Spoilers Hot Take: Chibnall didn't obliterate Doctor Who's continuity. He actually fixed it.
- Thread starter OCD Geek
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Just rewatched Let’s Kill Hitler, and The Wedding of River Song.
You know, two of the bits of the really quite nice little arc that Timeless Child completely with ignores or fucks up.
Chibnall has a thing for retcons. He needs to retcon the whole Timeless Child thing away, because it takes away from the overall story rather than adding to it. He needs to kill his darlings I am afraid.
You know, two of the bits of the really quite nice little arc that Timeless Child completely with ignores or fucks up.
Chibnall has a thing for retcons. He needs to retcon the whole Timeless Child thing away, because it takes away from the overall story rather than adding to it. He needs to kill his darlings I am afraid.
@Starkers: I believe that @jaime thinks there's an incompatibility between the Timeless Child lore and the origin story that Steven Moffat created for the character of River Song, and that the Timeless Child lore breaks the logic of River giving the Doctor her (River's) remaining regenerations.
However, there are logical workarounds to be thought through if one is inclined to do so.
However, there are logical workarounds to be thought through if one is inclined to do so.
Because we pretty much know that River gets her regens (limited without Time Lord/Gallifreyan intervention) from being ‘a child of the Tardis’ (Wedding of River Song) and that the Doctor dies for a few seconds/minutes before she transfers her regen/artron energy to him (Lets Kill Hitler) not to mention her ‘Archaeology’ not picking up any Pre-Hartnell Doctors.
Everything that arc sets up about regeneration (without breaking anything, only adding, the suggestion that ‘Time Lords’ are Gallifeyan children conceived in the Vortex.) is flatly contradicted by The Timeless Child. The best you can hope is that said child was conceived in the Vortex/A Tardis. (The Master is the Daddy! Blech.) but even then it just messes with the whole thing frankly.
(Nothing that was shown in The Timeless Child needs to happen, if you basically just have to boink in the Vortex… something we know comes from Rassilon/Omega inventing Time Travel etc. Or a Tardis.)
It’s ironic that the era Chibnall has come to most resemble is the exact point he famously decried it. We are even getting a season long arc with a light entertainment star thrown in as a companion.
Just re-watching the Eleven/Moffat stuff with it’s ability to wring real emotion from the most bonkers Doctor Who concepts (not even the strongest season) makes me sad for how bad the writing has been.
Eh.
Not really that big of deal. Doesn't effect the nature of River's actions.
As been pointed out many times before, continuity has changed significantly many times over the last 60 years and it'll change again. Not the end of the universe. Except that one time.
Not really that big of deal. Doesn't effect the nature of River's actions.
As been pointed out many times before, continuity has changed significantly many times over the last 60 years and it'll change again. Not the end of the universe. Except that one time.
Her archaeology didn't pick up any post Smith Doctors either, that's an immutable problem with Doctor Who, with all these different versions of the same person running around through time and space it's amazing they don't encounter their future versions more often (or maybe not, space is big, really big, after all and when you factor time into the equation...)
Also you're assuming River has no knowledge of pre Hartnell Doctors, you can't prove that (spoilers!)
There's nothing to suggest that River's DNA works exactly like a regular Timelord's either, she's (apologies Alex) a freak, a mutation, and as far as we know she only regenerated a couple of times. Maybe she only had enough energy left to regenerate one more time or maybe she scarified 400 future lives to save the Doctor, we just don't know, but nothing in her creation is necessarily contradicted by the Timeless child. There's more than one way to skin a goose and maybe more than one way to bake a Timelord.
And I say all this as someone who isn't the biggest fan of the Timeless Child storyline.
The ‘never bumping into future self’ was always covered by the existence of Gallifrey and the first law of time. (Which would rule out the Chef! Doctor, who was otherwise great fun in many ways) The not meeting post-smith doctors was covered — not least as she met Capaldi. Not to mention when these things do happen, there’s the whole memory thing because of what amounts to a linear internal timeline. Basically nah. It’s all just a bit of reach, Chibnall was not, is not, a particularly good writer on either small or large scale. He tried to out-Moffat Moffat, and it burned.
^ There are logical ways for the Timeless Child lore and everything that has been heretofore established about the Doctor and the concept of Regeneration to work in concert; you just don't like the TC stuff and are therefore justifying that dislike by insisting that it contradicts previously established lore. Its your prerogative to do so, but you believing that doesn't automatically or necessarily make the TC stuff any less valid than the elements of Doctor Who lore that you believe it contradicts.
I don’t like it because it’s awful on so many levels, and really doesn’t play nicely in other things established by other bits of the show as well.It just doesn’t. It looks arrogant and ignorant all at a once on Chibnalls part. And that comes from a huge amount of familiarity with the show.
