Warning: Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who season 15, episode 8, "The Reality War."Chibnall's Timeless Child arc. The twist overhauled the Doctor's history in 2020, when season 12's "The Timeless Children" revealed Doctor Who's main character was the first of his find who could regenerate, and that the skill was harvested by the foundling's caretaker, Tecteun, and implanted into select Gallifreyans, forming the basis of the Time Lord society.

Returning for a second spell in charge to relieve Chibnall in 2023, Russell T. Davies has toyed with the idea of retconning the Timeless Child twist several times during end of "The Reality War," he's now come the closest yet to getting rid of one of the most divisive plots in franchise history. The Timeless Child is hanging by a thread and could realistically be ignored if that's a viewer's preference.

Doctor Who Season 15's Finale Calls Omega The First Time Lord & Originator Of Time Travel

Tecteun isn't even mentioned in "The Reality War"

"The Timeless Children" unveiled Tecteun as the figure responsible for the creation of the Time Lords, but failed to acknowledge Omega, who had long been credited with that same honor. The return of Omega in "The Reality War" dubs him the first Time Lord, with the season 15 finale returning the favor of "The Timeless Children" by not mentioning Tecteun. So, it would appear that Omega has reclaimed the title in Doctor Who canon.

Omega wasn't technically a Time Lord, as the experiment that led to the discovery of time travel resulted in him being lost in another dimension.

Omega is a far more deserving character to be named the creator of the Time Lords. He is a pivotal figure in Gallifreyan history, as he is the person who discovered time travel, which became the development that went on to define the Time Lords. That said, Omega wasn't technically a Time Lord, as the experiment that led to the discovery of time travel resulted in him being lost in another dimension.

Therefore, the Time Lords were created in Omega's absence, with him believed to be dead rather than just trapped. Regardless, time travel seems like a far more important discovery than regeneration, and one that's far more fitting for someone being dubbed the originator of the Time Lords, even if Omega never was one himself. Either way, it seems like a definitive writing choice by Davies to leave Tecteun's name out of "The Reality War."

Doctor Who Season 15's Time Lord Retcon Resets Canon To The Pre-Timeless Child Years

Chibnall's biggest Doctor Who storyline has now been functionally wiped out

Omega had long been hailed by both the Time Lords and Doctor Who fans as being the most important figure in the period before the time-traveling society existed. Before Omega, there were only Gallifreyans, and no Time Lords. Omega worked his way into Time Lord legend because of his scientific efforts and the sacrifice he made, but Chibnall's introduction of Tecteun and her gift of regeneration to the Time Lords from the Doctor's body sort of eclipsed Omega's accomplishments for a while.

Davies bringing so much attention to Omega's fate, and how he came to be in the Underverse, all without a mention of Tecteun, essentially wipes her and the Doctor's reworked origin story from the Doctor Who canon.

Davies bringing so much attention to Omega's fate, and how he came to be in the Underverse, all without a mention of Tecteun, essentially wipes her and the Doctor's reworked origin story from the Doctor Who canon. It is probably still there, bubbling away in the background, but for all intents and purposes, the Doctor is a regular Time Lord who is remarkable only in his outstanding proclivity for heroics, rather than being highlighted as a member of an unknown alien race and the first known case of someone regenerating.

The return of Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor in "The Story and the Engine" is a confusingly big outlier in Davies' Timeless Child retcon.

This isn't the first effort Davies has taken to achieve this retcon. In 2023's "The Giggle," it was revealed that the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) had made a "jigsaw" out of the Doctor's history. This implied that the Doctor's new backstory and the existence of Tecteun were only recent additions to the Doctor Who universe, and that the Toymaker had meddled with the Doctor's timeline to confuse him. In other words, either version of events could be true, but the Timeless Child isn't the original version of the story.

How Omega & The Timeless Child Can Coexist In Doctor Who

Chibnall's era and the age of RTD2 need to find a way to live in harmony

Barring a definitive statement from the BBC saying that the Timeless Child has been 100% scrubbed from Doctor Who canon, it's going to remain part of the franchise's lore in some way. It may be pushed further and further to the back of the story, but that doesn't change the fact that the universe has essentially been split into two realities: one where the Timeless Child is relevant, and one where it isn't. So, Omega and the Timeless Child, each receiving credit for the creation of the Time Lords, will need to find a way to both be true.

Regeneration was once believed to be a result of would-be Time Lords spending so much time exposed to the Untempered Schism.

For instance, regeneration was once believed to be a result of would-be Time Lords spending so much time exposed to the Untempered Schism, whereas Tecteun's introduction to the show reveals that the ability is harvested from the Doctor. The former may be legend, and the latter fact, with few Time Lords knowing the answer for sure. Similarly, the Doctor is now believed to have fallen through from another dimension, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a different species.

The Doctor could be a Time Lord from another reality, one that runs ahead of the show's main universe and already has regeneration from the Untempered Schism. The limit of 12 regenerations per Time Lord is a little harder to solve between the two disparate origin stories, as the Doctor can regenerate infinite times while no one else can. That said, perhaps when the Time Lords granted Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor additional regenerations in "The Time of the Doctor", they made a mistake and gave him an endless amount.

Doctor Who has always been more than a little forgiving of reality, so what's just one more example?

All of this is to say is that the existence of both Omega and Tecteun doesn't need to create opposing theories. Instead, they can be two sides of the same coin that each answers the questions the other cannot. It's not a perfect solution, but it's one of the only ways the show can continue without becoming riddled with even more unsolvable plot holes. Doctor Who has always been more than a little forgiving of reality, so what's just one more example?