It's funny...I used that exact argument many times over the years (often when arguing with Allyn) because I was vehemently opposed to the idea of previous Doctors before The First Doctor...and because there was no direct follow up on that idea.
Until now.
Now there's a stronger sense that maybe there were Doctors before The First Doctor and an explanation why that does not effect The First Doctor's journey and all of the subsequent incarnations thereafter.
Yes, maybe it was poorly executed. But for the most part, I don't mind how it was revealed (aside from the weird parallel story about the copper but that can easily be ignored). Now the show has directly addressed the faces seen in The Brain of Morbius (if not directly referenced) and I've accept that it. Because it's more concrete and established, instead of almost entirely a fan theory.
And, again, as stated many times in this thread and other threads but seems to be ignored again and again, we still don't know the full story. We only have fragments of it and parts of it comes from The Master who is notoriously a liar. So we still have to wait and see where that story may go. That's the exciting part. I don't see why that rubs people the wrong way.
I sort of enjoyed the weird Heartbeat/Ashes to Ashes tribute act more than anything else in those episodes. I think how it was done is what in some ways makes the repercussions for the character unpalatable. Because it didn’t add anything, just changed things, which in turn took something away in a wider manner. The Morbius Doctors for me had never registered, and it felt daft even back when we were talking about the being The Other. (I missed Lungbarrow until it was on the website, and then I was terribly I’ll and had nightmares and fever dreams about it. Nearly died while Sathralope wandered around my living room. Not fun.) They never really made even the remotest bit of sense as anything other than aspects of Morbius himself. Truth be told that’s basically how they were presented.
I think as the police bit went on, I sort of liked the idea that there was some kind of corner of the matrix with Doctors in waiting, potential Doctors and might have been, that were being projected out as means of protecting against something, or because this was entirely a different universe the Doctor had fallen into. (This squared nicely with the Davison/Ainley vibes I got from the new master, before they cocked that up too.) I always strongly disliked the whole Tecteun backstory though, as it unfolded, because it ripped off elements of the whole ‘age of heroes/pythia’ for some of its parts, but mostly because as is common these days it was essentially using child abuse to act as a shortcut for evoking anger or sympathy. I strongly dislike that. I think even then, as it had been… well, restrained by the standards of our time, that I was very prepared to find out the Timeless Child had been The Master, and it would have been *interesting* and a kind of new spin on The Sound of Drums, and raised interesting questions going forward about morality and responsibility.
The time lords would still have to have been resurrected, and maybe the Doctor would have felt sympathy for the Master and re-awakened enough of Missy that it would have made for an interesting ‘The Master and The Doctor defend Gallifrey against the Cybermen while the Time Lords are reborn’ kind of finale, all the humans in the past having turned out to be part of Gallifreys formative years, changed by the gate like the Master/TC had been. That the young Doctor had been friends with the secretly damaged TC/Master, and that had been the one light in The Masters forgotten past.
Basically, even though it was a bit shit, I was still ready for it to not be completely awful, maybe even be good after all.
It was not fun as I realised where they were going, but I still held out a tiny bit of hope until they just threw any potential away and rewrote the whole fifty plus years shebang into intellectual turpitude, flatly contradicting damn near every lore story, and more besides, in one fell swoop.
I mean, it’s not too late, I suppose, but it has made for some utter tripe in the middle, and the CyberMasters or whatever the heck those DoilyMen are called was also just amazing piles of nope. That whole thing just crashes and burns *hard*. So disappointed.
Edit: I’ll be honest, the way it’s written at first makes so much more sense of it was the master, explaining his hanging on no matter what to life, that I am almost certain it was a last minute change *and a bad idea* to make it into the doctor.
