Headscratchers / Doctor Who Series 12

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"Spyfall"

• Why exactly were the Kasaavin spying on people involved in the development of computers, such as Ada Lovelace? And why were they all of a sudden killing loads of spies in the present day, after working more covertly for centuries? It doesn't seem like either of those operations were necessary for their grand plan of rewriting human DNA, because all they needed for that was Barton co-operating with them so they could use his tech. If the idea was that the spies they killed were about to discover Barton's plan, then that was never mentioned... And influencing someone like Lovelace, who came up with the rudimentary ideas of computer programming, wouldn't really help Barton's plan in any way; it's not like the "code" she came up with is used as such in modern computers.
  • The sudden burst of killing likely corresponds with them taking suggestions from the Master, who's (a) planning to screw them over, (b) only doing it to attract the Doctor's attention and (c) not the sanest chap in the Universe.
  • The Doctor did say the spy agencies were on the verge of discovering the Kasaavin's existence. But there's no other indication of this; they seem ill-informed when the main characters actually interact with them.
    • Actually it was the Master who claimed that, and since he'd infiltrated MI6, it's possible that he manipulated things to discredit anyone in the spy agencies who had data regarding the existence of the Kasaavin to further his plans.
• The Master knows that Gallifrey was saved in a pocket universe, and knows where it's located, so clearly this is supposed to be a post-Missy reincarnation. So how is he still alive, since Missy supposedly died a permanent death in "The Doctor Falls"? And why is he again back to his old evil ways, acting like the Harold Saxon incarnation, even though Missy went through a Heel–Face Turn?
  • This may not actually be a post-Missy Master; it could have been one between the two. In the Expanded Universe, Missy does seem to know where Gallifrey actually is. One story in the Missy Chronicles short story collection has her "hired" by the General to carry out a Time Lord mission, and it's strongly implied it's while the Twelfth Doctor is trapped in the confession dial. Missy may thus have lied to the Doctor back in "Death in Heaven" for funzies. And all of this could be key to Thirteen saving Gallifrey from what this "current" Master has done.
  • The behind the scenes supplements indicate that he is indeed a post-Missy version of the Master. As for his survival, he is the Master. Cheating death through various means is his motif. From taking over bodies on multiple occasions, or being brought to life for a Time War. It's one of the things the character is known for; hopefully this season will give an explanation on their recovery and what caused his current breakdown.
  • There's an implication that the Awful Truth the Master discovered about the Timeless Child may have been a major factor in him snapping and returning to villainy.
  • I would very much like a reference to Missy (she wanted to be on your side Doctor!), but also look at where trying to be good got her: Dying Alone in the dirt. The Doctor isn't the only one to have their regeneration be a response to the last one (though 13 is clearly having trouble herself).
  • We know from "Heaven Sent" that Time Lords take a long time to die, even when they can't regenerate. We last saw Missy on a huge colony ship that was slowly being taken over by Cybermen. Cybermen who had recently been programmed to try to assimilate humanoids with two hearts, mind you. Either she cut a deal with them, or they scavenged her body and added enough life support for her to be able to regenerate after all — then the main question would be, does the Master still have any implants, either needed to stay alive or unable to rid himself of them? Or did the regeneration short out and expel any foreign material once she was revived enough to start the process?
• The Master says that Gallifrey is in a bubble universe, but in "Hell Bent" it's established that Gallifrey left the bubble universe and has instead hidden itself at the extreme end of the time continuum, at the end of the universe. This would imply that this Master is from before "Hell Bent" (and therefore pre-Missy). But since Gallifrey still existed in "Hell Bent", after it escaped the bubble universe (and therefore after the Master destroyed it) creates either a continuity error or a time paradox (or both). Plus, The Doctor herself doesn't seem to question how Gallifrey can be destroyed when her previous incarnation had been there after it escaped from the bubble universe that it was still in at the time of this episode.
  • Possibly the Time Lords moved Gallifrey's dimensional bubble to the end of the universe, but retained the bubble itself as protective camouflage against the Daleks and the many, many other races whom they'd alienated during the Time War. This would explain how Me could sit around and watch the stars go out from Gallifrey without it vanishing out from under her, too.
  • Or Chris Chibnall forgot Gallifrey wasn't in a bubble universe anymore.
• Did the Doctor actually defeat the Kasaavin in any meaningful way? Sure, she hacked the silver statue that made it easier for them to project themselves on Earth, but what's stopping them from building a new one and continuing their project of influencing human history?
  • Well, the Master was the one influencing them to kill, so since they've turned on him they may no longer be an immediate threat. It's also implied that we haven't seen the last of them.
• The Doctor considers the Master working with the Nazi to be a new low. Uh...why exactly? I get the Doylist explanation. But the Master has done way worse stuff than work with the Nazis. Including working with the Daleks, who are the Nazis times like a gajillion. And he proceeds to do even worse. 90% of which is out of pure spite.
  • "New low" may have been as much a reference to how tawdry an alliance it was. How many really, really awful scifi stories about evil time travelers and/or aliens helping out the freakin' Nazis have been written...? At least working with Daleks or Cybermen shows a modicum of taste.
  • Simple. Daleks and Cybermen don't choose to be what they are.
• It's pretty clear that the Master chose to stay on The Slow Path for seventy-seven years. As of Series 10, there's a TARDIS being stored at a University in Britain for most of the time he's "trapped" on Earth that he could pop over and borrow. If he doesn't want to risk Twelve seeing him, as early as the seventies his past self arrives on Earth in a TARDIS that's functional until Three sabotages it. And, let's not forget, the Doctor, enemy of the Kasaavin, takes less than an hour to figure out how to use them and the Silver Lady to get from 1834 to 1943; the Master is nominally their ally but never gets a lift from them. So why didn't he want to get back to 2020?

