#saving tigmi

[rowanthestrange]

Thirteen regenerating back into Ten would literally be the ultimate Bad Ending for her.

By which I mean on a narrative level would be amazing, and I would be completely fascinated by, and makes perfect sense.

Because we want and expect Thirteen to ultimately make the ‘right’ choice at the end here. Right for the universe, and her relationship with Yaz, and for herself etc. Because she’s the hero and that’s what a ‘good person’ is supposed to do in a story. But the thing is, anyone with eyes should know by now that just cus she’s the main character, she isn’t a ‘good person’.

We have been watching her bad/Division/Master moments only get more and more blatant, but have yet to have any comeuppance for that. Nor does she even seem to have any conscience about them, not even a little bit. She enjoys being the shark. We have one episode left and that hasn’t been addressed let alone fixed.

So what if she doesn’t make the right decision? Doesn’t break the cycle. Whatever the ‘right’ choices are, it’s Dr Yaz who makes them, she’s the real Doctor in that finale, and she tries to get 13 to make the correct decision etc. But it’s not enough, this doesn’t work, and Yaz technically saves the day and does everything she should, maybe even the Master does, but the Doctor does not.

Maybe it’s not wanting to rewrite the universe to save Tigmi because that means rewriting the universe where it’s her and Yaz. Her Division story is a mirror of River’s after all, and that ends with “Not one line”. 13 does her Time Lord Victorious speech of it being her at the mountainous unreachable summit above the others after saying “You want me to sacrifice you?” versus the safety of the universe.

So maybe rather than doing what’s best for everyone including literally herself, that is what leads to her regenerating. And of course she still loses what she’s grasping onto because Yaz is her own person and will choose what’s right over selfish love every time.

Because this is worse than her regenerating into a Master. This is regression. Completely antithetical to Doctor Who as a show and as a character.

And how obscenely meta. Everyone saying ‘this is going backwards,’ and yes, maybe that’s the point. It’s designed to make you feel the same emotions in the real world, Chibnall style.

She gets those memories back, and turns back into the person defined by his obscenely selfish version of love complete with mindwiping, and never ever learned, and didn’t want to go. He has just been permanently separated from the person that he loves all over again. The Master gone too. But now he knows how to shove an inconceivably large amount of information back into a brain. Lightbulb.

Thirteen - TenThree.

[rowanthestrange]

ok so again actor ethnicity doesn’t have to correlate to character’s etc. especially when we’re talking aliens.

But Bel is played by Thaddea Graham, Irish/Chinese and proud of it, and the name Bel is almost certainly a reference to Belfast. (AU Gallifrey is in Ireland) But if her last name is also related…

Her name could be Bel Hu.

[rowanthestrange]

So for ‘the Doctor is the Master is the Doctor’ theory I think I’ve got an idea of what might be the Division’s current setup. Roughly.

I’m currently thinking that the division is that they’re split from the same source (Tigmi) but the Division utilised the Doctor’s tendency to go mad under their control, and pulled the mad version over through a portal from a universe/timeline to enrich/be hostage for/give direction to the sane one (or vice versa), and now wipes and swaps them when the mad one recovers and the sane goes mad.

Religious themes: They realised Adam needed an Eve. Made out of his own self.

(Meaning Doctor and Master are effectively just words coding ‘Good’-Acting!TC and ‘Bad’-Acting!TC).

So if Martin!Doctor is universe/timeline b’s Doctor (arguably soft-coded to us as Master if we take sonic screwdriver meta), then that makes sense she A) Has no ‘Master’ just an analogue in Swarm they might have noticed worked well - Timeline b didn’t bring/hasn’t brought the other over yet. And B) That she can touch the Doctor - Blinovitch has never applied to the same person from different universes/timelines (e.g. Mickey and Ricky) it’s only for literally the same person.

And maybe this is why we have Gallifrey Is In Ireland metaphor story and the Master’s Timeless Child storytime don’t line up - in one there’s one child, in the other there are two. In Martin!Doctor’s head she had two parents, but the Doctor only has Tecteun.

And in the Master’s storytime we see that very convenient portal to the next universe.

So, what if this is a second go at the plan which is technically the first? The Division successfully kidnap the Timeless Child, put her where she will be found by Tecteun (‘think of the advancements that could’ve been made if we’d found her earlier, rather than after the incident stealing the ship’) ie. shove her through the portal.

If The Division (that’s implied to already have existed pre-Tecteun and remembering the Irish metaphor, it’s the policeman that tells the man to take the child home) already have this universe’s version of the Child, freshly reset, then maybe it’s also given to Tecteun as well, hence why there are two kids on the cliff now. Not twins, but one looking very much like a wee little Dhawan!Master.

