DOCTOR WHO-THE TIMELESS CHILDREN

 

DOCTOR WHO-THE TIMELESS CHILDREN

 

DOCTOR: It's been a long, hard road, but at last the future of Gallifrey is assured. What, what are you looking at?

 

Hang on. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

 

This is my last episode of DOCTOR WHO until Ncuti’s first season starts in May. I’ve watched and reviewed every episode of the classic and modern series as well as four episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures, which I may pick up soon to watch and review all of, if I can stand it (I like it but it’s very routine).

 

Is Yed making sense? Once Bescot is shot down dead (horribly and giving the others time to get away), she can’t be turned into a Cyberman so why would he go back for her? To get her body? The body can’t be made into a Cyberman if she’s dead.

 

Why weren’t all the Cybermen already activated? How are there some that our group on the ship are able to clear out the bodies from and use the metal shell to escape detection? Won’t Cybermen notice when Ravio disconnects the shells from the network?

I used to love DW because the Doctor never carried a weapon but now she/he does: the sonic’s been used as a weapon in the new series often enough but something else: looking at the list anther fan made of the timeline of “pacifism in DW”, a sarcastic title, I realized the show and the character are NOT about pacifism. In fact, it’s about pacifism NOT working, as long as way back to AN UNEARTHLY CHILD’s cavemen story AND especially the entire second story THE DALEKS.

 

At this point, the Master’s just annoying. He’s just doing things for spite and for insanity because he’s the Master. He’s silly and annoying. Slightly creepy and scary but mostly unmotivated. Doing things because he’s just sOOOO bad. Ewl.

 

The scene where Graham tells Yaz what he thinks of her is so very, very well acted, well written and well done, it might just make this episode a rating higher. Their dialog is good, once again.

 

The Matrix was filled with things that…might or might not have been true in DEADLY ASSASSIN and even that horrid TRIAL OF A TIME LORD, why would the writer think that the Doctor would believe anything inside the Matrix is totally the truth?

 

Where did Yed and Graham hide the …ewl, gross, remains of the things inside the Cyber bodies the foursome are now hiding in?

 

I have the same problem with this that I did with the TRIAL scenes. In DEADLY ASSASSIN, one was laying down and unconscious as one’s soul or spirit or body energy, whatever you call it, went into the Matrix. This is more like what the Master is doing here but he’s fully awake and being horrid to himself, to Ashad, who’s awful, too and he shrinks Ashad. The Doctor is still in the circle of energy which makes more sense. Even so, at least she’s unconscious but the Master is not. He’s walking around, getting the Cyberium to enter him and making bad jokes.

 

 

 

Okay, so here’s where it gets boring again. The Master does go on and on. Once, the others are safe, this gets slowed down an awful lot.

 

So, each child that was the Doctor lived a life, almost died and regenerated as the Shobogan mother Tecteun explored the child she saved by experimenting on her/him? We don’t get the real interaction here as we’re being told this, boringly by the Master as the Doctor sees the images. From the Doctor, this woman uses it on her self and regenerates. This is the second person to do so on Gallifrey. She found the child at a gateway to another dimension or another universe and took her back to Gallifrey. She had been abandoned. By who?

 

 

Then, she creates the Time Lords from the Shobogans (but then who are the Shobogans spoken of in the DEADLY ASSASSIN?). From there, the Doctor works for the Division. The Brendan stuff is a Matrix construct. Not sure what use that was for? The Doc’s mind is erased.

 

More later. I’m beat.

 

Imma not gonna lie. Up to this point it wasn’t terrible.

 

Jodie really tries here with a script that just gives her nothing to do but be trapped and looked horrified. She succeeds really while the Master played ably and insanely and even entertaining way by Sacha Dhawan goes on and on about his new Cyber race he created from the Doc’s DNA….basically Time Lord Cybermen who can regenerate. Uhm, if he had these, why didn’t he use them to eliminate the humans? What is his game plan? Control the universe or just destroy it? Do we care at this point?

