The Timeless Children - The First Review

WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR WHO: SERIES 12 EPISODE 10! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Starring Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole, with Sacha Dhawan, Julie Graham, Steve Toussaint and Ian McElhinney.

Written by Chris Chibnall.
Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone.

The Cybermen are on the march. As the last remaining humans are ruthlessly hunted down, Graham, Ryan and Yaz face a terrifying fight to survive. Civilisations fall. Others rise anew. Lies are exposed, truths are revealed, battles are fought, and for the Doctor - trapped and alone - nothing will ever be the same again.

"What the hell was that, Chris?"

Ah...

Ok, I'm going to try and do this as calmly as possible, respecting as many multiple points of view as I can...

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, CHIBNALL? NO ONE WANTED THAT!

Well, I did say try. Not do.

Wow, "The Timeless Children" is bad. We haven't been this low since "Hell Bent", but, somehow, Chibnall managed it. I knew, from the beginning, that this arc was going to involve a lot of fan service. It had to - you're going back into the history of the Time Lords. Steven Moffat had the same problem with the Hybrid arc from Series 9. And, based on this episode, the lessons of Series 9 have not been learned. "The Timeless Children" butchers the backstory of our favourite character, throws away any potentially interesting set-up from "Ascension of the Cybermen" and ends up leaving a hell of a lot of loose threads everywhere. After the promise that most of series 11, and some of series 12 showed us, this is just frankly unacceptable, and a sure sign that Doctor Who, in its current form, is lacking direction and vision.

Ashad (Patrick O'Kane) turns up at the Doctor Who
production office, to complain about his lack of screen-time in
"The Timeless Children".

To start with, things weren't even that bad. There was a lot of promise in the first twenty minutes: some decent ideas, some great visuals, some phenomenal performances. Even the revelations about Gallifreyan history aren't that bad (although they do render "Ravenous 4", a recent Big Finish box set, rather redundant, although I'm sure it can be stitched together with events here), and could even be said to tie some elements together from the so-called 'Cartmel Masterplan'. However, the moment we get the revelation that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, the whole thing quickly falls apart, and not just because that single act butches Doctor Who cannon forever. It quickly throws so much lore at the screen that it becomes difficult for fans to keep up, so I dread to think what it must have done to the casual audience. The trouble is is that Chibnall ends up just throwing stuff at the audience, to the point where it becomes impossible to keep up. There's a Death Particle, the Doctor was a CIA agent, Graham and Yaz dressing up as Cybermen - there's just. So. Much. Stuff. And there's no time to even attempt to examine these elements and to do things with them, because all of a sudden, there's more things Chris wants to do. The story is just a mess, not able to focus on any one thing at once. Some might say that some of this stuff is set up for later, but we've been in this position before with both the Silence and the Hybrid, and it turned out to be bobbins. The idea of combining Time Lords and Cybermen is one of the finest ideas in the show's history, and yet, like every other element in this episode, it is ignored because Chibnall's shopping list is so long. And he is still determined to add more stuff on top of what we've already seen: a sacrifice that looses all impact when a different person makes it and a tacked on cliffhanger that, I guarantee, will see no concrete resolution in the festive special. Honestly, there is so much content in this episode that it doesn't have time to focus on anything in particular. The Cybermen are woefully underused to the point where it seems utterly redundant to have them in the episode, other than to provide our companions/guest characters something to do, and to be the stooges for the Master's plan. I love the idea of Cybermen/Time Lord Hybrids, but this story does nothing with them, other then have them stomp around and look amazing as hell. And maybe that's good enough, for some. But, for me, so much more could have been done with that set-up, instead of spending time wallowing in the show's history. And, in the end, it doesn't even really amount to anything anyway, because its all tied off in a nice, neat bow. It's clear that Series 13 probably won't revisit the events of this finale here too much, as it seems to painting itself as a fresh start, so why even bother doing any of what it did in the first place? There's simply no reason for it, other than to cause controversy, something we, frankly, need less of in the fanbase.

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and the Master (Sacha Dhawan)
try not to burst into laughter when Chris Chibnall tells them
the plot of "The Timeless Children".

