Like many critics out there that don't have their head firmly up the rear ends of Chris Chibnall and the BBC, I've been very critical of the current run of Doctor Who that began when both Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi left the show back in 2017. Chibnall started his run by making the controversial decision to cast a woman in the role of the Doctor, specifically Jodie Whitaker.
I -like many - scoffed at what was very clear pandering, but I was willing to give it a shot on the grounds that cross-sex regeneration had already been established in Moffat's era and had been hinted as being possible at least as far back as the Tom Baker era (both in and out of universe, Tom Baker apparently teased to the press that his replacement when he left in 1981 could be a woman). Whitaker is a talented actress, and I am of the belief that there is no bad actor who has ever played the Doctor regardless of their genitals.
Chibnall had written one of my favorite of the Matt Smith era episodes (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) and is still very much acclaimed for the work he did with Russell T. Davies on Torchwood. So, I thought we'd see a bit of the Russell T. Davies era with all the crap thrown out and, perhaps, an interesting Doctor in spite of a grab bag of iffy episodes.
...and then Series 11 happened.
For the record, I don't blame Series 11 on Whitaker or actually any of the cast. Whitaker does well with what she's given, as do her companions. Unfortunately, what she's given is crap and she has too many companions. The writing, and the sentiment behind it, ruined what could have been some really good episodes.
The Woman Who Fell To Earth did a good job of setting up everyone in the new cast, Kerblam! had a decent episode marred with a somewhat muddied message in the end, It Takes You Away had potential up until the very end, and Resolution managed to make the Daleks terrifying up until it climbed into a steampunk Dalek casing. And then it became hilarious.
...and yes, I will be getting to all of those episodes (and the rest) when I review Series 11 at...some point...in my From Madcap's Couch series. Unless you're reading this at some point in the future after I've already done so, in which case - hi, future people! Did we manage to survive the Coronavirus?
Horribly dating myself aside, pretty much every other episode in Series 11 was either merely okay or really bad and it seemed that audiences agreed. Critics loved them, but then they seemed to care more about the social messages pushed or mocking the fans for thinking things were ridiculous than they cared about the actual content itself.
Whether or not that was a deciding factor, Chibnall and the BBC took a gap year. This was both a good idea and a bad idea. It was a good idea in that it would give him time to rework his approach and maybe glean something from the critics and maybe get a-
Oh...oh, well that's very unfortunate there, Chris ol' boy...
The bad was that a gap year meant that everyone had the time to stew over just how not good Series 11 had been. Particularly with a finale that ripped off The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, things were not looking too good with Whitaker's return to the TARDIS even with Resolution being mostly pretty good.
Then came Spyfall. Besides the cameo appearance by Noor Inayat Khan (Ada Lovelace served well enough for their purposes and didn't require a pointless trip into World War II France), I thought it was great and a vast improvement over Series 11...and then the ending came.
The ending in which the Master had destroyed the Time Lords, meaning that the Time Lords are effectively dead again.
While I am aware that Chibnall was essentially raised up into Doctor Who by Russell T. Davies, that was one thing that he could have left out of the story and I would have been happy with. I didn't like it when Russell did it, and I don't like it now. However, that isn't what I'm here to have my mad ranting about. No, the ranting begins with the Master's statement that everything the Doctor knows about her background is a lie. That the Time Lords lied and have been lying about everything the entire time.
The fact that the Time Lords being a bunch of devious, backstabbing liars is shocking to some people confuses me - but then I remember that most of the fans of the New Series haven't actually seen or have any desire to see anything before the 2005 reboot (really the David Tennant era if I want to be more direct about it).
However, the Master claims he only destroyed the Time Lords because of the secrets they were keeping, but fails to divulge any of that because we need an arc for the Series and can't have everything given to us all at once.
Which brings us to Fugitive of the Judoon, which has sparked a minor outrage and all-out war in some corners of the internet between social ideologues and diehard continuity purists. Without wasting too much more time getting to the point, Fugitive of the Judoon has the titular Judoon coming to an English town to hunt down a fugitive as they are often wont to do. The Doctor gets involved and even Captain Jack Harkness makes a cameo because of plot reasons (no, not the plot of the episode, the Series Arc). Not that they do anything with this, of course, but that's another rant entirely.