 

Frankly, there’s nothing terrible here but boy, I’m sick the big bad threats at the end of the season.

 

I think the Doctor’s blast to the Matrix didn’t last long enough. I would have liked the clips to have been slower and would have liked a lot more of them.

 

If all the Doctors were clever, why did he work for the Division?

 

The Ruth Doctor appears to give our Doctor advice to stop being negative (basically) and get on with getting out  of the Matrix and stop the Master, “Course, you can.”

 

The Ruth Fugitive Doctor also said, “The one thing he said that you didn’t understand.” Who did she mean? She just skirts over that issue.

 

Here is the list of clips used: (and more info)

The Master wishes he had thought of making a pun before using the Tissue Compression Eliminator on Ashad. (AUDIO: The Two Masters)

The Doctor's memories used to overwhelm the Matrix are of:

The Spy Master from Spyfall.

Ashad and his Cyberguards from Ascension of the Cybermen.

Herself absorbing the Cyberium and Team TARDIS (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati)

Rakaya (TV: Can You Hear Me?)

Gat, the "Fugitive" Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness from Fugitive of the Judoon.

Herself running from Praxeus infected birds (TV: Praxeus)

Nikola Tesla and the Queen of the Skithra (TV: Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror)

A Dreg from Orphan 55.

The TARDIS beside the ruined Capitol (TV: Spyfall)

A Kasaavin (TV: Spyfall)

The reconnaissance scout Dalek from Resolution.

The Ux (TV: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos)

The Solitract as Grace O'Brien and Team TARDIS in the fjord (TV: It Takes You Away)

A Morax and herself chained down in The Witchfinders.

Umbreen and Prem's wedding (TV: Demons of the Punjab)

A Kerb!am Man from Kerblam!.

The Pting (TV: The Tsuranga Conundrum)

Giant spider's webs (TV: Arachnids in the UK)

Rosa Parks who she met in Rosa.

The TARDIS and remnants on Desolation (TV: The Ghost Monument)

Tzim-Sha from The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

Herself choosing an outfit from The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

Davros from The Stolen Earth.

Rose Tyler (TV: The Stolen Earth)

The Sycorax leader (TV: The Christmas Invasion)

Donna Noble (TV: Partners in Crime)

A Slitheen (TV: World War Three)

Amy Pond (TV: The Impossible Astronaut)

The Abzorbaloff (TV: Love & Monsters)

River Song (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)

An animated scarecrow (TV: The Family of Blood)

Wilfred Mott (TV: Journey's End)

Clara Oswald (TV: Dark Water)

General Staal of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet (TV: The Poison Sky)

Bill Potts (TV: The Pilot)

An Ood (TV: The Impossible Planet)

Martha Jones (TV: Smith and Jones)

Mickey Smith (TV: Boom Town)

The Empress of the Racnoss (TV: The Runaway Bride)

Rory Williams (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)

Jatt of the Sisters of Plenitude (TV: New Earth)

Sarah Jane Smith (TV: The Stolen Earth)

The Twelfth Doctor from Listen, The Magician's Apprentice and Hell Bent,

The Eleventh Doctor from The Almost People, The Bells of Saint John, and The Rings of Akhaten.

The Tenth Doctor (TV: Last of the Time Lords, The End of Time, The Runaway Bride)

The Ninth Doctor (TV: Rose, The Parting of the Ways)

The War Doctor (TV: The Name of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor)

The Eighth Doctor (TV: The Night of the Doctor, Doctor Who)

The Seventh Doctor (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Time and the Rani, The Curse of Fenric)

The Sixth Doctor (TV: The Ultimate Foe, Vengeance on Varos)

The Fifth Doctor (TV: Time-Flight, Arc of Infinity, The Caves of Androzani)

The Fourth Doctor (TV: The Brain of Morbius, Pyramids of Mars)

The Third Doctor (TV: Planet of the Spiders, Carnival of Monsters)

The Second Doctor (TV: The Moonbase, The War Games, The Tomb of the Cybermen)

