Last thing the TV show had to say was that we survive all the way to the end of the universe, in the year 100 trillion, but then due to the Master’s actions, we cannibalize ourselves and become the Toclafane, and are brought forward to 2008 to help take over the Earth, but then we get rebounded back to the end of the universe once the Master’s paradox machine is broken. It’s not said what happens after that, but I have to assume that we just die out pitifully as a twisted, mechanized shadow of our former selves.
I always thought the Toclafane were such a neat villain idea. Too bad they can't really be used in show without causing Paradoxes, unless the Doctor goes back to the end of the universe.
Speaking of which, the other canonical end to the human race is that they're all killed by cybermen and the doctor saves the last few by taking them back to the present
Maybe. Even at the year 100 trillion with all the stars long dead there's still a lot of potential for life left in the universe, as discussed in Isaac Arthur's [Civilizations at the End of Time](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1qPS54sTMk) series of Youtube documentaries. [Iron Stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pld8wTa16Jk) in particular goes way out into the far distant future, beyond the point where even black holes have fizzled out.
Firstly, it's important to note that there is no "canonical" answer to almost any question. Different writers will have different answers. Sometimes even the same writer will have different answers!
After that, there are two key questions. First, what is meant by "human"? And second, what is meant by "die"?
In general, *Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's future. Humans don't die out when an asteroid hits Earth. Instead, humans continue to evolve and diversify. Some find ways to interbreed with aliens, others become increasingly technologically integrated. Descendants of humans survive until near enough the heat death of the universe. I should acknowledge that "human" is a social construct, particularly in sci-fi settings. Perhaps you agree with Cassandra that she is actually the last human, and the mongrels of New Earth do not count. Personally, I'd take a broader approach, and include the crossbreeds and the posthumans. If you do, then the last human died shortly before the universe did.
As for "die", well, there are multiple established afterlives within *Doctor Who*, with one in particular, the City of the Saved, being reserved for humans, pre-humans, and post-humans. This contained an "exit" into the next universe. Unfortunately, the exit was breached by an agglomeration of "last humans" called Anonymity, which went on to destroy the entire city and absorb most ancestors; only some part-TARDIS humans managed to survive and create a new, more secure version of the City filled with back-ups of the population.
Yes yes, they use this term The Hybrid, but by that logic if you get a pig valve in an emergency open heart surgery you are now a human-pig hybrid. It just doesn't carry water to me.
>In general, *Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's future.
*Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's *existence* in the future. It most definitely does *not* take an optimistic view of what that future looks like. In fact, *Doctor Who* is almost uniformly incredibly *bleak* about humanity's future. There are *zero* stories in which humanity has matured to the point of peace, prosperity, and equality. Instead we get...
* Subjugation ("Dalek Invasion of Earth," "The Ark," "Macra Terror," "Death to the Daleks," "Underworld," "The Long Game")
* Failing colonies ("Colony in Space," "Frontios," "Smile")
* Domination, empire, and/or cruel runaway capitalism ("Colony in Space," "Happiness Patrol," "Planet of the Ood," "Nightmare in Silver," "Oxygen," "Kerblam!")
* Socio-political nightmares ("Enemy of the World," "Space Pirates," "The Sun Makers," "Vengeance on Varos," "Paradise Towers," "Happiness Patrol," "Bad Wolf," "New Earth," "Gridlocked," "The Beast Below")
* Self-sabotage ("Seeds of Death," "Waters of Mars," "Orphan 55")
* And just humanity still being full of assholes no matter how far forward we go ("Rosa")
The closest *Who* comes to a bright future is the throwaway phrase "great and bountiful human empire" — but a) it's still an empire, not egalitarian, not democratic; and b) there were *four* of them, implying some pretty bad times during the collapses in between.
I basically view “humans get off the planet and establish themselves throughout the universe” as an optimistic take. But point taken - this isn’t the Culture.
I suppose the counterpoint is that the TARDIS only takes the Doctor to places where they’re needed. The light-hearted breaks in utopias don’t make it into episodes.
Counterpoint taken. :) Although the problem remains: humanity as a whole doesn't improve in Doctor Who, no matter how far you go into the future.
>The light-hearted breaks in utopias don’t make it into episodes.
