(This article was originally released November 9th 2022 but has been reduced to fit a shorter format)
The Jodie Whittaker era written by Chris Chibnall has now concluded and therefore it’s unlikely that the Timeless Child storyline and everything revolving around the Division and the Doctor’s past lives will go anywhere on from this point. It’s an idea ever since the revelation in Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children I thought was very misjudged and a bad direction to take the show and the character. However, it’s a vision that was very personal and meant a lot to Chris Chibnall, it’s a story he was passionate about and wanted to tell. I’m going to talk about why I don’t think the arc succeeded, if there is anything to salvage from it and if there was a way to make a similar plot work.
What was appealing about the Doctor when the show first started is that they were a mystery, and we didn’t know who they were and where they came from. Over the years that mystery was unfortunately stripped away but there have been several attempts to revive this mystery. Whilst the likes of the Time War was very successful most of the time it has regressive results with the likes of the Doctor being Half Human and the Hybrid.
It feels more freeing when the show just abandons the backstory of the Doctor and their past on Gallifrey and focuses on the future and the adventures because that’s what the show is actually about. That’s what seemed to be Chris Chibnall’s approach when Series 11 came out and whatever the quality of the stories was like, it was just simple adventures with the Doctor helping out which worked much better. It was in Series 12 that the show started to delve into needless lore and backstory with the arc of the Timeless Child started to be teased. This made me very nervous at the time because I knew the danger of changing Doctor Who’s history and lore and the way this can cheapen the history of the show.
Fugitive of the Judoon halfway through caused a great amount of speculation with the revelation of the Fugitive Doctor played by Jo Martin. The real mystery was the fact that Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor did not recognise the Fugitive Doctor and Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor did not recognise her. It opened the door for all kinds of possibilities including the likes of her being a version of the Doctor before William Hartnell which her mind had been wiped of.
This is very interesting in concept, and I love Jo Martin as the Doctor. She steps into the role and totally owns and takes control of the part in seconds; Jo Martin immediately sells herself as the Doctor effortlessly. She has the charisma, assertive confidence, intellect, history, maturity, age, and gravitas of the character. Within 15 minutes she creates a Doctor you simply want to see more of. It’s why her use is just a huge disappointment. Fugitive of the Judoon feels like a two-part story where they forgot to make the second part. She is introduced in a similar way to John Hurt’s War Doctor, only there they act on the revelation the very next episode. Here you have a huge change to Doctor Who history and it’s just abandoned and you’re expected to forget about it. It feels like too much of a distracting element to leave lingering over the following episodes. Jo Martin makes cameos in the likes of the Timeless Children, Once, Upon Time and the Power of the Doctor but it’s not nearly enough considering the potential of her Doctor. I’m not saying Fugitive of the Judoon should have resolved everything, but it should have some story to tell, and it feels like its only purpose is in being a setup for the finale; it has no story of its own merit. The way this series is structured gets the audience to ask questions and start anticipating answers to those questions. That ended up being very misjudged, knowing none of it went anywhere.
In Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children, it was revealed by the Master that he had discovered in the Matrix that the Timeless Child is the Doctor and the backstory of the concept is explained. For me, it completely goes against what I find appealing about the character of the Doctor and what makes them so special and interesting. The Doctor is a traveller who left Gallifrey to explore and fight injustice. They are a rebel against Time Lord society, and they don’t fit into that oppressive structure and system. Even their sense of importance across the history of the show is largely down to those they have saved and the impact they have had on the universe. Their desire to do the right thing and their kindness is what defines them.
The Doctor is an outsider, and anybody could be them which is what makes them so easily identifiable. Now the Doctor is only important because they are the Timeless Child, they are essentially a god of Time Lord society. The entirety of the success and legacy of Gallifrian history lies upon them; all the history of the Time Lords and what they have become derives from, revolves around, and originates from the Doctor. I think this is a really terrible idea and concept. It feels like it trivialises everything the Doctor has been up to this point as it reshapes and remoulds them around the Timeless Child concept which is ridiculous. It may not perfectly fit it but it’s very similar to the Chosen One narrative which I have little stomach for.