The First Doctor (TV: The War Machines, An Unearthly Child, The Name of the Doctor)

A Sea Devil (TV: The Sea Devils)

The Saxon Master (TV: World Enough and Time)

A Zygon (TV: Terror of the Zygons)

Sil (TV: Vengeance on Varos)

Missy (TV: Empress of Mars)

Sharaz Jek (TV: The Caves of Androzani)

An Auton (TV: Terror of the Autons)

The War Master (TV: Utopia)

A Voc (TV: The Robots of Death)

The Bruce Master (TV: Doctor Who)

Sutekh (TV: Pyramids of Mars)

An Ogron (TV: Day of the Daleks)

The Tremas Master (TV: Logopolis)

The Ancient One (TV: The Curse of Fenric)

The Decayed Master (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

The Master (TV: The Sea Devils)

Scaroth (TV: City of Death)

Various incarnations of the Timeless Child (TV: Spyfall, Can You Hear Me?)

Seven of the faces seen during the mindbending battle against Morbius in The Brain of Morbius.

Brendan from Ascension of the Cybermen.

The "Fugitive" Doctor (TV: Fugitive of the Judoon)

The Doctor seeks to uphold the rule "No humans on Gallifrey", echoing her reason for leaving behind Sarah Jane Smith in The Hand of Fear.

The Doctor mentions Percy Shelley when she takes responsibility for the Cyberium. (TV: The Haunting of Villa Diodati)

The Doctor returns her companions home in a TARDIS while she prepares to sacrifice herself to destroy some of her oldest enemies. Similarly, the Ninth Doctor sent Rose Tyler home in the TARDIS as he confronted the Dalek Emperor and his human-converted Daleks in The Parting of the Ways.

The Doctor is prepared to sacrifice herself using a weapon that cannot be remotely detonated, only for Ko Sharmus to take her place. Previously, the Tenth Doctor planned to sacrifice himself to destroy the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet with an atmospheric converter, but Luke Rattigan used a Sontaran teleporter to switch places with him in The Poison Sky. Before this in The Unquiet Dead, the Ninth Doctor offered to light the match which would stop the Gelth for the sake of Gwyneth, who silently refused Earlier still, Orcini, despite the Sixth Doctor's protests, chose to hand detonate a bomb to destroy Davros' Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks.

Ko Sharmus was part of the resistance unit who sent the Cyberium through time and space, as prevously mentioned in Fugitive of the Judoon, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati.

The Doctor once again steals a TARDIS in order to run away from Gallifrey much like The Beginning, The Name of the Doctor, and Hell Bent.

The Doctor responds to being ambushed by the Judoon aboard her TARDIS by repeatedly exclaiming "what?", as the Tenth Doctor had previously done when caught by surprise aboard his TARDIS, as seen in The Runaway Bride, Time Crash, and Voyage of the Damned.

The Doctor talks to herself at length. (PROSE: Things She Thought While Falling, TV: Orphan 55, Can You Hear Me?)

The Cybermen use transmats. as they had in Revenge of the Cybermen, The Pandorica Opens, and Nightmare in Silver.

The Master is once again instrumental in creating a new race of Cybermen, much like Dark Water/ Death in Heaven and World Enough and Time.

The Cybermen again show their ability to convert the bodies of the deceased, as previously demonstrated in Dark Water/ Death in Heaven.

The Eighth Doctor previously uncovered another secret hushed up by the Founders of Gallifrey: the role Rassilon had played in the true origin of the Ravenous, as discovered in Day of the Master. The Doctor hypothesised that Rassilon had invented the myth of their creation precisely to hide his involvement in the events on Kolstan.

The Doctor states that she has fought the Matrix before and denied its reality. The Fourth Doctor previously entered the Matrix to locate the Master after the Time Lord President was assassinated, and was forced to fight against the Matrix, which was manipulated by Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin. The Sixth Doctor had also entered the Matrix after following the Valeyard and had to deal with the Matrix and its reality in The Ultimate Foe.

