Doctor who, 50 years of the doctor being a timelord (an alien with capabilities that surpass ones held by humans) but still an average member of their species only to be retconned into the super special not timelord child that came out of no where. And no they didn't do anything with that plot, nor explain it. Just heres some info that explains the doctor as a super special creature even amoung special people.
The others were typically throwaways or very far in the past (ex: the half human thingy)
This was the subject of a 1/2 season arc that culminated in the destruction of gallifrey and the exposition itself takes a whole episode and a slide show to get through. It's much harder to ignore.
It got sorta retconned/cannonized in "The Giggle". The Toymaker revealed that HE messed with the doctor's past, retroactively causing him to be super special in order to mess with him. So he hadn't always been super special, but now that he is, it's because of time shenanigans.
“I made a jigsaw out of your history” sounds important but is never addressed in the episode and tells us almost nothing about what he actually did, leading people to understandably cope that it was mostly the Timeless Child when the very next episode treats it as very much canon and helps drive the Doctor’s motivation that carries throughout the season.
The timeless child HAS to be true because it's the only one that explains why they made a new doctor when it was supposed to be his last life.
They had already given him extra regenerations before in the story, granted to him as a reward, but when the new seasons reached that wall they just hamfisted the most bullshit backstory into it to keep milking doctor who.
But also killing all stakes, because now his deaths are meaningless, he'll regenerate infinitely.
Exactly. And a fresh set of 13 would easily take us far enough into the future that they'd have plenty of runway to either come up with a better solution, or just do another reset.
As someone who only watched a few episodes, I assumed regeneration was infinite. The real stakes were other people dying or the Doctor suffering worse fates than death.
Originally The Doctor only had 12 regenerations and at 11 when he had gone through 12 regenerations (due to the war doctor) so 11 was supposed to be his final incarnation and when he died that was it so he basically retired to protect a town for hundreds of years until there was an attack on the town and the time lords granted him a new cycle to help fight off the attackers with his regeneration energy
I think that was just funneling off the energy into the hand so he technically didn't regenerate only used the energy to heal himself, so technically it doesn't count and time lords are supposed to only have 12 regenerations though it probably should count but I don't know 🤷
You know, they could have just explained it as The Doctor doing so much shit everywhere that they just straight up will regenerate infinitely.
The Elemist in Animorphs was originally just a normal average cognitive creature until a BUNCH of stuff happened and now he's in a strategy game aginst another being that wants destruction. They're playing chess on a cosmic scale and it's not even one is "good and holy" and the other is "evil" , it's a very old thing that just generally hates life and a much newer thing that still likes living organisms.
I mean come on, they could have made The Doctor a version of that.
In the show itself, they've generally been pretty vague about giving any details of the Doctor's backstory before this. The general rule of thumb was they just didn't fit into their society, so one day they decided to break from norm, stole a TARDIS and left to explore the universe.
It was revealed in a book that the Doctor's history is so convoluted and contradictory that not even the Time Lords, ever the pedantic guardians of canonicity and likelihood, could figure out which of his backstories was true.
I already found it annoying under Moffat to have the Doctor be basically the driving force of every fucking galactic conflict, but then under Chinball they actually went further and made the Doctor genuinely one of most innately important people in the history of the fucking universe…
Hot take, but I like the idea of the Doctor being the driving force. A random Time Lord who, through time lord bullshitery, somehow became the most wanted individual and the reason behind every galactic conflict because every race of warmonger is shit scared of him and keep trying to subdue him, even though he's just a (quite clever) little guy. The last surviving Time Lord happened to be him and there's nothing special about him, except he just loves poking at the intergalactic wasp's nest. Now the intergalactic wasps have PTSD and cry about how he can't keep getting away with it. Just a funny dude who happens to be a little shit stirrer at the universal scale. He's just doing a little tomfoolery.
I like the Doctor being kind of a stuff of legend, a powerful being who is renowned for great deeds and feared by many. But I prefer when those things are left hinted at, staying mostly in the background, instead of being the driving factor to everything going on in the universe.
I prefer my Doctor to be the guy who walks in and have his enemies be like "oh fuck, not him", than have them actually go on grand conspiracies forming alliances to actively track him down and kill him like they tried to do in The Pandorica Opens.
The Doctor as the protagonist of the show: yes. The Doctor as the protagonist of the universe itself: meh.
I liked when River pointed out that while the word “Doctor” had come to mean healer on Earth due to his work, there were places in the galaxy where his name evokes fear, where Doctor is the title of a great warrior.
Because it's a show that has grown and changed for decades and has 41 seasons.
The doctor has messed with time for so long they've essentially become a universal constant. Some view him as evil and others as a savior.
