@@meris8486 Chibnall was a fuckin fool To think that he could use one tool To fix a problem he helped create As far back as that interview he did around the time of Warriors Gate He thinks we didn't notice or compare The little boy in Ireland with the Ginger hair Or even notice that the Dr was male and white Strange how before that he was mostly black and effeminate Its going to take some doing For somebody else with the same tool to fix Chibnall's screwing My favourite show seems beyond repair Because of this arsehole with the ginger hair!!
I like that Chibnal completely re-wrote the fabric of the universe the show is based on to fix a minor plot hole from an episode that came out in 1976.
The Morbius stuff still doesn't make any sense. The Doctor has no memories of any incarnations prior Hartnell so how could the random machine bring up the images yet The Doctor still had no idea about it. Then there's also the question of why Ruth's Tardis is a police box.
@@breakinggreens theory: Ruth is not a pre-Hartnell doctor, she is from season 6b Batshit crazy theory: so are the Morbius Doctors. And all other supposedly pre-Hartnell Doctors. The Timeless Child is a season 6b doctor that through time travel shenaniganery swapped between universes a couple times, lost their memory, got turned into a baby and got unlimited regenerations. Regeneration itself is a bootstrap paradox It only requires Chibnall to make every single multi-doctor story with 1 or 2 non-canon C'mon Dewwit
He didn't. He had no interest in fixing anything, he looked for a loophole/opening to shove in the diversity children, so Doctor Who wasn't run with 12 white males. And that's all he really needed. Now they can say The Doctor was a little black girl from the start. Chibnall doesn't care about anything the show did prior. He made The Time Of The Doctor irrelevant, after all.
If I wrote this episode I would have revealed that the Timeless Child was Susan Foreman and I would have made Jo Martin Doctor the 4th or 5th incarnation of Romana having taken on the mantle of the Doctor to continue their work because Romana believed the Doctor had perished in the time war.
The only issue is Romana has canonically died at her 4th or 5th incarnation. At least that's what I was lead to believe when down a rabbit hole about a year or so ago when reading the Doctor Who Wiki
I honestly cant imagine what its like to be a casual viewer at this point. I mean the Moffat era had its moments of big overarching stories and confusing plot but there was still a lot you could enjoy even without understanding the context. Is there anyone still sitting down their family to watch this for fun? Does anyone enjoy a bad actor reading the plot to us for half the episode?
I think Sacha Dwan is an amazing actor, but I agree with the rest of what you say. It’s boring, confrontational in all the wrong ways, doesn’t explain Doctor Who at all to a new audience... It’s abysmal.
When the destruction of Gallifrey, initially thought to be done by the Daleks, then revealed to be by the Doctor, was such a massive part of the show for seven series, doing it *again* and not even revealing how the Master did it is incredibly poorly thought out. It's the same idea that RTD did, but with less emotional impact, and less coherent plotting. And that describes Series 12 as a whole; it's Chibnall doing a bunch of stuff that RTD and Moffat did before, but forgetting to write compelling characters, so there's little emotional investment, and we're just watching worse versions of episodes we've already seen.
Feels weird posting this now. Honestly feels like a lifetime ago that I started working on it. KInda had to stop several times as I was finishing it over the course of this week as I went to myself "this doesn't fucking matter right now, does it?" - for the record, my dayjob's at a pharmaceutical wholesaler and we kinda need to keep open during this, so anyone expecting extra content out of me at the moment, sorry to disappoint Anyway stay safe everyone, stay indoors and importantly: ONLY SHARE INFORMATION IF YOU CAN VERIFY THAT IT IS DEFINITELY TRUE seriously people need to stop spreading fake shit
I always preferred the idea of the Doctor as just a _Cosmic Hobo,_ not the "Space Messiah" rubbish they've tried to push since Tennant. Yet to be honest, the perceived failings of the Chibnall era are simply an exacerbated version of the deep flaws of Nu Who in general, since Ecclestone left IE Trying to re-invert the wheel without sufficient effort and forward thinking.
In Steven Moffat's Tenure (Matt Smith (11th Dr), John Hurt (War Dr) & Peter Capaldi (12th Dr)) I thought the "Space Messiah" thing was metaphorical and I liked it. In Christ Chibnall's tenure (Jodie Whittaker (13th Dr)) they made the "Space Messiah" thing literal and I disliked it. The Doctor isn't the messiah but just an outsider considered to be a joke trying to do good. The Doctor chose to be special and that was at the heart of the Moffat tenure. The Doctor just made lots of noise over the years to become famous through his actions. In the Chibnall tenure he isn't just an average Joe trying to do good but is special from birth being the literal messiah. Some characters can be written as a messiah but that isn't The Doctor. He/she wasn't meant to be a messiah like character.
At least with Tennent and Smith it was the actions that the Doctor had actually pulled, he's been actually fixing enough stuff to actually get noticed, you know, whereas this is the doctor being born cool.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Tennant's portrayal. The Doctor IS the last Time Lord in existence and so (as a result) is a pretty legendary and mythical figure. Not only that but he is the only living being to walk away from the last great time war. There simply isn't anyone left in existence (bar perhaps The Master or the Face of Boe) that is of comparative stature that we know of. I think historically the only beings that could consistently reign in the Doctor and put him in his place were the Time Lords. For example, putting him on trial and sending him into exile, forcing him to resolve the Omega conflict, forcing him to enter the events of the "Genesis of the Daleks", sending him into the death zone as the 5th Doctor, putting him on trial AGAIN as the 6th Doctor etc. Even in "The End of Time" the Doctor recognises Rassilon as a legitimate equal (or even superior being) and is resigned to his fate at his hand before The Master intervenes. How Moffat handled the Doctor and the time lords in "Hell Bent" and Chibnall did in this episode are in direct contradiction to the Doctor's history with his own people up till this point. I would say that the big problem about Messiah Doctor is more of a problem whenever Moffat took over. The fairytale theme which (although justifiable as the Doctor is a pretty fairytale like concept) does predispose to painting him in this light.
@@jasonhebedead1710 its one thing to have the master, the doctor and the elder gods allude to things but keep every ones hands tied in some way. (Look just have a future master save every one at the start of season an leave with "at it's your turn to pay the debt now..", there now we have a why the doctor can't go back an stop them and a why the master not really trying to kill them.)
Do be fair to Moffet. He loved DW and it showed. He created some really memorable and creative monsters of sci-fi in recent years. The silence, weeping angels, the one monster they didn't show at the end of time, clockwork droids, Trenzelor, the girl who waited etc. For all the things he did wrong, he did more right. Most importantly, he did the 50th anniversary special justice. I know it's not universally loved. But it was just a great celebration of the show. So I respect Moffet for the good that he's done. I just think he should've had a good co-writer who kept his feet on the ground more often. He always wrote himself too big and didn't know where to stop. The doctor has been punching the thing for many months? Naa let's make it billions of years.
nah, the doctor punching the wall for billions of years was fine. thats probably the worst example you could have used. the only thing big about that is the number of years spent, not the story.
@@fahadus I fail to understand your issue with the number being big. why is this a criticism of the moffat era? a billion btw is a whole lot more than 10's of thousands. i think he was in there longer than the current age of the universe. the number being that big does make it a little more impactiful. but thats not even what im arguing here. i am trying to figure out what the problem is here? was heaven sent just so good but you wanted to find something to dislike about it? this isn't even nitpicking, this is literally creating a problem out of nothing. not even out of nothing. just something as trivial as how big a number is. honestly i don't see the problem, he probably just decided billion is big, lets do that. and somehow you have a problem with the number being too big? i was expecting an example like the hybrid, how it was set up to be a big thing but was really dissapointing. or series 6 the doctor dying. or series 7 clara reveal. she could have been something cool and interesting. but instead she's just a human who got split into the doctors timestream. you said the issue with moffat was that the stories were too big, yet your example is that a trivial number was too big but out of all the examples you chose heaven sent because it has a number that you deem too big? whats next? a guy winning 100 million dollars is a number too big and would have been just as amazing as winning 10 million? therefore the show/movie is bad? I guess a made up planet being 500 million light years away is bad because 50 million light years would still be too far away too? please tell me what your problem is here? also the doctor punching the wall for months is so not impactful. the whole episode is a metaphor for grief. and the whole point of him doing the same thing over and over again is because that in itself is a metaphor for how after losing a loved one, it can just feel like you are repeating a cycle a co-writer wouldn't have told him to make it so he was punching the wall for only a few months
@@KYCDK I apologize, this ended up being a lot longer than I thought. The problem I have with it is two-folds, one is that it ruins the very idea that made this premise so brilliant. I have posted that in a separate comment below, if you want to skip the rant. The major problem is that it breaks the illusion and you start to feel Moffat's presence. "Oh it's him trying to be too clever again." He has a thing where he keeps inflating until it becomes ridiculous. Take Sherlock, for example. Started with a taxi driver serial killer hiding in plain sight, and ended with a physic, world dominating, mastermind Holmes sister, manipulating people with mind-control form solitary confinement. The very same happened with Carla. Just another girl, but over the seasons become the most important person in the grand scheme of the universe, in ALL of time. The Doctor was also just a silly old bugger, which was the fun thing about it. Davies made him into a coping war veteran, which was a great take, but still, Doctor was silly for the most part. Moffat started strong too, but slowly getting bigger and ended up with the Doctor being turned into a Norse god. You save a girl, but then you go bigger, you save a family, than a city, than a country, than the humanity, then the universe, then time itself, than whole of existence in the multiverse. You keep trying to out-clever your great ideas. That is my problem. I absolutely adore his work, but it does become silly a lot more often than it should. I think he works great under pressure and constraints. The Girl in the Fireplace is a great example. Blink (constraint being that primary cast couldn't do this episode full time), another one where he came through in a great way was the 50th Anniversary Special (Very short time to write it. Then Eccleston couldn't be convinced to come back etc.) He ran with small ideas and made them great!
@@KYCDK About the time period being too long. The premise was that the Doctor didn't retain any memory of the past time loops. But as time passed, he realized that the stars were shifted on the sky, that made him realize he's in a different time. This is such a brilliant idea. For example, Polaris wouldn't be our northern star anymore in a 12,000 years, it would be Vega. Now that would still be a very recognizable sky, a lot of the stars would be shifted, but it will still be recognizable. But 10 Billion years? There will stars be born and dead and galaxies collided several times over, there's no way he can just look at the sky and recognize that time has shifted. He wouldn't even know where he is, let alone the time. The idea works REALLY well, within thousands of years and hundreds of thousands of years time period. Breaks apart at the billion years completely.
