{"id":6517,"date":"2021-10-31T20:25:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T19:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1482991"},"modified":"2021-10-31T20:37:29","modified_gmt":"2021-10-31T19:37:29","slug":"did-doctor-who-just-introduce-another-secret-time-lord","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/did-doctor-who-just-introduce-another-secret-time-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Doctor Who just introduce another secret Time Lord?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Huw Fullerton\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 31 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The Halloween Apocalypse was an action-packed introduction for Doctor Who<\/a> series 13, delivering 50 minutes of thrills, chills and Weeping An-gills (sorry) as the Doctor and Yaz (Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill) tried to save the Earth from the devastating Flux. Among other things.<\/p>\n

Obviously, there\u2019s a lot to dissect from the episode \u2013 but one of the most striking moments had to be the introduction of new (or possibly old) baddie Swarm<\/a>, who claims to be an ancient foe of the Doctor now wiped from her memory (thanks to events glimpsed in series 12 finale The Timeless Children<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Exactly what their shared history is remains unclear \u2013 he describes them as \u201cdancing across space and time, locked in combat\u201d \u2013 but a few clues point towards Swarm being more than your average plastic-faced alien baddie (with apologies to Tim Shaw).<\/p>\n

What if\u2026 and bear with us here\u2026 he\u2019s some sort of Time Lord?<\/p>\n

OK, it\u2019s true, it sounds like we\u2019ve taken leave of our senses. But we can\u2019t shake the sensation that something connects Swarm to the Doctor\u2019s species, especially since \u2013 in his very first scene \u2013 he appears to regenerate.<\/p>

Trapped in a distant, ancient prison, Swarm\u2019s cage fails and he\u2019s unable to escape during the course of this episode, killing one of the Division operatives sent to check on him and somehow absorbing the other. Of course, we learned last series that The Division are sort of Time Lord Black Ops \u2013 like Gallifrey\u2019s CIA \u2013 so the fact that they\u2019re watching over him is interesting in of itself.<\/p>\n

But when Swarm breaks free, he does something curious. Absorbing energy from one of the operatives, he rejuvenates himself, changing his appearance and declaring that he is \u201crenewed at last!\u201d. He also changes actor \u2013 \u2018Old Swarm\u2019 is credited to Matthew Needham, while Swarm Prime (if that\u2019s what we\u2019re calling him) is played by Sam Spruell, with a distinctly different, skull-like appearance. Considering the levels of prosthetics involved, why bother changing between actors unless you were making a particular point?<\/p>\n

So what have we seen here? A dangerous figure, with ties to the Time Lords\u2026 who is able to rejuvenate his body\u2026 which changes his face and the actor playing his character. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

His choice of the \u2018renewal\u2019 wording is also telling. When Jo Martin was introduced as a previously-unknown incarnation of the Doctor in 2020\u2019s Fugitive of the Judoon, her status as an earlier version was signposted by her habit of calling the TARDIS \u201cmy ship\u201d just like First Doctor William Hartnell.<\/p>\n

\""The\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
The Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) in Doctor Who<\/span><\/figcaption> BBC<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

And similarly, the very first time we saw a regeneration onscreen (between William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton) it was referred to as a renewal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been renewed, have I? That\u2019s it. I\u2019ve been renewed,\u201d Troughton\u2019s Second Doctor says.<\/p>\n

Swarm, supposedly, has been in prison since \u201cthe dawn of the universe\u201d \u2013 is this similar language a suggestion that he could have been part of the earlier society of Time Lords?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly an intriguing idea \u2013 though of course, some details count against it. For one, the regeneration looks different to how it\u2019s been presented in the series in recent years, and seems to involve draining the life from another figure. Arguably, Swarm could have just been draining life force, and restoring his appearance to what it always used to be before millennia trapped in a cage.<\/p>\n

Swarm also doesn\u2019t look like a traditional depiction of a Time Lord. While technically they could regenerate into any appearance, almost all of them have usually appeared entirely human (or rather, humans look like Time Lords \u2013 long story), casting further doubt on this theory.<\/p>\n

Still, it could be that the truth is somewhere in between. In series 12 finale The Timeless Children, we learned that the true origins of regeneration were not on Gallifrey, with a much<\/em> younger version of the Doctor bringing the ability through from another universe, only to have the trick spliced into Gallifreyans.<\/p>\n

\""Doctor\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>\n

Maybe Swarm (and his sister Azure, played by Rochenda Sandall) have some connection to the Doctor\u2019s pre-Gallifrey life. Maybe they\u2019re her true species from the other universe, long lost to her after multiple regenerations. Or maybe they\u2019re some sort of rival to the Time Lords, able to recreate their regenerations with their own, darker version.<\/p>\n

After all, not every regeneration is the same. We\u2019ve seen The Master steal other people\u2019s bodies or regeneration cycles, infect someone as a weird little snake and generally break the rules around regeneration faster than the series can make them up. Who\u2019s to say what Swarm does to the Division operative isn\u2019t something similar?<\/p>\n

Or maybe he\u2019s just an alien who can suck a bit of life force, like a spiky Dementor. We really, truly probably are overthinking this, and will be back here in a few weeks more red-faced than Swarm himself.<\/p>\n

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And if there\u2019s anything we\u2019ve learned from this era of Doctor Who, it\u2019s that we shouldn\u2019t take anything we think we know about Time Lords as a given.<\/p>\n

Read more about Doctor Who:<\/strong><\/p>\n