Doctor Who News for 2020 (Season 12)

BBC's tale of The Timeless Child was a bad idea, deeply undermines The Doctor

(Wed Mar 11 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) For Doctor Who Season 12, the show runners promised us a story that would change everything we know about Doctor Who. Rolling out a trope like that is possibly a sign of desperation. In any case, what the BBC did to The Doctor was nearly as bad as what they portrayed Tecteun having done to develop Regeneration. The BBC gave us a story of a demigod fallen from the sky, who was tortured by mortals seeking to learn the secret of regeneration, and having stolen that secret built a society of pompous universe-shaping Time Lords. WTF?

The torture of The Timeless Child in Doctor Who and what the story could have been

(Wed Mar 11 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) For Doctor Who Season 12, the show runners promised us a story that would change everything we know about Doctor Who. Instead we were shown a child that was a gift from heaven, that was tortured with repeated deaths to find the secret of eternal life.

Who is The Doctor? An everyman who travels and rescues people? Or a demigod from another universe?

(Fri Mar 06 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In the Season 12 finale The Timeless Children the BBC gave us a story that rewrote the lore of Doctor Who in a big way. While there are plenty of folks cheering the rewrite, some of us (obviously like myself) see it differently. The question we should be asking is - Who is The Doctor? That is what The Timeless Children challenges us to ask.

Did The Master lie about The Doctor being The Timeless Child?

(Thu Mar 05 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Doctor Who Season 12, the season finale is proving to be controversial in some quarters. One controversy is whether The Master had sufficient proof that The Doctor was indeed The Timeless Child. A YouTuber commentator walks us through the claims, and sure enough The Master did not show in the episode a clear line of connection between the two. We know that The Master is a liar and a manipulator, so did he lie and manipulate in this case? Is the narrative shown during The Timeless Children truth, or is it another lie uttered by The Master?

2MTL gets it backwards about Doctor becoming Everyman

(Tue Mar 03 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The Doctor Who Season 12, season finale was an excellent rollicking good crazy-ass scheme invented by The Master. In his review of that episode, Chip Suterth claimed the episode gave us an Everyman Doctor. "The Doctor could have been anyone all along"? "A RETCON that doesn't invalidate a single televised story"? No, Chip, most of the time you're right on, but this time you got it completely backward.

Betrayed by the myth of the timeless child

(Mon Mar 02 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The Doctor Who Season 12, season finale was an excellent rollicking good crazy-ass scheme invented by The Master, but the episode was marred by the primary selling point - that we'd learn about The Timeless Child and the lie of the Timeless Child and all this earth-shattering stuff about the real history of Gallifrey. What we were given was not a useful clarification of some gap in Time Lord Lore - but instead it was an abomination that ruins the whole purpose of Doctor Who.

The disgusting over-hyping of The Doctor's role in the universe

(Mon Mar 02 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In The Timeless Children we got the reveal promised throughout Doctor Who Season 12. And yes it rewrote Time Lord history from the beginning. But not only did the episode fail on several levels, it is simply a continuation of the over-hype'd role The Doctor has in the universe. The Doctor is supposed to just be a guy, living in a box, carrying a screwdriver, passing through from place to place, and helping out where he (or she) can. But the BBC seems it can't help itself, and has built a bunch of hype about The Doctor. Let's go over the history of that hype bubble.

The BBC lied about The Doctor's origin from the beginning?

(Sat Feb 29 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Doctor Who Season 12, the season-long topic is the lie of the timeless child, and that the origin of The Time Lords was fake. The finale promises to have The Master present The Truth to The Doctor - as if The Master would ever tell the truth. The attached video makes the case that originally the BBC presented The Doctor as a brilliant HUMAN from the future, rather than an alien from another planet, and that the established lore of Gallifrey began with The Third Doctor.

When do Cybermen scream? What kind of Cyberman makes other Cybermen scream?

(Tue Feb 25 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In The Ascension of the Cybermen we see The Last Cyberman waking up an army of Cybermen. In the process he has some kind of gun-thing, and the Cybermen are screaming. Since it was asked in the show, what kind of Cyberman can make other Cybermen scream?

Overanalyzing the Timeless Children Preview video

(Mon Feb 24 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The finale of Season 12 is fast approaching, and the BBC has released both a Next Time trailer and a Preview trailer; since we already covered the first let's go over the second. Going by the Preview, the action will be split between Gallifrey and the Cyber Troop Carrier ship.

Officer Brendan has something to do with Capt. Jack, or else the Endless Child, in Ascension Of The Cybermen

(Sun Feb 23 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Ascension Of The Cybermen one of the story lines concerns Officer Brendan, a found (abandoned) child apparently in remote Ireland, who becomes a police officer, who curiously survives a fall off a cliff, and who undergoes a strange mind-wipe procedure. It's all very curious, but includes signature bits related to Capt. Jack Harkness.

