The Timeless Children - Review

I didn't expect quite so much to be explained by this episode. Chibnall hinted that it would pose more questions, but that really wasn't the case at all. Spoilers ahead...
The Doctor is the Timeless Child. An early explorer from Gallifrey - Tecteun - found the child, who had fallen through a portal from an alternative universe / dimension. She took the child back to Gallifrey and studied her, and discovered that she could regenerate when fatally injured. Tecteun eventually worked out what caused this regeneration process and used it on herself - becoming the first Gallifreyan to regenerate. More of her people were then given this gift - an elite who called themselves Time Lords. Up to this point, native Gallifreyans were known as Shebogans. The Timeless Child lived through many regenerations, before ultimately becoming the Doctor. An organisation known as "The Division" employed them - presumably some sort of precursor to the Celestial Intervention Agency - who were not averse to using their powers to interfere in the affairs of other species. The Division would regularly wipe the Timeless Child's mind after these clandestine operations - which is why the Doctor doesn't remember this life before the one she can recall. Dr Ruth would have been one of these forgotten incarnations. What wasn't explained was why the Timeless Child had a whole lifetime of memories as an Irishman named Brendan in the first place - especially when that lifetime included being a baby and a small boy. All that stuff from last week seems pointless now.
All of this came to light when the Master took the Doctor into the Matrix. The only material not explained was the bit about The Division, as it had been redacted. The Doctor eventually escaped the Matrix by overloading it with her own memories - cue clips from earlier seasons. It is significant that one of these clips was the "mind wrestling" duel between the Fourth Doctor and Morbius, suggesting that the faces we saw were indeed earlier, pre-Hartnell, incarnations of the Doctor.
All these revelations will get a mixed reception from fans. There are those who are going to accept that this is simply greater insight into the Doctor's background, explaining why she of all the Time Lords has always been so different. Others just won't accept such a seismic change to established canon. I've seen a few people on-line stating that they will walk away from the programme if the suspected events of tonight's episode were going to come to pass. I won't be one of them. It's a massive disruption, but one I'm sure I'll come to terms with. It does not necessarily negate everything that's gone before, as some will argue.
This new information does pose problems with continuity. If the first Gallifreyan to regenerate was a woman, then how come every one of the Time Lords we have previously seen in The War Games, Colony In Space, The Three Doctors and The Deadly Assassin were all male? Early Gallifrey was also shown to be ethnically diverse, and yet those same four stories showed only white men. The Invasion of Time had only one female character, in a minor position, and again all were white. Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors at least featured one female on the High Council - though everyone was again white. The entire court seen in Trial of a Time Lord was composed of white people, and none of the jury were female. At what point in their history did the Time Lords become a white, male dominated society? The question also has to be asked, if the Timeless Child spent much of their life female and ethnically diverse, why did they end up being a white man for thirteen regenerations?
You can't just shoehorn the BBC's current diversity policies into a programme that's been running nearly 60 years.
Sacha Dhawan, as expected, was brilliant as the Master. I said last week he would give Ashad a run for his money. He gave everyone a run for their money. He had more screen time than the Doctor, thanks to having him run around with the Cybermen in the real world, and still be with the Doctor, psychically, in the Matrix at the same time. One huge disappointment, which I'm sure everyone will pick up on, was the treatment of Ashad. He was set up brilliantly in the last two episodes, just to be summarily killed by the Master half way through the episode. He deserved much better than this.
The Master's plan was to combine the Cybermen and the Time Lords, whose bodies he had kept after destroying the Citadel - so that he could create an army of Cybermen able to regenerate.
We saw some of these Time Lord / Cybermen hybrids, and I must say I thought they looked rather stupid, with frilly lace fan-shaped designs on their helmets.
It was really obvious that one of the others was going to take the Doctor's place when it came to detonating the "Death Particle", and I really, really hoped that it would have been one of the companions. We really need a change in this TARDIS line-up, and one of them sacrificing themselves to save the Doctor would have been great. Yaz was the obvious candidate for this, after the scene where she and Graham spoke about bravery earlier. Instead we got Ko Sharmus doing the self-sacrificial duties - a wasted opportunity. Looks like we're stuck with the same overcrowded TARDIS team for next time.
The series desperately needs some change in the line-up.
The title of the New Year Special was revealed at the end, after we had a cliffhanger conclusion. The companions and the surviving humans have made it back to Earth in a TARDIS, which has disguised itself as a two-up, two down house on an estate (scope for a spin-off sitcom here). Another TARDIS has taken the Doctor back to her own ship, but before she can catch her breath she is arrested by Judoon, and transported to a cell in a prison asteroid. The BBC have stupidly let it be known that Captain Jack will be in the New Year Special, so presumably he is the one who helps the Doctor escape back to Earth, which is where we know that the Daleks will be waiting, having been quite publicly filmed on the Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol. The title for this special is Revolution of the Daleks, and a video vlog I've seen recently claims that the story involves yet another Dalek civil war, and Davros might appear. The opportunity is there for the human survivors to feature, if that sitcom hasn't already been commissioned, and there is always the possibility that Graham and Ravio will develop a romance that will take him out of the series before Series 13.
And what of the Master? We cut away from Ko Sharmus activating the Death Particle in the Matrix Room on Gallifrey, so he may well have managed to escape.
He always does.
He will be back.