Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: doctor who, jodie whittaker

Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker Defends Controversial "Timeless Child" Arc

Jodie Whittaker discusses the controversial "The Timeless Child" arc during her run on Doctor Who that retconned the Doctor's origin story.

One of the most controversial changes to Doctor Who lore was when then-showrunner Chris Chibnall introduced the Timeless Child arc where the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) discovers her true origin – she was an adoptee that the Gallifreyans exploited for her regeneration energy to power what became Time Lord society and she had countless lifetimes and regenerations before her memories as The First Doctor, including a lost regeneration (Jo Martin) she never knew existed before. Fans who hated change were in a rage about it and still are, but it opened up the lore of the series and reintroduced a mystery to The Doctor. Russell T Davies didn't retcon it away when he took over as showrunner – he doubled down on it to confirm it's canon, haters be damned. In a wide-ranging interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Jodie Whittaker finally talked about it. Chris Chibnall had written it from the perspective of being an adopted child himself.

"It doesn't change how I approach it. But when we talked about it – because I knew that Chris had been adopted, and when we chatted about what that was going to mean [for the Doctor] – I remember saying, 'You've just unlocked such a treasure trove of possibilities. It can be explored. It has a million different directions it can go in. It can also inform me.  The beauty of it is, it doesn't necessarily have to weigh on every Doctor. This revelation happened to my Doctor, in my time. You can let it go. Not erase it – it's always a lived experience for the Doctor – but you don't have to play every massive revelation forever. It's there to be picked up, or not picked up. Like, I'm not playing certain things that happened to David's Doctor, but they're still in there somewhere, beneath the surface.

Doctor Who: Whittaker On Lore Changes & Long Arcs

"What's probably very scary as a Whovian writing for your beloved show – which Chris is, he's a Whov', he proper loves it – is disrupting the lore, potentially. But having the bravery to do that, and to open it up in such a personal way, and knowing that every writer who comes in will do the same – taking their thing that's personal to them and putting it in the show – that's why Doctor Who keeps going, why we still want to watch it. If you only tried to do what's been done before, the show would have died long ago.

"What made it work was that we weren't trying to cram it into four episodes. We were able to explore it over an entire season, and then into another season. I was really lucky, because my first season very much catered to anyone who hadn't seen the show before. You could jump in fresh, watch an episode – obviously go back later and catch up! – but you could follow it without needing all this knowledge. Then, in season two, Chris shifted gears: he transitions into these huge story arcs. By the third, the Flux runs throughout the whole thing. If you missed an ep, you might've missed something massive!

"I loved having the space to explore those arcs properly, giving them the depth and revelations they deserved. It helped with the group dynamics, too – explaining why the fam wanted to stay or leave, like Graham and Ryan. And why Mandip – I mean Yaz! – never quite feels the Doctor is being completely honest with her, and she's always pushing to understand that. That keeps their relationship interesting. Because it's not tidy. And it's not controlled by either one of them."

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