Well, this is going to be a massive display of restraint on my part. There are so many things I could and would say about the episode, and none of them are “clean” or family-friendly. For the most part, there isn’t much I could say about the episode without spoilers very early on. I’ve privately said the horrible nasty things that would get people angry at a stand-up comedian for saying, but this was just a bad episode. I know I praised the last one for being a better set up than most of the series, but Jesus this was just wrong in so many ways.

To get this out of the way, “The Timeless Children” was a 1 out of 10 chaotic mess of not only too much going on, but too little expansion to the show itself. The only thing that’s added to the show isn’t character development, plot development, or anything that’s worth doing what was done. What’s made as the addendum to several Wikis and angry rants alone is something that wasn’t part of canon and the dumbest thing possible.

Spoilers Ahead – Read at your Own Risk

So with that big change, the mystery of the show is gone, the title of the show is gone, and I really don’t want to watch the next series because it will be headed by Chris Chibnall; a man I hate. With this one episode, Chris Chibnall was that one kid that ran up to you while talking about wrestling and said: “It’s fake!” To wit, I usually use a George Carlin-esque sardonically-monologued tone, “Really? Do tell enlightened one, for us mere creatures will nevermore advance without your comprehensive knowledge. Accompany us forward into a new and enchanting age!” Then he takes it a little too seriously.

Let’s go back to somewhere around the beginning when Sacha Dhawan is doing the worst job ever of being a credible threat to anything. I’ve seen Saturday morning cartoon villains that have been more menacing and downright sinister, and I’m just talking about Long John Baldry’s Dr. Robotnik. At every turn, he was just that one kid you know that turns out to be a banker later on in life; seriously, if anyone says “Cybs” they deserve to be headbutted. As for the line “I don’t mean to conversion shame you,” that’s either an old man taking things too seriously or Chibnall reading Reddit for some of his material.

For two of The Doctor’s biggest threats (behind the Daleks or everything else), The Master shouldn’t just be an internet troll and the Cybermen shouldn’t be useless fodder for that. I’ve said it before, I don’t care for the Cybermen, they aren’t an interesting or threatening villain to face because it’s not the 1960s and lumbering big oafs clomping about the place aren’t menacing. There’s a reason WestWorld, Breaking Bad, Firefly, Sons of Anarchy, and many more shows don’t do that, there are more effective threats available.

I think both just need to go away for a few years. Since 2007 in “Rise of the Cybermen” we’ve seen them in 20 episodes, between 1966 and 1988 they were in 10. Michelle Gomez’s Missy between 2014-17 alone was in 15 episodes, now we’ve had another 3 in a total of six years. Both of these villains need to go away for a while, Matt Smith didn’t even have a Master to face and that’s a good four years right there. The best thing to keep them fresh is to leave them out of the show for a good while. Let us forget about them for the most part, then bring them back when they are needed.

While we’re this early on, Yaz and Graham’s moment of feelings can get right out of the window with The Master. It was not a moment that was needed or earned, it was another moment of Chibnall not knowing how to write proper characters. The “I haven’t offended you, have I?” line came from the same race-baiting cesspit of hate the “I don’t mean to conversion shame you” line came from. You’ve just given her a heartfelt compliment that wasn’t needed, how is that offensive? Chibnall, pull your head out of the 7th planet from the sun.

So let’s get to the meat of this mess, the Shobogan, an off-handed term for those early Gallifreyans that are mentioned once (maybe twice) in 1976 in the episode “The Deadly Assassin.” Why does that matter? It’s an episode with The Master, the Matrix of Time, and the episode Rassilon restricts The Doctor’s regenerations to a total of twelve. It’s also an episode that would have been on while Chris Chibnall was 5-6, which gives fuel to the fire that he just wants Who to continue from about that point onwards.

Am I talking out of my 7th planet from the sun? Yeah, a bit; but why else would we get an episode that entirely re-writes Doctor Who canon back to before the twelve regenerations were written in and those Morbius Doctors were canon from Tom Baker’s run. For the benefit of my editor who’s probably asking “what’s going on, you’re shouting into the void!” The only addition I was on about that doesn’t add character is one that helps a producer, or say, head writer (hi Chris!), to work around a problem in the least sci-fi and fun way possible.

Doctor Who, as a title it sets up a mystery that no one actually cares about because the least interesting character is The Doctor. There’s so little cemented background of the character that she/he or otherwise works anyway. It’s the Mario-thing, you can put the character anywhere because they are bland enough to work. Before this episode, there was at least a bit of mystery that didn’t need to take center stage, but this was the episode that took up the better part of 70-minutes to make that mystery sing and dance to death.

The problem is just how much of the episode swivels on the dime that is “identity crisis,” something The Doctor doesn’t have when she doesn’t know or care about her past. She knows (for the most part) what we’ve seen or can see, but otherwise, there’s nothing for her to worry about changing or altering her perception of because it doesn’t matter. Yet the big twist is how she’s this “timeless child” that all Timelords are created from, and she doesn’t have the limit of her 12th regeneration. Jodie’s no longer the last of Timelords on her last regeneration.

If the character is as this episode puts into the canon infallible, we could just kill her next Thursday. She is now the problem with Superman, or to tie-in the wrestling bit before, John Cena. All the stakes have been lifted from the series, so why should we keep watching? The companions, the same companions that would have been better off dead in a bin? I might have liked Ravio and the others for a minute in the last episode, but neither of them or the usual companions did anything. They’re all useless burks.

Everyone was this episode, including Ashad, the Cyberman I liked from the last episode, the only thing he did was provide an out to the episode. This leads me to a final point I want to make, The Doctor, a character lauded for their history of having “no weapons, no defenses, no plan,” uses a bomb. I’ll get to how stupid the bomb is in a second, but the point of the character is not to directly kill, yet she sacrifices herself to blow up the Cyber-Timelords (yes, I’m skipping that mess) and The Master.

So what’s the bomb? A “death particle” held within the Cyberium riddled Ashad and will “Wipeout all organic life in the universe.” The problem, and it is a mighty big one for a particle, is The Master shrinking Ashad and the death particle staying within him. From there on out the particle will only take out a planet because it… shrunk? The dumbest of minds, me, with the worst of education when it comes to physics, (also me) can tell you that that the smallest thing in the universe is a particle, you can’t shrink it. Sure, it is a show about an invincible time-traveling space wizard, but basic physics.

This was truly one of the worst episodes in the show’s history, and I’m counting “Fear Her” and “The Twin Dilemma.” What I was narrowly avoiding to spoil up the top, and said only a couple of paragraphs ago, all that this episode added was a cheap way out for Chibnall and future showrunners. 45 minutes of exposition as our lead character is held in a sci-fi cell is not good television, and where she can’t stand in the titular role there are about several others chopping and changing in and out of the role. If you don’t have The Doctor being The Doctor, what’s the point in it being a Doctor Who episode?

As for suggestions on how this could have been improved, I said in the last review that Ko Sharmus should have been Rassilon. Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be nothing and he was just an old man. Otherwise, I’d have shoved this entire script up an Elephant’s 7th planet from the sun, where it should stay and never come back for making Doctor Who into Doctor What.

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Doctor Who "The Timeless Children"

1

Score

1.0/10

Pros

• Cybercarier landing in Gallifrey.

Cons

• 45 minutes of exposition.
• The Doctor isn't used for anything.
• Doesn't add anything useful to the cannon
• The death particle.
• Over-reliance on guns and bombs to fix the problem.