Oh, hello!
HELLO.
Recap
The Doctor seems to be falling, but the door to the Time Hotel opens, and Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley) appears. She knows that everything’s gone wonky—she’s currently manager of the hotel, and pregnant to boot, and she’s been looking in on the Doctor frequently. Meanwhile, everyone wakes up on May 23rd again, doomed to repeat the same day until the Rani can break through to May 24th and locate Omega in the Underverse. The Doctor has Anita bring him home to the house he shares with Belinda in the Wish World. He takes Belinda and Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) into the hotel with him, dressed back in his lovely pinstriped skirt. Belinda remembers who she is, and she and the Doctor marvel at Poppy, a child who has been created in a day. Anita opens a hotel door to UNIT tower, and the Doctor reminds everyone of who they are. Gradually the group comes back to themselves and reality starts asserting—the Vlinx appears, Kate is mortified to be wearing tweed, Rosie (Yasmin Finney) materializes out of thin air, mugs break left and right. They send out signals to the chips in every UNIT worker and call them back in—Shirley heads to work, along with Mel and Ruby. There’s a lot of hugging.
The Rani tells Conrad to find and locate the Doctor, and is directed to UNIT Tower. She arrives and explains to the Doctor how she survived the Master’s destruction of Gallifrey (by shifting her genetics and using a Time Ring to travel), and that her plan is to use Omega to rebuild the Time Lord race. The Doctor knows this won’t work because he knows exactly why Omega was banished, for being a “mad titan.” Mel points out that the Doctor and the Rani could potentially repopulate together due to their sexes, but the Doctor explains that the Time Lords are sterile, making Poppy a particular miracle. The Rani notes that Poppy is no good because she’s only half Time Lord, however, offending everyone in the room. She points out that Poppy is soon to vanish anyway, once the wish ends. She has the Bone Beast attack UNIT to distract them and heads back to the bone palace.
Susan Triad (Susan Twist) has created a Zero Room that might keep Poppy safe from the Wish World’s destruction, and Belinda insists on entering it with her despite the dangers that they could wind up in there for eternity. UNIT gives Ruby a transmat vest so that she can transport in to see Conrad once the Doctor takes down the Rani’s defenses in the palace. The Doctor manages this because he nabbed the Rani’s code when they used their sonic devices against each other. He gets access to her hover scooter, and takes it to the palace, shutting off the defenses. Ruby arrives in the room with Conrad. But rather than punching him, as she intended to, she notes that Conrad is an incredibly lonely and unhappy person. He gave everyone a family when he created Wish World because he clearly wished he’d had one (his father wasn’t around growing up). Ruby picks up Desidirium, and makes her own wish, for Conrad to be happy.
As she does this, the Rani and the Doctor are waiting for Omega to emerge from the Underverse. He does and reveals himself to be a monster—he has existed in a place of myth and legend for so long that he’s become one. Omega takes up the Rani and eats her to get more power. Mrs. Flood picks up the Time Ring and flees, leaving the Doctor to battle Omega with the Vindicator, holding the power of one billion supernovas. Omega is shoved back into the Underverse as Wish World begins to unravel. The place where Desidirium and Conrad were being held turns out to be the TARDIS, which the Doctor finds as he flees. Ruby points out that the Doctor could use his own wish to make Poppy real, but the Doctor does what needs doing: His wish is for no more wishes, making Desidirium a normal boy. They head back to UNIT and the Zero Room, and the door opens—Poppy and Belinda are both safe and sound. The Doctor and Ruby bring Desidirium to Carla to be raised, and Cherry names him Joseph, after her late husband.
The Doctor and Belinda put a cot in the console room of the TARDIS and make their plans to travel with their kid while Ruby watches. She notices that as they speak that Poppy’s coat keeps shrinking, and Ruby watches the Doctor and Belinda forget her as she vanishes. They head out into UNIT and Ruby presses the Doctor about his memory. Everyone tells Ruby she’s mistaken, but she points out that this has happened to her personally before, and many people who the Doctor has saved. Ruby knows she’s right and that Poppy is missing. So the Doctor vows to find her and bring her back. He leaves in the TARDIS, and knows that to shift reality by a single degree, he’ll need to give up regeneration energy. The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) appears, telling him it’s impossible… but she knows better than to talk him out of it. She tells him to go with a smile instead of in fear, and notes that he’s absolutely gorgeous. Fifteen tells her that he loves her, and Thirteen notes that she never says things like that. He tells her that’s why he exists. When Thirteen suggests she should say it to Yaz, he tells her that she never does, but that Yaz knows.
The Doctor unleashes regeneration energy into the Time Vortex and awakes on Belinda’s lawn. Poppy is there, but she’s fully human now, and a new reality exists: the Doctor was always getting Belinda home on this day at this time so she could be home to care for her daughter (who’s father is Richie, but he and Belinda aren’t together). The Doctor is heartbroken for the loss and happy Poppy is here. Belinda knows something is different and hopes that the Doctor will return to see her when Poppy is grown, and the Doctor says he’s sure he will, but he won’t be the same. He leaves on the TARDIS and goes to get a sight of Joy the star as he finally regenerates…
…into the very familiar visage of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper).
Commentary
I—!!! What an absolute heart attack of a finale.
Hang on, I need a moment.
YES.
Hang on.
I have to start with a couple terrible caveats. First: Doctor Who hasn’t been renewed yet for the next season yet. This is likely because the BBC needs to wait and find out if Disney still wants in on this partnership so they know how much money they can count on. Could the show just get flat-out cancelled? It always could, but the talk from showrunner Russell T. Davies suggests that it might just “pause” for a bit, which isn’t too much of shock given how little rest the series has had since it’s continuation in 2005.
The second caveat: The credits show Ncuti Gatwa and Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor, and then simply say “and introducing Billie Piper.” Obviously, Davies intends to keep the nature of this surprise to himself for the time being, and quite a few other things could be at work here because… well, Doctor Who.