The Chosen One story in fiction often feels like a very lazy and contrived way to give something a sense of importance as does the likes of a prophecy. There are cases of it working, like with the Lego Movie and Kung Fu Panda but most of the time it becomes incredibly tiresome and annoying. The likes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Matrix and almost everything revolving around a Chosen One narrative feels lazy and incredibly predictable. It feels like it’s trying to give the main character a sense of importance and a reason to be invested however I would rather they were invested just because of actual character motivations. Have a character invested in doing the right thing rather than just doing it because it’s their destiny. The Timeless Child feels like it’s trying to tie the Doctor into the centre of the universe to give them a personal story of stakes, but you don’t need to do that to get that result. It feels very similar to when Rey was revealed to be Palpatine’s granddaughter in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, it just feels contrived and utterly unnecessary. The truth is the Doctor does not need to be the centre of the universe to be important and it feels like this is Chris Chibnall amplifying fans’ love of the Doctor onto the universe itself too much. I can get behind the narrative of an abused child and that story but it comes with way too much other baggage.
I don’t like giving the Doctor a defined origin story. I feel like the events previously to An Unearthly Child should remain fairly vague and now we know directly how the Doctor fits into Time Lord society and their place in it which removes a spark of the character. I would rather know as little as possible of the Doctor’s life before their travels in the Tardis. I also feel like we’ve already done the story of not knowing where the Doctor came from. I feel like it cheapens the reveals of the War Games by the fact that Gallifrey is no longer the Doctor’s home planet. Yes, it is a mystery where the Doctor comes from again, but we’ve already told that story and that mystery, the show moved on and it feels regressive to go and do that story again. The show kind of ignored that element but even the act of making that decision feels regressive. It also misses the point of the mystery. The mystery of the Doctor wasn’t just where they came from, it was why they ran away, why they were cut off from their people and where their family were? What happened? The mystery is also far less interesting given the Doctor doesn't know the answers. The compelling mystery was that the Doctor had the answers but was keeping them secret.
Even considering all those issues I still think this is handled badly in the Series 12 finale. For one thing, you never have the Doctor discover this or take any proactive action to find out any of this for herself, it’s just the Master doing a PowerPoint presentation for half the episode. This takes over the story which previously had little to do with the Timeless Child, which is very structurally weird. You also have the strange story of Brendan in Ireland with Ireland supposedly being a cover for Gallifrey. It’s very vague, takes up long amounts of the story and you never discover the specific links to the Timeless Child and the Division. The Master is meant to have beamed this into the Doctor’s mind but it just kind of interrupts the action and takes up way too much time for something bafflingly you never find out anything more about. It’s a strange decision.
You also have the way this works in terms of character arcs and themes which is nothing but a mess. This isn’t going to change anything about the Doctor’s view of the Time Lord’s because she is already a reject from their society. Also, we are told by the end of the Timeless Children that this isn’t going to change or define the Doctor. The Thirteenth Doctor is told by the Fugitive Doctor that she isn’t limited by who she was before which is the central message of the story. It makes the change feel utterly redundant and pointless mainly because it changes very little of the Doctor for who she is now and changes very little of the current narrative.
This has negative effects on the likes of Revolution of the Daleks which sees the Doctor go through the same character arc off-screen. The Doctor claims she spent years in prison wondering who she was, but she in the end concludes that she’s the Doctor and her role is to stop the Daleks. It makes her arc in the previous story redundant and we never see her go through the arc in question as we never see her questioning herself and who she is in prison which makes this character arc feel very weak. The Thirteenth Doctor being caught by the Judoon and being left in prison for decades should ideally also lead to an arc of discovering through the Judoon some of her crimes as the Fugitive Doctor, but it just ends up as an abandoned plot thread once again which is just terrible.
When Flux came about, it was going to continue some of the Timeless Child threads in some way or another. The most compelling new additions though were the characters of Swarm and Azure who were prisoners of Division. The idea behind these villains is really interesting with some fantastic potential regardless of the concept they originate from. The sense of unknown and the depth of their relationship with the Doctor creates mysterious implications that are very interesting, and I wish Flux had focused more on it. They get a lot of focus from the start but as time goes on, they start to fade into the background and become irrelevant and meaningless. They have great potential and are performed well but Chris Chibnall does nothing with them as characters. Once, Upon Time was the chance to flesh out their relationship and history with the Doctor and have a full episode set during the Siege of Atropos with the Fugitive Doctor taking the main lead and explore how they were taken down. In the end, they were totally and completely wasted and just shoved aside in favour of all the other ingredients of Flux like the Sontarans and the Grand Serpent and in my view, those weren’t as important.
Another thing that was wasted during Flux was the concept of the Division. The idea of a secret and shady organisation on Gallifrey going against the non-interference policy is very interesting in recruiting all kinds of agents from all races for their devices, including Weeping Angels. The idea of this organisation of huge scale which has helped guide and shape the universe in secret, without the knowledge of everyone is very interesting. For one though with it being a similar concept I think it should have been tied into the Celestial Intervention Agency and the other is that Flux makes no time to use Division and mine it to its full advantage as a concept.