The Timeless Child is Susan Foreman, his "granddaughter". He stole her when the incarnation we know was an infant, and ran away to save her from further subjugation by the Time Lords (and later the Daleks in the Time War). He hid her on Earth. She looked like them. She had learned to act like them in the 1960's England. What better place to hide a tree than in a forest?
Yeah but the time lords can see the past and the future so how did the Master ever get in a position to wipe them all out anyways. Considering how much of a threat he is why didn't they keep an eye out for him. It's like the bit in Trial of a Time Lord when he appears on the matrix screen and none of the people in the courtroom, including the Valeyard have a bloody clue who he is. He's just the craziest time lord thats been produced by them and had already nearly destroyed them and Gallifrey in the Deadly Assassin! And even in that story the Doctor has to explain who the hell he is! Also they're not very good with their telepathic powers even when they're stood right next to each other (unlike Omega who worked out in seconds that 2 and 3 were the same time lords .) Shoddy writing all over the place, but the Timeless Children storyline is the ultimate in poor writing, even Bradley Walsh doesn't get a single decent bit of dialogue. Why can't they just go back to normal stories where the Doctor just turns up and confounds some lunatics scheme on some planet or other and then leave?
Headcanon: The whole Timeless Children nonsense is just the Other’s way of sending whoever is searching for him wild goose chases and making it impossible for anybody to figure out where he actually went. The Other just loves to troll the whole universe millions of years later after the foundation of Time Lord society.
@@tobi_dfwt8226 That’s the thing, the Other has planted so many misdirections that contradicts each other behind him before disappearing from recorded history including having them point to the Doctor being him while also having plenty to discount him as being the Other. Leaving the Doctor to sometimes think he is the Other and then sometimes think that he isn’t the Other.
Or the Master could be lying about everything to mindf*ck the Doctor. Look at the Five Doctors. The Master is as reliable and credible as Boris Johnson caught with his trousers down. The Doctor knows this, but instead of saying "save your breath", seems to swallow everything the proven liar is telling her. No questions. No "but I remember my parents, I only had two". Ten said he had a family, once. No, apparently he's had thousands, all adoptive. All kept the secret from him. And from Susan, it seems
Series 12 caused me to give up watching Doctor Who after 40 years. I watched "Spyfall" and saw that it wasn't any better than Series 11. I like watching the Series 12 commentaries because I have been curious about other peoples' opinions. The more reviews I watch the more I think I made the right decision. I don't think the show will recover from what's happened. Viewers (like me) are turning off in their millions. I'll stick with the older New Who and classic Who stories.
@@floydian2007 ratings are disastrous atm, though it's difficult to pin down exactly how many have switched off, due to streaming, time shifting, etc, muddying the water. Certainly "live" viewing figures have plummeted. The mere fact that RTD is returning shows that he, or the BBC, or both are very concerned. It's not like RTD to return to a past post, he is very much for moving forward, not back. On the other hand, he genuinely loves DW, even writing a main character as a Whovian in QAF.
Why poke fun at a good episode like “Last of the Time Lords?” (I’m not saying it’s the best thing ever, but it’s still good and much better than the one before it), when “The Wedding of River Song” exists?
I remember sitting in front of a TV, after I finished watching The Timeless Children. I felt cold and empty. Yes, I'm angry at changes. Actually, I got really pissed off the more I thought about it. But at the time, I wasn't, because I was more frustrated with the writing. 'They are here!' and 'Transmat!' are the standout lines here. This show deserves so much better. Instead, we get this... thing. I'm struggling for words colourful enough to describe my feelings about the writing and I can't find any. I hate this fucking episode. I hate everything about it. Well, except Sacha. I like his take on the Master. But you are right, Stu. He deserved so much better than this. Thank you for the video.
Why is no one talking about the lone cyberman. To be honest I quite enjoyed Ascension of the cybermen. Not because it was well written but because I was really interested in the lone cyberman and his backstory. The way he spoke about being a volunteer and the almost religious administration he had towards the cybermen was really fucking interesting. I thought it was drawing parallels to religious fundamentalism and I was really hoping we were going to explore why he began to think that way. Was it religion, propaganda or some kind of traumatic advent that made him see conversions as a sensible option. The cybermen always give humans the option to join up to be converted but they never do I was really hoping we’d get the opportunity to see the rare occasion where someone wants it. But what do we get?!?!? The master dose a shit little giggle then shrinks him before creating a fucking travesty in the props department. Seriously is no one els pissed of about this.
That moment was one of the few things I liked- but I'm a Master fanboy who likes seeing him betray people and get the upper hand. I also liked the cybermasters but they didn't do ANYTHING
Yeah totally agree. The most interesting Cyberman character & they don’t know how to conclude his character & basically becomes a plot device. Waste of potential
Exactly, that's something I really see expanded upon because we've hardly ever seen someone willingly convert, it's usually just those who are already converted dragging them off (eg: Age of Steel and Doomsday). We know that has happened before with the entire original being a choice to survive but someone being willing to do so during the Cyber Wars is something I'd like to understand the motives of.
Here we have a cyberman with the most backstory and character scene well Kroton or forever with we discount the comics. and there woefully under used , relegated to second role and then off stage as a plot devise.
I liked him too. I was hoping the Brendan story would show how he was picked up by the Alliance and converted into this uniquely-angry cyberman, who hated his own kind and wanted to destroy them. That would have carried forward all the threats and mysteries from the previous episodes and wrapped those up nicely in a massive cyber civil war. Instead, the whole cyberman threat was eliminated in the press of a button by the Master, along with the best Dr Who villain we've seen for some time. And Brendan turned out not to be real at all - just a story intended to reflect the Doctor's lifestory. All a bit disappointing really...
it's just embarrassing TV tbh. It's not fanfiction - it's *bad* fanfiction, written by a 14-year old. How the BBC let something this poor air, I have no idea. Have writers just forgotten how to write people talking to each other and doing shit like people? I swear to God, I'm watching Blake's 7 for the first time and that show has more realism in five minutes of 80s bikers in space and headless monkey suits than Chibnall has managed in two aggravatingly patronising and boring seasons.
@@tenacious3911 That he turned into a real episode... Look, I'm starting as a writer, and I'd loved to be a Doctor Who show runner (even if that is horribly unlikely) but fucking Christ on a bike, even I wouldn't do that.
Um... Well there are actually Plenty of reasons. For starters, he Did start to regenerate, before the astronaut shot him Again and he: 'died,' for-real. The idea was that if a Time-Lord gets killed mid-regeneration, they die for real. (And seeing how basically every regernation The Doctor has had has been overly-complicated, and getting messed-with everytime (Only Regenerations 6, War, 9, and 10's first-regeneration happen normally), I assume it would be even more the case for him. Secondly, he wasn't Really The Doctor. He was in the tesselecta. Thirdly, I'm surprised you decided to point fingers at THIS case, instead of the obvious one from The Time of the Doctor. (If The Doctor has infinite-regerneration, why did he need a new-cycle?
carealoo744 Maybe he needed a placebo to make him notice he has the energy. Like the lemonade and dry ice “potion” that 8 drank to become the war Doctor. Stupid, but passable.
It's more so "The Doctor is the Other" idea, but even that was ruined thanks to Lungbarrow and the like revealing the entire thing instead of leaving it as a mystery
Moffat always broke canon but it was usually somewhat entertaining, whereas at first Chibnall didn’t break canon but it was boring. Now Chibnall is both boring and breaking canon so worst of both worlds really 🤷♀️
My friend who got me into Doctor Who wasn’t that upset with the canon shaking finale, but I was. Lol and I started way after he did. The first series I watched live was series 8, but I got hooked on the lore. All the big finish stuff, and wilderness era novels, so I can’t stand this finale. It’s just changing the lore for the sake of change and shock value. It’s just like subverting our expectations in The Last Jedi. It’s only there to stir the pot, and it’s so obvious.
My sister has only watched new Who through David Tennant and isn't into all the lore like I am. But when she watched the finale with me even she was mad at what they did.
After the identity of the Timeless Child was revealed I started cackling like a mad man as my brain could not process the information I was told. I don't know if it was because the idea was ludicrous and or because I got so used to canon being one way.
I wholeheartedly agree, the story itself was incredibly dull and stupid, and the alterations to canon don't offer anything interesting. If they wanted more Doctors, they could have gone for showing some alternate universe stuff, or made it so that Season 6B happened and was really long and was erased from the Doctor's memory because they found out some stuff they shouldn't have. The Time Lords having reverse engineered regeneration from another race could also have been a good story, but not in the same space as finding out the Doctor has more incarnations, and neither of them should have been combined with the cybermen plot. The Cyber-Time Lords also hold the distinction of being one of the silliest looking things that's been on the show since... er, the flying cybermen heads last episode.
The cyber-time lords doesn't make sense considering that the Doctor on many occasions has claimed that himself ie time lords in general can't be converted because they are incompatible!
Additionally, I feel that the regeneration cap at 13 always made it to where a regeneration was a big deal. When the doctor regenerated, that was a whole life he/she couldn't get back, another tally on the life meter. Now the doctor could just walk around, not giving a shit because they could just regenerate. Might as well strap a bomb to their chest wherever they go for a quick fix to a situation.
as a viewer less involved in fanboy lore shit i can't stand episodes that inflate the doctor's importance. maybe certain developments resolve plot holes and stuff but on an episode-by-episode basis there's just very little interest to a lead character with deity-level power and influence. i would rather watch a weird dork get the shit kicked out of them by space creatures for 40 minutes than sit in a gold room and hear about how special the main character is. Edit: as an episode itself i thought it was lukewarm and disappointing by this season's standards. mostly my love for dhawan's master was what kept me watching. i've been liking jodie's doctor more this season and i think she deserved better than crying in a time tube for most of the ep.
More to the point don't you think that after the events of the Time Lords being stuck in a pocket universe etc,etc . it should have been more or less impossible for anybody to sneak onto Gallifrey never mind blow the place to fuck.
I take some issue with the argument on how those revelations permit endless possibilities. I mean, i thought that was the whole Nature of the show before this thing aired, just that the producers keep Burning the same cycle of villains over and over again and this went up its own arse in continuity it blowed up. Whats next? Davros is the Doctors dad?
You, me, and the Counsel of Geeks seem to be in a minority on the Doctor being the Timeless Child. I do also think, and hope, the Master is lying about that part if not the entire story.
