I hadn't been concerned about infinite regenerations so much as the Master's ability to singlehandedly destroy the Citadel and defeat the rest of the Time Lords seemingly without raising a sweat, when the combined might of all the Daleks couldn't do it. Why is nobody outraged about *that*?
I think the carnage of Chibnall's fanfiction just throws out too many things to find ridiculous all at the same time. Its certainly another ridiculous aspect of his plot arc though.
I always assumed that the doctor having infinite regenerations was implied by Tom Baker's cameo as the curator, and the line "over time you find yourself, revisiting a few old favourites"
What I have been wondering, is if the Doctor is the timeless child. Then when Clara entered the Doctor's timestream on Trenzalore, how come there was no evidence of these other incarnations? Even if the Doctor had no memory of them, should there not have been a trace of them in the scar across space and time left by the Doctor?
I mean they didn't show capaldi or whittaker either for obvious reasons. Personally I think the division would have put a time lock over any pre hartnell stuff when they wiped his memory.
Not to get to esoteric, but the real life nature of time is really dependent of your perception of it. So, in theory, the sci fantasy Doctor Who version of time would also be dependent of your memories of it. That's how the Doctor and their companions are able to remember events that have been erased from history, like Clara and Pink's descendant.
@@thomasleedham6572 Yeah but that grave of 11 is when he dies on Trenzalore and never regenaretas in 12 Clara changed the future by making time Lords give Doctor more regenarations
The timeless child retcons pretty much everything that has happened to the doctor. Especially what had happened to him on trenzalor where he was actually dying and was then granted a new regeneration cycle by the timelords.
@SofieHiyatsuki as this point it's not believable he's some random timelord. He has to be one of the original 3 or from six-fold realm. If he is from six-fold relm ie actually an old god it would make everything make sense but alot of people wouldn't like that.
@@jamesgray5900 I could deal with him being “The Other” of the 3. There’re books and previous references to draw on and point to for that. The timeless child bullshit? No. Chib’s fanfiction asspull and the fact that RTD not only didn’t get rid of it, but continues to build it up, tear down the most popular New Who Doctor, and doing what they’re doing now? Yeah no. Far as I’m concerned, the Doctor is still in the confession dial. He never left and never will at this point. The show is effectively dead. It’s in a vegetative state and won’t recover. It’s too far gone.
I have to agree. Especially that part of how the Master felt about the Doctor as kids. It cheapens the 'cosmic' feel given by the 10th Doctor in the "Sound of Drums" with gazing into the time vortex.
Hagunemnon yes, I would take what the Master says with a pinch of salt. Or he could just be plain wrong. Remember, the information was not intact and heavily redacted. I would like to see more evidence.
The Doctor may have unlimited regenerations, but like Tennant's Doctor said at one point, it's still similar to dying: "a new man walks away." And there are other ways to threaten the Doctor; through companions, torture, imprisonment etc. It doesnt always have to be the threat of death. In fact, that sort of punishment is arguably more threatening now, imagine being imprisoned or tortured for eternity, without even the promise of death to end your suffering. That's way more terrifying to me
It makes Trenzalor and the threat that surrounded that redundant. Why bother if he was always just gonna bounce right back up? Oh sure the personality changes, but guess what: The Doctor is STILL the Doctor. There goes any suspense. Even IF we know the Doctor is going to be fine by the end of it, writers far more clever than Chinballs and Co have been able to ramp up the tension and drama to where MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, he might not! If it's infinite, why was he sitting there growing old? He didn't need to? He was infinite. His whole "Got nothing left." Spiel, WHERE YOU SEE THE REGENERATION ENERGY EXTERNALLY ENTER HIS BODY, Capaldi's "fake regeneration" scene, so on, so forth. Oh, doesn't matter. No, it means you're a shit writer and a vandal who can't even figure out your own lore and mythology even when it slaps you in the face like a pimp.
My biggest concern is how many more "Ruths" are going to turn up, it now open season for writers to create their ideal doctor, claim they are pre-Hartnall and shoe horn new Doctors into lore.
What if hartnell was never the REAL doctor but they used her mind scan to give him false memories that have stuck and his "granddaughter" was actually an agent of the time lord CIA keeping an eye on him making sure he kept away from the REAL ruth Doctor
@@mainemail5506 not a retcon but s truth, why would they let him steal a tardis and not try to retrieve it? What if it was Ruth's first and was in for repair and the chameleon circuit was temporarily fixed and he re-damaged it and it got stuck once more into that setting
I have 2 theories for why Ruth’s TARDIS is a police box, without being stuck on it, and both of them start with the idea that Ruth had a type 40 then eventually it was put in storage when she regenerated and her memory was wiped, then the first doctor stole what he didn’t know had already been his TARDIS, maybe that even played a part in why she was unlocked. A) the TARDIS (who remember experiences all of her life simultaneously) was tying to signal the 13th doctor, so pretended to be already stuck on a police box. B) the TARDIS (who remember experiences all of her life simultaneously) knew that it would be best for the Doctor if she didn’t know where Ruth was on her timeline, and was trying to protect her, and therefore pretended to be already stuck on a police box.
Must of sounded good inside your head but no I mean Hell No. What ever Chib's thought as he put that in the earlier episode was just lazy f^&&** writing.
I was expecting the master say I am the timeless child and let's be honest that would have been far more interesting it would show why he is so crazy and keeps coming back all the time
Now that would've been interesting. I would have implied or asked the question was he left on the other side of the portal as he was because adults on the other side knew he was a bad seed child. That would have been interesting. Heck selling pancakes or hot dogs at the portal would have been more interesting than Chibs' cyber time lords with robes and headdresses and serial child murder by a foster mom.
I would've been ok with anyone being the timeless child except for the doctor. The Master would've been a great choice. But even more interesting would've been a brand new character. Someone who could change the dynamic between the Doctor and the Master, being Time Lords, and the real deal.
the biggest problem I can think of with the Master being the Timeless Child is that he has spent his every lifetime doing whatever he could to stave off death to continue his ambition. honestly the Master being the timeless child would have felt like a bit more of an asspull with that in mind, there was a point where his body wouldn't regenerate even if he wanted it to (which he very much did)
Please! We all know their in the Tommy Westphall universe. He has a snow globe with a TARDIS in it. At worst Bob Hartley ate something funny and Emily hasn't woken him yet.
Add after the first episode of the next season, the Thirteenth Doctor falls asleep. After a few hours, the thirteenth Doctor wakes up and finds herself as the First Doctor.
I like that it *can* give more mystery to the Doctors character, I don’t like that it frames him as this Time Lord Messiah and I hope the Master can say he lied a little bit because he’s toxic like that. I like that it makes it more special that he’s still essentially an angel who aspires to be human, I don’t like that it removes the fear or inevitability of death. I like that it ties together smaller retcon-y bits of Doctor Who history, I don’t like that it retcons the rest of the big, fully established bits of Doctor Who history.
Yeah I wouldn’t call it a retcon though. I think of a retcon as when history in a story is changed by simply disregarding / ignoring what’s already established. The Timeless Child was written in without any events so far having had to be changed, because the Doctor had re-started life as a child without those memories and because Rassilon had, in a shocking turn of events, lied. Most other things that don’t seem consistent (like the Trenzalore regeneration) can be explained as the sustaining of that lie
I honestly don't think that the Doctor's death is at all cheapened. We always new they were going to regenerate. But we still mourn the loss of a Doctor that we've become familiar with and the end of storylines that we loved.
It takes away the stakes. That's why fictional characters have weaknesses or limits placed on them because if you know they're always gonna be alright due to an ability or skill they have, what's the point in being worried about them when they find themselves in a dangerous situation?
"Does the Doctor having infinite regenerations cheapen their deaths?" While I can see why people would say yes, I don't think so myself, and the reason for that being reflected by 10 in his final moments. "I don't want to go" The Doctor may be immortal and can carry on in a new shape after a fatal wound, but the personality death they experience with each regeneration is still a death, the memories, the experiences, the connections may all remain, but the spark within that made the Doctor who they were at the time has gone, replaced with something else, or perhaps in a way, someone else. The Doctor as an entity may live on forever, but the Doctor as a person will die over and over again.
no it cheapens not just their deaths but also the whole point of a show. Regeneration having a limit means there is always a risk factor that you can run through time and time again and SOMEWAY, SOMEHOW, someone's gonna find a way to walk through all that. Now? What does it matter? They can't die. Suspension of disbelief has its limits. Even SUPERMAN - ya know, that guy with all that power in the red cape? HE HAS BEEN KILLED BEFORE! In fact he's been taken out in multiple ways and multiple occasions, which only served to make his rebound that much more triumphant. The writers basically said "this thing you cherished for so long? Not important. Meaningless. Stupid. Redundant. Old hat." Because of course they would, they're cultural vandals. They wouldn't know how to build on something if someone gave them EVERY SINGLE MEANS to do so. Oh wait: THEY DID! And they botched it nuclear!? NOOOOO. YOU DON'T SAY!
There's still an easy way to kill the Doctor tho. Regeneration doesn't work if there's no body left to regenerate. This was true even before this reveal.
Yeah because the Doctors enemies canonically get stupid when around him. Not like it's exactly hard to shoot someone with explosive projectiles afterall.
In answer to your opening question: Yes, yes it does. One of the things that made The Doctor special was that they weren't that special. They were an outcast even among their own people. A wash out, a nobody, that is until they took their destiny into their own hand and ran away in a stolen Tardis. But now they are a super special special supper being. I find this cheapens the character of The Dopctor. Personally, I think a more interesting twist would have been that The Master was The Timeless Child. I would have gone even further by saying that The Doctor was the Biological child of Tektaun and adopted sibling of The Timeless Child (young Master). As an adult The Doctor severed in The Division alongside The Master, and at the end of their service The Doctor recieved a complete mindwipe & regeneration reset. This being the standard retirement package for Division agents. But in The Master's case, instead of a reset they received a regeneration limiter -- something to prevent endless regeneration in the hopes of them quietly dying at the end of a full regeneration cycle. This might explain The Crispy Master. A Master unable to regenerate, but also undying. In fact, this might help explain many of The Master unexplained escapes from death. They aren't just another Time Lord, they are an anomaly of time itself. Where the Timeless Child revelation cheapens The Doctor, I think it would elevate The Master. But that's just my opinion.
The doctor is just a bloke in a box trying to make the universe a better place, a person who saw all of time and space and decided to run and never stop, someone that looks out for Earth and other races, and all of that... Kinda loses its luster if they were some kind of star child digi-destined to fight evil in every place and time. What is the point of being reminded to ALWAYS HOLD TO THE MARK, to "just save one family", that Time Lord Victorious is wrong, if the doctor is a special case and the rules don't apply to him/her.
@TheBobBrom Being the child of Tektaun doesn't have to mean that The Doctor is ten million years old. As Lords of Time it wouldn't be hard for them to relocate the factory reset forms of The Doctor & The Master to their current time frame. It might even be preferable for the likes of Rassilon who I presume would have wanted them out of the way while he rewrites the Time Lord history books. The important element that is the reason why I suggest this idea is that The Doctor and The Master share a rather close and rather complicated connection. The two seem to be bonded by time. They often seem to act like moral reflections of each other. It just seems right that they both share a history that goes all the way back to the beginning of both. It just seems right to me. There being a Master without The Doctor, or a Doctor without The Master just doesn't seem right.
In various times in the series’ history the pre leaving Gallifrey first Doctor has either been a prominent member of Time Lord society (The First Doctor as a scientist of repute - a pioneer amongst his people, no less - the Third speaks of many diplomatic missions he undertook, the Seventh as a mysterious founder of Gallifreyan society). At other time’s he’s been a facetious nobody, a drop out, like the mention of the Fourth’s poor grades at the academy, or the Tenth’s mentioning of his running away from the untempered Schism. At times a madman in a box - a criminal in exile or even Lord President of Gallifrey itself. There is room for both of these aspects of the Doctor and they will continue to wax and wane over time. I really wouldn’t worry - the Doctor doesn’t seem too keen to revel in it - imagine the gloating though if the Master was the Timeless Child! I think it matches up with the early draft of Power of the Daleks - where the Second Doctor tells Ben and Polly he has ‘renewed’ himself before (also in the novelisation) and I was never convinced the Morbius Doctors were incarnations of Morbius in the mind bending battle. It supports ideas in the Seventh Doctor era too. Perhaps the Seventh did know about his former incarnations and later forgot them for reasons Big Finish May tell us. And if a future show runner wants to ignore all this Timeless Child stuff it collide be written out in one line.
Actually the Doctor is no more special than she was before. The Timeless Child;'s endless regeneration abilities were genetic and therefore her entire species had them. If her entire species had them she is no more special due to having them than the Doctor as a Time Lord is special for having 12 regenerations. Besides, the Doctor has been established as special for ages... special in terms of knowledge and how clever the Doctor is. The Doctor is able to outsmart and out knowledge even other Time Lords and solve problems even the entire species cannot solve (eg The Last Great Time War).
It doesn't cheapen the Doctor's death at all. It's still the ego-death of an individual. As the 10th Doctor says, "It feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away . . . and I'm dead." The body continues, in a way. The memories are preserved, more or less. In some sense the Timeless Child/Doctor/Valeyard/etc. continues, but the specific nature of each individual is lost when regeneration occurs. It's not death as humans would generally understand it, but in some ways it's worse. Many human ideas of an afterlife have a continuity of identity in some afterlife, at least for some or for some time: Heaven and Hell (how pleasant the continued identity finds it notwithstanding), Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, etc. Some have a continuity of spirit in a new body and life (Hindu rebirth, drinking from the river Lethe and being reborn in Greek myth) or continuity for some time (Hades, where souls retain identity as long as they are remembered by the living). Most myths that have the individual personality cease in some way but some other identity walk around in a version of the original body are horror stories: dybbuks, vampires, zombies, body snatchers, etc. Vampires in the Buffyverse have the original memories, but the original soul has passed on and a demonic spirit is using the body and memories, but doesn't realize the memories aren't its own. Timelords are sort of the reverse: the original soul remains, but the memories and sense of self are scrambled, reassembled, and reset, and the different egos rarely realize they are, in a very real way, not the same person that created the memories. It's not a form of immortality that many would envy, if they stopped and gave it some thought.
I think that when they erased The Timeless Child's memory before retirement, the Timelords put the limit on the child then for a further 13 lives. So when they pass the energy through the crack in Time of The Doctor, they just unlock the ability to constantly regenerate.
Thank you. This is what I thought. But I believe the other is one of the other doctors who went into a loom and the loom put the limit of the regenerations on the other and was reborn as the doctoe
This is unlikely the timeless child was patient zero the Timelords needed the timeless child to have perpetual regenerations in case their regenerations started to fail not to mention the timeless child doesn't share the biology of Gallifreyians meaning the timeless child genetically carries the blueprint for regenerations so the child has the option to turn off the 12limit blocker.
@thomas burns nope go rewatch it she regenerates not that's stupid B's saying ohh eco system what a cop out she's a perfect clone of the doctor so bam 2 timeless children
There are always dangers worse than death for the Doctor which challenge all the values of infinite regenerations. Because Doctor Who, like any enduring show, must continually provide conflicts for the sake of drama and adventure, I wouldn’t expect the Timeless Child revelation to be damaging in that respect for such an iconically conflicted hero.
I'm not sure this is a "get out of death free card" for The Doctor, after all we have no explanation of how they limited regenerations and if the same methodology wouldn't have worked on the Timeless Child. I'm betting they would have wanted to limit the Child at some point, likely right before or during the mind wipe right before Doctor #1. Maybe the Timelords were threatening to apply the limit to The Ruth Doctor, and that's the real reason she was hiding out on the run from the Timelord's, after waking up regenerated in Hartnell's body with no memory of what happened he followed a subconscious desire to run away from the Gallifrey once again, this time with a limit of 12 lives the Timelords just let him go, confident he didn't know anything.