The Master has twice before secretly infiltrated and manipulated the Matrix for his ends in both The Deadly Assassin and The Ultimate Foe.

Lady Peinforte once threatened to reveal the Doctor's secrets concerning his role on Gallifrey during the Dark Time in Silver Nemesis. She believed this secret would prove the Seventh Doctor's downfall.

 

 

Oh and the theme music is used within the episode, as is, maybe for the first time. It’s been used before but with various changes and differences and not for very long. This is no long enough either.

 

Here are parts you have missed:

 

The Doctor wakes up in the Citadel as the Master explains that, although he ruined the planet, he kept the Time Lords' bodies just in case. He reveals that he has decided to create a race of Cybermen made out of Time Lords, with the ability to regenerate, with which he will take over the universe. Several of these Cybermen, dubbed CyberMasters, enter the room. To test his experiment, the Master orders one to shoot another, and the Cyberman falls to the ground, seemingly dead. However, after a few seconds, it regenerates and returns to its rank. With the Doctor still paralysed, the Master leads off his new army.

 

Back by the Boundary, the Doctor's friends gather to visit Gallifrey.

 

Okay so the Master left the Death Particle in place in the shrunken Ashad…who is the one Ruth Doctor meant when she told the Doctor to remember what he said. WHY didn’t she just tell her that the shrunken Cyberman still has the Death Particle in him and that could help her stop the CyberMasters? Why be cryptic? Gosh.

 

Why would the Master not know that? WHY would he leave the Cyber body of Ashad on the floor with the Death Particle there? Didn’t he try to activate the Death Particle already?

 

Is the Master stupid? He thought the Death Particle would activate when he shrunk Ashad but it didn’t. He LEFT it on the floor!? We DO get an answer to this. He did on purpose, left it for the Doctor to see if she would take him out. It doesn’t explain why he, who already expressed that he wanted it to kill him and everything, didn’t try himself. Maybe because he’s insane and doesn’t really want to die but just thinks he does but is too cowardly to do it himself. Well, good on him, then.

 

I used to hate this but fans think they know everything and having a set of Doctors or even unlimited amounts of Doctors before the First Doctor is a good premise but I would have done it more in line with it just being just a possibility rather than saying this IS how it is, like it or not. Perhaps that’s not committing. But I think answering those things takes away the WHO from DOCTOR WHO.

 

On the other hand, fans should not be so posh or conceited in thinking they know everything about the Doctor or the show. The one thing they forget is that it IS called Doctor WHO and there will always be something about the Doctor that they do not know. I’ve softened to this a lot more myself and even like this episode.

 

Sacha is really good here. His Master has grown on me. I still think he’s written all wrong but less wrong than the Jon Simms Master. Lore would have it that he DOES come after Missy, too.

 

First of all, you CAN’T make Cybermen from dead bodies. Time Lords might die and then regenerate or maybe they have to be close to death or maybe depending on the actual Time Lord it could be one or the other or both? In any case, if the Time Lords died in the destruction of Gallifrey, why didn’t they regenerate and stop this? Or run from it or flee? How did the Master incapacitate all of them long enough to keep them “on ice”? And then control their bodies inside Cybermen? Where did he get the ability to make metal bodies anyway?

 

WTF? Now, the Doctor can’t destroy the Master and the Cybermen? This is just off putting now. First, Ruth tells her she can stop the Master and find a way, using Ashad’s words without telling her that and so the Doctor resolves to do it even though she doesn’t want to. THEN, she doesn’t?

 

Then, as if the old man is right in the Doctor’s eyes, she LETS HIM sacrifice himself. In the past, others have had to stop the Doctor from sacrificing himself (ARK IN SPACE). The Doc would never do what the 13^th Doctor does here: let go of the bomb and let the old man do it. He sent the Cyberium back or was part of the team that did. It’s HIS fault and she agrees!

 

They should have made him just grab the bomb from the Doctor, not let her allow him to take it.

 

The ending is actually nice: the fam gets home, the trio survivors get a TARDIS home and live in 21^st century Earth. They’re all likable: Ethan, Ravio and even Yed.

