Doctor Who’s best companions and helped new audiences more deeply understand the Doctor’s past.

The Doctor’s history is a very complicated one, and his status as the “last of the Time Lords” has been repeatedly brought into question in recent years. It was certainly true when the Ninth Doctor emotionally confessed, “I’m the last of them… they’re gone” in his second adventure, but the show has given so much extra backstory in the years since that it’s hard to take these words at face value.

The Fifteenth Doctor's "Last Time Lord" Speech Lacks Emotional Impact

The Doctor Knows That Gallifrey Survived The Time War

While it was touching to see the Doctor recognize his heritage in “Lux,” the speech that he gives ultimately lacks conviction and emotional impact because of how convoluted the story of Gallifrey has been recently. When actors such as Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant gave similar speeches during their time on the show, it worked effectively because the audience had no reason to believe that Gallifrey still existed. Every word could be taken as the Doctor intended it, and it helped develop the Doctor’s story in a powerful way.

However, the events of “The Timeless Children” make it difficult to care about the future of Gallifrey anymore. Ever since 2005’s “Rose”, Doctor Who had been building towards the “return” of the Time Lords’ home planet, and it took ten years before “Hell Bent” finally took the Doctor back where he belongs. However, the planet quickly became irrelevant in later Doctor Who stories, with the Master destroying Gallifrey again in “The Timeless Children”. Knowing how easily the planet can be made redundant makes it difficult to fully invest in its safety anymore.

Gallifrey Shouldn't Have Been Destroyed So Quickly After Coming Back

Audiences Didn't Even Get A Chance To Return To The Time Lord's Home

The Doctor’s journey to reclaim Gallifrey took ten years in total, and it was the single overarching subplot that connected the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors. While every incarnation of the Doctor had their own companions and storylines, this grief for Gallifrey was the one thing that connected them. This is why it was so impactful when the 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor”, revealed that Gallifrey had actually been safe all along, as multiple versions of the Doctor from his past, present, and future teamed up to transport the planet into a pocket dimension.

Doctor Who’s unwillingness to discuss Gallifrey’s second destruction in any meaningful depth proves just how poor of a writing decision it was.

But after this ten-year-long subplot of the Doctor saving his people and overcoming the grief that had plagued him since the show’s reboot in 2005, it only took another five years before the show ruined all this character development by having the Master destroy Gallifrey again. This made so much of the show’s previous storytelling redundant, and Doctor Who’s unwillingness to discuss Gallifrey’s second destruction in any meaningful depth proves just how poor of a writing decision it was.

Can Future Doctor Who Seasons Resurrect Gallifrey (Again)?

It's Probably Too Late For Gallifrey To Be Saved A Second Time

Another reason that the second destruction of Gallifrey doesn’t work from a narrative perspective is that now it’s almost impossible to bring the planet back without the entire storyline feeling repetitive. Saving Gallifrey was the single plot thread that connected the modern era for almost a decade, and “The Day of the Doctor” was supposed to be a way of wrapping that up for good - and, crucially, reintroducing Gallifrey and the Time Lords to the show.

If Doctor Who wants to bring Gallifrey back, the storyline will suffer from one of two things. Either the show will dash through everything too quickly and feel rushed and meaningless, or Doctor Who will take its time, and audiences will lose interest because they’ve already been emotionally invested in this. This means that Gallifrey is pretty much off-limits for the foreseeable future - a very poor decision given the show’s intention to “soft reboot” from season 14.