Doctor Who Revolution Of The Daleks: 10 Huge Talking Points After The New Year Special

10. Why Was The Doctor In Prison For So Long?

For Yaz, Ryan, and Graham, the Doctor’s 10 month absence seemed like a long time, but the Doctor's imprisonment in fact lasted several decades. It’s nothing compared to the four and a half billion years the Twelfth Doctor spent trapped inside his Confession Dial (Heaven Sent), but it is odd to see the Doctor looking so resigned to her fate and not actively working to break herself out. She does tell the Pting that she had tried eating the walls, but even if she is being serious, it doesn’t seem to have been part of an escape plan. She just doesn’t like the food.

The Doctor is still shaken from discovering that she wasn’t born on Gallifrey, but she is not in a state of complete withdrawal, unlike the Eleventh Doctor following the departure of Amy and Rory. She tells herself to stay strong because people are waiting for her. She is willing to serve the entire sentence, knowing she can then return to the very point in time she left Graham, Ryan, and Yaz.

The idea that the Doctor needs the help of a man (albeit the pansexual Captain Jack) to get her out of the prison is surely not what Chibnall intended to convey. We have to assume, therefore, that either the Doctor knew she needed thinking time, and lots of it, or felt she deserved to be alone. She tells Ryan she is still angry about the deception of the Time Lords, suggesting that Jack broke her out too soon.