"Wish World/The
Reality War” (15th Dr, 2025)
(Series 15/2A serial 7, Dr
15 with Belinda, 24-31/5/2025, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T
Davies, executive producers: Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil
Collinson and Vicki Delow, director:
Alex Sanjiv Pillai)
Ranking: #N/A *but #295ish
reviewed 1/6/2025
‘Are you sitting comfortably? Yes? Then you’re probably an illegal immigrant taking one of our cushy jobs we could do better, while simultaneously scrounging at home and taking all our benefits How can it be both at once? wait did something fall just then? Well, who's the mug now then, eh?! Agh, the cracks are beginning to show….Now you’re all going to vote for the Green Party and let the Krynoids win!’
And just like that I was in a new unwelcome reality, a disturbing reality, where nothing made sense any more, where everything I thought I knew and could count on as true was all a mirage, a falsehood, a veritable pack of lies, where I began to doubt my own senses and opinions. There I was realising that ‘The Arc Of Infinity’ was no longer the stupidest Omega story. And then lo! It became worse: ‘Dimensions Of Time’ was no longer the worst Dr Who story to have The Rani in it. What was worse, ‘Time and The Rani’ had now moved into the top 50% of stories with The Rani in them. And I looked at the stars and cursed the reality that I’d been beamed into.
‘Wish World’ was for the most part solid
storytelling and a logical extension of everything series two was about. We
were lost in a parallel world, one where nothing was quite right, with the
usual Dr Who plot device of having the ordinary become extraordinary turned
inside out, with The Doctor and Belinda living the picket white fence dream,
complete with nice house boring but safe job and a baby. It’s the sort of thing
that happened to Donna (‘Silence In the
Library’) and humanity (twice: ‘The
Wedding Of River Song’ and ‘Extremis/Pyramid At The End Of the World/Lie Of The Land’) but usually The Doctor’s been in on
it. The closest time he’s ever come to believing in a parallel world himself
is, funnily enough, The rani pretending to be companion Mel at the start of ‘Time and The Rani’ (of all the classic Who
stories I thought I’d never see a sequel
to…) The news is all rightwing fairytales, with Conrad (the conspiracy theorist
from ‘Lucky Day’ and apparently the Rani’s
new ‘Cyrian’) using a ‘wish baby’ to create a fake world that’s ‘happy’ but
‘wrong’ (some of the best bits: the G B News channel, which features conspiracy
theorists delivered in the exact same way, happens to be next to the children’s
channels on British freeview TV. There’s
a long-running joke that it should be renamed ‘GBeebies’ like ‘CBeebies’ and
that it appeals to a similar toddler mental age, with it’s dangerous mixture of
opinion, ignored science and outright lies. Nothing has radicalised the average
Brit more. Plus they hate Dr Who with a passion, so you can see why Russell
would be having fun at their expense). Everyone is happy living in denial of
reality for the most part and going along with everybody else, but they feel
unsettled, as if something has shifted they can’t quite put their finger on.
That ‘something’ keeps changing across the Disney years but it’s often been
there, just out of sight: racism becoming mainstream rather than something that
shames people (‘Dot and Bubble’), denial
of covid (‘Dot and Bubble’), the boom in
rightwing ideology and conspiracies that would once be laughed out of the room
accepted as fact (‘Lucky Day’), the idea
that someone somewhere is controlling the strings and changing how people think
(‘Lux’ ‘The
Devil’s Chord’ ‘The Empire Of Death’).
There are parts of this story I really get behind,
even though it’s a bit clumsily put together. At heart this story comes down to
an ideological fight over what the future’s going to be like, with two children
both competing for different imaginary worlds. In the one corner is the ‘wish
child’ – the mystical seventh son of a seventh son – who represents life as it
might yet be. They’re brought up on a diet of bone beasts and lies, taught to
believe in a future where everyone leads boring stable jobs, women stay at home
as childcare and everyone knows their place in a carefully structured
hierarchical society based on colour and gender (the wish child is a white
baby, symbolically brought up around the Danube, so either in Austria or
Germany, the two countries associated with Hitler). In GBeebie propogandist
Conrad’s words ‘people just want to be fed and warm and I gave them that’.
