The Timeless Child will not be retconned. That's it. Show dead. Even deader than it already was.
That's not how the numbering works. We didn't reorder the count for Handy or War, we wouldn't for Fugitive.
The Timeless Child, effectively, changes NOTHING. Recontextualizes, sure. But what about The Doctor or their universe has been demonstrably changed with this revelation? Genuine question.
No, because we already knew who were going to play the 11th and 12th Doctors months in advance of regeneration day and those made headline news back in the UK and online, in fact I distinctly remember the fandom going nuts about how upset they were about it, months before their debut regenerations ("How dare they replace Tennant with a nobody?" or "Why is the new Doctor old?").
We actually had a cameo by Capaldi in the 50th anniversary for crying out loud.
I also watched some old interviews with classic Who actors after they were announced as the new Doctor but before they made their debuts.
I can vouch for this on my Tom Baker season 18 Bluray one of the extras is an interview with Peter Davison taking over as the fifth doctor.
ProfessorDetective wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 12:58 am
The Timeless Child, effectively, changes NOTHING. Recontextualizes, sure. But what about The Doctor or their universe has been demonstrably changed with this revelation? Genuine question.
It obliterates the entire foundational theme of the show: that an ordinary person can become extraordinary by committing themselves to doing the right thing.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
ProfessorDetective wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 12:58 am
The Timeless Child, effectively, changes NOTHING. Recontextualizes, sure. But what about The Doctor or their universe has been demonstrably changed with this revelation? Genuine question.
It obliterates the entire foundational theme of the show: that an ordinary person can become extraordinary by committing themselves to doing the right thing.
When has that ever been something you could apply to THE DOCTOR? Their companions, perhaps, but the TIME LORD themself...?
Since the First Doctor had a Heel-Face turn and devoted himself to his code of conduct.
It's long been canon that the Doctor is a very unimpressive Time Lord by Gallifrey's usual standards. He's an academic underachiever, a maverick, who insists on getting involved despite his species' rules about nonintervention and passive observation. Everything extraordinary about him has come from the choices he's made - until now, of course.
Possibly they'll just ignore the entire Chibnal era. He did a terrible job with the storytelling and left a huge mess for the next writers to clean up after.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Frustration wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 9:23 pm
Since the First Doctor had a Heel-Face turn and devoted himself to his code of conduct.
It's long been canon that the Doctor is a very unimpressive Time Lord by Gallifrey's usual standards. He's an academic underachiever, a maverick, who insists on getting involved despite his species' rules about nonintervention and passive observation. Everything extraordinary about him has come from the choices he's made - until now, of course.
Possibly they'll just ignore the entire Chibnal era. He did a terrible job with the storytelling and left a huge mess for the next writers to clean up after.
They were implying that The Doctor was as old and as important to the development of Gallifrey as Rassilon and Omega... during SEVEN'S era. Show got canceled before they could really pull the trigger on it. Plus all the mad destiny/prophecy stuff Moffat was putting in during his time... A lot of it ended up being for CLARA, but...
Frustration wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 10:52 pmYeah, so?
So, the classic series during the McCoy era suggested that the Doctor was far more than just another Time Lord, laying the foundations of what became known as the Cartmell Masterplan.
And the Virgin New Adventures novels (which Classic Who fans at the time took as the closest thing to a continuation after the show was "put on hiatus") actually developed that whole concept into the Doctor being the reincarnation of a Time Lord who was known as the Other who was one the three pioneers of Gallifrey that pioneered time travel and created Time Lord culture (the other three being Rassilon and Omega) although Marc Platt, one of the writers who were involved in developing that concept suggested that the Other/Doctor may not have been Gallifreyean himself. The novels also confirmed faces show in The Brain of Morbius were pre-Hartnell incarnations as originally planned in the serial's original concept.
Now, I'm not a fan of the Timeless Child reveal (mostly because it's just a poor man's version of the Cartmel Masterplan), however this wasn't the first time the show tried to do something like this for the Doctor and nor is it the first time the show messed around with the canon's lore. Though, I expect this is likely either going to be ignored or retconned by future showrunners or non TV material since it proved rather unpopular with a huge part of the fandom for being poorly written and revealing too much of the character's mystery.
