'The Timeless Children' (Story Code 12.10) by Chris Chibnall

“I told you before that everything you knew is a lie. Well now you get to face the truth. With me at your side.” - the Master

The Doctor accompanies the Master through the Boundary portal to Gallifrey, leaving Ryan and Ethan behind with Ko Sharmus as the Cyber-Carrier arrives overhead. Aboard the vessel, Bescot gives her life holding off the advancing Cybermen so that Graham, Yaz, Ravio and Yedlarmi can escape through a ventilation shaft. To prevent their enemies tracking them via the ship’s surveillance systems, Graham proposes a dangerous plan to disguise themselves using armour taken from dormant Cybermen. After materialising on Gallifrey, the Master leads the Doctor into the ruins of the Capitol. As they arrive in the Chamber of the Matrix the Master receives an alert that the Cybermen have arrived; he contacts Ashad and invites him to Gallifrey, provided he kills the Doctor’s friends. Ashad orders three execution squads to transmat down to the planet, then sets course for the Boundary... While Graham and Yaz prepare for battle, Ravio and Yedlarmi dismantle Cybermen for their armour; their activity sets off an alarm, prompting Ashad to investigate… In the Chamber of the Matrix, the Master explains how he hacked the database of all Time Lord memories and discovered the truth; trapping the Doctor in a paralysis field, the renegade sends her mind into the virtual reality of the Matrix so that he can share his findings… Ashad enters the Cyber-troop chamber and checks the occupants of several containers; inside their disguises, Yaz, Graham, Ravio and Yedlarmi hold their breath… and luckily for them Ashad returns to the control deck when the ship approaches the Boundary. Inside the Matrix, the Master recounts the history of Gallifrey before the Time Lords: a time when a native Shobogan named Tecteun developed space travel, and flew away to explore the universe. Tecteun discovered a distant, deserted planet with a gateway to an unknown dimension; standing by the gateway was a mysterious, abandoned child, seemingly from beyond the portal, whom Tecteun decided to adopt her as her own. After exploring the universe together, they eventually returned to Gallifrey; all seemed fine until the child had an accident while playing with a friend, falling off a cliff to her apparent death. But as Tecteun went to her, the child changed into someone different - it was the first regeneration on Gallifrey… The Cyber-Carrier lands on the ruins of the Capitol. On the Boundary planet, the Cybermen approach the human settlement, only to be cut down by automatic weapons; the warriors destroy the guns, only to be blown apart by a bomb deftly thrown by Ryan. But Ryan’s pleasure is short-lived, as more Cybermen appear and open fire… Ashad joins the Master in the Matrix Chamber, and is offered Gallifrey as a gift. The Cyberman reveals that he holds a ‘death particle’ in his chest unit, which can destroy all life in the universe; he also explains that he has purged his troops of all organic matter - they are now fully-mechanical. But the Master has a better plan than just becoming another race of robots, and after sending a part of his mind into the Matrix, he departs with Ashad to review the sleeping Cyber-army on the carrier… In the Matrix, the Master’s mind continues the story of Tecteun, who became so obsessed with learning her adopted daughter’s secret of regeneration, that she used up many of the girl’s lives. Finally finding the answer, Tecteun tested it on herself and transformed into a man. Over the years Gallifrey evolved: the Shobogans built a gleaming city, discovered the secret of time travel, and shared Tectuen’s genetic inheritance, limiting its usage to the city-dwellers, and for just twelve times. They also changed their race’s name, grandly calling themselves ‘Time Lords’. The Doctor demands to know the fate of the child, so the Master tells her: she is the Timeless Child… The Cybermen track Ryan, Ethan and Ko Sharmus through the settlement, and eventually capture Ethan; but before they can kill him, the Cybermen are gunned down by other Cybermen - namely Ravio, Yedlarmi, Graham and Yaz in disguise! Learning that Ashad hosts the Cyberium, the Master shrinks him to death with his tissue compression eliminator; this forces out the Cyberium, which bonds with the Master… Inside the Matrix, the Doctor struggles to process the truth she has learned about herself and her people; demanding to know more, she watches as the Timeless Child grows up and is taken in by a shadowy organisation known as ‘The Division’. As the Doctor watches the images break up into the tale of Brendan in Ireland, before they are completely greyed out by redaction. The Master explains that the Time Lords tried to cover-up their history, but Tectuen left a memory disguised as Ireland as a message to her child - a message the Master transmitted to the Doctor earlier. The Doctor enters Brendan’s memory and watches him have his mind wiped in the police station; examining Brendan’s retirement clock, the Doctor sees the engraving ‘For Services To The Division’… Waking up in the Matrix Chamber, the Doctor watches as the Master is joined by a squad of Cybermen, all wearing Time Lord traditional robes; the Master has used the Time Lords’ corpses as the basis for a new race of invincible soldiers: Cybermen that can regenerate! Delighting in how his troops are born from the Doctor, the Master