Doctor Who: The Timeless Children (2020) - Review

After nine weeks, ten episodes and eight stories, Doctor Who: Series 12 comes to a close in 'The Timeless Children'. With the promise of the unveiling of the Timeless Child mystery; an attack from an army of Cyber Warriors; and a big confrontation between the Doctor and the Master, can writer/showrunner Chris Chibnall provide the series with a satisfying conclusion?

Um, no. But he did come close.

So after all of the build-up with "the lone Cyberman" and Ashad's foreboding comments about a sinister plan for the universe, it turns out that he's got a macguffin in his chest that can destroy all organic life and allow the Cybermen to become robots. Also, he mentions that the Cyber Warriors are robots, which instantly makes them 85% less cool. I get that the Cybermen have always been about upgrading themselves, but upgrading themselves to just become robots? That's the same Cybermen = robots issue that 'Nightmare in Silver' fell into. What makes the Cybermen scary is that they are people, and the sheer terrifying body horror nature of it all. We never see - not really, anyway - how the Cybermen look under their armour. According to 'The Timeless Children' though, they're clean enough and the organic components are easy enough to scoop out to allow Yaz, Graham and two of the other characters to escape the Cyber warship.

Now, in Chris Chibnall's defense, it's not a terrible idea, but it does feel poorly-executed, especially when the Cyber Warriors are later revealed to be just robots. So either they happily scooped out human remains, or somehow managed to fit in armour designed for robots without any hint of their clothes underneath whatsoever. That always tests my suspension of disbelief, but when Chris Chibnall's script doesn't seem sure what the Cyber Warriors actually are, what the hell is his audience supposed to think? Oh, and Ashad naturally gets killed off with no fanfare whatsoever, despite being arguably *the* villain of the series up to that point. And the Master takes on the Cyberium because apparently he wants Time Lords to be Cybermen now...?

Let's get on to the Master while we're here. It's a testament to Sacha Dhawan's impeccable performance that he manages to sell some of the episode's worst elements. The Master here is obsessed with the Cybermen, despite the fact that he has worked with the Cybermen multiple times before to no avail, and also for whatever reason wants to bond with the Cyberium. Why? Doesn't the Cyberium hurt its host, wasn't that the whole crux of 'The Haunting of Villa Diodati' in the end? Why would the Master do that to himself, when he is the person he admires most in all the universe? There's also the unresolved issue of how the feck he managed to destroy all of Gallifrey when the Daleks managed to bugger it up so badly they ended up in a Time War. If the Master had that kind of power, why not just take over Gallifrey? That seems like a more Master-y thing to do, not convert dead Time Lords into Cybermen. Also, how are dead Time Lords-converted-into-Cybermen able to regenerate? They're dead. They can't regenerate. It doesn't make sense, by the show's own logic.

But of course let's not ignore the moment when Chris Chibnall dropped the ball in such a spectacular fashion that it plummeted through the previous episodes of Series 12 and made them all feel like build-up to a remarkable anti-climax: old wizard guy defeats the Master and the Cybermen at the end, because he apparently sent the Cyberium back in time in the first place. Why didn't he send any of the human survivors back in time to defeat the Cybermen before they ever took over, like in The Terminator? Why does Chris Chibnall choose to dump this exposition a minute before he dies? Why, when Yaz and Graham are set-up ready to die, did Chibnall chicken-out and use the old wizard guy instead? Yaz's storyline is concluded perfectly, ready for her to make the ultimate sacrifice. Graham's arc is nicely wrapped up in the first part, ready for his sacrifice. But no. Instead, we get the death of the old wizard guy. What a spectacular anti-climax. Worse still, the Master will probably inexplicably survive that in a later episode.

If the old wizard guy being part of the Alliance who sent the Cyberium back in time in the first place is the key motivation for his sacrifice at the end, why didn't Chibnall set this up earlier? Why did Captain Jack Harkness warn the companions about this in 'Fugitive of the Judoon'? How did he know? How did Ashad travel back in time in the first place? Wasn't the whole thing with the Cybermen that they couldn't go back in time, and if they did, they'd resurrect their home planet Mondas? Why does this story arc make no sense in hindsight?

Oh, but I'm sure the major talking point of the episode will be the gigantic exposition dump explaining the history of the Time Lords. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, but I appreciated what Chris Chibnall was attempting to do. I did feel that mentions of Rassilon, Omega, and others would have been appreciated, and the link to Brendan from 'Ascension of the Cybermen' was tenuous at best, but it is mostly alright, up until it reveals that the Doctor is the most important and special person ever in the history of the universe because she is the Timeless Child. And William Hartnell is no longer the First Doctor, but simply the first that the Doctor remembers, and Jo Martin was before him, and there's a whole lineage of Doctors because apparently we need to make the central character's personal timeline even more convoluted. Again, I didn't hate it, but I do feel that it undermines the show's origins, and the First Doctor's growth into the man we know and love over the course of his tenure. In this scenario, Hartnell's Doctor ends up feeling like a regression after Jo Martin's Doctor, which is just a bit disappointing.

For a series finale though, I was amazed at the lack of casualties here. There were three completely superfluous human characters left alive at the end - with no good reason -, none of the companions died, and the threat of the Cybermen completely dissipated after the first ten minutes. What a way to let down your audience after the Cybermen "ascended" last week. And what did Ashad do to the Cyber Warriors in 'Ascension of the Cybermen'? It hasn't been explained, nor is it explained by the Cyber Warriors screamed when they apparently don't have organic components. Or do they? Chibnall doesn't seem to know either way.

On the upside, I have to commend the performances of Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh and Sacha Dhawan, all of whom delivered some standout moments across the episode. The visual effects were well-implemented, the cinematography looked great, and Segun Akinola's score nicely complimented the action on screen. I just wish that Chris Chibnall had thought through his script properly. Ah well. At least we got a complete tonal shift in the final seconds for a Russell T Davies-style cliffhanger with the Doctor now a prisoner of the Judoon, and yet another one when it was revealed that "the Doctor will return in 'Revolution of the Daleks'". Seriously, am I meant to be sad at the end of 'The Timeless Children', or happy to see the Doctor in another wacky adventure with the Judoon, or scared by the promise of the return of the Daleks? Which is it, Chibnall? Until then, this is the end of my Series 12 reviews. It's been a very mixed season, and whilst I appreciate that some have absolutely loved it, I haven't been too fussed about most of the episodes. I just wish it had ended on a high note.