Love your work man! That "Universe" tribute had me in tears it conveyed everything I love about this daft beautiful show. Oh yeah, and I love Stuart too I guess. :)
I can't wait for Richard E Grant's Shalka Doctor, Rowan Atkinson's Faital Death Doctor and Peter Cushing's Dr Who to show up claiming they're past incarnations too. Then Jo Martin's Timeless Child and John Hurts War Doctor show up only for The Doctor to relies these aren't previous me's, they're parallel me's and all our timelines have been melded into one for some nefarious purposes.Then after a fun Into The Spider-Verse style adventure the add on Doctors disappear back to their own universes and we are left with the Original 13. that's my fan fiction can I have some TV licence payer money to make it? Chibnall gets to, and his is a lot dumber and detrimental to the show than mine.
@@davidrayner4695 How is that a thing. I can almost, ALMOST see that working in Doctor Who in Papa Lazarou from League of Gentlemen way but GOD NO. That's so awful and horrifically tone-deaf that Chibs is going to make it canonical.
This season just made my husband and I drift away before the end. Sure, episodes were interesting compared to most of Series 11, but we found this overarching plot hard to care about. And once we heard what occurs in this finale, we kinda felt...done with Doctor Who. It got bad enough with Moffat and now that it's happening again, we found it frustrating and tiring to continue. Who knows, maybe we'll get sucked back in, but I think DW is starting to lose appeal for us finally. It sucks 'cause we got into the show together and it helped us visit the classic series and some Big Finish as well. Continuity IS fluid, but now that we have another "the Doctor is uber important" plot, it feels pointless.
I feel like it was left ambiguous on purpose but I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be true (only with 12 being the first and 13 the second)
It would make much more sense if The Master was the timeless child. Every time he/she dies, he/she doesn’t just regenerate, they come back via some mystical method - stealing bodies, being some sort of green blob of energy etc. This would also mean that The Doctor has no other choice but to turn The Master good like Capaldi attempted to do in season 10. It would also explain why the master is so crazy and give them some actual justification for their anger which would make the character more complex and interesting.
Then maybe the Doctor feels some loyalty to the Timelords and tries to save them. And that would make her kind of morally compromised and the Master essentially justified in a lot of their hatred, thus creating some complex character dynamics. Hmmmm... This is actually a really good idea. Much better than space Jesus. I should be writing this show.
The biggest problem with this episode is it has way too much to deal with in one episode. They have new lore to explain in a boring manner (which I would've preferred if the Dr was shown investigating this in other episodes. Hell can you hear me could've been useful for that especially since they tease the timeless child by giving the Dr a vision. Maybe we could've gotten some explanation from that) the lone Cyberman is there until he's sidelined by the master and he's the new villain. His plan is revealed too late into the episode IMO because the cyber masters don't get to do anything and our characters come up with the plan to stop the master and execute the plan in the last 10 minutes of the episode. Like honestly why are the Cybermen even here it doesn't feel like a part 2 IMO it feels like a different story because Chris couldn't link the stories properly
Honestly, I am one of those lore/cannon nuts who hates the massive retcon. But you want to know what irritates me the most? When Ruth Doctor asks 13, "So how does all this affect you?" She replies, "This doesn't change anything." Seriously? Everything the Doctor has ever known, down to her own nature and mortality, has been a lie, and she isn't even BOTHERED by it? What is the point of a giant reveal if it doesn't even affect the characters in any real way? Imagine for a second if in Empire Strikes Back when Vader told Luke the shocking truth that he's his dad, and Luke's just like, "Oh. Cool I guess. Whatever."
Just putting this out there, i refuse to believe all the timelords are dead, some definitely escaped. And hopefully they will return to Gallifrey and rebuild it.
B H not really. The timeless children and most of chibbers scripts are dull. Plus, the ending of the doctor having to blow up Galifrey etc is ripped straight from Parting of the Ways, except with less substance. Time of the Doctor isn’t good, no, but one thing it isn’t is dull.
"Oh Dear" is a good way to describe this. I like changes that actually change things but this? The Doctor already disliked the Time Lords. Now there's just a dash of colonialist thievery in the mix. The Time lords are all dead again so there's no change on that and the Matrix was wiped and overloaded with just the memories this Doctor has without any new ones made so... it doesn't factor in. The character praising by Graham rang hollow to me because Yaz could have been the answer to the question "What if Ace was a cop" but she's so flimsy at times where you'd think she'd do something that it felt hollow. Maybe with Ryan and Graham leaving, she'll get a chance to shine. My initial issue with this finale is that this is the THIRD finale in 5 SERIES where the Master is using the CYbermen. If you want to make it stand out and say "Everything's going to change", don't make it the same as half the last few finales. There's a difference between self awareness to correct a plot and just lampshading, Chibs. The worst thing is that the TImeless child idea could work if either the Master was the child (giving everyone an answer to if he is before or after Missy) or if the Child is another character the doctor has to find to try and ask for forgiveness and maybe even show that there's good in the universe. Then there's the "Character Arc wrap up". It's a minor complaint but having Ryan's one be about his disability that rarely flared up in the season.... Chibnall, we appreciate you might like Steven Universe but "Too short to ride" was a ten minute episode and Peridot had more going for her. Mr Daddy issues and Stolen character beats doesn't. I know this is borrowing homage to the Cartnell master plan but isn't it bizarre that the bloke who complained on TV about the state of the show is doing the things that were going wrong with it and not stuff that was going right for it? Basically, make a companion dynamic as good as 7th had with Ace. Lore is fine and dandy as a garnish or to fill up Wiki pages. Story is what's happening right now. Make more story and less lore, Chibs.
7:18 *exactly!* It was a great move on Steven's part. Maybe the Doctor has one more set of regenerations. Mayne he has infinite. The ambiguity raises stakes and questions *in an interesting way.*
Chibnall in 2018: no previous canon, this must be accesable to new viewers Two years later: why do that when I can write my FANWANK over the previous incarnations of the doctor in the brain of morbius INTO CANON!!
I do hope they stop making the doctor mega important. Just make an arc where he learns to stop thinking he's the center of time and space itself because he just think he's space Jesus.
In all fairness Cartmel planned to go down a similar party with his masterplan making all time lords kind of a clone of the doctor (he threw himself into the looms that grew timelords) and him being up there with omega and rassilon, only more important. But was it well written? No, thematically it treaded steps we’d all been through (oh, Gallifrey destroyed again huh?) and it just STRETCHED that exposition. There were just too many issues. I’d often rewatch finales multiple times but I’ve not rewatched this since. The New Years specials I did. Those were fun
My new head Canon is the Capaldis doctor is going to wake up any second now and realize it was all just a horrible fever dream he had before regenerating.
Omg, you're right, I also looked at the time of the episode to see how long it was left and was constantly surprised over that just 10 minutes went by...
It's weird that hearing about how this recent season (the finale more specifically) somehow manages to fuck everything up managed to get me into Doctor Who again, whereas before I was more ambivalent about it, and start watching it once more... No, not the show itself. I've lost hope in that being good again for a while now, it's sort of lost the magic for me if that makes sense. But I've actually been watching my collection of Classic Who DVDs again, and listening to Big Finish once more, and I'm currently having a blast with it atm. Currently hoping to rewatch/relisten to more of my favourite Who Stories, as well as watching/listening to one's that I previously had yet to! Probably won't have much to do considering what's currently going either way so I might as well get cracking... ;^)
I loved The Timeless Children :) I was full of suspense the whole way through. What I like about your reviews is that even when I disagree, I still have a lot of respect for what you say. I find a lot of fans struggle to give a negative review without coming across as toxic and entitled. I'm glad your work is an exception :)
I personally would have liked this if instead of doing all that origins of regeneration tosh, they had told the Master's origin story from the Big Finish story Master, which at first I thought they were going to. So the reason the Master was so angry at the Doctor was because she was the reason he was evil in the first time, being designated death's champion. He would have been angry because he saw the whole redemption arch from the Capaldi era being hypocritical on the Doctor's part as he can't help what he is. Plus it would have been quite poetic, the timeless children being the Doctor, times champion and the Master, death's.
If there’s no stakes then why should I rewatch any Doctor Who or classic who or Big Finish ? I know the Doctor and the companions survive so what’s the point ?
An episode can have stakes, companions leave and die, the Doctor regenerates, side characters can live or die some of them you even care about like Adelaide from Waters Of Mars.
There's a difference between meta stakes and in-context stakes. Just because we know that the Doctor won't get killed off mid-season, doesn't mean that the characters also know.
I dunno, maybe because a GOOD STORY hooks you in with something intriguing with interesting characters and stakes raised based on what the episode sets up and what our characters have to lose because of that. Death isn't the only way to raise tension, there are other means in which the plot can engage the audience on the level with the cast so that you cheer when they succeed or feel crushed when they fail. Good Doctor Who episodes do that.
David Attenborough: Here we see a rare specimen - constructive criticism on The Timeless Children! Also, I can get on board with the theory that the master fucked with the matrix. He did that in Trial of a Time Lord, why not now?
With canon, you're right. It can be treated with flexibility... HOWEVER, there's just stuff you shouldn't mess with, like at all. And of course, if canon doesn't matter why make a big point of changing it at all? Why even write an arc? You mentioned how none of the doctors matter because there's so many. This is a consequence of not having a foundation. You have to have a core foundation, if lore is important or not. And to be honest, you're there for the plot so lore should be pretty important. Some of this is established as early as "the second doctor" but it's junked now. The point I took away from this was "They don't care about what came before at all, so why should I care at all?" All for the sake of a quick virtue signal. Fecking sickening.
It was so so so bad. Irrespective of the fact it broke lore, it destroyed the whole idea of "Doctor *WHO*". Chibnall decided Morbius joke sequence that lasts an insignificant number of seconds should be made into a serious canon thing, making dozens of other episode meaningless in the process. I would agree that the Matrix was messed around with somehow. The Valeyard has easily done it before... and for all we know The Valeyard did it ;) Edit: "Was it well written" The last two episodes were so bad with the dialogue and scenes. A lot of the lines I heard were incredibly cliche and were just cheap copypastas from previous episodes.
I can totally relate. Except for maybe Kerblam and the 2 parter Spyfall, every other episode of the 13th Doctor I was also counting the minutes for it to end.
