Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Talking Points After The Timeless Children
9. Are The Time Lords Gone For Good?
With all organic life supposedly wiped out by the death particle, Gallifrey truly is no more. Or is it? It wouldn’t be the first time a producer has written out the Time Lords and their home planet. Russell T Davies both simplified and added mystery to the series’ mythology by making the Doctor the last of his kind. The Time War was initially a convenient in-universe explanation for the absence of the Doctor’s race. The Doctor was presented as a uniquely gifted saviour figure – the lonely god. They returned, more bombastic than ever for David Tennant’s swansong, but they weren’t allowed to stay unless the next showrunner could decide what to do with them.
Steven Moffat brought the Time Lords back again for the fiftieth anniversary special only to swiftly consign them to the Bubble Universe, but in so doing he turned the ethos of the original series on its head by giving the Doctor a new mission – to return home the long way around. Predictably, when the Doctor finally sets foot on Gallifreyan soil again, it goes badly.
But Chris Chibnall seems to have gone a step further than his predecessor. He could have just left the Time Lords forgotten and irrelevant at the end of the universe, but instead he brings them back, dead already, and then kills them all over again.
The series no longer needs the Time Lords, not now there is a whole new backstory to explore. The Doctor could completely disown her adoptive race and go in search of her true origins, but it’s unlikely. There are other forgotten lives of the Doctor on Gallifrey, tales to be told of the Division. The Time Lords, specifically Gat and those from her time, will surely be back.