10 Doctor Who Plot Holes You Didn't Realise Were Actually Solved
3. How Can River Regenerate After The Timeless Children?
The Timeless Child had a monumental influence on the Doctor Who universe, with its revelations about the true source of the Time Lords’ regenerative abilities creating endless questions, conflicts, and confusion.
As if Doctor Who needed more complications to its lore.
One of the most glaring questions it throws up is that of River Song, who grew up to have Time Lord regeneration powers despite being the child of Amy and Rory, two humans.
In Series 6 it’s implied that she gains these powers as a result of being conceived while the TARDIS is mid-flight in the time vortex, but The Timeless Child reveals that the Time Lords’ abilities are not a natural phenomenon, but something genetically engineered into them. So how did River gain her powers in the first place?
The answer is laid out in the very same episode that first revealed River’s true identity, A Good Man Goes to War. While everybody remembers the point about River being conceived in the TARDIS, this is actually only one piece of the puzzle. As Vastra says to the Doctor, that was merely "a head start", and the Silence then had to work very hard to morph River's DNA further to get the result they wanted.
In other words, no, being conceived in the time vortex still isn't enough to suddenly cook yourself a Time Lord – there's still more work to be done!
Considering this, if anything The Timeless Children actually makes River’s backstory make more sense, giving a potential explanation for how the Silence were able to genetically alter her. We literally see Tecteun conducting all sorts of genetic experiments with regeneration in The Timeless Children, so who's to say the Silence didn't do something similar with their own adopted child?