Also even if The Doctor doesn't have a natural limit to regens, we've been told repeatedly that there are weapons powerful enough to remove all hope of regeneration. This is how episodes like "Turn Left" could still happen, and how the Master's Lazer Screwdriver could have worked on The Doctor.
That sucks imagine knowing someone butchered your superpower and copied it on everyone like if something so personal to me such as my natural hair colour or worst my neurology was copied set to an lesser degree put on everyone then they demanded I be forced to be an lesser degree I'd be pissed please don't get ideas anyone seeing this.
It's been said there are multiple stacked up reasons why The Doctor left Galifrey. The Hybrid, The Council going after him, already wanting to see the stars, boredom of their society and many others
The episode _is_ named _The Timeless Children,_ so... Maybe they're both Timeless Children. That would have a bit of poetry to it. The Doctor and The Master, destined to be Yin and Yang over all of time. We don't know the previous Doctors _didn't_ have a Master, so it's possible.
Frankly having the master has the Timeless child makes a little bit more sense to me. It would explain his various regenerations , as well as his Madness. Imagine being a young child and endlessly torture, experimented on, and even killed I need to find yourself in that same situation over and over and over
@@RobertJWaco once upon a time, the doctor said "In some ways, we're the same timelord..." Maybe the timeless child was split in two, somehow, perhaps the Doctor is a metacrisis regeneration of the Master/Timeless child with an ordinary gallifreyan. Which would explain why the master is called the master: They are the Master Copy for regeneration, and the Doctored Copy was the Other.
The Master started to say “once upon a time ...” the stopped, made an ironic sound and then said “once upon on a TIMES... “ The Last Great Time War is not the only Time War, it was not even only the second. There were places on Gallifrey that a person could walk through wreckage of some of the other wars in which pieces of contracting historical artifacts would stand next to each other - where reality changed as you crossed the street in others and back again. And if fact, where you could travel from a place to where the capital was destroyed - just like we saw in the Timeless Children. Oh my. Of course that was, either in the Virgin 6th Doctor novels or BBC 7th Doctor novels, so folks would be quick to argue it wasn’t canonical, but if all these time wars have mixed up history to that point (think “Let’s Kill Hitler” but on Gallifrey instead of Earth) that it’s all real all at once, then it’s just as much canon as anything else. The Stranger coming off the loom is the fiction, from the Doctor’s perspective, given the new revelations. The times less fiction that was necessary for him not to know consciously about timeless truth! Missy said “I’ve know [the Doctor] since he was a little girl!” To which the Doctor wagged a finger at her in I think Hellbent (or thereabouts).
Do not know if she said it 2 times but she said it in the magician apprentice the way she said it though two of what she said was true the 3rd was a lie.
Jose Ignacio Real Lozano yes is n magicians apprentice starting at 18.13 Missy said the 3 things in Hell Bent the doctor himself told Clara starting at 30.12
Jose Ignacio Real Lozano It was not the president’s wife it was the president’s daughter they mentioned the Shobogans here also . The lie was perpetuated by the Shobogans
Rassilon did say, "How many lives did we give you, Doctor?" With that in mind, if the Doctor is the Timeless Child, I would have to guess that Rassilon does not know. It is also possible that when the Doctor was allowed to go past that 12 regeneration, it also removed the limit with someone else being the Timeless Child.
Love your videos, as always. A few points: 1. The assumption that the Timeless Child couldn't have their regenerations capped, is balanced by the opposite assumption, that they could have. There's nothing that points to either. The only real clue, is that we know the cap was created and implemented for all Time Lords. To me, at least, that is a better "hint" that the technology was easily advanced enough to include the Child. But again, there's no real proof for either take. 2. I keep seeing people describe The Doctor as some sort of savior or Messiah. I'm not sure why, because it looked pretty obvious, to me, that the Timeless Child was turned into a lab rat by their adoptive mother. A mother who seemed to be forcing regenerations to learn more, which lends itself to the ugly thought that maybe she was hurting the Child. Even killing. You can't be a savior if you're being biologically raped over and over again by the people you're supposedly saving. 3. I don't believe the Division's other purpose was to hide the Child. It seems, to me, that it was a secret agency formed by rebellious Time Lords. It's the only time, I think, that the Timeless Child smiles. My take, is that Jo's Doctor was on the run from her retirement. She didn't want her memories wiped. Obviously, they eventually caught up with her. I'm not sure at all if the Timeless Child wasn't wiped before, to get rid of all the lab rat memories. Anyhoo, that's it. Sorry for the mess, I'm pretty high. Cheers. Edit: Dammit, I forgot one. 4. Death is still important, because of the fact that that particular Doctor dies. A new version takes their place. The same, yet vastly different in important ways. The Doctor was never afraid of the Big Death, but lamented the loss of his current selves over the years. Sorry for the late edit!
1. I'm not sure, but it feels more intuititve. If anything ever went wrong (with the copying mechanism or regeneration expansion-packs), and the Timeless Child had fallen off a cliff once too often, their source of power may be lost forever. In that light, tempering with the original (so s/he could die) may not be the bestest of ideas. Also, there's the question if they even could. Splicing a bit of information/ability into another Gallifreyan, changing that information beforehand so it is not as limitless sounds easy enough(?), where forcefully changing a being that can "heal" itself at least from mortal wounds ...I dunno, that kinda sounds tricky to me. Capping would in effect be a "fatal" infliction, so wouldn't the Child just regenerate into a "healthy" state again? @_@ .....but then again, the entirety of the regeneration-process is far beyond our (or at least: my) understanding; they may call it science in the show and use terms like "splicing" and "synthezising" and "altering DNA" ... ... I mean... "DNA" ...ooookay... but in the end the whole thing resembles magic more than anything else (or at least, something energy-related, rather than merely matter-based, with all the no-phsyical contact requiring shiny spectacle that comes with transfering regenerations). So, who are we / am I to judge, what's possible or not, what's smart or not. What we've seen is the "Timeless Child" regernating over and over. We've been told the Timelords were capped. We were not told the Child was. We can savely assume Ruth happened after the Timelords were capped (unless the Master told things out of order). Who is clearly a regeneration before / additionally to the known Doctors and the known regeneration circle(s). That's the current canon for the audience until definite information is given. We can either infer from that "The Docter is not capped" or "The Doctor has been given several expansions, one after another". We may also ask, if the Doctor maybe hasn't been given another set of regenerations at Trenzalore, but maybe had been "un-capped" (as the Timelords were unable to watch over him, personally - if that's a thing they, or at least some of them, do). That's the most annoying part, to me: We have been given "answers" that don't really answer anything, but only throw previously established facts (intentional facts by the showrunners at their time, who were careful to add to / elaborate on but never to recklessly -per- subvert previously established lore!) into question and raise more questions on their own - and not necessarily in the constructive way. My bigger question is, if River was given a "helluva start" by being born in the Tardis, but having the ability because of being altered by the Kovarian Chapter - if they were able to give her Timelord-powers of regeneration, does that mean they were able to copy the tech, just like that? I mean, they did, right? Turn River into a human(!) that was able to regenerate. Now that it's established the regeneration is a seperate trait, that opens just a can of worms nobody wanted to be opened. 2. ...have you heard of Jesus? ^_- There are plenty saviour / messiah stories in various cultures, that have their "One" go through horrible tribunals while prevailing as a "one of a kind" or "pure heart" or "unequaled warrior" or whatever the culture deems the most desirable attribute. But, I guess, what most of us mean, is that the Doctor, while special and admirable in his/her own right, was always "one of us". Born and raised amongst the common; a rebel against the higher-ups... Gallifrey and its Timelords acting as sort of a mirror to our own world, and the Doctor being just a "mad man with a box". One of them. One of us. Now we've got a God-like being, who is alien to his/her own world; an anomality to begin with; a Connor MacLeod or Anakin or Tsukino Usagi or Buffy or Neo or Son-Goku or Superman (or whatever you prefer) who was special from the start, who is an unkown, who may have even more unkown abilities, who may be limitless (even beyond the whole regeneration talk); who is not only a fish out of water, but literally alien, possibly even to this entire universe / dimension... Sure, as hammered home in the episode, this doesn't change that the Doctor is still a rebel and "a mad man [or woman] with a box", but s/he now became the origin of the Timelords; everything special about the Timelords came from the Doctor (well, not the time-travel, but that got panned over so I may do the same). That *is* a big change of perception. ..all the while this just raises (once more) much bigger questions: Where did that child come from? Why was it there? 3. Not sure what their purpose was. I was rather busy internally screaming at that point. But to my understanding, they were not merely rebellious Timelords. Wasn't the very creator of the Timelords (whatshername, the "adoptive mother" of the TC) involved in that? And The Child was as well. They seemed rather high-up in the command-chain to me... 4. I agree. From all the public backlash, that's one argument I cannot get behind at all. It does, however take away the entire emotional impact of Smith's Doctor's (almost final -- sorry, now in quotes: almost "final") death. That is, unless we get the information that the Doctor indeed was capped (at the time?).
Just because the 12 regenerations thing is an artificial limit, it doesn't follow that there isn't a natural limit, too. Or that there's no way to kill a Time Lord; indeed, it's been established that interrupting an regeneration can destroy a Time Lord.
@@dataweaver Indeed. Despite what some have assumed - and some have asserted almost as fact - it wasn't actually stated that the Timeless Child was immortal, nor that (s)he had limitless regenerations.
This was the first really fair and reasonable look at the whole situation I've seen and I really really appreciated it and it's earned my blind subscription to your channel
Something I only noticed today was that the device they use on "Brendan" is eerily similar to the Chameleon Arch, and my theory is that before they reset the Doctor, they weren't Gallifreyan, but due to the Chameleon Arch's abilities, when the Doctor is reset, they are turned into a Gallifreyan with the Thirteen lives limit.
madeleine smallwood “not how it works” has no meaning in Doctor Who. How anything works changes all the time in this show. That’s the whole point. The show is about tackling the impossible. Put a limit on anything, and the show loses its meaning.
Thoughts * In the comics the Master has a child form, and RTD thinks the Master was literal when Yana said he became a baby. The Timeless Child being turned into baby Hartnell would help cover up things and cause amnesia * Tecteun may be Omega. Rassilon was the warlord and even stole some of his achievements. Omega wanted to atone and reveal the truth, Rassilon sabotaged his black hole experiment. Currently he's too crazy to speak up(or maybe he healed somehow and became the Mysterious Woman, which 10 subconsciously remembered as his surrogate mother) * The Other was probably the Timeless Child, just becoming the Doctor through amnesia/infancy than loon reincarnation * 11 may have not regenerated without the Time Lords because he thought he was a normal Time Lord. The Master chose not to regenerate, maybe 11 assuming he can't regenerate would've stopped him regenerating. Psychosomatic * Early it was implied the Doctor was a future human. Maybe he's subconsciously remembering that. The Timeless Child was a human from another universe where they were more advanced and achieved regeneration, which is why humans like River Song had the potential * We aren't told if Ruth is pre-Hartnell, maybe she's Season 6B and discovered the truth after working for the CIA. The Division could be a rival organization like the FBI
In an earlier video on Rassilon, CI mentioned that in addition to Rassilon and Omega there was another researcher, Thremix, who discovered the key to immortality and developed a virus to dispense it to others, so maybe Tecteun is not Rassilon or Omega but Thremix. Thremix is referred to as "he" but on her first regeneration Tecteun did become male. So altogether, the founders of Time Lord society could be Rassilon, Omega, Thremix (Tecteun), and the Other (the Timeless Child/the Doctor). CI speculates that, because of Rassilon's unique knowledge of infinite regenerations, he could be Tecteun due to her direct experimentation on the child, but with my idea that Tecteun is Thremix, perhaps Rassilon, after Thremix was assassinated, kept all of his/her research for himself in secret.
It's clearly shown that Tecteun and the young black male Doctor are sitting in the Divisions recruiting room, as the woman spells out what the Division is all about. That is, at a time after the Time Lords have built the capital city, the Citadel and have invented time travel. So, Tecteun is not Omega, nor Rassilon. Funnily enough, neither Tecteun nor that Doctor have aged a single day it seems, in the intervening hundreds or thousands of years since she injected herself with the serum and the Gallifreyan civilisation subsequently developed, expanded, built their cities, developed time travel and got to the point where they decided they needed 'the Division'. However, before that point, the Doctor child was clearly aging. Odd that.
He doesnt have infinite regenerations. He hasn't been the timeless child since before Hartnell. That's why he ran out of regenerations in TOTD. Thats something people dont seem to realise because they dont have an attention to detail. The doctor only found out they used to be the child, they didnt turn back into them.
Exactly, before Hartnells Doctor they wiped his memory, restricted his limit to the same as the rest of the Time Lords. In TOTD they gave him more, but in Hell Bent it appears Rassilon doesn't actually know how much the Doctor was given. Essentially making it ambiguous, and making the Timeless Child kinda pointless before it existed.
I missed that bit in Hell Bent, but I assumed it was 12. Now that she got the fobwatch in Flux, she can now become the timeless child again if she runs out of regens. This connects to a theory I've got about the 60th specials.
Thanks! This is the clearest, most thorough and most satisfying explanation of the mythos (to date) that I've heard anywhere. And, my two cents is that because we become invested in each incarnation of the Doctor, it doesn't really matter if she is immortal. Tom Baker's Doctor was not Immortal, but was unique. Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was not immortal, but was unique. We're watching a never-ending-story, and it's the details that enthrall us, not the big picture. If you loved Tennant's Doctor you cried when he "died", just as if he HAD died. I know I did. Timeless Child or no Timeless Child (and I actually love the concept), the Doctor would have to be Immortal for the show to continue, which is why we got regeneration to begin with. And of course the Doctor is somehow special -- that's been evident all along.
I'm hoping that the Master is in fact the timeless child with Doctor being The Other. I agree that little has changed from old who after all we have Morbius the Cartmel master plan and Lungbarrow to fall back on and it literally opens up a whole new universe for the Doctor. I very much enjoy you intelligent and knowledgeable histories/ reviews which are level headed and well balanced, lots of work no doubt, thank you.
Morbius was an instance that even within its own canon they spent DECADES trying to skate around, not bring to the forefront. This changes quite a lot.
The infinite regenerations make the Valeyard more interesting to me. At some point in the future, the Doctor is gonna run out of their "infinite" lives and I'd love to know how that could happen.
5:50 It's been known since "The Five Doctors" that the High Council could grant a new life cycle. From that same show, we learned what sort of "immortality" Rassilon had discovered. And the twelve-regeneration limit was not "soft canon," whatever that may mean.
I like your videos. They're always well thought out and narrated. One thing I'd point out though is that the Doctor, and many of her companions post 2005, have been becoming more and more centred around them. The concept of a wandering stranger doing random acts of good hasn't really been purely like that for a while now. So being the timeless child, isn't such a big thing imho. The bigger thing is that it effectively turns The Doctor into an orphan, and her next 1-2 seasons might move towards searching for her own background, just like many orphans do today.
Making the master the Timeless child would have explain how he survived after being killed by Sims’ Master. Realizing she didn’t die when she was killed she seeks to understand better how she survived. And finds out about the timeless child out of anger destroys Gallifrey.
