Spoilers, as we get a clearer idea of Russell T Davies’ approach to two story threads from the Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who, in particular the Flux.
There’d been a fair bit of speculation over the past few months that the new era of Doctor Who was going to have precious little to do with the one that immediately preceded it. Outside of David Tennant’s 14th Doctor acknowledging the 13th, the opening episode of the new Who – The Star Beast – quickly got on with doing its own thing.
It’s little secret that Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who was pretty divisive. As much as Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor rightly earned a legion of fans, the stories she was part of didn’t always feel fully fuelled.
But there were some strong moments in there, and Chibnall was also keener to explore Time Lord lore than some before him.
In particular, he spent time on The Timeless Child, an arc that threatened to effectively rewrite the foundations of Doctor Who. There’s a lot of detail to the idea of The Timeless Child and the secrets of Time Lord regeneration, and I’m going to cede that to the TARDIS wiki page here.
Short version: it significantly changes the origins of the Doctor, and throws into question the Time Lords themselves. Here’s the key clip.
Arguably Chris Chibnall’s most successful series of Doctor Who was the Flux storyline, which I enjoyed personally for large parts. It also resulted in half the universe being wiped out, and again, there was speculation that Russell T Davies would pretty much ignore that in his new era of Doctor Who.
However, he’d promised in press leading up to the debut of the new Doctor Who series that he wouldn’t be turning a blind eye to what’d happened over the last few years. Specifically, he told SFX magazine that he had no intention of unwriting any of the work done by “my good friend” Chris Chibnall.
With the second of his returning episodes, Wild Blue Yonder, he’s basically confirmed – as promised – that what Chibnall added to the world of Doctor Who is now canon.
Firstly, that the Doctor directly addresses that the Flux destroyed half the universe, and says that “we stand here now on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated”.
Of the Flux, Tennant’s (latest) Doctor says, “it destroyed half the universe because of me”.
Then there’s the moment when Donna questions the Doctor, saying “you don’t know where you’re from”, playing into the aforementioned mystery of The Timeless Child.
Read more: Doctor Who | Wild Blue Yonder review (spoilers)
None of which means that Russell T Davies is going to spend lots of screentime examining these threads, to be clear. He may, he may not. But by directly acknowledging them early in his latest run, he’s quickly established that his continuation of Doctor Who is building on the era before, and not avoiding it.
That’s not going to be to the liking of every fan, but in the world of Doctor Who, why would we expect anything different?
