Traditional Doctor Who regenerations involve the outgoing actor being replaced, quite literally, by their successor - one Time Lord in, one Time Lord out. Bi-generation is a narrative salve for the wounds of Doctor Who's past, but to the detriment of its future. The Timeless Child made Doctor Who's future more intriguing by trampling over its past. Skip forward three years, and bi-generation does the exact opposite. Whatever the Morbius Doctors and Cartmel Masterplan may suggest, the remaining 98% of Doctor Who mythology fits the Timeless Child like the Fourteenth Doctor fits his suit - awkwardly, and with much chafing.ĭethroning William Hartnell as the First Doctor, raising questions over Susan, muddling Clara's presence throughout the Doctor's timeline, debunking the mystery woman Russell T Davies intended to be the Doctor's mother - the Timeless Child dropped a vault full of inconsistencies and plot holes into Doctor Who's past. ![]() That argument ignores the vast swathes of Doctor Who lore the Timeless Child contradicts. Sympathizers will point to "The Brain of Morbius" and the aforementioned Seventh Doctor hints as signs the Timeless Child was there all along, lingering in the air like forgotten cheese at the back of the refrigerator. Endless possibilities for the future opened up, but at the steep cost of damaging Doctor Who's past. In that sense, the twist was a roaring success, re-injecting Doctor Who with a sense of the unknown and inciting feverish discussion over the quirky time traveler's real identity. Rampant speculation and endless theories over the Doctor's true species have been constant ever since "The Timeless Children" landed in 2020. It creates a ripple effect, meaning every single past Doctor survives their regeneration and goes on to have further adventures. According to showrunner Russell T Davies in the BBC's episode commentary, Doctor Who's bi-generation is actually an even bigger deal than first assumed. Instead of changing bodies, David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor miraculously divides, retaining his own form, but also spawning a Ncuti Gatwa-shaped successor, thus allowing both Doctors to coexist. Three short years later, the concept of bi-generation is just as seismic. The Timeless Child was, by a comfortable distance, the most significant addition to Doctor Who canon since regeneration in 1966. His pièce de résistance came in "The Timeless Children" - the lore-shaking revelation that the Doctor was secretly from another universe, and had been used as both the foundation of the Time Lord race and a clandestine Gallifreyan agent. 2020 was a volatile time for Doctor Who, as Chibnall presided over an era beset by critique and controversy. ![]() Russell T Davies is taking a big narrative swing with bi-generation, and while Doctor Who's latest twist has more than a passing resemblance to the Timeless Child in terms of its sweeping consequences and divisive response, the main problem it causes is a mirror image of the fallout from Chris Chibnall's big gamble.
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