Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

[jaime]

How much time are we talking about from the Timeless Child being found and the 1st Doctor going on the run? The 6th Doctor said Gallifrey had been in power for millions of years, which even for a Time Lord is an extremely long time. Enough to work for Division, and do Doctor stuff too before turning into baby Hartnell?

Depending on dog dudes lifespan, those division jobs were during the earths twentieth century.

That time where two doctor’s minimum had a prolonged stay on Earth, not including Fugitive.
It’s a mess.
And yes, there are those who say ‘oh, there isn’t any continuity etc’ but there are people who think the Earth is flat too. Is there perfect continuity? No. But there’s a difference between the odd flub, not making an effort, and just rewriting the rules because reasons.

 

[jaime]

That gets into my issue with the TC plot, making the Doctor have a spectacularly more interesting and epic life that took place long ago that we’ll never see, so much so that their current adventures (defining “current” as Hartnell-on) pale in comparison.

It was almost purposefully designed to render everything unimportant. And then proceeded to… also not do anything of much importance.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I actually liked the idea of the Timeless Child. I liked the potential storytelling options it brought to the table. But I agree that the execution left much to be desired. Fourteen seemed much more affected by it than Thirteen ever did.

 

[Sketcher]

I actually liked the idea of the Timeless Child. I liked the potential storytelling options it brought to the table. But I agree that the execution left much to be desired. Fourteen seemed much more affected by it than Thirteen ever did.

The show is called Doctor Who, not Doctor We Know Nearly Every Important Event In This Character's Life By Now.

I have more faith in RTD utilizing the Timeless Child backstory than Chibnall. Even if most remains unexplained, it keeps the mystery of who the Doctor is going for the audience, and now, the Doctor himself.

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, too much importance is given to the concept of the Timeless Child. As far as the real world is concerned, Hartnell will always be the First Doctor, Trouhgton the Second and so on with Gatwa now as the Fifteenth. So what if there are thousands of other unaccounted Doctors out there in-universe? Given the nature of time travel and alternate timelines, that was already a given throughout all of time and space. Doctor Who is always about the current Doctor, someone we can cheer for but will never truly know, And just when you think you may know everything about the Doctor, a curtain is pulled back that makes that false. That was true even back during the classic run of the program.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of the Timeless Child idea, but it once again put the "Who" back in Doctor Who and it may ultimately make the numbering of Doctors less important in the future.

 

[jaime]

IMO, too much importance is given to the concept of the Timeless Child. As far as the real world is concerned, Hartnell will always be the First Doctor, Trouhgton the Second and so on with Gatwa now as the Fifteenth. So what if there are thousands of other unaccounted Doctors out there in-universe? Given the nature of time travel and alternate timelines, that was already a given throughout all of time and space. Doctor Who is always about the current Doctor, someone we can cheer for but will never truly know, And just when you think you may know everything about the Doctor, a curtain is pulled back that makes that false. That was true even back during the classic run of the program.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of the Timeless Child idea, but it once again put the "Who" back in Doctor Who and it may ultimately make the numbering of Doctors less important in the future.

For me it’s the removal of the idea that The Doctor was just another Time Lord, who grew bored of fitting in with a very staid society, and went out to see the universe — and then using his advantages as a member of basically the oldest most advanced race in the universe not as an excuse to do nothing, but to do good.

That’s basically gone now.
Someone could argue it replaces something of a colonial view with an oppressed character, but I don’t think that really works well either. (In fact it makes it quite distasteful in some ways) Before, in a fairly metaphorical sense, anyone could be the Doctor —because that just means doing good in the world, and rejecting excuses to not do good. Now, anyone can be the Doctor, in the sense that between the eons long age of the being and other things inherent in both the TC and this new ‘they all bigenerated’ thing is basically the case. The Brig? Could turn out to have been the Doctor. Give him a pocket watch. Benton? Also a Doctor. Pigbin Josh? Doctor.
At this point, the Doctor has no kind of start point, muddied motivations, and no plausible end point. More of a God than even the Timelord Victorious, and therefore surprisingly less interesting or useful as a character.
A function, not a character, robbed of all agency (by… putting them in The Agency. Oh Chibbers you sly dog.) and inherently weaker and less unique for a good few years now as a result.

