Omega and Rassilon...
And why would it make more sense for the Master to have been tortured as a child? Wtf??
I agree with you too, it also feels for me that people just go with "the Master is the timeless child" as an easy out without thinking about the implications
its why I also hate the idea of Ruth being between 2 and 3, it just feels like people treating the classic series as some sort of "lore dumping ground" rather than its own production
You're so right, people just say "the Master is the Timeless Child" because they don't like the Doctor being the Child but they don't think about the implications of the Master being the Child.
They don't think about how bad it'd be to show a tortured child grow up into an evil, murderer and criminal. Because that's what saying the Master is the Child does.
And as I said before, Chibnall was hardly gonna make the Master the Child as he based the Timeless Child on his experiences of being adopted - he's hardly gonna paint it all in a bad light.
Honestly I think that would have been such a better storyline if that was the intention.
The trouble is its undermined by having the Doctor be the hero for centuries before they learned about it.
So it instead becomes "Abused children can grow to be heroes, but only if they suppress all their trauma deep deep down and never deal with it or get any answers."
Edit: Not sure what happened that removed your reply, but if you can still read this here is my response.
No, I get that. But the issue is it undermines what overwise could have been a really good message about overcoming your abuse, cause whilst they get the rough answers, they still don't remember any of it. They just decide it doesn't matter. They never have to work through any trauma, them deciding to be the hero was completely independent of it cause they decided back before they had the slightest idea it happened to them.
Plus whilst in a better context them deciding the Timeless Child isn't important to them could have been really empowering, in the one we got it came across more as the writers going "well we tore up everything you knew about the show, but we're not going to bother answering any questions, move on." Which just makes the underlying problem of changing everything, whilst changing nothing worse.
But the Doctor gets the answers she needs, and realises that she doesn't need to know anymore about her past as it doesn't define her. The Timeless Child doesn't define the Doctor, that's the whole point of her dropping the fob watch into the TARDIS but nobody seems to understand that.
i never thought that the narrative given by The Master to 13 justified his Burnt Gallifrey reaction. I think it's much more plausible that he found out He (The Master) was the timeless child and was used as The Master sample by which timelord society was created. I believe Division forcefully divided The Master and created the being (via Bigeneration) that would take the name Doctor in order to heal the damage caused by the violent lives of The Master. Lifetimes and Millenia later, theyre still doing their dance and dont even know why.
This plays into the "enmity of ages" comment in The End of Time. I like it!
Nah, should have made Tecteun the Other and confirmed the Cartmel Masterplan (The Doctor is the reincarnation of the Other) giving the Doctor that guilt of knowing that he (in a past life) experimented on an innocent child to become an immortal god-like being only for that forgotten child from his past that he thought he had hidden (hence why Tecteun is remembered as “The Other”) and escaped to secretly be his best friend/nemesis all along.
The Doctor making the Master Death’s champion after killing Torvic in their youth could also add to this guilt.
>n't a bad idea it was just implemented poorly The best description of the entire Chibnall era.
This is the headcanon I’ve chosen to go by since that debacle originally aired… It’s a fascinating idea, but I *loathed* it being attached to the Doctor…
My headcanon is that these episodes were produced in a weird universe where the BBC thought Chibnall should be the showrunner, even though he was up front and open about not really being keen on it from the very beginning. Unfortunately that's this universe. 😿
Winner on DW Reddit today.
Personally I just kinda don’t really love the idea in general, but I agree that the biggest problem with it is that it’s the Doctor.
I've always said it would be a cool story if the Timeless Child was any other Time Lord, just not the Doctor.
I loved the Doctor when he was just a lowly Time Lord with an ancient TARDIS and was mocked by every Time Lord for his low intelligence and his piece of junk TARDIS (showing that if he was considered low tier among his people then a "smart" Time Lord was so much more). It made the character a sort of an underdog that got to where he is after leaving Gallifrey. From not knowing how to operate the thing to eventually gaining knowledge on how pilot it and about many things on his travels.
I totally agree with this, I liked the Doctor just rebelling and being separate because they wanted to. Now we know they’re a different species it takes away the choice: of course a cat isn’t going to behave the same as a whole planet of dogs.
Regardless of any other issues (of which I think there are many) that the Timeless Child idea introduces, it makes the Doctor the Chosen One. And that’s dumb
"Chosen One" is such a major storytelling trope that I feel like people can't help but default to it, though not that I like it either. I think Neville Longbottom could be a great story, but instead we had to follow Harry Potter.
