There are all sorts of interesting things you could do, too.
I actually do think the Doctor and the Master being siblings would be a fun development in their relationship.
I did just come up with a really bizarre idea, though. What if one of the times the Doctor’s foster mother was killing them over and over, they biregenerated? This could be a really strange way of having the Doctor and the Master be the same person…
I understand why the Timeless Child is the Doctor, and why that infuriates the Master. I haven’t seen the episode since it aired, but I think that if this were the Master, it work better to fuel his rage at the abuse. It would’ve also been more interesting if the Time Lords had been created from him that he could declare himself their Master, their god. I think might’ve been more interesting to explore. I also don’t know how much, if any, of the planned Timeless Child development was scrapped because of Covid and/or fan reaction.
This is fair, I just don’t see the story this way–I think because I don’t get the sense that there’s any real “destiny” behind it, they’re just a kid who happened to be found by someone with ill intent. But I guess either way it’s frustrating to constantly hear “but this makes them special when the point was that they weren’t!!” when the thing that “makes them special” is deep-seated trauma and betrayal.
I wouldn’t like it as much, but to each their own–at the very least it would be a very different story/very different direction for the show. It also wouldn’t blow up canon as much, which some might think is a good thing, but I think Doctor Who needs to be blown up once in a while…
I do think the “children” are the different regenerations of the Doctor. That always seemed logical to me, anyway.
deeply fitting statement for your icon…
my thought is that they were already ‘special’, but this changes the way that they’re special in a way that i don’t find as compelling personally.
I also had the thought recently that the Doctor’s relationship with/treatment from Tecteun really works with the stuff i DO like, about the core of the Doctor being that they’re a foil to the standard Time Lord norm. Tecteun is abusive but more specifically they’re cold-hearted and academic and are willing to allow someone to suffer in favor of a world where the Time Lords are supreme. they’re more or less the archetypal Time Lord that the Doctor is always fighting against. the longer i stew on this the more i realize there’s a lot of individual pieces of the Timeless Child that i find really appealing, so maybe whatever RTD does with this will bring me around, idk…
and it’s always nice to know that if i totally dont like a Canon Blow-Up there’s so much material in this series i can just go hang out in a different part of canon almost indefinitely lol
This is the exact appeal to me, yes! It helps that when I watched the episode for the first time I wasn’t yet disillusioned with Chibnall era, I was still trying to like it… I still like the episode better than a lot from that era, but I no longer think it was a good episode.
And, you know, one big issue I had was that Tecteun, basically the queen of regeneration, went down easily and didn’t become a reoccurring character. I would have liked more of her going forward…
there’s still time for RTD to pull somethin out… Who Nose…
And we don’t know what’s planned in the Big Finish Fugitive Doctor range.
I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her…
I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up in one way or another during ncuti’s era even, given how it looks like RTD will continue to focus on TTC and the Doctor’s emotions about it (which I am all for, I’d love to see more of Tecteun)
I just like the whole aspect of the Master finding out about the Timeless Child → realising they’ll never wholly get their deep-seated desire to be the Doctor fulfilled → utterly annihilating Gallifrey in a fit of peak → coming up with the rather ludicrous, yet glorious, plan of regenerating into the Doctor → added context to the lines: “Don’t make me go back to being me” and “If I can’t be the Doctor, neither can you” in The Power of the Doctor.
Dhawan’s Master is also just my favourite portrayal of the Master in New Who, Missy’s arc was nice and well done but this is much more the “Classic Master Vibes” that I know and love.
I especially loved what Dhawan revealed about that scene later:
…People are gonna think, ‘God, he just dances in all his scenes.’ Interestingly, with the Rasputin scene, for some reason, I must have read somewhere that he dances, and the truth of the matter is it wasn’t even written in the script, I misinterpreted it.
So they must have been thinking on the day like, ‘What the hell is he doing? Well, this is kind of what he does, so we’ll just go with it.’
But hand on heart I thought that was written in the script. So I think I danced for about five, six minutes. They must have been thinking, ‘What the hell is he doing?’"
I love how in that scene the Dalek and the Cyberman just look at each other with a sort of wtf look between them.
Oh, I do too, and now we know the actors playing them probably had the same look at the time…
I have my own slightly different headcanon for that.
In my brain, the Chameleon Circuit issue happened in or before Ruth’s time. Eventually Ruth or a subsequent pre-Hartnell Doctor got it working again.
That was fine until the Tardis landed in 1963 and assumed the Police Box shape again. Like putting pressure on a weak point previously repaired, this caused the previous fix to fail, and so it got stuck again in that shape.
Makes sense in my head, at least.
i really like that interpretation!
I agree that making the Doctor the origin and source of regeneration makes them way too important, but the Doctor being an adopted Gallifreyan doesn’t mean that they’re not a Gallifreyan or don’t belong, I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but saying that they’re not Gallifreyan and don’t belong because it was through adoption and not birth is difficult not to take personally as an adoptee because it’s like when people refer to an adoptee’s birth parents as their “real parents” suggesting that the adopted person is not a real member of their adoptive family, and that they’re don’t belong because they’re not a biological member through birth. The Doctor being an adopted Gallifreyan is no different to Leia being an adopted Alderaanian, or Superman being an adopted Earthian. Identities aren’t always by birth, they can be through adoption and are just as real and valid as birth identities.
The Doctor is still a Gallifreyan, it’s just not by birth but through adoption, and that doesn’t make them lessor or mean that they don’t belong. When the Doctor was adopted by Tecteun, they adopted a Gallifreyan identity, which grew the longer they lived on Gallifrey growing up amongst the Gallifreyans.
I don’t like The Timeless Child, but I eventually accepted it. The idea of a “nobody,” a rebel from their race who ends up being a hero in history when the Time War breaks out, and who later becomes the last of their kind, is very good. But turning the Doctor into Jesus Christ, basically a god among Time Lords, is boring. Even what they were going to do with The Other and the Cartmel Masterplan was more interesting (and was handled better).
On top of that, it has a ton of plot holes: why is the Fugitive’s TARDIS a police box? Is it the same TARDIS? Supposedly yes, but did she just conveniently steal the TARDIS she used in her previous life? Why, when the Doctor’s memories are shown as Clyde’s in The Lodger, don’t they show the Fugitive and the earlier lives? You could argue it’s because of the memory wipe, but in Brain of Morbius we see the pre-Hartnell lives, and even without the memory wipe, why didn’t the Atraxi see them in The Eleventh Hour? They literally scanned Earth’s history—at some point the Fugitive had to have been there. Why did it take so long for her past to catch up with her, with Swarm in Flux? Logically, it should have happened earlier. Why did no other high-ranking Time Lord ever mention it or anything similar? When the Doctor was President of Gallifrey, didn’t the Division worry that they might find out about their memories? These are just some examples, but I could go on.
Still, as I said, I eventually accepted it, so I hope they explore the pre-Hartnell Doctor and the Fugitive more.
