The foundling falls from a cliff top in The Timeless Children (2020).
Tucked away on the DVDs and Blu-rays of The Complete Fifth Series are two Doctor Who mini-episodes called Meanwhile in the TARDIS. In the second of those episodes we finally learn the answer to one of the longstanding Doctor Who questions: the reason why the Doctor travels with others.
It’s because, after a while, everything in the universe becomes just ‘stuff’. “You make all of space and time your backyard and what do you have? A backyard.” But when he’s with someone seeing it for the first time, he sees it as they see it. He sees with fresh eyes; he sees it properly.
Being a grown-up Doctor Who fan can feel like that sometimes. It’s been around for so long, and there’s been so much of it, that new Doctor Who can sometimes feel like more stuff being added to the top of a very high pile. Everything that’s new is viewed in terms of the old. How does a new incarnation of the Master compare with his predecessors? How does this new Cyberman story match up with all the old Cyberman stories? How do the new facts we’re told about the Doctor in The Timeless Children fit with the facts we’ve previously been told?
Just like the Doctor, sometimes you can lose sight of what really matters. Which is what those stories are like for someone coming to Doctor Who as something unknown and brand new, without preconceptions, agendas or baggage. What they’re like for a young child.