Although in doing so people signed away their freedom and rights to be anything
more – forever (this is why it’s significant the world stops on a particular
day: it’s not the date itself that’s important beyond being the day of
broadcast for ‘Wish World’ but it’s significant the world repeats itself and
humanity stops evolving). It’s a very restrictive place where no one is allowed
to think for themselves and where everyone tows the line: The Doctor. For
instance, has a wife in a heterosexual marriage and Rose Noble, a trans
character, ceases to exist because the right don’t ‘believe’ she has a right
to.It’s a world where you’re crushed and stifled, restricted to be something
someone else wants you to be rather than who you truly are. For all that, though, it’s a safe world: if
you don’t think about the stupidity of it too hard then nothing eats you,
nothing kills you and if you’re tip of the food chain you kind of do alright
(of course it’s not as happy for the disabled or homeless). But is alright ever
enough in a series that’s about being daring and being different? Humanity
would stifle, crumble, devolve. It would end up like the timelords, sterile,
without growth into something more beautiful and with more potential. Poppy,
though, is a child of dreams and wishes and hopes who represents life as it
ought to be. She’s a utopian ideal created on an alien planet, who represents
everything that could happen if we were free to be ourselves. As a baby of
mixed race parents (so we think: the enforced ending might change this) they
pay the price for growing up in Conrad’s whiter than white world, but for now,
while there’s still a chance of being saved, she can be anything she likes and
we all can be too. A lot of fans have seen this plot as ‘ugh The Doctor is
fighting for a baby’ but it’s a lot more than that: he’s fighting over our
futures, to make sure we grow up in Poppy’s world not the wish baby’s, with Dr
Who making a promise to never ever give in to the Conrads and Ranis of the
world and play things safe. That’s why Poppy is taken to a zero room, to
channel out all the propaganda. That’s why it’s meant to be devastating when
The Doctor forgets that there ever was a baby and ever was a different world.
Having him going to search for his baby and restoring balance, turning the
dimension one degree to the left, ought to be thrilling.
In places it is. There are lots of great little bits
dotted across this two parter, often in the most unexpected of places. The
Doctor’s deskbound job working in The Unified National Insurance Team (the
absolute opposite of his daily life and a very different UNIT to the one that
shoot down aliens) is a great gag and the chance for all our old friends to
dress up in an ‘Inferno’ type parallel universe where everyone isn’t evil so
much as bland, is priceless (I almost didn’t recognise Kate Stewart in tweed
and glasses). The moment The Doctor realised who he is and goes back to his
office, his suit and tie swapped for a dress, as he tells everyone the truth
and encourages them to see past the illusion and be themselves is fabulous:
everything Dr Who is for. Ruby comes into her own as a character at last,
taking everything The Doctor taught her and everything she learned herself in
‘Lucky Day’ to see through Conrad’s lies and hang on to the truth, even when
it’s so much easier not to, is a great end for her character (though I wish
she’d had, you know, a ‘proper’ end if this really is her goodbye rather than
disappearing). Having Mrs Flood accidentally give the Doctor an episode
cliffhanger get-out-of-jail-free card by ‘taking Christmas off’ and allowing
him to escape through the time hotel from ‘Joy To
The World’ is a wonderfully inventive idea, even if all it means in reality
is that hotel manager Anita holds a door open for him. It’s lovely to see the
‘Castrovalva’ ‘zero room’ back in modern Who at last too, given a whole new
meaning outside the Tardis (though goodness only knows how Susan twist has the
abilities to make it). I like the idea of a ‘glitchy’ world where things aren’t
quite right, but everyone pretend they are (teal is clearly not that colour though
– it’s more a shade of rueles if you ask me. What? That’s a colour, right? Or
am I in the wrong dimension again?)