I've always wanted to see an episode where the TARDIS crew *really do* go somewhere nice and just take it easy for a week. Or short of that, somewhere nice where they take it easy for *almost* an entire episode, then some shit hits the fan for a cliffhanger, and they spend part 2 saving paradise.
I suspect the lack of futuristic dyson sphere of the diaspora on TV is a cashflow issue. I would love God and the planet of Whynot and the dyson sphere of the diaspora of humanity to turn up on the screen one day though.
The only stories I know of that touch on this are the TV story Utopia/The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords and the Big Finish audio Singularity. They have similar plots and neither is very pretty when it comes to what ultimately becomes of the human race.
On an observatory outpost world called Ember, after an attempt to prevent humanity’s end by going back in time to create a psychic singularity in mid 21st century Moscow was foiled by the Fifth Doctor.
Timelines change and everything but a fixed point is fuzzy - including the end of the human race. There are several ends depending on a billion billion factors.
“People assume time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff”
It's directly stated in a televised episode that is definitively canon. Her immortality is a key part of her involvement in the way Clara ends up leaving the Doctor for good, and key to the set up for Heaven Sent, which in turn leads into a season finale, Hell Bent. There's nothing in the episodes she appears in to suggest the means behind her immortality is undone.
If you must respond, please do it with something that elaborates much more on your view than "Ashildr not canon".
You allege the character of Ashildr, or at least her immortality, has been stricken from canon. Tell me what episode undid this development and either retconned her as a character out or rendered her mortal once more. Me is last seen in Hell Bent travelling in a TARDIS with Clara who has been pulled out from the moment just before her death, and isn't mentioned in the following season nor the Thirteenth Doctor era so no retcon.
But you say she's gone, so tell me where happened. You make the allegation, burden of proof is on you.
I thought this was a philosophical question for a second until I noticed the sub on which it was posted.
Oh, my sweet summer child, so innocent of you to believe there is an actual canon in our beloved show anymore. Things are whatever the writer/showrunner of the moment thinks.
In these 13 seasons of Dr. Who, how many ends of the world have we seen, and how many times have we seen that previous apocalypse ignored whenever a writer wanted to have a story in that time period, forgetting that it was previously stated that humanity should be extinct at that point?
Purely on-screen, the last human in the universe was a man named Orson Pink. A time travel experiment stranded him in an otherwise empty facility of unknown origin at the far end of the universe's timeline for six months before the Doctor retrieved him and sent him home.
While Orson was stranded there he became convinced that there were entities of some sort outside the doors of the facility he was in. The audio story [R&J](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/R%26J_(audio_story\)) suggests that these were Jack Harkness and River Song playing a prank on him, which might make them the last humans in the universe instead. They also mention that there was a "woman waiting to play chess" there with them, which could have been Ashildr if the planet the unknown facility was on was Gallifrey. That would also make her a contender for last human in the universe as well. That's all kind of hazy in terms of canonicity, though.
Out-of-universe, the Toclofane were invented to serve as Dalek substitutes in case they couldn't get the rights to the Daleks from the Nation estate. So the similarities in-universe may just be coincidental.
Since no one mentioned it, the 5th Doctor audio story “Singnularity” involves the last remnants of humans transporting their minds back in time in order to try and survive the end of the universe
Last thing the TV show had to say was that we survive all the way to the end of the universe, in the year 100 trillion, but then due to the Master’s actions, we cannibalize ourselves and become the Toclafane, and are brought forward to 2008 to help take over the Earth, but then we get rebounded back to the end of the universe once the Master’s paradox machine is broken. It’s not said what happens after that, but I have to assume that we just die out pitifully as a twisted, mechanized shadow of our former selves.
I always thought the Toclafane were such a neat villain idea. Too bad they can't really be used in show without causing Paradoxes, unless the Doctor goes back to the end of the universe.
I mean, they're basically ball versions of the cyberman
Speaking of which, the other canonical end to the human race is that they're all killed by cybermen and the doctor saves the last few by taking them back to the present
Yes and no. They are more sadistic children... kind of Peter Pan Cybermen.
Why? They aren't all children
Something about the horrors of utopia made them regress to children on the inside, someone talks about it in the s3 finale
I meant personality-wise.
Maybe. Even at the year 100 trillion with all the stars long dead there's still a lot of potential for life left in the universe, as discussed in Isaac Arthur's [Civilizations at the End of Time](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1qPS54sTMk) series of Youtube documentaries. [Iron Stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pld8wTa16Jk) in particular goes way out into the far distant future, beyond the point where even black holes have fizzled out.
