Doctor Who – Series 12, Episode 10: “The Timeless Children”

• I honestly thought Yaz was a goner when Graham started telling her what a great person she was, in case “we don’t get out of this”. And then in the end, all of the Fam are still alive! Pretty surprising, considering all the speculation.
• Sasha Dhawan is still great as the Master: you can really feel his anger and how long he’s been around. The idea that he wouldn’t have cared about being killed by the Death Particle, so long as he took the rest of the universe (including the Doctor) with him, feels right for this Master.
• Watching that scene of the Cybercarrier looking for Graham and Yaz (and the other characters whose names I can’t remember), I was holding my breath each time he peered into a suit.
• The series seems to have completely forgotten about Ryan’s dyspraxia. I don’t think it’s been mentioned once this time round, and he certainly had no trouble throwing that bomb.
• So, there are certainly some big revelations and additions to the mythology here. Mostly, I liked it. I don’t think the Timeless Child and the history of regeneration contradicts anything we’ve previously seen in the TV series – the earliest Time Lord history that’s previously been discussed is how Omega gave them the ability to time travel. And while the reveal that the Doctor was the Timeless Child was predictable (though I did get it wrong about Brendan last week), there’s still a lot that’s left unanswered. I’m glad that Jo Martin’s alternate Doctor reappears, and that loose end isn’t totally left hanging.
• How did the Timeless Child regenerate so many times while still a child? Did her mother intentionally kill her over and over again?
• Also, considering how many of the regenerations we see in this episode result in sex changes, you’d think that simple probability would have seen the Doctor we know become a woman ages ago. Maybe there’s a higher chance of ending up as the sex you started as, but we now know that the Doctor started out as female!
• Wow, the main baddie of the previous two episodes went down even easier than the ones in Can You Hear Me.
• Dead Time Lords turned into Cybermen should really look more perverse and horrifying than just Cybermen in funny costumes.
• It’s a good job for our heroes that the mechanical, technically advanced Cybermen have the shooting accuracy of Imperial Stormtroopers.
• So the episode tries to seriously make us believe that the Doctor’s going to sacrifice him/herself (even though Jodie Whittaker’s not even regenerating this series), only for them to be replaced at the last moment by a side character who was only introduced last episode and that nobody really cares about. It’s the ending of The Poison Sky all over again. I wasn’t impressed back then, either.
• The scenario of the Master trying to force the Doctor to destroy Gallifrey, as she was spared from doing in The Day of the Doctor (though not on the same scale as apparently everyone’s already dead), certainly wasn’t bad. But with Gallifrey gone for a second time, The Day of the Doctor is still looking a bit pointless now.
• Once, it was a big deal if somebody could get into the TARDIS without permission – and suddenly the simple-minded Judoon can do it, no problem?!
• Not a bad cliffhanger – looks like we’re in for a prison break next time round. Involving the Daleks, apparently.

All in all, this was an entertaining series finale with a lot of interesting information and great acting, but there were also plenty of details that I thought could have been handled better. Rating: 3.5/5.

It seems uncertain at the moment when Doctor Who will be back – but at least Series 2 of Race Across The World starts next week, so I’ll still be occupied on Sunday nights!