Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children
Story 295, Episodes 860-861, Series 12 Episodes 9-10
Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor
Companions: Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan, Graham O’Brien
Series 12 concludes with the most earth-shattering story in Doctor Who history, completely changing the way we view the Doctor in one story that is so colossal my head is still spinning.
The Review
Part two was so huge that I want to jump ahead but we do have to spend some time on part one. It starts out with the Doctor and the fam visiting the last seven humanities in whatever galaxy they are in (I’m going to go with Tiberian Spiral and it all lines up well with Nightmare in Silver) to save them from Ashad and the Cybermen. Ryan and the Doctor get separated from Graham and Yaz, who end up on a Cybermen troop carrier, and are visited by Ashad who re-awakens the Cybermen on it. The human’s goal was to get to Ko Sharmus and the mysterious Boundary, supposedly the only way outside of the galaxy. It turns out Ko Sharmus is actually an old man, and the boundary leads to…the ruins of Gallifrey. Out of which the Master drops out, no explanation of how he got away from the Spyfall situation, but we don’t need one of those from the Master. Ascension of the Cybermen is a good episode thanks to the very real threat of the awakening Cybermen, and Ashad is such a frightening presence that it drives the pace. That said, we don’t really get any answers to any questions about what is going on, nor more hints at the Timeless Child.
Well enough about that episode, it’s time to talk about the episode that contains, I think without a doubt, the most lore ever. See, revealing the truth about the history of the Time Lords is one thing, but revealing truth about the Doctor is another. Our guide throughout all this is Sacha Dhawan’s Master, and Dhawan absolutely nails it throughout this episode. I thought nobody could come close to Michelle Gomez, but Dhawan’s energy and manic charisma is truly something to behold. I can accept that the Master went crazy again, but I would really have liked some in-universe acknowledgement that Missy did end up standing with the Doctor. The Master could reveal to the Doctor that he did choose her side, and that could have further underscored how earth-shattering the Timeless Child story was. He invites Ashad and the Cybermen troop carrier to dock in the ruins of the citadel, and learns Ashad’s final plan: to remove all organic elements in the Cybermen and make them mechanized. The Master is disappointed that Ashad’s plans were just to make them into robots, and I agree. Dumb plan. So the Master kills Ashad in cold blood.
Let’s check in on the companions. In a story absolutely filled to the brim with Time Lord lore, the companions take a back seat. The pairing of Graham and Yaz was a good one, and leads to a scene where Graham praises Yaz as the best woman he’s ever known. It’s beautiful, but I wish we had seen more of what Graham praises Yaz for throughout the past two seasons. Hilariously, Yaz says Graham is not so bad himself, apparently a love letter if you’re from Yorkshire. Ryan doesn’t do much except for use his basketball skills to throw a bomb to destroy some Cybermen and react just like a guy his age would. I actually feel that Ryan has been pretty well-developed as a character, and Tosin Cole was able to do a lot with not many lines. Graham, Yaz, and the two surviving humans from the settlement disguise themselves in Cybermen armor to escape the troop carrier. The companions have been much more developed this season, and I hope we get a good goodbye to them. One of the surviving humans is a middle-aged woman, Ravio, who I think could be a good match for Graham. They all take a TARDIS back to 2020 London.
Ascension of the Cybermen features the story of a boy named Brendan in early 20th century century Ireland, found abandoned as a baby, who becomes a police officer. He somehow survives a gunshot wound and fall into a canyon, grows old, then his un-aged dad and former captain show up and begin brutally mind-wiping him. It turns out to have been an allegory for the founding of Gallifrey as the Master shows the Doctor within the Matrix. Gallifrey’s indigenous people were a group called the Shobogans, which is apparently straight from the EU. One of them, Tecteun, an explorer, found a child that had emerged from a gateway. She brought her back to Gallifrey and tried to find out what she was, but got no answer. One day the child fell to her death and regenerated, and after forcing several regenerations out of her Tecteun found the secret of regeneration. She proved it on herself and distributed the gift to the Time Lord elite founding Time Lord society. That child, of course, was the Doctor (though for a beat I thought it was going to be the Master). So there is a hell of a lot to unpack here.
This is the most info we have ever been definitively shown about the foundation of Gallifrey, and Chibnall has chosen to go down the path of ‘the Doctor is a special Time Lord’ and not ‘the Doctor is a random Time Lord who left Gallifrey and became a hero’. I have to say, I kind of prefer the latter, because it shows that anybody can be special and be a hero. But in Chibnall’s defense, there have been many clues pointing at the Doctor being special, mostly from the Seventh Doctor era but the Hybrid sort of fits that. I was initially excited, then I got pretty down on all of the Doctor is special stuff, but now I’m kind of drawing myself back in. The problem though is that the onus is now on Chibnall to explain everything, and there are several loose ends: Rassilon and Omega, and what became of Tecteun? I assume the two unseen Time Lords that Tecteun bows to are supposed to be them. Was Tecteun the woman from The End of Time? Who is Susan? Her being the Timeless Child would actually make far more sense honestly. Were the Shobogans humans? We never found out if the Boundary always went to Gallifrey or not. Lastly, I see why this was a shattering revelation for the Doctor, but I don’t think it quite ‘laid her low’ like the Master thought it would. Not getting an answer to most of these questions in Whittaker’s era would feel unfinished.
Regardless of my hesitation around making the Doctor the pillar of Time Lord history, and leaving us with tons of questions, I am excited about one thing: Ruth. Ruth is heavily implied to be a pre-Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor, working for ‘the Division’, Time Lord black ops. What really excites me about her is Jo Martin’s performance, who absolutely nails it as the Doctor. Still, it rings weird to me that a pre-Hartnell incarnation would call herself the Doctor, let alone have a police box TARDIS. The First Doctor just stole a random TARDIS, and this has been explicitly confirmed. Martin rocks though, so look to see more of her. The Doctor uses all of her history, known and unknown, to break out of the Matrix and we got a montage of all the known Doctors + Ruth and the pre-First Doctor faces from The Brain of Morbius because has Chibnall really waited 44 years to pay off that plot thread? Oh and one last thing, Ko Sharmus destroys the CYBERMAN/TIME LORD HYBRIDS THE MASTER MADE. They are Cybermen in Time Lord regalia, they are able to regenerate, they are amazing. It is weird that the Doctor can’t bring herself to kill them with the DEATH PARTICLE ASHAD HAD but we’re supposed to be fine with Ko Sharmus doing it. Oh, and six and a half years after saving Gallifrey, it and all the Time Lords are apparently super dead. Gallifrey whiplash! I guess Rassilon is still out there…
This story, especially part two, was as narratively dense as anything in show history. For as many revelations as there were, it still kind of worked. Not all of it, but a lot. And finally using the show theme as in-universe music for the Doctor montage was awesome. Got to give credit to audacity. Also loved the Tennant-esque ending with the Doctor getting immediately arrested by Judoon.
9/10 My head is still reeling, but amazing production values, pacing, and performances make this a blockbuster to remember.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 