Warning! Warning! Doctor WhoEpisode “The Power of the Doctor.”Read at your own risk
Doctor Who recently aired its farewell episode to Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, and in my opinion, The BBC franchise did right by its latest actress. The episode was a thrill ride loaded to the gills with cameos from past actors, even some we didn’t know about prior to airing. It also did nothing to dismiss exiting showrunner Chris Chibnall’s polarizing Timeless Child arc, and I think that’s a great thing.
“The Power of the Doctor”It was a justification for the Timeless Child episode, which is quite impressive considering that it didn’t even mention it. As such fans shouldn’t be upset the episode didn’t find a chance to retcon it, or campaign for Russell T. Davies to do so in the 60th anniversary or Ncuti Gatwa’s run in Season 14. For anyone not in agreement on that, the following should help make it clear why it’s not necessary.
Let’s first look at The Timeless Child Arch and How It Changed.
The Timeless Child arc revealed that The Doctor, a Shabogan scientist named Tecteun found The Doctor as a child while searching for him on another planet. Once Tecteun discovered The Doctor’s ability to regenerate, she managed to engineer the trait so that Gallifreyans could all be injected with the ability as well. The Shabogans were born. “Time Lords,”They set a strict limit for their regeneration but The Doctor is said to have unlimited regenerations. The Master locked the memory and made The Doctor aware.
The Timeless Child arc has been retconned to include a lot of information Doctor Who’s original origin story, and also seemingly negated the previous showrunner Steven Moffat’s original fix to The Doctor’s regeneration issues. “The Time Of The Doctor”The Time Lords granted the Eleventh Doctor a new cycle of regeneration, but this story shows that it was completely unnecessary. This is unless the Time Lords send something else and it’s addressed later.
The Timeless Child’s premise and the complicated stories that it told made it an extremely polarizing film. Doctor Who. Well, it might be so for some people. I know that I support it for several reasons.
The Doctor has Fates that are worse than death
One common argument I’ve heard against the Timeless Child arc is that suggesting The Doctor has no regeneration limit removed stakes from Doctor Who. They can only ever be defeated if they can continue to regenerate themselves whenever they die. “The Power of the Doctor” proved that there are far worse fates for someone like The Doctor than death, especially when you can’t die.
In the episode, The Master joined forces with The Doctor’s greatest enemies and managed to trap her and begin the process of “forced regeneration.”It is very similar to What happened to the Second DoctorHowever, The Master added a twist to his plan. He managed to concoct a device that would transmit his own consciousness into The Doctor’s body, which made him The Doctor.
And while The Doctor likely would’ve found a way out of that eventually, the premise of it was pretty terrifying. The Master planned to destroy all the goodwill that his rival had made over the years and plunge the planet into chaos. Had The Doctor taken a long time to return, they would’ve come back to a world they didn’t recognize and would be universally hated.
The Master didn’t succeed in his latest plot. But it just shows that there are other ways to incapacitate The Doctor and hurt them without actually killing them. I can’t imagine anywhere from one to a thousand years trapped as a prisoner in my own body while someone navigated it, and then having to deal with whatever came after next. There are worse fates than death, it is certain.
Realistically, the Doctor Will Never Really Exist. “Die”
Fans argue that Doctor Who needs to implement strict regeneration limits on The Doctor have always sounded silly to me, mainly because it’s not realistic to hold onto. As long as Doctor WhoWhile The Doctor is still on air, the show will continue to run. The whole beauty of the regeneration trait is that the show can seamlessly switch leads without raising too many eyebrows like other shows would, and it’s not like shows decide to suddenly end should they be forced to kill off the lead character.
The notion that The Doctor could only receive a certain number of regenerations was always more restrictive than the idea of freeing them. Over the series’ history, showrunners had to adjust, retcon and revise why The Doctor received fewer regenerations. They were effectively all dumping it on to the next person, until Chris Chibnall took it over with the Doctor. ‘Timeless Child” arc.
Even when Doctor Who was canceled back in 1989, The Doctor was still alive. It stands to reason that if The BBC ever ended the franchise in the future, which feels unlikely anytime soon thanks to that new Disney+ deal, The Doctor will live on eternally through other projects. In short, there doesn’It doesn’t appear that the character will ever really die. This makes the Timeless Child more plausible than previous regeneration stories.
The Timeless Child Story will likely have little long-term impact on the franchise
Doctor Who fans can get all up in arms about the Timeless Child arc, but in reality, it’s hard to imagine this change has a massive impact on the franchise long-term. The Doctor cannot die. The character is still the same at the end. One doesn’t live over two thousand years and find at least a few adventures that are more exciting than becoming immortal. Hell, I’m sure fans have forgotten many past arcs and how bizarre they were, likely because the show kept things moving and introduced even weirder arcs.
Stories such as the Timeless Child keep shows like these going. Doctor Who interesting for decades. Shows that don’t change the status quo are doomed to end eventually, especially if they’re scripted dramas. We should cheer Doctor WhoChris Chibnall and Darren McFarlane for their big swings when it came time to a retcon this large. Even though not everyone is here now, the future fans might appreciate the decision in the long-term. Or I might be entirely wrong and it’ll become one of the most controversial decisions in the show’s history, though after looking at that current list, I think it’s pretty safe from that scrutiny.
Doctor Who is on hiatus at the moment, but will return in 2023 with the 60th-anniversary specials, and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor as well. The franchise’s future looks bright so it might be a good time to start your own. Disney+ subscriptionTo prepare for next year’s new episodes.