Spoilers The Timeless Children grade and discussion thread

[Doctor Bombay]

And suddenly, the heads of DW fans around the world simultaneously exploded...

I gave it an 8 because it was well done.

That being said, not a big fan of the retcon on the Doctor's history. I was satisfied with what we had.

I'm mixed as to whether or not I'll be upfront and seated for the next season. In many ways, this show has run its course for me.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll be there waiting...

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The thing about continuity, though, is that in all of the retcons there have been, wwiith the solid exception of the Cartmel Masterplan, the Doctor never was or even hinted at being THE PROGENITOR OF HIS ENTIRE RACE!

Robert Holmes in 1976: "There's a twelve regeneration limit, y'all!"

Every showrunner since: "Fuuuuuuuuuuck."

Well, actually no. JNT fairly certainly stuck to it, in fact slavishly so. See Mawdryn Undead or The Five Doctors for reference.

 

[RevdKathy]

The Master is mad. Whatever the Master has understood, said, shown or claimed to have done should be taken in that light.

Who thinks the Doctor is an extra-special root-of-all-timelordiness? The Master
Who sees a mystic child in Gallifrey's history and assumes it must be the Doctor? The Master
Who has obsessed about the Doctor the entirety of his lives like a fixation? The Master
Who claims to have killed all the timelords? The Master
Who thinks timelord cybermen will live forever? The Master

Was there a historic mystic child? Probably yes.
Are the timelords selfish rat bastards who appointedthemselves to run the universe? Probably yes
Are they all dead? Almost certainly not

Someone give the Master a decent antipsychotic and we can all move on. The mystery of the Ruth Doctor and the Timeless child can run but the rest is the ramblings of a disturbed mind.

(The timeless child is a creature from the vortex who was imprisoned in the first Tardis, the Timelords enslaved her, then captured more like slave owners to encapsulate one in each Tardis - they are not 'timelords' without a Tardis, which makes them suitably unpleasant. Exposure to the time vortex in being in a tardis is what caused the regeneration thing - hence River Song. The first original Tardis ended up in a museum... until it was stolen. )

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I expected the timeless child to be revealed to be The Master. Made more sense at the time. Though I saw or imagined – intentional or unintentional – repressed jealousy in his actions, as if he wished it was him too. Maybe it still can be him. He could even be Tecteun.

 

[Sparky]

Overall I enjoyed the episode, but I was a bit bummed that they didn't go far enough. The actual revelations were ok if not a bit pedestrian and predictable. I wanted something a bit more meaty with a real WTF moment attached. I was hoping that the twist was going to be that the Timeless Child was both the Master and the Doctor. I wanted the cliffhanger to be a big reveal that the Master and the Doctor are in fact the same person, just at different points of their life, separated by a mind wipe.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I thought Sacha Dhawan was Excellent as The Master.

as for the rest, Nope, Nope, Nope...

So the regeneration limit was set by that woman for no good reason then but the child has no limit? and they just wipe the Doctor's mind for NO REASON at the end of each 13 lives? Then why the fuck did 11 need the Time Lords to give him more Regeneration energy and why wasn't his mind wiped?

How did The Master wipe out an entire planet? The Time Lords undone by 1 lunatic. I mean i'm glad the whole Time War arc from 2005-2013 wasn't a giant waste of time, oh wait it is now. How is The Master still around? he literally killed himself at the end of 12's story and I'm sure he will pop up again with zero explanation.

How can The Doctor have potentially hundreds or even thousands of lives and yet The Doctor we know NEVER ran into one of them once across time & space. The Doctor legend is known throughout time and the Universe and there was zero hint, zero hint to such a mythology. The Doctor isn't even Gallifreyan but some other species It was bad enough when the Yanks tried to make The Doctor half human.

River Song's Regeneration ability was due to being conceived inside the Time Vortex but this episode states that regeneration ability has nothing to do with the Time Vortex and The Time Lords hadn't discovered Time Travel when they got this ability.

Oh and The Daleks can't get into the Tardis but Space Rhino's can?

I love Doctor Who, I re-watch it all the time on Netflix and for the past 15 years, it's been a constant for me to watch year in and year out. I love we have a female Doctor, I like all the Doctors to be fair (11 is my favourite) but changing the core character's history in such a way really makes me think i'm done.

If other people enjoy it then I have no problem but IMO Chris Chinball is a hack.