So I know consistency isn’t a huge thing in the history of The Doctor Who Universe but I think in the modern era these issues have become a bigger deal. People seem to crave some logic. And it definitely helps to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary for sci-fi shows like this. With that in mind I’d like to ask the following: 1. What of the Doctors’ physiology - 2 hearts etc. How is it that this inter dimensional being is found by someone with the same basic anatomy. What are the chances? 2. How is it that in the past 50years of episodes the Doctor has never run into other incarnations of Him/herself that s/he did not know of? Ruth knows she is the Doctor??? 3. How would the Doctor regenerate to infant form so that as a child s/he could look into the well of time alongside the master???? So many of these type of questions that are opened by the writing choices that create enough issues to pull you from the basic entertainment value of the show. Though admittedly the pure entertainment value is certainly at an all time low.
also the we were never bothered by his ability to survive death before because what both we and the doctor were always really afraid of was that someone new taking would taking over and replacing him especially when we really liked this version, and we no idea what's coming next especially when it's very possible that the next guy could be totally evil like the 7th doctor or the valyard
It also explains a lot. (1.) why the doctor never fit in and was constantly having trouble with the time lords. (2.) it actually makes the hybrid make sense. That plot was a cluster that made no sense, but now it could be argued that the Time Lords are the hybrids between whatever The Doctor is and the people of Galifrey. The Second Doctor says he ran when he got bored. Rule 1 is that the Doctor lies. He wasn’t bored. It was very complicated. (3). Why there was a 13th Doctor at all (since our buddy the War Doctor (RIP John Hurt) was a problematic extra generation. (4.) it also adds a theme of abuse and emancipation. The Doctor was in effect a slave and captive of the evil Time Lords. At some time in The Doctor’s long life, he/she named his/herself the Doctor to say that he/she wasn’t the slave. He/she was her/himself and she helps people. I like it. It also explains why he took Susan and ran off. What were they going to do to Susan? Or would he have lost all memory of Susan if they wiped his memory again? Also what if they brought the Galifreyans back (because the Master is a liar and I have doubts he killed them all) and they are the new villains? They could bring back a version of Romana and Susan and make them his allis against the evil time lords. And this doesn’t have to be the end of Risk for the Doctor. I agree with writers like Joss Whedon and George RR Martin that without Risk the story is basically ruined. There might be away to develop a fatal flaw the doctor has. How the doctor is killed might still matter and what if in one regeneration is evil? What if the Doctor becomes the villain in the story after a regen and the Master fights him off? This honestly might not be a bad thing. I mean think about the bad things the Time Lords did to him in the original series. They’re not completely a benevolent race.
Have we all seriously forgot what this means to the Doctor's Daughter? she was in fact not Gallifreyan but pure recombined DNA of the Timeless Child! This means she is perhaps NOT limited in the 12 cap as they are? (her first regeneration(?) was not triggered by exposure to the time vortex but the chemical stew terraforming agent the "Breath of Life" but there was no change of form) If so, is there is a 2nd timeless child ? or perhaps she still awaits exposure to the time vortex for a full activation of the regeneration ability. Still waiting for that character to return... (BUT WE HAD JACK BACK! AND WE NEEDS MORE! )
Question: Did the timeless child, since the child is from another dimension had 2 hearts just like the timelords? Did tatuc , the very first time lord to regenerate into 2 hearts? Did she started with one heart? What are the chances that the timeless child and tatuc had 2 hearts to begin with? Or the timeless child gave the timelords 2 hearts?
another question that comes to mind for me, in light of discoveries from the most recent episode, regards omega's discovery of time travel. We still know very little about it, and how the first TARDIS was constructed - that is, if there is an alternate to what high galifreyan timelord society claims regarding omega, whether that too be in question, or not [given what we have just witnessed in the timeless children].
i think when the doctor's memory was wiped and they became the 1st doctor the division genetically altered the doctor to only have 13 lives like the rest of the timelords so the doctor couldn't discover he was the timeless child
Pretty sure that's established, but it does seem to have passed people by. The second set they gave him was alsl ambiguous as to how many they actually gave him, so they didn't even need to say oh well actually you had infinite already.
It is not "toxic" to point that the Timeless Child is both a rotten story and messes up Doctor Who. If Doctor Who is to have a future the "Timeless Child" is going to either have to be ignored or explained away - perhaps by saying this was another universe.
I'm a biochemist, and I would like to add something about how this could all work scientifically. I could see the time vortex (or untempered schism, rather) _activating_ genes that are already there, causing the body to express those genes. It could also be something completely unnecessary, and just for show, put there to throw people off the "real" method. The way it was described, she gave herself, and many other proto-Time Lords the gene (through gene therapy of some sort) for regenerations, which would then be passed on _naturally_ from then on. As in, there's currently no gene therapy, aside from perhaps involved in removing (edit: or _adding!_ ) the limit, although that could also be done through another mechanism. So, the genes for regeneration are certainly already there. They may or may not be active. River is a different question altogether, unless humans have this gene and it's just latent and unexpressed since they aren't exposed to the time vortex as children (but then, you would have the issue that any human child exposed to it in the Tardis would be activated and have regeneration cycles, which doesn't happen), and exposure to the time vortex when conceived could have caused her to mutate the genes for regeneration, perhaps? Or, possibly humans do have the gene, but it's only possible to activate the gene by exposure considerably earlier, such as when they are a zygote. Additionally, it could be that some time lords have interbred with humans over time, and _some_ humans, such as Rory or Amy, have the latent, unactivated gene, which was then passed on and activated by the time vortex to River.
@@eternallylearning2811 No, it was specifically stated that she was _concieved_ aboard the Tardis while it was in the Time Vortex. I think it's conception while in the time vortex that's the key. If it was that simple, the Doctor couldn't take _any_ pregnant women on the Tardis, ever. That'd be a bit limiting, I would think.
@@chemputer It's also specifically stated that madame kovarian made changes to the kid's DNA prior to birth. I've always interpreted that as adding the regeneration powers on top of a much easier starting point. I.E. The time vortex can make it easier for someone to get regeneration, but doesn't do it all. (not to mention that Time Lord and human physiology is eerily similar...)
@@raingramAh, that's very important, thank you! I completely forgot about that! Yes, that could certainly be it, and would get around a bunch of problems. I could definitely see exposure to the Time Vortex from conception to birth pretty consistently being enough to do some weird timey wimey magic "science" to allow her to add the gene therapy and be successful, when it wouldn't work on just your random human baby. Though, and I don't know why, but I always thought it was something to do with her conditioning, but your explanation does make a good bit more sense. Additionally, it could've been what placed the limit on her regeneration cycle, to begin with. I mean, we're trying to retrofit additional meaning onto past content made prior to this retcon, so "making sense" of it is always going to be _somewhat_ futile on some level, as in my mind what happened is what the story writers said or thought happened, and retcons fundamentally mess with that when you have a far-reaching revelation but that doesn't explain all the details of everything it effects, but it's still fun.
I kind of like the idea of the master being the Timeless child. Here is a being whose whole purpose has to been to extend his life. Perhaps it is on his life and he fears losing but his life in a greater sense. Imagine being a child and being tortured, experimented on, and sometimes even killed to advance scientific knowledge. It would be enough to drive anyone mad. So the dr. now becomes a companion to the master, someone to keep them sane and then control. Obviously they had somehow failed both the master and the doctor overtime have simply forgotten their roles? After all Universe has been around for a very very long time
I reckon that the Master is actually the Timeless Child and he misinterpreted the memories and they were actually his memories. Hence why he seems not to die. He was proper killed off in Capauldi finale. No coming back.... but what if killing himself actually removed the re-gen lock? and at some time after that event his original regen ability reignited. He probably thought he just got lucky. If Tecteun is infact Rasilon (changing her name when she took a Timelord mantle). Then her/his torture of the Timeless child to discover regen ability would make sense and be in part why the Master has a pathological hatred of Timelords and their society. He probably didn't know why as he probably has his mind wiped several times by Rasilon and the Timelords. Ironically may be he was known as the Doctor before the event that lead to his mind wipe and reversion to a child (by say the Sisters of Karn) which happen around the time of the actual Doctor's childhood? The Timelords hope the influence of the actual Doctor will stabilize him, but they can't, Rasilon did such a number on him that its carved into his DNA. ;) Pluusss. Here we go... the Tardis is actually the Master's originally?!?! When the event happened that the Master was reverted to childhood and his memory wiped, his Tardis was decommissioned and reverted to its original form, ripe for the actual Doctor to be guided to it by Clara many decades later. Boom. Now it all works and it doesn't destroy the Doctor at all and reinforces the Master and his backstory expanded.
What do you think the implications of the doctor not being a "time lord" (or natively from gallifrey) are? What's the deal with the two hearts thing? Is that part of the secret to regeneration? Why would both species have them? Could the doctor be born from gallifrey, but much later (No idea how at this point, but *time travel*), only to go back to the start? Are we maybe looking at an ouroboros situation where the doctor will eventually end up back in time as a child?
Okay, so I just started to watch Doctor Who again after Can You Hear Me in season 12 as thats where I stopped in 2020, and I was VERY pleasantly surprised with the last 3 episodes of the season. I just watched The Timeless Child and I have been thinking about it for hours..... I don't really have any issues with it overall, as it has added an entirely new dimension to the way we think about The Doctor and Timelords overall, *BUT* I have one issue with the whole timeline of things and that is the Ruth Doctor. She can't be pre- Hartnell because her Tardis is a police box!! That means she would have to have been after Hartnell and I'm a bit confused as to where she fits into it all. Does this get cleared up in season 13? Anyways I'm am surprisingly looking forward to the Dalek episode and season 13!
Unfortunately it seems Ruth is pre hartnell and the Tardis just decided to turn back into a police box, if its even the same one. My favourite theory is that shes between 2 and 3 though, and was covered up.
Where are we told or shown that she killed the kid? Who's to say that the Timeless Child couldn't regenerate at will? Who's to say that Shobogans/Gallifreyans live significantly longer than Timeless Children, and the kid was dying naturally whilst Tecteun barely aged at all?
@@GODCONVOYPRIME I didn't claim to be right. I was just pointing out that (a) we were not told that she killed the kid; and (b) other possibilities exist.
Yes - but all the companions are exposed to time travel too - They don’t regenerate. Critical thinking really does put this retcon under a scrutiny it cannot satisfactorily Shake-off.
Im devastated that they completely brushed over rassilon and omega, and didnt even use the perfect chance to explain the web of time to new-who fans and explain why galifrey is always at the next logical point in time when we see it, rather than being able to go to different times on galifrey!
Interesting as the sisterhood of Karn is supposed to be part of the origin of regeneration using their flame of eternal life. How is it linked now? I guess we can forget about things from books like Shobogans being a magic based society that became a science based society as it would make next to no sense anymore. Before the timeless child we could assume that the sacred flame was a prototype of regeneration but now I don't get how that fits in the lore.
What if "granddaughter" Susan Foreman was tasked with wiping #1's memory, but he stranded her on post-Dalek invasion Earth, never went back for her, and was able to live out several regenerations as "The Doctor"?
I love it when shows do this. Shows that go on for this long have incredibly convoluted lore that can act as a detriment to future stories. Having one simple Canon for everything to fall under allows for easier arc writing and character development. I get this is an extremely controversial opinion, but It's one I felt like I had to share.
Thank you thank you. I'm so glad you did this video. I myself do not understand how people can be so upset over changes to a history that a lot of them had no clue about. I've watched most of classic Who you mentioned we get to meet a version of the doctor that's from near the end of his regeneration what happened to that because that would have been Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi and we all know it wasn't. So yes they change things just like the War Doctor you thought you knew how many doctors are where before nope there's another dude you never heard of. I read some of the comments Ramon the internet this weekend I said it's amazing how people want to tack on classic Who history when it suits them but then dismiss it when it doesn't. I have a friend who was upset about this episode he said it destroys the history of the doctor. I said how do you figure you've never even watched classic Who. he said I tried I just didn't like it and I went so what are you upset about. These are TV shows sometimes there are different groups of people that make them like Star Trek there's been five different major groups of teams if you will that have made Star Trek and yeah they contradict each other sometime.
The first Doctor is still the first Doctor, because he's the first one to choose the name Doctor and the promise that it constitutes. There may have been thousands of previous Timeless Children, but Hartnell is still definitively the First Doctor. Edit: Slight correction, considering we know that a previous version of the Timeless Child chose the name The Doctor, Hartnell's version is the First Doctor as far as he knows. It's possible that some core component of the Doctor's/Timeless Child's character inevitably bends toward that moral choice or question (the First Doctor said in a Thirteenth Doctor episode that the reason he stole a TARDIS and went off to explore the universe was that he couldn't figure out why good tended to triumph over evil more often than the reverse, since logically evil should be the easier choice and path to victory. He apparently never does figure out that it's his own interventions throughout his incarnations that are tipping the balance.)
There had to be a means by which to overcome the twelve re-generations, and handled well this could have been a stroke of genius, there really does need to be someone sufficiently well versed in the lore involved to cross check. I honestly think that this could be inculcated, really, really need someone now who knows what they're doing. I haven't been able to watch since capaldi's writing went so horrible, Troughton was my first Doctor and I haven't completely given up hope.
Well, the Doctor can still die during regeneration, and unless Turn Left gets retconned, that's rock solid. So the Doctor isn't invincible. I'm more interested in how inheritable infinite regenerations is. Because the 12 regenerations limit was expressly an artificial genetic limitation not a power limitation. So do the Doctor's children have infinite regenerations? Maybe any born on Gallifrey will have the same limit imposed, but what about Jenny? Sure her return to life didn't seem like regeneration... Until we saw (probably) the Doctor fall off a cliff and get up without fully regenerating. Look, just bring Susan or Jenny back!
Let's pedal things back a bit..... Could the Timeless Child not, for whatever reason, have been thrown into the looms and thus all future Gallifreyans are the Timeless Child genetically? Including the Doctor and the Master? Tecteun didn't seem to care much about the Timeless Child, repeatedly murdering it, maybe she was amoral enough to completely annihilate the child to create the Time Lords.
I'm going to go a step further with my crazy theory and suggest the Other threw himself into the looms after the Timeless Child in despair. And this is how the Doctor is both a reincarnation of the Other and has the Timeless Child's DNA.
@@KalRandom Watched it, don't agree that the ENTIRE series is dead. May not be able to move forward without rectonning 11/12, but its not hard to forget that they exist and watch/read/hear all of the earlier stuff.
@@Bobby90 Maybe not, but they need to do some major work before it can be appealing to watch. I still love Dr. Who, just not this one. (and the whole writing)
It could be the case that the Doctor was only allowed to keep his memories & escaped after his regeneration limit was neutralized by Timelord science. So was considered no longer a threat to Rassilon. As the Chameleon Arc can extract regeneration ability and revert Timelords DNA to that original Gallifreyans. So the Doctor was limited to 12. The sisterhood of Carn might have be founded by Tecteon herself and so they knew who the Doctor is and so had to bring the Doctor back to life.
I've now got the headcannon theory that the Doctor is a bootstrap paradox. That at some point in the far future the Doctor will fall through the vortex and come out as a child in need of rescue. I've got no problem with infinite regenerations. They were always going to tack more on as needed and regeneration isn't immortality. Which was reinforced but the Master killing the Time Lords. There's still risk, just no countdown clock.
I don't think it does take away from it... in all the new who stuff... especially from 10... they have tried to establish the changes between regeneration as the death of the previous... and a new doctor... still with the same core values... but a new person as the more important factor than a "limit" on regenerations.... indeed, I think we saw this early with Capaldi... and when he recognised the face he now wore. So no... I think the "death" of a doctor is still just as important... and just as impactful... just for different reasons than the whole "one less regeneration" thing.
What if Romana fell through the future portal, to escape the cybermen, then regenerated into the black little girl. So that could make Romana The Doctor And the Time Lords take the regeneration energy from a future Timelord who fell through a portal and so this creates a loop
might be a odd topic but do you think you could do a video on what happened to the rest of the tardis capsules on gallifrey? just thought it might be cool to talk about thanks buddy :)
We don't know what became of Tectayun. She/he could potential be almost anywhere, if she/he indeed escaped The Master's rage near-genocide. We may never actually learn anything more about her. This episode did bother me, it doesn't change The Doctor, who she/he has always been. It did break continuity, & contradicts so many years of stories, though. I agree with you, the infinite lifespan of the Doctor, now, is very problematic. It takes the edge of things. It was a lazy, slipshod new, ill-conceived plot device to guarantee future shows. It was conceived through lazy writing to justify future lazy writing.