"Oh Dear" ... immediately amusing dude, thanks Please use this quarantine time to do some vids on real Who :D * Personally request some from the CLEARLY best Docs; Pat & Tom
Clearly the best Doctors? I'm sorry, but David Tennant and Jon Pertwee would like to have a word with you to change your completely wrong opinion. Lol jk
@@peylix-ohm4701 & @Alex Zander I do like David Tennant and Jon Pertwee (Pertwee more, of course!) Actually, may as well pop the yee'ole *IMO* ranking list up huh (I'd be curious as to you two's also) : 14. Christopher Eccleston - the king of hammy overacting & zero subtlety; shouting or sulking, basically! 13. Jodie Whittaker - Not really her fault I think, dreadful writing in the main 12. John Hurt - Great actor, again though naff writing & quite one dimensional; within the very limited time, of course 11. Colin Baker - Mainly naff stories; 'Vengeance on Varos' rules, terrible wasted opportunity on 'Two Doctors' though :( *gets pretty tough from here* 10. David Tennant - Great actor, & some magnificent stories; down here though as I don't like the generally juvenile tone & writing of much of the Tennant era. The dreadful Donna didn't help. 09. Sylvester McCoy - Some real gems ('Ghost Light', 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'The Curse Of Fenric'), but just too much crap, & a tendency towards off-putting overacting (nothing on Hammy-Chris though!) 08. Paul McGann - Even with just the the TV movie & the mini-episode he's just so good; the range of emotion on display is astounding, incredible actor. 07. Peter Davison - Great actor, lovely generally soft manor that makes it more powerful when he gets animated; mainly a great standard of stories, with a few classics & fewer turkeys. 06. William Hartnell - Kinda like the anti-Davidson , in that his generally grumpy manor makes it more powerful when he's soft! & also similar to Davidson *IMO* with a great standard of stories, a few classics & some turkeys 05. Peter Capaldi - Powerful & ranged actor & a generally fantastic standard of stories I think. Also one of the funniest Docs (Malcolm F'ing Tucker, of course) 04. Jon Pertwee - Just brilliant, & his time of course had LOTS of da'Brig & the best Master being bloody legends, so that helped! A handful of truly dreadful stories towards the end of his time though 03. Matt Smith - Like a younger Troughton, & very funny. The pant wettingly gorgeous Amy Pond helps, & ( *obviously* ) Bow-ties are extremely cool. 02. Patrick Troughton - Truly incredible actor (very funny & very intense, as required), plenty of Brig, great stories in general, fantastic companions & possibly my favorite regeneration story. 01. Tom Baker - Basically the same assessment as with Pat: incredible actor, plenty of Brig, great stories in general, fantastic companions; but Tom, damn the dude is SO funny & SO intense, & he really does have so many of the best Who stories ever ... a God among men :)
Apart from the Hell Bent comparisons, I pretty much agree with everything. I always look forward to your videos, so I'm glad Series 12 got you interested enough to make videos on each episode, but do you think you'll continue in this format going forward with Series 13 or will you just do a whole series review like you said you planned for Series 12?
Now they rammed the new Master into a wanted poster in the Faceless Ones - which could now say is he pre Roger D Master?? Why can't the classics be left alone :( without NuWho crap being shoe horned in.
Have the Doctor actively seek out the missing Matrix information rather than having it exposited to her, and don't have the Timeless Child be the Doctor. Easy fix, solid 6/10, maybe 7/10 finale. Now it's a 4/10.
I just realized that the Master going into the matrix and coming up with new incarnations of the doctor is not even unique to this story. Which makes this story even worse.
Hell Bent had a point, this one didn't seem to have one. I dislike the point of Hell Bent, but Clara's fans love it, and it builds up on 12th character arc, while this... why didn't 13th press the button? Why was she somewhat ok that the old dude did? I can find explanations and maybe that's what's intended. I doubt it, tho, if chibber believed his audience to be clever, he wouldn't give us 60 minutes of exposition! And series 11 didn't have one single story in it, not unless you can forego basic storytelling!
The reason why the doctor has started being presented as super important is that she’s a woman so they have to uplift her because this is a BBC production.
You just have to answer to questions; How did the master kill all the timelords. How does turning them into cybertimelords give them new regenerations. Don't look to the episode for any suggestions, any answer it can give will be disappointing.
Message from September 2020: I always thought the point, at least in the classic show, that nobody knew who the Doctor was (except the villains) when he arrived somewhere but they respected him when he left.
The issue is that The Timeless Children makes a big deal about lore that fans disagree with, and the general public don't understand. I've said for a while that franchises have to find a balance within a sort of franchise compass. The compass looks something like this. Left: New stories at the cost of old stories. Right: Old stories at the cost of new stories. Top: Old fans at the cost of new fans Bottom: New fans at the cost of old fans This is a new story for old fans, aggressively so. It's like "The Last Jedi" in that respect. I find "The Mandalorian" to be a good example of an "enlightened centrist" within this compass. Doctor Who needs a "The Mandalorian".
Maybe the timeless child could have been Susan and the doctor's rescuing of the child doesn't have to necessarily explain where the doctor came from, but maybe have been the first step in the doctor bravery and doing the right thing. On the other hand, in keeping with the doctor's shades of secrecy and manipulation, he never told Susan she was the timeless child and lied to her buy saying she was his grandfather. So when the first doctor says "one day we shall go back", its referring to a hopefull change in the tide of galifrey (which eventually does happen). It would also be the reason why he ran away from galifrey, because he was disgusted at the high council for what they were doing to the child. Not sure if this would be an improvement or not but at the very least it would have served the doctor's character more, since even though it may not explain who he/she is (which doesn't need an explanation) it explains the origin of his or her compassion to do the right thing and not let injustice happen. Characteristcs which would be further developed of course when the doctor meets Ian and Barbara. You could also maybe tie the Valeyard in, saying hes an alternate version of the doctor who never made the choice to rescue susan/the timeless child and in turn never develop the characteristcs he/she is known for. With the rescuing of susan being a fulcrum point in the doctor's journey. That's my two scents anyway. Great video.
two things it did well; made the time lords do mysterious shit again which was nice and Jodie was amazing. She has been wonderful this year, they've really given her so much more to do. Especially in Haunting, the finale and Spyfall. I think considering the criticisms people had of her Doctor last series, they made a real effort to give her more character than just "hey I'm quirky!"
As someone who actually really enjoyed series 12 overall (and I'm feeling like a real outsider in the Dr Who community atm for being a fan of this era so far), I can't really defend how plodding and messy this story was. At this point I just sort of accept that most writers will never really do the Cybermen justice* so I don't even begrudge that side of things, but the Masters plan here was... I'm not even sure what his end game was. I thought that they might go the route of half cyberised timelords with the Master as cyber leader, sending them across time and space to remake the universe how he wants, but they just sort of stand around. Russel I think has been the only showrunner so far to create good finales. Even the bad ones were loud and bombastic enough that they could still be mindless popcorn fun. *The only two that really worked in the modern era imo were the Age of Steel twoparter and The Next Doctor (which I maintain is my favourite Christmas special and the best depiction of the Cybermen in the modern era. Fight me.)
![ประสบการณ์ จ้าง Developer ที่ผมจะไม่มีวันลืม [ภาค1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bzivN4KDg-k/mqdefault.jpg)
"He shows her a power point presentation that ends with "You were adopted"" bless you, Stuart.
This is probably the best summarisation of The Timeless Children.
Chibnall sits inside your head
Chibnall lives among the dead,
Chibnall sees you in your bed,
And eats you when you're sleeping
So chibnall isn't actually real? Fantastic!
Chibnall at the end of days,
Chibnall lies all other ways,
Chibnall comes when time's a maze,
And all of fandom is weeping.
Hahahahahahaha
@@meris8486 Chibnall was a fuckin fool
To think that he could use one tool
To fix a problem he helped create
As far back as that interview he did around the time of Warriors Gate
He thinks we didn't notice or compare
The little boy in Ireland with the Ginger hair
Or even notice that the Dr was male and white
Strange how before that he was mostly black and effeminate
Its going to take some doing
For somebody else with the same tool to fix Chibnall's screwing
My favourite show seems beyond repair
Because of this arsehole with the ginger hair!!
@@bendream544
Bravo
When the master said 'brace yourself this is going to hurt' he was breaking the 4th wall.
I like that Chibnal completely re-wrote the fabric of the universe the show is based on to fix a minor plot hole from an episode that came out in 1976.
And now another one is made in the question, "Why is the Ruth Doctor's TARDIS a police box?"
The Morbius stuff still doesn't make any sense. The Doctor has no memories of any incarnations prior Hartnell so how could the random machine bring up the images yet The Doctor still had no idea about it. Then there's also the question of why Ruth's Tardis is a police box.
@@breakinggreens theory: Ruth is not a pre-Hartnell doctor, she is from season 6b
Batshit crazy theory: so are the Morbius Doctors. And all other supposedly pre-Hartnell Doctors. The Timeless Child is a season 6b doctor that through time travel shenaniganery swapped between universes a couple times, lost their memory, got turned into a baby and got unlimited regenerations. Regeneration itself is a bootstrap paradox
It only requires Chibnall to make every single multi-doctor story with 1 or 2 non-canon
C'mon
Dewwit
A minor plot hole that could easily be handwaved away
He didn't. He had no interest in fixing anything, he looked for a loophole/opening to shove in the diversity children, so Doctor Who wasn't run with 12 white males. And that's all he really needed. Now they can say The Doctor was a little black girl from the start.
Chibnall doesn't care about anything the show did prior. He made The Time Of The Doctor irrelevant, after all.
If I wrote this episode I would have revealed that the Timeless Child was Susan Foreman and I would have made Jo Martin Doctor the 4th or 5th incarnation of Romana having taken on the mantle of the Doctor to continue their work because Romana believed the Doctor had perished in the time war.
You’re a genius
That actually would make sense, more modern love for Susan and Romana
The only issue is Romana has canonically died at her 4th or 5th incarnation. At least that's what I was lead to believe when down a rabbit hole about a year or so ago when reading the Doctor Who Wiki
@@shortangel333 because it hasn't been mentioned in the show it can be retconed by the show.
@@shortangel333 If the BF audio is accurate Romana died in her second incarnation but good point.
I honestly cant imagine what its like to be a casual viewer at this point. I mean the Moffat era had its moments of big overarching stories and confusing plot but there was still a lot you could enjoy even without understanding the context. Is there anyone still sitting down their family to watch this for fun? Does anyone enjoy a bad actor reading the plot to us for half the episode?
Evidently u watched a differing ep to me.
@@MrThorfan64 agreed
MrThorfan64 this episode was a 50% bad fan fiction 50% exposition dump. What fucking episode did you watch?
I think Sacha Dwan is an amazing actor, but I agree with the rest of what you say. It’s boring, confrontational in all the wrong ways, doesn’t explain Doctor Who at all to a new audience... It’s abysmal.
@@alexzander4426 I dont hate him as a person, I liked him in the 50th anniversary special, but his performance was a mess in this episode.
When the destruction of Gallifrey, initially thought to be done by the Daleks, then revealed to be by the Doctor, was such a massive part of the show for seven series, doing it *again* and not even revealing how the Master did it is incredibly poorly thought out. It's the same idea that RTD did, but with less emotional impact, and less coherent plotting.
