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| Promotional photo for "The Timeless Children" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, The Timeless Children gallery) ©BBC |
It's kind of weird, this one. Essentially, "The Timeless Children" is a game of two halves: one half is pretty thrilling and exciting and a nice conclusion of what we saw last time, while the other half seems exposition-heavy and largely divorced from the proceedings.
To be fair, the Cybermen/companions under siege half of this episode is really good indeed. It's not quite as bleak as "Ascension of the Cybermen" was: our heroes are still in pretty dangerous situations (with one of Yaz and Graham's party, Bescot, killed by the Cybermen in the opening minutes to underline that point), but it's a bit calmer overall: Graham and Yaz, for instance, can take the time to have a touching conversation while their fellows Ravio and Yedlarmi remove the organic components from some Cyber-Warrior suits so that the four of them can disguise themselves long enough to get off the ship. It's a really sweet conversation ("I'm going to sound like a... like a proper old man, but you're doing your family proud, Yaz, you really are") which just reinforces how much of a treasure Bradley Walsh is and how wonderful a character Graham is. I also like the idea of having the companions dress up as Cybermen in the first place -- maybe because it makes me think of Ian in the Dalek back in The Daleks.
The other group down on the planet (Ryan, Ko Sharmus, and Ethan) are also a bit calmer, but that's because they're preparing for an attack by the Cybermen, so they're in preparation mode. There's something lovely about Ian McElhinney's kindly grizzled old general Ko Sharmus, as he's both nice but also practical. "I'm not too sure about weapons," Ryan says (having learned something from the Doctor, it seems). "Yeah, well, I'm sure about Cybermen," Ko Sharmus replies. "Now, you fight them or you die. ... You can be a pacifist tomorrow. Today, you have to survive." It's handled very well, and watching these two groups (the one on the Carrier trying to sneak off as Cybermen and the one on the planet fending off the "execution units" that Ashad has sent down) is very entertaining, and the guerrilla attacks are good fun too -- plus, I like how the two plotlines combine by having the disguised group take out the Cybermen who are about to execute Ethan; it may be a bit obvious and cheesy, but I find I don't mind.
And the Master's participation in all this is also great, at least at the beginning. His interactions with Ashad are loads of fun; I especially like how he takes the piss out of Ashad's plan to wipe out all organic life:
MASTER: Now, I hate to point out the flaw in your plan. Cybermen are part organic, but you more than most.Sacha Dhawan is clearly having loads of fun as the Master, which makes him thoroughly enjoyable to watch. I also like the way he casually kills Ashad in order to gain control of the Cyberium, while the little conversation he has with himself afterwards about not knowing if he was going to activate the Death Particle inside and being OK if it had killed him is an interesting look into the mindset of this Master. It's really well done, and I kind of wish there had been a little more in this vein.
ASHAD: My new Cyber-Warriors are purged of organic components.294 We shall rise towards full automation, driven by the intelligence of the Cyberium. And when that work is done, I shall join my warriors and make the final ascension to full mechanisation.
MASTER: Oh, you mean robots. You'll be robots.
ASHAD: We shall be dominant.
MASTER: But robots. Oof. I'm a bit disappointed. I see how you got there - an AI wanting to create more things in its own image - but it lacks vision. Right, what if we, er, workshop this? You know, kick it around a bit? I have notes.
ASHAD: You question the strategy of the Cyberium?
MASTER: I do. I mean, it's good! But it's not great. There's loads of robots. Throw a stick in this universe, you'll hit a robot. I used to do that. Any idiot can make themselves into a robot. It's not special.
(Ashad takes the Master by the throat.)
MASTER: But if you want to be the dominant force in the universe, I can facilitate that.
Because unfortunately, the Master is also the one who introduces the other half of this story. And while the chemistry between the Master and the Doctor is truly amazing, the story that the Master is telling is not. For one, it's very exposition-heavy. It's literally a long explanation about how the Time Lords gained their regenerative abilities -- with pretty pictures to go along with, but still just a very long infodump (and one that assumes you're interested in the backstory of the Time Lords at all -- obviously I am, but one wonders what any casual viewers made of all this). It seems a woman named Tecteun from the Shobogan people of Gallifrey travelled the universe and found a young girl who regenerated every time she died, so Tecteun ran tests and studied this "timeless child" until she discovered the secret of regeneration, after which she provided the secret to her fellow Shobogans. One gets the sneaking suspicion that this is supposed to be some massive revelation, but it lands with a bit of a dull thud: "Ok, and? So what?" was my initial reaction when I saw this, and I don't know that that's changed with repeated viewings. I guess it's nice to know, but it doesn't change much.
But that may be because that's followed by the Big Reveal: the Timeless Child is in fact the Doctor, which does change a lot, but it doesn't feel quite right. Part of the issue is that one of the nice things about the Doctor was that among her own people, she wasn't anything special: she was an undistinguished student, only scraping by on her second attempt at graduating from the Academy, and the only thing that made her different was a desire to go and explore and then a willingness to help out where she could. Obviously being an alien made her different from you and me, but the point was that anyone could be the Doctor if they were willing to step up; it's not about a birthright or being special in some way, it's just about standing up and making a difference. But now we're told, no, actually the Doctor is special in some way, it does matter who she is and where she came from, and by the way she's indirectly responsible for regenerative abilities in her entire people.