Well, who’s to say they didn’t limit the Doctor? We see that it was possible for them to give the Doctor a new regeneration cycle. They could have found a way to make the Doctor just like any Time Lord. Just granting regeneration cycles as they saw fit.
Kennedy Lehane or yet again they may not have needed to. In theory a timelord could actually regenerate a thirteenth time without an extension but due to the symbiotic nuclei only being able to handle twelve those who attempt this go insane. It could be that the Doctor was not willing to attempt it as he fully knew the risks
You had constantly repeated the still from The Brain of Morbius and in that clip the character of Morbius says to the Doctor (played by Tom Baker at that time of the series) "How long Doctor, how long have you lived?" So even in the classic series they were trying to say that there were definitely Doctors before the William Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor so it's not like the new series isn't following it's own early days
So you are saying that one clip from one single episode explains the canon, but the hundreds of other episodes that say otherwise are wrong. I’m, sorry, but it doesn’t make sense to just ignore decades of canon for one mediocre episode. Not to mention the many plot holes this retcon creates. Hartnell was, and forever will be, the first doctor.
@@alexisaguirre7514 by you calling me childish that’s the immature behaviour that you have displayed and that is the kind of immature behaviour that I would expect from you
I'm gonna offer a counter theory and say Tecteun is the Other, the third found of Time Lord society after Rassilon and Omega. Alternatively, working off your theory, the Timeless Child is the Other.
Na-ah. IF we believe the Master (which I don't) in that case I think Tecteun would be Omega and The Child is The Other. Tecteun got the first dose giving her unlimited lives and then Rassilon. (Either her husband or lab partner) But Rassilon got his Ego and killed Tecteun this way (or at least got rid of her). And then there is a reason why The Other is kept in secret.
Im hoping that some of the continuity is respected by allowing Rassilon to still be the founder of the origin for regeneration. The Timeless Child made them aware of the fact, yes, but experiments with Time Travel, exposure to the Vortex and how the Vortex would differentiate an individuals cells into those which can regenerate was Rassilon’s doing. Along with his later studies which would allow him to dictate how that coding operated. From this discovery, he, after many years of working with the Division didn’t like the idea of sharing that glory and simply wanted to bury the true history.
I'm not bothered by the infinite regeneration thing cheapening a death. The revived series has done a lot to build that each regeneration is essentially really dying, that to the Doctor it feels like they die and someone else takes their place. That still has enough gravity for me. I also don't think that the "chosen one" thing is as big of an issue either. Firstly this is about as "chosen" as the older notions that The Doctor was The Other. Secondly, technically this means the Doctor is an alien to Gallifrey, one member of an entire species from that other universe that can regenerate infinitely. The Doctor is entirely ordinary for their species, their species just isn't Gallifreyan.
"The Doctor is entirely ordinary for their species, their species just isn't Gallifreyan." Exactly! It is no more a case of being special than the 12 regenerations limit made the Doctor special under old canon.
I think peril still exists. Each Doctor is still an individual and a number have shown a reluctance to regenerate as they see it as a "death" of sorts.
They have claimed that mind bending with morbius scene was the plot hole they were trying to close with this revelation. But the whole Clara oswold / impossible girl story arc was supposed to be the whole story of the doctors regenerations. The faces shown in morbius could easily be explained by rule 1 "the doctor lies" Galifrayans supposedly come from the great loom, a progenitor device of sorts because they lost the ability to reproduce. The doctor being half human was possibly explained by the fact that he was "dead too long" and in close proximity to dead humans when he regenerated. He once claimed after a regeneration that human bacteria was all that was keeping him alive so soon after regenerating.
@Scooby McDooby everything that is unexplained in morbius or Dr who in general is covered by rule 1: the doctor lies. If it is beneficial the doctor will lie or withhold information, but what we have seen over the years have been plot lines and rules/canon out of the doctors control.
Notice in the master's speech he says The Foundling became a Founder which I think suggests the Timeless Child became The Other and The Other either forgot about being the child or they were told a lie as they grew up. Eventually rassilon wanted the other out of the way so The Other jumped into the looms and was reloomed as the doctor.
I love this concise history of regeneration and the History of the Timelords. I don't think that being the Timeless Child turns the Doctor into a chosen one... even before that, the Doctor was kinda "the chosen one" in a way. I also like the Doctor being the Timeless Child. There is so much potential for further stories. The Doctor being the Timeless Child with innumerable regenerations doesn't cheapen the impact of an incarnation dying. It's still a death. Only, there will always be a rebirth following. Or, rather, happen silmutaneously. Because Regeneration is at once dying and being reborn. It would actually also explain the Doctor's trouble with regenerating, as it looks like Tecteun's actions changed the process and since it wasn't supposed to work that way, the Doctor ends up having trouble. Because that first (?) incarnation of the Doctor, the little girl? She died first and then regenerated. It wasn't silmutaneous, as we usually see in regenerations. Rather like the Twelfth Doctor, who also died first and then regenerated. As for why the Eleventh Doctor almost died for real, at the end of his regeneration circle and Rassilons "How many Regenerations did we give you?" Either, Rassilon KNEW all along that the Doctor would simply regenerate AFTER dying and giving him a new regeneration cycle was done to prevent the 12th Doctor from looking into why he regenerated when he SHOULD have died, or Rassilon had no idea at all and just gave the Doctor a new regeneration cycle because they needed him to connect to the universe.
I don't mind if they are the Timeless Child though I think that they are being tricked by the Master. Something to point out is that, if I recall correctly, upon regeneration, the first Doctor said "Here we go... The long way around." Granted this is a line given to him after a special with 12 but this does hint that the Doctor knows something other than the end point that they saw as upon the Doctor's leaving a point in time where they meet themselves, they tend to forget the event till they enter the event(Hence why 9 believes he destroyed Gallifrey despite the fact he saved it before regeneration). However, also remember the Doctor acquired/stole the TARDIS as they ran from Gallifrey. Why would they have ran? It is possible that the true Timeless Child vanished and, fearing that this might put them at risk, they cloned the Timeless Child, spinning their DNA with that of a Gallifrean and creating the Doctor. The first Doctor is still the first Doctor but is also the Timeless Child. This would explain why they don't know this tidbit and why Gallifrey give the Doctor so much special treatment as well as why they ran. They didn't want to be used because of whatever they were cloned from, which, if this is true, the Master just revealed. What about 11 nearly dying of old age? Well, that was due to being a clone. Their Regenerations have limits and Gallifrey broke through time and space to give them a new set or fully unlock the ability fully. To put it bluntly, the Doctor would only be a chosen one to Gallifrey and no one else. That being said, I don't feel it cheapens each form's death. We knew 10 would regen to 11 but that didn't make his line "I don't wanna go" any less heartbreaking. Regenerations bring about a new person each time it happens. The being known as the Doctor lives but the person that is the Doctor's current form at that moment dies. With it, the Doctor for a brief time also dies. And let's not forget that if the Doctor is mortally wounded during regeneration they can be killed(11 merely survived because wibbly wobbly timey wimey happenings). If the Doctor has no limit on Regeneration, they'd only be semi-immortal, unable to die without steps taken to truly kill them. They aren't a fixed point in time after all, they can be killed. All and all, each regen is still a death and still holds weight. But that's just my thoughts.
I've given some thought to this, and come up with a theory of my own. The Master has been known to at least twist the truth if not outright lie about it, but The Time Lords are not Beyound bending the truth themselves. In the 25th anniversary book of Dr. WHO, there were 3 founder's of the Time Lords; Rassalon, Omega, and a third that was simply called the one. The One allegedly committed suicide in protest against Rassilon convincing Omega to make the flight to create the eye, even though he knew it would seemingly kill Omega. Anyone who watched the classic series knows Omega was technically alive, but existed in the negative zone as an anti matter being. He was finally killed by the 5th doctor when he made his way to Earth and risked destroying the planet when he began to destabilize. Getting back to the one, he allegedly committed suicide by throwing himself in a machine that artificially created Galifreyans through gene splicing as Rassilon betrayed a race of witches known as the Sisters who then cursed them with sterility. Since both the Doctor and Master have discussed thier parents in childhood memories to each other, the gene splicer could well be just a story that may have been nothing more than gossip. This leaves the question of what happened to the ONE. My theory is that the One may have been Telssa, and either Rassalon or Omega had exploited him/her and the Timeless child for thier own ends. Once time travel was perfected, The one escaped through time, eventually calling herself the Doctor, erasing her memories and burying the TARDIS in order to avoid being detected by Rassalon who has been revealed to be a dictator in contrast to the history that later generations of Time Lords were told. She was eventually lured back to Galifrey perhaps using her adopted child as bait, and was eliminated by Rassalon who saw her as the last threat to his rule. Some time later the current Doctor inspired by the legends took up her mantle and left Galifrey with his Grandchild.
@@joshuahillerup4290 The Left are Nazi's. Think about it. The left is doing exactly what the nazi's did back in the world wars. Changing history, going after people for wrong think, violence on the streets? They're the nazis, man. It's them, it's always been them.
You can hear the faint glimmer of disgust coming from the guy as he describes the "new canon" lol. We're right there with ya, bud. Good job focusing on the subject matter without getting emotional. You're a better man than me.
I suspect the Timeless Child/Doctor was also given the 12 regeneration limit, so the Division could have more control, granting the Doctor new cycles and erasing his memories, often at the beginning of a new cycle. I do have a head canon on why the limit was established, basically to exerciser a degree of control over Time Lords. Time Lords stored in the Matrix could be granted new cycles, and probably they all got resurrected during the time war (and House probably ended up turning a lot of these time lords into spare parts).
I'm not too concerned about infinite regenerations leading to the Doctor throwing lives away, either. The "crisis" of regeneration, whether the Doctor's own crisis or that of a companion, has always centered around the Doctor's identity changing. Nothing about that is altered by unlimited regenerations.
@@GyitMulhaneski-GloriousYears That doesn't change the fact that each regeneration brings a change of personality and identity, or that each incarnation becomes attached to their own particular expression of "Doctor-ness."
@@mr.flibble3190 Its really tapping into my concern about THE CHARACTER as well as the series: the series used to be fairly consistent and the series used to VERY (Apart from Baker C's mad half hour for a few episodes and McCoy's 14 weeks of pratfalls). The present situation is far more serious. Chibnall and Whitaker are turning the Doctor into an asshole. This isn't just not MY Doctor, this really bares no relation to the Doctor ANY of us saw pre 2017, now to make things worse s/he's a cut-price messiah of Gallifrey (AZ on the Heelvbf channel explains it better than I can right now, even if some slam him as being a hater).
I have come up with a theory on the Timeless child Arc. At the end of the Timeless child where they show the memory being erased by the division the doctor was regenerated into a child and was made to think that he was born on galafrey and grew up to be William hartnell's first doctor
I honestly thought old man that killed himself at the end was going to reveal himself to be Tecteun when he said this was all his fault, but nope he end up talking about Cyberman part of the plot
I think Tecteun is Rassillon. Omega got his name for scoring badly at the academy ... that doesn’t rule Omega out either. The Other is the Timeless Child.
Where did the Timeless child originally come from? This is no more the origin of regeneration than just a new form of the mystery of where it came from.
Rassilon was an egomaniac - he took credit for everything - including Omega's achievements but we found out some of those, I suspect he took credit for Tecteun's as well - the founding triumvirate is still Rassilon, Omega and "The Other" , perhaps Tecteun is the other ... The script says that the two others shown are perhaps Rassion and Omega, and we know the third is Tecteun
I hadn't been concerned about infinite regenerations so much as the Master's ability to singlehandedly destroy the Citadel and defeat the rest of the Time Lords seemingly without raising a sweat, when the combined might of all the Daleks couldn't do it. Why is nobody outraged about *that*?
I think the carnage of Chibnall's fanfiction just throws out too many things to find ridiculous all at the same time. Its certainly another ridiculous aspect of his plot arc though.
I mean, the timelords arent what they once were. Capaldi almost took it all down
the prince that wasn't promised no , he inspired a revolt . Then commuted acrime agsinst linearity re Clara
@paul yes exactly my only issue
I am very outraged by that Paul
I always assumed that the doctor having infinite regenerations was implied by Tom Baker's cameo as the curator, and the line "over time you find yourself, revisiting a few old favourites"
Me too
It was implied way earlier than that^^ also by Tom Baker's Doctor on several occasion
What I have been wondering, is if the Doctor is the timeless child. Then when Clara entered the Doctor's timestream on Trenzalore, how come there was no evidence of these other incarnations?
Even if the Doctor had no memory of them, should there not have been a trace of them in the scar across space and time left by the Doctor?
I mean they didn't show capaldi or whittaker either for obvious reasons. Personally I think the division would have put a time lock over any pre hartnell stuff when they wiped his memory.
Not to get to esoteric, but the real life nature of time is really dependent of your perception of it. So, in theory, the sci fantasy Doctor Who version of time would also be dependent of your memories of it. That's how the Doctor and their companions are able to remember events that have been erased from history, like Clara and Pink's descendant.
Because chibnall is an idiot who doesnt respect Doctor continuity.
@@thomasleedham6572 Yeah but that grave of 11 is when he dies on Trenzalore and never regenaretas in 12
Clara changed the future by making time Lords give Doctor more regenarations
@@sevensevenseven9351 If you say so. Still think a time lock is in place for any stuff the child did with the division.
The timeless child retcons pretty much everything that has happened to the doctor. Especially what had happened to him on trenzalor where he was actually dying and was then granted a new regeneration cycle by the timelords.
Or it was then hiding it by saying they were give ing him more
@SofieHiyatsuki as this point it's not believable he's some random timelord. He has to be one of the original 3 or from six-fold realm. If he is from six-fold relm ie actually an old god it would make everything make sense but alot of people wouldn't like that.
@@jamesgray5900the Timeless Child is sort of a god IMO
These writers are shit
@@jamesgray5900 I could deal with him being “The Other” of the 3. There’re books and previous references to draw on and point to for that. The timeless child bullshit? No. Chib’s fanfiction asspull and the fact that RTD not only didn’t get rid of it, but continues to build it up, tear down the most popular New Who Doctor, and doing what they’re doing now? Yeah no. Far as I’m concerned, the Doctor is still in the confession dial. He never left and never will at this point. The show is effectively dead. It’s in a vegetative state and won’t recover. It’s too far gone.
I'd be willing to bet the Master is just screwing with the Doctor and lying. It isn't like he hasn't lied through his teeth before.
That's also my theory
I have to agree. Especially that part of how the Master felt about the Doctor as kids. It cheapens the 'cosmic' feel given by the 10th Doctor in the "Sound of Drums" with gazing into the time vortex.
Hagunemnon yes, I would take what the Master says with a pinch of salt. Or he could just be plain wrong. Remember, the information was not intact and heavily redacted. I would like to see more evidence.
Hagunemnon I agree. The Timeless Child could either the Master OR Rassilon (“The foundling became the founder”).
I think both the Master lied BUT he also misinterpreted the data.
The Doctor may have unlimited regenerations, but like Tennant's Doctor said at one point, it's still similar to dying: "a new man walks away." And there are other ways to threaten the Doctor; through companions, torture, imprisonment etc. It doesnt always have to be the threat of death. In fact, that sort of punishment is arguably more threatening now, imagine being imprisoned or tortured for eternity, without even the promise of death to end your suffering. That's way more terrifying to me
Adam Lindley gee is this the first time you ever heard of HELL?
