Ncuti Gatwa finally appeared as The Doctor in the 3rd David Tennant special for 2023. We didn’t get to see much of him (which is typical for a transition) but he brought energy and excitement to the role.
I’m looking forward to watching his run as The Doctor but I have to say I do so reluctantly. The problem for me is this Timeless Child arc that Chris Chibnall injected into the Doctor’s backstory. I hate it.
I loved watched Jodie Whittaker’s take on The Doctor and thought she did a great job with the stories she was given. But I lost interest as soon as I understood what the Timeless Child arc was leading up to. Not having watched all of Jodie’s final episodes puts me at a disadvantage as an armchair critic, but for me part of the magic of the Doctor has been watching the countdown to his final life.
After Matt Smith’s Doctor was given “extra” regenerations by the Time Lords, I felt there was a way forward for the character that didn’t make it seem invincible. The Doctor may have been thousands of years old (up through the Peter Capaldi years) but he was always mortal in the sense that there was an impending finality to the character’s lifespan. It would take occasional cleverness to extend it further.
The Timeless Child nonsense separates the Doctor from the Time Lords almost completely and makes the character less empathetic. I just hate that about the Chris Chibnall years.
That said, Russell T. Davies barely allowed the character to pay lip service to the Great Mistake with a single reference in the 3 David Tennant specials. And he’s still got creative leeway (should he so choose) to undo the billion-year-old Doctor story with some alternative retconning. I’m just not going to hold out hope that the Doctor’s story will be fixed.
So basically the character has become episodic with no real pathway for development toward finality. The Doctor will simply change from time to time and, frankly, I think that will get boring. There is no threat to the Doctor’s existence because he’s immortal – timeless – thanks to the most stupid retcon in television history.
All that said, yes, I know the Fourth Doctor had introduced the mystery of pre-William Hartnell iterations of the Doctor. So technically Chris Chibnall didn’t destroy the Doctor’s character. He just surfaced the most stupid retcon (in my opinion). “The Time of the Doctor” had explained all those past lives perfectly when the Time Lords granted Matt Smith’s Doctor additional regenerations. That made sense, and it was compatible with the revelations of “The Five Doctors”.
So I’m disappointed to see Russell T. Davies stick with the Chibnall retcon. The character is now so flawed that I may lose all interest in it completely. I hope Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor gets really good stories. If they don’t revisit the Timeless Child nonsense then I’ll be able to pretend for myself that it never happened and I can watch the Doctor move on toward something. But if RTD brings it up again without doing away with it, I’ll probably hang up my T.A.R.D.I.S. key for a long, long time (if not for good).
I can enjoy the older Doctor episodes but the Jodie Whittaker Doctor years were ruined for me as a fan by an unnecessary revelation that didn’t advance the character in any meaningful way.
So, enough whining.
If you’d like to know what I think of the 3 David Tennant specials, I shared my thoughts in the SF-Fandom forums.
Sf-Fandom's Wordpress Blog 