It’s the ideas behind that which don’t work and
don’t add up together. That idea is a good one but it’s never properly
explained: we’re just handed two random babies and asked to fill in the gaps
and, honestly, they’re rather big ones – so much so that it’s only after the
episode was on that I managed to unravel what it was really about. Russell
throws some extra ideas at this that he never sees through such as the
importance of parenting in bringing children up – but you can’t have a story
that says ‘Conrad grew up bad because he never knew his father’ and ‘The Doctor
can’t remain a father because he needs to be off saving the universe’ in the
same story, they don’t belong together. Inspired
the idea might be but if every fan is left scratching their heads about what’s
going on that’s poor storytelling in any book. It expects too much of The Rani
too. Russell T has clearly gone away to think of the first mad scientist who
would be interested in genetic splicing and timelord babies and come up with
The Rani. But that’s not her at all. The Rani is a rulebreaker, not a rule
supporter. In the words of this very script ‘she’s not ruthless, she’s
indifferent’. She was expelled from the Prydonean academy on Gallifrey for
genetically splicing her tutor’s cat. She’s the least maternal, most
self-obsessed scientist of the lot. She’s the last person to want time tots
running about around her feet when she’s trying to grow pet dinosaurs. She
couldn’t care less if the timelords died out, given that they expelled her and
she’s been moping ever since, just as long as she’s still alive (And how did
she survive anyway? A time ring like the ones in ‘Genesis
Of The Daleks’? How did she get hold of one of those – and more importantly
why didn’t every timelord get one out of their loft?) Even The Master would
have a greater claim to wanting to see a mini Master (a master Master!) rule
the universe than she would, even if he didn’t know how to make one (both
scientifically and because you can guarantee he wasn’t paying attention in
timelord sex ed class). Plus timelords aren’t born the way most mammalian
species are: last we heard they were ‘loomed’, woven from DNA splices, but only
under very strict conditions of population control: note that this is all in
the ‘New Adventures’ books rather on TV but in thirty-odd years it’s never been
challenged. The Rani has come up with an
entire plan to keep The Doctor safe and out the way so he doesn’t spoil her
plan – but The Rani couldn’t care less about The Doctor. She’s always been
painted as the arrogant sort who figures no one can get in her way and she
looks down on The Doctor the way the cool kid in class looks down on the school
prefect, someone too stuck in his ways to have the imagination to keep up with
her. Worse than that her plan actually relies on The Doctor, someone she
loathes and dismisses on all their previous meetings, seeing through it all.
It’s good
idea in the sense that trying to hang onto reality in a world that seems to
have shifted to the right overnight and become less tolerant lately and where
lies don’t get fact-checked or called out the way they once were (because the
same right wing millionaires own all the media: that’s why covid is no longer a
‘thing’ because they wanted you to go back to work and why they exploit the
fear of the people who aren’t like ‘you’ so that you don’t realise you have
more in common with other working class families and turn on your pay masters
and demand they pay more tax). Of
course, such is the thin veil of mutually agreed lies that the rightwing world
can’t hold together and is doomed to fall apart the minute someone points out
the truth, from the stupidity of prejudice to the realities of covid, swept
under the carpet (a theme of series one more than series two, Russell was
virtually the last ‘boss’ in TV to relax mask wearing). By breaking through the
fakeness of this world it unleashes the ‘underworld’ - no, not a retelling of Jason and the
Argonauts with a dodgy CSO backdrop, but part of her big plan to bring back the
daddy of the timelords, Omega. But since when did The Rani care about Omega?
She doesn’t have the reverence and awe that even The Doctor and Master have for
the grandaddy of all timelords and whole Omega might be the timelord ‘creator’
he didn’t make babies, just the time travel ‘gift’ that enabled them to grow up
the way they did (while accidentally falling into an anti-matter universe, the
‘underworld’). The Rani has far greater biological gifts than Omega ever had
and she’s smart enough to know that bringing back someone with such enormous
powers is not going to end well for her. This isn’t The Master we’re talking
about, for whom it’s perfectly in character to bite off more than he can chew,
this is the Rani. She knows when to stop and run away. Seeing her get eaten by
a CGI Omega they’ve somehow turned into a dinosaur (first time we saw him Omega
couldn’t ‘imagine’ his own head into being, how come he’s turned himself into a
bony reptile native to another planet?) that makes even the CGI Sutekh dog from
‘The Legend Of Ruby Sunday’ look okay is
one of the single dumbest things this series has ever done (and yes that
includes The Rani turning people into trees. One pictures Sutekh off screen
barking ‘how come he gets to be a dinosaur when I was only a dog?) Re-working
the founder of Gallifrey into the ‘original sin’ without explanation doesn’t
cut it either. Why has The Doctor changed his view of him so drastically
offscreen. It’s how he looks on screen that’s the real travesty though. Omega
actually made more sense the last time we saw him. When he was dressed as Peter
Davison covered in sugar puffs.
Even more out of character is what this does to The
Doctor who ‘solves’ this story by shooting Omega with a gun. Admittedly it’s a
special kind of gun that The Rani planted on him and which he’s unwittingly
been carrying on his travels, but it’s still a gun nevertheless. The Doctor
doesn’t often carry guns. Indeed Russell T spent his farewell the first time
round with Wilf following him around with a gun because he refused to carry
one. The Doctor, who once risked life and limb three times over to try and talk
sense into Omega (‘The Three Doctors). Dr 15 has, so far, been one of the most
peace-loving, trying to save people even when they’re being racist/evil/killing
people he loves. So why does he lose his temper now? Did the terrorist attack
of ‘Interstellar Song Contest’ really undo all that love inside him in one go?