The Master always survives; his involvement with the Cyber War, Gallifrey, using Gallifrey as a base for Cybermen, etc

(Sun Feb 23 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Skyfall 2, The Master was surely forever trapped in that alternate universe. Anybody who believes that for a minute has not watched very much Doctor Who. The Master always survives and always comes back no matter how certain a death he'd endured. And The Master always has a cockamamie scheme.

Did the Doctor save history in The Haunting of Villa Diodati?

(Wed Feb 19 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In The Haunting of Villa Diodati, we were promised a rollicking ghost story when The Doctor visited with Mary Shelley and Doctor Polidori on the evening that both created the core of two significant horror genres - Frankenstein and Vampires. Instead we got a Base Under Siege story where some folks The Doctor said were significant historical figures were threatened with death, and therefore The Doctor got really uptight about preserving history. But The Doctor did not preserve history - probably.

The biggest issue with Ruth-Doctor being pre-Hartnell isn't the TARDIS?

(Sun Feb 16 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Fugitive of the Judoon, the BBC in its infinite wisdom thrust upon us a new incarnation of The Doctor which is presented as an impossibility. Being Doctor Who fans we're examining minutae to figure out how this could be, and one of the theories is that The Ruth-Doctor was a pre-William Hartnell incarnation of The Doctor. But the biggest problem with that theory isn't what most of us are talking about.

Did the Ruth-Doctor guard The Timeless Child in a memory-wiped regeneration?

(Sat Feb 15 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Doctor Who Season 12, fandom is being rocked by The Master claiming something about the lie of the Timeless Child, and then the revelation of an incarnation of The Doctor that basically cannot exist, but obviously does exist. Putting two and two together to get 50 is what Doctor Who fans do all the time, so of course someone has suggested there was a Doctor regeneration stuck between the Troughton and Pertwee Doctor's, and that during that regeneration The Doctor worked for a secretive Time Lord agency trusted with guarding the secret of The Timeless Child.

Everyone is missing another gap in The Doctor's regenerations

(Sat Feb 15 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The theories about The Ruth-Doctor point to a regeneration gap between Troughton's and Pertwee's Doctor, and therefore The Ruth-Doctor has to fit in that gap. However there is another gap that everyone is missing. The Ruth-Doctor could have fit into this other gap.

Is The Division a kind of Time Lord CIA in The Fugitive of the Judoon?

(Sat Feb 15 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Fans of Big Finish audios were probably on the edge of their seats during Fugitive of the Judoon to see if The Celestial Intervention Agency would be named. Instead, in the episode Gat was only identified as working for The Division. But since it's obvious that The Time Lords would have a secret agent agency, let's talk about that.

Who are the Eternals, Guardians, and the Toymaker named in 'Can You Hear Me'? (Doctor Who)

(Wed Feb 12 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Can You Hear Me was a rollicking good adventure in time and space that made a surprising reference back to shows from early Doctor Who. Old Who wasn't always about fighting the monster or villain of the week. Sometimes Doctor Who covered the immortal beings that lived beyond time and space, for whom these little universes we live in are mere playthings. The protagonists in this weeks episode, Zellin and his partner Rakaya, are two of those immortal beings, and Zellin named off several with whom The Doctor has had encounters over the centuries.

Where did the Ruth-Doctor come from? Fugitive of the Judoon

(Sat Feb 08 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Fugitive of the Judoon, we were treated to a previously unknown and nearly impossible incarnation of The Doctor. In the show they made it very clear that The Ruth-Doctor was The Doctor. But unlike every other multi-Doctor story, the two Doctor's did not recognize each other. It leaves us fans wondering what the ____ is going on. I found an interesting video on YouTube with a number of interesting theories, so here's what I think about those theories.

Timeless Children and Cybermen to finish out Doctor Who Season 12

(Sat Feb 08 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) When Capt. Jack told us about a single remaining Cyberman, and The Master told us about the Lie of the Timeless Child, and we saw Gallifrey destroyed, and we met a previously unknown Doctor incarnation, we knew that season 12 would be a game changer. As is usual for Doctor Who, what any of this means is extremely inscrutable until we see it aired on television, and of course even that will leave lots of unfilled details. For now, we have episode titles for the rest of Season 12, and most of the synopses, so let the guessing games begin.

Doctor Who Season 12 theme: Smack-in-the-face-with-2x4-lecturing

(Mon Feb 03 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The episode Praxeus was rollicking good fun, with scary bits, funny bits, and an intriguing puzzle to solve. But at least twice The Doctor turned to the audience to deliver a lecture about Plastics. That wouldn't be so bad, but that's happened in nearly every episode so far this season, and it's beginning to get on my nerves.

