The season 12 finale of Doctor Who revealed that the Last of the Time Lords was, in fact, the Timeless Child, changing everything we’ve come to know about her character up to that point.
While a lot of people may think that being a solitary creature in the universe with no allegiance, not even the Time Lords, makes the Doctor even lonelier than ever before, there’s good reason to think that the character may not be the only Timeless Child in existence. As we saw in the latest season’s final episode, the Master revealed that the Doctor was never Gallifreyan to begin with. In fact, a scientist named Tecteun found her at the edge of the known universe, stranded and alone. When she realized that the child had the ability to regenerate himself, Tecteun studied her and eventually, the indigenous people of Gallifrey found a way to splice their DNA with the Doctor’s, granting them the ability to regenerate.
This practically changed everything about the history of Doctor Who. With this twist, William Hartnell’s First Doctor isn’t actually the first incarnation, now that we know there have been countless more before him. Additionally, the Doctor has always considered himself as a Time Lord, referring to his species as “a sum of knowledge, a code, a shared history, a shared suffering” in “The Doctor’s Daughter.” While the fact that Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth isn’t even a Time Lord makes her more unique, she’s not as alone as she’d like to think.
In the same episode, which aired in David Tennant’s era as the Tenth Doctor, the crew of the TARDIS stumbled upon a planet engulfed in a never-ending war. Arriving there, the humans quickly took the Doctor and threw him into a cloning machine, which created a new soldier from his DNA, Jenny. By the end of the episode, the Doctor’s daughter decided to traverse the universe and go on adventures like her father, but we never got to see her again.
Since Jenny was born out of the Doctor’s genetic code though, it’s safe to say that she’s a Timeless Child. Given Chibnall’s inclination to bring back characters like Captain Jack, would it be much of a stretch to suggest that we may see Jenny again in future seasons of Doctor Who? Even if not, it’s safe to say that she, just like the Doctor, can regenerate herself infinitely and belongs to a race that’s not in the known universe.
Perhaps that’s what Chibnall meant by naming the last episode “The Timeless Children,” though we won’t know for sure until season 13 arrives sometime next year.
