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. 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.
The video attached below contains an idea that I'd pondered about the Season 12 finale, The Timeless Children, while asking an additional question.
Clearly The Timeless Children depicted the torture of a youngster, and from that torture Tecteun stole the secret to eternal life. What does it say about us, and the BBC, that little is being made of the torture the BBC showed us? It's as if the BBC wants us to believe Tecteun was some kind of benevolent figure, when she was in truth a torturer.
Such a kind looking person, eh? But - the episode clearly showed her committing torture by causing repeated deaths of the child she had adopted. The episode spun this as scientific research, but what kind of research involves repeated deaths?
The Timeless Child story that could have been
This torture actually fits The Time Lords like a glove. Their portrayal in Doctor Who has not been benevolent lords watching over all of time and space. No. They've been power mad manipulators.
In a way it makes perfect sense for the source of The Time Lords to be a tortured young child, who they first used as a secret agent, and who they mind-wiped to erase their tracks.
In my previous posts about The Timeless Children have made the case that this story is one of the worst things The BBC has ever done to Doctor Who. It converted The Doctor into a demigod, rather than leaving him/her as what we've always known The Doctor to be - a person - who is traveling the universe fixing things.
For more on this see:
- BBC's tale of The Timeless Child was a bad idea, deeply undermines The Doctor
- 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?
But - the attached video goes on to discuss the story the BBC could have shown us, that would have made more sense, and that the viewers would have had better appreciation for.
Why spin it that The Doctor is actually The Timeless Child?
Why not create a different story. Sure - it makes some sense that The Time Lords sprang from that torture and misuse of a child.
This is the sort of wrong that The Doctor has spent his/her life rectifying.
Why not leave The Doctor as the person we've known all along - one among zillions of Time Lords. Someone who had a conscious objection to Time Lord society and chose to leave Gallifrey.
It would have given us a whole new depth of understanding why The Doctor left Gallifrey. To fix the wrongs committed on the universe by The Time Lords.
The BBC could have also coupled this with the wrongs of torturing children. THAT is a horror playing itself out today in modern times - whether it is the horrid conditions that the Trump Administration is inflicting on undocumented immigrants in the USA - or whether it is the refugee's at the Greece-Turkey border over the last couple weeks - there are children in horrible conditions. What is the psychological damage being done to those children?
Literally - in The Beast Below - The Doctor said the duty is to not interfere, unless there is a child crying.
I am sure that The Timeless Child had more than a few tears over being repeatedly killed, and then witnessing the birth of the race that came from the Child's stolen DNA.
What if The Timeless Children had been about rescuing The Timeless Child from that torture?
Doctor Who: The Timeless Child Doesn't Work (And Here's Why)
