#Timeless child

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

Ephemer Week 2024 🧣

Thank you to everyone who helped choose the date! This event will officially take place from December 19th to 25th, but feel free to post entries even after the week has passed. You also do not have to participate in the entire week. Basically, just do what you can/want and have fun!!

If you have any questions, please reply to this post or send me an ask here. I’m looking forward to seeing what you all make! 😊💜

PROMPTS

Feel free to use about any of the following prompts, or not! Whatever floats your lifeboat.

Day 1: Light | Leadership | Favourite canon line/scene?

Day 2: Curiosity | Adventure | Something you wish had happened, or something you wish had been shown in canon, or an AU you like

Day 3: Heart | Home | Do you have any headcanons for him?

Day 4: Promise | Love | A relationship/dynamic you enjoy

Day 5: Dream | Nightmare | An alternate form or outfit you’d love to see

Day 6: Prophecy | Legacy | What do you think his future looks like?

Day 7: Hope | Resilience | Free day

More single word prompts:

Teamwork | Hobbies | Combat | Mystery | Nostalgia

Nervous | Mishaps | Miracles | Help | Family |

Grief | Rainbow | Freedom | Glory | Fame

Community | Merriment | Care | Stars | Final

RULES

Please tag your posts with #ephemerweek2024

(Yes, you can call him Ephemera but please stick to the tag!)

ALLOWED

Any form of creative media (you do not have to use the same one all throughout)

Personal written responses

Coming up with your own prompts / tweaking existing prompts

Shipping/Romantic content

OC content

Furry / Anthro / Creature-related content

BANNED

NSFW / Mature Content. Suggestive content and light gore/violence is allowed, but please tag responsibly.

Criticizing other people’s work. This is meant to be a lighthearted event celebrating Ephemer and fans’ creativity! Please be kind to each other.

AI / Generative art

Minor x adult ships

* (header image from here)

May your heart be your guiding key! 🫡

[jupiter049]

Ruby asked about his foster mom

[claraoswalds]

THE DOCTOR + regenerating

[who-datgirl]

Y’all ever since someone said “Whittaker!Master” on here I have NOT been able to get it out of my head. I honestly kind of need it. Jodie would serve c*nt on a damn silver platter as the next Master. It canonically is not even too far fetched that The Master would regenerate Jodie’s face after the events of the forced regeneration with 13.

“Are you really so shocked I would wind up looking like this darling? Don’t flatter yourself about it, I didn’t plan to wear this face. After the forced regeneration was canceled an imprint of this body was left within me, but I have no complaints. After all, LOOK at me. You didn’t wear this with an ounce of the elegance that I do. If anything, I am doing you a favor”.

Let her slay with her outfit and makeup and give us the post-Missy incarnation we all deserve. Jodie would EAT.

[humanstein]

I can't help but draw a connection between The Dot deciding the people of Finetime needed to die and The Master learning about the Timeless Child from the Matrix and deciding that the people of Gallifrey needed to die.

Domed cities full of the safe and entitled being executed systematically.

[pluralzalpha]

Random thought: what if Theta Sigma isn't just an Academy nickname, but a designation given by the Time Lords to denote which iteration of the Doctor they're dealing with?

The Doctor doesn't know that, they think it's just a silly Academy thing. They don't know that each time the Time Lords have wiped their memory they've been given a marker: Alpha Alpha, Alpha Beta, Alpha Gamma... all the way until Theta Sigma.

[mister-leonn]

Two new Doctor Who headcanons for you my dear little friends:

1 - The Doctor dragged Sutekh through the time vortex, giving death to Death, spreading life accross the universe. Well here's my deal, guess who didn't realize they fixed their mistakes with destroying half of the universe? The Doctor probably doesn't see it yet but he restored the universe altogether completely erasing Tecteun's plans. On the other hand, our dear Fifteenth surely doesn't know they probably revived all the daleks and cybermen who got destroyed in the flux... But maybe also... just maybe... all the Gallifreyans as well...

2 - By biggest thought, probably a whole explanation to the Timeless Child story, (but im sure all of you figured out) The Doctor isn't exactly from another universe, thing assured, not from the next, I think the Doctor is the reincarnation of the God of Life, a god who brings life but never got to experience it, which explains the regenerations, the infinite knowledge, the telepathy, the pure passion for every living thing and the beauty of the universe. All along the Doctor was the god of life, and like death, life knows no bound through time and space, that's why they all time travel, the infinite versions of the same cranky old face who loves every living beings, the Doctor spreads life as a default mode.

