Doctor Who How Susans Return Can Fix The Timeless Child Story

Doctor Who: How Susan’s Return Can Fix The Timeless Child Story

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After Doctor Who: Flux, the controversial Timeless Child is impossible to retcon. Can Susan, The Doctor’s granddaughter, provide a solution?

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Doctor Who How Susans Return Can Fix The Timeless Child Story

Doctor Who faces a dire challenge marrying together existing canon with the Timeless Child – could the return of Susan Foreman, The Doctor’s granddaughter, bridge the gap? Even before the Timeless Child peered cheerlessly into view, audiences were split over Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who. Though Jodie Whittaker proved inspired casting upon the backdrop of vastly improved cinematic visuals, the showrunner’s storytelling philosophy and sparse deployment of familiar villains cleaved division. Still, those misgivings were absolutely dwarfed by the negative reaction when Doctor Who’s season 12 finale dropped its Timeless Child revelation.

Via a dramatic monologue courtesy of Sacha Dhawan’s Master, The Doctor was revealed as a visitor to our universe, (probably) hailing from some unknown planet in an alternate universe. Her biology was spliced to begin Gallifrey’s race of regenerating Time Lords, but those memories were stolen from The Doctor’s mind by Division. Needless to say, not everyone was delighted about this wholesale rewrite of Doctor Who lore. The Timeless Child doesn’t merely alter The Doctor’s past, but retroactively shifts Doctor Who’s long-standing protagonist from a renegade runaway to an inherently special “chosen one” predestined for greatness.

Doctor Who theorists have conjured up various ways the Timeless Child might be handled, many of which involve pretending the whole thing never happened. Instead, Doctor Who season 14 might find the perfect Timeless Child solution back where everything began – with The Doctor’s first companion and very own granddaughter, Susan.

Doctor Who Needs A Solution To The Timeless Child (Not A Retcon)

Doctor Who How Susans Return Can Fix The Timeless Child Story

Despite what transpired in the final episode of Doctor Who season 12, aborting the Timeless Child storyline was possible. The entire ordeal might’ve been an elaborate scheme cooked up by The Master, or maybe Gallifrey’s Matrix framed The Doctor to cover up how the Time Lords were really created. Unfortunately, Doctor Who: Flux makes getting rid of the Timeless Child more trouble than it’s worth. During her efforts to save the universe from Swarm and Azure (and stop the Flux, and beat the Sontarans…), Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor reunites with Tecteun for the first time since Doctor Who lore began. Vividly brought to life by Barbara Flynn, Tecteun essentially corroborates everything The Master said in season 12’s finale, confirming The Doctor as a refugee from another world, and the progenitor of all Time Lords.

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Doctor Who: Flux reaffirms that the Timeless Child is happening, like it or not, but stops short of developing the storyline in any meaningful way. The Doctor’s origins are just as mysterious in the season’s closing credits as during the premiere’s opening “dum du-dum.” In fact, Whittaker’s character throws even more possibilities into the pot, suggesting she might’ve been waiting to enter the rift, rather than falling out of it.

Chris Chibnall only has a handful of episodes to answer the box of Timeless Child mysteries (it’s bigger on the inside), and with no reset button in sight, Doctor Who must somehow align existing lore with Chibnall’s canon. That job may be reserved for Russell T. Davies, and it’s an unenviable position for any showrunner to be in, but perhaps the key to smoothing Timeless Child material into Doctor Who’s older history isn’t a new face behind the camera, but a familiar one in front of it.

Susan’s Return Can Fix Doctor Who’s Timeless Child Problem

Doctor Who How Susans Return Can Fix The Timeless Child Story

From the moment Sacha Dhawan began spilling the beans, the Timeless Child risked making Doctor Who’s classic lore obsolete. The concept of The Doctor as a Division escapee whose biology created the Time Lords treads upon the toes of The Doctor running away from home because he sought adventure as opposed to non-interference. To remedy that, Doctor Who must address a blank period in the protagonist’s history – the First Doctor’s time between leaving Division and leaving Gallifrey. And the best chance of finding out what happened during those years rests with Susan.

Played by Carole Ann Ford, Susan Foreman debuted in Doctor Who’s very first episode as the Time Lord’s granddaughter – his earliest companion, and the only direct relative of The Doctor’s to appear onscreen. Susan would’ve been around for at least some of the gap between The Doctor acrimoniously quitting Division and the grandparent-granddaughter duo absconding from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS. Maybe she had some sneaking suspicion that her grandfather’s regeneration wasn’t the first – picking up on residual subconscious memories only a close family remember (and fellow Time Lord) would notice.

Doctor Who season 12 even hints that Susan might know more about the Timeless Child than even Tecteun. When Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor debuted, she referred to her blue box as “the TARDIS,” which is curious, as not only did Susan herself invent the acronym, but the vessel only became stuck in its police box form after the First Doctor left Gallifrey. Jo Martin’s Doctor knowing what Susan called her ship could prove The Doctor’s granddaughter possesses deeper knowledge about the Timeless Child and Division.

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Susan revealing how she always had an inkling about The Doctor’s hidden past would finally connect the dots between classic canon and Chibnall canon, bridging the gap between what fans knew of The Doctor over the past 60 years, and the bits only coming to light now. Susan may be the only character who can speak to both the Timeless Child and the First Doctor, and as a legendary Doctor Who character, her return would add the emotive impact the Timeless Child has thus far lacked.

How Susan Can Return In Doctor Who

Susan could be a great help getting Doctor Who’s Timeless Child to work – but how does she actually come back? Carole Ann Ford remained active within Doctor Who audio stories as recently as 2013, and might be tempted to make an short onscreen comeback in season 14. If the opportunity for a cameo doesn’t appeal to the Doctor Who acting legend, that’s what regeneration’s for.

Although Gallifrey has been destroyed (twice since Susan’s last chronological appearance), the First Doctor left her on 22nd century Earth, where she sparked up a romance with an anti-Dalek resistance fighter known as David Campbell. As such, it’s highly unlikely Susan was on Gallifrey during the Time War, or for The Master’s post-Timeless Child outburst. As far as Doctor Who canon is concerned, Susan Foreman/Campbell’s whereabouts are unknown, and even if The Doctor has previously suggested his entire family are dead, there’s no concrete Doctor Who stories to confirm his assumption.

The Doctor has previously admitted to avoiding past companions, finding the sense of loss too great to bear. Knowing about her secret past, however, The Doctor has been poring over ex-companions, faded memories, and long-buried truths since the Timeless Child came to light. Digging up that ancient history might bring Susan out of the woodwork, reuniting granddaughter and grandparent one final time on TV. What better way to start a new chapter than bringing back one of the original TARDIS crew? And what better way to connect the Timeless Child to Doctor Who’s roots?

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-season-14-susan-timeless-child-fix/

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