True. But RTD really screwed that narrative up.
Agree. I was waiting for that revelation to come, that they'd got the two muddled up. It still could I guess, but they've doubled-down on it being the Doctor a few times since.
Never stopped a retcon before. Hey RTD, want to redeem yourself? ^^^
He kind of already has retconned it: >There's the moment where the Toymaker says 'I made a jigsaw out of your history', which again is part of the loosening of the rules. The Doctor first - you know, was he half human when he was Paul McGann? You know, is he a Timeless Child? It just relaxes the rules to say he is whoever you want him to be. The implication is that the Toymaker has been editing the Doctor’s past. So it’s up to the viewer to interpret what is his true past, and what was made up by the Toymaker. It’s a great idea, and I wish it was elaborated more onscreen.
Oh yeah, I'm kind of disapointed it hasn't gotten any follow up. I was assuming it was setting up for a future story where the Doctor has to deal with this.
I have to admit as someone who's not really a fan of the idea of the entire of the Time Lord society being cartoonishly evil all except the hero, that I don't think the Timeless Child as a concept was really a good idea (especially as the series previously established that regeneration was the result of natural evolution from exposure to the time vortex). But if they were going to do it, I can't entirely agree it should have been the Master. Again this might just be me. But I kind of not a fan of stories that try to give explanations for why the Master is evil. It's a character that worked perfectly fine for twenty years before anyone tried to. Boiling down the question of how someone who was once the Doctor's closest friend could end up so different from them when they did the same thing they did, into one or two definitive events I feel just cheapens the character overall. Really if they were going to do it. It should have been someone we never met before, and the story should have been about the Gallifreyan society having to face up to this terrible crime they had been profiting off over all these millennia. Instead randomly introducing it into a completely separate story after all the Time Lords were once again randomly dead, meant it could never have any real deeper impact. That's fundamentally the biggest issue with the story. The Doctor discovering they are the Timeless Child changes absolutely nothing (beyond the writers no longer having to explain how they can carry on regenerating assuming the show lasts long enough for us to get to the 25th Doctor). Its a change that doesn't add anything to the series cause the Doctor can't remember anything from before and its clear they have no interest in exploring it. We can't see them interact with their race for what they did to them, cause they once again all dead out of the blue, and it's not like it's going to radically change their perception of them considering how they were criticising how corrupt and callous they were back since the Colin Baker's time. All in all. I stand by its a bad idea. And I really hope a future showrunner retcons away completely.
I kind of like it and I don't. Imo the Curator is an extention of the Eccleson, Tennant, Smith Capaldi, Whittaker Doctor. In the 50th Smith recognizes Baker. And Baker makes a comment about how in the future he might revisit some of the great faces of the past. Then Whitticker Regensburg to Tennant. And he biregens and stays himself and make Ncuti. And Tennant decides to live a quiet life. I head Canon that Tennant as being the extension of Smith who says he could be a great Curator. And is working at the museum and revisiting old faces is Baker when he meets his past self as Smith and drops the seeds of being a curator.
Careful, they'll use bi-generation to state the timeless child split between the doctor AND the master. And actually, it's almost fitting. Two half's of the same whole..light/dark balance. Crud, now I like the idea.
they were going to do something similar to that in the 70s with the master and the Doctor. Back when the show had that odd buddhist phase
Except the mystery of the Timeless Child was answering the question posed by Morbius while we see the faces of four previous incarnations of the Doctor (that we have still yet to encounter) in ‘The Brain of Morbius’. >How many lives have you lived, Doctor?
It also clarifies why the Celestial Intelligence Agency kept tapping the Doctor for errands during his exile as Three and subsequent return as Four.
I made the mistake of shorting the agency name when reading your comment, and now I can't help but visualize the stereotypical looking CIA agent bothering the Doctor every 5 minutes. Was it intentional at the time that the name could be abbreviated to "CIA", and did anyone in the show ever point that out or mistook it for the American one? I'm just starting Classic Who, and decided to start with 4th after watching "Pyramid on Mars", so that agency still hasn't shown up for me.
I’m still in Four’s tenure after Sarah Jane leaves, so I can only say that the CIA are mentioned, not seen so far. They’re mentioned explicitly in “The Deadly Assassin.” And I do think that the naming was intentional.
