Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children

[louisedennis]

I didn't like it.

My problem is that the reasons I didn't like this two parter fall into "things I feel strongly but suspect will get over in time" and "things which I think were objectively rather poor but would happily over-look in a Doctor Who story I otherwise liked".

My thinking after several days is still somewhat disjointed, so I'm going to do the notes version of this.

1. I was uncharacteristically anxious throughout all of this. Particularly Ascension of the Cybermen. I think some of it was the rumours that one or more of the Fam were to leave. This is interesting in that it means I'm fonder of the Fam than I thought I was, but also I think is because it feels like none of the Fam have really reached a natural end point in their story. I don't like being anxious while watching Doctor Who, though presumably now I know where all this is going I won't be anxious next time I watch it.
   
2. A corollary to this is that it's felt all series like the interactions between the Fam and the Doctor were going somewhere but there was no real resolution to that. I'm not even clear if the Fam are still part of the show or not? I mean they have a Tardis House right? so maybe? probably?
   
3. A big part of my objection to the big reveal boils down to "but looms"* which is weird because a) The looms are not actually directly contradicted here and b) I always thought they were a silly idea anyway. Still - "but looms".
   
4. Actually I suspect "but looms" is acting as a surrogate around a set of feelings that fitting the novels into the overall continuity of Doctor Who is basically a lost cause at this point. One could argue its been a lost cause since Human Nature but I'd been managing via a mixture of vigorous squinting and denial to pretend that it ALL FITTED INTO ONE GLORIOUS WHOLE. I think The Timeless Children broke this.
   
5. I'm not keen on the idea that the Doctor is somehow super-special by birth, on the other hand that's not what The Timeless Children said - only that she was the originator of the Time Lord ability to regenerate which isn't actually the same thing.
   
6. "Everything you think you know is a lie" - seriously? I mean even before the episode aired I was muttering contrarily "well I suppose 2 plus 2 still equals 4" but I was suspecting something far more radical than that the Time Lords had been lying about where they got regeneration from and that the Doctor had previous lives she had forgotten. I was expecting something much more explicitly along the lines of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (i.e., that Gallifreyan "civilisation" not only originated in exploitation of the Timeless Child but was maintained by continued exploitation of The Timeless Children) with a side possibility that whole swathes of the Doctor's past might turn out to be a dream or fantasy of some kind.
   
7. Why Timeless Children plural? Did I miss something?
   
8. Still don't like Gallifrey getting destroyed again. I mean, I understand all the reasons why you might from a story perspective want to destroy Gallifrey, but it has been done.
   
9. I also don't really like the Master's reversion to Simm-Master like giggling-evil-madness. In particular, I don't like the fact that this is done without any acknowledgement of where Missy ended up. Of course, events yet planned could resolve some of this.
   
10. Not that Sacha Dhawan isn't very pretty to look at.
    
11. I did like the bit where he shrunk Ashad. The moment Ashad explained the Cyberium could only be accessed if he was killed we all went "Uh Oh! Bad Move." It was such a Master-like moment and underlined how very dangerous the Master is.
    
12. Seemed a bit of a waste of Ashad though.
    
13. In general the whole Lone Cyberman thing in retrospect feels more like hype than anything genuinely dangerous. It wasn't clear the Cyberium actually made that much difference to Ashad's ability to lead the Cybermen. It also wasn't really clear to me how Jack was involved and why he chose to specifically warn the Doctor against giving the Lone Cyberman what it wanted - unless wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey wait for next season to resolve.
    
14. Also what was Ashad doing to the Cybermen when he was apparently torturing them? I assumed he was restoring emotion but apparently not.
    
15. I wanted the Ruth Doctor to be season 6B. Obviously this is not directly contradicted here but still.
    
16. Tame Layman very smug. "I always thought those faces were the Doctor's in The Brain of Morbius" he said. Which is a lie, he didn't even know about the faces until we watched it in the Randomiser and I explained both the production intention and fan theorising to him. Tame Layman being unnecessarily smug isn't the story's fault mind, though one does wonder at the wisdom of hanging your central plot point off a fan argument from the 1980s.
    
17. I see all the descriptions of what the Doctor was doing in The Timeless Children but it still feels like she spent most of the episode being exposited to.
    
18. Actually, while the Fam was once again rather side-lined. I thought their sub-plot worked pretty well. I particularly liked the moment when they all dressed up as Cyberman and rescued the human whose name I have forgotten.
    
19. Shows should be very wary of painting their protagonists into a corner where "you must kill the few to save the many" - it doesn't really add complexity to your character so much as give them some rather predictable angst. Doctor Who, in my opinion, should be doubly careful of this since its is built into the character of the Doctor that they generally find a terribly clever option 3. Doing this twice in three episodes is not, in my opinion, a good look.
    
20. So the whole Brendan thing was the Doctor having weird flashbacks as the events of Ascension of the Cybermen unfolded. Did I understand that correctly? Because that wasn't at all how it seemed during the actual episode.
    
21. Though, you know, I quite like the way it ties into the Doctor's repeated desire to be ginger.
    
22. What is the point of setting up The Division as something significant if you've just wiped out Gallifrey (again)? Corollary: Gallifrey would probably be more interesting as war-torn with survivors and secret societies hiding in the ruins than scoured of all organic life. Though Gallifrey would probably be even better just quietly forgotten about for a few years.
    
23. Err... so where did all the humans who crossed the Boundary go? Is this also going to be explained later?
    

*The looms were an invention of the Virgin New Adventures. Time Lords are not born but loomed on, umm, looms. At one point a mysterious founding Time Lord called The Other who may (or may not) have been half human on his mother's side threw himself into the looms. At some point later he may (or may not) have been re-loomed as The Doctor.

I have a feeling that this is a story I will re-evaluate and feel rather different about once both the new ideas have settled and the unanswered questions have been either answered or allowed to lie a bit. But it's rare for me to both quite strongly dislike a Doctor Who story while feeling that quality-wise it's not that bad, even if I struggle to feel it is actually all that good.

This entry was originally posted at https://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/666352.html.