Doctor Who Just Brought Back Faction Paradox | Screen Rant
The latest Doctor Who novel, Dave Rudden's The Wintertime Paradox, brings back the Doctor's most horrific enemies - the time travel cult Faction Paradox. The BBC famously cancelled Doctor Who in 1989, but it wasn't the end of the road for the enigmatic time traveler. The Doctor Who franchise had long since expanded into other mediums, and the Doctor's adventures simply continued elsewhere - including in a range of novels that pushed the boundaries of the franchise beyond anything the BBC would ever dare do in the series itself.
Take the example of Faction Paradox, who played a prominent role in the Eighth Doctor Adventures. Where Time Lords value stability, Faction Paradox revel in the impossible. They use their abilities to interfere in history and create horrific paradoxes, tearing the fabric of space and time apart at will. Their power is centered in the Eleven-Day Empire, a perceptual gap in time created when Britain changed its calendar in 1752. What's more, Faction Paradox's science is more akin to blood magic than to anything traditionally seen in Doctor Who. They're more horror than anything ever seen in the TV series. The Doctor was literally forced to destroy his homeworld of Gallifrey to defeat them - which explains why most fans assumed these stories were no longer canon.
And yet, they've just become canon again - in a rather fascinating way. Their return begins with a short story, "Canaries," published exclusively on the official Doctor Who website. This confirms Doctor Who's timeline has been rewritten countless times, with occasional relics from other timelines somehow surviving, hints of history as it could have been. One woman, Anke Von Grisel, has dedicated her life to collecting these artifacts; a pipe bearing the mark of a company that never existed, a coin commemorating Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government minted in 1954, and even the remnants of a Toclafane sphere from the TV story "Last of the Time Lords". "Those relics are like thorns poking into our reality," the Doctor attempts to warn Anke. "Keeping all of them together might cause a tear. A fracture. Something could come through, Anke, and I don’t know what that might be."
The power of so many paradoxes ultimately allows two members of Faction Paradox to force their way through to this reality, although they are more ghosts than real beings, dependent on the energy of temporal paradoxes in order to stay alive. Their story continues in Dave Rudden's The Wintertime Paradox, in which they attempt to rewrite history again and restore the timeline they originate from, which has been erased by the Doctor. They finally encounter Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor, and she recognizes them for what they are. "There was a group, in those wild times," she remembers, recalling a timeline she apparently erased. "They chased paradoxes. Wore masks. I thought most of them had left this universe far behind before the first shots of the war were even fired."
The Wintertime Paradox is an excellent and well-written book, and it offers a subtle explanation of Doctor Who's insane continuity. The franchise is doubling down on a new approach to time travel, embracing the idea history has been rewritten countless times. Apparently the Eighth Doctor Adventures, all those battles with Faction Paradox, and presumably even the destruction of Gallifrey itself, are all part of a timeline the Doctor erased - but she still remembers. In Doctor Who, there's a sense in which everything is canon, and nothing is at the same time.