 

[C.E. Evans]

For me it’s the removal of the idea that The Doctor was just another Time Lord, who grew bored of fitting in with a very staid society, and went out to see the universe — and then using his advantages as a member of basically the oldest most advanced race in the universe not as an excuse to do nothing, but to do good.

It's the same for me. Although the Doctor was a Time Lord, they were still originally nothing particular special among their people. Just an ordinary Time Lord who really made a name for themselves after leaving Gallifrey.

That’s basically gone now.

Well...yes and no. As I said earlier, I don't like the Timeless Child idea as it removes the everyperson quality the Doctor originally had, but I don't think it fundamentally changes the Doctor themselves. Regardless of the Doctor's true origins, Hartnell's Doctor still left Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS because he was bored and saw there were injustices out there that his fellow Time Lords could stop but didn't. That really hasn't changed. Sure, one could get lost in the minutiae of the Timeless Child and debate whether or not Hartnell's Doctor was the first of a restarted regeneration cycle, but the Doctor is still the Doctor, regardless of what face they wear or how many they've worn, IMO.

The Doctor's origins may now be a mystery even to themselves, but they still associate themselves with the Time Lords, flies about in a outmoded police box that isn't really at all a police box, fights monsters, and still gets periodically locked up in a dungeon somewhere. I think that's all that matters in the end. I feel what the Doctor does is far more important than what they are, but that's just me.

 

[Starkers]

Whilst personally I'd rather the Doctor was just another Time Lord who chose to rebel, it's worth remembering that the idea of the Doctor being more than just another Time Lord isn't new. Take the notion of The Other and the Cartmel Master plan in the 80s, and while we can fudge our way out of it The Brain of Morbius did seem to suggest pre-Hartnell incarnations back in the 70s.

Even going right back to the beginning these notes from CE Webber in 1963 would seem to fit quite nicely with the notion of the Timeless Child.

A frail old man lost in space and time. They give him this name because they don't know who he is. He seems not to remember where he has come from; he is suspicious and capable of sudden malignance; he seems to have some undefined enemy; he is searching for something as well as fleeing from something.

For me the biggest success/failing (take your pick) of the Timeless Child is that it doesn't really change anything. Outside of a few scraps of memory of the Fugitive Doctor that the Doctor now has, they don't recall 99.9% of their life pre Hartnell, so to all intents and purposes, for me at least, the Doctor is still the person they've always been, as the fifth Doctor says:

A man is the sum of his memories, you know. A Time Lord even more so.

 

[jaime]

It's the same for me. Although the Doctor was a Time Lord, they were still originally nothing particular special among their people. Just an ordinary Time Lord who really made a name for themselves after leaving Gallifrey.

Well...yes and no. As I said earlier, I don't like the Timeless Child idea as it removes the everyperson quality the Doctor originally had, but I don't think it fundamentally changes the Doctor themselves. Regardless of the Doctor's true origins, Hartnell's Doctor still left Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS because he was bored and saw there were injustices out there that his fellow Time Lords could stop but didn't. That really hasn't changed. Sure, one could get lost in the minutiae of the Timeless Child and debate whether or not Hartnell's Doctor was the first of a restarted regeneration cycle, but the Doctor is still the Doctor, regardless of what face they wear or how many they've worn, IMO.

The Doctor's origins may now be a mystery even to themselves, but they still associate themselves with the Time Lords, flies about in a outmoded police box that isn't really at all a police box, fights monsters, and still gets periodically locked up in a dungeon somewhere. I think that's all that matters in the end. I feel what the Doctor does is far more important than what they are, but that's just me.