"Orphan 55"

• Since when the TARDIS allows time travel to different alternate futures? Isn't time set, and it takes a time traveller to change the event? If Earth is destined to become Orphan 55, there is nothing average humans can do to prevent that, because it is our history... Or did I miss something?
  • Two possible answers: One, this is the series that invented the Timey-Wimey Ball. Two, the Doctor is saying that to cheer her companions up. It is possible to alter time in the series, so Orphan 55 can potentially be averted, but the Doctor knows that at the moment, that is Earth's future, but she wants to embolden her companions.
  • The TARDIS has been able to do that since "Pyramids of Mars".
• When the crew goes out to save Benni, why did everyone have to come with them, including the granny and the kid? Wouldn't it be safer to leave them inside the spa?
  • Best guess? Since everyone in the truck were the only survivors of the Dreg attack, and given the spa's damaged defences, it was judged safer for everyone to stick together as a group. In addition, it's likely that Vilma would have insisted on coming along to try and rescue Benni anyways.
• Okay, Bella hates her mom for abandoning her, but how does that justify her sabotaging the whole facility, with numerous innocent people inside? Couldn't she just have killed Kane or something?
• When the Doctor goes inside the mind of the leader Dreg, why does it have memories of pre-catastrophe Earth? Wouldn't it take generations and generations for humans to evolve into the Dregs, so no way would any of them have memories of humanity?
  • Genetic Memory?
• At the end of the episode, why don't they just use the TARDIS to go back and save Bella and Kane?
  • Generally in this show, once you see something happen, it's pretty much fixed.
• Why did Benni say he wanted someone to shoot him? Why did Kane shoot him? Since we couldn't see him, and we didn't know what the Dregs were at the time, I assumed that the Dregs were humans that had been mutated by a virus or something, and Benni was turning into one. But then it turns out that whatever made humans evolve into Dregs isn't something that can spread like a virus, which means that Benni was perfectly all right and had no reason to become a death seeker. So WTF?
  • As Kane put it, the Dregs had been "having fun" with Benni. It is entirely probable that they tortured him in some fashion, or possibly ate parts of his body.
• Are the Dregs sentient or aren't they? I took one of the Doctor's comments to imply they're not sentient, but then they were able to open doors, understand complex concepts like respiration and making deals, and were also capable of understanding English. Are they degraded primitives, or do they have human intelligence?
  • Which comment was that? I don't recall anything she said implying that.
• What do the Dregs eat? As far as we can tell they’re the only lifeforms left on Orphan 55.
  • Perhaps they eat each other. The human race ultimately consuming itself to death, and all that.
  • Key word: "as far as we can tell". There could be a prey species somewhere that we just didn't get a chance to see in the episode.