Hear you, but... does adding this really fundamentally change the character? Or the show? Sure they like to advertise that “this is important” but is it really? Like, is it going to play into 90% of the episodes?

Probably not. Like as “important” of a revelation as this is, is it really? The Doctor is still going to travel and fight the Daleks.

It’s not going to fundamentally change the show. It made the mistake in assuming this kind of stuff is important, whereas it’s dumb fanwank. And not that important, really.

 

[Pindar]

Well after catching up with the thread I don't have much to add.

I found that the more episodes the Master was in the less I liked this portrayal.

I can't believe the Timelords are dead, I still don't really understand why the Master was annoyed after finding out a scientist used gene manipulation to give them regeneration.

And really the nothing will ever be the same again schtick to be massively over hyped.

Nothing has really changed, the biggest dissapointment for me was no Captain Jack.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The information dump was courtesy of the Master so I'm not sure how much of it was fake news. I gather the reskinned origin story was some sort of in-joke about Gallifrey being in Ireland but it likely confused some people. The Master was presumably the child who pushed the Doctor off the cliff but in one version this was more accidental than in the other. Whether we'll ever get a backstory explanation of the timeless child appearing from the interdimensional gateway remains to be seen - assuming it's true. I assume the Doctor is a paradoxical closed time-like loop and will eventually end up again as the timeless child.

It sounded like the Master and some of his minions escaped the explosion so I'm not sure how soon we'll see them again.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I can't believe the Timelords are dead, I still don't really understand why the Master was annoyed after finding out a scientist used gene manipulation to give them regeneration.

I think what really upset the Master was the fact that they used the Doctor as a sort of template for their entire species. That's the thing that the Master hated and wanted no part of.

 

[jaime]

They give Graham more Doctor moments than the Doctor (see his re-enactment of Tomb of the Cybermen with Yaz) and the Doctor is literally and metaphorically led around by the hand in this episode.
I would like the new Master more if (a) it hadn’t ignored everything about missy for the sake of this nonsense and (b) they hadn’t ignored so much else about the character to do this. (If he hates the idea of the Doctor being part of him, why try to steal the Doctors body?)

 

[StCoop]

I can't believe the Timelords are dead, I still don't really understand why the Master was annoyed after finding out a scientist used gene manipulation to give them regeneration.

He wasn't. He quite clearly says in the episode what his problems were.

 

[jaime]

He wasn't. He quite clearly says in the episode what his problems were.

I don’t remember him confessing to being written by a muppet who rips everything off from other better stories and still can’t stick the landing...

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Except, his attitude towards the Doctor is puzzingly aloof. If this is the Master before Missy but after Simm, fine - I'd love it, because then Missy's "I knew him since he was a little girl" comment would come off as rudely funny - but we don't know so we go with the assumption he's post-Missy. And if he is, then both he and the Doctor should have adressed the Doctor's enormous attempt to rehabilitate him in series 10 - you know, that season's arc? Instead you have them exchanging platitudes, in exactly the same awkward situation as Moffat put the Doctor with Davros in series 9. Without aknowledging some actual history, there's no tension, just a lot of fidgeting between two actors who visibly don't know that said history (not that they should, because a good script could communicate that stuff for them). We should have seen the Doctor disappointed the Master's bad, and the Master should have remarked how he's no longer giving him any chance, like "she" did (meaning himself as Missy).

And it really doesn't help that Dhawan plays the Master without an ounce of subtlety. I'm not rejecting camp here, I just don't subscribe to the Campy-Master-at-all-times club. Delgado was campy too, but he balanced it with some nuance and menace in his mannerisms.

To put it simply, if the Dhawan Master "created" this infodump as an excuse to "destroy" the Doctor, his portrayal doesn't leave room for it. He's so hammy and chewing the scenery so grinningly, I'm aghast anyone thought this was a good performance.

 

[DarKush]

I'm a very, very casual Doctor Who watcher and for me, the season finale didn't really live up to the universe shattering revelations it was selling IMO. Granted, my lack of knowledge for Doctor Who lore means that the whole business about The Doctor being the Timeless Child meant little to me. I don't see how it upends Jodie's Doctor's world in particular. Yes, she has been lied to. Her memories altered perhaps, but that doesn't seem that big a deal for a time traveling alien that has lived multiple lifetimes already. I was glad that the Master did say that he hated that the Doctor being the progenitor of their species meant that there was a part of her inside him and that what he hated because up until that point I didn't understand why the Timeless Child/Children hidden history necessitated wiping out Gallifrey. I chalk up The Master's reaction to his insanity and ego, and his love-hate relationship with the Doctor. It felt like this Master was a Clown Prince of Crime-like incarnation of the character IMO.