That would hold true, if they hadn’t explicitly made the pre Hartnell Doctor *be* the Doctor, down to giving the ‘Fugitive’ a Police Box Tardis. The Doctor is no longer a name and a promise they gave themself, but is instead an extension of their government-military-stooge-black-ops days, and who they were before. They are no longer a rebel, renegade, or punk, but someone getting back at a system that oppressed and killed them over and over, and took from them.
In other words, the standard action hero backstory. Oh, with a hint of Messiah thrown in.
That’s what I mean by changing their motivation. The Doctor doing good is now all about trauma and vengeance, as far back as forever.

 

[jaime]

Whilst personally I'd rather the Doctor was just another Time Lord who chose to rebel, it's worth remembering that the idea of the Doctor being more than just another Time Lord isn't new. Take the notion of The Other and the Cartmel Master plan in the 80s, and while we can fudge our way out of it The Brain of Morbius did seem to suggest pre-Hartnell incarnations back in the 70s.

Even going right back to the beginning these notes from CE Webber in 1963 would seem to fit quite nicely with the notion of the Timeless Child.



For me the biggest success/failing (take your pick) of the Timeless Child is that it doesn't really change anything. Outside of a few scraps of memory of the Fugitive Doctor that the Doctor now has, they don't recall 99.9% of their life pre Hartnell, so to all intents and purposes, for me at least, the Doctor is still the person they've always been, as the fifth Doctor says:

Oh it isn’t new, but ‘The Other’ was a books thing (and only really one book) that never played out on screen. Much as I love the wilderness years and the books (and the EDAs in particular, shockingly — that give even more complex twists to the Doctors origins) they don’t really factor in — except to say that the show has been shamelessly cribbing from them for *years* though some do that better than others.
Bunny Webbers notes as well are apocryphal, as it relates to nebulous concepts like Susan being a telepath kung-fu fighter, and them being fugitives from a future Earth. It’s as relevant as suggesting a previous companion was a talking cabbage in some ways, or that the Doctor fought the devil on a pinball table. (Or that James Bond is also a Time Lord…)
Fun things, but not really supportive tissue for a handful of continuity trashing stories that ended up explicitly and overtly contradicting fairly important and *recent* stories on screen. When it really didn’t have to. (Season 6B would have been a much more fun origin for Chef!Doctor for example. Or even a parallel universe trying to overwrite this one. Would have been so much more *interesting* and wouldn’t have needed much in the way of fanwankery either)

And the Doctor is sort of still the person they’ve always been, except it’s been so undermined now. Largely, the Doctor now is David Tennant Eternal, and Fifteen neé Seventeen didn’t even get trousers let alone be allowed to be the de facto Doctor. (Again, not hard to have had something similar without messing it up — K’Anpo Rinpoche was doing the whole ‘next incarnation in the room’ thing in the seventies.) Chibnall and RTD (it seems) see themselves less as custodians of a thing with a long and storied history so much as new landlords who get to knock down things with abandon.

 

[C.E. Evans]

That would hold true, if they hadn’t explicitly made the pre Hartnell Doctor *be* the Doctor, down to giving the ‘Fugitive’ a Police Box Tardis. The Doctor is no longer a name and a promise they gave themself, but is instead an extension of their government-military-stooge-black-ops days, and who they were before. They are no longer a rebel, renegade, or punk, but someone getting back at a system that oppressed and killed them over and over, and took from them.

The only thing is that Hartnell's Doctor apparently doesn't remember any of that. He may have had a subconscious inclination to call himself "the Doctor," but everything else--including everything before his childhood--was seemingly wiped from his memory. He was born/reborn with a clean slate and no recollection of anything prior.

That’s what I mean by changing their motivation. The Doctor doing good is now all about trauma and vengeance, as far back as forever.

