Doctor Who
Doctor of the Church Who ’s new " Time Lord Victorious " graphic novel helps bring home the bacon context for Chris Chibnall ’s Timeless Child retcon . 2020 has been a class of dramatic developments for Whovians , withDoctor Whoseason 12 literally rewriting the show ’s history . Showrunner Chris Chibnall unveil the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all , but rather is the Timeless Child , a being who potentially originated from another cosmos - and who became the humble genetical code for the entire Time Lord slipstream .
This has been adopt by " Time Lord Victorious , " the biggest transmedia event in the history ofDoctor Who . In this story , various incarnations of the Doctor have traveled back to the Dark Times , when the universe was young . This should be impossible , but somehow the time locks preventing TARDISes traveling back so far have miscarry , and now all history is in flux . The story of " Time Lord Victorious " runs across several different mass medium , including cartoon strip , novels , and even a Dalek animated telecasting series to be issue on YouTube .
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Now the up-to-the-minute chapter of " Time Lord Victorious " hints at a very subtle connection between this story and the Timeless Child retcon . It helps to ply an authoritative context for the Doctor ’s new beginning .
The Kotturuh Brought The Gift Of Death
Doctor Whohas consistently suggest there is a the true behind every myth , every legend , and every spiritual belief . Over the years , the Doctor has encountered the ancient Osirans who revolutionise Egyptian religion , cosmic forces who claim to be responsible for belief in demon and the Tempter , and even learned one of his avatar was Merlin , King Arthur ’s necromancer in the legend of Camelot . " Time Lord Victorious " goes one dance step further , though , lifting from the Judeo - Christian opinion that death was unknown when the universe of discourse first constitute , and that it is best come across as an intruder introduced by malevolent force .
Step forwardthe Kotturuh , a race whose macrocosm has been lost in the annals of history , meaning even the Doctor does n’t know anything about them . The Kotturuh get word they had the power to take demise wherever they want , allocating life for every race they encountered . They traveled the stars doing just that , basically judge every mintage based on what they consider to be its universal implication . Some immortal subspecies undertake to combat them , and were pass over out ; others , like the Racnoss andthe Eternals , flee from them . The Kotturuh ’s fate is unknown . Having achieved their goal , they appear to have disappeared , perhaps return themselves extinct or being destroyed by the wrathful races they had condemned to mortality .
And here is the interesting thing;Doctor Who Magazine#556 take a supplementary comic book story , Monstrous Beauty , in which the Ninth Doctor and Rose stumble into the Dark Times . There , they encounter a Gallifrey group go by Commander Rassilon himself , the legendary founder of the Time Lord airstream . These ancient Gallifreyans are apparently ghost with their own transmissible purity , presumably already arrogant enough to consider other races as lesser . Dialogue propose they have only late been touch by the Kotturuh , and thus are struggling to come to terms with the newfangled reality of dying . Significantly , they are not Time Lords ; their bio - scanners consider the Doctor to be an noncitizen .
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“Time Lord Victorious” Provides Context For The Timeless Child
This offer important context for Chris Chibnall ’s " Timeless tike " retcon , specifically facilitate explain the action of a Gallifreyan scientist and explorer named Tecteun . agree toDoctor Whoseason 12 , she was the one who expose the Timeless Child , abandon and alone on a planet distant from Gallifrey . Tecteun took the Timeless Child as her ward , lend her up as part of her family ; and then , on one fateful day , the Timeless Child fall from a drop-off to what should have been her death . To Tecteun ’s amazement , she did not kick the bucket ; she regenerated . Suddenly Tecteun understood end was not inevitably inevitable , but rather that there was an substitute - regeneration . She consecrate years of her aliveness to experimenting upon the Timeless Child , causing her to die and be reborn several times , until finally she unlock the secret of regeneration . This was the beginning of the Time Lord subspecies - and , significantly , because these will have been the days of Rassilon , they must have happened before long after the Kotturuh visited Gallifrey .
Tecteun ’s legal action are appalling , but suddenly they are a piffling more comprehendible . She had been brought up in a culture that already considered itself superior . She may have shown the Timeless Child compassionateness when she take her in as her Aaron Montgomery Ward , but she would have still recollect of the Timeless Child as a lesser being . Meanwhile , on a psychological horizontal surface Tecteun would have been reeling in the aspect of her fresh mortality , and scramble to go for the humbling that come from her own race being assigned a lifespan by the Kotturuh . Little wonder Tecteun was ineffectual to resist experimenting upon the Timeless Child in such an immoral path .
It ’s crucial to note , though , that Tecteun did not make the Time Lords immortal . To be sure , she claimed immortality for herself , and presumably to Rassilon as well ; but she then pick out tolimit the number of regenerations a Time Lord could undergo . Time Lords may be able to live for untold millennia , barring chance event , but they do not live forever , and that was Tecteun ’s choice . " Time Lord Victorious " subtly reframes this decision as a declaration of Tecteun ’s superiority over the Kotturuh . She has rejected the lifespan they allocated her , ensuring like the Timeless Child she will never become flat , and then she has taken on their part and reallocated a lifespan to the Gallifreyans . It ’s breathtakingly egotistical , perhaps hint Tecteun had add up to consider herself the supreme force in the universe .
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There is no direct connection between " Time Lord Victorious " and the Timeless Child retcon . That ’s largely because the BBC charter would not allow that ; as former showrunner Russell T. Davies explain in the May 2005 issue ofDoctor WhoMagazine , the idiot box serial publication is farm by a public service broadcaster , and"if you had to corrupt a BBC novel so as to empathise the plot as transmitted on BBC1 , then we would be breaking the BBC ’s guideline . " But there are collateral nexus , insidious threads that wed the continuity together in a fascinating elbow room .
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