{"id":3153,"date":"2020-03-08T14:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.payneful.co.uk\/blogsplosion\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2020-04-05T00:46:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T23:46:27","slug":"random-guesswork-doctor-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.payneful.co.uk\/blogsplosion\/2020\/03\/08\/random-guesswork-doctor-who\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Guesswork: Doctor Who"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This blog post is going to be rife with SPOILERS<\/strong> so you have been warned!<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

The first episodes in the series, Spyfall<\/i>, 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.<\/p>\n

\"The
I really like how the Master’s trousers are about 20cms too short to reach his shoes, as a reflection of Thirteen’s outfit.<\/div><\/div>\n

The midpoint of the series, Fugitive <\/i>of the Judoon<\/i>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Thirteen
It must be the Doctor with a shirt that<\/em> tacky.<\/div><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/sup> and then had their mind wiped once their service was up.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n