If Regeneration is a result of Tecteun genetically engineering the elite of Gallifrey (and their descendants) and not a fluke of exposure to the Untempered Schism (either for them, or for the Child), how was River Song able to regenerate? If Vastra's theory was wrong, and it was entirely the efforts of the doctors' on Demons Run who gave her regeneration medically, why don't they do it to everyone, and why did they pick Amy and Rory's child to be their assassin if she wouldn't have special time powers from being exposed to the time vortex, and anyone could just be given them? In fact, what is the Untempered Schism, if not The Thing That Made Gallifrey Gallifrey? If it was just something they did after they created time travel the normal way, why aren't there such things all over the universe as other species mastered time travel?
I don't think I see this one lasting. In my opinion, it's dramaturgical suicide to all but declare that the Doctor's past is, in fact, more infinite, open-ended, and interesting than their future, since the Doctor's future is the thing we're all tuning in to watch. And the fact that the show went out of its way to hedge on this suggests they fear it's a bad idea, too; the Master is our only source for this information, Ruth can be retconned away any number of ways (far future incarnation, 2nd-and-a-half Doctor from deep in the weeds of Season 6b, alternate universe Doctor), and even Gallifrey can be bought back because the Master thoughtfully "killed" everyone in such a way that their bodies are still capable of regenerating ("This is Gallifrey! 'Death' is Time Lord for 'man flu!'"), and you could easily explain their temporary deaths protected them from the Evil Particle. Rassilon comes back in his little Scooty Puff 5000 the Doctor sent him away in, revives the planet, bing, bang, boom.
This season was a bit of an improvement on the last one, but still has the same fundamental flaws (ineffectual Doctor and companions, nihilistic politics, self-conscious avoidance of recent seasons in favor of deep lore and spur-of-the-moment backstory, superficial "wokeness" that isn't really as politically relevant as it thinks (the first black Doctor is a cameo, and the first southeast asian Doctors are extras. Things that could've been milestones were burned off as trivia questions)), but dressed it up by being the worst kind of fannish, an escalating series of "wouldn't it be cool if..." dares with hardly any thematic or character underpinning, and a literal fan-film cameo where a character drops by to deliver portentous exposition after hamming around doing a shallow, half-remembered "greatest-hits" version of himself) without intersecting with the main plot, or even the main sets, like filming an insert scene of Captain Taggert in Tim Allen's garage. It's not enough to drive me away from the show entirely but, boy, is it a letdown after RTD and Moffat.
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