I mean, isn't that literally what happened at the end of the last episode? "whole life imprisonment"
It makes Trenzalor and the threat that surrounded that redundant. Why bother if he was always just gonna bounce right back up? Oh sure the personality changes, but guess what: The Doctor is STILL the Doctor. There goes any suspense. Even IF we know the Doctor is going to be fine by the end of it, writers far more clever than Chinballs and Co have been able to ramp up the tension and drama to where MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, he might not! If it's infinite, why was he sitting there growing old? He didn't need to? He was infinite. His whole "Got nothing left." Spiel, WHERE YOU SEE THE REGENERATION ENERGY EXTERNALLY ENTER HIS BODY, Capaldi's "fake regeneration" scene, so on, so forth. Oh, doesn't matter. No, it means you're a shit writer and a vandal who can't even figure out your own lore and mythology even when it slaps you in the face like a pimp.
He walks in eternity, that is his curse
My biggest concern is how many more "Ruths" are going to turn up, it now open season for writers to create their ideal doctor, claim they are pre-Hartnall and shoe horn new Doctors into lore.
It also fixes the canon for past who
What if hartnell was never the REAL doctor but they used her mind scan to give him false memories that have stuck and his "granddaughter" was actually an agent of the time lord CIA keeping an eye on him making sure he kept away from the REAL ruth Doctor
Nathan Tanguma That would not be a good retcon
@@mainemail5506 not a retcon but s truth, why would they let him steal a tardis and not try to retrieve it? What if it was Ruth's first and was in for repair and the chameleon circuit was temporarily fixed and he re-damaged it and it got stuck once more into that setting
@@tanguman2 that would mean Ruth is not the Doctor we saw Hartnell regenerate into Troughton
I have 2 theories for why Ruth’s TARDIS is a police box, without being stuck on it, and both of them start with the idea that Ruth had a type 40 then eventually it was put in storage when she regenerated and her memory was wiped, then the first doctor stole what he didn’t know had already been his TARDIS, maybe that even played a part in why she was unlocked.
A) the TARDIS (who remember experiences all of her life simultaneously) was tying to signal the 13th doctor, so pretended to be already stuck on a police box.
B) the TARDIS (who remember experiences all of her life simultaneously) knew that it would be best for the Doctor if she didn’t know where Ruth was on her timeline, and was trying to protect her, and therefore pretended to be already stuck on a police box.
Must of sounded good inside your head but no I mean Hell No. What ever Chib's thought as he put that in the earlier episode was just lazy f^&&** writing.
Bilal Bux it’s quite clear that Ruth is meant to be from the the timeless child lineup. Considering how she’s on the run from the division.
Both of those two theories fit much more perfectly that what Certifiably In Game has brought up
The "timeless child" idea blows chunks.
I was expecting the master say I am the timeless child and let's be honest that would have been far more interesting it would show why he is so crazy and keeps coming back all the time
True.
Now that would've been interesting. I would have implied or asked the question was he left on the other side of the portal as he was because adults on the other side knew he was a bad seed child. That would have been interesting. Heck selling pancakes or hot dogs at the portal would have been more interesting than Chibs' cyber time lords with robes and headdresses and serial child murder by a foster mom.
I would've been ok with anyone being the timeless child except for the doctor. The Master would've been a great choice. But even more interesting would've been a brand new character. Someone who could change the dynamic between the Doctor and the Master, being Time Lords, and the real deal.
the biggest problem I can think of with the Master being the Timeless Child is that he has spent his every lifetime doing whatever he could to stave off death to continue his ambition. honestly the Master being the timeless child would have felt like a bit more of an asspull with that in mind, there was a point where his body wouldn't regenerate even if he wanted it to (which he very much did)
The master is always capable of lying. He’s a master villain.
And then Bobby Ewing emerges from the shower, to discover that this has all been a dream.
Please! We all know their in the Tommy Westphall universe. He has a snow globe with a TARDIS in it. At worst Bob Hartley ate something funny and Emily hasn't woken him yet.
Ha ha yea can see that happnin
Add after the first episode of the next season, the Thirteenth Doctor falls asleep. After a few hours, the thirteenth Doctor wakes up and finds herself as the First Doctor.
Better scenario: Paul McGann wakes up from a nap and sees Grace at the console.
God dang it Bobby
I like that it *can* give more mystery to the Doctors character, I don’t like that it frames him as this Time Lord Messiah and I hope the Master can say he lied a little bit because he’s toxic like that. I like that it makes it more special that he’s still essentially an angel who aspires to be human, I don’t like that it removes the fear or inevitability of death. I like that it ties together smaller retcon-y bits of Doctor Who history, I don’t like that it retcons the rest of the big, fully established bits of Doctor Who history.
Yeah I wouldn’t call it a retcon though. I think of a retcon as when history in a story is changed by simply disregarding / ignoring what’s already established. The Timeless Child was written in without any events so far having had to be changed, because the Doctor had re-started life as a child without those memories and because Rassilon had, in a shocking turn of events, lied. Most other things that don’t seem consistent (like the Trenzalore regeneration) can be explained as the sustaining of that lie
I honestly don't think that the Doctor's death is at all cheapened. We always new they were going to regenerate. But we still mourn the loss of a Doctor that we've become familiar with and the end of storylines that we loved.
I don’t think it’s the death that’s cheapened so much as the drama of the Timelords giving them more regenerations.
It takes away the stakes. That's why fictional characters have weaknesses or limits placed on them because if you know they're always gonna be alright due to an ability or skill they have, what's the point in being worried about them when they find themselves in a dangerous situation?
"Does the Doctor having infinite regenerations cheapen their deaths?"
While I can see why people would say yes, I don't think so myself, and the reason for that being reflected by 10 in his final moments.
"I don't want to go"
The Doctor may be immortal and can carry on in a new shape after a fatal wound, but the personality death they experience with each regeneration is still a death, the memories, the experiences, the connections may all remain, but the spark within that made the Doctor who they were at the time has gone, replaced with something else, or perhaps in a way, someone else.
The Doctor as an entity may live on forever, but the Doctor as a person will die over and over again.
I think the same as well
no it cheapens not just their deaths but also the whole point of a show. Regeneration having a limit means there is always a risk factor that you can run through time and time again and SOMEWAY, SOMEHOW, someone's gonna find a way to walk through all that. Now? What does it matter? They can't die. Suspension of disbelief has its limits. Even SUPERMAN - ya know, that guy with all that power in the red cape? HE HAS BEEN KILLED BEFORE! In fact he's been taken out in multiple ways and multiple occasions, which only served to make his rebound that much more triumphant. The writers basically said "this thing you cherished for so long? Not important. Meaningless. Stupid. Redundant. Old hat." Because of course they would, they're cultural vandals. They wouldn't know how to build on something if someone gave them EVERY SINGLE MEANS to do so. Oh wait: THEY DID! And they botched it nuclear!? NOOOOO. YOU DON'T SAY!
There's still an easy way to kill the Doctor tho.
Regeneration doesn't work if there's no body left to regenerate.
This was true even before this reveal.
@@MB-sq7yn annnd you don't think if they had a surefire method to do this, they wouldn't have already? Chekov's Gun situation.
Yeah because the Doctors enemies canonically get stupid when around him.
Not like it's exactly hard to shoot someone with explosive projectiles afterall.
In answer to your opening question: Yes, yes it does.
One of the things that made The Doctor special was that they weren't that special. They were an outcast even among their own people. A wash out, a nobody, that is until they took their destiny into their own hand and ran away in a stolen Tardis. But now they are a super special special supper being. I find this cheapens the character of The Dopctor. Personally, I think a more interesting twist would have been that The Master was The Timeless Child.
I would have gone even further by saying that The Doctor was the Biological child of Tektaun and adopted sibling of The Timeless Child (young Master). As an adult The Doctor severed in The Division alongside The Master, and at the end of their service The Doctor recieved a complete mindwipe & regeneration reset. This being the standard retirement package for Division agents. But in The Master's case, instead of a reset they received a regeneration limiter -- something to prevent endless regeneration in the hopes of them quietly dying at the end of a full regeneration cycle. This might explain The Crispy Master. A Master unable to regenerate, but also undying. In fact, this might help explain many of The Master unexplained escapes from death. They aren't just another Time Lord, they are an anomaly of time itself.
Where the Timeless Child revelation cheapens The Doctor, I think it would elevate The Master. But that's just my opinion.
The doctor is just a bloke in a box trying to make the universe a better place, a person who saw all of time and space and decided to run and never stop, someone that looks out for Earth and other races, and all of that... Kinda loses its luster if they were some kind of star child digi-destined to fight evil in every place and time. What is the point of being reminded to ALWAYS HOLD TO THE MARK, to "just save one family", that Time Lord Victorious is wrong, if the doctor is a special case and the rules don't apply to him/her.
@TheBobBrom Being the child of Tektaun doesn't have to mean that The Doctor is ten million years old. As Lords of Time it wouldn't be hard for them to relocate the factory reset forms of The Doctor & The Master to their current time frame. It might even be preferable for the likes of Rassilon who I presume would have wanted them out of the way while he rewrites the Time Lord history books.
The important element that is the reason why I suggest this idea is that The Doctor and The Master share a rather close and rather complicated connection. The two seem to be bonded by time. They often seem to act like moral reflections of each other. It just seems right that they both share a history that goes all the way back to the beginning of both. It just seems right to me. There being a Master without The Doctor, or a Doctor without The Master just doesn't seem right.
@@phill6504 Right. What makes The Doctor special should be what they stand for, not that they were born special.
In various times in the series’ history the pre leaving Gallifrey first Doctor has either been a prominent member of Time Lord society (The First Doctor as a scientist of repute - a pioneer amongst his people, no less - the Third speaks of many diplomatic missions he undertook, the Seventh as a mysterious founder of Gallifreyan society). At other time’s he’s been a facetious nobody, a drop out, like the mention of the Fourth’s poor grades at the academy, or the Tenth’s mentioning of his running away from the untempered Schism. At times a madman in a box - a criminal in exile or even Lord President of Gallifrey itself. There is room for both of these aspects of the Doctor and they will continue to wax and wane over time. I really wouldn’t worry - the Doctor doesn’t seem too keen to revel in it - imagine the gloating though if the Master was the Timeless Child! I think it matches up with the early draft of Power of the Daleks - where the Second Doctor tells Ben and Polly he has ‘renewed’ himself before (also in the novelisation) and I was never convinced the Morbius Doctors were incarnations of Morbius in the mind bending battle. It supports ideas in the Seventh Doctor era too. Perhaps the Seventh did know about his former incarnations and later forgot them for reasons Big Finish May tell us. And if a future show runner wants to ignore all this Timeless Child stuff it collide be written out in one line.
Actually the Doctor is no more special than she was before. The Timeless Child;'s endless regeneration abilities were genetic and therefore her entire species had them. If her entire species had them she is no more special due to having them than the Doctor as a Time Lord is special for having 12 regenerations.
Besides, the Doctor has been established as special for ages... special in terms of knowledge and how clever the Doctor is. The Doctor is able to outsmart and out knowledge even other Time Lords and solve problems even the entire species cannot solve (eg The Last Great Time War).
Dont forget 12 kicked rassilon off gallifrey. He's off planet and when he finds out what happend...
Can't wait for that.
oh yeah ,he will literally fuck the master and the doctor for what has happened
It doesn't cheapen the Doctor's death at all. It's still the ego-death of an individual. As the 10th Doctor says, "It feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away . . . and I'm dead." The body continues, in a way. The memories are preserved, more or less. In some sense the Timeless Child/Doctor/Valeyard/etc. continues, but the specific nature of each individual is lost when regeneration occurs. It's not death as humans would generally understand it, but in some ways it's worse.
Many human ideas of an afterlife have a continuity of identity in some afterlife, at least for some or for some time: Heaven and Hell (how pleasant the continued identity finds it notwithstanding), Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, etc. Some have a continuity of spirit in a new body and life (Hindu rebirth, drinking from the river Lethe and being reborn in Greek myth) or continuity for some time (Hades, where souls retain identity as long as they are remembered by the living). Most myths that have the individual personality cease in some way but some other identity walk around in a version of the original body are horror stories: dybbuks, vampires, zombies, body snatchers, etc.
Vampires in the Buffyverse have the original memories, but the original soul has passed on and a demonic spirit is using the body and memories, but doesn't realize the memories aren't its own. Timelords are sort of the reverse: the original soul remains, but the memories and sense of self are scrambled, reassembled, and reset, and the different egos rarely realize they are, in a very real way, not the same person that created the memories. It's not a form of immortality that many would envy, if they stopped and gave it some thought.
I think that when they erased The Timeless Child's memory before retirement, the Timelords put the limit on the child then for a further 13 lives. So when they pass the energy through the crack in Time of The Doctor, they just unlock the ability to constantly regenerate.
Or rassilon just did a "fake regeneration cycle" so the doctor he wouldn't start questioning.
Or the Timeless child jumped into a Loom and we make Lungbarrow canon.. Alright, I will get my coat
@@HerrFrog I'm all for that idea. It's already part of my head canon. So now it's kinda been made official.
Thank you. This is what I thought. But I believe the other is one of the other doctors who went into a loom and the loom put the limit of the regenerations on the other and was reborn as the doctoe
This is unlikely the timeless child was patient zero the Timelords needed the timeless child to have perpetual regenerations in case their regenerations started to fail not to mention the timeless child doesn't share the biology of Gallifreyians meaning the timeless child genetically carries the blueprint for regenerations so the child has the option to turn off the 12limit blocker.
You know, that Timeless Child thing raises a question... Wouldn't the Doctor's Daughter (that clone) also have infinite regenerations then?
I don't think so because she couldn't regenerate in the first place
@@professionaleejit5927 Yeah, she can. That's why she got over being dead and flew away in a rocket.
@@MarginalSC Pretty sure this was said to be wrong and she was actually revived by the orb kind of thing that restored the ecosystem.
@thomas burns nope go rewatch it she regenerates not that's stupid B's saying ohh eco system what a cop out she's a perfect clone of the doctor so bam 2 timeless children
At the time, she was created, the 10th Doctor had the lock in place so that lock may have been passed on
This is a really well balanced video, btw. It's really refreshing seeing someone discuss it normally without resorting to toxicity.
Thank you!
There are always dangers worse than death for the Doctor which challenge all the values of infinite regenerations. Because Doctor Who, like any enduring show, must continually provide conflicts for the sake of drama and adventure, I wouldn’t expect the Timeless Child revelation to be damaging in that respect for such an iconically conflicted hero.
I'm not sure this is a "get out of death free card" for The Doctor, after all we have no explanation of how they limited regenerations and if the same methodology wouldn't have worked on the Timeless Child. I'm betting they would have wanted to limit the Child at some point, likely right before or during the mind wipe right before Doctor #1. Maybe the Timelords were threatening to apply the limit to The Ruth Doctor, and that's the real reason she was hiding out on the run from the Timelord's, after waking up regenerated in Hartnell's body with no memory of what happened he followed a subconscious desire to run away from the Gallifrey once again, this time with a limit of 12 lives the Timelords just let him go, confident he didn't know anything.
Also even if The Doctor doesn't have a natural limit to regens, we've been told repeatedly that there are weapons powerful enough to remove all hope of regeneration. This is how episodes like "Turn Left" could still happen, and how the Master's Lazer Screwdriver could have worked on The Doctor.
It could be psychosomatic. Time Lords can will themselves to die, maybe by assuming his lifespan was limited 11 was unwittingly doing the same?
That sucks imagine knowing someone butchered your superpower and copied it on everyone like if something so personal to me such as my natural hair colour or worst my neurology was copied set to an lesser degree put on everyone then they demanded I be forced to be an lesser degree I'd be pissed please don't get ideas anyone seeing this.
@@redjirachi1 interesting idea it being psychosomatic.
It's been said there are multiple stacked up reasons why The Doctor left Galifrey. The Hybrid, The Council going after him, already wanting to see the stars, boredom of their society and many others
Ironic twist: the actual Timeless Child is the Master.
The episode _is_ named _The Timeless Children,_ so... Maybe they're both Timeless Children. That would have a bit of poetry to it. The Doctor and The Master, destined to be Yin and Yang over all of time.