And that describes Series 12 as a whole; it's Chibnall doing a bunch of stuff that RTD and Moffat did before, but forgetting to write compelling characters, so there's little emotional investment, and we're just watching worse versions of episodes we've already seen.
Feels weird posting this now. Honestly feels like a lifetime ago that I started working on it. KInda had to stop several times as I was finishing it over the course of this week as I went to myself "this doesn't fucking matter right now, does it?" - for the record, my dayjob's at a pharmaceutical wholesaler and we kinda need to keep open during this, so anyone expecting extra content out of me at the moment, sorry to disappoint
Anyway stay safe everyone, stay indoors and importantly: ONLY SHARE INFORMATION IF YOU CAN VERIFY THAT IT IS DEFINITELY TRUE seriously people need to stop spreading fake shit
"All Time Lords are secretly clones of The Doctor"
Isn't that basically what this episode revealed?
I always preferred the idea of the Doctor as just a _Cosmic Hobo,_ not the "Space Messiah" rubbish they've tried to push since Tennant.
Yet to be honest, the perceived failings of the Chibnall era are simply an exacerbated version of the deep flaws of Nu Who in general, since Ecclestone left IE Trying to re-invert the wheel without sufficient effort and forward thinking.
@pious83 To be honest I think the groundwork for the Doctor as "Space Messiah" was laid as far back as the McCoy era
In Steven Moffat's Tenure (Matt Smith (11th Dr), John Hurt (War Dr) & Peter Capaldi (12th Dr)) I thought the "Space Messiah" thing was metaphorical and I liked it.
In Christ Chibnall's tenure (Jodie Whittaker (13th Dr)) they made the "Space Messiah" thing literal and I disliked it.
The Doctor isn't the messiah but just an outsider considered to be a joke trying to do good. The Doctor chose to be special and that was at the heart of the Moffat tenure. The Doctor just made lots of noise over the years to become famous through his actions. In the Chibnall tenure he isn't just an average Joe trying to do good but is special from birth being the literal messiah.
Some characters can be written as a messiah but that isn't The Doctor. He/she wasn't meant to be a messiah like character.
At least with Tennent and Smith it was the actions that the Doctor had actually pulled, he's been actually fixing enough stuff to actually get noticed, you know, whereas this is the doctor being born cool.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Tennant's portrayal. The Doctor IS the last Time Lord in existence and so (as a result) is a pretty legendary and mythical figure. Not only that but he is the only living being to walk away from the last great time war. There simply isn't anyone left in existence (bar perhaps The Master or the Face of Boe) that is of comparative stature that we know of.
I think historically the only beings that could consistently reign in the Doctor and put him in his place were the Time Lords. For example, putting him on trial and sending him into exile, forcing him to resolve the Omega conflict, forcing him to enter the events of the "Genesis of the Daleks", sending him into the death zone as the 5th Doctor, putting him on trial AGAIN as the 6th Doctor etc. Even in "The End of Time" the Doctor recognises Rassilon as a legitimate equal (or even superior being) and is resigned to his fate at his hand before The Master intervenes. How Moffat handled the Doctor and the time lords in "Hell Bent" and Chibnall did in this episode are in direct contradiction to the Doctor's history with his own people up till this point.
I would say that the big problem about Messiah Doctor is more of a problem whenever Moffat took over. The fairytale theme which (although justifiable as the Doctor is a pretty fairytale like concept) does predispose to painting him in this light.
@@jasonhebedead1710 its one thing to have the master, the doctor and the elder gods allude to things but keep every ones hands tied in some way.
(Look just have a future master save every one at the start of season an leave with "at it's your turn to pay the debt now..", there now we have a why the doctor can't go back an stop them and a why the master not really trying to kill them.)
Do be fair to Moffet. He loved DW and it showed. He created some really memorable and creative monsters of sci-fi in recent years. The silence, weeping angels, the one monster they didn't show at the end of time, clockwork droids, Trenzelor, the girl who waited etc. For all the things he did wrong, he did more right. Most importantly, he did the 50th anniversary special justice. I know it's not universally loved. But it was just a great celebration of the show. So I respect Moffet for the good that he's done. I just think he should've had a good co-writer who kept his feet on the ground more often. He always wrote himself too big and didn't know where to stop. The doctor has been punching the thing for many months? Naa let's make it billions of years.
nah, the doctor punching the wall for billions of years was fine. thats probably the worst example you could have used. the only thing big about that is the number of years spent, not the story.
@@KYCDK that's the thing I was talking about. It could've been just as epic with 10s of thousands lol.
@@fahadus I fail to understand your issue with the number being big. why is this a criticism of the moffat era? a billion btw is a whole lot more than 10's of thousands. i think he was in there longer than the current age of the universe. the number being that big does make it a little more impactiful. but thats not even what im arguing here. i am trying to figure out what the problem is here? was heaven sent just so good but you wanted to find something to dislike about it?
this isn't even nitpicking, this is literally creating a problem out of nothing. not even out of nothing. just something as trivial as how big a number is.
honestly i don't see the problem, he probably just decided billion is big, lets do that. and somehow you have a problem with the number being too big?
i was expecting an example like the hybrid, how it was set up to be a big thing but was really dissapointing. or series 6 the doctor dying. or series 7 clara reveal. she could have been something cool and interesting. but instead she's just a human who got split into the doctors timestream. you said the issue with moffat was that the stories were too big, yet your example is that a trivial number was too big
but out of all the examples you chose heaven sent because it has a number that you deem too big?
whats next? a guy winning 100 million dollars is a number too big and would have been just as amazing as winning 10 million? therefore the show/movie is bad? I guess a made up planet being 500 million light years away is bad because 50 million light years would still be too far away too?
please tell me what your problem is here? also the doctor punching the wall for months is so not impactful. the whole episode is a metaphor for grief. and the whole point of him doing the same thing over and over again is because that in itself is a metaphor for how after losing a loved one, it can just feel like you are repeating a cycle
a co-writer wouldn't have told him to make it so he was punching the wall for only a few months
@@KYCDK I apologize, this ended up being a lot longer than I thought.
The problem I have with it is two-folds, one is that it ruins the very idea that made this premise so brilliant. I have posted that in a separate comment below, if you want to skip the rant. The major problem is that it breaks the illusion and you start to feel Moffat's presence. "Oh it's him trying to be too clever again." He has a thing where he keeps inflating until it becomes ridiculous. Take Sherlock, for example. Started with a taxi driver serial killer hiding in plain sight, and ended with a physic, world dominating, mastermind Holmes sister, manipulating people with mind-control form solitary confinement. The very same happened with Carla. Just another girl, but over the seasons become the most important person in the grand scheme of the universe, in ALL of time. The Doctor was also just a silly old bugger, which was the fun thing about it. Davies made him into a coping war veteran, which was a great take, but still, Doctor was silly for the most part. Moffat started strong too, but slowly getting bigger and ended up with the Doctor being turned into a Norse god. You save a girl, but then you go bigger, you save a family, than a city, than a country, than the humanity, then the universe, then time itself, than whole of existence in the multiverse. You keep trying to out-clever your great ideas. That is my problem. I absolutely adore his work, but it does become silly a lot more often than it should. I think he works great under pressure and constraints. The Girl in the Fireplace is a great example. Blink (constraint being that primary cast couldn't do this episode full time), another one where he came through in a great way was the 50th Anniversary Special (Very short time to write it. Then Eccleston couldn't be convinced to come back etc.) He ran with small ideas and made them great!
@@KYCDK About the time period being too long. The premise was that the Doctor didn't retain any memory of the past time loops. But as time passed, he realized that the stars were shifted on the sky, that made him realize he's in a different time. This is such a brilliant idea. For example, Polaris wouldn't be our northern star anymore in a 12,000 years, it would be Vega. Now that would still be a very recognizable sky, a lot of the stars would be shifted, but it will still be recognizable. But 10 Billion years? There will stars be born and dead and galaxies collided several times over, there's no way he can just look at the sky and recognize that time has shifted. He wouldn't even know where he is, let alone the time. The idea works REALLY well, within thousands of years and hundreds of thousands of years time period. Breaks apart at the billion years completely.
The Timeless Child is Susan Foreman, his "granddaughter". He stole her when the incarnation we know was an infant, and ran away to save her from further subjugation by the Time Lords (and later the Daleks in the Time War). He hid her on Earth. She looked like them. She had learned to act like them in the 1960's England. What better place to hide a tree than in a forest?
That's actually a cool idea I hadn't thought about. I personally thought it'd be the Master.
Yeah but the time lords can see the past and the future so how did the Master ever get in a position to wipe them all out anyways. Considering how much of a threat he is why didn't they keep an eye out for him. It's like the bit in Trial of a Time Lord when he appears on the matrix screen and none of the people in the courtroom, including the Valeyard have a bloody clue who he is. He's just the craziest time lord thats been produced by them and had already nearly destroyed them and Gallifrey in the Deadly Assassin! And even in that story the Doctor has to explain who the hell he is! Also they're not very good with their telepathic powers even when they're stood right next to each other (unlike Omega who worked out in seconds that 2 and 3 were the same time lords .) Shoddy writing all over the place, but the Timeless Children storyline is the ultimate in poor writing, even Bradley Walsh doesn't get a single decent bit of dialogue. Why can't they just go back to normal stories where the Doctor just turns up and confounds some lunatics scheme on some planet or other and then leave?
Headcanon: The whole Timeless Children nonsense is just the Other’s way of sending whoever is searching for him wild goose chases and making it impossible for anybody to figure out where he actually went. The Other just loves to troll the whole universe millions of years later after the foundation of Time Lord society.
But, wouldn't that have the same issue? That would make The Other canon which would probably make The Doctor being The Other canon.
@@tobi_dfwt8226 That’s the thing, the Other has planted so many misdirections that contradicts each other behind him before disappearing from recorded history including having them point to the Doctor being him while also having plenty to discount him as being the Other. Leaving the Doctor to sometimes think he is the Other and then sometimes think that he isn’t the Other.
Or the Master could be lying about everything to mindf*ck the Doctor. Look at the Five Doctors. The Master is as reliable and credible as Boris Johnson caught with his trousers down. The Doctor knows this, but instead of saying "save your breath", seems to swallow everything the proven liar is telling her.
No questions. No "but I remember my parents, I only had two".
Ten said he had a family, once. No, apparently he's had thousands, all adoptive. All kept the secret from him. And from Susan, it seems
Series 12 caused me to give up watching Doctor Who after 40 years. I watched "Spyfall" and saw that it wasn't any better than Series 11. I like watching the Series 12 commentaries because I have been curious about other peoples' opinions. The more reviews I watch the more I think I made the right decision. I don't think the show will recover from what's happened. Viewers (like me) are turning off in their millions. I'll stick with the older New Who and classic Who stories.