I thought the first half of the episode was the strongest. I liked the fast pacing and the production values. I really enjoyed the Cybermen and their leader, who reminded me of Ultron. Once the episode went into the Timeless Child/Children history it started losing steam for me, and I didn't care much for the Master's ultimate plan which felt ho hum. It wasn't much different than the Ultron-Cyberman's plan. I did like the Timelord-Cybermen though. Unfortunately they were too easily defeated. This storyline could've been resolved in next season's opener. I don't think this episode pushed hard enough or really turned Doctor Who history and lore on its ear.

I was happy to see the Ruth Doctor again, but I wished we had actually learned more about her history and how she fits into things.

Going into it, I was expecting some major character death, but the one we got wasn't surprising. The cliffhanger we did get does bring back the Judoon but it felt anticlimatic. Ending the season with the Jodie Doctor about to kill herself, the Master, and the Timelord-Cybermen would've been better.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The information dump was courtesy of the Master so I'm not sure how much of it was fake news. I gather the reskinned origin story was some sort of in-joke about Gallifrey being in Ireland but it likely confused some people. The Master was presumably the child who pushed the Doctor off the cliff but in one version this was more accidental than in the other. Whether we'll ever get a backstory explanation of the timeless child appearing from the interdimensional gateway remains to be seen - assuming it's true. I assume the Doctor is a paradoxical closed time-like loop and will eventually end up again as the timeless child.

It sounded like the Master and some of his minions escaped the explosion so I'm not sure how soon we'll see them again.

The Timelords were regenerating for more than a million years before The Master was born.

 

[Tosk]

Well, it was an episode. I'll give it that. The revelations left me neither happy or sad, just kind of..."Oh, okay."
Maybe if there wasn't the massive hype job it would have hit harder. But probably not. As drama, I'm just not that worried about someone who is so ridiculously long-lived finding out that they are older than they thought.

 

[Pindar]

I think what really upset the Master was the fact that they used the Doctor as a sort of template for their entire species. That's the thing that the Master hated and wanted no part of.

He wasn't. He quite clearly says in the episode what his problems were.

I get that he was furious because the Doctor really is special and a bit her DNA is in him, but assuming looms don't exist the upper eschalons of Timelord society would be pretty inbred anyway.

I know he is insane but I just don't buy that as being a valid reason for feeling everything is a lie and I have to kill all the Timelords because all of them have a bit of the Doctor in them.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

The very ending. Was that Demon's Run or the Shadow Proclamation base? It looked familiar

I'm telling you, it's Shada!

 

[Doctor Bombay]

I'm telling you, it's Shada!

I think it's Shada, too.

 

[jaime]

Except, his attitude towards the Doctor is puzzingly aloof. If this is the Master before Missy but after Simm, fine - I'd love it, because then Missy's "I knew him since he was a little girl" comment would come off as rudely funny - but we don't know so we go with the assumption he's post-Missy. And if he is, then both he and the Doctor should have adressed the Doctor's enormous attempt to rehabilitate him in series 10 - you know, that season's arc? Instead you have them exchanging platitudes, in exactly the same awkward situation as Moffat put the Doctor with Davros in series 9. Without aknowledging some actual history, there's no tension, just a lot of fidgeting between two actors who visibly don't know that said history (not that they should, because a good script could communicate that stuff for them). We should have seen the Doctor disappointed the Master's bad, and the Master should have remarked how he's no longer giving him any chance, like "she" did (meaning himself as Missy).

And it really doesn't help that Dhawan plays the Master without an ounce of subtlety. I'm not rejecting camp here, I just don't subscribe to the Campy-Master-at-all-times club. Delgado was campy too, but he balanced it with some nuance and menace in his mannerisms.

To put it simply, if the Dhawan Master "created" this infodump as an excuse to "destroy" the Doctor, his portrayal doesn't leave room for it. He's so hammy and chewing the scenery so grinningly, I'm aghast anyone thought this was a good performance.

One line change would do it.

‘You’re appealing to my better nature. But she died. You left her to rot.’