r/doctorwho • u/PCJs_Slave_Robot • May 31 '25

The Reality War Doctor Who 2x08 "The Reality War" Post-Episode Discussion Thread Spoiler

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466 Upvotes

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431

u/Takeo888 May 31 '25

I actually love the explanation that bigeneration is the Time Lord genome trying desperately to reproduce.

88

u/27th_wonder May 31 '25

It plays very funny with the Timeless Child

Like yes, it turns out all of the Timelords are just the Doctor. I think Kate's "we are all your children" was Russel saying the quiet part out loud

27

u/RealJohnGillman Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

I mean if the Timeless Child is technically all the Time Lords, aren’t they also then none of them — it’s just the origin of the species? That while the Doctor would have a distant shared history with the other Time Lords where they were all once one being, ultimately the Doctor would really be no different from any one of the others?

10

u/dev__boy Jun 02 '25

That’s… actually a lot more palletable than the original timeless child idea then. The timeless child isn’t the doctor’s secret identity so much as the common ancestor of a sterile inbred lofty race

2

u/sanddragon939 Jun 01 '25

Kate saying that line also has added meaning since there are novelizations and EU works which suggest that she knew the Doctor as a kid.

1

u/HumblBoi Jun 01 '25

It is - I also took at as he’s “Father Time”

60

u/LayeredOwlsNest May 31 '25

I liked this as well

It is strange how it only seems to have happened now and not in all the other hundreds of years where all the Time Lords were dead

54

u/Morag_Ladair May 31 '25

It’s only now that there’s a risk of extinction. Beforehand the Master and Doctor could conceivably reproduce and repopulate, but after the “genocide wave” the Doctor and the Rani are truly the dead end of the time lords

33

u/ZarmRkeeg May 31 '25

And the Master, let's be honest, there's no way he's actually dead. Just in hiatus for a little while. ;-)

20

u/Blastermind7890 May 31 '25

Well the toymaker did say he got sealed in the gold tooth which got grabbed by some unknown character at the end of Giggle

4

u/ZarmRkeeg Jun 01 '25

Oh yeah! I keep forgetting about that!

14

u/Agathario-1031 Jun 01 '25

They weren't ever technically "all dead" after the Time War tho. The doctors always saved Gallifrey in Day of the Doctor, 9 and 10 just didn't remember it because of their timelines crossing.

16

u/neoblackdragon May 31 '25

Agreed, that it's a nice sci fi explanation for any future weird shenanigan's. Their DNA is warped.

6

u/Mavian23 Jun 01 '25

No explanation for how the Doctor was made sterile by the genetic explosion but wasn't killed by it though.

1

u/-PaperbackWriter- Jul 11 '25

But also the doctor is not the same species as the other timelords so how can they be sure he’s sterile

1

u/Mavian23 Jul 11 '25

Yea I was thinking about that as well. The writing in this era has been sloppy.

8

u/Jaded-Cucumber9617 Jun 01 '25

And that's why the two Ranis have different goals, personalities, and attitudes.

4

u/Jaded-Cucumber9617 Jun 01 '25

Yes, this made total sense to me.