"Fugitive of the Judoon"

• So its revealed that Jo Martin is another incarnation of the Doctor. The only problem being that neither JoDoc or JodieDoc remember being the other. At the end of the episode, JodieDoc is shown conversating with the TARDIS. So that begs the question that if JoDoc and JodieDoc both are using the same TARDIS, couldn't JodieDoc simply ask the TARDIS what's going on and where in her timeline JoDoc fits and when she was her?
  • First off, Thirteen is speaking to the TARDIS the same way she always does: normally. And no, the TARDIS can't just talk back. As indicated in "The Doctor's Wife", and on many other occasions, although the TARDIS can indirectly communicate with the Doctor, she can't really directly communicate. Even with the voice interface, the TARDIS can only barely affect what it directly says. So no, the Doctor cannot just ask the TARDIS how Ruth fits into her timeline, if the TARDIS wasn't subjected to memory erasure regarding her as well...
  • Also, the TARDIS has been shown in "The Doctor's Wife" to have a tenuous grasp of the way time flows - she kept answering questions long before they had been asked, and has revealed she had archived desktop themes of the console rooms that the Doctor had not used yet. Even assuming she could talk to the Doctor again, it is likely she would not be able to give a clear enough explanation, especially if the reason is timey-wimey.

• Was Gat a Time Lord (or Lady)? The Doctor identifies her as Gallifreyan, but does not say Time Lord explicitly.
  • She does call her a Time Lord when she does the mind meld thing. Though it's never been clear the precise differences between a Time Lord and a "mere" Gallifreyan, so maybe you don't need to be a Time Lord to have the telepathic link.

"Can You Hear Me?"

• The Chagaska creature looks a lot like a realistic nue (in an episode about nightmares, no less). So my question is, why didn't they call it a nue?
  • Because the writers might not have known about it? Because Zellin made it from the fears of a girl from the 1300s? This isn’t even something that needs to be asked - just because you personally think it should be called that doesn’t mean the writers do.

"The Haunting of Villa Diodati"

• It's allegedly necessary in "Spyfall" for the Doctor to ignore the lesson Twelve learned about consent and mental integrity and mindwipe Ada Byron because she learned that computer programs would become a big thing and this would somehow sully her genius, and also Noor Inayat Khan for some reason, but Percy Shelley gets to keep the memory of his future death, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin keeps the memory of the Cyberman that, it is implied, inspires Frankenstein, and all of them get to keep the knowledge that Shelley's poems are vital to the cultural future of humanity. So why is this different?
  • Best guess, none of them actually left their own time like Ada did. So Shelley knows how he's going to die, but not when. And, well, Mary has to write Frankenstein, so losing her memory of what inspired it is a bad idea.
    • And Ada was able to witness technology directly tied to her research while she had not even thought about it, risking an Stable Time Loop. Meanwhile, Mary may have been inspired by the Cyberman to write Frankenstein, but it is quite unlikely the existence of that novel influenced the creation of the Cyberman. Also, the Doctor was personally responsible for Ada's time-travelling, while Mary was just along for the ride like any standard human witnessing the existence of aliens and living to tell the tale.
  • Plus with everything that happened to Bill, and the confirmation that the Doctor is still hurting over it, it's easy to assume they probably wish they had mind wiped her to keep her safe.

"Ascension of the Cybermen"

• At the beginning of the episode, why didn't the Doctor just land the TARDIS right to the human settlement and save all the seven humans left by evacuating them inside it? Instead she chose to park it so far that they can't use it to escape when the Cybermen attack, for reasons that remain unclear.
  • The TARDIS is a pretty distinctive vessel, and the Cybermen know it well: maybe she was trying to keep it out of their sight while they were focused on the human settlement, so that she could maintain the element of surprise. Also, if the Cybermen actually captured the TARDIS, it's the whole of time and space in peril, not just the humans at the end of the war. Maybe the Doctor just didn't want to take that risk.
• If there's a massive Cybership full of intact but dormant Cybermen, why didn't the Cyberium direct Ashad to it instead of letting him chase for the few remaining humans across the galaxy with his ragtag Cyberman crew?
• How did the Master know the Doctor would end up near the gateway to Gallifrey at the exact moment she did? Was he just waiting on Gallifrey for years or centuries in case the Doctor would show up?
  • Like he wouldn't do that.
  • Another possibility is that, since he's working with the Cybermen, he's keeping an eye on them, and has some kind of spy camera somewhere around.