If so then that’s the most depressing place to leave this character we could
possibly have. Especially in a story that’s meant to be all about the fight
over bringing up babies properly and teaching them how to grow up kind and
accepting. That’s just one false ending though: like Moffat and Chibnall season
finales (though never usually Russell ones, the deservedly indulgent one at the
end of ‘The End Of Time’ aside which I
rather like) the endings keep on coming, with no more rhyme or reason to any of
them. Everything’s saved. Except it’s all a fake and The Doctor’s forgotten his
baby, which Ruby somehow remembers (because she’s used to seeing through lies
after her time with Conrad?) So The Doctor takes off to save his baby, even
though it means a forced regeneration, discovering that Poppy is alive and well
– but not his baby. Arriving into ‘our’ dimension should not cause a
regeneration, because it never has in all the other times he does it in
different stories (take your pick from ‘Inferno’
‘Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel’ and the entire
e-space trilogy).
I do like the idea of family though, even if it
isn’t followed through: from the beginning
in 2003 Russell spoke about how he wanted to make Dr Who a ‘family’ show
and it’s always been central to his way of seeing the series. In that respect
he was the perfect showrunner for a series that was designed that way from the
beginning: the 1960s shows, in particular, were always about what sort of a
world the children of the 1960s might inherit when they came of age. Would they
choose the way of world wars like their parents or find a more hopeful equal
way? (see ‘The Space Museum’ and ‘The Dominators’ for two extremes
of this view but it’s in most of them, especially the Dalek stories). Having a
21st century update of that, however botched, might just be the
single most in keeping thing the series has done with its 1963 origins this
century. More than that, it closes out a cycle that Russell started himself. ‘Midnight’
‘Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’ ‘The Waters Of Mars’ and ‘The End Of Time’ all form a sort of quartet in
my head, about Russell’s difficult decision to give up the show he loved more
than anything. If you’re new to why then this is the basis of it: Russell’s
partner Andrew got very sick just as series four was starting and Russell was at
the top of his game and popularity and the writer, after a year of trying to
find a way to do both, realised that his family life was still more important
and got some last great years together before his husband sadly died. A lot of
his comeback, especially the three anniversary Tennant specials from 2023, have
been about how hard it was to adjust to an ordinary life while seeing your
friends do the job you loved (a job they wouldn’t have had if not for him) and
wrestling with whether that situation was right. Russell apparently toyed with
having The Doctor leaving for love (there’s no other explanation for Rogue
appearing on TV to warn him about living in a fake world, because how would he
know? And his warning, to drop a cup and see what happens, is the most los
budget breaking of an alternate reality we’ve had on the show so far). Then
decided it would make more dramatic impact to have it be a cute baby, writing
‘Space Babies’ to cover his grand plan.
After all, in one of this first interviews since coming back Russell
explained that he wanted a Dr Who for a new generation to have as theirs to
grow up with, to connect with the children of now and having them grow up
hopefully seeing through the lies of people like Conrad in a world that’s
shifted so far to the right lately is perfectly in fitting with everything else
we’ve had. It’s also, in context, a sweet admission that, yes Russell was right
to give up being The Doctor to make sure his family were safe and that, deep
down, Dr Who is all about family anyway. I also like the way the ‘rounded’ way
we end – no not with Rose (not sure what I think about to be honest) but Big
Ben signifying the arrival of a new day (compare to the first story recorded for
comeback Who ‘Aliens of London’.
Where the Slitheen crashed into it. Apparently the rebuilding went well).
Only that raises yet more issues: Why did this all
need to happen on this date? Why was Mrs Flood keeping an eye on The Doctor for
so long before revealing herself, living next door to Belinda (who has the baby
that breaks the illusion) and Ruby (who is the person who sees through the
illusion) as if encouraging The Doctor to be with them. If Poppy is here where
are the other Space Babies? Why is just this one ‘alive’ on Earth in this
dimension? How come she was walking around Nigeria without apparently
recognising her ‘mummy’ Belinda in ‘Story and The Engine’? How did Ruby know
where The Doctor’s fake house was? (Is Belinda’s the other side of Mrs Flood?
If so how did she know to look there – and does she know Belinda? You think
they’d have passed in the street and the script fudges over whether their greeting
is because they know each other or because they’re both friends of the Doctor
and so on ‘the same team’). Why did The Rani’s plan include The Doctor having a
baby at all? (Did she somehow confuse his love of jelly babies? I’m just
grateful we didn’t have a ‘wibbly wobbly jelly baby’ catchphrase I guess). Why
does the story go to such lengths to have Conrad not know how to parent because
of his own absent father, then turn out to actually be rather good with babies?