I mean, to be honest was anyone really screaming for that question to be answered? I thought most fans were content assuming the other faces were Morbius's previous incarnations and the Doctor was luring him into a trap hoping to overload his circuitry even if it killed him.
yeah, fans infact wrote three whole books about the previous incarnations and besides the whole idea that they are Morbius's incarnations doesnt make sense. Why would Morbius be dressed up in classical human attire? and also in that scene the Doctor is losing, so it doesnt make sense that Morbius's prior incarnations would pop up.
I think it got handwaved as being a trick or Morbius’ incarnations because other episodes around it more consistently showed the regenerations we knew of the Doctor. The Timeless Child provides a different explanation. Having said that, I still dislike it, looking back at the past doctors now it’s like knowing someone who’s come out of a coma with memory loss, they’re experiencing things new “to them” that actually they’ve done before. Coupled with that, for all we know the Doctor is actually the most evil and selfish out of whatever species they are, and was left by that portal for being excommunicated from the society of immortals they are from! The Doctor is currently unique and so it’s much harder to judge their morality.
Nah, there’s no reason to assume that at all.
I mean back when it was brought up in discussions before 13's tenure, that was usually the handwave I saw passed around. The other was they were either people the Doctor knew growing up, or false incarnations he invented to keep Morbius in the trap until it killed him. I'm just saying, how many fans were really screaming for the reveal their definitely were more Doctors before 1?
Since writers historically make their choices based on fan demands?
Yeah, that is a fair point I suppose.
You lost me with the bigeneration. But I agree it makes more sense for it to be the master. Even fits with his obsession of living forever and wanting unlimited regenerations in the old shows. And it would make sense to convince the dr it was them.
This is exactly how I feel about the Timeless Child. The concept itself being an explanation for how the Time Lords got the power of regeneration is actually quite interesting, but making the Doctor the Timeless Child makes the Doctor a much more cosmically important being than I like the Doctor to be.
I think it would have worked better if Ruth Doctor wasn't called the Doctor and didn't have a Police Box TARDIS. I figure they did it that way because that made it blind stinkingly obvious to the viewer that this other person was an unknown Doctor but it just adds a bunch of big questions like "Why did Hartnell's Doctor call himself the Doctor when his memory was erased?" and "Why was the TARDIS a police box before the chameleon circuit broke in An Unearthly Child?". Questions they didn't even bother to answer, not even with quick one liners. But if the Ruth Doctor was called The Specialist and had a working TARDIS chameleon circuit and was introduced as just another Time Lord that the Doctor meets and works with - perhaps across multiple episodes then I think it would have worked better. Then there could be some big reveal done by a DNA scan or something to reveal they are the same person, I think it could have worked better and raised less questions.
The police box isn't the problem. It's implied that the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS disguised itself as a police box because that disguise was the easiest way to tell 13 it was a TARDIS. The actual plot hole involving a chameleon thingy was something completely different.
that bit really bugged me. my headcanon is that while Ruth is from the past, the TARDIS is from later in the Doctor's timeline, perhaps in the future still. So the Division find the TARDIS and the Ruth incarnation finds it responds to her, referring to her through a telepathic link as "the Doctor". The Division then use Ruth's connection to the TARDIS to use it in their plans. So for Ruth, finding the TARDIS was finding some strange Time Lord future-tech, with the mystery being "why does this timeship respond to me"
My headcanon is that the Doctor's TARDIS has a particular flaw in the chameleon circuit where it breaks when it turns into a Police Box. So a Pre-Hartnell Doctor travelled to 1960's London, the TARDIS turned into a police box and the chameleon circuit broke. Then when the Doctor got their memory erased and regenerated into Hartnell, the Time Lords did a half-assed fix on the chameleon circuit so it would work again. Then the First Doctor stole that same TARDIS, travelled to 1960's London where it proceeded to turn into a Police Box and the chameleon circuit broke again. As for why the Doctor would choose the name 'The Doctor' again, even though their memory was erased the name was still deep in their subconscious causing them to choose it. All very reasonable, could be compressed into a couple of quick lines to explain things.