We don't know the previous Doctors _didn't_ have a Master, so it's possible.
Frankly having the master has the Timeless child makes a little bit more sense to me. It would explain his various regenerations , as well as his Madness. Imagine being a young child and endlessly torture, experimented on, and even killed I need to find yourself in that same situation over and over and over
@@RobertJWaco once upon a time, the doctor said "In some ways, we're the same timelord..."
Maybe the timeless child was split in two, somehow, perhaps the Doctor is a metacrisis regeneration of the Master/Timeless child with an ordinary gallifreyan. Which would explain why the master is called the master: They are the Master Copy for regeneration, and the Doctored Copy was the Other.
@@SymbioteMullet Or they are if fact the very same person from different time periods, a period before the Doctor decided to become the Doctor.
Best I can do is the timeless child existed and was split into two mortal children
The Doctor and the Master.
The Master started to say “once upon a time ...” the stopped, made an ironic sound and then said “once upon on a TIMES... “
The Last Great Time War is not the only Time War, it was not even only the second. There were places on Gallifrey that a person could walk through wreckage of some of the other wars in which pieces of contracting historical artifacts would stand next to each other - where reality changed as you crossed the street in others and back again. And if fact, where you could travel from a place to where the capital was destroyed - just like we saw in the Timeless Children. Oh my. Of course that was, either in the Virgin 6th Doctor novels or BBC 7th Doctor novels, so folks would be quick to argue it wasn’t canonical, but if all these time wars have mixed up history to that point (think “Let’s Kill Hitler” but on Gallifrey instead of Earth) that it’s all real all at once, then it’s just as much canon as anything else.
The Stranger coming off the loom is the fiction, from the Doctor’s perspective, given the new revelations. The times less fiction that was necessary for him not to know consciously about timeless truth!
Missy said “I’ve know [the Doctor] since he was a little girl!” To which the Doctor wagged a finger at her in I think Hellbent (or thereabouts).
Do not know if she said it 2 times but she said it in the magician apprentice the way she said it though two of what she said was true the 3rd was a lie.
She said 3 things and said one is a lie. Then, on Hellbent, Clara quotes some of those things to confirm something the Doctor was telling her
Jose Ignacio Real Lozano yes is n magicians apprentice starting at 18.13 Missy said the 3 things in Hell Bent the doctor himself told Clara starting at 30.12
Jose Ignacio Real Lozano It was not the president’s wife it was the president’s daughter they mentioned the Shobogans here also . The lie was perpetuated by the Shobogans
@@7vernessa Jajajaja, well, I didn't remember everything that well, thanks for correcting me
Rassilon did say, "How many lives did we give you, Doctor?"
With that in mind, if the Doctor is the Timeless Child, I would have to guess that Rassilon does not know. It is also possible that when the Doctor was allowed to go past that 12 regeneration, it also removed the limit with someone else being the Timeless Child.
Or Rassilon was pretending. To not give away the secret of the Timeless Child in front of the soldiers and the Doctor
Love your videos, as always. A few points:
1. The assumption that the Timeless Child couldn't have their regenerations capped, is balanced by the opposite assumption, that they could have. There's nothing that points to either. The only real clue, is that we know the cap was created and implemented for all Time Lords. To me, at least, that is a better "hint" that the technology was easily advanced enough to include the Child. But again, there's no real proof for either take.
2. I keep seeing people describe The Doctor as some sort of savior or Messiah. I'm not sure why, because it looked pretty obvious, to me, that the Timeless Child was turned into a lab rat by their adoptive mother. A mother who seemed to be forcing regenerations to learn more, which lends itself to the ugly thought that maybe she was hurting the Child. Even killing. You can't be a savior if you're being biologically raped over and over again by the people you're supposedly saving.
3. I don't believe the Division's other purpose was to hide the Child. It seems, to me, that it was a secret agency formed by rebellious Time Lords. It's the only time, I think, that the Timeless Child smiles. My take, is that Jo's Doctor was on the run from her retirement. She didn't want her memories wiped. Obviously, they eventually caught up with her. I'm not sure at all if the Timeless Child wasn't wiped before, to get rid of all the lab rat memories.
Anyhoo, that's it. Sorry for the mess, I'm pretty high. Cheers.
Edit: Dammit, I forgot one. 4. Death is still important, because of the fact that that particular Doctor dies. A new version takes their place. The same, yet vastly different in important ways. The Doctor was never afraid of the Big Death, but lamented the loss of his current selves over the years.
Sorry for the late edit!
Each personality doesn't want to "die" and leave even if they know the being known as the Doctor will go on in the end. It is death of personality.
That's precisely my thinking on points 1 and 2.
1. I'm not sure, but it feels more intuititve. If anything ever went wrong (with the copying mechanism or regeneration expansion-packs), and the Timeless Child had fallen off a cliff once too often, their source of power may be lost forever. In that light, tempering with the original (so s/he could die) may not be the bestest of ideas.
Also, there's the question if they even could. Splicing a bit of information/ability into another Gallifreyan, changing that information beforehand so it is not as limitless sounds easy enough(?), where forcefully changing a being that can "heal" itself at least from mortal wounds ...I dunno, that kinda sounds tricky to me. Capping would in effect be a "fatal" infliction, so wouldn't the Child just regenerate into a "healthy" state again? @_@ .....but then again, the entirety of the regeneration-process is far beyond our (or at least: my) understanding; they may call it science in the show and use terms like "splicing" and "synthezising" and "altering DNA" ... ... I mean... "DNA" ...ooookay... but in the end the whole thing resembles magic more than anything else (or at least, something energy-related, rather than merely matter-based, with all the no-phsyical contact requiring shiny spectacle that comes with transfering regenerations). So, who are we / am I to judge, what's possible or not, what's smart or not.
What we've seen is the "Timeless Child" regernating over and over. We've been told the Timelords were capped. We were not told the Child was. We can savely assume Ruth happened after the Timelords were capped (unless the Master told things out of order). Who is clearly a regeneration before / additionally to the known Doctors and the known regeneration circle(s). That's the current canon for the audience until definite information is given. We can either infer from that "The Docter is not capped" or "The Doctor has been given several expansions, one after another". We may also ask, if the Doctor maybe hasn't been given another set of regenerations at Trenzalore, but maybe had been "un-capped" (as the Timelords were unable to watch over him, personally - if that's a thing they, or at least some of them, do).
That's the most annoying part, to me: We have been given "answers" that don't really answer anything, but only throw previously established facts (intentional facts by the showrunners at their time, who were careful to add to / elaborate on but never to recklessly -per- subvert previously established lore!) into question and raise more questions on their own - and not necessarily in the constructive way.
My bigger question is, if River was given a "helluva start" by being born in the Tardis, but having the ability because of being altered by the Kovarian Chapter - if they were able to give her Timelord-powers of regeneration, does that mean they were able to copy the tech, just like that? I mean, they did, right? Turn River into a human(!) that was able to regenerate. Now that it's established the regeneration is a seperate trait, that opens just a can of worms nobody wanted to be opened.
2. ...have you heard of Jesus? ^_-
There are plenty saviour / messiah stories in various cultures, that have their "One" go through horrible tribunals while prevailing as a "one of a kind" or "pure heart" or "unequaled warrior" or whatever the culture deems the most desirable attribute.
But, I guess, what most of us mean, is that the Doctor, while special and admirable in his/her own right, was always "one of us". Born and raised amongst the common; a rebel against the higher-ups... Gallifrey and its Timelords acting as sort of a mirror to our own world, and the Doctor being just a "mad man with a box". One of them. One of us.
Now we've got a God-like being, who is alien to his/her own world; an anomality to begin with; a Connor MacLeod or Anakin or Tsukino Usagi or Buffy or Neo or Son-Goku or Superman (or whatever you prefer) who was special from the start, who is an unkown, who may have even more unkown abilities, who may be limitless (even beyond the whole regeneration talk); who is not only a fish out of water, but literally alien, possibly even to this entire universe / dimension... Sure, as hammered home in the episode, this doesn't change that the Doctor is still a rebel and "a mad man [or woman] with a box", but s/he now became the origin of the Timelords; everything special about the Timelords came from the Doctor (well, not the time-travel, but that got panned over so I may do the same). That *is* a big change of perception.
..all the while this just raises (once more) much bigger questions: Where did that child come from? Why was it there?
3. Not sure what their purpose was. I was rather busy internally screaming at that point. But to my understanding, they were not merely rebellious Timelords. Wasn't the very creator of the Timelords (whatshername, the "adoptive mother" of the TC) involved in that? And The Child was as well. They seemed rather high-up in the command-chain to me...
4. I agree. From all the public backlash, that's one argument I cannot get behind at all. It does, however take away the entire emotional impact of Smith's Doctor's (almost final -- sorry, now in quotes: almost "final") death. That is, unless we get the information that the Doctor indeed was capped (at the time?).
Just because the 12 regenerations thing is an artificial limit, it doesn't follow that there isn't a natural limit, too. Or that there's no way to kill a Time Lord; indeed, it's been established that interrupting an regeneration can destroy a Time Lord.
@@dataweaver Indeed. Despite what some have assumed - and some have asserted almost as fact - it wasn't actually stated that the Timeless Child was immortal, nor that (s)he had limitless regenerations.
This was the first really fair and reasonable look at the whole situation I've seen and I really really appreciated it and it's earned my blind subscription to your channel
Something I only noticed today was that the device they use on "Brendan" is eerily similar to the Chameleon Arch, and my theory is that before they reset the Doctor, they weren't Gallifreyan, but due to the Chameleon Arch's abilities, when the Doctor is reset, they are turned into a Gallifreyan with the Thirteen lives limit.
Except apparently the Brendan story is _just_ a story or 'filter' symbolizing the true story.
originaluddite keywords being “symbolizing the true story”
Nice idea but that isn't how Chameleon Archs work
madeleine smallwood “not how it works” has no meaning in Doctor Who. How anything works changes all the time in this show. That’s the whole point. The show is about tackling the impossible. Put a limit on anything, and the show loses its meaning.
Thoughts
* In the comics the Master has a child form, and RTD thinks the Master was literal when Yana said he became a baby. The Timeless Child being turned into baby Hartnell would help cover up things and cause amnesia
* Tecteun may be Omega. Rassilon was the warlord and even stole some of his achievements. Omega wanted to atone and reveal the truth, Rassilon sabotaged his black hole experiment. Currently he's too crazy to speak up(or maybe he healed somehow and became the Mysterious Woman, which 10 subconsciously remembered as his surrogate mother)
* The Other was probably the Timeless Child, just becoming the Doctor through amnesia/infancy than loon reincarnation
* 11 may have not regenerated without the Time Lords because he thought he was a normal Time Lord. The Master chose not to regenerate, maybe 11 assuming he can't regenerate would've stopped him regenerating. Psychosomatic
* Early it was implied the Doctor was a future human. Maybe he's subconsciously remembering that. The Timeless Child was a human from another universe where they were more advanced and achieved regeneration, which is why humans like River Song had the potential
* We aren't told if Ruth is pre-Hartnell, maybe she's Season 6B and discovered the truth after working for the CIA. The Division could be a rival organization like the FBI
In an earlier video on Rassilon, CI mentioned that in addition to Rassilon and Omega there was another researcher, Thremix, who discovered the key to immortality and developed a virus to dispense it to others, so maybe Tecteun is not Rassilon or Omega but Thremix. Thremix is referred to as "he" but on her first regeneration Tecteun did become male. So altogether, the founders of Time Lord society could be Rassilon, Omega, Thremix (Tecteun), and the Other (the Timeless Child/the Doctor). CI speculates that, because of Rassilon's unique knowledge of infinite regenerations, he could be Tecteun due to her direct experimentation on the child, but with my idea that Tecteun is Thremix, perhaps Rassilon, after Thremix was assassinated, kept all of his/her research for himself in secret.
It's clearly shown that Tecteun and the young black male Doctor are sitting in the Divisions recruiting room, as the woman spells out what the Division is all about. That is, at a time after the Time Lords have built the capital city, the Citadel and have invented time travel. So, Tecteun is not Omega, nor Rassilon. Funnily enough, neither Tecteun nor that Doctor have aged a single day it seems, in the intervening hundreds or thousands of years since she injected herself with the serum and the Gallifreyan civilisation subsequently developed, expanded, built their cities, developed time travel and got to the point where they decided they needed 'the Division'. However, before that point, the Doctor child was clearly aging. Odd that.
William Hartnell is the first doctor. He will always be the first doctor
Alphabet fans "Reeeeee! The 1st doctor is a black female child bigot!"
He doesnt have infinite regenerations. He hasn't been the timeless child since before Hartnell. That's why he ran out of regenerations in TOTD. Thats something people dont seem to realise because they dont have an attention to detail. The doctor only found out they used to be the child, they didnt turn back into them.
Exactly, before Hartnells Doctor they wiped his memory, restricted his limit to the same as the rest of the Time Lords.
In TOTD they gave him more, but in Hell Bent it appears Rassilon doesn't actually know how much the Doctor was given. Essentially making it ambiguous, and making the Timeless Child kinda pointless before it existed.
I missed that bit in Hell Bent, but I assumed it was 12. Now that she got the fobwatch in Flux, she can now become the timeless child again if she runs out of regens. This connects to a theory I've got about the 60th specials.
You fitted the new and old canon together quite well there. I am very impressed.
Thanks! This is the clearest, most thorough and most satisfying explanation of the mythos (to date) that I've heard anywhere. And, my two cents is that because we become invested in each incarnation of the Doctor, it doesn't really matter if she is immortal. Tom Baker's Doctor was not Immortal, but was unique. Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was not immortal, but was unique. We're watching a never-ending-story, and it's the details that enthrall us, not the big picture. If you loved Tennant's Doctor you cried when he "died", just as if he HAD died. I know I did. Timeless Child or no Timeless Child (and I actually love the concept), the Doctor would have to be Immortal for the show to continue, which is why we got regeneration to begin with. And of course the Doctor is somehow special -- that's been evident all along.
I'm hoping that the Master is in fact the timeless child with Doctor being The Other. I agree that little has changed from old who after all we have Morbius the Cartmel master plan and Lungbarrow to fall back on and it literally opens up a whole new universe for the Doctor. I very much enjoy you intelligent and knowledgeable histories/ reviews which are level headed and well balanced, lots of work no doubt, thank you.
Morbius was an instance that even within its own canon they spent DECADES trying to skate around, not bring to the forefront. This changes quite a lot.
The infinite regenerations make the Valeyard more interesting to me.
At some point in the future, the Doctor is gonna run out of their "infinite" lives and I'd love to know how that could happen.
5:50 It's been known since "The Five Doctors" that the High Council could grant a new life cycle. From that same show, we learned what sort of "immortality" Rassilon had discovered.
And the twelve-regeneration limit was not "soft canon," whatever that may mean.
I can't wait for the holiday special!
I like your videos. They're always well thought out and narrated.
One thing I'd point out though is that the Doctor, and many of her companions post 2005, have been becoming more and more centred around them. The concept of a wandering stranger doing random acts of good hasn't really been purely like that for a while now. So being the timeless child, isn't such a big thing imho.
The bigger thing is that it effectively turns The Doctor into an orphan, and her next 1-2 seasons might move towards searching for her own background, just like many orphans do today.
Making the master the Timeless child would have explain how he survived after being killed by Sims’ Master. Realizing she didn’t die when she was killed she seeks to understand better how she survived. And finds out about the timeless child out of anger destroys Gallifrey.