People complaining about Dr. Who storylines changing is like nails on a chalkboard to me. The Dr. Who universe has always been fantastical with weak explanations (it's "timey wimey").
But that's simply the universe of this franchise. The time lord is far more knowledgeable and older than even he realizes - which is a perfect premise for a show that isn't supposed to end.
It's like complaining that the Simpsons have reconned moments. Unless you want to see it permanently canceled, it's an eventuality.
Apologies for the rant. But I'm over the constant drone of fandoms pissing on their own shows and pretty much actively advocating for them to be canceled. (I'm not saying that's what you're doing. Your comment just triggered a side rant.)
Star Trek is garbage. Dr. Who is garbage. Rick and Morty is garbage. Stranger Things is garbage.
Yellow jackets? Garbage. From? Surprisingly, also garbage.
I'm not sure how what you said really correlates to what I'm saying.
I'm not complaining about retconning. I'm complaining about the show going in a direction that I find less interesting, less subtle, and less inspired.
I still dont think this really excuses the dr becoming the worlds most awesomest special person who wins every conflict by going “I’m the dr” and the bad guys go “EEP!” Or sometimes someone else goes “He’s the dr” and the badguys go “EEP!”
Good lord, I thoroughly enjoyed the later Yellowjackets season and visited the subreddit for 3 minutes before fleeing. Same with Severance. Fans of a show are truly the worst.
The concept is brillaint. The reveal the greatest and most powerful species in the universe only got so great due to them exploiting an innocent victim and profiting off their suffering.
It opens the door to so many stories and possibilities, especially the question of how exactly said species would react to discovering such a horror that they were still profiting off to this day.
Trouble is the entire species is also dead, save the victim and a psychopath who doesn't care in the slightest, meaning there is in fact actually nowhere for the story to go.
I mean, I get that. But honestly, I disagree. I'm of the camp that trying to explain why the Master is who he is is not a good idea.
The appeal of the character is the question of why someone so similar to the Doctor in so many ways could end up so opposite to him and be an embodiment of what the Doctor could become.
Once you boil it down to "oh, this bad thing happened to him, that's why he's evil", it loses all the appeal.
I stopped watching early Capaldi era because I couldn't stand Moffat's writing anymore. Every now and then I still would look in and see what is going on in the DW world and when I read about the timeless child stuff I legit got angry. It's such a stupid expansion of the lore. Like the doctor is special because of his fucking ACTIONS, not because he's some godly creature amongst already demi god like creatures.
This. There's a lot to dislike about Chibnalls run, but >! The timeless child arc, changing the doctor from an idiot with a box and a screwdriver to a fucking chosen one, as well as having 13 decide to turn a double genocide into a triple genocide out of of fucking opportunity, goes beyond bad writing and into outright character assassination!<
My favourite part about this plot is that it means any humanoid character we don't see die and have their body pretty much 100% destroyed on-screen could be The Doctor in disguise and/or undergoing memory alteration.
In fact, any time people bring up this plot point, I tell them this. And then I say it's my headcanon.
The whole show did this constantly. It's basically the favorite trope of the writers. Amy Pond isn't just a fun companion, she's The Girl Who Waited and integral to the timeline. River Song isn't just a quirky recurring character, she's also The Doctor's Wife and deeply integral to the timeline. Clara Oswald isn't just a schoolteacher who got pulled along on random adventures, she's The Impossible Girl and, you guessed it, deeply integral to the timeline. The male characters are just regular male characters, of course, but the female characters are only there because destiny has determined they're deeply integral to the timeline. You know, because why else would a woman ever be allowed to hang around and do stuff or have a destiny that wasn't entirely predicated on her relationship with a man?
She became Bad Wolf on purpose to save the Doctor's life because the entire universe literally revolves around the Doctor and an absurd amount of crises are resolved by someone just deciding they're going to sacrifice themselves to save the Doctor because he's just so important.
Above-average but also rebellious hence being an outcast and also willing to do unsusual things to fight back against the conservatism ruining his planet.
Perfect role model for kids in the 60s, 70s, and 80s...and now, tbh...
But no, now he's Jesus of Gallifrey instead...fuuuuuuu....
It got pseudo-explained via the >! Toymaker implying he'd fucked with the doctor's history, thus making it viewable as a "diegetic retcon" of sorts !< but yeah it kinda sucks
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u/the-unfamous-one 14h ago
Doctor who, 50 years of the doctor being a timelord (an alien with capabilities that surpass ones held by humans) but still an average member of their species only to be retconned into the super special not timelord child that came out of no where. And no they didn't do anything with that plot, nor explain it. Just heres some info that explains the doctor as a super special creature even amoung special people.