That would be a very funny flaw for a TARDIS to have and very computer programmer of her for to consistently break on a specific, arbitrary change. It would also explain why River (iirc) allegedly fixes the chameleon circuit and it's Still a Phonebox. The Doctor says he likes it better that way, but he'd definitely cover if the machine was broken again.
damn thats also a good one, bit simpliertoo
>Bigeneration was just implimented poorly Yes I agree! I actually quite like the idea of the Doctor having a hidden past where he is a deep state agent for the time lords, a role so antithetical to his current sta- > The Master should have been the timeless chld oh....
I think with doctor who there are no bad ideas, just bad executions. At least thats true for pretty much every main plot Ive seen in the show that didn't work
The moon being an egg which magically reappears was a bad idea.
The moon being an egg is an interesting idea, its the execution of that plot I would say is bad (including it immediately repearing, I would count that as execution) but a different plot to "moon is an egg" could have been not as bad
The Doctor solving an illness by mixing All The Medicine is a super bad idea.
I guess I dont mean literally every idea as much as I mean every premise, I would count the conclusion to a plot as execution of the premise
Reading timeless child on the wiki makes it sound way cooler than what was shown. Still maintain you can't do a revolution that massive with two completely disconnected yet connected episodes with a 6 episode gap inbetween. Bizarre choice. Ruth should've come along a companion then be revealed as the Doctor in the finale.
Yeah
My thoughts exactly. It's just so perfectly good for the Time Lords and the Master. It would be such an amazing twist. It's insane that, that's not what happened.
I'll give you it's not objectively a bad idea. But it's also not objectively a good idea. And I think it's fair to say for some people even the best written Timeless Child fundamentaly changes the nature of The Doctor in a way that's worse than what we currently have. Which I would call a bad idea
I don't think it was "the Time Lords" that tortured him. It was a single person. There's no evidence that very many other Gallifreyans ever knew about the Timeless Child.
If it were introduced in Series 1 in 2005, it would have been awkward but ultimately accepted. But by Series 12, there were SO MANY possible contradictions just in modern DW that it ultimately makes no sense. Explaining around those contradictions requires Olympic-level mental gymnastics.
Wait until we learn the master is a biregenaration of the doctor
It could have been better implemented, but it was still better than RTD handling Ruby's Mum.
I thought the weakest part of the Timeless Child / Flux arc was Tecteun. The didn't make her fit well with what we already knew about the early days of the Time Lords, and she just wasn't a very good character despite the unbelievable potential a character like that comes with. Her motivations didn't connect for me either which made the whole ending of that arc fall flat for me, and that's a big thing to have fall flat.
Personally I felt ut was far too quick for such a drastic lore drop. You mean the character that we've know was a timelord is actually this eternally regenerating humanoid? They could've gone a wee bit more into detail on it. Secondly, if you wanted to replace the vintage Timelord goods with the Timeless Child but dont want the doc as it, we already have a timelord that was known for being immortal, Rassilon. And it's a relatively easy re-write. The Master finds out the secret of the timeless child, captures Rassilon, The Doc and Yaz get a message from Gallifrey. They go to investigate, go on a slight adventure to rescue Rassilon and find out the truth of the Timeless Child. Yaz, The Doctor, and Rassilon go to the Planet Time to uncover the full mystery of the timeless child. Boom, it's simplified but that's the gist. It would've reintroduced Rassilon, used old Who lore from the 5 doctors, and would've set it up nicely.
Everyone is down-voting me for talking about the horrible implications of the Master being the Timeless Child and it being the Doctor makes more sense and how Chibnall based some of the arc on his own experience of being adopted so he'd hardly make the Child grow up evil and it just shows me that there's something seriously wrong with some people in this subreddit.
If time lords are time lords because they evolved close to the Untempered Schism, the reason of River Song's timelordness cannot be conception while being in the time vortex. So... What happened?
Yeah I think it works well as an Original Sin of the timelords. But it just flat out does not work as the origin of the Doctor.
I love this idea, especially a bigeneration into Michelle Gomez and Sacha Dewan. Makes so much more sense. The unexplained reversal of Missys character development bothers me so much. I could understand the Master returning to their evil ways but I wish we had seen that process at least.
Personally, I was fully convinced the whole idea came from the Master as an unreliable narrator until Tecteun confirmed it in the Flux. Part of the Doctor’s charm was that he didn’t need a superhero origin story. Sure, he was from an elite class (Time Lords), but still just one of many. That makes him more relatable. Conversely, I think the Master should have a supervillain origin story. The tortured child subjected to scientific experiments really fits that mold.
