After Doctor Who Season 15’s Big Cameo, I’m Worried A Landmark Timeless Child Reveal Happened Offscreen

Jo Martin’s Doctor is the show’s figurehead when it comes to the countless versions of the Time Lord that now exist before William Hartnell’s First Doctor. These other iterations of Doctor Who‘s main character were introduced when former showrunner Chris Chibnall wrote them in during his ambitious-but-incredibly-divisive Timeless Child arc. While the storyline was riddled with plot holes, one part of it made perfect sense. Before the Doctor regenerated into William Hartnell and became the Doctor that the show has followed since 1963, the character’s memory was wiped by a Time Lord black-ops group called Division.

In “The Story and the Engine,” Doctor Who appears to have either ignored or forgotten that particular part of Chibnall’s biggest twist, because Fifteen is able to recall meeting Abena during his time as the Fugitive Doctor. Such a thing shouldn’t be possible, even if he does visibly struggle to remember where he has seen Asante’s character before. The Timeless Child went beyond the suggestion that all those pre-Hartnell memories were just buried, but that they were removed from the Doctor’s mind entirely. So, Fifteen remembering Abena and opening the door for Martin’s cameo is a confusing development.

Has The Doctor Restored The Memories They Received From Tecteun?

The Doctor does still have his lost memories somewhere aboard the TARDIS

Chibnall didn’t shy away from turning Doctor Who canon on its head after the Timeless Child twist, but went on to write the equally momentous Flux storyline shortly after. Flux took up the entirety of Doctor Who season 13 and was Jodie Whittaker’s final main run of episodes as the Thirteenth Doctor. Near the end of Flux, Tecteun (Barbara Flynn) returns the memories to the Doctor that were taken at the end of their service to Division. Although Thirteen accepts the watch in which the memories are stored, she chooses not to reintegrate them.

“Do me a favor. Keep this safe. Somewhere deep within this TARDIS. Somewhere I can never find it…unless I really ask for it.”

– The Thirteenth Doctor to the TARDIS in Doctor Who season 13, episode 6, “The Vanquishers.”

Although references have since been made to the Doctor’s newly-revealed past, the moment that shows Thirteen dropping the watch into the depths of the TARDIS is the last time the audience saw the alien timepiece. Regardless, the possibility remains that the Doctor has since had a change of hearts. Thirteen, David Tennant’s Fourteen, and Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteen have all had ample opportunity to do what Whittaker’s Doctor held herself back from at the end of “The Vanquishers.”

Thirteen even suggests, while hiding the watch from herself in the TARDIS, that it still isn’t outside of her reach, saying that her blue box should still return it to her if she really, really wants it back. So, the Doctor may have chosen to reabsorb the returned memories since then, and Doctor Who just hasn’t shown the moment happening. If so, this would explain why Fifteen remembered Abena and would even account for his struggles to remember her clearly at first. There is a lot of information in that watch, so it wouldn’t be easy to process.

The Memories Might Be Bleeding Into The Doctor’s Mind Without Him Knowing

The TARDIS may ultimately turn out to be a conduit for reimparting the Doctor’s lost memories

While the most logical explanation, as far as I’m concerned, is that the Doctor has chosen to open the watch and take back his pre-Hartnell memories, there are other possibilities. Of these alternate theories, I think the most likely is that choosing to store the watch in the depths of the TARDIS has turned out to be a less secure option than the Doctor originally assumed. The TARDIS is so big and alien that it is always presenting new quirks and functionalities, so it may have interacted with the memories in the Doctor’s watch in an interesting way.

Therefore, while the Doctor thought the watch would safely contain the memories until he was ready to confront his past lives, if that day ever even came, its presence so deep inside the TARDIS may have resulted in the memories leaking out into the surrounding Time Lord tech and making their way quietly into the Doctor’s recollections. This would, understandably, be an inefficient and slow way for the watch to impart the information it holds, which could account for the Doctor knowing who Abena was, but needing more to jog his memory before it all fell into place.

Why Doctor Who’s Timeless Child Memory Restoration Shouldn’t Happen Offscreen

It would certainly be an interesting writing decision to have a moment so important happen offscreen, but not one that I think would be a very good idea. It has seemed for a while now as though Doctor Who has been trying to acknowledge the Timeless Child storyline while also sweeping it under the rug. This kind of indecision ultimately hurts the story that’s trying to be told, and the Doctor opening the memory watch in his time away from the screen would embody the show’s fractious relationship with Chibnall’s time as Doctor Who‘s showrunner.

If Russell T. Davies is planning a return to the Fugitive Doctor and the Time Lord’s tenure with Division, which certainly seems to be the plan with Martin’s cameo taking place, then he should either commit to the story fully or not bother with it at all. If he’s doing the former, then the audience needs to see the Doctor opening the watch so they can witness what that process looks like and how Doctor Who‘s main character starts to change.