It’s Day 1 of this new community, so why not throw a grenade into it by bringing up the Timeless Child story?
Personally, I don’t have a big issue with the concept of the Timeless Child. I think the possibility of earlier, uknown versions of the Doctor, some of whom could even be antagonists, is pretty exciting.
I understand the frustration expressed by those who don’t like that the Doctor is basically the foundation of modern Time Lord society by being the origin of regeneration. I don’t really have a rebuttal to that.
I do think that the story in the Chibnall era was poorly told, and it failed to do anything interesting with the concepts it presented. So far, I like the way Davies is embracing the story, even if it’s just to add some texture to the Doctor’s backstory, and the way he interacts with the universe.
One thing Davies hasn’t done so far is address the fact that this is not just an adoption story, which is the way he’s portrayed it so far - it’s also an abuse story. I think he’s going to have to reckon with that at some point.
Personally, my issue with this is that it reduces the Doctor in a way, in a very important way.
The Doctor is the name they chose, he said it is a promise. That said everything about how they are, they made a choice about the person they wanted to be and that made them special, maybe even unique in all of space and time.
But nah, turns out that’s not what made them special, they were born that way and the most powerful race that ever existed with all its history and splendor is now just a pale copy of this anomaly.
I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’m also not going to be convinced to easily embrace it.
That’s all very fair.
Generally Doctor Who gets into a quagmire when it starts mining the backstory for story ideas. Too much of it and the show becomes unwatchable. Chibnall didn’t appear to have many plans for it beyond introducing Jo Martin’s Doctor so it’s hard to understand why it was brought up in the first place.
That said RTD seems to have found an interesting take on it with the orphan angle and seems to have used it as a soft continuity reset of the backstory. With the new “happy go lucky” Doctor that we have in the 15th and the fact that we are back to being the “last of the time lords” (at least for the moment) I think it’s going to hard to explore the abuse angle in any depth without bringing the angst back.
I always thought that when the timeless child idea came up it seemed like it had something interesting going on. But the entire time I couldn’t figure out what was actually going on. RTD seems to actually care about overarching story arcs, so I look forward to seeing what he does with it.