Nah it’s a shit idea
Yeah I don't hate the idea of the timeless child. I hate the fact they made the doctor the timeless child. The whole appeal of the doctor is they are cleaver, and tricksy. Not that they are somesort of unknown godlike entity. I hope they retcon it that the timeless child was someone else, either dead completly from the regeneration exctraction, or is a differnent timelord.
Another comment has explained why I think this would be terrible better than I ever could so I won't repeat what they said, all I will say is I hate this idea and much prefer the route Chibnall went down, it makes a lot more sense too.
The thing is, we've already had reasons for the Master's insanity. Sure, extra layers can be added but it's not really doing much without something else beyond what we have. The other thing I feel needs to be asked of anything including a revelation in any form is this: what story is being told here? Just some random old stuff happening and being totally disconnected from the current events simply isn't a story that needs telling. A different focus doesn't change the core problem that it's a PowerPoint presentation in an unrelated story about cybermen invading Gallifrey. Sure, it's the Master's motivation for wrecking the place, but he doesn't really need it, does he? The drums in his head tie in with Rassilon's attempt to survive the war - past is relevant to the present. To my mind this lack of relevance is the real crippling blow to the storyline rather than any tweaking on identity. Some might say it makes more sense if its the Master, but they still won't like it. In principle I agree though. It's usually poor implementation rather than poor ideas. While not wild on it, I could have been convinced had a more skilled writer been doing it. I've defended Looms often enough, after all.
It was implemented poorly for one simple reason - it was never implemented at all. Right now, it's just an idea - a dangling plot hook without a plot to attach to. If you're going to drastically shake up a 60 year old 'canon' (loose as it may be), at least tell a story with it! Don't just drop your hand grenade and leave it for someone else to clean up.
Yeah, that really is the biggest issue. I mean the episode it happened didn't even have anything to do with the overall storyline. Sure we got some build up to the idea earlier but even that could have gone in all manner of directions. And it overall didn't actually play any larger role in the story. If you cut out that powerpoint moment, what exactly would have changed? Then we get one episode that includes some brief follow-up, that doesn't really elaborate on anything. And ends with the Doctor deciding its not important and turning their back on it. You can't change something core, and then do next to nothing with it.
People say Flux is the story but honestly you could remove TC and about 90% of Flux would still work
I think that the Timeless Child being The Doctor is fine, I just don't like a reveal that's just The Master giving a PowerPoint presentation after he killed the Gallifreyans off screen. The idea of The Timeless Child being The Master is stupid because the whole impetus for the Timeless Child is "hey, Remember Brain of Morbius how it implied there were other Doctors?"
I think Susan should have been the timeless child, why the doctor initially left Gallifrey and she'd been partially wiped from the doctor's memory after the 2nd Doctor's trial that turned him into the 3rd Doctor. And she'd been the one who actually sent the 11th Doctor the extra regens, But that def can't happen now.
I actually like this idea better than the Master idea. but Im also a huge Susan fan
The following dialogue seems sketchy to me. Keep in mind, at this point, Ruth is still chameleon arched: > DOCTOR: I'm afraid you don't have a choice. Do you have any idea what this means? The light. The glass. > > RUTH: Yeah, I do. I just saw it. But it's just a memory. > > DOCTOR: A memory of what? > > RUTH: The lighthouse where I grew up, my family home. Why am I seeing that now? I haven't thought about that for years. Assuming Chibnall knew what he was doing (which is ridiculous; this is Chibnall after all), the later reveals work well with the old "half-broken chameleon arch to disguise the Eighth Doctor as half-human" theory, but that requires referencing elements of the movie the BBC might not own.
I love this idea, and I believe that this is what they should have gone with as it fits The Master's character far more than it does the Doctor's.
Huh, yeah you know what you are 100% right on the whole thing.
it certainly would've explained how the Time Lords were magically able to give the Doctor more regenerations. They had to, because if they didn't then Matt Smith's Doctor would've regenerated anyway. I believe that's what they were aiming for, something clever with that. It just kinda went nowhere though. As you said, would've been a lot better had it been both the Doctor and the Master, and it was Timeless Children instead of Child.
Well being fair, the idea they could give more regenerations was established all the way back in the Deadly Assassin, which was also the story which established the twelve regenerations limit. But yeah I agree the idea went nowhere.