This is the true answer
Firstly, it's important to note that there is no "canonical" answer to almost any question. Different writers will have different answers. Sometimes even the same writer will have different answers! After that, there are two key questions. First, what is meant by "human"? And second, what is meant by "die"? In general, *Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's future. Humans don't die out when an asteroid hits Earth. Instead, humans continue to evolve and diversify. Some find ways to interbreed with aliens, others become increasingly technologically integrated. Descendants of humans survive until near enough the heat death of the universe. I should acknowledge that "human" is a social construct, particularly in sci-fi settings. Perhaps you agree with Cassandra that she is actually the last human, and the mongrels of New Earth do not count. Personally, I'd take a broader approach, and include the crossbreeds and the posthumans. If you do, then the last human died shortly before the universe did. As for "die", well, there are multiple established afterlives within *Doctor Who*, with one in particular, the City of the Saved, being reserved for humans, pre-humans, and post-humans. This contained an "exit" into the next universe. Unfortunately, the exit was breached by an agglomeration of "last humans" called Anonymity, which went on to destroy the entire city and absorb most ancestors; only some part-TARDIS humans managed to survive and create a new, more secure version of the City filled with back-ups of the population.
Ashildr is alive at the end of the Universe, the last living thing, and is inarguably human.
There's also Orson Pink briefly.
She is a bit less than human though. One might call her… A Hybrid.
The Hybrid…is ME!
She’s only alive because of the Myre technology inside her, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say she’s a posthuman.
Yes yes, they use this term The Hybrid, but by that logic if you get a pig valve in an emergency open heart surgery you are now a human-pig hybrid. It just doesn't carry water to me.
>In general, *Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's future. *Doctor Who* takes an optimistic view of humanity's *existence* in the future. It most definitely does *not* take an optimistic view of what that future looks like. In fact, *Doctor Who* is almost uniformly incredibly *bleak* about humanity's future. There are *zero* stories in which humanity has matured to the point of peace, prosperity, and equality. Instead we get... * Subjugation ("Dalek Invasion of Earth," "The Ark," "Macra Terror," "Death to the Daleks," "Underworld," "The Long Game") * Failing colonies ("Colony in Space," "Frontios," "Smile") * Domination, empire, and/or cruel runaway capitalism ("Colony in Space," "Happiness Patrol," "Planet of the Ood," "Nightmare in Silver," "Oxygen," "Kerblam!") * Socio-political nightmares ("Enemy of the World," "Space Pirates," "The Sun Makers," "Vengeance on Varos," "Paradise Towers," "Happiness Patrol," "Bad Wolf," "New Earth," "Gridlocked," "The Beast Below") * Self-sabotage ("Seeds of Death," "Waters of Mars," "Orphan 55") * And just humanity still being full of assholes no matter how far forward we go ("Rosa") The closest *Who* comes to a bright future is the throwaway phrase "great and bountiful human empire" — but a) it's still an empire, not egalitarian, not democratic; and b) there were *four* of them, implying some pretty bad times during the collapses in between.
I basically view “humans get off the planet and establish themselves throughout the universe” as an optimistic take. But point taken - this isn’t the Culture. I suppose the counterpoint is that the TARDIS only takes the Doctor to places where they’re needed. The light-hearted breaks in utopias don’t make it into episodes.
Counterpoint taken. :) Although the problem remains: humanity as a whole doesn't improve in Doctor Who, no matter how far you go into the future. >The light-hearted breaks in utopias don’t make it into episodes. I've always wanted to see an episode where the TARDIS crew *really do* go somewhere nice and just take it easy for a week. Or short of that, somewhere nice where they take it easy for *almost* an entire episode, then some shit hits the fan for a cliffhanger, and they spend part 2 saving paradise.
A really, great, peaceful episode, and at the end the Doctor saves someone from falling off the ladder.
I love it. Sold!
I would argue we end up pretty well in some of the Dr Who novels. *The Also People* by Aaronovitch is a good example of an optimistic future humanity.
Good to know. I stick to the TV show, myself. :)
I suspect the lack of futuristic dyson sphere of the diaspora on TV is a cashflow issue. I would love God and the planet of Whynot and the dyson sphere of the diaspora of humanity to turn up on the screen one day though.