"The Timeless Children"

• It has been revealed that the Division has apparently wiped the Doctor's memory of the lives she has lived before the First Doctor, and that they could've done this repeatedly, which means that there are possibly scores of previous incarnations (and lives that she has lived) that she now no longer remembers. We presume then, that the Time Lords are aware that the Doctor is the Timeless Child and can thus regenerate infinitely. Thus, the dose of regenerative energy they gave the Eleventh Doctor at the end of his life was to give the appearance of a new regenerative cycle in order to uphold this masquerade that he is a normal Time Lord. After all, by that point, he had supposedly exhausted all of his regenerations. This would supposedly relive them of the need to continue hiding the Doctor's ability to infinitely regenerate. From that point on, everyone seemed to point out the uncertainty of how many regenerations the Doctor now supposedly possessed, with some postulating that it's some vast uncountable number, if even it was finite. Given all this, you have to wonder, why didn't the Time Lords simply give the Doctor this supposed additional cycle at a much earlier point in her life? Doing this would prevent the need to do it at the end of the Eleventh Doctor's life and also eliminate the need to keep wiping her memory of previous incarnations for every thirteen lives she lived and ostensible reached the end of what would be a normal regenerative cycle for the average Time Lord. Clearly then, by the end of the Eleventh Doctor's life, the Time Lords seemed to think that it was not necessary to wipe his memory all over again and pretend that his next incarnation (the Twelfth Doctor) was his very first life all over again, like they apparently did at least once before. Did the Doctor do something heinous in the past that warranted this memory wiping? And if so, what exactly was it? Clearly, the Doctor didn't do anything that bad in her "current" cycle if the Time Lords decided that pretending to give her a new cycle is a better option than wiping her memory and starting her all over again from the beginning.
  • From what I interpreted it as, the Time Lords, trapped on the other side of the crack, only had enough power/resources/time to send through one thing. They wanted to put Gallifrey through, because Time Lordy Loophole Abuse, but realised that the Doctor was not going to give them the all clear. They then had the choice of giving the Doctor regeneration energy, or wiping his mind. Since the Doctor is the Doctor because of his memories, they couldn't wipe his mind to keep the secret, so they gave him the regeneration energy to keep the masquerade of him being a normal Time Lord, and probably kickstart the actual regeneration. The Doctor then noted he had no idea how many regenerations he had, and the Time Lords, upon learning of this, went with it to keep him in the dark. When the Doctor returned to Gallifrey, they had the more pressing matter of learning what the Doctor knew of the Hybrid, and erasing the Doctor's memory would be counterproductive, since it was the First Doctor who snuck into the Cloisters. Then the Doctor ran away again and the Time Lords have since been destroyed. So it might have been a case of they always wiped the Doctor's mind when at the end of what should be their thirteenth life, making them think they were at the end of their first, but when it came to not being able to, they tricked him into thinking he had been granted more regenerations. Of course, this is just how I interpret it. I could be wrong.
  • Or maybe, when the Time Lords imposed a regeneration limit on themselves, it applied to the Doctor too, and in The Time of the Doctor what they were actually doing was re-unlocking his original infinite capacity.

• If Tecteun designed a “visual filter” to make the Doctor’s memories seem unremarkable to anyone who stumbled upon them in the Matrix, why would they take place in Ireland and not Gallifrey?
  • Maybe Tecteun thought that setting it on Earth (a planet the Time Lords regard as inferior and primitive) would prevent anyone from suspecting anything nefarious was happening on Gallifrey.
    • Earth is hardly an inconspicuous planet, however. With such a notable contingent of Time Lord renegades and exiles popping up there (e.g. Professor Chronotis, K'anpo Rimpoche, the Monk, the Rani), to say nothing of its importance to the Doctor, it ought to be on a Time Lord watch list. It would be one of the first places anyone searching the Doctor’s lives would look.
    • We don't know exactly when the visual filter was created. It could have been long before the Doctor ever visited Earth.

