Doctor Who Series 12 First Impressions: Episode 10 (The Timeless Children)

Heh. Hehehe. Ha. Ahah. HAH. HAH! AHAHA! AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!


That's a good place to start with a once-over of The Timeless Children. Oh my god. Look, this is a great big mess. An even bigger mess than usual because, God help us, Chris Chibnall has (more than likely) changed the face of Doctor Who canon forever with his revelations. This has led to a lot of despair and critique from people I respect, even declarations that they're done with the show if it puts out lore-driven drivel like this. I don't begrudge them in the slightest, of course. It is messy, it is brazen and absurd, and it shifts the lore to places that are arguably less interesting than the ambiguity and assumptions which came before. All I can do is offer my take, and my take is that this is so brazen and absurd that it became goddamned hilarious to me. I don't want to toss around the word "fanfiction" like it's a pejorative when talking about this episode. As I've said before somewhere, Doctor Who is such a long-running show that it's sort of become official fanfiction of itself at this point. People like Chris Chibnall or Steven Moffat, who grew up as fans, got to run the show and indulge their imaginations as fans of the show, officially. There is an almost joyous and innocent sense of Chris Chibnall as a kid smashing his toys together and just coming up with the most ridiculous shit as part of his story, and I found it hilarious. I was laughing at the screen more than once, unable to believe the sheer ludicrousness of what I was witnessing. I had fun here, in some sense! Unlike Ascension Of The Cybermen, which was just dire confusing buildup to this, I found enjoyment out of the silliness. It's rather like a "so bad it's good" cheesy movie, where it's terrible but you get something out of it anyway. Unfortunately I can't go all the way and call the episode "so bad it's good"; there are still some scenes and tonal inconsistencies that are just plain bad. Still, I'm going to have fun with this writeup. One more for the road before the long hiatus begins anew, eh?



Before getting to the lore, let's talk about the Cybermen for just a little bit. Look. I derisively called them "big stompy robots" before. We're starting right out of the gate with this, but my jaw dropped and I lost my shit. The titular Ascension Of The Cybermen from last week, the Lone Cybermen's grand plan, is to literally just become robots. Holy fuck. That's bad. That's a really bad use of the goddamned Cybermen. I'd blame Chibnall for being totally sincere, if the Master didn't also immediately lampshade this by calling that plan completely fucking stupid. Then the Lone Cyberman just gets killed like it's no thing, and basically becomes a bomb for the rest of the episode. I'm of two halves on this shit. On the one hand it's clear that Chibnall recognizes the obvious problem of turning the Cybermen, the iconic Doctor Who villains which are a fusion of man and machine, into actual literal big stompy death robots. On the other hand, the Cybermen in this episode are still just that. It's rather like a narrative substitution, but that doesn't change the fact that Chibnall still sincerely put this mode of Cybermen, and a Lone Cyberman who represented that view, front and center for last week's teaser trailer-- I mean, episode. Then, of course, you get the absolutely ridiculous twist that made me lose my goddamned mind. Cyber Time Lords. Cyber. Time Lords. Cybermen with the robes and the funny hats and they can regenerate. CYBER. FUCKING. TIME. LORDS. You can't take it seriously! You can't! It's a little kid playing with his toys, it's the dumbest thing imaginable, and it made the episode more enjoyable for me once I stopped taking that seriously.



Speaking of shit meant to be taken seriously, the big reveal. This is a little messier, and it's the big sticking point for many. Doctor Who lore isn't set in stone or anything. It can be changed. The change just has to be, you know, better. So, what of the revelation that the Doctor is a Timeless Child who was there in the Ancient Times of Gallifrey, and whose regenerative properties were reverse engineered for use by the Time Lords? What, then, of their service to the "Division" over god knows how many lives and eventual mind wiping of this whole thing? It's not that great. Many have taken objection to the idea of making the Doctor the super special secret origin of the Time Lords, and they're not wrong. It was better when the Doctor was just some ordinary Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and ran away. More to the point, there's a real sense of tonal inconsistency when it comes to the show and these revelations. The idea it seems to be putting across, at the end, is that these huge revelations and missing memories are kind of irrelevant, because the Doctor still is and always will be the Doctor, that big idiot in a blue box saving the day. Fine and all, but what then of the marketing and the teasing and the hype? EVERYTHING EVER IS GOING TO CHANGE FOREVER, EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS A LIE, oh but you're still the Doctor so just let it roll off your back during the climax of the episode. It's baffling. It's like a worse version of a Moffat-era season arc subversion, like the Impossible Girl or the Hybrid. The point has been right under your nose, that the Doctor's just the Doctor, but everything around that point has been screaming the contrary. The reveal on its own doesn't add much, and ambiguity is usually better than explaining things like this... but it may be interesting to track how this goes further down the line. I don't speak of more "Chibnall passing the buck" talk like I did last week, but even like whether or not this becomes accepted canon. If Chibnall doesn't play around with it too much more in Series 13, it could become a thing that's ignored or retconned back out (kind of like that half-human thing from the TV movie.). If it is kept canon, it will be interesting to see if any good stories can come of it. It could be done. Off the top of my head, have the Doctor investigate some planet where she did Division shit in the past, discover her memories a little more, fix something she did wrong way back then now that she's older and wiser. Interesting stories could be told from this. We just have to wait and see.


Waiting and seeing is what we get to do now, as this is the end of Series 12. You know what? This was a good series. It had its messes, to be sure, but that middle bit was really crunchy and interesting. We were bookended by Chibnall doing some weird eyebrow-raising shit, but here we are. On another cliffhanger. The adventure continues, and I likely will too. As for The Timeless Children... it is a mess. It's a mess that made me laugh, though, and that counts for a lot. I don't know how enjoyable it will be in the future, now that I know what it's doing, but here and now it was so ridiculous that I had fun. Despite that, it had its flaws. It's very gun, and its climax is basically one of the expendable humans pulling an Eric Saward and going "HI HERE LET ME DO THE THING AND BLOW EVERYONE UP". So that isn't great. The lore reveal isn't great either, on the face of it. Well, we'll see. Until then, I leave Chris Chibnall and go to enjoy... I dunno, comic books and audios or something. I leave him here, along with the Doctor.


Chris Chibnall, arrested for lore crimes.