So I know consistency isn’t a huge thing in the history of The Doctor Who Universe but I think in the modern era these issues have become a bigger deal. People seem to crave some logic. And it definitely helps to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary for sci-fi shows like this. With that in mind I’d like to ask the following: 1. What of the Doctors’ physiology - 2 hearts etc. How is it that this inter dimensional being is found by someone with the same basic anatomy. What are the chances? 2. How is it that in the past 50years of episodes the Doctor has never run into other incarnations of Him/herself that s/he did not know of? Ruth knows she is the Doctor??? 3. How would the Doctor regenerate to infant form so that as a child s/he could look into the well of time alongside the master???? So many of these type of questions that are opened by the writing choices that create enough issues to pull you from the basic entertainment value of the show. Though admittedly the pure entertainment value is certainly at an all time low.
Apparently tecteun got the two hearts off Regeneration and eventually after generations it became a basic part of galifreyan anatomy
also the we were never bothered by his ability to survive death before because what both we and the doctor were always really afraid of was that someone new taking would taking over and replacing him especially when we really liked this version, and we no idea what's coming next especially when it's very possible that the next guy could be totally evil like the 7th doctor or the valyard
It also explains a lot. (1.) why the doctor never fit in and was constantly having trouble with the time lords. (2.) it actually makes the hybrid make sense. That plot was a cluster that made no sense, but now it could be argued that the Time Lords are the hybrids between whatever The Doctor is and the people of Galifrey. The Second Doctor says he ran when he got bored. Rule 1 is that the Doctor lies. He wasn’t bored. It was very complicated. (3). Why there was a 13th Doctor at all (since our buddy the War Doctor (RIP John Hurt) was a problematic extra generation. (4.) it also adds a theme of abuse and emancipation. The Doctor was in effect a slave and captive of the evil Time Lords. At some time in The Doctor’s long life, he/she named his/herself the Doctor to say that he/she wasn’t the slave. He/she was her/himself and she helps people. I like it.
It also explains why he took Susan and ran off. What were they going to do to Susan? Or would he have lost all memory of Susan if they wiped his memory again?
Also what if they brought the Galifreyans back (because the Master is a liar and I have doubts he killed them all) and they are the new villains? They could bring back a version of Romana and Susan and make them his allis against the evil time lords.
And this doesn’t have to be the end of Risk for the Doctor. I agree with writers like Joss Whedon and George RR Martin that without Risk the story is basically ruined. There might be away to develop a fatal flaw the doctor has. How the doctor is killed might still matter and what if in one regeneration is evil? What if the Doctor becomes the villain in the story after a regen and the Master fights him off? This honestly might not be a bad thing.
I mean think about the bad things the Time Lords did to him in the original series. They’re not completely a benevolent race.
From watching the episode only once, I also thought TecTeun woman became Rassilon.
Have we all seriously forgot what this means to the Doctor's Daughter? she was in fact not Gallifreyan but pure recombined DNA of the Timeless Child! This means she is perhaps NOT limited in the 12 cap as they are? (her first regeneration(?) was not triggered by exposure to the time vortex but the chemical stew terraforming agent the "Breath of Life" but there was no change of form) If so, is there is a 2nd timeless child ? or perhaps she still awaits exposure to the time vortex for a full activation of the regeneration ability. Still waiting for that character to return... (BUT WE HAD JACK BACK! AND WE NEEDS MORE! )
She was the daughter of Moffat and wife of Tennant., she is like pure timelord
That’s not what she is saying lol 😂
Question:
Did the timeless child, since the child is from another dimension had 2 hearts just like the timelords?
Did tatuc , the very first time lord to regenerate into 2 hearts?
Did she started with one heart?
What are the chances that the timeless child and tatuc had 2 hearts to begin with?
Or the timeless child gave the timelords 2 hearts?
The first and second Doctors had one heart. Two hearts weren't added to canon until Pertwee.
another question that comes to mind for me, in light of discoveries from the most recent episode, regards omega's discovery of time travel. We still know very little about it, and how the first TARDIS was constructed - that is, if there is an alternate to what high galifreyan timelord society claims regarding omega, whether that too be in question, or not [given what we have just witnessed in the timeless children].
i think when the doctor's memory was wiped and they became the 1st doctor the division genetically altered the doctor to only have 13 lives like the rest of the timelords so the doctor couldn't discover he was the timeless child
Pretty sure that's established, but it does seem to have passed people by.
The second set they gave him was alsl ambiguous as to how many they actually gave him, so they didn't even need to say oh well actually you had infinite already.
@@rhodrage yeah
It is not "toxic" to point that the Timeless Child is both a rotten story and messes up Doctor Who. If Doctor Who is to have a future the "Timeless Child" is going to either have to be ignored or explained away - perhaps by saying this was another universe.
Sounds plausible! Appreciate your thoughts!
WHY DOES RUTH HAVE A GOD DAMN POLICEBOXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I'm a biochemist, and I would like to add something about how this could all work scientifically.
I could see the time vortex (or untempered schism, rather) _activating_ genes that are already there, causing the body to express those genes. It could also be something completely unnecessary, and just for show, put there to throw people off the "real" method.
The way it was described, she gave herself, and many other proto-Time Lords the gene (through gene therapy of some sort) for regenerations, which would then be passed on _naturally_ from then on. As in, there's currently no gene therapy, aside from perhaps involved in removing (edit: or _adding!_ ) the limit, although that could also be done through another mechanism. So, the genes for regeneration are certainly already there. They may or may not be active.
River is a different question altogether, unless humans have this gene and it's just latent and unexpressed since they aren't exposed to the time vortex as children (but then, you would have the issue that any human child exposed to it in the Tardis would be activated and have regeneration cycles, which doesn't happen), and exposure to the time vortex when conceived could have caused her to mutate the genes for regeneration, perhaps? Or, possibly humans do have the gene, but it's only possible to activate the gene by exposure considerably earlier, such as when they are a zygote.
Additionally, it could be that some time lords have interbred with humans over time, and _some_ humans, such as Rory or Amy, have the latent, unactivated gene, which was then passed on and activated by the time vortex to River.
I just thought that she only could regenerate cause she was in Amy's belly while any was in the TARDIS
@@eternallylearning2811 No, it was specifically stated that she was _concieved_ aboard the Tardis while it was in the Time Vortex.
I think it's conception while in the time vortex that's the key.
If it was that simple, the Doctor couldn't take _any_ pregnant women on the Tardis, ever. That'd be a bit limiting, I would think.
@@chemputer It's also specifically stated that madame kovarian made changes to the kid's DNA prior to birth. I've always interpreted that as adding the regeneration powers on top of a much easier starting point. I.E. The time vortex can make it easier for someone to get regeneration, but doesn't do it all. (not to mention that Time Lord and human physiology is eerily similar...)
@@raingramAh, that's very important, thank you! I completely forgot about that! Yes, that could certainly be it, and would get around a bunch of problems. I could definitely see exposure to the Time Vortex from conception to birth pretty consistently being enough to do some weird timey wimey magic "science" to allow her to add the gene therapy and be successful, when it wouldn't work on just your random human baby.
Though, and I don't know why, but I always thought it was something to do with her conditioning, but your explanation does make a good bit more sense.
Additionally, it could've been what placed the limit on her regeneration cycle, to begin with.
I mean, we're trying to retrofit additional meaning onto past content made prior to this retcon, so "making sense" of it is always going to be _somewhat_ futile on some level, as in my mind what happened is what the story writers said or thought happened, and retcons fundamentally mess with that when you have a far-reaching revelation but that doesn't explain all the details of everything it effects, but it's still fun.
Arton energy and the eye of harmony
I kind of like the idea of the master being the Timeless child. Here is a being whose whole purpose has to been to extend his life. Perhaps it is on his life and he fears losing but his life in a greater sense. Imagine being a child and being tortured, experimented on, and sometimes even killed to advance scientific knowledge. It would be enough to drive anyone mad. So the dr. now becomes a companion to the master, someone to keep them sane and then control. Obviously they had somehow failed both the master and the doctor overtime have simply forgotten their roles? After all Universe has been around for a very very long time
I reckon that the Master is actually the Timeless Child and he misinterpreted the memories and they were actually his memories. Hence why he seems not to die. He was proper killed off in Capauldi finale. No coming back.... but what if killing himself actually removed the re-gen lock? and at some time after that event his original regen ability reignited. He probably thought he just got lucky. If Tecteun is infact Rasilon (changing her name when she took a Timelord mantle). Then her/his torture of the Timeless child to discover regen ability would make sense and be in part why the Master has a pathological hatred of Timelords and their society. He probably didn't know why as he probably has his mind wiped several times by Rasilon and the Timelords. Ironically may be he was known as the Doctor before the event that lead to his mind wipe and reversion to a child (by say the Sisters of Karn) which happen around the time of the actual Doctor's childhood? The Timelords hope the influence of the actual Doctor will stabilize him, but they can't, Rasilon did such a number on him that its carved into his DNA. ;)
Pluusss. Here we go... the Tardis is actually the Master's originally?!?! When the event happened that the Master was reverted to childhood and his memory wiped, his Tardis was decommissioned and reverted to its original form, ripe for the actual Doctor to be guided to it by Clara many decades later. Boom. Now it all works and it doesn't destroy the Doctor at all and reinforces the Master and his backstory expanded.
What do you think the implications of the doctor not being a "time lord" (or natively from gallifrey) are?
What's the deal with the two hearts thing? Is that part of the secret to regeneration? Why would both species have them?
Could the doctor be born from gallifrey, but much later (No idea how at this point, but *time travel*), only to go back to the start?
Are we maybe looking at an ouroboros situation where the doctor will eventually end up back in time as a child?
Now I'm wondering why, having two of almost everything, _we_ only have one heart. :)
Okay, so I just started to watch Doctor Who again after Can You Hear Me in season 12 as thats where I stopped in 2020, and I was VERY pleasantly surprised with the last 3 episodes of the season. I just watched The Timeless Child and I have been thinking about it for hours..... I don't really have any issues with it overall, as it has added an entirely new dimension to the way we think about The Doctor and Timelords overall, *BUT* I have one issue with the whole timeline of things and that is the Ruth Doctor. She can't be pre- Hartnell because her Tardis is a police box!! That means she would have to have been after Hartnell and I'm a bit confused as to where she fits into it all. Does this get cleared up in season 13? Anyways I'm am surprisingly looking forward to the Dalek episode and season 13!
Unfortunately it seems Ruth is pre hartnell and the Tardis just decided to turn back into a police box, if its even the same one.
My favourite theory is that shes between 2 and 3 though, and was covered up.
She killed a kid repeatedly just to find out what would happen. DOCTOR WHO, ladies and gentlemen!
Certainly fits with her being Rassilon
@@joshuahillerup4290 I guess you could say she was, pro choice.
Where are we told or shown that she killed the kid? Who's to say that the Timeless Child couldn't regenerate at will? Who's to say that Shobogans/Gallifreyans live significantly longer than Timeless Children, and the kid was dying naturally whilst Tecteun barely aged at all?
@@ftumschk Who's to say you're even right. Just you.
@@GODCONVOYPRIME I didn't claim to be right. I was just pointing out that (a) we were not told that she killed the kid; and (b) other possibilities exist.
Yes - but all the companions are exposed to time travel too - They don’t regenerate. Critical thinking really does put this retcon under a scrutiny it cannot satisfactorily Shake-off.
Vijay Menon well, why not... there is no canon anymore. All of Who is now gamble.
Except for River Song who was conceived in the TARDIS. So Time Lord DNA is manifested by the TARDIS?
Ed Palmer it will all be retconned again in 5 minutes, so don’t worry about canon - after all, Chibnall doesn’t and nor does his rabid following.
@@gadget850 I think during Smith and Capald times they said they dont fully understand TARDIS behaviour or internal system.
Only those conceived in the time vortex with means the Time Less Child came from there.
Im devastated that they completely brushed over rassilon and omega, and didnt even use the perfect chance to explain the web of time to new-who fans and explain why galifrey is always at the next logical point in time when we see it, rather than being able to go to different times on galifrey!
I think Tecteun either eventually regenerates into Omega, or is banished from Gallifrey and starts the sisterhood of Karn
Interesting as the sisterhood of Karn is supposed to be part of the origin of regeneration using their flame of eternal life. How is it linked now? I guess we can forget about things from books like Shobogans being a magic based society that became a science based society as it would make next to no sense anymore. Before the timeless child we could assume that the sacred flame was a prototype of regeneration but now I don't get how that fits in the lore.
What if "granddaughter" Susan Foreman was tasked with wiping #1's memory, but he stranded her on post-Dalek invasion Earth, never went back for her, and was able to live out several regenerations as "The Doctor"?
I love it when shows do this. Shows that go on for this long have incredibly convoluted lore that can act as a detriment to future stories. Having one simple Canon for everything to fall under allows for easier arc writing and character development. I get this is an extremely controversial opinion, but It's one I felt like I had to share.
It's almost like a show about a regenerating hero has to regenerate _itself_ from time to time.
@@raingram this reply needs more eyes on it
Thank you thank you. I'm so glad you did this video. I myself do not understand how people can be so upset over changes to a history that a lot of them had no clue about. I've watched most of classic Who you mentioned we get to meet a version of the doctor that's from near the end of his regeneration what happened to that because that would have been Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi and we all know it wasn't. So yes they change things just like the War Doctor you thought you knew how many doctors are where before nope there's another dude you never heard of. I read some of the comments Ramon the internet this weekend I said it's amazing how people want to tack on classic Who history when it suits them but then dismiss it when it doesn't. I have a friend who was upset about this episode he said it destroys the history of the doctor. I said how do you figure you've never even watched classic Who. he said I tried I just didn't like it and I went so what are you upset about. These are TV shows sometimes there are different groups of people that make them like Star Trek there's been five different major groups of teams if you will that have made Star Trek and yeah they contradict each other sometime.
The first Doctor is still the first Doctor, because he's the first one to choose the name Doctor and the promise that it constitutes. There may have been thousands of previous Timeless Children, but Hartnell is still definitively the First Doctor.
Edit: Slight correction, considering we know that a previous version of the Timeless Child chose the name The Doctor, Hartnell's version is the First Doctor as far as he knows. It's possible that some core component of the Doctor's/Timeless Child's character inevitably bends toward that moral choice or question (the First Doctor said in a Thirteenth Doctor episode that the reason he stole a TARDIS and went off to explore the universe was that he couldn't figure out why good tended to triumph over evil more often than the reverse, since logically evil should be the easier choice and path to victory. He apparently never does figure out that it's his own interventions throughout his incarnations that are tipping the balance.)
100% Agreed.
There had to be a means by which to overcome the twelve re-generations, and handled well this could have been a stroke of genius, there really does need to be someone sufficiently well versed in the lore involved to cross check. I honestly think that this could be inculcated, really, really need someone now who knows what they're doing. I haven't been able to watch since capaldi's writing went so horrible, Troughton was my first Doctor and I haven't completely given up hope.
Now that you explain it that storyline. It does seem a bit more acceptable thank you.
Well, the Doctor can still die during regeneration, and unless Turn Left gets retconned, that's rock solid. So the Doctor isn't invincible. I'm more interested in how inheritable infinite regenerations is. Because the 12 regenerations limit was expressly an artificial genetic limitation not a power limitation. So do the Doctor's children have infinite regenerations? Maybe any born on Gallifrey will have the same limit imposed, but what about Jenny? Sure her return to life didn't seem like regeneration... Until we saw (probably) the Doctor fall off a cliff and get up without fully regenerating.
Look, just bring Susan or Jenny back!
Let's pedal things back a bit.....
Could the Timeless Child not, for whatever reason, have been thrown into the looms and thus all future Gallifreyans are the Timeless Child genetically? Including the Doctor and the Master? Tecteun didn't seem to care much about the Timeless Child, repeatedly murdering it, maybe she was amoral enough to completely annihilate the child to create the Time Lords.
I'm going to go a step further with my crazy theory and suggest the Other threw himself into the looms after the Timeless Child in despair. And this is how the Doctor is both a reincarnation of the Other and has the Timeless Child's DNA.