• We never found out who Ashad was or why he acted so differently from all the other Cybermen, when their main goal is to erase individuality and emotion, all of which Ashad had in scores. Why did the Cyberium allow him to be that way?
  • Force of will? Perhaps the Cyberium realized that his individuality made him an ideal tool.
  • Ashad mentions the other Cybermen cast him out for being "defective", so they didn't let up on their main goal. Given that he's the only recorded example so far of a human converting willingly to the Cybermen, maybe the programming just didn't erase that much.

• How was the Master able to defeat and kill all the other Time Lords when he's never managed to do that before?
  • The Master had hacked into the Matrix, accessing the total knowledge of the Time Lords. Access to that much secrets and technology would have given him an edge. It is also possible that it gave him access to their weapons cache. In any case this version of the Master seemed more feral then his previous incarnations, access to the sum knowledge of his people, add with his trigger happy blood lust. Add to the fact that the Master has a history of mass murder and genocide and the experience that comes with it. Then you have a being able and capable to wipe out his people. As to the how? The current Time Lords were hiding out, there was a schism in leadership with Rassilon's downfall. It is possible with their weakened state, being unaware of the threat the Master was, he could have blind sided them.
  • He's come damn close to wiping out Gallifrey before. The chief difference being, the Doctor wasn't there to stop him this time.
  • And anyone else formidable enough to have stood in the Master's way, Rassilon probably purged to secure his own post-War death-grip on power.

• When team TARDIS and the future humans go through the gateway into Gallifrey, why don't they take the Cyberman armor and weapons they had worn with them? They know they're probably gonna have to fight some Cybermen, so those weapons would've come handy.
  • Speed could have been a factor. Walking around in heavy armour would have been time consuming and exhausting. They wanted to get to the Doctor as soon as possible and, considering they were heading towards an army of Cybermen, may have decided stealth would have benefited more than going into a fire fight against superior numbers.

• The Doctor tries to appeal to the better nature of the Master, but he says he has none. So what happened to the conscience he developed in his previous incarnation as Missy?
  • Unreliable Narrator. He's regressed back thanks to mass trauma and not everything he says is perfectly true.
  • From an out of universe perspective, did anyone honestly believe that the Master will stay good for the remainder of the show's run? Sooner or later, a writer is probably going to decide that they want him evil again and revert Missy's Heel–Face Turn accordingly in a future incarnation.
  • No, no one expected the Master to stay good, but it would've been nice if the writers had at least acknowledged the Heel–Face Turn and explained why it didn't last, instead of just having him revert back to the Harold Saxon persona with no explanation.
  • But they did explain. Both the Master and the Doctor felt betrayed by each other in "The Doctor Falls", he saw this huge reveal that made him feel inferior and angry both for and at the Doctor, it's just the Missy-softness got twisted into looking like he's always a second away from crying, being a Death Seeker and all that rage. Plus the montage shows both Saxon's reveal in "World Enough And Time" and Missy's tears, so that's weighing heavy on 13's mind.
  • This Troper was under the impression that Missy was in fact the last possible incarnation of the Master and this version of them was the one John Simm had regenerated into at the end of 'The Doctor Falls'. Missy's better nature would not be present in this version, but Missy could now be seen to have been motivated by the current Master's actions and revelations.

• If the Jo Martin version of the Doctor is an incarnation that precedes the William Hartnell incarnation, why is her TARDIS a police box too? Didn't it get stuck into that form during the Hartnell era?
  • The TARDIS is known to have been old when the First Doctor was young. It's probably the exact same TARDIS, and maybe she reverted to a police box out of nostalgia, or the Doctor's subconscious personal preference, or perhaps the TARDIS trying to remind the Doctor of their true past.
  • Is Jo Martin's Doctor's TARDIS necessarily the same one William Hartnell's Doctor (and onward) used?
  • If it's not the same TARDIS, why is it stuck in the form of a police box too?
  • They never explicitly state that Martin's Doctor is a pre-Hartnell one. It's possible that Martin!Doctor is actually a season 6B incarnation after all. That's the theory that when the Time Lords caught Troughton!Doctor, they didn't exile him to Earth as Pertwee!Doctor right away, they first coerced him into working for them for a time. This would just require he get killed and regenerate at least once before they exiled him. Chibnall is enough of a Who geek to be familiar with this theory.
    • Problem with that is that it would throw off the numbering even more. Martin's Doctor would be the true Third Doctor, making Pertwee's the Fourth and so on. And also, if she's the third, then the Tenth Doctor shouldn't have expected to regenerate into the Eleventh in The End of Time, nor would he have said to Wilf, "some new man goes walking away, and I'm dead."