And whatever we’re doing with Tigmi now in whatever universe we might happen to be in (portals, Not-Gallifreyans, Rose station idfk), is what’s making everything go crunch because that’s the fundamental difference between this universe and the other one where otherwise it should be literally the same without external tampering.

(also if Martin!Doctor then is our Master now, then we finally know why Lee is named Lee and it would be that stupid Movie!Master/Lee pairing and that feels like very on-brand Chibs nonsense)

[rowanthestrange]

How dark can we go?

Because just following what we have: Barton kills his mother. Swarm kills Tecteun. Both blatant Master mirrors.

Depending on how much the Master understands of both Tigmi, and the extent to what the Division have done with him and the Doctor, along with his suicidal nature…

Does he actually kill Bel (currently therefore plus Tigmi)?

And boom, the Doctor is suddenly disintegrating, panicking, screaming for Yaz because she had no warning she’s just ending now

And depending on which universe we’re talking or however we’re handling it, probably the Master disintegrating too.

Leaving Yaz to have to do something to rewrite this, be the Doctor in the TARDIS because what the hell else is she supposed to do.

Save Tigmi, save the poet, save the universe, she knows this.

We would have probably reminded the audience that Yaz can fly the TARDIS during Vinder’s stick-up - him saying why he could (Amy and the Astronaut one of two) shoot the Doctor. So we can roll fairly easily into her doing just that.

Maybe this is where the podcast fits in from what I know of the premise. “Oh Rowan, Ace and Tegan definitely still exist because-” no, we’ve almost certainly already done our bit seeing them and Kate, cus Yaz looks like she’s already got Kate’s gun in the stick-up.

[rowanthestrange]

I really hope our theories about the trailer and the Timeless Child/Tigmi things are more or less accurate, because I really want to see that story and think it makes a good one. The Doctor (ultimately if not entirely gracefully) showing the roughness of the situation but basically trying to heal from everything, even if her coping mechanisms aren’t always the right ones. And the Master showing the destructive but still relatable responses, someone who hasn’t been able to heal and doesn’t really know how.

I want it to be that situation of Bel and Vinder having to send their daughter away from them in what they see as their only choice, the only chance to save her, full of grief because they love her so much…and for the Master to be so angry with them for doing that. Hate them more than the Time Lords and anything else that came after because it’s their fault the child was there for that to happen in the first place. They should have tried harder. Or they should have accepted it and kept the child in the terrible situation and at least they could have been together. They should have bent reality in two to fix it - that’s what he would have done.

That child’s desire to go back and change things so you never ended up being in care; or to punish the people who hurt you, the state that kept you and failed you all over again, to punish your parents for ‘abandoning’ you; to make it so you were never born. I think it could be quite cathartic for some people if done right. Showing the rage that is so so understandable but also only going to hurt yourself and others around you. It could be an interesting story, but more importantly, it could be a valuable one - even if it comes with no easy answers, but simply explores those feelings.

[rowanthestrange]

What if we are in a universe where the Timeless Child was saved? Right now. We are in Timeline-B, not A, we’ve already swapped.

Cryptocurrency Brax is a Timeline-B ‘Not-Time-Lord’.

Bel and Vinder are Timeline-B Not-Gallifreyans from Not-Gallifrey: Long-lived, psychic, implied complexity in getting pregnant, and a lovely Academy to be trained in.

Not-Gallifrey is the centre of importance cus Tecteun never took the Timeless Child back to her home planet of Gallifrey - it still developed with her help, but without regeneration.

The Division still rules in both timelines but it’s using both Gallifrey and Not-Gallifrey, with Cryptocurrency Brax and other Not-Time-Lords. As we can assume via Vinder’s flashbacks and Bel’s coat etc.

TARDISes are a myth to Vinder because they’re not Not-Gallifrey tech, they’re still Gallifreyan tech created by Tecteun which is why Swarm and Azure are so angry with her etc. (The Division highest levels presumably still have access to them). Neo-Time Lords still a thing, but without regeneration they’re probably more vulnerable to invasion trying to get that technology, hinders the empire building.

This is why we’ve seen two Gallifreys. The one that we saw the Master nuke all life from, and a Gallifrey full of grass and Cybermen. They’re not incompatible at all because the Gallifrey the Master burned no longer existed in the first place, and the other Gallifrey has Neo-citizens aplenty to convert. Probably explains why we needed the purple portal though.