That said: Billie Piper absolutely better be the Sixteenth Doctor.
There’s really not enough room here for me to get into exactly all the reasons why this is a brilliant choice, both within the universe and without. But, just for starters: Billie Piper deserves this. Some folks really can’t stand the fact that the series revival worked in large part due to her presence, but it did. Rose Tyler remains one of the greatest stories Doctor Who ever told, and it did that by recognizing all the ordinary beauty in the life of a poor, dead-end jobbing teenage girl who—against all hope and reason—took her shot at something extraordinary. She spoke to so many people (women especially), watching the show for the first time.
And in that time, Rose Tyler learned many of the Doctor’s skills and tactics, effectively becoming her own version of him by the end of season four. So the real point is, Billie Piper has experience being the Doctor already. It just took two decades to make it official. And then there’s all of the delicious in-and-out universe suggestions this makes for the character themself, but again, there’s too much to talk about here!
There’s also the extra fun with which side you come down on in the regeneration dramatics argument—because the Doctor regenerates, but it’s usually a big to-do. The actor announces that they’re leaving, there’s a big announcement on the BBC of the new Doctor, it’s a whole thing with pomp and circumstance, mostly made to give the new actor a loving welcome and get audiences used to the idea of them before they show up. Which I’m normally all for! But it’s true that the act of regeneration always means that the show has the ability to simply do that without warning. And plenty of fans have been pulling for the show to try that move for ages.
On the one hand—it hurts because we didn’t get long enough with Gatwa, so maybe this wasn’t the place to do it. On the other hand—maybe that’s exactly why you should do it. So many fans are never going to be ready to see him go, so you simply rip off the band-aid and cross your fingers. As for the why, Gatwa has already given interviews saying the role is a marathon that’s tough on the body—which it certainly is—and we all know his meteoric star is only at the start of its rise. I certainly can’t blame him for not wanting to stay too long, if that’s truly the reason… (See down below for other, far more aggravating, possibilities.)
And they gave him Jodie in his run-up to the end! Ugh, the instantaneous comfort of seeing her face. The joy of multi-Doctor interactions, which should never be over-used, but always do something extra special to your heart. And they’ve now proved the point I’ve always made about regeneration: that the previous Doctor influences the next ones. Thirteen never said she loved anyone, was never effusive about her feelings… and the Doctor realized that was no good, and came out differently next time around. Both Fourteen and Fifteen cannot stop saying how much they love everyone because they couldn’t manage it when it mattered.
That said, Thirteen’s regeneration advice is the best the Doctor will ever get.
And now I’ve got to get into the plot that was actually wrapped up with this, and I’m unfortunately of two minds about it entirely. Doctor Who is already being plagued by the main problem with television these days, in not getting enough time to set things up. If this had been a full three-part finale, and the three parts had all been the Wish World plot, we really could’ve dug into the concept, particularly where Poppy was concerned. (I’m having thoughts about the nature of queer families, particularly the fact that Belinda is happy to travel the stars with Poppy and the Doctor when she’s his kid—but not so much when she’s a normal human baby and not biologically related to him? I… I’m having feelings about this, and they are painful ones. About the fact that this occurs to a Doctor who is explicitly gay and explicitly stated to be incapable of having children. It feels so pointed, consciously or not.)
Then again, I cannot pretend that I don’t love how this story mechanic means that the Doctor—retroactively—just had an entire season-long adventure with a single mother?? That is objectively great, and I sort of wish it had been there from the beginning.
And then there’s the Davies penchant for big finales where everyone shows up and hugs each other, which I’m also an absolute sucker for. Hug Rosie! Hug Mel! Hug Kate! Hug Ruby! Traumatize Ruby again! Wait, crap, maybe not that…
Because she did get traumatized again, and after doing the most loving thing she could possibly do. This is where I’m furious once more that we don’t get more time with any of this because it needed space for the impact and a longer setup: Ruby stood in front of someone who used and belittled her, who thinks she’s pathetic and wants to destroy a reality he cannot conceive of, and she essentially deprograms him with kindness. Which is what Doctor Who is all about on its best days. But you can’t feel it if you don’t give it room.
After all that, Ruby has to watch her friend forget his child? A thing she has very personal trauma around in multiple ways? (Shoutout to the world’s greatest practical effect in all that—watching the Doctor and Belinda pass Poppy’s coat back and forth, as it gets smaller and smaller, until it’s a scrap of fabric and then nothing… oof.) All of that deserved time to build up before it broke. It’s hard to buy Poppy’s existence as the Doctor’s actual kid—who somehow is more real than the major wish powering this place?—without having time to feel that from the actors playing it. Moments like this are not made real with sci-fi explaining; they’re made real by the actors emotions and interactions, and we barely had any space for those.
All of it in service of telling one of Davies’ favorite Doctor Who stories: The myriad and byzantine ways the Doctor will sacrifice themself so others can have the sort of life he wishes he could have. He makes Poppy real at the expense of his own life, but she’s no longer his child. And in some ways it feels a little gimmicky to make her the same Poppy of “Space Babies,” but I was struck by it at the same time? The idea that the Doctor met this child and some part of him desperately wished that she were his. It screams of all the little things the Doctor never admits to feeling.
I’m incredibly glad that Omega ended up being nothing more than a great big monster because that’s all he deserves to be at this point—it’s kind of what he always was, in any case. The bogeyman of the Time Lords. However, he ate the Rani we deserved to keep! At least Mrs. Flood’s survival means she’ll be back one way or another, but Archie Panjabi deserved better.
This is me cackling over the fact that they’ve canonized sterile Time Lords now, though. I am genuinely pleased by it, even though it feels as though it exists in this episode only for Davies to say ‘no they’re really dead, you don’t understand how dead the Time Lords are, okay?’ (This conceit existed in Doctor Who novels, the idea that Time Lords cannot have children and therefore have to create babies on, I kid you not, devices called looms. There’s a whole subsection of Doctor Who jokes devoted to this, and for some reason my brain elects to retain things like this and not anything remotely important.)