At the start of the video, about to play it, and seriously considering stop watching ANY DW related videos connected to series 11/12.
Watch "The Critical Drinkers" review of this cluster....., He does a great job of explaining the new DW (can't bring myself to call it THE DOCTOR).
@@KalRandom Do you mean the doctor impersonator?
@@KalRandom Watched it, don't agree that the ENTIRE series is dead. May not be able to move forward without rectonning 11/12, but its not hard to forget that they exist and watch/read/hear all of the earlier stuff.
@@Bobby90 Maybe not, but they need to do some major work before it can be appealing to watch.
I still love Dr. Who, just not this one. (and the whole writing)
@@KalRandom what tv shows have you written?
It could be the case that the Doctor was only allowed to keep his memories & escaped after his regeneration limit was neutralized by Timelord science. So was considered no longer a threat to Rassilon. As the Chameleon Arc can extract regeneration ability and revert Timelords DNA to that original Gallifreyans. So the Doctor was limited to 12. The sisterhood of Carn might have be founded by Tecteon herself and so they knew who the Doctor is and so had to bring the Doctor back to life.
the idea is great, it opens up so many opportunities, that I am 100% sure that they will never expand upon
It would not be the first time that the master is wrong with his assumptions and as you have just said yourself the data is not complete
Speaking of which, there used to be a video about regeneration in the channel, wonder where it's gone.
I've now got the headcannon theory that the Doctor is a bootstrap paradox. That at some point in the far future the Doctor will fall through the vortex and come out as a child in need of rescue.
I've got no problem with infinite regenerations. They were always going to tack more on as needed and regeneration isn't immortality. Which was reinforced but the Master killing the Time Lords. There's still risk, just no countdown clock.
I don't think it does take away from it... in all the new who stuff... especially from 10... they have tried to establish the changes between regeneration as the death of the previous... and a new doctor... still with the same core values... but a new person as the more important factor than a "limit" on regenerations.... indeed, I think we saw this early with Capaldi... and when he recognised the face he now wore. So no... I think the "death" of a doctor is still just as important... and just as impactful... just for different reasons than the whole "one less regeneration" thing.
What if Romana fell through the future portal, to escape the cybermen, then regenerated into the black little girl. So that could make Romana The Doctor
And the Time Lords take the regeneration energy from a future Timelord who fell through a portal and so this creates a loop
might be a odd topic but do you think you could do a video on what happened to the rest of the tardis capsules on gallifrey?
just thought it might be cool to talk about
thanks buddy :)
We don't know what became of Tectayun. She/he could potential be almost anywhere, if she/he indeed escaped The Master's rage near-genocide. We may never actually learn anything more about her. This episode did bother me, it doesn't change The Doctor, who she/he has always been. It did break continuity, & contradicts so many years of stories, though. I agree with you, the infinite lifespan of the Doctor, now, is very problematic. It takes the edge of things. It was a lazy, slipshod new, ill-conceived plot device to guarantee future shows. It was conceived through lazy writing to justify future lazy writing.
Well, who’s to say they didn’t limit the Doctor? We see that it was possible for them to give the Doctor a new regeneration cycle. They could have found a way to make the Doctor just like any Time Lord. Just granting regeneration cycles as they saw fit.
Kennedy Lehane or yet again they may not have needed to. In theory a timelord could actually regenerate a thirteenth time without an extension but due to the symbiotic nuclei only being able to handle twelve those who attempt this go insane. It could be that the Doctor was not willing to attempt it as he fully knew the risks
Tecteun is gonna be like a young rassilon or omega or something I'm calling it now
You had constantly repeated the still from The Brain of Morbius and in that clip the character of Morbius says to the Doctor (played by Tom Baker at that time of the series) "How long Doctor, how long have you lived?" So even in the classic series they were trying to say that there were definitely Doctors before the William Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor so it's not like the new series isn't following it's own early days
So you are saying that one clip from one single episode explains the canon, but the hundreds of other episodes that say otherwise are wrong. I’m, sorry, but it doesn’t make sense to just ignore decades of canon for one mediocre episode. Not to mention the many plot holes this retcon creates. Hartnell was, and forever will be, the first doctor.
@@superduck6456 I don't agree and that's the end of it
@@ozsdcontentcreator1068 stop being childish
@@alexisaguirre7514 by you calling me childish that’s the immature behaviour that you have displayed and that is the kind of immature behaviour that I would expect from you
@@ozsdcontentcreator1068 Dude its already a year shut up
I'm gonna offer a counter theory and say Tecteun is the Other, the third found of Time Lord society after Rassilon and Omega.
Alternatively, working off your theory, the Timeless Child is the Other.
Na-ah. IF we believe the Master (which I don't) in that case I think Tecteun would be Omega and The Child is The Other. Tecteun got the first dose giving her unlimited lives and then Rassilon. (Either her husband or lab partner) But Rassilon got his Ego and killed Tecteun this way (or at least got rid of her). And then there is a reason why The Other is kept in secret.
Im hoping that some of the continuity is respected by allowing Rassilon to still be the founder of the origin for regeneration. The Timeless Child made them aware of the fact, yes, but experiments with Time Travel, exposure to the Vortex and how the Vortex would differentiate an individuals cells into those which can regenerate was Rassilon’s doing. Along with his later studies which would allow him to dictate how that coding operated. From this discovery, he, after many years of working with the Division didn’t like the idea of sharing that glory and simply wanted to bury the true history.
I'm not bothered by the infinite regeneration thing cheapening a death. The revived series has done a lot to build that each regeneration is essentially really dying, that to the Doctor it feels like they die and someone else takes their place. That still has enough gravity for me.
I also don't think that the "chosen one" thing is as big of an issue either. Firstly this is about as "chosen" as the older notions that The Doctor was The Other. Secondly, technically this means the Doctor is an alien to Gallifrey, one member of an entire species from that other universe that can regenerate infinitely. The Doctor is entirely ordinary for their species, their species just isn't Gallifreyan.
"The Doctor is entirely ordinary for their species, their species just isn't Gallifreyan."
Exactly! It is no more a case of being special than the 12 regenerations limit made the Doctor special under old canon.
@@kanebunce3791 Even then, being special != "Chosen One"
@@raingram Agreed.
I think peril still exists. Each Doctor is still an individual and a number have shown a reluctance to regenerate as they see it as a "death" of sorts.
Its a nuanced thing though isn't it, not literal. If you ever read author T Dicks' comments on every Doctor...
They have claimed that mind bending with morbius scene was the plot hole they were trying to close with this revelation.
But the whole Clara oswold / impossible girl story arc was supposed to be the whole story of the doctors regenerations.
The faces shown in morbius could easily be explained by rule 1 "the doctor lies"
Galifrayans supposedly come from the great loom, a progenitor device of sorts because they lost the ability to reproduce.
The doctor being half human was possibly explained by the fact that he was "dead too long" and in close proximity to dead humans when he regenerated.
He once claimed after a regeneration that human bacteria was all that was keeping him alive so soon after regenerating.
@Scooby McDooby everything that is unexplained in morbius or Dr who in general is covered by rule 1: the doctor lies.
If it is beneficial the doctor will lie or withhold information, but what we have seen over the years have been plot lines and rules/canon out of the doctors control.
Notice in the master's speech he says The Foundling became a Founder which I think suggests the Timeless Child became The Other and The Other either forgot about being the child or they were told a lie as they grew up. Eventually rassilon wanted the other out of the way so The Other jumped into the looms and was reloomed as the doctor.
I love this concise history of regeneration and the History of the Timelords.
I don't think that being the Timeless Child turns the Doctor into a chosen one... even before that, the Doctor was kinda "the chosen one" in a way.
I also like the Doctor being the Timeless Child. There is so much potential for further stories.
The Doctor being the Timeless Child with innumerable regenerations doesn't cheapen the impact of an incarnation dying. It's still a death. Only, there will always be a rebirth following. Or, rather, happen silmutaneously.
Because Regeneration is at once dying and being reborn.
It would actually also explain the Doctor's trouble with regenerating, as it looks like Tecteun's actions changed the process and since it wasn't supposed to work that way, the Doctor ends up having trouble. Because that first (?) incarnation of the Doctor, the little girl? She died first and then regenerated. It wasn't silmutaneous, as we usually see in regenerations. Rather like the Twelfth Doctor, who also died first and then regenerated.
As for why the Eleventh Doctor almost died for real, at the end of his regeneration circle and Rassilons
"How many Regenerations did we give you?"
Either, Rassilon KNEW all along that the Doctor would simply regenerate AFTER dying and giving him a new regeneration cycle was done to prevent the 12th Doctor from looking into why he regenerated when he SHOULD have died, or Rassilon had no idea at all and just gave the Doctor a new regeneration cycle because they needed him to connect to the universe.
I don't mind if they are the Timeless Child though I think that they are being tricked by the Master.
Something to point out is that, if I recall correctly, upon regeneration, the first Doctor said "Here we go... The long way around." Granted this is a line given to him after a special with 12 but this does hint that the Doctor knows something other than the end point that they saw as upon the Doctor's leaving a point in time where they meet themselves, they tend to forget the event till they enter the event(Hence why 9 believes he destroyed Gallifrey despite the fact he saved it before regeneration). However, also remember the Doctor acquired/stole the TARDIS as they ran from Gallifrey. Why would they have ran? It is possible that the true Timeless Child vanished and, fearing that this might put them at risk, they cloned the Timeless Child, spinning their DNA with that of a Gallifrean and creating the Doctor. The first Doctor is still the first Doctor but is also the Timeless Child. This would explain why they don't know this tidbit and why Gallifrey give the Doctor so much special treatment as well as why they ran. They didn't want to be used because of whatever they were cloned from, which, if this is true, the Master just revealed. What about 11 nearly dying of old age? Well, that was due to being a clone. Their Regenerations have limits and Gallifrey broke through time and space to give them a new set or fully unlock the ability fully. To put it bluntly, the Doctor would only be a chosen one to Gallifrey and no one else.
That being said, I don't feel it cheapens each form's death. We knew 10 would regen to 11 but that didn't make his line "I don't wanna go" any less heartbreaking. Regenerations bring about a new person each time it happens. The being known as the Doctor lives but the person that is the Doctor's current form at that moment dies. With it, the Doctor for a brief time also dies. And let's not forget that if the Doctor is mortally wounded during regeneration they can be killed(11 merely survived because wibbly wobbly timey wimey happenings). If the Doctor has no limit on Regeneration, they'd only be semi-immortal, unable to die without steps taken to truly kill them. They aren't a fixed point in time after all, they can be killed. All and all, each regen is still a death and still holds weight. But that's just my thoughts.
I assumed they placed a regeneration limit on the Doctor. It completely undermines Name of the Doctor if not
Except it doesn't, what matters there is that The Doctor _believes_ he's going to die. Whether he would have or not we don't know.
Raingram I still feel like something is lost if that’s the case
I've given some thought to this, and come up with a theory of my own. The Master has been known to at least twist the truth if not outright lie about it, but The Time Lords are not Beyound bending the truth themselves. In the 25th anniversary book of Dr. WHO, there were 3 founder's of the Time Lords; Rassalon, Omega, and a third that was simply called the one. The One allegedly committed suicide in protest against Rassilon convincing Omega to make the flight to create the eye, even though he knew it would seemingly kill Omega. Anyone who watched the classic series knows Omega was technically alive, but existed in the negative zone as an anti matter being. He was finally killed by the 5th doctor when he made his way to Earth and risked destroying the planet when he began to destabilize.
Getting back to the one, he allegedly committed suicide by throwing himself in a machine that artificially created Galifreyans through gene splicing as Rassilon betrayed a race of witches known as the Sisters who then cursed them with sterility. Since both the Doctor and Master have discussed thier parents in childhood memories to each other, the gene splicer could well be just a story that may have been nothing more than gossip. This leaves the question of what happened to the ONE.
My theory is that the One may have been Telssa, and either Rassalon or Omega had exploited him/her and the Timeless child for thier own ends. Once time travel was perfected, The one escaped through time, eventually calling herself the Doctor, erasing her memories and burying the TARDIS in order to avoid being detected by Rassalon who has been revealed to be a dictator in contrast to the history that later generations of Time Lords were told. She was eventually lured back to Galifrey perhaps using her adopted child as bait, and was eliminated by Rassalon who saw her as the last threat to his rule.
Some time later the current Doctor inspired by the legends took up her mantle and left Galifrey with his Grandchild.
One big question left by that story as well: where the heck did the timeless child come from?
Imagine it was the master after he went through the eye of harmony.
@@GODCONVOYPRIME or it's Jenny
@@joshuahillerup4290 Aw who am I kidding nazi's have control of the series, OF COURSE IT'S JENNY.🙄
@@GODCONVOYPRIME I know I'm going to regret this, but Nazis?
@@joshuahillerup4290 The Left are Nazi's. Think about it. The left is doing exactly what the nazi's did back in the world wars. Changing history, going after people for wrong think, violence on the streets? They're the nazis, man. It's them, it's always been them.
You can hear the faint glimmer of disgust coming from the guy as he describes the "new canon" lol. We're right there with ya, bud. Good job focusing on the subject matter without getting emotional. You're a better man than me.
I suspect the Timeless Child/Doctor was also given the 12 regeneration limit, so the Division could have more control, granting the Doctor new cycles and erasing his memories, often at the beginning of a new cycle. I do have a head canon on why the limit was established, basically to exerciser a degree of control over Time Lords. Time Lords stored in the Matrix could be granted new cycles, and probably they all got resurrected during the time war (and House probably ended up turning a lot of these time lords into spare parts).
I'm not too concerned about infinite regenerations leading to the Doctor throwing lives away, either. The "crisis" of regeneration, whether the Doctor's own crisis or that of a companion, has always centered around the Doctor's identity changing. Nothing about that is altered by unlimited regenerations.
But s/he's immortal now dammit!
@@GyitMulhaneski-GloriousYears
That doesn't change the fact that each regeneration brings a change of personality and identity, or that each incarnation becomes attached to their own particular expression of "Doctor-ness."
@@mr.flibble3190
Its really tapping into my concern about THE CHARACTER as well as the series: the series used to be fairly consistent and the series used to VERY (Apart from Baker C's mad half hour for a few episodes and McCoy's 14 weeks of pratfalls). The present situation is far more serious. Chibnall and Whitaker are turning the Doctor into an asshole. This isn't just not MY Doctor, this really bares no relation to the Doctor ANY of us saw pre 2017, now to make things worse s/he's a cut-price messiah of Gallifrey (AZ on the Heelvbf channel explains it better than I can right now, even if some slam him as being a hater).
Not only is the Doctor unlocked from time, but the plot is now unlocked from canon... and audience share. We are beating a long dead horse.
I have come up with a theory on the Timeless child Arc. At the end of the Timeless child where they show the memory being erased by the division the doctor was regenerated into a child and was made to think that he was born on galafrey and grew up to be William hartnell's first doctor
I also wonder what happened to Tecteun. I was thinking Rassilon and Omega killed her or they at least had something to do with.
I honestly thought old man that killed himself at the end was going to reveal himself to be Tecteun when he said this was all his fault, but nope he end up talking about Cyberman part of the plot
I think Tecteun is Rassillon. Omega got his name for scoring badly at the academy ... that doesn’t rule Omega out either. The Other is the Timeless Child.
I think Tecteun is Omega. Rassilon lie to get rid of Omega and take a more honorable place in history. (a theory)
Da
Where did the Timeless child originally come from? This is no more the origin of regeneration than just a new form of the mystery of where it came from.
Rassilon was an egomaniac - he took credit for everything - including Omega's achievements but we found out some of those, I suspect he took credit for Tecteun's as well - the founding triumvirate is still Rassilon, Omega and "The Other" , perhaps Tecteun is the other ... The script says that the two others shown are perhaps Rassion and Omega, and we know the third is Tecteun
Finally someone with brain! Nice video.