[tinkerbitch69]

So bigeneration is already a contentious thing and the timeless child was a contentious thing too and believe me I get it, the doctor just being some rebel time lord who got bored and ran away is my favourite version of the character too but like

this controversial new thing could actually fix the timeless child controversy.

The doctor thinks this is the first time they have bigenerated but remember they’ve been mind wiped who knows how many times by the time lords. They could have done this before without rememebering but their new bigenerated self would still hold the repressed memories of being the timeless child and so still technically BE the timeless child right?

So what if the fugitive doctor bigenerated into a child version of hartnells doctor and that new child clone was raised on a barn in gallifrey while the fugitive doctor aka the og timeless child continued to work for the division?

If this is true, the doctor we’ve been following for the past 60 years IS essentially just a regular time lord who grew up on gallifrey and ran away and the timeless child is still a thing and we’re not rewriting the chibnall era. Plus for fan’s of that particular interpretation of the doctor the new bigeneration means our favourite version of the doctor finally gets a happy ending AND the show goes on.

This is just my headcanon but like I’m pretty sure this would make EVERYONE happy. Thoughts?

[thetorturedlovergirl]

Aww look how cute they are <33

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

These were made for him ☺️💛

[astrid-goes-for-a-spin]

I have had a terrible, terrible idea

Timeless Child establishes that the Doctor is not from the/this universe and is the source of regeneration. Now we have a whole season about his identity as an adoptee and the villains are godlike creatures with titles instead of names from…outside of the universe…?

Praying I’m wrong but I’m so concerned now that the Doctor is gonna be revealed to be the same type of being as the Toymaker and Maestro and that’s why regeneration is so bullshit (it’s reality warping)

[73chn1c0l0rr3v3l]

So I've had an interesting revelation irt the Timeless Children and one of the critiques I see thrown at it a lot. And I think I've had a bit of a lightbulb moment about it.

One of the critiques I see about the episode Timeless Children is that the Doctor doesn't actually... do anything with it, she just has to witness and listen to being told about the tragedy that happened to her.

And I was thinking about how that reflects what happens to a lot of people who are learning about tragedies in their own pasts.

I couldn't do anything about the antisemitism my dad experienced, I couldn't do anything about the abuse my mother suffered. I can't change the abuse that I experienced before I can even remember it happening. Sometime the horror of finding out your history is that it's what it is - it's HISTORY, and you can't change it. You can't redo it, you can't fix it, you have to just deal with the repercussions of it.

So much of what I love about 13's era and the way Chibnall has done Doctor Who is the fact that it feels like it deals with the REALITY of stuff. No, you can't save the man who was going to die because that'll change history. No, you can't get rid of the horrible racists even though they're a blight, because that has to happen for history to happen. No, you can't go back in time and save yourself.

You have to live with it and you have to process it and you have to pick up the pieces, because sometimes you can't fix it, no matter how much you want it.

But you can keep going. You can find things that are terrifying that unseat your whole reality and sense of self, but you can still keep going. And I really love seeing that reflected with the Doctor.

[paulrobinsonshotel]

I've been thinking a lot about the iconic Murray Gold theme This is Gallifrey, Our Childhood, Our Home. It's often referred to as "The Gallifrey Theme" or "The Time Lord Theme".

I don't think it is either of those things. In most scenes the theme is used in, it signifies either one or both of two things:

The Doctor's longing for home.

The Doctor and the Master's childhood friendship and their mutual longing for it.

The first time we hear This is Gallifrey, it is in Utopia when the Doctor is praising Professor Yana's scientific prowess. Of course, neither the Doctor, the audience, or Yana himself know that this is really the Master, but this theme underscoring the scene between the two men shows the immediate bond between them, and I think sets the tone of the Doctor/Master relationship for the rest of Murray's (first) era, the understanding that they are supposed to be friends, and if these two ancient beings had a clean slate from centuries of fighting and resentment and Time Wars, they would bond straight away.

The next major use is an episode later, in The Sound of Drums, when the Doctor is reminiscing about Gallifrey. However, I don't think the music is being used as a theme for Gallifrey itself, but rather the Doctor's memories of his childhood home. And the music continues playing when we see the flashback of the Master staring into the Untempered Schism. I think the use of This is Gallifrey is less about the place itself, but the Doctor missing home, and the Doctor remembering his childhood friend, and the moment his friend was cursed with the insanity that would ruin their friendship.