Everything with the Rani is entirely on form, though. Her assuredness in her own superiority (and need to make better Time Lords that inherently accept this), her disgust at the idea of mixing human and Time Lord DNA, and her belief that humans are cattle. Also her wryness at everyone else’s shock and horror over said belief (“I’ve lost the crowd,” yes, flawless, continue). I wanted more time with her, come on, you had such a good thing going.
All in all, a finale that could have been stupendous, were we not at the whims of mega-corporations and how they spend their money. I’m already missing Gatwa’s Doctor, but I imagine he’ll find time to pop back in now and again. And while he was here, he shone brighter than the power of one billion supernovas…
Time and Space and Sundry
- It’s possible that this episode had a completely different ending that didn’t contain a regeneration sequence at all… and that Gatwa leaving the show had more to do with the likelihood of the series being on pause for the foreseeable future. There are scenes in promo from the finale that didn’t make it into the final cut, and pickup shots for the episode (which occurred early this year) seem to encompass the ending that we saw, and explains why Poppy suddenly appears older toward the end of the episode. Frankly, it would make sense for the current actor to want to leave if an uncertain hiatus was clearly on the table, and if that’s the case, even more power to this team for pulling this ending out of a flipping hat? Still sad that Gatwa couldn’t get the send-off he so rightly deserved, if true, though.
- The Bone Beasts feel like the natural embiggening of the creatures (called Reapers) we see in “Father’s Day,” trying to sterilize the time stream.
- The Zero Room! I love a Zero Room! The TARDIS used to have one of those, but the Doctor had to eject it at a certain point. It was first seen after the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration into the Fifth—the Fifth Doctor had a rough start, and needed the Zero Room to essentially stabilize himself.
- Okay, but if Rogue is just Jack in another body, he’d lose his mind at Billie Piper Doctor. He was in love with the Doctor and in love with Rose, and now the Doctor is Rose?? Poor guy.
- And of course… who is the Boss that Anita was referring to? Surely that won’t come up ever again.
And that’s maybe it for Doctor Who for a bit. We’ll (hopefully) meet again, don’t where, don’t know wheeeeen…
Also, crucially, Piper was the Moment in the Day of the Doctor. I’d say she’s more than earned being The Doctor and the success and presence of her in the series is a significant reason for the reboot’s success from day one.
This was a problematical finale in a lot of ways, the biggest of which was how badly it served Belinda. Really, she’s felt kind of marginalized for the whole back half of the season, but now this strong, independent woman has been redefined as someone whose only role is to be a mother. Worse, in the coat-folding scene, she was finally embracing the adventure of traveling with the Doctor, but then minutes later she was staying behind to be a homemaker. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with choosing to devote oneself to parenting, but the disturbing thing is that Belinda didn’t choose. It was a reality forced on her by Conrad, and then reestablished by the Doctor, and she was shown as simply going along with it. Her agency pretty much evaporated.
Indeed, I’m seeing people arguing on social media that this season arc was probably written for Ruby, since the climax revolves around her ex Conrad and around Poppy from “Space Babies,” and that Belinda got written in when Millie Gibson couldn’t commit to a whole season. If that’s true, and if it’s true that Gatwa left prematurely because of the chance of the show going on a long hiatus, then this is as bad as how the BBC treated Colin Baker, putting him on hiatus for a year and a half, then counting that off time against the unofficial “three years per Doctor” tradition so that he was fired after two seasons.
Turning Omega into an evil CGI god-monster, rather than the tragic and vengeful figure he was before, feels too much like a rehash of Sutekh from last season, and it was wrapped up too briefly. But Omega being a “god” offers some hope for Panjabi’s Rani, since we know that people swallowed by gods in ancient myth have been known to escape again.
Weird that they seemed to be setting up an explanation for how the Doctor had a granddaughter, but what they ended up doing was pretty much the opposite of that, which makes it bizarre that they brought back Carole Ann Ford and then didn’t follow up in any way. It was lovely to see her, but what was the point? (Although the dialogue was confusing, since were they saying the Time Lords had always been sterile, or that the Master’s destruction of Gallifrey didn’t actually kill them all but just sterilized them? Very unclear.)
It’s also frustrating that the first Black and openly gay actor to star as the Doctor only gets two relatively short seasons, the shortest run of any lead actor other than Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston. He’s also the only Doctor who’s never encountered at least one of the Daleks, the Cybermen, or the Master.
As for casting Billie Piper as the new Doctor (if that’s really what she is — apparently it’s still ambiguous), it’s just as gimmicky as bringing back Tennant for a second go. But it’s also an interesting idea in a way, promoting a companion to play the Doctor. And at least it’s not another white man. Although for a moment, I was kind of hoping it would be Jo Martin and that the Fugitive would turn out to have been a future incarnation after all.
Seems pretty clear that the Rani was saying the Master’s actions had sterilized any Time Lords left alive in the universe, so they weren’t sterile before the. (Hence, the multiple references to children and families on Gallifrey before this, the children/families in Day of the Doctor, the Doctor’s old cradle, etc….although we now know that he was regenerated back into a baby at the end of his previous cycle,)
With all the talk about Omega as a Time Lord legend I kept wondering why they didn’t treat him as a formidable old adversary (“You’re trying to free someone it took three different regenerations combined to beat!”). But I guess that wouldn’t position him as the Sutekh clone you’ve correctly identified him as.
