THE TIMELESS CHILDREN

Wow. And not in a good way.

At the end of Ascension Of The Cybermen, the Master informs us that everything we knew was a lie and things are going to change. Forever.

Ugh.

Correct us if we’re wrong, but didn’t Chris Chibnall at the beginning of his tenure declare his disinterest in all things fanwank? Wasn’t it going to be an era of simple stories the casual viewer could understand without a degree in Gallifreyan history?

Well, that didn’t last long, did it? Give him five minutes and he’s hip deep in Doctor Who lore and determined to carve his initials in it.

Is this a bad thing per se? Should we respectfully tiptoe around Doctor Who history as we know it, changing not one line? Course not. Showrunners have upended the backstory for years. There weren’t even Time Lords until very late in the Second Doctor’s tenure. And all the Gallifreyan stuff didn’t appear until Robert Holmes chucked it in in the late seventies. Then there was the Cartmel Masterplan, the half-human thing in the Eighth Doctor movie, the intimations about the Sisterhood of Karn with regard to regeneration…

Fine. But let’s ask another question. Should Chris Chibnall do it? And here we’d have to say: one thousand percent no. Robert Holmes earned it. Chris Chibnall most definitely has not. Not just because of the execrable state of the series under his tenure, but because he proves conclusively in The Timeless Children that when it comes to the important stuff he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.

So what is this all a lie stuff? According to Chibnall, everything you knew about Rassilon was rubbish. Instead, the Doctor is a creature from another realm whose regeneration abilities form the foundation, along with the discovery of time travel, of the Time Lords.

So what’s wrong with that? Don’t get us wrong, there isn’t a problem with the extra lives/hidden history stuff: on its own, it’s as valid an idea as anything else. The problem is the Doctor being so very very special. Primarily, it’s wrong because it actually makes the Doctor LESS interesting. Before the Master’s revelation, the Doctor was a renegade Time Lord, yes, but a Time Lord like other Time Lords nonetheless. What makes them different is not some quirk of biology: it’s an insatiable curiosity about and compassion for the universe and a deep conviction that it’s their duty not to stand by as the other Time Lords do in the face of injustice but instead to devote their lives to striving to make the universe a better place.

Of course, the Doctor is still that person with those convictions. But making them special because of who they are, rather than for what they do, significantly takes away from them as a character. You could write stories that organically send characters in exciting new directions. Or you could be utterly lacking in inspiration and just fiddle with their backstories instead. As Dr Polidori might say, is it too late to choose a new group?

There’s another reason the Doctor is an endlessly fascinating character: it’s because of their mystery. We don’t know everything about them, and we don’t want to know. Where would be the fun in that? Needless to say, however, that mystery is plumptiously tempting for showrunners looking to go down in history as the one who set Fact X about the Doctor in stone. Sadly, this temptation often ranks higher with them than the benefit of keeping the mystery intact. No doubt they revel in the knowledge that they put their fingerprints on the Doctor’s story, and why shouldn’t they? After all, it’s not them it hurts, it’s us. A reveal may give us a short-term hit of satisfied curiosity, but each one makes the Doctor just a little less intriguing.

So that’s how Chibnall’s pet revelations affect us. But how do they affect the Doctor? Clearly, very badly. Between her shock and the Master’s paralysis field, she basically spends much of the episode catatonic. Question: has Chibnall actually ever seen an episode of Doctor Who? Surely not. Otherwise, how could he think this reaction would ever be an acceptable one for the Doctor? When has the Doctor lacked this much agency?

The companions who are struggling on without her are clearly trying to apply themselves to the situation and come up with cunning plans the way they think she would. Sadly for the Doctor’s reputation, they’re actually far, far better at it than she is. When she does finally drag herself into action, it’s catastrophic. She goes out to sacrifice herself to off the Cybermen, but when Ko Sharmus volunteers to take her place, not only does she not argue, she literally runs away. Of course it’s not unheard of that the Doctor has to accept someone’s sacrifice for the greater good, but never just for selfish reasons and not like this. Between her utter passivity and someone else’s heroism, it’s like she’s absent from the story that has her name in the title. It seems ever clearer that Chibnall has no grasp whatsoever on who the Doctor actually is.

Because bad as that is, it’s not all of it. After two seasons of extending our best genuine effort to like Chibnall’s Doctor, we can no longer avoid the fact that far from always being the most fascinating person in the room as all the other Doctors are, she’s often the most boring one. In this story alone, we’d rather spend time with literally any of the other characters including the Master (and we really, really don’t like the Master) than with her. The alt Doctor who’s only onscreen for a few minutes is more interesting than she is. The companions who’ve been underdrawn due to lack of space are more interesting than she is. The characters with early deaths whose names we have to look up on Wikipedia are more interesting than she is.

We’re tired of the gasping. We’re tired of the monotonous pace and inflection of the delivery. We’re tired of the embarrassing bragging swiftly followed by ignominious failure. We’re tired of her resorting to the sonic screwdriver in every single situation. We’re tired of villains pushing her around and her letting them. We’re tired of the utter absence of conveying that she’s an alien with many long lives behind her. As a result, whether she’s a mysterious regenerating being from another realm or a small tree frog, we can’t really bring ourselves to care.

And it doesn’t matter anyway. The Master says it will change everything, but will it? Will it really? Does it make that much difference? Half of his infogrenades seem to consist of taking something that was already there and replacing it with something the same but with a different name. And the Ruth Doctor asks the Doctor whether she’s ever been limited by what she was before and the Doctor agrees she hasn’t. So if it makes no difference, why bother with it in the first place?

Nor can we really accept it as canon when it shoots far better episodes more full of holes than a fishnet stocking. There are way too many of these to list, but we’re just not prepared to let them go in the service of Chibnall’s much dumber idea. What’s more, it even creates holes in Chibnall’s own stories. Let’s just hope the tides of history bury it in mud as it deserves. In the interim, we’re declaring it an alternative fact.