Millions might be a stretch
@@SmartSmears it certainly isn't. Millions of fans around the world hate what chinballs has done.
@@SmartSmears That is a comment that hasn't aged well.
@@floydian2007 ratings are disastrous atm, though it's difficult to pin down exactly how many have switched off, due to streaming, time shifting, etc, muddying the water.
Certainly "live" viewing figures have plummeted.
The mere fact that RTD is returning shows that he, or the BBC, or both are very concerned. It's not like RTD to return to a past post, he is very much for moving forward, not back. On the other hand, he genuinely loves DW, even writing a main character as a Whovian in QAF.
Well it’s obvious that “Warriors of the Deep” is gonorrhea
Thanks to Chibnall it's now the cure FOR gonorrhea!
Warriors of the Deep is amazing, who wouldn't want to see Hillary Clinton kung-fu fight a giant sea dragon horse thing?
@@morningcoffeecat2271 lmao
The one advantage of bad finale after finale coming out of new who : Last of the Timelords looks better and better with each one
Nah.
Not everyone's convinced? Mr Chibnall! More disappointing finales, if you please!
God I miss the days when that was the low point of new who
Why poke fun at a good episode like “Last of the Time Lords?” (I’m not saying it’s the best thing ever, but it’s still good and much better than the one before it), when “The Wedding of River Song” exists?
All of the finales which were bad in the previous seasons will prbably be middling to decent episodes in the Chibs era. All of them.
"Out-Moffated Moffat". New favourite quote, another excellent video Stu.
I remember sitting in front of a TV, after I finished watching The Timeless Children. I felt cold and empty. Yes, I'm angry at changes. Actually, I got really pissed off the more I thought about it. But at the time, I wasn't, because I was more frustrated with the writing. 'They are here!' and 'Transmat!' are the standout lines here. This show deserves so much better. Instead, we get this... thing. I'm struggling for words colourful enough to describe my feelings about the writing and I can't find any. I hate this fucking episode. I hate everything about it. Well, except Sacha. I like his take on the Master. But you are right, Stu. He deserved so much better than this.
Thank you for the video.
I know this is random but, love the Tom Baker Cartoon
Why is no one talking about the lone cyberman. To be honest I quite enjoyed Ascension of the cybermen. Not because it was well written but because I was really interested in the lone cyberman and his backstory. The way he spoke about being a volunteer and the almost religious administration he had towards the cybermen was really fucking interesting. I thought it was drawing parallels to religious fundamentalism and I was really hoping we were going to explore why he began to think that way. Was it religion, propaganda or some kind of traumatic advent that made him see conversions as a sensible option. The cybermen always give humans the option to join up to be converted but they never do I was really hoping we’d get the opportunity to see the rare occasion where someone wants it. But what do we get?!?!? The master dose a shit little giggle then shrinks him before creating a fucking travesty in the props department. Seriously is no one els pissed of about this.
That moment was one of the few things I liked- but I'm a Master fanboy who likes seeing him betray people and get the upper hand. I also liked the cybermasters but they didn't do ANYTHING
Yeah totally agree. The most interesting Cyberman character & they don’t know how to conclude his character & basically becomes a plot device. Waste of potential
Exactly, that's something I really see expanded upon because we've hardly ever seen someone willingly convert, it's usually just those who are already converted dragging them off (eg: Age of Steel and Doomsday). We know that has happened before with the entire original being a choice to survive but someone being willing to do so during the Cyber Wars is something I'd like to understand the motives of.
Here we have a cyberman with the most backstory and character scene well Kroton or forever with we discount the comics.
and there woefully under used , relegated to second role and then off stage as a plot devise.
I liked him too. I was hoping the Brendan story would show how he was picked up by the Alliance and converted into this uniquely-angry cyberman, who hated his own kind and wanted to destroy them. That would have carried forward all the threats and mysteries from the previous episodes and wrapped those up nicely in a massive cyber civil war. Instead, the whole cyberman threat was eliminated in the press of a button by the Master, along with the best Dr Who villain we've seen for some time. And Brendan turned out not to be real at all - just a story intended to reflect the Doctor's lifestory. All a bit disappointing really...
it's just embarrassing TV tbh. It's not fanfiction - it's *bad* fanfiction, written by a 14-year old. How the BBC let something this poor air, I have no idea. Have writers just forgotten how to write people talking to each other and doing shit like people?
I swear to God, I'm watching Blake's 7 for the first time and that show has more realism in five minutes of 80s bikers in space and headless monkey suits than Chibnall has managed in two aggravatingly patronising and boring seasons.
The space rats episode, "Stardrive"! 🤣 great comparison!
Chinballs actually admitted he based it on fanfiction he wrote as a child.
Don't forget Red Dwarf :D
Not even I would write something like that, despite the fact I am 14.
@@tenacious3911 That he turned into a real episode...
Look, I'm starting as a writer, and I'd loved to be a Doctor Who show runner (even if that is horribly unlikely) but fucking Christ on a bike, even I wouldn't do that.
Why didn’t he regenerate when he got shot twice on the beach in Impossible Astronaut if he was immortal the entire time? Doesn’t make sense.
Um... Well there are actually Plenty of reasons.
For starters, he Did start to regenerate, before the astronaut shot him Again and he: 'died,' for-real. The idea was that if a Time-Lord gets killed mid-regeneration, they die for real. (And seeing how basically every regernation The Doctor has had has been overly-complicated, and getting messed-with everytime (Only Regenerations 6, War, 9, and 10's first-regeneration happen normally), I assume it would be even more the case for him.
Secondly, he wasn't Really The Doctor. He was in the tesselecta.
Thirdly, I'm surprised you decided to point fingers at THIS case, instead of the obvious one from The Time of the Doctor. (If The Doctor has infinite-regerneration, why did he need a new-cycle?
carealoo744 Maybe he needed a placebo to make him notice he has the energy. Like the lemonade and dry ice “potion” that 8 drank to become the war Doctor. Stupid, but passable.
"I've been looking forward to this" - Dooku
"The plot holes have doubled since the last time we met"
Good. Twice the pride, double the fall.
@@andrewf1145 Chibnall In A Chair: YE!
I think this is Chibnall's way of trying to resurrect the old "The Doctor is Omega" idea but fucked it up.
It's more so "The Doctor is the Other" idea, but even that was ruined thanks to Lungbarrow and the like revealing the entire thing instead of leaving it as a mystery
Moffat always broke canon but it was usually somewhat entertaining, whereas at first Chibnall didn’t break canon but it was boring. Now Chibnall is both boring and breaking canon so worst of both worlds really 🤷♀️
First Chibnall episode my moms ever seen, and coincidently the last episode she'll be watching
My friend who got me into Doctor Who wasn’t that upset with the canon shaking finale, but I was. Lol and I started way after he did. The first series I watched live was series 8, but I got hooked on the lore. All the big finish stuff, and wilderness era novels, so I can’t stand this finale. It’s just changing the lore for the sake of change and shock value. It’s just like subverting our expectations in The Last Jedi. It’s only there to stir the pot, and it’s so obvious.
My sister has only watched new Who through David Tennant and isn't into all the lore like I am. But when she watched the finale with me even she was mad at what they did.
@@karenhall4645 how did she feel about the blatant pandering references to 10’s era in this episode?
After the identity of the Timeless Child was revealed I started cackling like a mad man as my brain could not process the information I was told. I don't know if it was because the idea was ludicrous and or because I got so used to canon being one way.
Well... I'm looking forward to Big Finish's Stranded. No Chibnall there.
I wholeheartedly agree, the story itself was incredibly dull and stupid, and the alterations to canon don't offer anything interesting. If they wanted more Doctors, they could have gone for showing some alternate universe stuff, or made it so that Season 6B happened and was really long and was erased from the Doctor's memory because they found out some stuff they shouldn't have. The Time Lords having reverse engineered regeneration from another race could also have been a good story, but not in the same space as finding out the Doctor has more incarnations, and neither of them should have been combined with the cybermen plot. The Cyber-Time Lords also hold the distinction of being one of the silliest looking things that's been on the show since... er, the flying cybermen heads last episode.
I personally loved the Cyber Time Lords designs but everything else I agree with.
But....They fly now!
The Time Lords having reverse engineered regeneration from another race IS a good story -- it's called Zagreus lmao
The cyber-time lords doesn't make sense considering that the Doctor on many occasions has claimed that himself ie time lords in general can't be converted because they are incompatible!
If anyone wants to make this canon, I’m the real timeless child
so like...i forgot... did they ever explain why the weird sentient evil rags in The Ghost Monument knew about The Timeless Child?
Additionally, I feel that the regeneration cap at 13 always made it to where a regeneration was a big deal. When the doctor regenerated, that was a whole life he/she couldn't get back, another tally on the life meter. Now the doctor could just walk around, not giving a shit because they could just regenerate. Might as well strap a bomb to their chest wherever they go for a quick fix to a situation.
When theres a new showrunner they will ignore/retcon every but on this
I personally think this was Chibber's attempt to just retroactively make the Doctor more ethnically diverse. Nothing else really.
as a viewer less involved in fanboy lore shit i can't stand episodes that inflate the doctor's importance. maybe certain developments resolve plot holes and stuff but on an episode-by-episode basis there's just very little interest to a lead character with deity-level power and influence. i would rather watch a weird dork get the shit kicked out of them by space creatures for 40 minutes than sit in a gold room and hear about how special the main character is.
Edit: as an episode itself i thought it was lukewarm and disappointing by this season's standards. mostly my love for dhawan's master was what kept me watching. i've been liking jodie's doctor more this season and i think she deserved better than crying in a time tube for most of the ep.
I still want to know how The Master destroyed Gallifrey.
More to the point don't you think that after the events of the Time Lords being stuck in a pocket universe etc,etc . it should have been more or less impossible for anybody to sneak onto Gallifrey never mind blow the place to fuck.
Big boom
He told everyone that Rassilon and Omega were actually the same person, which literally blew everyone's minds, killing them all
At least you didn’t start crying
I take some issue with the argument on how those revelations permit endless possibilities. I mean, i thought that was the whole Nature of the show before this thing aired, just that the producers keep Burning the same cycle of villains over and over again and this went up its own arse in continuity it blowed up. Whats next? Davros is the Doctors dad?
Omega is the Doctor's mum.
Solidus-Skully and sister
You, me, and the Counsel of Geeks seem to be in a minority on the Doctor being the Timeless Child. I do also think, and hope, the Master is lying about that part if not the entire story.
