462 – Doctor Who – Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children
March 3, 20201h 27m
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Show Notes
The regular 2020 Doctor Who series comes to an end. Simon and Eugene look at Ascension of the Timeless Cyberchildren.
This episode has been released early.
Episode synopsis:
Following the coordinates obtained from Percy Shelley, the Doctor and the gang arrive on a planet in the far future where there are 7 remaining humans. She has them set up defenses against the Cybermen, that fail. The Cybermen are lead by the Lone Cyberman, who is a nut case who wanted to be a Cyberman, but got rejected as inferior. Isn’t that how Hitler got his start?
The team is split, with Graham, Yaz and some humans escaping in a rickety old space ship, while the Doctor, Ryan and some human steal a cybership.
They all make their way to a planet which is home to the legendary boundary. A mysterious gateway for escape to some random part of the universe. Along the way, Graham’s team capture a cybercarrier, complete with a LOT of dormant Cybermen.
The Doctor, in the faster cybership, gets there first and inspects the boundary, which shows Gallifrey behind it and belches forth the Master.
Oh, and there was some stuff with a guy who was a policeman, but he died, but actually he didn’t, somewhere.
End of part one.
Part Two.
The Master forces the Doctor to go to Gallifrey. He imprisons her in the Matrix while at the same time, inviting the Cybermen to come through and visit.
Incidentally, Graham’s team escape from the Cybermen.
The Master shows the Doctor a story about the origin of the Time Lords. One of their early explorers discovered an immortal child and adopted it, returning to Gallifrey. The child was immortal because it could regenerate. The power of regeneration was copied from the child and the Time Lords were created, limited as there were to only 12 regenerations – unlike the the child.
The Child was the Doctor, who apparently is erased, forced back to childhood, and starts all over again once in a while. The purpose: To save the universe while allowing Gallifrey to maintain a policy of nonintervention.
The Master is mad because the Doctor really is special and he owes his existence her.
So, being nuts, he’s saved all the Time Lord bodies and he’s converting them to a new race of immortal Cyber-timelords.
Oh, and somewhere along the way, he dispensed of the Lone Cyberman with no difficulty whatsoever.
Most of the Matrix has been redacted, so the Doctor’s story is still a mystery we’ll probably have to suffer with as long as Chibnall is calling all the shots, before it’s forgotten like a bad shower sequence on Dallas.
The Doctor escapes by blowing up the Matrix. That would be the Matrix that contains all the memories of all Time Lords, past and present, thought all time. The Doctor blows up that Matrix by… and I’m not making this up… remembering everything she’s done… in an ordinary TimeLord lifespan.
Anyway, having killed the Lone Cyberman, the Master took the Cyberium into himself, and confronted with the possibility of an immortal cyberrace with the ability to regenerate, the Doctor has the humans blow up the cybership, killing all the Cybermen.
The Doctor sends her friends home in a TARDIS and then goes to detonate a bomb which contains the Death Particle, a spurious non sequitur devised by the Cyberium to destroy all organic life in the universe. Detonating this bomb will destroy the Master, the cyber-timelords, the spare bodies in the refrigerator and all organic material on Gallifrey.
Of course she can’t do it, so one of the human characters, who turns out at the last possible moment to be one of the idiots who thought sending the Cyberium BACK in time was good idea, blows up the bomb instead and the Doctor escapes in another TARDIS. Retrieving her own TARDIS and then being captured and imprisoned forever by the Judoon in a prison that wouldn’t keep River Song secure on a Friday night.
The end
Oh, and no spoilers here, but both the cliffhanger and our Christmas/New Year season has been ruined already by the title of the next episode.