 

The expected cliffhanger ending with the Doctor in jail is okay, too. HOW did the Judoon get on board the TARDIS? No. Just, no.

 

Also: HOW did the Master destroy all the Time Lords?

 

And: did Gallifrey blow up totally at the end of this? It looks like that but the screen goes to white out.

 

The Doctor leaves a TARDIS on the refugee planet?

 

I could have done without the “What?” routine from this Doctor. David did it and that was enough, trust me on that.

 

Was that SHADA at the end?

 

No.

 

Myths about the next “story”:

Davros would return. This was proven false.

The prison the Doctor was in would be revealed to be Shada. This is unknown as this was neither confirmed nor denied in the episode.

 

 

Okay: DOCTOR: It's been a long, hard road, but at last the future of Gallifrey is assured. What, what are you looking at?

 

 

 

 

Story notes

This episode used the same kind of "cold opening" used in Spyfall: Part Two, recapping the preceding episode.

This episode had the most extensive use of archive footage in any Doctor Who media as of 2021.

Tecteun and the Timeless Child's regenerations mark the first time female to male regeneration has been seen onscreen. However, the first depiction of a female regenerating into a male in any media was in AUDIO: Enemy Lines. In the case of the Timeless Child, multiple regenerations were shown, both female to male and male to female.

The episode's cliffhanger ending calls back to the cliffhanger endings of both Doomsday and Last of the Time Lords, in which the dumbfounded Doctor repeatedly utters the word "what?" in response to the events suddenly and rapidly unfolding around them.

This episode is the first time in the show's history, discounting full red and full blue from various previous stories, that clips from the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton eras have been shown in colour.

This marks the second time the theme music has been used during a TV story, playing across the Doctor's Matrix mind-blow-up sequence. The first time was in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

This story strongly implies that the faces in the mind battle with Morbius in The Brain of Morbius are incarnations of the Doctor, something long debated amongst fans, as these eight faces had not appeared since, with following stories seemingly debunking them.

The Timeless Children made such a huge impact on the fandom as a whole that the episode made it into the satirical website News Thump.[7]

The episode used an anagram for actor Sacha Dhawan on the Doctor Who website; "Barack Stemis" which, if re-arranged, becomes "Master is Back", and playing a false character called "Fakout".[8][9] This tactic, discounting in-universe examples from 2007's Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, has not been seen on television since The King's Demons in 1983. Back then it was used in the credits of the episode. Another more recent example is Mark Gatiss being credited, in the old tradition, as Sam Kisgart, for his role as a parallel universe Master, though this was more of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the classic trope than a genuine attempt at audience subterfuge.

This story is the third consecutive finale for an even-numbered season to feature both the Master and the Cybermen, following Death in Heaven and The Doctor Falls.

In the scene corresponding to the point where Tecteun's male incarnation stands alongside two other Time Lords in full high-collared regalia, the episode's script release mentions that "we can assume [the other two] might be Rassilon and Omega".[10] 2nd assistant director Mark Corden cast himself as the Omega stand-in and hired a Don Warrington lookalike to play Rassilon, in homage to Warrington's portrayal of Rassilon in Big Finish.[5]

Similar to Hell Bent, this story takes place primarily on Gallifrey and is the second season finale for its respective Doctor.

In a roundabout way, this episode also provides a televised fulfilment of the "Cartmel Masterplan".

The premise of this episode also fulfils several elements of the Hybrid prophecy from Season 9.

A hybrid creature (the Spy Master had merged with the Cyberium), would stand over the ruins of Gallifrey and unravel the Web of Time (the Master had hacked into the Matrix), breaking a billion billion hearts to heal its own (the Master had also slaughtered the Time Lords after he became distraught at learning the truth of their origins).

This story is the third to feature multiple on-screen regenerations, following Planet of the Spiders and Twice Upon a Time, and the first such story in which the then-current incarnation of the Doctor is not among those shown to regenerate.

