This is mostly me just riffing, but I was wondering why we don’t get Time Lords as a civilization anymore. I mean Moffat brought them back, used them once, and then we all know what’s happened since. But any time we get singular Time Lord’s that the Doctor gods up against they’re megalomaniacal. The Master, The Rani, and whatever Omega was.
Generally the Doctor in the revival era is shown as the one good Time Lord. With Missy being sort of an exception.
Obviously when the show came back in 2005 the erasure of the Time Lords was a really good dramatic point for the Doctor and the show, but we are far beyond that necessity now and yet we keep coming back to it. And we fans are clamoring for the return of Gallifrey yet any time they’re brought up we are explicitly told they shouldn’t come back because they were “despots and tyrants.” Usually accompanied by a speech or whatever.
I think it’s possible that Chibnall and RTD to an extent are upsetty spaghetti with Moffat for bringing the Time Lord’s back because they don’t want the hero of the show being emotionally tied to and empathetic with a self-aggrandizing civilization that lords itself over the universe simply because they can.
Yet it’s unavoidable to escape the reality that by birth the Doctor is a part of that self-aggrandizing civilization, specifically the aristocratic portion and that’s what makes them different. Unless you make them an entirely different species from a different universe altogether. Or make them sterile so they can’t procreate.
I don’t think they’re actually upset with him, but there is clearly a fundamental difference of opinion of the Time Lords happening between within this oroborous of showrunners we’ve had for the last twenty years.
Personally, I think Moffat is the only one of the three who fundamentally understands that the Doctor being a native Time Lord and choosing to be different–even changing the hearts of some others along the way–is what makes the Time Lords a perfect foil for our hero.
It’s complex, it’s interesting, and you can get a lot of good storytelling from it. It’s like being a the one person in your family with different political beliefs (the good kind) and you still love your family, but fundamentally you are different from them. And that creates a lot of interesting scenarios.
But we’re not allowed to get that anymore. And it sucks and I hate it.
Clearly I do not know what these men talk about, they’re great friends to one another, but like anyone they have differing opinions on certain aspects of the lore and we are all suffering for it. Lol
And I also get the logistics of how the show is made now versus back in the day when it was twenty minutes multi-part serials and longer seasons. Using the Time Lords over and over now could get boring…but we still get the same with Daleks and Cybermen, or did anyways, and for my money it’s getting boring to keep hearing “the last of the Time Lords” every season. So it’s a lose- lose situation currently.
What are your thoughts?