I’m reading a lot of takes on Belinda where I’m not sure how to register the complaints. It seems to me like we are repeatedly shown the character exercising agency in the episode and some viewers simply want to deny that: the idea that she was shoved in a box, for example, when the story shows us Belinda (not “wishl but “post-thresholdl Belinda) being warned off the box by the Doctor and bravely insisting. RTD isn’t subtle. Donna’s story originally ended without her consent, and this isn’t that. Indeed, at every point Belinda is insistent about Poppy. I can see “RTD shouldn’t have written the child” or “why retcon her into a single mother” or something along those lines. And yes, RTD wrote Belinda as consenting, but he originated the character. You can say that he miswrote or under cut her, though I don’t think she was established well enough to claim that. Suggesting he wrote her as consenting but she somehow isn’t seems like an incoherent position that makes all fictional relationships non-consenting.
While I’m at it, I’ve read multiple descriptions of Ruby being “gaslit” by the Doctor and Belinda. Gaslighting means someone who knows a thing to be true deliberately and forcefully asserting its falsity to someone else. Neither the Doctor nor Belinda know Poppy exists at this point. It’s like suggesting an atheist is “gaslighting” Christians about the existence of God! It’s quite fair to say RTD wrote the Doctor and Belinda as too forcefully denying Ruby’s claims (though that’s the tragedy of the moment, right?), but confusing the term does a disservice IMO to those who are actually being abused in this way.
RTD really has gone all in for Doctor Who as a soap opera, though. This finale was almost on-the-nose about “I have a child, and it’s yours! No, it isn’t!”
The issue with Belinda is more metatextual than textual. Yes, she argued forcefully for Poppy’s right to exist, but it still feels strange that she’s suddenly so eager to accept the maternal role that the misogynistic Conrad forced on her the week before. At the very least, RTD is sending mixed messages. It’s also disturbing how quickly she went from being eager to see the universe with the Doctor to just becoming a stay-at-home mom, which makes it feel like the Doctor forcibly rewrote her memory and personality the same way Conrad did.
But you’re right that nobody gaslit Ruby, because they actually listened to her and trusted her about Poppy’s existence after their initial dismissal.
I just read something on the same lines about Ruby and how the baby god was probably meant to be her, had Gibson been able to appear in all episodes, and it makes a great deal of sense! The ending of “no more wishes” would have probably led to Ruby delivering her depowered self to be looked after by the Sundays, rather than “there wasn’t a story here in the first place” explanation at the end of the Season One.
Also, yes, I would have loved it to be the Fugitive Doctor next because Jo Martin has shown she can do it. I hope that, unlike McGann, they get it together and do a standalone series for her.
Of course, the Timeless Child reveal means that there’s not only the Fugitive, but many other pre-Hartnell Doctors as yet unrevealed, all presumably wandering about the universe. So an unknown Doctor could show up at any time, played by anyone.
Although I often wonder if some of the non-canonical Doctors could be slotted in as forgotten incarnations, like the Trevor Martin one from the stage play, or maybe the Shalka Doctor.
Yeah, that would be a great solution to where to fit them in. I’m not expecting it, but I wondered if the War Between the Land and the Sea might feature an out of sequence Doctor in an episode.
You’re not the only one – in a show as fundamentally slipshod about continuity as DOCTOR WHO having the procession of Doctors as a fixed point helped me tolerate the writer’s tendency to be more clever than fully-satisfying when it came to timelines (Don’t even get me started on that ‘Timeless Child’ … rigmarole).
Also, I’m truly hoping that Susan IS The Boss hunter at during our visits to the Time Hotel: it would be an extremely neat way to show Susan stay in one place while still keeping in touch with her heritage as a Time Lady (and if the reunion has already occurred from her perspective, she would undoubtedly be very careful to avoid Paradox – a TARDIS can run, a hotel cannot).
Belinda’s still a nurse in the end; she works nights.
But that’s not how the story defines her at the end. It reduces her to a motherly role that was imposed on her by two male characters, and just has her passively accept it. Also, she raises no objection to the Doctor scanning Poppy’s DNA without consent, contradicting her attituded toward it at the start of the season. She’s just not the same character all of a sudden.
Remaining a nurse means that Belinda isn’t a homemaker, “whose only role is to be a mother.”
She did passionately want Poppy to stay alive, in the Wish World, and if iirc, she accepted Ruby’s story before the Doctor did, so she consented to Poppy’s existence.
Whatever the meta-textual arguments may be, this is what the show literally says.
“Whatever the meta-textual arguments may be, this is what the show literally says.”
Technically, yes, but the issue is what the story emphasizes about her. And context matters. Minutes earlier, she was eager to travel the universe alongside the Doctor and their baby. She had made a choice to do both. At the end, she’d forgotten that decision and was content to stay home with the baby. That makes a difference. She had her choice taken away from her without her consent. Her personality was rewritten solely so that the show could maintain its status quo of the Doctor not being a parent. Which just underlines what a bad idea it was to turn the Doctor and Belinda into parents in the first place.
YMMV, as always. :)
I think it says it all that Belinda spends much of her final episode literally shut away from the story.
I loved the chemistry Sethu and Gatwa shared throughout the first half of this season as he tried to win her over while all she wanted was to get back home. To go from that to what happened to her here is a travesty.
As for Ford, I didn’t expect her to be in this. I had a feeling her earlier appearance was setting something up for Gatwa’s third season. If that is true, I hope they don’t just drop the thread now that he’s gone, because Carole Ann Ford isn’t getting any younger (though she still sounds great).
It would be nice to see Ford again, but if she were unable to continue in the role, Susan could always regenerate.
I wouldn’t be against that at all. I just hope if that happens that Ford is still available to participate in some capacity.
I really hope that Carole Ann Ford as Susan can reconnect with her grandfather/mother in person before a possible regeneration.
I don’t remember whether they explicitly mentioned Cronos, or if they just called Omega a “titan”, but if the Time Lords are like Omega’s children and he ate the Rani… I do expect Archie Panjabi to return.
I have to disagree that bringing back Billie Piper at this stage of the game was brilliant. It comes across as a gimmick and more nostalgia-baiting, like Fourteen ultimately was.