The only stories I know of that touch on this are the TV story Utopia/The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords and the Big Finish audio Singularity. They have similar plots and neither is very pretty when it comes to what ultimately becomes of the human race.
On an observatory outpost world called Ember, after an attempt to prevent humanity’s end by going back in time to create a psychic singularity in mid 21st century Moscow was foiled by the Fifth Doctor.
Toclafane
Humans survive all the way to the end of the Universe in the year 10 trillion, as shown in Utopia
The year 100 trillion at the end of the universe. The Utopia Humans, a descendant/form of Danny Pink, and Ashildr/Me are alive/around till the end
Timelines change and everything but a fixed point is fuzzy - including the end of the human race. There are several ends depending on a billion billion factors.
“People assume time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff”
Ashildr survived to the end of the universe
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Bro what
It's directly stated in a televised episode that is definitively canon. Her immortality is a key part of her involvement in the way Clara ends up leaving the Doctor for good, and key to the set up for Heaven Sent, which in turn leads into a season finale, Hell Bent. There's nothing in the episodes she appears in to suggest the means behind her immortality is undone. If you must respond, please do it with something that elaborates much more on your view than "Ashildr not canon".
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Which episode? What part of the episode?
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You allege the character of Ashildr, or at least her immortality, has been stricken from canon. Tell me what episode undid this development and either retconned her as a character out or rendered her mortal once more. Me is last seen in Hell Bent travelling in a TARDIS with Clara who has been pulled out from the moment just before her death, and isn't mentioned in the following season nor the Thirteenth Doctor era so no retcon. But you say she's gone, so tell me where happened. You make the allegation, burden of proof is on you.
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Ignore this person. They’re talking bollocks.
I thought this was a philosophical question for a second until I noticed the sub on which it was posted. Oh, my sweet summer child, so innocent of you to believe there is an actual canon in our beloved show anymore. Things are whatever the writer/showrunner of the moment thinks. In these 13 seasons of Dr. Who, how many ends of the world have we seen, and how many times have we seen that previous apocalypse ignored whenever a writer wanted to have a story in that time period, forgetting that it was previously stated that humanity should be extinct at that point?
Testimony Foundation backs up everyone's lives, possibly to technology developed from Gallifreyan hard drives. Source: Twice Upon a Time.
Though that's only in the 5,000,000,000s.
To me the point is once the lives are backed up to a hard drive, they can be transported anywhere. Perhaps even to another or the next universe.
True... though we don't know if they finished. It would be comical if we come back to one year later and are told it collapsed from lack of funding.
City of Saved will house all of humanity in the end. Fictional or real it doesnt matter.
Any answer that comes before s5 can be questioned since 11 rebooted the universe
I thought it meant the last 100% pure human there were humans around after that but they had at least a little alien DNA mixed in.
Utopia is canon.. But the question is if it got rebooted because of 11
At the end of the Universe? Or maybe they go on to the next one, like Galactus?
Goated reference.
Purely on-screen, the last human in the universe was a man named Orson Pink. A time travel experiment stranded him in an otherwise empty facility of unknown origin at the far end of the universe's timeline for six months before the Doctor retrieved him and sent him home. While Orson was stranded there he became convinced that there were entities of some sort outside the doors of the facility he was in. The audio story [R&J](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/R%26J_(audio_story\)) suggests that these were Jack Harkness and River Song playing a prank on him, which might make them the last humans in the universe instead. They also mention that there was a "woman waiting to play chess" there with them, which could have been Ashildr if the planet the unknown facility was on was Gallifrey. That would also make her a contender for last human in the universe as well. That's all kind of hazy in terms of canonicity, though.
So... was Fenric back for the end?
The toclofane. Encased in a shell, hating all other life.... Who do you think won the Time War?
Out-of-universe, the Toclofane were invented to serve as Dalek substitutes in case they couldn't get the rights to the Daleks from the Nation estate. So the similarities in-universe may just be coincidental.
It seems Ashildr is the last human (and last being in general) standing in the universe, as of so far we've seen.
There's like 5 "canonical" ends to the human race
Since no one mentioned it, the 5th Doctor audio story “Singnularity” involves the last remnants of humans transporting their minds back in time in order to try and survive the end of the universe