• Captain Jack Harkness is not involved in the events of this three-parter story, so how did he know to warn the Doctor not to trust the lone Cyberman at Villa Diodati? It only makes sense if he heard about these events from the Doctor after they happened, but in that case he would know that the Doctor solved the Cyberman situation anyway. So his warning might risk changing events that had already happened, possibly for the worse. What was the point of the warning, then?
  • Same as any Prophecy in multiple stories and themes, to give the hero a fighting chance. To give them an edge, an opportunity. They don't always work but sometimes you have to try. Also we don't know how much Jack knew. Maybe in the future he found out the Doc gave the lone Cyberman what he wanted but not where or when. If his information was limited then his warning would be limited. Otherwise his warning would be for the Doctor to get to a certain lake at a certain time to prevent the Cyberium from being absorbed by a wandering English poet.

• So how did River get regenerations?
  • According to Moffat, being conceived on the TARDIS, so being exposed to temporal energies, and genetic manipulation by the group trying to kill the Doctor when she was a baby.
  • But according to this episode, regenerations are the result of stealing DNA from the Doctor and gene-splicing it into the Time Lords. River couldn't have undergone this process, unless Kovarian knew about the Timeless Child - which she can't have, because a) not even the Master and the Doctor knew, so how would a human cleric find out when Gallifrey wasn't even in this dimension and b) she totally would have taunted the Doctor over it if she knew.
  • The TARDIS does count herself as one of River's parents, and the TARDIS may very well know the truth about the Doctor. She may very well have done that deliberately.
  • Maybe while hurtling through the Time Vortex, the TARDIS got close to one of the Doctor's species, and then the unborn Melody absorbed their DNA that way?
  • TARDISes were created by the Time Lords- it could be that they have some Time Lord/Doctor genetics in them which were passed on to River. Though this would make the Doctor's relationship with River (and the TARDIS for that matter) rather incestuous...
  • Genetic manipulation was the first way that Gallifreyans learned to grant regenerations. That doesn't have to mean it's the only way. Indeed, the Fifth Doctor once ran into some non-Gallifreyans who'd tried to acquire the capacity for regeneration using stolen Time Lord medical tech.
  • Maybe River getting regenerations from Vortex exposure was the same way the Timeless Child/their original species did - take everything you thought you knew about Time Lord origins and apply it to whatever the Doctor is.

• Why didn't Clara see the pre-Hartnell incarnations in the Doctor's timeline?
  • Possibly because she was seeing the incarnations that the Doctor believed existed, instead of what did exist. He subdued the War Doctor part of his memory but he existed post mind wipe. The memory she viewed is what the Doctor memory believed to be the totality of his existence, post wipe.
  • But Clara (as well as the Great Intelligence) didn't enter the Doctor's mind, they entered his timeline. So even if he didn't remember any of the pre-Hartnell incarnations, they should've still seen them, as they are part of his timeline.
  • I wouldn't put it past the Division to have figured out how to "lock" the Doctor's timeline before what they were currently supposed to remember so it couldn't be detected.
  • That doesn't really gel with the Morbius Doctors though.
  • The Morbius Doctors were shown via a mind-bending contest, not temporal manipulation. If Ruth is any indication, the Doctor retains a subconscious recollection of the past lives that have been erased (hence why they chose to call themselves "the Doctor" again and again). Mind probing, not being rooted in temporal manipulation, could allow bits and pieces of the truth through. In fact, that's exactly how the truth is revealed to the Doctor in "The Timeless Children" anyways!
  • So the Division is powerful enough to lock away a person's objective timeline, but still not powerful enough to fully wipe her memory of said timeline?
  • A full mind wipe does not mean that the memory is not there. It’s just been overwritten. The thing is, the wipe had been in place literally longer then the "Doctor" believes she has been alive. Her couple of thousands of years as the “Doctor” pale to the unknown time she spent as the Timeless Child, agent of the CIA. She is older then her people and Time Lord history. So while the huge amount of memory was overwritten, it was still there, and if attacked directly would cause leaks. To a Time Lord, temporal manipulation is second nature, hence Time Lord. But the mind of the Timeless Child would have been a different challenge, one that worked until it didn’t thanks to the Master.
  • The glowing coil in the Trenzalore tomb was created from the Doctor's many, many journeys through time having "wounded" the fabric of reality to some degree. It's possible that, so long as the Doctor's journeys were being made under their direct supervision, the Division had been able to "heal" any such damage along the way. Once their agent went completely rogue and left Gallifrey for keeps, they were no longer able or willing to tidy up his mess, leaving a whole lot of glowing coils from One and his successors, but little or none from the previous Doctors.

