Doctor Who – The Timeless Children Review

The Twelfth Series of Doctor Who ends with one of the most controversial episodes in the modern era of the show.

The Cybermen set out to invade the last planet inhabited by humans. Yaz, Graham, and a group of surviving humans are trapped on a Cyberman spaceship, and The Doctor is forced to go with The Master through a portal to Gallifrey. As the Doctor’s companions fight for their lives, The Master reveals the horrifying truth the Time Lords have suppressed.

The controversy with this episode surrounds the reveal on who the Timeless Child is. It was The Doctor. The reveal was The Doctor was found on another planet as a child, taken to Gallifrey where it discovered she could regenerate. The Doctor was the source of regeneration and leading to the creation of the Time Lords. But due to The Doctor being the source of regeneration, the Time Lords had erased The Doctor’s mind and she finds out she had lives before The First Doctor. Chris Chibnall has taken nearly 60 years of continuity and disregarded it.

Doctor Who has had constantly re-written history and been able to reboot itself. The show can reinvent itself and that is one of the reasons why the show has been able to continue for as long as it has. Doctor Who has overcome controversial ideas as well, like the Eighth Doctor revealing his mother was human. We are living in an age where fanboy rage gets amplified by social media; just look at fandoms like Star Wars and Star Trek. But Chibnall does ignore two major tenets of Doctor Who. The first was this reveal turns The Doctor from a space gypsy and an outsider to Time Lord society – now she is the most important person from their world. I preferred how The Twelfth Doctor describes the character’s motivation, “because it’s right.”

The other dramatic change was to The Doctor’s regeneration cycle. In the lore of Doctor Who, Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times. In the Christmas Special “The Time of the Doctor” Clara had to plead with The Time Lords to help The Doctor and start a new regeneration cycle. The reveal in “The Timeless Children” undermines the drama and emotion in that episode and it undercuts other key moments like The First Doctor stealing a TARDIS so he can travel across space and time.

The episode even tries to mitigate this retcon by The Thirteenth Doctor speaking to The Ruth Doctor in The Matrix. The Ruth Doctor says to The Thirteenth Doctor that the reveal doesn’t change who she is, and it doesn’t matter. This conversation ends up being the worst of both worlds because Chibnall has changed the backstory and it won’t have an impact on The Doctor.

The hope is this information was told to The Doctor by The Master and in the future it could be revealed he was lying. Chibnall has bowed to public pressure before because fans were dissatisfied by Series 11 because of its lack of famous villains and having no two-parters. Series 12 brought back The Master and The Cybermen and had two two-partner episodes.

The resolution of the episode was a repeat of The Doctor’s dilemma during the Time War. She can stop The Master and The Cybermen by releasing the Death Particle, but it would mean killing all life on Gallifrey. The Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors were racked with guilt because they thought they killed their own race. The Thirteenth Doctor seems unperturbed about releasing the Death Particle on her planet – sure, she’s putting her life on the line but seems so out of character.

Chibnall set up more mysteries box for later seasons. The two biggest being what was the Doctor’s homeland and original species, the other is who is The Division? But this is all centred around controversial retcon.

Despite all this lore breaking, “The Timeless Children” was a still a more satisfying finale then Series 11’s. “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” was one of the most lacklustre finales in the modern era, “The Timeless Children” had some action. Ryan, Ethan, and Ko Sharmus had to fight off a troop of Cybermen as best they could and Yaz, Graham, and the other humans had to find a way to escape the Cybermen’s ship. There were stakes: failure meant death. There was some action in this part of the story.

One thing Chibnall is good at is cliffhangers. The cliffhanger in “The Timeless Children” was similar to the setup of Christmas Specials during the Davies/Moffatt eras. However, whilst the cliffhanger sets up some intrigue, experience has shown that it’s not worth getting excited by Chibnall’s work.

“The Timeless Children” was a textbook case on how to annoy a show’s fanbase and Chibnall has little goodwill left. Chibnall managed to change The Doctor’s backstory and make it meaningless. It seems like Chibnall hates the show he’s writing for.