He is in fact a foundling, a poor little black girl, who is the sole source of the regenerative ability of the Time Lords, hence the true founder of their society, not Rassilon.

This clip does not show, but I have it on good authority that the scientist and mother of the Doctor, a super-scientist who isolates the regeneration gene code, of course, of course, is a strong female character, and the first female space explorer of Gallifrey.

In some other context, in the hands of another writer, at some other point in time, making William Hartnell into a little orphaned black girl who is also the sole source of the immortality of the Time Lords might have been a perfectly legitimate science fictional flourish to a beloved and long-running series.

But that is not the context here. We live in a day and age when a professor in a lecture hall can be forced by threat of lawsuit not to call his students “mister” and “miss” — a male student insisted on being addressed by a female pronoun — and the professor is not allowed gracefully to obey but to announce his protest to this prohibition in his syllabus. He must obey without protest.

I have not seen the episode, nor, indeed, the season, nor ever will I.

Doctor Who is dead to me. Farewell, faithful childhood friend from Gallifrey!

I will recall your wonderful adventures forever. The hacks who scribbled you over with clownish graffiti of political correctness, I will not hate forever, for I have it from Dante that the coldest and lowest place in Hell is reserved for betrayers.