• Bad Wolf!Rose and TARDIS!Idris both could see all of time and space, so why didn't they mention it (especially if the TARDIS chose the police box form to try to remind the Doctor of their past, like someone suggests above)?
  • Rose didn't really remember anything after her Bad Wolf episode. Not even of resurrecting Jack. It is possible she was aware of the truth, however after she reverted back to default human, that knowledge left her. As for Tardis!Idris, she had thousands of years of multi-dimensional and temporal information crammed into her human head. She more likely focused on being able to walk and talk, not to mention keep her body going. It is possible the truth about the Doctor was a) not a priority, b) something she was shielding the Doctor from, or c) not accessible to her in her human state.
  • Here's an idea: Morbius was part of the Division. He was able to partially reverse the Doctor's mindwipe because he was responsible in the first place.

• How did the Master conclude the Doctor was the Timeless Child? The last we see of the Child is him with Tecteun being talked to by someone from the Division and then the Matrix goes blank.
  • The Matrix went blank because the information was hidden from the Doctor, not the Master. He had already discovered she was the Timeless Child as he mentioned he found out the truth poking around. He already knows the whole story, the missing part was the Matrix shutting off her access to certain parts of her history.
    • Except the Master states that he discovered the blank section in the Matrix before showing the Doctor, and that he tried everything to recover it but was unable — pathological liar he may be, the Master here is shown to be relishing in the Doctor’s torment over learning what the Time Lords did to her and her history, so I doubt he would edit out part of the Matrix, or put up a block just to her, and spin the entire Brendan story, when showing the Doctor her forgotten past is easier and more likely to torture her. It is possible that we just didn’t see everything the Master saw while he was revealing the secrets of the Timeless Child, and he was just showing the more prevalent parts and ignoring the lesser details.

• So why isn't Thirteen's first order of business to start The Quest to restore Gallifrey at the end? She did it before, and whatever her flaws, she's no more willing to let billions of children burn than any previous incarnation was. Or is that being saved for Series 13?
  • It’s not about her flaws, if it was then despite their flaws the previous Doctors would have saved Gallifrey prior. They were unable to do so because it was beyond their ability. An all- powerful reality warper calling itself the Bad Wolf did it. By gathering the 10th, 11th and War Doctor in one place in order to give them a chance to save Gallifrey despite the event being “Time Locked.” If saving Gallifrey was within the Doctor’s power, the 9th, 10th and 11th Doctor would have done so instead of carry the guilt of being the last Time Lord for centuries. Another factor is that due to the timey wimey nature of Bad Wolf's actions it’s uncertain if Gallifrey was actually destroyed in the first place. Because of the lore that a Time Locked event cannot be altered no matter what. If so, then Gallifrey was never destroyed, only the 9th, 10th and 11th version believed so. The current Gallifrey was most definitely destroyed (making it a timelocked event) and the Doctor like her previous incarnations lacks the power to reverse that without dire consequences for the universe.
  • Also she just realized how even more awful the Time Lords have treated her. She's traumatized and processing.
  • Maybe that's next season's big finale?
  • Somewhat doubtful, as Gallifrey was always destined to be destroyed as per the season ten prophecy. Gallifrey was always destined to truly fall and the Time Lords wiped out. However it is possible the Doctor might be able to help create a new Gallifrey somewhere. Or maybe some Time Lords escaped the destruction of the homeworld and the Doctor can help them find a new one.

