Random Guesswork: Doctor Who

Surprisingly I don’t blog about Doctor Who a lot, in fact this is apparently the first time (if you don’t include the time I denounced James Bond as being a Time Lord).

This blog post is going to be rife with SPOILERS so you have been warned!

Series 12 has been controversial for making massive changes to the Doctor Who canon, table-flipping the status quo for the foreseeable future. To summarise events…

The first episodes in the series, Spyfall, reintroduced the Master as a nasty, unhinged man working to depose humanity. Fans following the series didn’t expect the Master to reappear anytime soon as we’d last seen Missy supposedly killed for good after a scuffle with John Simm’s Master at the end of Capaldi’s run. It’s not revealed if this incarnation is pre-Missy and post-John Simm but it is revealed that the Master has discovered a secret of the Time Lords so dire that he felt it necessary to massacre the Time Lords and burn Gallifrey.

I really like how the Master’s trousers are about 20cms too short to reach his shoes, as a reflection of Thirteen’s outfit.

The midpoint of the series, Fugitive of the Judoon, seemingly was a straightforward episode about a fugitive hiding away from the anthropomorphic rhino police first introduced in the Tennant days. The twist came when it turned out the fugitive was an incarnation of the Doctor that Thirteen didn’t recognise. Similarly, this “Ruthless” Doctor (named because she was masquerading as a human called “Ruth”) didn’t recognise Thirteen. The implication is that the Ruthless Doctor is some forgotten incarnation or an incarnation from the future that has forgotten their past.

To complicate matters, a Time Lord agency turns out to be the Judoon’s client and they have no recollection of the Master murderising the hell out of Gallifrey, implying they must be from the past. A counterpoint floating about of Reddit remarks that Ruthless’ TARDIS is in the shape of a Police Box, which was the shape it took (and got stuck in) during one of the First Doctor’s adventures, placing Ruthless squarely in the “future incarnation” bracket.

It must be the Doctor with a shirt that tacky.

Fan favourite Captain Jack Harkness also makes an appearance to pass on a message to not give the lone Cyberman “what he wants”. Naturally things go tits up and three episodes towards the end of the series the lone Cyberman gets exactly what he wants.

The last few episodes are a bit of a confusing mess, criss-crossing between the Last Cyberwar and the Doctor and the Master back on Gallifrey. The latter has the Master explain in long-form that the origins of the Time Lords come from the Doctor, that they are the “Timeless Child” alluded to in various previous episodes. To boil it down, the Doctor was a lost child found next to a portal between worlds and one of the early native Gallifreyans found them, adopted them and then, having discovered the Doctor’s regenerative ability, then went on to splice it into Gallifreyans. In an exceptionally confusing sequence it’s then revealed that a story about a young Irish lad joining the police and then getting electroshock therapy that we’d seen in-between the main action was a masked version of past events, implying the Doctor joined some shady Time Lord FBI¹ and then had their mind wiped once their service was up.

Phew! That’s a lot to take in and I admit I’ve exaggerated or outright skipped large chunks. The main points to take away are:

• Gallifrey and the Time Lords are gone, which is annoying because we’d only just got them back following the epic events of the 50^th anniversary and the Doctor got to spend maybe three episodes involving them.
• There’s a mysterious Ruthless Doctor floating about in the background who is either a past or future incarnation of the Doctor.
• The Doctor is ultra special, not being from this universe and basically being the progenitor of the Time Lords.
• The Master is probably out there somewhere with a small cadre of invincible Cybermen-Time Lord hybrids (that’s one of the things I skirted over).
• Incarnations 1-13 of the Doctor are not remotely 1-13. According to one Redditor Jodie Whittaker could potentially be the thirtieth incarnation!