Division is widespread across the universe with a history dating back to the origin of the Time Lords. To do them justice in a series I feel like you needed to introduce them at the very latest in Episode 2 of Flux and then spend some time fleshing them out and exploring them. They should have shown the first-hand impact of Division and how they have affected planets, species, and civilisations. Unfortunately, they are just shoved into a single episode of Flux which is just exposition and then they are quickly shoved aside in a rather bad way.
The biggest problem is that I haven’t been given a reason to care about the Doctor and her past lives. The prospect of these past lives also only really functions as backstory, lore, and continuity. Within the Doctor Who universe it expands the Doctor Who world but from a narrative and story perspective it gives me nothing; there is no reason for me to want to find out about these past lives other than it’s another life the Doctor doesn't remember. This becomes a particular problem when the Thirteenth Doctor first meets Tecteun, played by Barbara Flynn. She does the best job she can, but her role is simply exposition and there is no character there to play. There is no relationship there to play because these characters have no connection to each other as the Doctor doesn't even remember Tecteun. I can’t figure out what the Doctor’s motivation is in finding out about her past memories. Her reaction to Tecteun and the discussion on the life she could have had makes no sense when you consider the context.
It’s in Survivors of the Flux where I did begin to realise that this version of Doctor Who simply wasn’t about fun adventures anymore and what I like about Doctor Who. It’s about the family relationship between the Doctor and her adopted mother, it’s about Gallifrey lore and backstory all of which I find tiresome and simply don’t care about. The Timeless Child story simply works as a lore addition which is why I find it dull and tedious, and it rarely furthers character or story.
Believe it or not, there are aspects of the Timeless Child concept that I do like, and think could have had potential if things had been reworked a certain way. The idea of the Timeless Child itself, of an abused child, taken advantage of and experimented upon which allowed the Time Lords to gain their power and build their legacy is very compelling, I just don’t like that it’s the Doctor. It becomes much more interesting if it isn’t the Doctor. With the power of regeneration being all due to an abused child she could have grappled with the dilemma if she is going to choose to regenerate the next time she dies. Does any Time Lord deserve this power considering where it came from and is she complicit in the child’s suffering? You have some fundamental moral struggles for the Doctor and impactful decisions for her to make that infringe upon her life. A confrontation with the Doctor and the child would be interesting. The Timeless Child story has echoes of British Imperialism and the way others suffered all for the growth and power of the British Empire. You could push those themes to the forefront.
Another observation I have is whilst the idea of the Doctor being the Timeless Child is bad, the idea of Pre Hartnell-Doctors I do think has potential. I just don’t think that part was executed well, or much was done with it. Let’s say that the version of the Doctor before they had their memories removed and before they were reverted to a child was an evil perpetrator and part of Division as this villainous and cruel organisation. You could have a story with the Doctor questioning the nature of who they were whilst they were part of Division and must come to terms with the murderous, cruel, oppressive, and violent acts they committed to push the British Imperialism allegory. You could have the Doctor meet the planets, civilisations, and people she harmed, meet her past victims. It would be thought-provoking to see the Doctor question if she is the person she thought she was. If she is truly responsible for these dark deeds or if it’s another life, she has no connection to, does she need to hold the guilt of what she did during that time? That’s a storyline with a lot of potential and moral gravity.
The sad truth is we didn’t get any answers out of the Timeless Child storyline. The Doctor got hold of the memories hidden inside a fob watch and she hid them deep in the Tardis and refused to look at them. I get why they did this but from a story structure perspective, this is simply a terrible conclusion. This is told in the form of a mystery box, it gives you teases, and revelations and strings you along with promising answers to the many questions you have. To resolve that with simply no answers is deeply unsatisfying.
I know Chris Chibnall intended to simply make the Doctor mysterious again and broaden the Doctor Who universe where you can have as many Doctors as you want. However, if he was going to do that then Chris Chibnall shouldn’t have structured the whole thing as a mystery box. Chris Chibnall massively shook up the Doctor Who universe and did nothing with it which makes it feel to me just totally pointless. This was a massive change to the series which was in my eyes a terrible idea which lost the appeal of the character, made the audience expect answers and gave them nothing. Even the ending of Flux leaves the audience expecting more from the storyline, but the Power of the Doctor gives you nothing and leaves the plot thread hanging there forever. It’s guaranteed that future showrunners and writers will have their own ways of trying to make the Doctor mysterious again. I just hope they look forward and find new ways of doing it with new concepts and creations rather than looking into the backstory of who the Doctor is and trying to rewrite and change the character’s origin and fundamentals which feels unnecessary and a terrible idea.
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