• We see the "Timeless Child" being experimented on: several faces in a row, all looking only slightly older than the last. So is this the most accident prone child in the universe (hey, it happened to Borusa!), or did their adoptive mother murder them repeatedly for medical experiments?
  • Could be the Child had some capacity to induce regenerations voluntarily, and was persuaded, bribed, or coerced into doing it. Maybe Romana I's share of the Child's genetic material made her enough of a throwback to share in that ability, and all those "fashion regenerations" she shuffled through before settling on Astra's form for Romana II weren't wasteful after all?
  • The problem is the look of discomfort and fear on the child's face would lean towards it being a traumatic event. Which would lean towards less benign or voluntary means of regeneration. Also during the flashback we learned that Tecteun risked her life in order to test regeneration which would lead that regeneration was tested by a do or die means. It is possible after time passed later Timelords could control regeneration by effort like Romana after Tecteun fine-tuned regeneration. But seeing as Tecteun was obsessed in the flashbacks with making regeneration work during the experimental stage and the child's reaction it seems logical she would have gone with what worked, as in repeatedly forcing regeneration via life threatening trauma.

• The bodies of the Time Lords are able to regenerate once they've been cyberconverted. Why couldn't—or didn't—they regenerate before the Master started cyberconverting them?
  • As has been stated and shown before, if a Time Lord is killed before Regeneration can take place, then they’re dead for good.
    • Maybe I phrased that badly. On their own, I'm not confused by Time Lords being unable to regenerate. On their own, I'm not confused by Cybermasters being able to regenerate. What I'm confused by is those two facts both being true, simultaneously.

"Revolution of the Daleks"

• At the beginning of the episode, how did Jack Robertson's henchwoman know the truck driver would stop to get tea at her roadside kiosk? What if he had just driven past it?
  • Looks like it was a professional operation, it is possible they had a secondary plan and even a third one. They were fortunate their first plan worked.
    • Assuming that was the first plan; maybe every kiosk on the route had a staff member working for Robertson, scowling in irritation that they've wasted an afternoon when the truck drove past them.
  • Another possibility is that the truck driver is in the habit of getting tea at that particular stop, which Robertson knows from surveillance.
• After the SAS Daleks have exterminated the mutant Daleks, Robertson clearly says he's going to go and negotiate with them. Why the did Doctor allow that? She doesn't want the SAS Daleks to know she's on Earth, and it shouldn't take a genius to deduce Robertson would use that as a bargaining chip and reveal she's around.
  • Doctor was multi-tasking and could have dismissed his comment as a passing thought, she most likely thought no-one could be that stupid.
  • Why would she think Robertson isn't that stupid, when Robertson tells her that's exactly what he's gonna do?
  • Well she was on the clock, she did not have time to try and chase him down and force him into the TARDIS. Not to mention she was almost into her TARDIS when Robertson told her his intention then was shooting down the ladder. She had two options, try and chase after Robertson, try and subdue him and hope the Daleks don't notice them. Or she could continue and complete her time-sensitive plan that everything hinged on. Another factor to consider is that the Doctor had just spent twenty years basically isolated so that would have made her a touch off her game hence her delayed reaction. Not to mention this is not the first nor last time the Doctor have had their plans derailed by self-serving humans acting in their own interests contrary to common sense during high pressure situations.
• At the end of the episode, how did Robertson manage to make it look like it was he who defeated the Daleks? Those things were created in factories owned by him, and there must've been scores of workers there who could testify he was the one who had them built, so shouldn't he be blamed for creating the Daleks instead of being lauded as a hero?
  • We live in an age where the net and PR can spin anything and make a solid fact into a debatable question. If Qanon and the anti-vaccination movement are any indication. Within just a few decades, people were already saying that the Holocaust was a myth. With enough money, enough spin, and any narrative can be spun to fool enough people as the past decade has shown.
• The Doctor defeats the Daleks by destroying an earlier, time-displaced version of her TARDIS. Shouldn't that create a massive paradox, since her TARDIS wouldn't have existed anymore, and all the stuff she and her earlier incarnations did it wouldn't have happened?
  • The TARDIS used to trap the Daleks was the one used previous episode to escape Gallifrey in, it was not her TARDIS but one she stole to get her Fam and the survivors home. It had a working chameleon circuit which she then used to trick the Purifier Daleks. It's not a paradox as it was not her TARDIS just one she made to look like hers.

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