And it's not really clear what the show gains from this. What's the advantage of learning the Doctor had some secret past working for a shady Division? Much like Chibnall destroying Gallifrey again, it's not obvious why this was done. Are there lots of storytelling opportunities now available that weren't before? I guess you could do lots of stunt casting of past Doctors, since they'd only have to show up for an episode or two, but is that really worth jettisoning everyone's understanding of the character for? (Well, the other potential reason is that this would explain the Morbius Doctors (see The Brain of Morbius in season 13 for more info), which most everyone else has decided to ignore but Chibnall is a big enough fan to possibly want to explain (and if you need proof of his fandom, I again direct you to the "Open Air" special feature on the Trial of a Time Lord DVD (and now Blu-ray as well!) set).) It doesn't help that this episode, after blowing up everything we thought we knew, explicitly tells us it doesn't matter anyway: "Have you ever been limited by who you were before?" the Ruth Doctor asks our Doctor. And besides, this was the information the Master was willing to commit genocide over, the fact that there's a bit of Doctor in him? Even by the Master's standards this seems like a gross overreaction, if he'd even care in the first place. I'm a little worried I sound like one of those fans who complained about The Deadly Assassin back when it first aired for misrepresenting Gallifrey, but I have to confess that on the face of it I just don't see the point.
(As many, many people have pointed out, it would make far more sense for the Master to actually be the Timeless Child; this would provide a better reason for his rage and genocide -- the fact that they had used him for their own ends, both with the regeneration science and the Division missions -- as well as provide an explanation for how he constantly seems to survive encounters where he otherwise should have died, including the end of Missy, which seemed pretty definitive. You'd still have to explain the Ruth Doctor, of course, but that could been handwaved away as some future Doctor (say, the 43rd Doctor) -- or possibly, the fourteenth Doctor: now that would be a hell of a reveal. I still have enough faith in Chris Chibnall to wonder if possibly this is actually the ultimate plan -- after all, he knows he and Jodie will be around for at least series 13, and we've seen he has enough faith to seed things in earlier series and then let them lay fallow (remember, the first mention of the Timeless Child was back in "The Ghost Monument", where it was then ignored for the rest of series 11) -- so I wouldn't completely put it past him. And if something like this turns out to be what actually happens then I'll be both happy and impressed.)
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| The Master with his new race of Cybermen. ("The Timeless Children") ©BBC |
So I dunno. Half of this story, the Cyberman half, is really exciting and fun to watch, at least until it all falls apart with the Cyber-Masters -- but even there at least that idea is a good one with crummy execution. The other half is a dull infodump that seems to break a lot of things just for the sake of doing something Big. It's a weird feeling when the bits of the story involving the Doctor are the least engaging bits, but that's the feat that "The Timeless Children" manages. Ultimately, this is a pretty schizophrenic episode, and it's not one that leaves a great taste in your mind.
It's a bit unfortunate that this series ends the way it does, because it has the effect of weakening the previous run. Because overall, I generally enjoyed series 12; after the more traditional approach of series 11, it was nice to see the show start using some of its newer tools again. And while there are some low spots this series and perhaps not quite as many highs as last series, I didn't feel particularly unhappy with things. Jodie Whittaker seems very comfortable as the Doctor, while her three companions all seem happy and generally get things to do. If there's a complaint to made, it's that we've gotten generally less characterization this time around than last time, which means occasionally Yaz, Ryan, and Graham feel a bit underdeveloped. But this is a minor complaint.
But because series 12 ends on such an ambivalent note, I find that my enthusiasm is correspondingly lessened for this run, and I'm not sure why. It might be because it felt like a lot of series 12 was building up to a big finale that they fail to deliver on, or because the misfires of "The Timeless Children" overshadow the rest of the series because of how Important they're meant to feel. I'm hoping this feeling will go away with time, and honestly to some extent it has; rewatching this run for this blog made it clearer just how many good moments there really were that I'd sort of forgotten about. So perhaps that will be the legacy of series 12: a bunch of generally good stories with only a couple rough spots along the way, with the caveat that the rough spots are pretty big. But if they can be ignored, there's definitely fun to be had here, and definitely enough positives to be encouraged for the future of the show.
And so that does it for this year's run of entries. Obviously the advent of the novel coronavirus (which this run of stories only just avoided; "The Timeless Children" aired on 1 March 2020, while the United Kingdom and the United States didn't start truly taking things seriously until mid-March) has potentially thrown future production schedules into disarray, but it's been reported that the upcoming holiday special, "Revolution of the Daleks", was largely completed by the time restrictions began being put into place (having been filmed as part of series 12), so we have that at least to look forward to for next year. And maybe I'll cover some of the "Lockdown" web stories as well. (Or this animated Dalek show that was announced yesterday as part of the BBC's cross-media tale Time Lord Victorious. (A single tale across multiple platforms! Books! Audios! Comics! Games! YouTube! Probably not TV! etc.)) So in any event, I hope to see you all again on 11 September 2021, and in the meantime be safe and be well.
294 Ohhhhhhh, that must be what Ashad was doing last time that caused the Cybermen to scream. Hmm, that wasn't made very obvious at all, was it?