The Timeless Children (3810 / 1210)

[P-90_177]

What worked with a audience in the 70s and 80s doesn't necessarily work with todays audience who generally expect more. RTD explained how the Master came back in 'The End of Time' and Moffat didn't leave the Master in any real how did he get out of that situation that couldn't be solved with a teleport. So a tradition in classic who not so much in modern who.

RTD wrote how he came back in the End of Time but that's because he wrote Last of the Timelords as well. He never explained how he came back in Utopia and Sound of Drums from the TV movie except in the loosest terms and Moffat didn't explain how he survived the End of Time in any of Missy's or Master's appearances. It's really not necessary.

[Falcon Horus]

Hence why I'm fairly certain the Master will be back....

[tomstone]

Hence why I'm fairly certain the Master will be back....

Thats a given, just like the Daleks, the Cybermen are also going to return.

[Annoyed]

Let's just hope Chibnall doesn't.

[Falcon Horus]

Let's just hope Chibnall doesn't.

Sorry pal, he's staying... as is Jodie.

[Annoyed]

I have no problem with Jodie. She's better than Matt Smith was. She can't help the drivel that Chibnall hands her to read.

[cosmichobo]

I don't know if I want to watch this episode - I really don't think I do.

Yes, absolutely, new producers / writers have from time to time retconned the show's past to fit in their new concepts; the "13 Lives" rule for instance didn't appear in Doctor Who until half way through the original era's run. But generally those retcons were more like a little splinter, or at worst like breaking a bone and re-setting it. This (by the sounds of it from reading above, and elsewhere) breaks every bone ever conceived in the history of the show.

And I thought I had it tough watching old grey grumpy Doc "not care" about people dying in Mummy on the Orient Express... cos that was such an un-Doctor-like thing to see, and offended my sensibilities!

I've often scoffed at fans who outright refuse to accept parts of the televised series as "canon", because they so vehemently objected to some issue or other. Now, here I stand, contemplating crossing that bridge...

God, melodramatic or what, cosmic? Shut the **** up and just go to bed.

[Falcon Horus]

The Doctor wasn't going to regenerate at all when William Hartnell was it, but we have his poor health to thank for that... and they already had to break the 12 regeneration rules once, so it was bound to happen again especially with the BBC not yet planning on retiring the franchise.

[Annoyed]

20-20 hindsight says the 12 regeneration rule was boneheaded to begin with, but they didn't count on this series existing sa long as it has. So I can understand the retcon eliminating it.

Overall, this season was an enormous disappointment, for many reasons.

As far as plans on retiring the series for now, at least, with the pathetic ratings this season has achieved, I'm not going to be surprised of the Christmas special this year is the last we see of it for a while. As I understand it, 2 companions have quit over it already.

https://cosmicbook.news/doctor-who-c...strous-ratings

Regarding the ratings, the article also notes ratings have fallen to 5.5 million from 8 million for the previous series in 2018, and what is particularly worrisome is that over 600k viewers turned off the Doctor Who Season 12 finale that aired Sunday but returned for the show following the episode.

I hope I'm wrong, but it just might be that the show itself has been sacrificed on the altar of Chibnall's politically correct soapbox. Congratulations, dude. You suck.

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Chibnall has got to go!

[P-90_177]

20-20 hindsight says the 12 regeneration rule was boneheaded to begin with, but they didn't count on this series existing sa long as it has. So I can understand the retcon eliminating it.

Overall, this season was an enormous disappointment, for many reasons.

As far as plans on retiring the series for now, at least, with the pathetic ratings this season has achieved, I'm not going to be surprised of the Christmas special this year is the last we see of it for a while. As I understand it, 2 companions have quit over it already.

https://cosmicbook.news/doctor-who-c...strous-ratings



I hope I'm wrong, but it just might be that the show itself has been sacrificed on the altar of Chibnall's politically correct soapbox. Congratulations, dude. You suck.

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Chibnall has got to go!

Actually the BBC has confirmed that they absolutely no intentions of cancelling Doctor Who any time soon. As for the companions, you can count on one hand the number of companions who have lasted more than a season since the show revived.

[Annoyed]

Actually the BBC has confirmed that they absolutely no intentions of cancelling Doctor Who any time soon. As for the companions, you can count on one hand the number of companions who have lasted more than a season since the show revived.

Isn't that like a politician saying "If elected, I intend on doing (fill in the blank)" which of course he has no intention of doing and probably wouldn't be able to do anyway.