Chibnalls biggest sin is mostly contradicting the Terrance Dicks summation of the character, straight after Capaldi all but recited it on screen. He may as well have had an episode called ‘Doctor Who and The Big Yummy Plate of Pears.’
^ The Timeless Child lore being 'awful' and contradictory are your own personal points of view.
Doctor Who lore is chock full of stuff that sounds contradictory to or that could be considered 'awful' by somebody, but said lore is still valid precisely because of the fact that the franchise does not have a Canon.
There are logical workarounds to make the Timeless Child lore work with literally everything else that has ever been introduced within the franchise's mythos, but you are clearly unwilling to entertain such workarounds.
Doctor Who lore is chock full of stuff that sounds contradictory to or that could be considered 'awful' by somebody, but said lore is still valid precisely because of the fact that the franchise does not have a Canon.
There are logical workarounds to make the Timeless Child lore work with literally everything else that has ever been introduced within the franchise's mythos, but you are clearly unwilling to entertain such workarounds.
Personally I did not care for the Timeless Child concept- but as mentioned before Dr Who has played with many established situations and come up with new twists to move the story along- most notable stating off with the Doctor being the last of the Timelords with the series revival (Eccleston).
I would like to think the Doctor was just a bit of a renegade in trying to be proactive in the universe instead of just watching and judging as the rest of the Timelords, but it is up to the show runners to decide the course of the show.
My ONLY wish is that they stop this wall to wall woke preaching at us and just let the stories provide the object lessons as they have done before.
I would like to think the Doctor was just a bit of a renegade in trying to be proactive in the universe instead of just watching and judging as the rest of the Timelords, but it is up to the show runners to decide the course of the show.
My ONLY wish is that they stop this wall to wall woke preaching at us and just let the stories provide the object lessons as they have done before.
Using "woke" unironically as a bad thing in the context of Star Trek or Doctor Who is never a good sign. When was Doctor Who not woke? When 12 punched a racist or made speeches during the Zygon story or ranted about the evils of the miitary? When 5 said "There should have been another way"? When 3 berated the Brigadier for killing the Silurians? Anyone can come up with a number of other unsubtle messages in Doctor Who.
The one thing you can count on in any discussion of the latest version of Doctor Who or Star Trek is that people will criticize the new show for doing something the older versions did too.
The one thing you can count on in any discussion of the latest version of Doctor Who or Star Trek is that people will criticize the new show for doing something the older versions did too.
Stories from earlier seasons (Doctors 9/10/11/12) and even earlier made many social comments and critical observations, I have no problem with that- they did so within the context of the story but the story came first/
What I do have a problem with is that the Doctor 13 shows seem to be written with the message first and the story only exists as a platform for us to be lectured at from.
A lot of shows have a message of sorts- Trek, MASH, even the Anderson puppet shows had this, they were just not so heavy handed or relentless about it. This is not about hating the new for what the old did as well, it is about how the new chooses to do things
What I do have a problem with is that the Doctor 13 shows seem to be written with the message first and the story only exists as a platform for us to be lectured at from.
A lot of shows have a message of sorts- Trek, MASH, even the Anderson puppet shows had this, they were just not so heavy handed or relentless about it. This is not about hating the new for what the old did as well, it is about how the new chooses to do things
Whenever somebody who purports to be a fan of Doctor Who and yet goes "keep politics out of the story", I immediately and automatically dismiss the legitimacy of their purported love for the property.
Good grief. Star Trek and MASH, not heavyhanded? Wow. Much as I love Star Trek and loved MASH back in the day, they were as subtle as a two-by-four to the head when they had a message they wanted to deliver. Whenever I see someone try to make an argument like this, I find it hard not to think that they started by viscerally disliking the 13th Doctor and tried to come up with reasons why that might sound a little better than "ewww, girl cooties."
Thank you for assuming
From what little we saw of the Jo Martin "Fugitive Doctor," I hope she turns out to be Doctor 14. But that seems unlikely, since apparently she is meant to be a previously-unknown past Doctor and not a future Doctor. Doctor 13's "high energy" personality just reminds me too much of Doctor 11. I also wish Doctor 13 had stood up more for her companions when they were in 1955 Montgomery.
Kor
Kor
What can I say, I like my chosen ones with an American accent, and my adventurers who choose to do good to speak the queens English. Or something like that.
I would prefer if neither ran their fingers through their blonde hair whilst sending people to Nazi death camps.
I do not recognise anything of the character that was extant for fifty plus years below the very surface details applied to this iteration, and the landscape of fiction is all the poorer for it.