Rassilon created regenerations to gain immortality and omega created time machines and space and time travel
They could have made it all canon through alternate universes/dimensions not this and even then I don't care about all the non canon ones being canon
I remember years ago you said "they need to stop treating the doctor as space jesus when he's really a space gypsie"
I sometimes rewatch Stubagful's videos on DW after a few months. Nothing in the last two seasons of DW makes me want to watch again, ever.
Every character is just a regeneration of the doctor
I really enjoyed this finale, but like always, I do love hearing Stuart rip it to shreds 😂
Same here
I've heard like two people say they enjoyed it, that's something at least.
Love your work man! That "Universe" tribute had me in tears it conveyed everything I love about this daft beautiful show. Oh yeah, and I love Stuart too I guess. :)
I can't wait for Richard E Grant's Shalka Doctor, Rowan Atkinson's Faital Death Doctor and Peter Cushing's Dr Who to show up claiming they're past incarnations too. Then Jo Martin's Timeless Child and John Hurts War Doctor show up only for The Doctor to relies these aren't previous me's, they're parallel me's and all our timelines have been melded into one for some nefarious purposes.Then after a fun Into The Spider-Verse style adventure the add on Doctors disappear back to their own universes and we are left with the Original 13. that's my fan fiction can I have some TV licence payer money to make it? Chibnall gets to, and his is a lot dumber and detrimental to the show than mine.
@@davidrayner4695 How is that a thing. I can almost, ALMOST see that working in Doctor Who in Papa Lazarou from League of Gentlemen way but GOD NO. That's so awful and horrifically tone-deaf that Chibs is going to make it canonical.
This season just made my husband and I drift away before the end. Sure, episodes were interesting compared to most of Series 11, but we found this overarching plot hard to care about. And once we heard what occurs in this finale, we kinda felt...done with Doctor Who. It got bad enough with Moffat and now that it's happening again, we found it frustrating and tiring to continue.
Who knows, maybe we'll get sucked back in, but I think DW is starting to lose appeal for us finally. It sucks 'cause we got into the show together and it helped us visit the classic series and some Big Finish as well. Continuity IS fluid, but now that we have another "the Doctor is uber important" plot, it feels pointless.
For a second I thought you said this episode made you break up
I mean it's bad but hopefully not that bad!
@@meris8486 Oh god, I hope it never gets that bad! That'd be a pretty shaky marriage. XD
let's just ignore this had ever happened and bathe in the glory of Big Finish
I just figured the doctor was given 12 more regenerations and 13 was the first of this new cycle.
I feel like it was left ambiguous on purpose but I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be true (only with 12 being the first and 13 the second)
As much as I dislike this episode, I must admit that time lapse of the Citadel being built was beautiful.
as someone who enjoys watching lego being built sped up - yep, agree entirely
It would make much more sense if The Master was the timeless child. Every time he/she dies, he/she doesn’t just regenerate, they come back via some mystical method - stealing bodies, being some sort of green blob of energy etc. This would also mean that The Doctor has no other choice but to turn The Master good like Capaldi attempted to do in season 10. It would also explain why the master is so crazy and give them some actual justification for their anger which would make the character more complex and interesting.
Then maybe the Doctor feels some loyalty to the Timelords and tries to save them. And that would make her kind of morally compromised and the Master essentially justified in a lot of their hatred, thus creating some complex character dynamics. Hmmmm... This is actually a really good idea. Much better than space Jesus. I should be writing this show.
The biggest problem with this episode is it has way too much to deal with in one episode. They have new lore to explain in a boring manner (which I would've preferred if the Dr was shown investigating this in other episodes. Hell can you hear me could've been useful for that especially since they tease the timeless child by giving the Dr a vision. Maybe we could've gotten some explanation from that) the lone Cyberman is there until he's sidelined by the master and he's the new villain. His plan is revealed too late into the episode IMO because the cyber masters don't get to do anything and our characters come up with the plan to stop the master and execute the plan in the last 10 minutes of the episode. Like honestly why are the Cybermen even here it doesn't feel like a part 2 IMO it feels like a different story because Chris couldn't link the stories properly
Honestly, I am one of those lore/cannon nuts who hates the massive retcon. But you want to know what irritates me the most? When Ruth Doctor asks 13, "So how does all this affect you?" She replies, "This doesn't change anything."
Seriously? Everything the Doctor has ever known, down to her own nature and mortality, has been a lie, and she isn't even BOTHERED by it? What is the point of a giant reveal if it doesn't even affect the characters in any real way?
Imagine for a second if in Empire Strikes Back when Vader told Luke the shocking truth that he's his dad, and Luke's just like, "Oh. Cool I guess. Whatever."
*If Chris watched just one of these TH-camrs' videos be might actually learn something.*
A whole bunch of fanwanky bollocks, I'll leave it at that, i've been too angry at this story these past weeks
Zak Rosenfeld wow so this story broke you too
surely an unwanted handy though, I don't think anyone wanted this
Just putting this out there, i refuse to believe all the timelords are dead, some definitely escaped. And hopefully they will return to Gallifrey and rebuild it.
Yeah, I think the doctor survived.
BIGGEST PROBLEM: Dull and Lazy. Like an extreme diet Parting of the Ways.
AG Films I think that describes time of the doctor more than it does timeless children.
B H not really. The timeless children and most of chibbers scripts are dull. Plus, the ending of the doctor having to blow up Galifrey etc is ripped straight from Parting of the Ways, except with less substance. Time of the Doctor isn’t good, no, but one thing it isn’t is dull.
"Oh Dear" is a good way to describe this.
I like changes that actually change things but this? The Doctor already disliked the Time Lords. Now there's just a dash of colonialist thievery in the mix. The Time lords are all dead again so there's no change on that and the Matrix was wiped and overloaded with just the memories this Doctor has without any new ones made so... it doesn't factor in.
The character praising by Graham rang hollow to me because Yaz could have been the answer to the question "What if Ace was a cop" but she's so flimsy at times where you'd think she'd do something that it felt hollow. Maybe with Ryan and Graham leaving, she'll get a chance to shine.
My initial issue with this finale is that this is the THIRD finale in 5 SERIES where the Master is using the CYbermen. If you want to make it stand out and say "Everything's going to change", don't make it the same as half the last few finales. There's a difference between self awareness to correct a plot and just lampshading, Chibs.
The worst thing is that the TImeless child idea could work if either the Master was the child (giving everyone an answer to if he is before or after Missy) or if the Child is another character the doctor has to find to try and ask for forgiveness and maybe even show that there's good in the universe.
Then there's the "Character Arc wrap up". It's a minor complaint but having Ryan's one be about his disability that rarely flared up in the season.... Chibnall, we appreciate you might like Steven Universe but "Too short to ride" was a ten minute episode and Peridot had more going for her. Mr Daddy issues and Stolen character beats doesn't.
I know this is borrowing homage to the Cartnell master plan but isn't it bizarre that the bloke who complained on TV about the state of the show is doing the things that were going wrong with it and not stuff that was going right for it? Basically, make a companion dynamic as good as 7th had with Ace.
Lore is fine and dandy as a garnish or to fill up Wiki pages. Story is what's happening right now. Make more story and less lore, Chibs.
The wastage of the Ruth Doctor was the worst thing for me... like a firework that fizzled out.
•Illusion System• This entire era fizzled out on Jodie’s second episode.
7:18 *exactly!* It was a great move on Steven's part. Maybe the Doctor has one more set of regenerations. Mayne he has infinite. The ambiguity raises stakes and questions *in an interesting way.*
Chibnall in 2018: no previous canon, this must be accesable to new viewers
Two years later: why do that when I can write my FANWANK over the previous incarnations of the doctor in the brain of morbius INTO CANON!!
I do hope they stop making the doctor mega important. Just make an arc where he learns to stop thinking he's the center of time and space itself because he just think he's space Jesus.
I've always said it. Why can the Morbius Doctors not be Morbius.
In all fairness Cartmel planned to go down a similar party with his masterplan making all time lords kind of a clone of the doctor (he threw himself into the looms that grew timelords) and him being up there with omega and rassilon, only more important.
But was it well written? No, thematically it treaded steps we’d all been through (oh, Gallifrey destroyed again huh?) and it just STRETCHED that exposition. There were just too many issues. I’d often rewatch finales multiple times but I’ve not rewatched this since. The New Years specials I did. Those were fun
My new head Canon is the Capaldis doctor is going to wake up any second now and realize it was all just a horrible fever dream he had before regenerating.
Omg, you're right, I also looked at the time of the episode to see how long it was left and was constantly surprised over that just 10 minutes went by...
It's weird that hearing about how this recent season (the finale more specifically) somehow manages to fuck everything up managed to get me into Doctor Who again, whereas before I was more ambivalent about it, and start watching it once more...
No, not the show itself. I've lost hope in that being good again for a while now, it's sort of lost the magic for me if that makes sense.
But I've actually been watching my collection of Classic Who DVDs again, and listening to Big Finish once more, and I'm currently having a blast with it atm. Currently hoping to rewatch/relisten to more of my favourite Who Stories, as well as watching/listening to one's that I previously had yet to! Probably won't have much to do considering what's currently going either way so I might as well get cracking... ;^)
I loved The Timeless Children :) I was full of suspense the whole way through. What I like about your reviews is that even when I disagree, I still have a lot of respect for what you say. I find a lot of fans struggle to give a negative review without coming across as toxic and entitled. I'm glad your work is an exception :)
can we just acknowledge how stupid it is to have Ko Sharmus be shot dead on the floor and he just presses the button. AFTER BEING SHOT A DOZEN TIMES
Nice nod with the Colin baker Davros as that actually did happen in Big Finish.
What’s the story called? I know I’m 8 months late
I personally would have liked this if instead of doing all that origins of regeneration tosh, they had told the Master's origin story from the Big Finish story Master, which at first I thought they were going to. So the reason the Master was so angry at the Doctor was because she was the reason he was evil in the first time, being designated death's champion. He would have been angry because he saw the whole redemption arch from the Capaldi era being hypocritical on the Doctor's part as he can't help what he is. Plus it would have been quite poetic, the timeless children being the Doctor, times champion and the Master, death's.
If there’s no stakes then why should I rewatch any Doctor Who or classic who or Big Finish ?
I know the Doctor and the companions survive so what’s the point ?
An episode can have stakes, companions leave and die, the Doctor regenerates, side characters can live or die some of them you even care about like Adelaide from Waters Of Mars.
There's a difference between meta stakes and in-context stakes. Just because we know that the Doctor won't get killed off mid-season, doesn't mean that the characters also know.
Meris but we knew that none of that was true going into TTC so why does he care
@@iain9757
What?