departs with his army… Meanwhile, Graham, Yaz, Ryan, Ko Sharmus, Ravio, Yedlarmi and Ethan step into the Boundary and emerge on Gallifrey; together they set off to find the Doctor. In the Matrix, the Doctor comes face-to-face with a vision of the Fugitive Doctor – could she be an early incarnation of hers? The Doctor wonders how many more of her there are, but the Fugitive Doctor cuts through her self-doubt with a pep talk, encouraging her to escape the Matrix. After the Fugitive Doctor vanishes, the Doctor channels all her memories into the Matrix, overloading the system and the paralysis field; she wakes to find herself back in the Matrix Chamber, surrounded by the refugees and her fam. The Doctor briefs her friends on the Master’s new army, and in return they explain their plan to seed the Cyber-ship with bombs. When the Doctor recalls Ashad’s claim to be the death of everything, Ravio and Yedlarmi recount a legend about a death particle within him. Instructing Ko Sharmus, Ravio, Yedlarmi and Ethan to meet up after they set the bombs, the Doctor mind-links to find the Master’s location, then races off with her fam; but all they find is Ashad’s shrunken body, a gift from the Master. Mentally communicating with her old enemy, the Doctor goads him into meeting at the Matrix Chamber. The refugees set the bombs aboard the Cyber-Carrier, but one of Ko Sharmus’ devices malfunctions, prematurely activating the timers on all of the weapons. As the Cybermen open fire on the intruders, the Doctor, her fam and the refugees run for their lives, just managing to return to the Capitol as the bombs explode. With the Cybership falling apart, the Doctor ushers everyone inside a berthed TARDIS and sets its controls for Twenty-First Century Earth. Taking Ko Sharmus’ last, timerless bomb, the Doctor bids her fam goodbye and then leaves to destroy the Master and his army with the death particle. Arriving in the Matrix Chamber, the Doctor finds the Master and a squad of Cyber-Time Lords. When the villain boasts of being the new Cyberium host, the Doctor is undaunted: instead of being defeated by the truth of the Time Lords’ lies, she now has the gift of knowledge, of being more than she ever thought she was. Brandishing the bomb with Ashad attached to it, the Doctor vows to destroy the Master and his army, as well as all organic life on Gallifrey - but when goaded by the Master, she is unable to press the button. The Master is delighted - until Ko Sharmus appears and grabs the bomb for himself; revealing that he was part of the resistance group who sent the Cyberium back in time, the soldier orders the Doctor to run to safety. As the Doctor races to the TARDIS berths and escapes in another time-space ship, the Master orders his Cyber-Time Lords to open fire on Ko Sharmus; as the general falls to the ground, he activates the bomb, destroying the Capital and all life on Gallifrey in the ensuing explosion – but did the Master escape? A TARDIS lands on Earth and disguises itself as a detached suburban house; Ravio, Yedlarmi and Ethan are elated to have survived their ordeal, but Graham, Yaz and Ryan wonder what has happened to the Doctor… Elsewhere, the Doctor’s borrowed TARDIS lands at Lake Geneva and disguises itself as a tree; the Doctor swaps over to her own TARDIS, which stands nearby. Inside the control room, the Doctor takes a moment to recover before she retrieves her fam – but then a Judoon captain and two Cold Case Squad troopers teleport into the TARDIS, arrest the Doctor and transmat her to a maximum-security facility in space, sentenced to imprisonment for all eternity…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Sacha Dhawan (The Master), Patrick O'Kane (Ashad), Ian McElhinney (Ko Sharmus), Julie Graham (Ravio), Alex Austin (Yedlarmi), Matt Carver (Ethan), Rhiannon Clements (Bescot), Seylan Baxter (Tecteun), Kirsty Besterman (Solpado), Paul Kasey (Judoon Captain Pol-Kon-Don), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of Cybermen & Judoon Captain), Matthew Rohman (Cyberman), Simon Carew (Cyberman), Jon Davey (Cyberman), Richard Highgate (Cyberman), Richard Price (Cyberman), Mickey Lewis (Cyberman), Matthew Doman (Cyberman), Paul Bailey (Cyberman), Jo Martin (The Doctor)

Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone
Produced by Nikki Wilson
Executive Producers Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
1st March 2020 @ 6.50 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz

*This episode is sixty-five minutes long

*Part three of a three-part story

*The Thirteenth Doctor's mind-blast at the Matrix features images of Doctors Twelve back through to the First (including the War Doctor), eight of her 'previous life' incarnations from 'The Brain of Morbius', seven incarnations of the Timeless Child of various gender (four girls, three boys) and ethnicity, and the Fugitive Doctor - making thirty known incarnations of the person called the Doctor. We have also seen the severed-hand-Meta-Crisis Doctor, and there are potentially even more incarnations to be revealed from the Doctor's time working for The Division...

*In the clips that accompany the Doctor’s overload of the Matrix, the identities of the eight long-debated Time-Lord images seen in 'The Brain of Morbius' are finally confirmed as early incarnations of the Doctor

*Early cast lists excluded Jo Martin, and listed Barack Stemis as Fakout - short for 'fakeout', while 'Barack Stemis' is an anagram of 'Master is back'