For me, the finale felt incredibly rushed and haphazard. Things happened because they had to happen, logic be damned. For example: how did Ruby know how to make a wish come true? She just knows. There’s a lot of that going on. Tons of dangling plot threads: Susan (why did they even bother with that?!?), the “Boss” (is this the same boss that Meep was referring to?), the Pantheon is still hanging out there, etc. All while the exact future of the series is in doubt. Will RTD even be the one still in change when it comes back?
(And it just occurred to me that RTD’s big story ideas will now span over at least three Doctors before they *might* get resolved…)
And that’s besides the rage-inducing shortness of Fifteen’s era. Gatwa deserved better.
I did also want to direct some of my annoyance towards the BBC and the official DW accounts. Spoilers for the ending were circulating within hours of the finale dropping. I thought Marvel’s decision to spoil the end of Thunderbolts before the end of opening weekend was rude. But spoiling the finale on the same day it released? Really?
It’s likely a virtue of necessity. My guess: Gatwa and RTD discussed a three-season arc, with plans to film each season well in advance. S1 was shot Dec 2022-July 2023, with S2 shot Oct ‘23-May ‘24. That schedule extended to a S3 would have meant wrapping S3 in March or April of this year. Obviously, that didn’t happen once Disney said “wait and see,” so assume Disney makes a decision in August ‘25 and renews. You can’t pay to hold production without that money, so the show has to spin up from there and likely wraps S3 sometime in 2026. If Gatwa was in for three years and those years were 2023-2025, that ruins his own plans; if Disney doesn’t renew, you have to do a quick regeneration and the arc is completely ruined.
In all fairness, it sounds as though Mr Gatwa is leaving under his own power and not being pushed out – it has to be pretty exhausting projecting a character as Big and positive as Fifteen, even in a relatively short run (Also, it’s hardly unfair to be worried that if you stick with the Blue Box too long you might be locked into it for the rest of consensus reality).
Hopefully he really is going on to Bigger and Better things, rather than ‘pulling a Lazenby’.
He and Edward Bluemel will be playing Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare in the West End debut of Liz Duffy Adams’ BORN WITH TEETH, in which the pair collaborate on HENRY VI. I am keeping fingers crossed the production will be filmed. Opens this August.
I think it may have more to do with the uncertainty about the series’s renewal. An actor needs to keep working, so if Gatwa doesn’t know when or whether the show will return, it makes more sense to leave and make himself available for other work.
I didn’t see it as nostalgia-baiting so much as Davies wanting to keep working with the people he has a history with, which is common enough among creative people. Still, I think it’s a sign — one of many — that bringing back RTD was not the greatest idea and that the series needs a fresh creative mind at the helm.
“the “Boss” (is this the same boss that Meep was referring to?)”
Why would it be? The Meep was talking about the head of some evil organization, while Anita was talking about the person in charge of the Time Hotel. “Boss” is a common title, after all.
Something in the way it was pointedly stated by Anita just made me immediately think of the reference by the Meep. Which is why I added that as a question for possible debate.
The way the word “Boss” was used in The Star Beast, Rogue and now in The Reality War, we are clearly meant to think they are the same person. The first time, the Doctor all but said it had been foreshadowing.
I’m just hoping it turns out to be the BOSS from The Green Death. It probably won’t, but I can dream.
I think the odds that Billie Piper is playing the lead next season (whenever that happens) are slim. They wouldn’t be this coy about it otherwise. When Davies brought Tennant back to star in the anniversary specials, everyone including the BBC itself went out of their way to insist that it wasn’t some sort of gimmick—he was actually playing the Fourteenth Doctor. That they’re all mum about it this time leads me to suspect that Piper was a last minute idea by Davies, who didn’t want Gatwa’s regeneration to end inconclusively, because then people would worry that it was signaling the end of the show. He needed a face, and Piper happily volunteered to be that face. Even he might not have known who she was supposed to be.
As for the episode itself, it was a thoroughly mixed bag as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I was pretty disappointed that Omega was reduced to a CGI monster, precisely because he’s always been a much more interesting villain on paper than he’s ever been portrayed on television. Despite the fact that they didn’t even mention him until the final moments of the penultimate episode, I still hoped against hope that he’d finally get a story worthy of the concept. Oh well.
I also wasn’t crazy about what they did with Belinda. If her being a single mom had been at all foreshadowed, it would have been excellent, but as it was, it felt like it came out of nowhere. It’s not a big reveal if there was no mystery to begin with. I adored the characterization of Belinda Chandra during the first four episodes of this season, and it felt to me like that all fell away in favor of something more generic. And then they literally shoved her in a box for much of the finale. Come on.
As for what I did like, I think the regeneration scene was really really great, and I was absolutely delighted to see Jodie Whittaker again. It reminded me of how much I loved her Doctor (and how excited I am for her first Big Finish story in July). Plus, the latest explanation for bigeneration at least makes more sense (and causes less chaos) than what Davies has floated before, though, if true, it pretty much puts to bed the notion that Fourteen will somehow regenerate into Fifteen in some timey-wimey way. If that ends up being the case, I’d rather he didn’t regenerate at all for the sake of my sanity. Murray Gold’s score was pretty good, even if it was overbearingly mixed at times (a problem I’ve had with the music all season long). I didn’t even mind that one of the Ranis ended up being eaten by CGI Omega, though I was surprised that it wasn’t Mrs. Flood (though not unpleasantly so—I do love Dobson in the role). Oh, and I loved the return of Anita. While she was one of the best things about the most recent Christmas episode, it was odd that it took what felt like such an unnecessary detour. Obviously it wasn’t unnecessary at all, because she had to be established in order to pop up here.
One last thought: it would be hilarious if Richie and Ricardo were the same guy.
