10 Huge Doctor Who Moments That Didn't Matter At All

3. The Timeless Child

After all that fuss... this really wasn't a big deal, was it?

It’s the controversial lore change everyone is still talking about. But years on, did the Timeless Child actually change all that much? It really didn't.

Having learned that she was adopted, and the progenitor for the Time Lords, the Thirteenth Doctor is fundamentally still the same person. So it’s more about the storytelling possibilities on offer – some of which were delivered on in Flux, but for the most part pretty much nothing was done with the Timeless Child after the reveal itself.

In Space Babies the Doctor was back to his old "Last of the Time Lords" spiel, with a handful of throwaway mentions that he was adopted. And most of the stuff that was introduced along with the Timeless Child story – Tecteun, Division, the Fugitive Doctor – were under-developed and gone in a flash.

Most puzzlingly of all, the whole thing with Tecteun’s fob watch turns out to be a bait-and-switch, with the Timeless Child not mentioned at all after The Vanquishers and completely absent from The Power of the Doctor.

Maybe Chris Chibnall didn’t want to double down too much for fear of incurring fandom’s wrath any more than he had, but either way, the net result is that the whole things now feels a bit pointless.