What else is in here? First of all, the wearisomely inevitable return of Sacha Dhawan’s Master. We know some people think he’s the greatest Master since Delgado, but we’re just not getting it. We find the madness part desperately dull and a complete retread of the Simms Master. What’s more, for a story which is meant to be Explaining It All, we’re still no wiser as to why he’s quite so angry at the Doctor, and characters that are angry for no reason are a total yawn. Also, it’s abundantly clear to us that Sacha Dhawan is actually a perfectly lovely guy, and it’s that we keep seeing through the supposedly diabolical exterior. Absent the frisson of pure evil that’s supposed to be there, when he gets angry we’re reminded far too irresistibly of a toddler having a tantrum.

What’s more, as with much of this Chibnall has left far too much of the Master’s story woefully underexplained. Why did he destroy Gallifrey? How did he destroy Gallifrey? Why does he want the Cybermen to overrun Gallifrey? Where does his death wish come from? How does his history with the Doctor account for quite this much fury? Sure, we don’t want to destroy the Master’s mystery either, but all of this should at least make some sense.

Chibnall might not explain the things that need explaining, but it’s not for want of talking. Through the centre section of this episode, the Master goes on and on and on, ranting and whispering and just talking talking talking and it’s so boring. The pacing here is so off it’s laughable.

And the two-handers with the Doctor fall completely flat, because the majority of the time she just lets him rattle on with no reaction on her part. It’s as if he’s monologuing while she’s mentally composing her shopping list. And when she does occasionally riposte, it’s as if she thinks she’s dealing out a superbly clever line when it’s actually utterly mundane. “And has it calmed all the rage?” Ooh. Zinger.

And the Cybermen? First of all, we’re really taken with Graham’s idea of dressing up in their tin overcoats. Of course it would never actually work, because they tell us the Cybermen are neurally networked and so they’d instantly realise that the humans in the Cybersuits weren’t in the network. For the same reason, Ashad peering through their eye meshes is utterly pointless. However, it’s a lovely idea and we can’t quite believe it hasn’t been used before.

Unfortunately, the Cybermen themselves don’t fare quite as well. Chibnall is far more interested in the Master than he is in the Cybermen in this episode, and as a result, after building Ashad up in the last two episodes, he has the Master tissue compress him off-handedly and leaves the rest of ‘em in a stompy holding pattern until he can be bothered getting round to them again. Considering the effort he’s put into Ashad’s story up till now, and Ashad’s stature within the three episodes, it’s a pretty ignominious ending. With this lack of interest, no wonder Chibnall couldn’t be bothered coming up with a reason for Ashad to be so keen on being Cyberfied in the first place. What’s more, Ashad’s storyline about wanting to Kill All Humans shifts the Cybermen’s motivation, which has always been all about Teh Conversion, too close to the Daleks’ motivation. Not to mention the Master’s motivation. Take insufficient care to distinguish your villains and they all end up as one giant villainy bollock.

When the Cybermen eventually return, they have their collars on: we’re not sure the prettiness of these do the Cybermen’s ruthless reputation any favours. To be honest, we’re a bit mystified by the Master’s plan: are regenerating Cybermen really that much worse than the bog-standard model? They never seem to have much trouble producing more of them, after all. And after this they just sort of trail away into a welter of silliness. How are the Time Lords in them dead, exactly, given that they can regenerate? And why do they (and the Master, come to that) stand there like a shelf full of tin cans while the Doctor is running away and Ser Barristan’s setting off his grenade?

How do the companions fare? It’s poor old Ryan’s turn to get the crappy end of the stick as he’s limited to a few lines. Yaz and Graham get more to do, and they’re agreeably proactive (DID YOU NOTICE THAT, DOCTOR?). However, we could have done without the heartwarming bit where Graham tells Yaz how impressed he is by her. Dude. We know. You don’t have to tell us, and you shouldn’t.

And the other characters? There isn’t much room for them in this far too overstuffed episode, but by God Ian McElhinney is blisteringly good. Like we said in our review of Ascension of the Cybermen, he’s the real hero of the story, and he’s by far the most riveting thing on the screen. Snip everything out of this episode except for him, Ruth, Yaz and Graham and we really would have had something worth watching.

Argh. We don’t like her, we don’t like the Master, we don’t like this episode and we don’t like the showrunner. So looking forward to the next episode.

OUTTAKES

SECOND HAND NEWS

If Tecteun is so monomaniacally obsessed with figuring out the kid, why doesn’t she go back to where she found her and step through herself?

I MAY BE SOME TIME

Tecteun had crude space travel technology and yet she managed to travel to other galaxies? Plural?

LIKE RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY

“Look upon my work, Doctor, and despair.” Yes, it’s a Shelley ref, but does the Master realise how ironic that line is meant to be?

MASSIVE EYEROLL

How hokey is the Doctor breaking out of the Matrix with the power of her memories?

THE LEGEND OF THE PARTICLE IS WAY HARDCORE

The legend of the death particle? Not only is that utterly hilarious, it’s the laziest writer’s trick ever.

GETTING WARMER

We can’t quite believe Chibnall makes a big thing of who the Timeless Child is. The Doctor asks the Master twice to elucidate this impenetrable mystery. This being the case, for a minute there we actually thought it wasn’t going to be the tritest answer possible. But no.

PEEKABOO

Would Ko Sharmus’s tent maze really bamboozle the Cybes? If we were Cybermen we’d just set it on fire.

OPEN HOME

And as a last insult, the Judoon invade the TARDIS. The Judoon. Seems like any old riff-raff can get into the TARDIS now. Yeah, that’s a development we can really get behind.