@David-Pirtle: “the latest explanation for bigeneration at least makes more sense (and causes less chaos) than what Davies has floated before”
What is this latest explanation?
It wasn’t an explanation so much as a speculation, a suggestion that bigeneration might be the Time Lords’ biology attempting to find a way around their sterility.
Except I thought the deal with bigeneration was that it was something the Toymaker caused to happen with his reality-bending powers. I don’t get why it would need another explanation.
“Except I thought the deal with bigeneration was that it was something the Toymaker caused to happen with his reality-bending powers.”
I seem to recall them referring to it somewhat knowingly, though, as if bigeneration had been rumored or referenced in lore, so if my own memory/interpretation is correct it’s may be that while Toymaker’s powers made it possible in this instance it was, like, a vestigial trait to be tapped into rather than entirely new.
[Dear Reactor mods: Yet again I had to rewrite my comment repeatedly for it to post, guessing at what certain words or accent marks could be keeping it from going through.]
Fifteen said bigeneration was “supposed to be a myth,” and the Toymaker was all about bringing myths to life. While it’s an old saw that “myths often have basis in fact,” it’s more common for myths to be metaphors and symbols for the abstract ideas the storytellers wished to convey. A myth about bigeneration seems like something that would naturally arise as a wish-fulfillment fantasy; we often see Time Lords regretting that they have to lose their current personality upon regeneration, so the fantasy of the old personality somehow surviving alongside the new would be a natural one for them to have. Or the myth could’ve arisen as a metaphorical way of talking about the tension between different incarnations of the same Time Lord, imagining an impossible dialogue between the old and new selves. (“Impossible” presuming that the myth arose after Tecteun gave the Time Lords renegeration but before Omega gave them time travel.)
There are enough ways the idea could have arisen as a myth that there’s no reason to take the existence of the myth as evidence that it was ever really possible, any more than we would believe it’s actually possible for a teenager to build wings of wax and feathers and fly too close to the Sun.
Good call(s) there.
“a suggestion that bigeneration might be the Time Lords’ biology attempting to find a way around their sterility”
Oh yeah.
Which reminds me how bizarre I found the revelation of their race’s (or bioengineered caste’s) extinction at the Master’s hands to be a slow one of attrition, reinforcing just how staggeringly little interest the Doctors of this era have in revisiting their homeworld across centuries of life unless/until it’s absolutely necessary to prevent their genocide.
This explanation for bigeneration makes no sense, however, since it was pretty clear at Fifteen’s introduction that he was the end result of all Fourteen’s experiences, leading to the assumption that whenever and however Fourteen dies his body will become regeneration stardust or whatever and his essence will snap back into Fifteen at the moment of that bigeneration, rather than regenerating/bigenerating yet again as part of a branching tree of increasingly separate Doctors with shared early experiences but entirely independent later ones; Mrs. Flood will surely try to survive, and the newest Rani might yet return, but it must’ve been chilling to see her future self devoured.
Unless maybe Time Lords can repeatedly bigenerate like branches and that’s why Thirteen and the Fugitive Doctor were unfamiliar to each other? I don’t remember whether the latter was explicitly written as ignorant of earlier Doctors whom viewers know but if not maybe they both stem from separate bigenerations of, say, Hartnell’s First Doctor.
It does seem odd that if she is playing the Doctor it hasn’t been announced. I am wondering if there’s the possibility of a surprise special for the 20th anniversary of the new show in the offing. The only thing I will say is that RTD, whatever else you can say about him, understands how the general public responds to things, and I don’t know that without an immediate follow up that he would fake out the audience in that way. Plus, it’s got the potential to be an unholy mess if it’s not the Doctor, unless Tennant is coming back and Gatwa is the start of a different character, which is a bit suspect for how you treat the historical importance of that casting. Although I wouldn’t really have anticipated him bringing back Sutekh with little to no explanation for the audience, so my judgement is probably suspect!
The other thing though, is I can see the production crew wanting to give Gatwa’s departure a moment to land with the audience given it was a rare case of us not knowing that it was happening, and not wanting to take away from that by jumping straight in with the celebration of Piper taking on the role.
We don’t know if we’re getting ANY Doctor Who with Piper, and neither does Bad Wolf Productions. You announce “Doctor Who is back with Billie Piper as the Doctor” when a new series is announced, not “she’s the Doctor when we come back in 10 years or whenever” because you can’t know that. This way, if things fall through you get Piper in for one scene as “Bad Wolf” supervising a new kind of regeneration and if things go more smoothly, she gets a few years in the part most likely.
Yes, that’s a fair assumption too!
Now I’m wondering whether Belinda seeing Poppy in The Story & the Engine was foreshadowing of the ending or the opposite. On the one hand, if she had seen her daughter, she should have recognised her (and if it is not her daughter, why would she see her?). On the other hand, it’s similar to the Doctor confusedly recognising Abena in the same episode, when he should have no recollection of her at all. So this could be something about stories revealing important connections or something.
Out of context, Poppy’s appearance just felt like one of the Doctor’s stories leaking out, so if it was intended to foreshadow Belinda being a mom, it failed spectacularly. Had she seen more visions of Poppy outside of The Story & the Engine, it might have landed better for me.
So there were definitely things I liked in that episode and other things I was less fond of.
I liked that the 15th Doctor’s identity is important for overcoming Conrad’s reality. So often we get the Doctor is special and that’s what saves the day, but in this case it did actually come from who the Doctor is.
I didn’t like Omega become the end of level boss. It’s a bit selfish in the writing (like Moffatt wanting to tell us how the Doctor got his TARDIS or why he started travelling) because it takes more away than it leaves. There is so much potential in what can be done, so many interesting stories that could be done with Omega (not Sutekh, he’s rubbish) and the Rani, but they’re both thrown away to be cinematic. But Omega is mutable so in about 20 years time maybe someone will be able to do something else with the character.