After a bunch of non-moments, the Doctor discovers that the Fugitive of the Judoon...is the Doctor. Namely, a Black female incarnation that does not recognize her, implying that she's from the Doctor's past and not a future incarnation (sort of, but I'll get to that). The Doctor, also, does not recognize this incarnation and specifically states that she would remember doing the things she did as this one. And she doesn't.
As you can imagine, this causes problems...but not for the reasons you might be thinking.
Now, for a bit of background, it has been widely accepted that the Doctor was born on Gallifrey and (despite all the lip service that Moffat paid to social justice during his era) was actually male when he was born. We know this, because of the episode Listen, where Clara ends up in the barn where the Doctor spent part of his childhood and grabs him by the ankle as he woke up from a nightmare.
...it's Doctor Who, context will only make it hurt worse.
The boy who would grow up to be the Doctor is also referred to by the pronoun "he" several times in said episode. So there's really not any room for ambiguity there - the Doctor was male during their childhood.
The incarnation that appears in Fugitive is played by actress Jo Martin, originally under the identity of one Ruth Clayton by way of a Chameleon Arch. To give full credit to her, she does well. If she were an incarnation of the Doctor, she'd probably do very well in the role.
Like with Whitaker's casting, I don't put the blame on the actress in question. I just wanted to get that out there before I begin to tear into why this all doesn't work, and what I think is actually going on.
The Doctor discovers the Ruth Doctor's identity when the two go to a lighthouse that Ruth remembered from her childhood. As Ruth literally breaks an alarm box and recovers her Gallifreyan DNA, the Doctor finds the TARDIS buried nearby...specifically a police box-shaped TARDIS.
For those not in the know, the TARDIS isn't actually shaped like a police box. The TARDIS has a device aboard called a Chameleon Circuit, which is supposed to disguise it wherever it lands. That way, presumably, the Time Lords can travel throughout the whole of time and space without drawing attention to themselves. The Doctor's, after landing in 1963, got stuck as the police box as noted in episode two of An Unearthly Child when the Doctor was clearly surprised that it had happened.
So the second part of the show's first episode.
This is important to note because, before this, the TARDIS functioned as normal. The Doctor had made several attempts to fix the chameleon circuit (particularly in Attack of the Cybermen, where he almost succeeded) before finally giving up because he liked the appearance. This is notable because, if the Ruth incarnation is before William Hartnell (putting aside Listen), then there is no way this could be.
Therefore, with this continuity snafu in mind, I've managed to boil it down to four potential theories, seeing as Doctor Who fans have a bizarre obsession with trying to make everything work together no matter how bad the writing.
And I am definitely a Doctor Who fan as anyone who's read my reviews knows all too well, poor bastard that I am.
1. It's a trick
This is a little bit mundane, even for Doctor Who, but it's the most prevalent one I've seen elsewhere. During Fugitive, the Doctor scans the Ruth Doctor with her sonic and confirms that they have the same DNA. However, this wouldn't be the first time that the Doctor's equipment has been either wrong or tricked by an opponent, or the first time that an opponent has been able to successfully deceive her. The Master has been doing it since the Pertwee era, and other foes such as the Daleks and even allies like the Ood have managed to do so. So it's hardly outside the realm of possibility.
Other false incarnations have popped up before, such as Jackson Lake in The Next Doctor and Banto Zame in the Big Finish audio play The One Doctor.
In the first case it was because of a malfunctioning data stamp, in the other it was because of the efforts of a con man (the aforementioned Banto Zame). So, if this is a trick, then why is it being done? No doubt something that Chibnall wishes to use to keep us in suspense, if it's true. However, since we only have speculation on that...let's look at some others, starting with...
