Doctor Who spoilers: Who is the Timeless Child? The answer has a huge impact on mythology
By James Aggas
Series 12 finale The Timeless Children finally revealed who the Timeless Child was. And the answer has a major impact on the whole of Doctor Who mythology. (Spoilers follow.)
Unsurprisingly, The Timeless Children – the final episode of Series 12 – answered a lot of major questions, while also raising new ones. The biggest question it answered was one we had been wondering about since it was first mentioned back in The Ghost Monument in 2018: who is the Timeless Child? The answer had major revelations for not just the Doctor, but for the whole of Doctor Who mythology.
After taking his oldest enemy to Gallifrey and sending her mind into the Matrix – the repository of all Time Lord knowledge – the Master told the Doctor a story. The story of Tecteun – a pioneer of ancient Gallifreyan history who journeyed out into the stars. She eventually found a child stranded on a distant world, although it was unknown where the child had exactly come from. Tecteun decided to raise the child as her own back on Gallifrey.
One day, the child was killed in an accident. However, the child survived through regeneration. The first regeneration on Gallifrey, in fact.
You can guess what happened next. For a long time, Tecteun experimented on the child, trying to uncover the secrets of regeneration. Eventually, she was able to replicate the ability, using it on herself and on the rest of her race, who renamed themselves as the Time Lords.
And what of the Timeless Child? What happened to them? Eventually, the child would be forced to forget their past, for reasons we don’t yet know, and eventually become…the Doctor.
Doctor Who has strongly implied that there was more to the Doctor’s origins than we knew, especially during the Seventh Doctor’s era.
Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox
Major retcon
This is quite a major twist, and is bound to be the key moment that every fan will be talking about. The Doctor had always believed that her life began with the incarnation played by William Hartnell – the Doctor that stole a TARDIS and ran far away from Gallifrey with his granddaughter. Now we know that that’s far from the case.
More from Winter is Coming
- For All Mankind finally gives us information in Episode 405, “Goldilocks”
- Watch a stunning VFX breakdown of The Wheel of Time season 2
- Of course Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) thinks Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen) should rule Westeros
- Confirmed: The Last of Us season 2 will air in 2025
- Final season of Star Trek: Discovery will have “a lot of action, a lot of adventure, a lot of fun”
Personally speaking, I have mixed feelings on this huge retcon. On the one hand, what’s wonderful about the First Doctor’s journey is that he wasn’t anything special. He was just a Time Lord who wanted to escape Gallifrey and journey out into the universe. It was only over time that he became someone truly special. The revelation that the Doctor actually has direct ties to the foundation of Time Lord history itself almost takes away from that story.
However, at the same time, The Timeless Children isn’t the first instance in Doctor Who history to imply that there’s a lot more to the Doctor than we know. This was a key theme of the Seventh Doctor’s era, although it was only ever hinted at. On top of that: the episode even acknowledged the briefly seen Doctors from The Brain of Morbius in a direct way.
So while showrunner Chris Chibnall is rewriting history in one way, he’s actually expanding on it in another. A lot of fans might be angry right now as a result, but the fact that Chibnall has used canon itself for his major revelations strengthens them as a result.
Next. Should Missy’s regeneration be left unexplained?. dark
What did you think of The Timeless Children‘s biggest revelation? Do you think it works? Are you excited about the idea of incarnations of the Doctor we didn’t know about? Or do you think it’s a retcon too far? Let us know in the comments below.