If the matter was settled, they would use more affirmative language, such as "we will not be cancelling".

[P-90_177]

Isn't that like a politician saying "If elected, I intend on doing (fill in the blank)" which of course he has no intention of doing and probably wouldn't be able to do anyway.

If the matter was settled, they would use more affirmative language, such as "we will not be cancelling".

For the BBC that is very affirmative really.
The thing is that Doctor Who is still the BBC's biggest export (except maybe Top Gear) and earns them a ton in merchandise sales. Even with the lower ratings they won't want to give that up. It is a very expensive series. But unlike other shows who live and die with their starring cast who have to be paid more and more after each season, Doctor can potentially massively reduce it's cost just by chanting leads and companions and start over from scratch. The classic who did this a number of times.

[The_Carpenter]

They won't cancel it at least as long as the licence fee is a thing (although they considered resting it after Tennants run IIRC and that was when merch sales was at the peak).

I can see Chibs having some uncomfortable meetings and being replaced before too long, and maybe then this mess can be retconed and ignored like the half Human nonsense from the TV movie. Preferably have the last 2 seasons be a regeneration fever dream and reveal the real 13th Doctor to be Jo Martin.

[Annoyed]

They won't cancel it at least as long as the licence fee is a thing (although they considered resting it after Tennants run IIRC and that was when merch sales was at the peak).

I can see Chibs having some uncomfortable meetings and being replaced before too long, and maybe then this mess can be retconed and ignored like the half Human nonsense from the TV movie. Preferably have the last 2 seasons be a regeneration fever dream and reveal the real 13th Doctor to be Jo Martin.

I won't miss Chibnall. The sooner he's gone, the better. In fact, I'd like to see him stuffed into the Tardis and canned 3 years ago before he had a chance to screw the series up.

But I don't want to see the show die or rested for any length of time. Considering the pathetic ratings in comparison to prior years, the BBC may have it on a death list. The long and growing longer delays between seasons certainly don't give me confidence. If a business is making money off a product, they make more of that product in order to make more money. They make less of the product when it's losing money for them, and they eventually stop making it.

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Chibnall has got to go!

[cosmichobo]

Ok - I watched it...

In the 1996 Telemovie the Doctor stated that he was half human, which at first could have been passed off as a joke, but then the Master confirmed it using the TARDIS to scan the Doctor. 9 years later, RTD rebooted the series properly, and the half-human thing was forgotten, ignored, treated as if it never happened. He could have kept that aspect of the Doctor going - even made a story-arc around it - who was the Doctor's parent/s?

But - instead, even though McGann's Doctor IS canon, his half-human-ness? Not so much.

20 years earlier in the The Deadly Assassin, long time writer and former WHO script editor, Terrance Dicks, set down the "12 regeneration limit" for Time Lords, in order to build his story regarding the return of the Master - who had used all of his lives. Less than a decade later, the rule was pivotal to Mawdryn Undead and The Five Doctors. In particular, we learned that the limit ensured that no one person could rule Time Lord society forever, lest they become corrupt (ahem China & Russia..)

Whilst the rule was established well before I was born, and thus just treated in my head as "Doctor Who fact", the debut of The Five Doctors is a cherished memory from my childhood. The limitation on the Doctor's, and other Time Lords' lives seemed entirely "right" when viewed from the context of that story.

Fast forward to the show's 50th anniversary and the showrunner needed to develop a work-around to the rule, but - no biggie - it just gave us Time of the Doctor. (I just wish they'd actually made an arc out of the concept, - the Doctor spending the whole season knowing he was nearing the end of his life, starting to show signs of his pending doom... rather than the way it was handled just in 1 story.

Now, 2020...

What Chibnall has done in this episode certainly adds a lot of mystery to the Doctor's past. How many lives has the Doctor really lived? How does that new storyline dovetail into established lore? Etc etc. But... If Chibnall doesn't follow up with some exploration of that new past in his next (last?) season, I wonder if this story will become a new half-human..?

Overall, what I'm more frustrated about is the treatment of Gallifrey. Granted, the pay-off (regenerating Cybermen) was an interesting and terrifying concept, but why destroy Gallifrey again?! We've been there, done that. To achieve the same outcome, the Master could have done something akin to Evolution of the Daleks - "sharing" his DNA with the Cybermen to allow regeneration. Could have been much easier than destroying Gallifrey...

Destroying Gallifrey pisses all over the 50th anniversary story, but also Capaldi's Doctor, and his anguish at trying to find the planet again.