The theme is used once again, when the Master chooses to die to spite the Doctor. The Doctor breaks down sobbing while a heartbreaking rendition of This is Gallifrey plays. Once again, it is very much used as the Doctor and the Master's friendship theme, a sad variation as the Doctor loses his oldest friend once again.

The next time we hear This is Gallifrey, it is being used when the Doctor refuses to accept Jenny as his daughter or a Time Lord. We know that he is rejecting her because of his grief and regret over the family he lost on Gallifrey, and the theme is used again later in the episode when the Doctor admits this to Donna. This is Gallifrey is used to signify the Doctor's family, and all the painful memories of them that he feels when he looks at Jenny.

And then we're on to the End of Time. Simm's Master is far less open and vulnerable than either Missy or Dhawan's Master, but we get a rare moment when he and the Doctor are together in the landfill site. The Master remembering how he and the Doctor used to run through the fields as children. And sure enough, a very soft variation of This is Gallifrey can be heard, showing that the Master still misses their friendship.

A more militaristic variation of This is Gallifrey can be heard at the beginning of Part Two of The End of Time. I'd say this is one of the few times it can realistically be called a Gallifrey theme. However, I'd argue that it's less about the Time Lords themselves, and more about the Doctor's childhood home having become a warzone.

The theme is absent for most of Matt Smith's era, not returning until The Name of the Doctor. Once again, there's a credible argument that it's being used for Gallifrey/The Time Lords. However, it's important to note that the theme is being used for the flashback of an echo of Clara influencing the First Doctor to choose his TARDIS, and then showing Clara echoes helping the Doctor throughout his incarnations. I think this might come back to the theme of family, that while the Doctor mourns his family, there has been someone who has been with him from the very beginning on Gallifrey, even if he hasn't really met her yet.

One of the reasons I don't think This is Gallifrey is a Time Lord theme is that it is absent from The Day of the Doctor, despite Gallifrey and the Time Lords featuring heavily in that episode. Because Day doesn't really touch on the Doctor's grief or his longing for home. While those things undoubtedly factor in, the main drama in the episode is the Doctor's guilt for being forced to kill billions of innocent people, particularly the children, and how that came to define his future incarnations. This is Gallifrey was never really about that. That's what the excellent The Doctor's Theme represents.

This is Gallifrey is used when the Time Lords send the dying Doctor a new cycle of regenerations. It's quite an interesting use, when you consider Clara's dialogue immediately before:

CLARA: if you love him, and you should, help him.

In my opinion this is very much a "coming home" moment, a resolution to 7 seasons of storytelling. Yes, the Doctor doesn't physically reach Gallifrey, but the Time Lords have accepted him and saved him. He hasn't gotten home "the long way round" yet, but he's no longer the "Last of the Time Lords". He has somewhere to belong, at last.

Obviously, this doesn't last, and when the Doctor returns to Gallifrey in Hell Bent, it's not on pleasant terms. For this reason, This is Gallifrey never appears in the episode, because the episode isn't about the Doctor returning to his childhood home or reuniting with his loved ones. It's an episode about a man being driven to extremes by the loss of his love.

Series 10 heavily explores the Doctor/Master relationship, and This is Gallifrey underscores many of the Doctor and Missy's scenes together during the latter half of Series 10, most notably during the "Your version of good is not absolute" and "Every star in the universe" scenes. It's also used throughout the scene on the rooftop, when both Missy and Simm!Master are tormenting the Doctor, only for him to gain the upper hand. I think in this scene it is meant to show the cyclical relationship between them, how the Master's schemes inevitably fall apart at the Doctor's hands, and how normalised this game between them has become, to the extent that the Doctor takes apart the Master and Missy's scheme within the first ten minutes of the episode.

And then we get to what is in my view the defining use of This is Gallifrey: Missy killing her past self. To me, this is the moment the show had been building towards since that conversation between Ten and Yana in Utopia. The moment Missy chooses to reject her violent past in favour of rebuilding her friendship with the Doctor. And the music perfectly carries that story.

Or so we thought...