I agree with Emmett that a lot of this is to underline the Time Lords are gone. But I don’t know why we have to, I’d rather something was built to replace them. Which also, the idea that the Doctor would have magic offspring felt off to begin with. It worked in Wish World as part of the attempt to overwrite who the Doctor is, but in this episode it all just felt very odd. And I think part of that was that I definitely didn’t think it was something RTD would want to deal with (which was why it also felt odd that he raised the idea). It could work, but it’s a bit of a show breaker. You could do it going into a period where Dr Who might be off the air for a while, having him go off to raise his daughter and then we come back and the daughter is leaving the TARDIS, but the idea of the Doctor not flying into danger with a baby on board would be tricky for all sorts of reasons. So clearly in part this is to show us this won’t happen. And what does that mean for Susan? That we’re not likely to go back to that, but RTD probably recognised that everyone would be very disappointed if she hadn’t popped up somewhere.
I don’t like the modern trend in storytelling for a show to have three different endings in the finale. As a result we didn’t have space for the Rani and Omega who both get treated like afterthoughts, so that we can get to the bit RTD wants to write and is more interesting dramatically. There was a way that whole thing could have been set up to get there without all the bombast but would that have played in cinemas?
I loved Jodie being back. I loved how instantly I went “yep she’s a very Doctory Doctor” and how distinctive her character is. There was absolutely no need for it and it took time away from other parts of the story that could have done with help but it was a nice break from the odd, slightly depressing Poppy stuff.
Millie Gibson basically acted the rest of the cast off the screen. She was brilliant. Varada Sethu does a good job, even if it does feel very weird what happens to her. But I suppose that the effects of Wish World were maybe coming into play around the point she starts insisting the Doctor is such a wonderful man.
Why have Mel and do nothing with her, especially when the Rani is involved?
I didn’t expect Joy to the World to tie so heavily into this.
The regeneration, acknowledging the “clues” (although remember that fans also thought Tennant wasn’t really playing the Doctor because of the clothes changing, and that was where the announcement came in) that Billie might not be playing the Doctor, but maybe the Moment or Bad Wolf, is interesting. As I said in a reply to David Pirtle, I’m not sure that RTD is going to play with the general audience in that way unless there is a direct follow up planned. I know someone who got confused and thought John Hurt was following on from Matt Smith as the Doctor after watching Day of the Doctor, so “the Doctor regenerated into her but she’s not the Doctor” seems unlikely, RTD doesn’t like to have longwinded metaphysical discussions in his shows, but that “the gods play tricks” line is there. I also think the idea that Billie Piper, an actress who works in television predominantly, doesn’t have time to be on Doctor Who is an odd argument. I can see her doing an Eccleston, because why not. It also guarantees her a Big Finish run where we will see her team up with various Doctors until the end of time.
I admit to being less than enthusiastic about Billie Piper-as-The-Doctor (At least in this context it feels as though Mr Davies et al could only lean on the memory of former glories when presented with the departure of their Shiny New Doctor at short notice, rather than trust in their ability to support an entirely new Doctor, shininess to be determined) and the episode as a whole, but I was extremely glad to see Thirteen pop up: I didn’t follow her series as far as I might have, but that was always due to the scripts and to exhaustion with the franchise, not the character or her performance.
Also, OF COURSE Mrs Flood (A Rani) the common sense to GTFO whilst The Rani tried and failed to Queen her way out of trouble: my only regret is that we will almost certainly never get a chance to see the latter and Mr Sacha Dhawan’s Master glare at each other like a pair of passive-aggressive cats.
Honestly, I’m sorry to see Ms Panjabi go, but I’m pleased to think that The Rani will still be out there plotting Mad Science behind a most untrustworthy twinkle.
I am, however, extremely cross that The Doctor took such a grotesquely high-handed attitude to Ruby’s efforts to point out that NO, time has done something timey-whimey (God, imagine how cross War Doctor would be to know that phrase has long survived him) : it might be one of the most actively unpleasant scenes in the whole darned series and it’s not a Giod Look for any character who has just pointed out that timelines come and go, but Ruby remembers.
Anyway, I just hope that whenever DOCTOR WHO comes back The Doctor (In whatever form) will finally do some corporate monkey-wrenching: these days we can always, always do with more banana groves and fewer engines kf Corporate Kleptocracy.
AAAARGH! ‘of’, not ‘kf’.
I certainly cannot see the Rani letting a little thing like being eaten by a mad god and dragged into hell stop her returning!
I’m glad The Doctor saved Poppy. But why couldn’t he save Rogue as well? Knowing he was about to regenenerate, all it needed was one line.
“I’m about to look different to the person Rogue met. But if I put him in [e.g. the Time Hotel], at least he’ll be safe.” Open plot for RTD or other future showrunner to woo Jonathan Groff back for more.
Ultimately this one failed for me. It might have worked if i could care about Poppy, The Baby Who Magically Appeared Last Episode and the effort to save her…. but I didn’t.
I do think they got a feel for the Rani (“The universe is just one big experiment to her.”) and I enjoyed her and Mel snarling daggers at each other.
I half-wondered if they were going to regenerate Gatwa into Susan (or more precisely The Doctor Looking Just Like Her) and her appearances were foreshadowing, similar to Logopolis. I’m cool with Piper though.
Loved seeing Whitaker again.
Kate at the steering wheel of the skyscraper made me think of Monty Python’s Crimson Fidelity Insurance Sketch, which did not help.
Though Colin Baker is on record that it’s only a coincidence that his Doctor looked exactly like Commander Maxil and nothing much was ever made of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor looking exactly like a Roman father in Pompeii, there is canon for a regeneration deliberately looking like a previously met character: Romana seemed to have the ability to examine “possibilities” for her appearance, settling on Princess Astra. Now the Doctor doesn’t seem to have mastered this skill before (“Am I ginger?”), but who knows? There may be reasons the Doctor settled on the visage of Rose Tyler.
