Written by Brian T. McNamara
Where do you even begin with the most recent Doctor Who? So much happened and so much has changed, and yet the show is exactly what it always was. In what has to be one of the tightest season-long arcs of the modern-era, Chris Chibnall delivered a fantastic capper to a strong season with ‘The Timeless Children.’
A new era of Cybermen, a new Master triumphant and the Doctor doing everything to protect her fam. This is how we begin the episode. But ‘The Timeless Children’ quickly completely changes as the Master whisks The Doctor away to the ruins of Gallifrey, to the Matrix – the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, past and present. Here, the Master reveals to The Doctor the truth of the Timeless Child. A lone child, discovered at the source of a dimensional disturbance by an early Gallifreyian – actually Shebogan (not Sheboygan!) – explorer. This child exhibits the ability to regenerate time and again and is ultimately the genetic source for regeneration energy in all Time Lords. What the Master reveals is that the child was The Doctor, who has had part of her life erased from her memory. And the Matrix information is incomplete as well. This revelation shatters The Doctor as The Master goes about creating a new Cybermen-Gallifreyan fusion race to dominate the galaxy: the Cyber-Masters, achingly beautiful and over-the-top gaudy Cyberman with Gallifreyian design work and classic Time Lord wide wimples.
‘The Timeless Children’ is just a lot. It hinges on a very big, character-changing revelation for The Doctor. That revelation does kinda suck the air out of the room of the B-plot left over from last week’s “Ascension of the Cybermen.” But the revelation is executed about as well as it could have been. Adding in many lives previous to the Doctors we have known from 1963 through now has been hinted around for a while now, and it always seemed like a bridge too far. Here, though, it is presented as a new mysterious wrinkle for The Doctor and the audience to work out and think about. The blanks are not all filled in; the questions are barely answered. The Doctor literally escapes from the revelation by blowing the mind of the computer keeping her there with her new continuity. We see a little of The Doctor’s reaction to this massive change to her lives but it does feel like the coda of the episode should have focused on her dealing with the changes rather than an admittedly good hook for New Years.
The strongest sequence of ‘The Timeless Children’ stands in the Doctor talking to a Matrix projection of the “Ruth Doctor” from earlier this season. We still don’t know where she fits in The Doctor’s timeline, nor does it really matter. She helps The Doctor by offering reassurance about who she is. Despite any revelations of a heretofore unknown past, any loss of self, she reminds Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor of who they are and what The Doctor stands for with the question “Have you ever let who were before hold you back?” It’s a great moment between the two.
Shortly after, a fantastic scene where The Doctor overloads the Matrix by thinking about all her companions, her enemies, her encounters takes us through the established canon of the show in about 20 seconds. Then the new revelation of her timeless childhood comes in. All this is underscored by an amazing blend of styles of all the Doctor Who theme songs. We then get into tricky territory as the show reveals – 44 years later! – that 8 random faces from The Doctor’s past (actually script writers and directors of the time) in a scene in the classic serial “The Brain of Morbius” are indeed previous incarnations of The Doctor before William Hartnell. It’s surprising and fan service but it also cinches up continuity in a show that is largely free from it. Here, Chibnall uses the show’s rich history – and its hundreds of multimedia tie-in novels and audio dramas – to literally canonize and de-canonize everything. A story with a Doctor we never saw on screen? There’s space for that. All the hints and non-committal answers on Time Lord history and regeneration given over the past 66 years? Here’s more answers than you’ve gotten but still room for it all. Was it looms all along? Is the Doctor really the Other? Do we all have to read Lungbarrow now? Who knows but I’m not going to try to explain those here.
From a certain point of view, ”The Timeless Children’ solves minor issues and gives us answers without confirmation of other things. Moffat’s Hybrid theory from Series 9 about who will destroy Gallifrey? Turns out it’s The Master and the Cyberium. Would the Doctor really commit genocide to end a war as Russel T. Davies posited in the show’s return? Turns out that answer is still no as it was in “Day of the Doctor.” The Time Lords are gone – sort of? – but also the revelations mean we’ll need some comeuppance for them. It barely works, it shouldn’t work and yet, Chibnall was able to deftly paint with references and inferences to create a masterstroke of in-universe and meta-textual storytelling. When continuity is used well it adds so much more to the show than just tossing stuff out for the sake of easier story choices.
Sascha Dawan is a bright point of ‘The Timeless Children.’ His Master is delightfully evil but with depth and an evil charm. He can swing from “giving notes” on the Lone Cyberman’s plan to being upset that killing the Lone Cybermen didn’t actually result in his death, which he longs for but cannot enact on himself, to then jokingly berating himself for not coming up with a good pun. It’s a fantastic performance and Dawan could go down as one of the all-time Masters. His measured narration of the Timeless Child sequences is played against his manic revelation that part of the Doctor is always inside him to chilling effect. He even marches in alongside his Cyber Masters at point, showcasing off his purple and plaid that feels like a nod to Troughton’s Doctor.
Jodie’s Doctor has an odd arc as she’s sidelined into being a wide-eyed viewer of her own history. But she plays her moments incredibly well. Her farewell to her companions is a beautiful small moment in an episode that is overstuffed on the huge, sweeping moments. That she spends the majority of the hour away from them is a slight hindrance to their emotional beats. Yaz gets the most significant moments as Graham talks about how she’s changed and how she’s the best person and later in the episode her refusal to let The Doctor go off alone to meet her end stand out as some of the strongest Yaz material in two seasons.
However, the B-Plot of Yaz, Graham and Ryan with the few survivors from last episode really is short changed here. For all of Yaz’s development this episode, most of her’s – and Ryan’s – largely happens offscreen or with no middle-ground. It makes for an odd read. Ryan simply says he can’t throw a ball then is shown throwing it and succeeding in bombing Cybermen. We get no test, no trial, no failure just the beginning and end point. It feels odd against the goals of showing Ryan dealing with his dyspraxia. He can just do it now. It feels like we needed just a little more to tie it together.
The Cybermen’s plan is also odd as they wish to just become robots by wiping out all organic life in the galaxy. A plot so bad, The Master literally calls them on it. Perhaps the mystery of the Doctor’s Timeless Childhood would have worked better if the Brendan sequences were spread over the season or at least since meeting the Ruth Doctor. The rush at the end to cram them into last week’s somewhat light episode didn’t quite work with the Master invoking them as if they’ve plagued the Doctor forever. As well, it seemed like the Old Man with a mysterious past was poised to be revealed as a past Doctor or a mystery Time Lord or something. He knows a little too much and is too precious to the plot. But he’s really there to take the moral bullet poised for The Doctor and commit genocide on her behalf. It’s an odd moment, certainly understood in the moment, but one that could have used a little more work in the lead up. Choosing to not show us him leaving the companions behind felt odd.
The episode highlights a strong season and wraps up its mysteries very well and in satisfying ways. It’s a lot to digest. And it’s one I’ll be thinking on for a long time. Everything is different, everything is as it was, but nothing can be the same as it was before.
Rating: 9/10