I dunno, maybe because a GOOD STORY hooks you in with something intriguing with interesting characters and stakes raised based on what the episode sets up and what our characters have to lose because of that.
Death isn't the only way to raise tension, there are other means in which the plot can engage the audience on the level with the cast so that you cheer when they succeed or feel crushed when they fail.
Good Doctor Who episodes do that.
David Attenborough: Here we see a rare specimen - constructive criticism on The Timeless Children!
Also, I can get on board with the theory that the master fucked with the matrix. He did that in Trial of a Time Lord, why not now?
Refuse to watch this episode. I will never watch it.
4:26 So does that mean Curse of Fatal Death actually happened?
With canon, you're right. It can be treated with flexibility... HOWEVER, there's just stuff you shouldn't mess with, like at all.
And of course, if canon doesn't matter why make a big point of changing it at all? Why even write an arc?
You mentioned how none of the doctors matter because there's so many. This is a consequence of not having a foundation.
You have to have a core foundation, if lore is important or not. And to be honest, you're there for the plot so lore should be pretty important.
Some of this is established as early as "the second doctor" but it's junked now. The point I took away from this was "They don't care about what came before at all, so why should I care at all?" All for the sake of a quick virtue signal. Fecking sickening.
To be honest, making the doctor the root of the time lord regenerations makes to doctor a Mary Sue.
It was so so so bad. Irrespective of the fact it broke lore, it destroyed the whole idea of "Doctor *WHO*". Chibnall decided Morbius joke sequence that lasts an insignificant number of seconds should be made into a serious canon thing, making dozens of other episode meaningless in the process.
I would agree that the Matrix was messed around with somehow. The Valeyard has easily done it before... and for all we know The Valeyard did it ;)
Edit: "Was it well written"
The last two episodes were so bad with the dialogue and scenes. A lot of the lines I heard were incredibly cliche and were just cheap copypastas from previous episodes.
I can totally relate. Except for maybe Kerblam and the 2 parter Spyfall, every other episode of the 13th Doctor I was also counting the minutes for it to end.
I only just found out about this because it wasn't recommended to me. I've never been more disappointed to miss a video before
"Oh Dear" ... immediately amusing dude, thanks
Please use this quarantine time to do some vids on real Who :D
* Personally request some from the CLEARLY best Docs; Pat & Tom
Clearly the best Doctors? I'm sorry, but David Tennant and Jon Pertwee would like to have a word with you to change your completely wrong opinion. Lol jk
@@alexzander4426 Tennant is one of the worst tbh, the OP is completely right.
@@peylix-ohm4701 & @Alex Zander
I do like David Tennant and Jon Pertwee (Pertwee more, of course!)
Actually, may as well pop the yee'ole *IMO* ranking list up huh (I'd be curious as to you two's also) :
14. Christopher Eccleston - the king of hammy overacting & zero subtlety; shouting or sulking, basically!
13. Jodie Whittaker - Not really her fault I think, dreadful writing in the main
12. John Hurt - Great actor, again though naff writing & quite one dimensional; within the very limited time, of course
11. Colin Baker - Mainly naff stories; 'Vengeance on Varos' rules, terrible wasted opportunity on 'Two Doctors' though :(
*gets pretty tough from here*
10. David Tennant - Great actor, & some magnificent stories; down here though as I don't like the generally juvenile tone & writing of much of the Tennant era. The dreadful Donna didn't help.
09. Sylvester McCoy - Some real gems ('Ghost Light', 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'The Curse Of Fenric'), but just too much crap, & a tendency towards off-putting overacting (nothing on Hammy-Chris though!)
08. Paul McGann - Even with just the the TV movie & the mini-episode he's just so good; the range of emotion on display is astounding, incredible actor.
07. Peter Davison - Great actor, lovely generally soft manor that makes it more powerful when he gets animated; mainly a great standard of stories, with a few classics & fewer turkeys.
06. William Hartnell - Kinda like the anti-Davidson , in that his generally grumpy manor makes it more powerful when he's soft! & also similar to Davidson *IMO* with a great standard of stories, a few classics & some turkeys
05. Peter Capaldi - Powerful & ranged actor & a generally fantastic standard of stories I think. Also one of the funniest Docs (Malcolm F'ing Tucker, of course)
04. Jon Pertwee - Just brilliant, & his time of course had LOTS of da'Brig & the best Master being bloody legends, so that helped! A handful of truly dreadful stories towards the end of his time though
03. Matt Smith - Like a younger Troughton, & very funny. The pant wettingly gorgeous Amy Pond helps, & ( *obviously* ) Bow-ties are extremely cool.
02. Patrick Troughton - Truly incredible actor (very funny & very intense, as required), plenty of Brig, great stories in general, fantastic companions & possibly my favorite regeneration story.
01. Tom Baker - Basically the same assessment as with Pat: incredible actor, plenty of Brig, great stories in general, fantastic companions; but Tom, damn the dude is SO funny & SO intense, & he really does have so many of the best Who stories ever ... a God among men :)
Apart from the Hell Bent comparisons, I pretty much agree with everything. I always look forward to your videos, so I'm glad Series 12 got you interested enough to make videos on each episode, but do you think you'll continue in this format going forward with Series 13 or will you just do a whole series review like you said you planned for Series 12?
Now they rammed the new Master into a wanted poster in the Faceless Ones - which could now say is he pre Roger D Master?? Why can't the classics be left alone :( without NuWho crap being shoe horned in.
It's a show about time travel...
Some Random Guy no you don't say - rolls eyes
@@marky437 Well, as you clearly didn't follow.
I think him being in the faceless ones is kinda cool. I don’t think he’s pre Delgado though. I’d say he’s in between simm and missy
The Doctor in Hellbent, "Get off my planet." Rassilon, "Akshully...."
Doctor Who is dead. It survived the 80s, the wilderness years, the slow deteriroation of the Moffat era... but this was the last fucking straw
Have the Doctor actively seek out the missing Matrix information rather than having it exposited to her, and don't have the Timeless Child be the Doctor.
Easy fix, solid 6/10, maybe 7/10 finale. Now it's a 4/10.
I just realized that the Master going into the matrix and coming up with new incarnations of the doctor is not even unique to this story. Which makes this story even worse.
Same with the idea of the Cybermen invading Gallifrey and giving themselves regenerations - a comic story already did that a few years ago.
Neither is a poorly-written Master delivering stupid exposition trying to explain the Doctor's origins (see the 1996 movie).
Hell Bent had a point, this one didn't seem to have one. I dislike the point of Hell Bent, but Clara's fans love it, and it builds up on 12th character arc, while this... why didn't 13th press the button? Why was she somewhat ok that the old dude did? I can find explanations and maybe that's what's intended. I doubt it, tho, if chibber believed his audience to be clever, he wouldn't give us 60 minutes of exposition!
And series 11 didn't have one single story in it, not unless you can forego basic storytelling!
The Yaz thing was literally dialogue lifted from Neil Breens Twisted Pair
The reason why the doctor has started being presented as super important is that she’s a woman so they have to uplift her because this is a BBC production.
You just have to answer to questions; How did the master kill all the timelords. How does turning them into cybertimelords give them new regenerations.
Don't look to the episode for any suggestions, any answer it can give will be disappointing.
Psychic toilet paper?
Message from September 2020: I always thought the point, at least in the classic show, that nobody knew who the Doctor was (except the villains) when he arrived somewhere but they respected him when he left.
The issue is that The Timeless Children makes a big deal about lore that fans disagree with, and the general public don't understand. I've said for a while that franchises have to find a balance within a sort of franchise compass. The compass looks something like this.
Left: New stories at the cost of old stories.
Right: Old stories at the cost of new stories.
Top: Old fans at the cost of new fans
Bottom: New fans at the cost of old fans
This is a new story for old fans, aggressively so. It's like "The Last Jedi" in that respect. I find "The Mandalorian" to be a good example of an "enlightened centrist" within this compass. Doctor Who needs a "The Mandalorian".
The only reason why I hate this episode is that it makes the scene where Clara comforts The Doctor as a child entirely worthless
Maybe the timeless child could have been Susan and the doctor's rescuing of the child doesn't have to necessarily explain where the doctor came from, but maybe have been the first step in the doctor bravery and doing the right thing. On the other hand, in keeping with the doctor's shades of secrecy and manipulation, he never told Susan she was the timeless child and lied to her buy saying she was his grandfather. So when the first doctor says "one day we shall go back", its referring to a hopefull change in the tide of galifrey (which eventually does happen). It would also be the reason why he ran away from galifrey, because he was disgusted at the high council for what they were doing to the child.
Not sure if this would be an improvement or not but at the very least it would have served the doctor's character more, since even though it may not explain who he/she is (which doesn't need an explanation) it explains the origin of his or her compassion to do the right thing and not let injustice happen. Characteristcs which would be further developed of course when the doctor meets Ian and Barbara.
You could also maybe tie the Valeyard in, saying hes an alternate version of the doctor who never made the choice to rescue susan/the timeless child and in turn never develop the characteristcs he/she is known for. With the rescuing of susan being a fulcrum point in the doctor's journey.
That's my two scents anyway. Great video.
Ser Barristan Selmy at the end of The Winds of Winter when White Walkers appear: 11:43
Barristan: It's okay Doctor, i can finally tell Robert i made the eight
two things it did well; made the time lords do mysterious shit again which was nice and Jodie was amazing. She has been wonderful this year, they've really given her so much more to do. Especially in Haunting, the finale and Spyfall. I think considering the criticisms people had of her Doctor last series, they made a real effort to give her more character than just "hey I'm quirky!"
Timeless children is a solid *deary me* /10
My head canon is when The Timeless Child was reincarnated into The Doctor, she was stripped of her infinite lives and still had 13.
yeah, same here.
As someone who actually really enjoyed series 12 overall (and I'm feeling like a real outsider in the Dr Who community atm for being a fan of this era so far), I can't really defend how plodding and messy this story was. At this point I just sort of accept that most writers will never really do the Cybermen justice* so I don't even begrudge that side of things, but the Masters plan here was... I'm not even sure what his end game was. I thought that they might go the route of half cyberised timelords with the Master as cyber leader, sending them across time and space to remake the universe how he wants, but they just sort of stand around.
Russel I think has been the only showrunner so far to create good finales. Even the bad ones were loud and bombastic enough that they could still be mindless popcorn fun.
*The only two that really worked in the modern era imo were the Age of Steel twoparter and The Next Doctor (which I maintain is my favourite Christmas special and the best depiction of the Cybermen in the modern era. Fight me.)
How long until they make an episode where every villain ever was an incarnation of the doctor