The characters are also as poorly served as you'd expect, although the acting is, once again, off the charts. All the guest characters introduced in "Ascension of the Cybermen" get a grand total of about ten minutes of screen-time. And that's it. Not one of them make any impression here, none of them are remotely interesting and ultimately, nothing they do has any impression on the plot, save for Ko Sharmus' sacrifice. The cast are great (especially Ian McElhinney, who is having a ball), but they are utterly wasted in thankless roles that give them nothing to do. The most notable cast member is, of course, Sacha Dhawan as the Master. He once again steals the show, delivering a performance of immense magnitude. Right from the beginning, he has, more than most, really understood the character of the Master, and gives a performance with echoes of both Roger Delgado and Derek Jacobi's Masters, but with his own, twisted take. While I have issues with the events of the story, his attempt to bring the Doctor to her lowest ebb is wonderfully twisted, and his Master's interplay with Ashad is wonderful. I have to be honest, these are the only really notable scenes for Ashad, who, as I expected, is relegated to secondary villain status, and then unceremoniously killed off by the Master. Considering not only how good Patrick O'Kane was, but also how interesting Ashad was as a Cyberman, I found this eventual fate for this character disappointing and wasteful of an interesting character. He was just dumped from the narrative at the moment when he was no longer needed. Even the companions are treated abysmally, bar one scene each where they get the chance to show how far they have developed since joining the Doctor. This really should have been the companion's episode: a chance to show how they, with all the skills and experience they have learnt over their two seasons in the TARDIS, are able to rescue the Doctor from the Master's clutches. And you get little glimmers of it every now and again, but they just fade away, or are used as cheap jokes. The acting from all four of them is superb, as you'd expect, but the companions just feel like background characters in a story that should be all about them. As for the Brendan part of the plot from "Ascension of the Cybermen"... well, that was basically ignored, so why they bothered to include it at all baffles me. I can see literally no reason why it was included, as, with the revelation of what those scenes were actually about, those scenes does not serve any purpose. The production is once again superb, and I continue to maintain that the quality of the team working on Doctor Who in terms of directing, set design, CGI animation and cinematography have rarely been bettered. "The Timeless Children" looks beautiful, and the shots of the destroyed Gallifrey are particularly breath-taking, especially using a reversed camera shot from "Hell Bent", which just shows how far Gallifrey has come since that story. Director Jamie Magnus Stone pulls all the stops out for this finale, even if it doesn't really deserve it.

"Jodie, have you seen Chris?"
"I know. He's pacing up and down the corridor outside,
wondering how he can explain something about a 'Seal of
Rassilon' and "Revenge of the Cybermen". Don't ask me."

And now, we come to the biggie: the moment you've all been waiting for. That twist. Well, let me start by saying it was guessable from the start, so very few should be acting surprised. And let me continue by saying that, by going down that route, Chris Chibnall has single-handedly destroyed one of the greatest parts of Doctor Who for me: the simplicity of the backstory. Now, I know there have been many attempts in the show and the expanded media before to re-write bits of the Doctor's backstory, from leaving Gallifrey to whether Susan was even the Doctor's biological granddaughter. However, these have, really, been little more than hints, maybe even nothing more than speculation that the Doctor might be 'more than just another Time Lord' (to quote a deleted line for the Seventh Doctor from "Remembrance of the Daleks"). The main point that everyone agrees on, that has been established from "The War Games" in 1969, was that the Doctor was a Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and left Gallifrey because he was bored. He wanted to explore and see the universe. That was it. The Doctor's official backstory needed to be no more complicated than that. Even Steven Moffat, who, on several occasions teetered dangerously close to revealing too much, pulled himself back when it looked like he was going too far. Chibnall, however, decided not to bother doing that, and to, instead, just go the whole hog, and turn the Doctor's backstory from 'simple, easy to understand, relatable' to 'overblown, sci-fi bafflegab, un-relatable'. It's the sort of thing that Russell T Davies would never have even dreamed of attempting (and the fact I'm using Russell as a positive example shows how disastrous this is for me), because it ends up bogging the Doctor down in even more superfluous backstory the viewing public at home really have no interest in at all. Only the fans really care about this sort of stuff, and about half of them won't even like it anyway. But, ultimately, whether you like this twist or not comes down to your personal preferences, and, for me, I do not. Despite the fact that the Doctor was an alien, who came from another planet, and who travelled in time and space, I could feel like I could relate to their desire to be set free from their boring, humdrum life and see all of the universe. That they didn't start out as some God-like figure, but was just someone ordinary who wanted a different life to the one set out for them. That was what appeal the Doctor had for me: that I could be just like them, stuck in an ordinary life, and still go and do amazing things. And all the amazing things that the Doctor has done aren't because they was destined to be special, but because they just helped people out, and were kind. That was much more engaging than a 'Chosen One' narrative, which feels more like the realm of Star Wars than Doctor Who to me. I can't connect to a 'Chosen One': I can to someone who wants to do something different with their life. I just feel like this is one addition to the cannon that actually takes away from the appeal of the show, for me at least. You may say there is added mystery to the Doctor's backstory now, as we don't know where the Doctor really comes from, but that's a mystery that will probably end up being solved in a few season's time. All the earlier Doctors we have seen will probably end up being cast by Big Finish in the future. I don't see any mystery being added to the Doctor's story, just taken away. And I'm aware that a lot of my issues with this story are personal ones. If you are reading this, and you really enjoyed this episode, then all power to you. You managed to see something I did not, so I'm glad for you. However, I simply cannot get over the massive issues that this story presents, because, for me, they fundamentally alter the mythology of my personal view of Doctor Who, to a point beyond which I find acceptable. It is totally personal preference, but, for me, this cannot belong with the Doctor Who I grew up with and loved growing up.

"The Timeless Children" was and is everything I don't want Doctor Who to be. It's slaughtering of the Doctor's backstory is enough of a reason for me not to like it, but it doesn't help itself by being poorly written with a lack of focus, needless use of glorified continuity and a complete dearth of anything even approaching meaningful character drama. We thought the franchise could not get any lower than "Hell Bent". Turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg. Mark "The Timeless Children" folks: this is officially the point at which I give up any hope with modern Doctor Who.

The looks basically sum it all up, really...

All pictures copyright to the BBC. Thank you very much for reading. Apologies for the negativity.