I agree, a little bit of exposition is OK in a complex story with limited time... but relying heavily on it shows poor showrunning creativity. People watch TV and films to watch TV and films... not to listen to an audiobook.

i just can't warm to show at all these days, i find it very juvenile, largely induced by the dialog

Yeah, that's the big downfall this era, everything seems to be spoonfed to us, and over explained

I think the dialogue got very involved (sci-fi wise) in the Smith era and into the Capaldi era - which I imagine adult fans enjoyed, but it'll have caused a lot of younger fans to tune out with no idea what was going on. They've tried to address it but ended up going too far in the other direction, into "Sarah Jane Adventures" territory which is boring for adults and frankly, a bit patronising for young fans too :facepalm:.

It's a mess. Character development amounting to Ryan missing a basketball hoop in episode 1 but managing to kill a bunch of Cybermen in episode 10 with a bomb shaped like a basketball is so laughable. :joker:

Also, did the Doctor need to be "gifted" the additional regeneration ability beyond 12?

If the Doctor is the Timeless child then she was the only being already with the innate ability to regenerate. The 12 times thing was a law the Timelords created for the people of Gallifrey?

To The Doctor and Timelord's knowledge, it was their final regeneration, despite that they probably could have regenerated anyway

Yeah that's the way I took it, the limit was imposed.

In Five Doctors, we learn that Rassilon could regenerate endlessly, and that the then-President was trying to get this power too.
The Master was in a stolen human body at the time, and they said they could give him a regeneration cycle.


I think Master being the Timeless Child makes more sense, s/he's the one who inexplicable cheated death so many times :joker:

Yeah, and it would explain the Master being so self destructive and against Gallifrey as deep inside would've always known anyway.

But I suppose that could describe the Doctor too. Never abided by the Timelord rules.

This would make sense. Rassilon says in the End of Time about having ‘a billion years of time lord history riding on their backs’ or something so I would presume they had no idea about the Timeless Child. The Master found it hidden in the Matrix when he was hacking it.

I do wonder if Rassilon was the 'mother' of the child?

Oh I forgot about the Timelord's themselves not knowing about the timeless child either since it dates back so far.

But then they redacted more information from the matrix, so is that completely deleted or can we expect more information to come to light?

It would have been The Division that redacted it though surely? So the Timelords would still be clueless.

Are the Division like the MI5 of Gallifrey?

So big an info dump on Sunday I couldn't process all of it.

I'd have rather a "Doctor-lite" episode where the majority told the story of the Timeless child.

Pretty much yeah. The woman said they don’t exist or something. So yeah, the Timelords wouldn’t know unless they ventured into the Matrix like the Master, which they wouldn’t do because they feared it.

Also does this make the Master the Hybrid? Two warrior races being the Timelords and The Cybermen. The hybrid was destined to stand in the ruins of Gallifrey and break a billion hearts to heal his own.

I can't even remember how the Hybrid arc ended originally. :joker:

I never even considered this, it works pretty well.

It makes more sense than what Moffat give us lmao