It’s always helpful when someone on YouTube or an article drops something just when I’m looking for an article subject. So, full disclosure (again this week): I have not seen the Chibnall run of Doctor Who when the first few episodes failed to impress. Now that all of New Who is tied to Disney+ (not sure about Classic Who, which Britbox does run on a few ad-sponsored streaming sites) and taken from BBC America so I won’t be able to watch anything new from Doctor Who possibly ever again, I probably won’t be able to get caught up. I’m okay with this as I’m more into the original because I like the charm of the original more and the new show is often hit or miss for me, especially nowadays. I know of the Timeless Child and reject the concept since it feels like the same “we need to keep the Doctor mysterious” nonsense we got with the Cartmel Master Plan and The Question That Can’t Be Answered. The Doctor’s from Gallifrey, left to explore the universe, apparently had a granddaughter which means he was a husband and father at some point, slowly evolved to saving the universe and running with gods like the White and Black Guardians…and nothing else. There’s plenty of mystery left to the character.
I’ve also heard of the Flux, which from what I can tell is basically the non-Covenant threat from the Halo game franchise. I know enough to follow Harbo Wholmes‘ video which just dropped today. In the below video he discusses the idea of the scientist who found the Timeless Child (I don’t know her name and don’t care enough to do so as she’s basically a plot point) trying to talk the Doctor into joining her in an alternate universe and letting the regular Whoniverse die. Not a parallel universe like we’ve seen in the past, but a full on alternate reality with new creatures, new races, new forms of life, and where the Timeless Doctor may come from. In the video, Harbo goes over how not going there missed an opportunity to reboot the franchise and give the audience something completely new yet familiar without the baggage of a show that’s been on the air on and off since 1963. Why isn’t this a Versus post? Because he also goes over why this might not be the best thing for the show…and that part I agree with him on.
I’m not sure if Harbo was so much taking a position as performing a “what if” thought experiment. It is an idea, and in a time where writers seem to think of years of history not as a challenge to continue something fans love but as something keeping them from the stories they really want to tell (while being too lazy to just make something new), this does have at least enough merit to consider. The old universe still happened, those events still affect the Doctor, and that wouldn’t change. There could even be the occasional alternate version of Earth or the series’ other planets with different results. Imagine if Earth was more like Bluey where the dogs evolved instead of some variant of primate. It’s a terrible idea over all for reasons Harbo brings up, but it’s not like it lacks possibilities.
If you’re one of those people invested in the “mystery” of the Doctor the idea is also promising for exploring the Timeless Child idea, learning where the Doctor came from…except every time you come close to the answer, even if there are still tons of mysteries about the Doctor as I noted earlier, some new showrunner is going to come along, insist the Doctor isn’t mysterious enough, and come up with some other dumb idea to “rebuild the mystery”. So we’d have to put up with that at some point.
One thing he doesn’t bring up is that if the Flux wipes out the universe, it also wipes out all the characters that have appeared in the franchise that isn’t the Doctor. All of the Doctor’s Companions who did survive to return to Earth, or explore the galaxy in a different way, or were just working with the Doctor for one or two stories would be killed off, meaning someone’s favorite character is now dead when they weren’t before. Big Finish, comics, and novels have all shown that side stories with those characters are possible. We talked about “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang” last week and I just realized I’ve done at least one Doctor Who related post the past few weeks without intending to. Big Finish took the detective and doctor from that serial, Henry Jago and George Litefoot, their own audio drama series, as well as the Doctor’s clone daughter Jenny, novel companion Bernice Summerfield, the pre-Time War Romana as president of the Time Lords, and a host of other stories that now end because there’s no universe, and even if they set the stories before the Flux (kind of have to with Romana, whom I believe is dead thanks to the Time War as Rassilon returned but she thus far hasn’t) it’s stories before they’re wiped out. They just had Ian Chesterton show up in the show and Susan show up in the “Once And Future” audio drama storyline, both with their original actors. Killed by the Flux so the Doctor can reboot her life? No thank you.
However, I have the perfect solution: SPIN-OFFS! Have scientist lady run off to the other dimension, have HER going around this new universe meeting variations of existing Who races and new races that won’t exist in the main universe, and start a whole new show with ties to the original. It’s not like we haven’t had spin-offs before from both the BBC, Australia, and Big Finish. Plus fan series like Professor What shows you can build decent stories around Time Lords who aren’t the Doctor. One step better: have Ruth be the real Timeless Child who went by The Doctor for some reason (one inspired the other somehow), and she goes along to find her home without being the Doctor we’ve known. William Hartnell gets to be the first Doctor again, we still have the Timeless Child, we get a new universe to explore without losing the original Doctor, the regular Whoniverse, and all the characters we love while at the same time all the benefits of this totally separated universe as a reboot-ish take on the Doctor. Wins for days!
For that matter, the Metacrisis Doctor in the alternate universe with Rose. Shouldn’t he have grown his own TARDIS by now? Imagine he, Rose, Jackie, and Pete clearing out the rest of the Cybermen and going off on adventures in their more parallel universe. What are the Time Lords like, if they exist at all? The Doctor thinks he has the advantage over the Daleks because he knows them, only to find they are not the same as the ones he knew. You thus aren’t “burdened” by Who history but also by regular history or the need to continue present day Earth acting like a variation of our Earth but with secret and not-so-secret alien invasions. Meanwhile the regular Doctor still has our universe, all the people he/she has met through various incarnation, and the unexplored parts of ours and endless other galaxies. Between these three realities there’s a Doctor for everyone, and the more versions you like the more you get out of the franchise…and you can ignore the ones you want while at least limiting the brand dilution plaguing so many other “my takes” out there.
Don’t toss out, build upon instead. Everybody wins at least once, if not three times. The main universe still has stories to tell. Don’t toss out something useful just to bring in something new. That’s one of the advantages of a multiverse.
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