The next time we see the Master, Murray Gold has left the show and Segun Akinola is composing. Now, I'm not one of the people who thinks Akinola should've reused Gold's themes. Gold got to build his soundscape from the ground up, so it's only right Akinola got to do the same rather than riding Murray's coattails. While I don't think this is intentional, I think the absence of This is Gallifrey reinforces what is being made clear on screen, that the Doctor and the Master's friendship is over. There is now too much hurt on both sides. SpyDoc is a very different kind of relationship to either TenSimm or Twissy, with the Master's bitterness over the Timeless Child, and the Doctor's bitterness over Missy's seeming betrayal, leaving nothing but resentment between the two of them. Akinola speaks about the complexities of his theme for Dhawan!Master here , and how it reinforces the tragic nature of his character, and the thwarted potential for change in him.

Personally, I hope the Master gets a good long rest, but since RTD seems to be continuing the Timeless Child storyline, if Dhawan does return, and the possibility of reconciliation and healing after the revelation is considered, then I hope Murray does bring back This is Gallifrey as their friendship theme, possibly playing it against Akinola's Spy Master theme.

[purplehalnw]

So, while the Chibnall Era was certainly not as bad as I saw some people saying it was, it was definitely not good. A big problem is that there is just a lot of missed potential. There are lots of elements that the writers didn't take advantage of or expand upon enough which ended up making the story and the characters pretty boring in my opinion. So, a lot of my rewrite ideas will be expansions of those underutilized elements.

Also, let me preface this by saying that I am in no way a professional writer, I am just a teenager with a dream. I've tried to organize my ideas as much as possible by presenting them character by character but it still may be a little messy.

Graham:

-His wife Grace should die helping/saving people after having spent at least half a season with the Doctor (not just one episode)

-The Doctor will feel guilty for having put Grace in danger and not being able to save her. Ryan will blame the Doctor and be angry while Yaz and Graham will be understanding and not blame the Doctor. Graham will reassure Ryan that all of them were aware of the risks that would come with travelling with the Doctor and that Grace died doing what she loved which was helping people.

-Graham's cancer will return and he will die from it. I think it would be interesting to see a companion die from something more normal when other ones have died in the most devastating ways possible. Graham's death can extend over multiple episodes which would show the characters' developing reactions to the fact that Graham is going to die.

-The Doctor will have a crisis in which she tries to make sure that Graham has lived a full life by taking him on as many adventures as possible due to the fact that other companions who died were so young and thus didn't get to experience as much. However, Graham will tell the Doctor that he is content with the mostly quiet life he has lived and that he has accepted the fact that he is going to die because at least he'll be going to the same place where Grace is.

-Also, I posted these ideas on TikTok as well and someone suggested another idea in the comments: The Doctor will obtain a cure for cancer from the future and offer it to Graham. But Graham will reject it for several reasons. One, Graham thinks that he has lived long enough, and he'd rather die this way rather than die suddenly and unexpectedly from something else. Two, the Doctor says she can't give the cure to anyone else before the time it's invented because of you know timeline shenanigans she can't interfere with. So Graham thinks, "why should I get the cure while no one else does? That's unfair". Third, Graham wants to see Grace again.

Ryan:

-Ryan will feel inclined to mend the relationship with his dad because he is the only blood relative he has left since Grace died. However, he won't reconcile with his father in the end. This'll instead be the moment Ryan accepts Graham as a father figure and calls Graham his grandfather.

-His dyspraxia will be touched upon more than just with throwaway lines about how he can't ride a bike and struggles with climbing ladders. There will be moments in which he is underestimated by some of the other characters, maybe Graham, which Ryan will obviously be frustrated by and will serve as a way to show how those with disabilities are often coddled and infantilized. Also, the Doctor will relate to him because of her own neurodivergence (especially since I've seen dyspraxic people point out how the 11th Doctor moves reminds them of themselves) which will strengthen their bond.

-There will be flashbacks that show how Yaz and Ryan were friends when they were in school. The two of them became friends because they both felt like outcasts with Ryan feeling that way due to his dyspraxia and Yaz feeling that way due to her sexuality.

-Ryan's YouTube channel will be a greater part of his character instead of something that never gets brought up again after his first episode. He will constantly record his adventures with the Doctor and upload them to YouTube to honor Grace in a way. When Graham dies of cancer, Ryan will upload a video summarizing who Graham was as a person and all the amazing things he did.

