Doctor Who Review: The Timeless Children (Season 12 Episode 10)

This is how a finale should be done. Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 10, “The Timeless Children,” delivers equal parts action, adventure, mystery, and mythology to take the story in new directions in the coming seasons. 

It does a great job of satisfying some of the threads that have been gnawing at the audience all season, but it also begs us to ask more. 

The heart of “The Timeless Children” is the Doctor and the Master. The relationship between these characters has always been an interesting dynamic. The two characters have a lot of history and that drives their story more so than any plan the master may come up with. 

Sacha Dhawan’s performance as the master has been superb. There’s a delicate dance that has to happen in order to play the Master. They’re a villain, but you have to be able to like them as well; as much as you can like someone from your school days who ultimately shows up to cause chaos in your life.

Dhawan did an amazing job during the season premiere bringing a deliciously evil side to the character. His master is playful and relishes the chaos he brings to the screen.

On “The Timeless Children,” he gets to push even further and bring to the role all the history that comes with the Doctor and the Master’s relationship.

THE MASTER: …the history between us does mean something. It’s the rage and pain in my hearts. 

Dhawan’s narration of the story of Tecteun is oddly gentle. It’s not what I expected after the venomous end to this message during Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 2, “Spyfall: Part II.” Given that the reveal is that the child the Master is talking about is the Doctor it just adds to the layers of their relationship. 

With each revelation, Dhawan’s delivery twists the knife a little harder until he gets to that ultimate reveal and the mystery of what was taken from the Doctor’s life.

Dhawan’s performance as he delivers that news is amazing. There’s a bit of sympathy there, but it’s masked by rage and anger that his friend who he’s always compared himself to is actually better than him.

Every ounce of him in that scene evokes the villain of someone who has seen god and knows that they can’t measure up. 

Most of the Doctor and the Master’s interactions on “The Timeless Child” are rife with the emotional complications of being both resentful and loving of an old friend. Even the Doctor’s realization that she has to use the Death Particle on the master and his Cybermasters is full of regret. 

It’s no surprise that Ko Sharmus is the one that ends up pulling the trigger and activating the Death Particle. However, this sudden intervention just serves to make me wonder if maybe Ko Sharmus is part of that missing time and we just don’t know it yet. 

“The Timeless Children” also gives us something of a natural progression to the Master as well. 

The Master’s plan involving the cybermen and Time Lord corpses feels very reminiscent of Missy’s on Doctor Who Season 8 Episodes 11 and 12, “Dark Water,” and “Death in Heaven.” This might suggest that he’s somewhere post-Missy in the Master timeline, but this may remain a point that I will continue to pick apart.

The concept of Time Lord cybermen is a terrifying one, and definitely a level up for the Master, but it’s a villain that’s too strong and can’t be sustained without a lot of destruction in their wake. They had to be taken out, but the Master is going to show up again. They always do.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper into the concept of The Division. 

We know a lot about Time Lord society but the idea that they had a subset of their culture devoted to non-intervention in other worlds and times is new. The fact that the Doctor may have been involved with that speaks volumes to the personality we’ve come to know and love.  

If the story of Brendan on Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 9, “Ascension of the Cybermen,” is a version of the truth–a way to explain the missing time from the Doctor’s memory–then maybe subconsciously whatever the Doctor was involved in has informed who they became post “The Timeless Child” era.

Doctor Who has set up a tall order and a bigger mystery by introducing another era to the Doctor’s life. Some of the best scenes in Doctor Who have been when the Doctor has brooded and really dug into their pain.

For instance, I always think of Doctor Who Season 9 Episode 11, “Heaven Sent,” as a prime example of how to write the Doctor’s emotional state. Jodie Whitaker got to get into this headspace with everything her incarnation encountered over the course of the season, but there’s still room for more. 

Throughout everything that happens on “The Timeless Child,”  we cannot forget the events of Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 5, “Fugitive of the Judoon.” Given what we know now, the Doctor is considered a fugitive and just because they were after Jo Wilson’s Doctor doesn’t mean that she’ll be pardoned for the crimes. 

When the Judoon arrives in the Tardis and hastily sent the Doctor to her life imprisonment it was a reminder of that and set up our favorite Time Lord to have a hell of a time getting out of that scenario. 

Now that Doctor Who Season 12 has concluded it is definitely leaps and bounds beyond Season 11. The inclusion of more mythology, a few classic villains, and even a cameo from an old friend. 

Going into Season 13, I anticipate that there may be some concern for what the Doctor will find out and how that will change her.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Doctor Who is a show that has dealt with the idea of a chosen identity. We’ve seen the Doctor wrestle with the wrongs of their past before and they’ve always found the light.

Plus, given that on some level the Doctor has chosen to remain the Doctor puts the idea that it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, it’s who we choose to be in the future.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Doctor will choose to keep being the Doctor no matter what she finds out, she may grapple with its implications, but she’ll come out a stronger character for it. 

At the end of Season 12, I am both excited for Season 13 and worried about what it has in store. 

Stray Thoughts:

• Is it just me or did Doctor Who Season 12 use a lot of voiceover narration? Like more than normal?
• Back in the Matt Smith years, right before he regenerated into Peter Capaldi, Clara pleaded with the Time Lords to help the Doctor and he was supposedly given unlimited regenerations. How does that work now if they were supposedly the Doctor’s regenerations all along? 
• I didn’t talk much about the companions here but the moment between Graham and Yaz where he says that Yaz is the best person he knows is so sweet. Yaz has had the most connection to earth of the three members of the fam so seeing her bond with Graham was a nice flourish. 
• If Ashad has removed all the organic components from the cyberwarriors, what’s controlling them? If they’re full of human remains what would the death particle make them? That seems like a fallacy on the part of the Cyberium. 
• Knowing the master isn’t going to die, then is he going to be in control of all the cybermen throughout time and space? That feels like a natural progression from Missy, and if Dhawan’s master ever met Missy could be cause for some very playful and jealous interaction. 
• By my count, there are now at least four Tardises (Tardi?) in play (three piloted by the Doctor, one by the Master) how are humans not walking into these and just finding them? Are people just gonna ignore the house the fam flew in on? 
• The fact that the Master was able to convert the Time Lord bodies into his Cybermasters also suggests that he may be a post-Missy incarnation because of the events on the Mondasian ship at the end of, Doctor Who Season 10 Episode 12, “The Doctor Falls.” 

What did you think of this episode of Doctor Who? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Doctor Who will return this holiday season on BBC America.

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