The Ruth-Doctor's and The Master's discovery of the 'lie of the Timeless Child' launches Doctor Who into massive rewrite

(Sun Feb 02 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The Doctor Who show runners launched us into a serious rewrite of Doctor Who Canon with Season 12. First we had a new Master who told us everything we knew about Gallifrey was a lie, so he destroyed Gallifrey. Then we met a whole new incarnation of The Doctor that flatly doesn't fit the known timeline of THe Doctor. At the end of Fugitive of the Judoon, The Doctor said time is swirling around her, indicating there is some serious flux going on. And we have to remind ourselves that what's kept Doctor Who alive all these decades is its ability to reinvent itself from time to time.

Who is Captain Jack and just why are we happy to see his return?

(Thu Jan 30 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Fugitive of the Judoon, we had a lot of news jammed into one episode, one of which was a tangential visit by Captain Jack Harkness. You heard that right, Capt. Beefcake is back just when we thought his only return would be in audio releases from Big Finish. Since there may be a lot of Doctor Who fans who aren't aware of Capt. Jack, since it was maybe 10 years since his last appearance, let's take a stroll down memory lane and revisit just who this guy is. Capt. Jack's life story is right among the accidental immortals created by The Doctor.

The Ruth-Doctor fits the 'Time Lords are a lie' story line of the latest Master incarnation

(Wed Jan 29 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Fugitive of the Judoon, we had a Multi-Doctor story where both were Women which we hope was done for legitimate story reasons, which is cool. Not only was the story good mind-blowing Doctor Who, it gave us a Doctor incarnation that looks to be kick-ass great. But it comes at the cost of a huge question about timeline and continuity and all those other picky details that keep Doctor Who fans awake at night. Especially considering what was shown to us by the new incarnation of The Master.

Remembering The Doctor's past lives in Fugitive of the Judoon

(Mon Jan 27 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) In Fugitive of the Judoon, The Doctor (both of them) said multiple times they remember who they were. Does any of us remember who we were? Who we are is made up of all the moments of our live(s). Even the bits of our life that we don't remember has an impact on who we become. Just as the show runners invented The War Doctor as a Doctor Regeneration that The Doctor forgot about, there could surely be another Regeneration that the show runners want us to believe The Doctor Forgot. But going by what's presented in the show, we the fans have a conundrum to solve, _Who is Who_? And, _When is Which_?

Orphan 55 is the latest Doctor Who to feature environmental justice, but its the most blatant

(Wed Jan 15 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Apparently Doctor Who Season 12's story, Orphan 55, is receiving backlash because of the preachy lecture at the end. Sure that lecture grated in how it was blatantly targeted at the audience. However, Doctor Who has frequently featured lectures about the environment and how human power structures are harming the planet. Since a core theme of Doctor Who is the fight against big power structures, and sometimes those big power structures are destroying ecosystems in the name of profit, therefore The Doctor will have seen his/her fair share of environmental catastrophes, and therefore have an opinion or two.

The Master destroys Gallifrey because of a lie about The Timeless Child

(Mon Jan 06 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Skyfall, the season opener for Season 12, got us a new Master, and a huge twist to the Lore of Doctor Who. But we don't know what that twist is, yet, other than The Master claims there was a massive lie told to all Time Lords from the beginning of the Time Lord race.

Skyfall 2 tries to have us forget The Redemption of Missy thanks to The Master's violence

(Mon Jan 06 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Skyfall 2 is an homage to The Master of Old, wantonly killing people, implementing an insane plan to destroy everything, and showing no sign of the Redemption of Missy we had during Capaldi's era. Instead we have a return of The Master of Old, causing violence just because, and implementing crazy-mad schemes to sow chaos and death and destruction.

Did The Master kill UNIT in Doctor Who Season 11?

(Wed Jan 01 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) It's a new season of Doctor Who, and even though The Master appeared to be truly dead at the end of Season 10, The Master always returns. The Presence of The Master is as long-running a part of Doctor Who as has been U.N.I.T. But we learn in Season 12 Episode 1 (Skyfall) that U.N.I.T. is truly dead. And it seems that The Master may have engineered the shutdown of U.N.I.T. to serve the cockamamie plan he has concocted.

The new TARDIS interior for Doctor Who Season 12

(Wed Jan 01 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) It's a new season of Doctor Who, and of course the staff has decided to change things up by making some changes to the TARDIS interior. I'm not sure what the point to the change was. The big thing I'm unclear on is - why are the roundels now hexagons? Throughout Doctor Who, the interior featured round things on the walls - roundels. But now they're hexagons. Why? Otherwise the interior reminds us of the interior used in the 1996 TV movie that was big and expansive.

Skyfall is not Skyfail in Doctor Who Season 12 first episode

(Wed Jan 01 2020 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) It's a given that no matter how seriously dead The Master is, that The Master will always come back. So, in the Doctor Season 12 opener we have a rollicking good Doctor Who story, full of twists and turns, and a big reveal at the end that I may have just spoiled for anyone who hasn't seen the episode. Given all the angst from Season 11, I think it's safe to say that Jodi Whittaker is truly in her stride as The Doctor, but I am openly doubting whether the Doctor Who franchise is in good hands.