We know one of the Doctor’s splits was pulled to Tigmi, so Tigmi is her. But that means that Tigmi is from Timeline-B and is/was/will be used to create Timeline-A. But to start Timeline-A means Timeline-B does not exist unless you break Timeline-A. The Timeless Child as the ultimate paradox. They exist because they cannot exist. A manifest loop completely untethered from time.

Gat seemed really high ranking, was recognised as Gallifreyan when scanned by Thirteen, and answers to Gallifrey, with a TARDIS (where we were with Jack), she was the one sent to get the Doctor. Why wouldn’t she regenerate when shot? Cus she can’t.

Maybe Martin!Doctor is who you get if you save Tigmi, save the Timeless Child. Different origin story, slightly different universe structure, but still the same result. We met her parents, ‘the Doctor’ is an inevitability either way. But perhaps they lived very differently to the idyllic life with Tigmi we’d want because they knew, were told what was going on with her, knew the risks of what people would do if they found out who and what she was, and would have to be exiles forever. Ruth talks about her not-good-with-people parents who lived in the lighthouse. Not ‘parent’ like Tecteun, but ‘parents’ plural. Ruth says “Forgotten what it feels like to come back here. Like nothing can touch me.”

(Aside: Ruth believed she moved to Gloucester in mid-December - that more or less lines up with the Final Flux event and is probably important, especially knowing how much Chibnall cared about dates and also knowing that he had to cut two episodes from Flux.)

The presence of old faces doesn’t help us identify anything: Jack is a fixed point, he’s stuck whatever, and for all we know old adventures would still more or less line up. Kate knew the Doctor but doesn’t seem surprised or comment on her being a woman - maybe because that’s not new to her, perhaps M!Doc’s in a line of predominantly female Doctors instead of male, whatever. Could be because the Earth was protected that nothing could alter on it at all anyway. (And Tecteun escaped Timeline-A before it ruptured, safe on her way out the universe, and let’s hope Tecteun-B’s dead in a ditch somewhere)

(Fringe idea: Our Master still exists in the universe like our Doctor does, and is the one who sends Ruth the mysterious text from an unknown sender that lets her free herself - “Follow the light. Break the glass. Happy birthday. X.” - ‘happy birthday’ ala Missy and because of the nature of the story, call back to Clara, texting the Doctor, and a kiss - a bit French. And we have a prophecy etc.)

By no means is this a full working theory. Less needs the edges sanding off and is more like a rough blueprint before we’ve started making anything, just analysing what we’re seeing. I don’t know how it would all work in context - it’s obvious there’s a Save Tigmi split point that could make a paradox loop in Timeline-A but there are still other paradoxical elements. Could mean the theory’s completely wrong, could be I’m missing some key parts, could be we don’t have the tools to crack it and this is as far as we can go without details.

But it’d explain how the Doctor’s memories are a house that doesn’t make sense, cus they can’t, they’re different and incompatible timelines crashed together.

[rowanthestrange]

Bit freeform but stick with me:

Swarm and Azure want Time to be released and to have universal control. They are perfectly content to murder millions of innocent people as a bargaining chip. Not good people.

Swarm and Azure effectively want to be the new Time Lords, new Division. Their atrocities are more noticeable on the surface, but fundamentally there is no difference. They are simply a replacement of one Empire with another.

The narrative itself has us pushed to the idea that Time being enslaved the way it is, is not a good thing; the Doctor’s desire to conserve the status quo, is not actually the right call.

So we need to free Time, but truly. Not putting it under someone else’s dominion again.

Wild Time is flexible. That’s why Rassilon wanted it locked down under known lines. To what extent does that flexibility work? If you free Time, Can you go back and stop the Flux before it begins? Not undo it, but rewrite events so it never happened? Probably.

The Doctor wants to preserve the status quo. But not at any cost. Not poets, not the fam, not children.

Swarm and Azure. “Translations, but they’ll do.”

The Timeless Child. What if it’s also a translation?

Time Less, Time Absent, Time Without, Time Free-from, Time Free?

The Division made the Flux because they feared the Doctor. It’s the same story. The same resolution.

Saving the Timeless Child is saving the universe.

We save Tigmi/The Timeless Child/The Doctor and rewrite a hundred thousand no-such-thing-as-a-fixed-points because Time is Free - the Time Lords don’t exist to build their Empire on it, and we solve the Flux because the Flux never exists.

And - if not flexible enough - we boot the Doctor into the next universe along, cus neither should she.

[rowanthestrange]

No Timeless Child, no Time Lords, no Flux. No TARDIS. TARDISes.

If the Crystals are related to what we think they are, and their ideology is flipping the Empire to reverse the position of them and the Time Lords primarily as a reaction against subjugation, then does saving Tigmi solve the problem of them too?