Tags: Doctor Who »»»» Doctor Who Season 12
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 attached video makes a great case for what I've been arguing over the last several postings. That the story of The Timeless Child betrays to the core the character of The Doctor. It converts a character that had been an "everyman" into an ultra-special demigod from whom a great secret was stolen after years of torture.
Repeatedly in the history of Doctor Who, the case was made that The Doctor was just a regular old Time Lord who became disaffected with Time Lord society, stole a TARDIS, and ran away. Well - as I noted a couple weeks ago, the earliest Doctor Who wasn't so certain whether The Doctor was human or alien - but starting with The Third Doctor, the prevailing story was The Doctor was one of zillions of Time Lords, a race of people on the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterberous.
The key point to Doctor Who fandom's reaction to The Timeless Children is the recasting of The Doctor. The viewers want to aspire to be The Doctor. When The Doctor was a regular Time Lord we could aspire to be him/her. Now? The Doctor is this ultra-special demigod? How can we aspire to being that?
I've gone over this enough times it's better to just reference those postings:
- 2MTL gets it backwards about Doctor becoming Everyman
- Betrayed by the myth of the timeless child
- Did the Ruth-Doctor guard The Timeless Child in a memory-wiped regeneration?
- Did The Master lie about The Doctor being The Timeless Child?
- The disgusting over-hyping of The Doctor's role in the universe
- Who is The Doctor? An everyman who travels and rescues people? Or a demigod from another universe?
I've watched several video reviews of The Timeless Child storyline, and the attached video is one of the best.
For additional discussion of this - see: The torture of The Timeless Child in Doctor Who and what the story could have been
Doctor Who: The Timeless Child Doesn't Work (And Here's Why)
