The Timeless Children

“It is solid enough but by far the least interesting of all the series finales since the show returned and the most derivative.” That’s what I wrote of Chris Chibnall’s previous finale, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. Finales are notoriously disappointing. Traditionally the grand set up of the penultimate episode is let down by a damp squib of an ending. The only finales which truly work in my view are The Parting of the Ways, The Big Bang and Death in Heaven. The remainder seem either overwrought, overwritten or strangely languorous and talky. After all the action of the build-up, we’re left with a conversation and however human that is, it can’t help but feel like deflation. That’s true to a degree of The Timeless Children which spends an awful lot of time in a room outside the Panopticon with a physically immovable Doctor meaning that in terms of geography, the story literally can’t go anywhere except the realms of the metaphysical. However, I’m also surprised and delighted that those three outstanding finales mentioned above now have a fourth stablemate because, perhaps against all the odds, Chris Chibnall has only gone and bloody done it.

The Timeless Children is a strange story. I wonder if it is a story that actually needed telling. The moral is essentially, as the Ruth Doctor tells us: whatever’s happened in the past, it doesn’t matter. So why bother exploring it at all? “Everything you think you know is a lie,” the Master tells the Doctor but we the viewers don’t actually know anything to begin with. We don’t know if the Doctor ever knew her parents. We don’t know where she came from in the first place. To re-write a history we know nothing about seems like a bit of a pointless task and surely a hiding to nowhere? But what we get here is mesmerising and robust. It is powerful and interesting. It is in the Doctor’s confusion and disconcertion where the drama lies. The Master’s narration over the beautiful images of early Gallifrey is pleasingly mythic and seeing the Capitol in crumbling disrepair feels iconic. I’m not sure how much I like the idea of the Doctor being a special child fallen from the stars (too Superman?); I prefer the idea of the bored student among many who did a brave thing and ran away one day. Cleverly though, Chibnall makes sure that both avenues of possibility are still open and as bold as his re-writing of canon is, he actually plays everything safe. There are no huge revelations, no jaw-dropping surprises. Things play out in measured, thoughtful movements and peak with that Brain of Morbius montage letting us know that everything has always been OK. That’s the real punch-the-air moment: that nothing was wrong with canon in the first place, that everything fits together, and as if to prove it, we get a glorious, reeling rendition of the theme tune to bring this whole incredible history and universe together.

There is another cleverness about this story and indeed this series and it’s perhaps a delicate issue. Since the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, the obvious questions are very quickly asked: If we’re going down that route, why has the Doctor never been black? Why has the Doctor never been disabled? Why does the Doctor not represent me personally? How many degrees of self are there in the world for the Doctor to represent? And that’s the danger of identity politics. Chris Chibnall neatly assures us that in fact, the Doctor has already been all those things and can be any of those things. We don’t need to measure his or her identity any more by virtue of their sex or race or age. If anything, The Timeless Child broadens out the possibilities still further by making all those distinctions irrelevant. Having inhabited all those roles, why should the Doctor even notice anymore? And perhaps that is the over-riding message here: The Doctor, wherever they may be from, whichever body they inhabit, can be anything. And so can we all. The past doesn’t matter; the future is more important. And in The Timeless Child, Jodie Whittaker finally, finally convinces that she has the chutzpah to take on this part. For once, she convinces throughout. She is real; tangibly the Doctor. She is never better than when playing the victim and here, she is the centre of a very personal persecution throughout. Desperate, confused and scared, this episode plays to Jodie Whittaker’s real talents and she brings, ironically, her felt humanity to the part.

These last three episodes have been as grand, enjoyable and bold as Russell T Davies’ Utopia/ The Sound of Drums/ Last of the Time Lords or Steven Moffat’s Face the Raven / Heaven Sent / Hell Bent. They are the respective writers’ magnum opuses, Doctor Who in long form with an authorial vision at the centres. Chris Chibnall’s Who represented by this three-part finale is linear, exciting and personal. If I was unconvinced before about what Chris Chibnall had to bring to the table (and I’m still not sure I can hear his voice across his work), then I’m looking forward to what comes next. Because even amongst all the often nail-biting heroic posturing and sometimes po-faced mythologising of the show, there’s still room for those completely silly Cyber Lords. That’s the heart of the show, right there: the birth of the universe, bodily regeneration, Irish dreamscapes and camp robots in headdresses. Yeah, Chibnall understands what presses our fan buttons alright.

8/10

JH