Early versions of this story referred to Ashad as the 'Cyberzealot', like the previous two episodes, and swapped the roles of Ryan and Yaz. Additionally, the death particle would have been created by the Cyberzealot as a mercy to kill humanity in the event of losing to the Cybermen. (DWM 570 supplement)

On production documents, the Fugitive Doctor was named as Ruth, the Master as O, and Gallifrey as the village of Gilfach Goch in south Wales to disguise their real identities. (DWM 570 supplement)

 

 

And with all of this we come to the end of my DOCTOR WHO re-watch though season 11 was watched once because it aired while I was in the middle of this re-watch so that was just watched. That was the best season of New Who along with seasons one through four and also season ten.

 

Was this as bad as I remembered?  The answer is NO. It was not.

 

Did this have some flaws? Yup.

 

What rating would I give it? I don’t know, honestly.

 

Part of me wants to give it a 5/10 and another part wants to give it an 8/10. I guess in the long run it’s really a 6/10 or maybe a 7/10.

 

It’s that off edge and that off putting while also being quite daring and bold, too.

 

Let’s hope Gallifrey stays lost until some writer can do a great big time mess adventure on it (see fan fiction) exploring its past in a time melding that even the Time Lords do not realize is happening and a fast paced action adventure with all sort of characters across the rich history of the show (again, in fan fic they’ve done this). The new series never gets Gallifrey right. They either make it stuffy and boring or they make it a huge epic which at the center is some boring notion that Gallifrey either has to be lost or destroyed or cut off from the Doctor. As if he ever cared about Gallifrey that much, and certainly not more than any other planet he/she saved.

 

In any case, I’m done. Until Ncuti’s first season, that’s all the DW I can stand for now. I have to say as much as I liked the new Who stuff and RTD’s take on things his first round, the family relationships, the true feeling reactions of the Doctor and the companions, I have to say that I enjoyed the world building and alien creations of the Classic Series more. The New Series took the old series and gave it a sparkle and gave it truth in human emotions and I love that it had the balls to make the Doctor and Rose have a near love romance or rather they had a romance but never really consummated the relationship…maybe. There is one scene in DOOMSDAY that the Doc looks worried Rose might be pregnant but it’s not Rose, it’s Jackie…by Alt World Pete. Was the Doctor worried that Rose was pregnant by with HIS baby by him or was he worried that the baby was when Rose might have sex with Mickey? We’re never told as Rose confirms that it is Jackie who is pregnant, not her.

 

I still contend the Doctor IS gay and always has been but had been fighting that notion, trying to love a female. He keeps making excuses not to love Rose and then leaves her off with another man and cut off from himself forever. Donna recently confirmed that she always thought the Doctor was gay, it bubbling always just below the surface. And…she’s right. He pushed the men away because he could not accept it. The Time Lords were against anyone not being Time Lords and humans were not allowed on Gallifrey, let alone to have relationships with Time Lords/Gallefreans. Even straight ones. And as for gay…well, it stands that they were probably homophobic, most of them and their politics were probably set on homophobia, too. Thus, the Doctor didn’t want to be gay and hid it. And not gay with a human. As for the fact that Time Lords could change gender (and they can), well, that didn’t preclude them from hating on anyone who couldn’t do that and who engaged in same sex romances.

 

I diverge. I’m done.

 

Unless I do the SARAH JANE ADVENTURES, which seem to be recalling me at the moment. I don’t really want to. I found that series engaging but after a few seasons, I also found it to be very formulaic and frankly, boring. I’ll probably never rewatch the awful series TORCHWOOD but might watch CLASS  or some of it as I liked Ram, Charlie and Matteusz. The rest? Meh. I think those three characters should somehow be brought into DW or at least Big Finish again. Still, there are only eight CLASS episodes and three novels. I’ve already listened to the audios and those are brilliant. There are something like 27 hours of SARAH JANE ADVENTURES. I’ve already rewatched two of those so that leaves 25 hours. Sigh.

 

 

Maybe?

 

In any case, a rundown of season 12 will follow. Yes, it’s been a long, hard road!