I myself am not offended or upset by the revelations from this series regarding Gallifreyan history. This isn’t the first time the lore has been tinkered with:

• An infamous scene back in Tom Baker’s era involves mental combat with deranged Time Lord Morbius; during the scene we see projected the previous faces of the Doctor, which also includes several we’ve never seen before². Fans had reasoned that these were Morbius’ faces, but having two seconds of this scene flash up during the Doctor flashing back through her memories in the last episode of series 12 implies the original reading of the scene is now canon.
• Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor (that’s no. Seven) was supposed to have some sort of climactic reveal that they were one of the original Time Lords and helped create Gallifrey as we know it alongside Time Lord Big-Bads Rassilon and Omega. This story unfortunately got abandoned as Doctor Who was cancelled, but it’s been dubbed “The Cartmel Masterplan” and if you want to know more there’s a really detailed Wikipedia article about it.
• The reveal of John Hurt’s War Doctor meant that the numbering was suddenly out and that Ten was actually Eleven and Eleven was Twelve! I vaguely remember certain fans being upset about that so you can only imagine their disgust at the implication that the numbers are now sort of redundant (except they won’t be because we still think of Ten as Ten and always will and so on).

My main gripe with the series is that, at the end, Thirteen was frustratingly passive. The Doctor should always appear to be in control, even when it’s clear they’re not. Some of the best drama has come out of the Doctor making the wrong decision! Thirteen’s characteristics are naivety, a brashness of action (she rarely plans properly and when she does it almost always goes awry) and a general warmth of humanity. I really like her because she has a lot of the characteristics of Ten, albeit without the annoying habit Ten had of, to paraphrase Charlie Brooker, walking into a room and going “oh it’s space! I know all about this!”.

I’m just hoping that Thirteen’s passivity in the last episode was supposed to be representative of her learning the “horrible secret” of the origins of the Time Lords and that she was missing large chunks of her life. It’s just annoying that it took a mental image of the Ruthless Doctor pointing out it never mattered before she knew rather than Thirteen snapping herself out of it. What I want to see going forward is Thirteen taking back control, even if it is in her characteristically plan-as-she-goes manner.

If you’ve made it this far you’re probably wondering where the title of the blog comes into this. Well, I had to explain the status in order to set up my guesses as to where the series is going. I genuinely don’t think showrunner Chris Chibnall is trying to ruin the franchise. If anything he’s successfully added proper mystery back to the show, unlike Stephen Moffett who used to set up a mystery and then maybe explain it in a throwaway line in a much later episode if he remembers to (I’m looking at you, exploding TARDIS!).

Here’s my guesses as to what’s up:

• The 60^th anniversary of Doctor Who is in 2023. The Time Lords getting wiped out again is a little heavy-handed but I suspect Chibnall is laying the groundwork for some epic story that will culminate at the anniversary. The 50^th gave us the Doctor saving Gallifrey from the Time War, so it makes sense to have to save them again for the 60^th.
• I think Ruthless will be Doctor no. 14. The fans like her and I think it would be pretty neat to have foreshadowed their next incarnation so heavily, a bit like the lead into River Song back in the day. I just hope that Thirteen can take back control of their run because she is getting overshadowed quite nastily at the moment!
• The Doctor’s backstory still had questions to answer. Where did she come from originally? Is it anything to do with the ethereal Kasaavins from the Spyfall episodes? I reckon we’ll hopefully get some episodes exploring this question.
• I haven’t the foggiest about the Master. He made a comment about “stealing a body” which is one of his old tricks so he could be post-Missy but given his John Simm-like mannerisms and psychopathy I’d be more tempted to assume he’s post-Simm and pre-Missy. Big Finish actually have a big event planned for the Master’s 50^th anniversary in a box set called “Masterful” coming soon and I’m really hoping Sacha Dawan’s Master gets a cameo!

Regardless of how much Chibnall has supposedly “ruined” the canon, I’m looking forward to what’s yet to come and will continue to watch the series for as long as it runs.

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | March 8, 2020 at 2:00 pm | Characters, Random Guesswork, This Stuff Probably Isn't Relevant Now | No comment

Tags: Doctor Who