“nothing much was ever made of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor looking exactly like a Roman father in Pompeii”
I do believe that was addressed as the Doctor realizing he’d regenerated with a face meant to remind him to be kind or something along those lines. Which isn’t counter to what you’re saying; I’m just adding the specifics — the… vague specifics, anyway, I guess XD — because I appreciated getting that bit of dialogue.
Yes, exactly. In “The Girl Who Died,” the Doctor realized he’d given himself Caecilius’s face to remind himself of his commitment to saving people.
To make new Timelords there are 2 options: go into the past and retrieve a set of fertile Timelords (you live in a time machine) OR have some companions knock boots while the tardis is traveling. QED. There’s also that cloning machine from that planet that gave us Georgia Tennant’s Doctor’s Daughter (bring her back and give her adventures!!!).
While Ncuti likely left of his own volition, I am peeved that in this episode we lose 4 major characters of colour in one fell swoop: 15, Belinda, Rani regnant, and Poppy.
If Poppy had remained a Timebaby, that would have been one thing, but making her retroactively a totally human baby just fridges Belinda with a magical baby in lieu of magical pregnancy. Some of the best companions are continuing companions: most of 5’s, Sarah Jane, Clara, Rose, etc. Why are those rare as hen’s teeth? We finally get a Rani apropos to the name and they kill her completely and decisively. I will forgive them if they handwave her back when Dobson-Rani next “dies” (if you’re going to mess with lore, do it in a way that gives us Archie back!).
I noticed the lack of PoC in Dot and Bubble while watching the episode but assumed it was a failing of casting and not a plot point because we still live in a world where *one* PoC in a cast gives a show claim to “diversity”.
The franchise has always kind of assumed that Time Lords all exist in a perpetual present relative to each other and don’t cross each other’s timestreams, except in rare circumstances (i.e. anniversary crossovers and whatnot). Although you’d think that in an emergency, they could break that rule.
One more option you didn’t mention: The Sisterhood of Karn are Gallifreyan by species, and presumably were not wiped out when Gallifrey was. So it’s not really the Time Lord species that’s been wiped out, just the culture. Maybe that’s why the Doctor considers himself the last of them, since the Rani is a renegade from them and Jenny was never part of the culture. But then, the Doctor’s as much a renegade as the Rani is, and the Rani pretty clearly considers herself part of the culture, so that doesn’t really work.
I enjoyed when Jodie Whittaker appeared Ncuti Gatwa being surprised it was her and not ‘that other guy… he keeps showing up’ (presumably David Tennant).
I loved seeing Jodie as Thirteen again.
“The hotel’s in spasm!” is a great line and it was good to see Anita too.
I’m with the general consensus that a lot went wrong here, though, which I’d expand on but the same stuff that’s kept me from commenting until now is pulling me away, so maybe later.
I’m coming to terms with the fact that I must be partially face-blind. (Not making fun. I’ve met someone who has face blindness properly full on and navigates the people in his life entirely through context.) When the Doctor regenerated and the resultant face came into focus, I thought it was maybe Hayley Atwell, then Kylie Minogue, but possibly not anyone familiar, and then of course I saw the credits. I didn’t realize Mrs. Flood and Susan Triad were separate characters until reading episode recaps.
I didn’t recognize Billie Piper either, but it’s partly because she has one of those facial types that a lot of beautiful women converge on (she resembles a friend of mine from college that I had a crush on), partly because she’s two decades older and her face has changed, and partly because a face looks different in tight close-up due to the different perspective. Given more than 10-15 seconds, I might’ve recognized her.
Although I also consider myself to be slightly face-blind, since it often takes me time to “learn” a face to the point that I can recognize it, and I can have trouble recognizing a person if they change their hairstyle.
I’d swear that when the Doctor jetted to Rani’s place on that personal flying platform the score went pseudo-Queen for a 1980 Flash Gordon homage.
The melodramatic turns — I mean actual, literal ones — and gestures held on the bridge of UNIT HQ when Rani’s plan is discussed struck me as weirdly, awkwardly stagy.
We got no follow-through on Susan, Rogue, or the gold tooth from last season, in descending order of stuff I would’ve expected to be addressed now rather than later, and zero mention — other than Fifteen’s cheeky remark when Thirteen popped in — of Fourteen, who’s out there and, you know, might’ve been a help.
The idea that Belinda’s arc with the baby here was first meant to be Ruby’s explains so much that I hope it’s true even though it didn’t work for many of us as filmed because otherwise the avoidable but resultant mess would’ve just been a completely intentional mess. Still within all that, beyond the way it ultimately screws with Belinda’s agency, beyond the odd, disheartening way the Doctor is dismissive of Ruby’s attestation to events having been changed, that stretch of the episode breaks my heart with Belinda and the Doctor gleefully celebrating their imminent freedom to adventure throughout — you might’ve heard this phrase before — time and space right in front of Ruby like she’s not there, which is leagues removed from the wistfulness of Ruby parting with the Doctor after last season and its evocation of Peter Pan but entirely in line with the Doctor’s adversaries’ descriptions of his mortal companions as mere playthings that he can toss aside in favor of newer ones at a whim.
I’m also really at a loss over the Doctor’s repeated insistence after being awakened from the One Big, Beautiful Wish that Poppy was his daughter if that didn’t end up tying into Susan in any way. My assumption was that Poppy would have truly predated the Rani’s plan and thus figured into her defeat as a wild card not unlike, but of course differently than, Ruby and the supposed undesirables whose place in the new world couldn’t be imagined.
Susan is proof that he does have, or can/will have, a child out there for his granddaughter to spring from. Furthermore, while I don’t want this to sound remotely like a family cannot be formed around platonic partnership if so chosen, Belinda and the Doctor being thrown together as a couple just read wrong to me, the least convincing part of this emotionally evolved Doctor’s human connections.