2. She's the Doctor from an alternative universe
Again, this is a little bit mundane, but explainable by the logic of Doctor Who. Alternative universes have been an established fact in Doctor Who as far back as The Mind Robber and, more recently, with Pete's World as established in Rise of the Cybermen. Given that the Doctor spoke of the Time Lords being able to travel between universes in that episode, it's entirely possible that Time Lords from other universes could cross over into the Whoniverse. This would explain why both Doctors would read genetically as the same person, but Whitaker can't remember the Ruth incarnation and vice-versa.
It's an interesting idea, and it'd allow Chibnall to have his cake and eat it, too. The Ruth Doctor would be no more or less legitimate than the Doctor the show has been following for nearly sixty years now, and the diehard purists wouldn't have continuity destroyed beyond repair...which is saying something if you know anything about Doctor Who.
3. She's the Rani
This sort of ties in with Reason One, though it still doesn't answer the question of why. With the return of the Master in Spyfall, the return of another renegade Time Lord wouldn't be too far-fetched. However, I don't really care for this seeing as the Ruth incarnation doesn't really fit the Rani as seen in her two appearances in the classic show - Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani. Sure, Time Lords can have drastic personality changes from regeneration, but not that much. The Ruth Doctor is not as closely akin in personality to the Rani as she is the Doctor, which brings me to my final theory...
4. She's actually a future Doctor
Now this theory is a little less headache-causing. Technology that can erase the memories of people it's been used on has shown up a number of times in both Classic and New Who, the Doctor's been subjected to them as recently as the Capaldi era (Hell Bent comes to mind). While the Ruth incarnation doesn't recognize Whitaker as herself, that may because she was subjected to either technology or Time Lord telepathy that erased her memories.
While people have picked up on the thought that the Ruth incarnation is from the Doctor's past, we don't get any actual confirmation on that besides the Doctor's theories and loud protestations that she's seen Gallifrey destroyed twice now - which the Ruth incarnation doesn't react much to. Also, given that the main villain of the episode is a Gallifreyan that hired the Judoon to do her dirty work, I find it more likely that she comes from a Gallifrey in recovery from the culture being wiped out twice rather than the nigh-unstoppable techno gods that put the Doctor on trial in The War Games.
None of the Doctor's previous incarnations are brought up when Whitaker tries to figure things out, which I think lends more credence to the theory. Naturally, of course, I'm confused as to why she doesn't attempt this since she did back when she was David Tennant when trying to coax the truth out of Jackson Lake who (at the time) he believed to be one of his future incarnations until he realized that he wasn't. However, the fact that they aren't mentioned is something that I think muddies things up a bit more.
The thing about it all is, any one of these theories could be valid. They could also all be complete and utter bullshit and Chibnall could be rewriting the history of the show back to the very beginning. However, because the appearance of Ruth's TARDIS, I'm more inclined to believe either theory two or four, as both would explain the similarities to the Doctor we know without shattering an already insane Gordian knot of continuity.
Chibnall playing fast and loose with continuity is not a good thing, particularly considering how much of it he dumped in both Series 11 and even in Spyfall. Russell T. Davies made a lot of really stupid, questionable decisions during his tenure from 2005 to 2010. For all of his faults, and there are many, he never took a sledgehammer to the continuity of the show.
He just ignored it for Christopher Eccleston's entire year.
I did tweet about it on Sunday night that I think Chibnall is setting us up for a "Gotcha!" moment and I still stand by that, there's got to be something more to this than what we're seeing. If he's going to actually rewrite the backstory of the show in introducing a new incarnation of the Doctor set before Hartnell, and that seeming to be one of the many things he's doing to do that, then Doctor Who might end up morphing into something wholly unrecognizable.
This on a show that is all about change. This might actually be a change it can't take.
I get a bad feeling about history repeating itself. Doctor Who had a bad year in 1985 and so, after an 18 month hiatus, came back with the radically different The Trial of a Time Lord season in 1986. The show was cancelled three years later.
Now I'm not saying that that's what's going to happen, I just hope that the gamble that Chibnall is taking is worth it, or we could very possibly be saying goodbye to the Doctor again very, very soon.
Doctor Who is owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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