-Graham's death and his thing about being content with the little things in life will make Ryan realize that he hasn't fully explored his planet and seen its full potential and beauty. This epiphany will make him decide to take a break from being with the Doctor to travel around Earth. This'll open up the door for episodes solely focused on Ryan along with a way to introduce us to more Earth adventure episodes with the Doctor. Plus, this situation will allow Yaz and the Doctor's relationship to develop more.

Yaz:

-Her sexuality will not be something that only gets barely acknowledged in her final three episodes.

-Yaz and Ryan will have dated in school but broke up due to Yaz's lack of feelings towards him and her mental health struggles which caused her to push him away which will explain why they grew apart.

-I know we all love Dan but I'm going to have to get rid of him completely. So instead, Ryan will be the one to confront Yaz about her feelings towards the Doctor.

-Yaz's implied internalized homophobia will be further expanded upon. Jack's 51st century values and feelings towards the Doctor along with the Doctor's nonchalantness towards gender will serve as ways for Yaz to accept herself more. A main thing with Doctor Who companions is the Doctor showing them things they didn't even think were possible, the same will be true for Yaz but in a different way.

-The issues surrounding Yaz being a police officer were only barely touched upon in the episode "Rosa" before quickly being brushed off and never brought up again. Her job in general hardly even plays much of a role, like she literally just quits off screen near the end. But now her being a cop will serve as a source of ongoing conflict between the Doctor and Ryan who will be ACAB. The Doctor will challenge Yaz's beliefs regarding the police system, similar to how she challenged Yaz's ideas regarding gender and sexuality.

The Doctor:

-While it is kind of nice that the Doctor's gender identity isn't really questioned and is treated as normal, I think there should be some more exploration of Timelord's concept of sexuality and gender. Are all Timelords fluid in gender and sexuality? Do Timelords ever have gender dysphoria or have gender identities that are different from their current sex? Is sexuality the same throughout every regeneration or does it vary? Not all of them have to be answered or completely answered but I would like them to be addressed.

-More lore will be given regarding who the Doctor thought was their biological family so that the Timeless Child plotline and the fact that the Doctor was lied to will have more impact.

-Instead of confining the Flux to only six episodes, it will be alluded to at around the same time the Timeless Child will be hinted at.

-The writers said that they intentionally wrote the 13th Doctor as autistic. There are several scenes where they emphasize how socially awkward she is and the Timeless Child plotline is used to explain the autistic behavior of hers which has been present throughout the whole entire series. All of this is nice but again it isn't used to it's full potential. The Doctor should be used to create allegories for neurodivergence. The reveal of the Timeless Child will be equated to say finding out you're autistic. The Doctor will be used as a way to show how autistic men are treated differently than autistic women with her eccentricities being met with more hostility than when she was a man. Ryan will address how the way the Doctor acts aligns with autism which will spark a conversation about the necessity of labels and who can use them.

-The Doctor's refusal to form strong relationships out of fear of them ending tragically will be a more present underlying conflict. The story of the 13th Doctor and her companions will end sadly with her pushing them away and leaving them on Earth long enough that they've gone back to their normal lives and have realized that there's nothing they can do except hope that the Doctor is able to sort her shit out on her own.

I have considered doing a rewrite of these seasons or something but again I'm not an expert writer. The only fic I've ever written is a 2,000 word character study and that one took me a long time to write because of how much a perfectionist I am.

[humanstein]

Ruby learns what she isn't meant to know. A dark future in her own lifetime! She could prevent that from coming to pass if she was willing to be completely alone.

In the end, she stops herself from doing that and the web of time (fairy circle) is preserved.

She would never be able share what she's doing. It would drive everyone away. Who would believe her? When the woman shares why, people are frightened and leave. She's thrust into The Doctor's shoes. He helps but at what cost? He sees the bigger picture. The web. The fairy circle.

I think we just saw a magic version of the web of time healing. The Doctor knows many horrible futures. He could prevent them from coming to pass. However, he doesn't do that. He mostly works to preserve the web of time. He was going to trample a butterfly and Ruby stopped him.

Heavy emphasis on "watching where you step" this season! The butterfly in Space Babies. The mine in BOOM. The circle in 73 Yards. Don't go trampling the web of time. There are consequences.

I strongly suspect Ruby will leave herself on the doorstep of the church to preserve causality and the web of time.

She might even kidnap herself so that she is raised by her adoptive mother rather than her birth parents.

I also strongly suspect The Doctor will do something very similar!