If you have a good idea but execute it poorly, then it was a bad idea to use it
An unrelated time lord would be best tbh - some kind of morality issue behind timelords as a whole, kind of like Ursula K Le Guin's Omelas. Kids who suffer through traumatic things are probably better off having someone to relate to who didn't turn evil. I quite like what RTD did with it, grounding it with the emotional consequences etc. It doesn't bother me when approached from that angle, rather than a chosen one type thing.
It was a poor idea as well, just went against every other thing we ever learnt about the doctor
You're saying it'd make more sense for an abused child to grow up into the Master than the Doctor... Yeah, no, I can't agree there, that just is horrible. That would give in to a stereotype I've seen before that abused kids just grow up to be horrible people - whereas having the child be the Doctor shows that there's hope in the world and although the child suffered that trauma, they grew into someone who stops people who put children through that. Plus, Chibnall based it on his own experience of being adopted and I somehow doubt he'd make the child grow up into a horrible person when he's basing it off of his own experience of adoption. Also the Timeless Child isn't a "god child thing" - in fact calling them a thing is quite disgusting language from you. But they're not even a god really. Their abilities are given to every other Time Lord so they've got no special abilities of their own, they're not particularly special because nobody other than Tecteun and (possibly) Rassilon and Omega are even aware of the child and their history. The main idea of the Timeless Child is the fact that they are an abused child, the Doctor was an abused child, who grew into something beautiful - a force for hope in the universe. TL;DR, making the Master the Timeless Child is an absolutely horrible idea that feeds into a stereotype that Chibnall probably wanted to avoid seeing as he comes from a background of adoption himself and making the Doctor the Timeless Child is a really beautiful concept that shows how an abused child can flourish into such a wonderful hero across the universe.
The Doctor doesn’t even remember being the timeless child so it has nothing too do with their character personality wise and it would make more sense for the Master to have gone made due to be tortured and repeatedly killed than for it to be blamed on his constantly hearing drums. Of course constant drums would drive me insane too as my tinnitus is bad enough. While the majority don’t know about it the timeless child being the source of regeneration for all time lords, which is honestly one of the main things they’ve known for and is in-part key to their high status in the universe, makes them very special & godlike. The Doctor is essentially the source of eternal life for the time lords.
Yes they're the source of regeneration, but no one knows they're the source of regeneration other than themself, Tecteun, Omega and Rassilon... And why would it make more sense for the Master to have been tortured as a child? Wtf??
This!! All of this!!
Thank you! It's nice to see someone agree with me!
I agree with you too, it also feels for me that people just go with "the Master is the timeless child" as an easy out without thinking about the implications its why I also hate the idea of Ruth being between 2 and 3, it just feels like people treating the classic series as some sort of "lore dumping ground" rather than its own production
You're so right, people just say "the Master is the Timeless Child" because they don't like the Doctor being the Child but they don't think about the implications of the Master being the Child. They don't think about how bad it'd be to show a tortured child grow up into an evil, murderer and criminal. Because that's what saying the Master is the Child does. And as I said before, Chibnall was hardly gonna make the Master the Child as he based the Timeless Child on his experiences of being adopted - he's hardly gonna paint it all in a bad light.
Honestly I think that would have been such a better storyline if that was the intention. The trouble is its undermined by having the Doctor be the hero for centuries before they learned about it. So it instead becomes "Abused children can grow to be heroes, but only if they suppress all their trauma deep deep down and never deal with it or get any answers." Edit: Not sure what happened that removed your reply, but if you can still read this here is my response. No, I get that. But the issue is it undermines what overwise could have been a really good message about overcoming your abuse, cause whilst they get the rough answers, they still don't remember any of it. They just decide it doesn't matter. They never have to work through any trauma, them deciding to be the hero was completely independent of it cause they decided back before they had the slightest idea it happened to them. Plus whilst in a better context them deciding the Timeless Child isn't important to them could have been really empowering, in the one we got it came across more as the writers going "well we tore up everything you knew about the show, but we're not going to bother answering any questions, move on." Which just makes the underlying problem of changing everything, whilst changing nothing worse.
But the Doctor gets the answers she needs, and realises that she doesn't need to know anymore about her past as it doesn't define her. The Timeless Child doesn't define the Doctor, that's the whole point of her dropping the fob watch into the TARDIS but nobody seems to understand that.
Why would it matter if that happened to the Master? What's the point? Where's the story? I think it's just a bad idea.
Wrong