Doctor Who Series 12: Ten Huge Questions After Ascension Of The Cybermen
3. Where Are The Alliance?
Cast your mind back to Captain Jack’s surprise appearance in Fugitive of the Judoon. He warned the Doctor’s companions about the Lone Cyberman, but also told them that in order to stop the Cybermen from rebuilding, the Alliance had sent something back it time. That something we assumed was the Cyberium. But where are the Alliance and when did they do this?
Ascension of the Cybermen doesn’t reference an alliance, we start instead with just seven remaining humans and even those numbers are going down. Is the Alliance on the other side of the portal? It seems unlikely, but they might have formed before the portal had led to a decimated and deserted Gallifrey.
The only reminder of Captain Jack, who may or may not have been part of the Alliance, is when Brendan miraculously starts breathing again at the bottom of the cliff. It’s the same gasps of deep breath that Jack took every time he came back from the dead. The most likely explanation is that Brendan, like Jack, is a temporal paradox. What if we are wrong about the Cyberium? What if Brendan is the thing that the Alliance hid back in time?
Jack’s ability to be resurrected came from Rose’s connection to the time vortex via the TARDIS. Could the TARDIS, otherwise curiously inaccessible, be closer than we think? The Alliance too, might also be hidden in plain sight. An alliance of the Doctor’s former selves, or of the Timeless Children?