But that couldn't have been the motivation for Hartnell's Doctor onwards though. There was no memory of any trauma, and so no need for vengeance either.

 

[David cgc]

That's the Catch-22 of it. Either the Doctor was influenced by their pre-history, in which case the Timeless Child warps and blunts their characterization and backstory, or they weren't, in which case the Timeless Child is narratively pointless.

 

[Qonundrum]

I actually liked the idea of the Timeless Child. I liked the potential storytelling options it brought to the table. But I agree that the execution left much to be desired. Fourteen seemed much more affected by it than Thirteen ever did.

The execution was definitely off, but the idea is there . Execution and being overdone. A fair amount has grown on me and it could have been done more effectively. What with mind wipes and mind locks and advanced hypnosis that the Time Lords were already shown to do, that's a lesser stretch (and absolutely not a canonical break) compared to a mystery being from some other cookie cutter dimension ending up to Gallifrey, and the underlying new mystery ended up not being compelling.

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13:30 raises a good point, ditto starting at 12:28 that leads into it, and for 14:06 too. And 18:00. Actually, their reactions to Classic Who have been quite good...

 

[C.E. Evans]

That kind of goes back to what I said upthread that perhaps too much attention is given to the Timeless Child concept. Yes, it makes a mess of the Doctor's origins and makes it difficult to know just how many Doctors there were prior to Hartnell's, but in the end, the Doctor is still a mysterious madperson with a box having crazy adventures across time and space. That is what Doctor Who is all about, not how whether they've had 15 or 1500 incarnations.

 

[jaime]

The only thing is that Hartnell's Doctor apparently doesn't remember any of that. He may have had a subconscious inclination to call himself "the Doctor," but everything else--including everything before his childhood--was seemingly wiped from his memory. He was born/reborn with a clean slate and no recollection of anything prior.

But that couldn't have been the motivation for Hartnell's Doctor onwards though. There was no memory of any trauma, and so no need for vengeance either.

There was no conscious memory. The costume, Tardis, and characterisation of Chef!Doctor was *so* Doctorish (more so than Jodie the incumbent) and it is then essentially being written as ‘and this is why The Doctor is The Doctor’.
Not even going to go into the odd mockery that is Chef!Doctor being hunted down, whilst at no point is Hartnell/Troughton shown being chased with anywhere *near* as much effort. The Master gets a likely CIA chap letting the Doctor know — and is that a different Agency?
Guess I went into it a little.
For someone who hung his hat on Morbius, Chibnall seemed to barely have even a cursory knowledge of the rest of the show — this isn’t deep magic carved into a stone table, this is stuff kids younger than him would be reading about munching their Golden Wonder in the seventies and eighties.

Fundamentally, the TC seems to have been designed to re-write a traditionally White British Male character (whose characterisation is in some ways a critique of Post-Empire Britain, represented by Gallifrey) as originally being an oppressed, exploited, Black Female character. (None of those pre-doctors have a voice, literally) Which is… kind of distasteful.
It was also a radical shake up, for the sake of a radical shake up, which is something RTD *thinks* he is doing, but really he’s just undermined things. Like having the first Black British Actor to portray the role be sexualised and undermined in his first appearance. Like making sure his other favourite boy Tennant is the Once And Future King.
There’s a disconnect in how these writers are working from the material they are working on — and I feel it comes from perhaps understanding other forms of TV better. Soaps, for instance, where this shit is pulled consistently.

 

[jaime]

That kind of goes back to what I said upthread that perhaps too much attention is given to the Timeless Child concept. Yes, it makes a mess of the Doctor's origins and makes it difficult to know just how many Doctors there were prior to Hartnell's, but in the end, the Doctor is still a mysterious madperson with a box having crazy adventures across time and space. That is what Doctor Who is all about, not how whether they've had 15 or 1500 incarnations.

