Doctor Who: Every episode of season 12, ranked from worst to best
By Lacy Baugher
The Timeless Children
The season 12 finale manages to do something unprecedented – rewrite our understanding of both the Doctor as a character – and Doctor Who as a franchise – while somehow not actually changing that much at all. “The Timeless Children” has a lot of ground to cover and, as a result, is messy and overstuffed, attempting to explain the existence of the Ruth Doctor, fill us in on the destruction of Gallifrey and give us a new origin story for the Doctor all in the space of roughly an hour.
That this episode doesn’t make a lick of sense really shouldn’t surprise anyone. But it also…doesn’t actually change that much, either. Beyond giving the Doctor an essentially endless set of regenerations in either direction and claiming there are a bunch of additional versions of the character we’ve never met, it’s hard to imagine how it will really impact the series going forward. And if it doesn’t really change anything, then what was the point? (Other than the weird plot holes, I guess.)