Like any series that’s been running for nearly 60 years, the beloved sci-fi adventure show Doctor Who has had its fair share of ups and downs over the decades. But while Doctor Who is certainly no stranger to divisive stories, no single episode in the series’ history has been quite so controversial as the Series 12 finale, 2020’s “The Timeless Children”, written by showrunner Chris Chibnall.

“The Timeless Children” features another eventful appearance of the Master (Sacha Dhawan, who previously played Davos in Iron Fist), the childhood friend turned longtime arch-nemesis of the Doctor (Broadchurch star Jodie Whittaker). The Master first made his triumphant return in the Thirteenth Doctor era with the Series 12 premiere “Spyfall”, which revealed that he had wiped out the rest of the Time Lord species offscreen. This is an especially curious decision considering 2013’s 50th anniversary special, “Day of the Doctor”, ended with the Doctor’s many incarnations teaming up to undo Gallifrey’s previous destruction — but since then, it had only been featured in a single episode (Series 9’s “Hell Bent”) before being ravaged yet again.

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“The Timeless Children” also follows up on another Series 12 episode, “Fugitive of the Judoon”, in which the Thirteenth Doctor encountered another version of herself, the Fugitive Doctor, played by Jo Martin. Curiously, neither Doctor recognizes the other, eliminating the possibility that the Fugitive Doctor is a future regeneration of the one we know. This mystery goes unaddressed until the Series 12 finale, in which the Master delivers a revelation that completely demolishes all preconceived notions of the series’ lore.

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Previously, the Doctor’s backstory was decidedly simple, albeit mysterious. They were an ordinary Time Lord on Gallifrey who, unsatisfied with a life of idle decadence and privilege like the rest of their species, decided to steal a TARDIS in order to travel the universe. However, the story revealed by the Master completely contradicts everything fans had been told in the past — not just about the Doctor, but about Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

According to the Master, the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all, but rather a being from another dimension who was discovered as a child by a Gallifreyan explorer named Tecteun. This entity, dubbed the “Timeless Child”, possessed the ability to regenerate indefinitely upon death — a power that the native Gallifreyans did not possess. By harnessing the power of the Timeless Child’s DNA, the Gallifreyans claimed the power of regeneration as their own, though the ruling elite decreed that all Gallifreyans should be limited to a total of twelve regenerations. Thus, the Gallifreyans became the Time Lords. At some point after this, the Timeless Child’s memories were wiped and they were transformed back into a child, at which point their life as the Doctor began.

Needless to say, the Timeless Child reveal goes against nearly everything that had been previously established about the backstory of the Doctor and the Time Lords. Rather than an ordinary Time Lord, the Doctor is revealed as a mysterious being from another dimension who not only lived countless other lives prior to their existence as the First Doctor, but can in fact regenerate an infinite number of times, and is the very reason the Time Lords can regenerate in the first place. The idea that Time Lord society is a product of the Doctor rather than vice versa takes away some of the Doctor’s relatability, turning them into a chosen one-type figure with a grand cosmic importance, as opposed to the wanderer with humble origins they were previously said to be.

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In addition, the twist of the Doctor having an entire set of past lives that they’d forgotten about is forced at best and downright catastrophic at worst. For one thing, the Doctor’s previous backstory is undermined by the reveal that it was all based on a lie. But more importantly, it’s implied by the Fugitive Doctor’s existence that the Doctor had already been traveling around the universe in a TARDIS identical to their current one before the First Doctor’s childhood on Gallifrey. Not only is this idea incredibly awkward from a continuity standpoint, it also feels like a forced, needless, and overly convoluted addition to the backstory of a character who was best left as an enigma.

“The Timeless Children” was immediately met with massive backlash. Countless fans were left frustrated and confused by the changes to the series’ lore, which they felt lessened previous stories and went against the spirit of the Doctor’s character. And it seems that the higher-ups at BBC listened to these complaints, because the upcoming Series 13 will be the last season of Doctor Who with Chris Chibnall as showrunner and Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. Starting in 2023, Russell T Davies — the showrunner behind the Ninth and Tenth Doctors — will be returning to the series, to the delight of fans everywhere.

But until then, there’s still one more season left with Chibnall at the helm: Series 13, a six-episode miniseries titled Doctor Who: Flux, which will air its first episode on October 31st. While the plot of the season is currently vague, it’s been confirmed that the Thirteenth Doctor will be faced with a mysterious cosmic phenomenon known only as the Flux, which has caused the appearance of “old foes and new creatures from beyond our dimension”, according to the official BBC synopsis. The Series 13 trailer hints that space-time anomalies will be involved, like the Sontarans suddenly appearing in the Crimean War.

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At first, this may seem like a typical Doctor Who premise, completely unrelated to the events of “The Timeless Children”. However, it’s possible that Series 13 might present a way to reverse the events of the previous season, and therefore undo the controversial decisions that caused so much uproar among the fandom. Since the synopsis indicates that alternate dimensions will be involved in the story, it could potentially be revealed that the Fugitive Doctor is actually a Doctor from another universe, not the distant past, and that the Timeless Child backstory was just an elaborate lie woven by the Master.

Alternatively, the presence of temporal anomalies within the plot could lead to the timeline getting majorly damaged by the titular Flux, causing a ripple effect in time after the Doctor sets things right. This could allow the events of Series 12 to be undone in-universe, creating a new timeline where the previous backstory for the Doctor and the Time Lords is restored, and Gallifrey was never destroyed a second time by the Master. In a series like this where time travel is a central part of the story, there’s no shortage of creative ways for past events to be reversed.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Series 13 will address the Timeless Child reveal at all, or even that Russell T Davies will in the future. However, it would certainly be a good way for Chibnall to address fan complaints in the final season of his much-maligned era as showrunner. But for now, there’s no way of knowing how Series 13 will turn out until Doctor Who: Flux begins this Halloween.

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