That’s the surface, kids TV description. You don’t have to be good, or moral, to have adventures. The moral underpinning the show grew from The Daleks onwards is lost, because it’s no longer ‘these things must be fought’ so much as ‘I must fight’.
Terrance Dicks had the Doctor right, and any time it moves away from that, it’s a failure. Ironically, Moffat all but put Dicks into Capaldi’s regeneration speech (Phnar! —Ed) almost as a reminder to Chibnall, because he possibly knew it was a danger. (As Dinosaurs on a Spaceship had already shown in fact.)

The Doctor is a person making a moral stand, because it is the right thing to do, and because they are often in a position to do so. Not to make up for a dark past in Gallifreyan Black Ops, not because they were wronged by the biggest authority in the universe bar actual god-things. Not because they are space Jesus.
TC made The Doctor into Jason Bourne, and it’s a bit pony.

 

[Marc]

Whilst personally I'd rather the Doctor was just another Time Lord who chose to rebel, it's worth remembering that the idea of the Doctor being more than just another Time Lord isn't new. Take the notion of The Other and the Cartmel Master plan in the 80s, and while we can fudge our way out of it The Brain of Morbius did seem to suggest pre-Hartnell incarnations back in the 70s.

though other than the 7th Doctor's line in Remembrance of the Daleks, we can pretend the Cartmel master plan never existed because there was never anything else on the screen to support it

 

[C.E. Evans]

That’s the surface, kids TV description. You don’t have to be good, or moral, to have adventures. The moral underpinning the show grew from The Daleks onwards is lost, because it’s no longer ‘these things must be fought’ so much as ‘I must fight’.

I don't think that's it, but if that's what you believe, that's your right. But I don't think that's what the show is really about.

The Doctor is a person making a moral stand, because it is the right thing to do, and because they are often in a position to do so.

That's what the show is about. Everything else is sci-fi window dressing that can be a bit messy at times.

 

[Starkers]

That's the Catch-22 of it. Either the Doctor was influenced by their pre-history, in which case the Timeless Child warps and blunts their characterization and backstory, or they weren't, in which case the Timeless Child is narratively pointless.

Personally I think it's the latter. For me the Doctor hasn't really changed. They know they were abused, know they did bad things (presumably) but they have no conscious memory of any of that, and frankly the Doctor's done enough bad things they do remember to be worrying about other stuff they don't.

I was pissed off about the Doctor/Tardis bit--it's lousy but I know why Chibnall did it, how do you show a character who's the Doctor without the narrative shorthand of Doctor/Tardis? To be honest the great thing about the flexibility of Dr Who is that even this can be explained.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff

So who's to say that a pre-Doctor Timeless Child, on some secret mission, didn't interact with a future Doctor? And as always seems to be the case when a past Doctor encounters a future Doctor they promptly forgot the meeting took place, except maybe the notion of the Doctor/police box lodged in their subconscious and maybe they chose the name Doctor not realising what was prompting them to choose it?

That's the trouble with Chibnall, this wouldn't even have occurred to him whereas that is exactly the kind of narrative trickery I could see Moffatt doing.

 

[Mr Awe]

Still against the TC idea. I liked following the adventures of a regular Time Lord who struck out on their own and started doing good after some adventures rather than watching an über, seemingly indestructible being who basically created the Time Lords.

Granted that's a preference on my part. And Chibnall actually did a fairly good job retconning TC in without contradicting too much.

And it's seemingly here to stay. I hope RTD doesn't play it up too much. How he's used it so far is fine because it was more in the background.

Although, is the line from the special that @Starkers quoted earlier already a retcon?

I came from another universe but
the Time Lords adopted me and
that’s my heritage now; the very
last Time Lord in existence.

It was more like the TC was found, experimented on, abused, escaped, hunted down, and mind wiped. Not really your typical adoption!

And, it's not so much that the Doctor took on Time Lord heritage. Rather they formed Time Lord society around this being they tormented.

That quote is very much a toned down version of what we saw earlier.