(So much for the ‘hurt begets more hurt’ line). Why is there a door at the
hotel that leads to his bedroom with Belinda, when it’s in a ‘fake’
reality? Why does The Doctor regenerate
on landing in Belinda’s world, assuming it’s the ‘proper’ one? And why has he
forgotten everything she apparently told him about her child? We’re teased with
the idea of timelords becoming ‘half human’ for a while (you know, like in ‘The
TV Movie’) which a prejudiced Rani is appalled at, even though it seems to have
been her plan to pair The Doctor up with Belinda all along (is this a comment
on OTT fan reactions? In which case wait till they see Omega as a dinosaur). We’re
teased with the idea that women have to face a choice between their career and
being a mother, something that deserved an entire series but instead ends up a
sort of veiled comment near the end when Belinda has to run back to work,
leaving her child with her mum (who seems a much nicer mum than any previous
Russell T mum ever wrote for Rose, Martha, Donna or even Ruby. There you are
see, he can do it). How did Mel get her scooter up the stairs/in the elevator
at UNIT HQ on the top floor? Where is Dr
14 while this happening? His adopted daughter Rose works for UNIT and I can’t
see Donna staying quiet either. For that matter where is everyone else? No way
would all the other aliens of Dr Who sit back and let this happen to the earth
and you’d think our space neighbours, The Ice Warriors, would have a thing to
say (not least because the Rani’s plan is so un-noble and against their moral
code; The Ice Warriors believe in truth over everything). Not exactly something
that couldn’t happen, but the idea of William Hartnell dancing with Kate O’Mara’s
Rani on Gallifrey feels wrong and icky on so many levels. Bye the bye, has
anyone else noticed how parallel universes almost always make the unlikeliest
people maternal out of nowhere? It happened to Donna, to River (both ‘Silence
In The Library’), to Bill to an extent (‘Lie Of The Land’) and now The Doctor
and Belinda. Most of all, how come the biscuits in the UNIT canteen don’t
contain jammie dodgers or custard creams? It’s almost as if they were making
this up as they went along.
In many ways they were. This is one of those stories
where I suspect the behind-the-scenes stories are more interesting than
anything we got on screen, like ‘The Horns Of
Nimon’ or ‘Resurrection Of The Daleks’,
but it’s too soon to have those stories yet. We might never get to the bottom
of what really went on behind the scenes the past couple of years (when did
Disney cancel series three? How far did they get writing it? Did Ncuti leave,
not because he wanted to, but because the series was put on hold and he kept
having to turn down lucrative offers in Hollywood for something that might never
happen?) but we do know that Ncuti’s decision to leave wasn’t part of the plan
when they made this story. Everything from the moment The Tardis lands in
Belinda’s garden was filmed in February 2025, a full ten months after
production officially wrapped. Russell, Ncuti and probably lots of other people
presumably signed as non-disclosure agreement, or perhaps abided by one in the
hope of getting a third series (which is still isn’t officially cancelled,
though we’re not going to get one before 2027, perhaps 2028 the way things
stand) but I’m willing to bet a lifetime supply of jelly babies this was not
the original plan. We know Russell had ideas for series three and a number of
scripts ready to go. It sounds as if he still planned for Ncuti to be The Doctor
in them. It sounds as if, during filming last year, Ncuti still planned to be
The Doctor too. From what I hear the original ending was meant to be a big
party (with the Vlinx as DJ) with everyone celebrating the fact that the world
had moved on and was no longer ‘stuck’, with The Doctor partying with all his
many varied friends (it’s the ‘nightclub’ photo the official Dr Who site
released and which can be seen as the graphic on i-player for ‘The Reality
War’, either as a clue or because this all get signed off before the ending
changed) when The Doctor spots…Susan (a lead in cliffhanger to the next
series). It might explain all the loose endings that are left dangling, along
with a couple more thrown in for good measure (who is the ‘Boss’ The Rani
refers to? Why does the wish baby ‘giggle’ like the Celestial Toymaker? How come Mrs Flood escaped? What happened to
the ‘pantheon of Gods’? And how come the wish baby has a Celestial Toymaker
style ‘Giggle’?) I suspect what we have here is a last desperate attempt to
have a full ending, one that perhaps originally led into a cliffhanger, after a
growing realisation this might really be ‘it’ for the series this time. Perhaps
Belinda’s reality wasn’t actually the right one after all? Perhaps The Space
Babies had created it all in order to have a mummy? (I still suspect Belinda
was a last minute replacement for Ruby to do a full year for whatever reason).
Perhaps Poppy really was his daughter but she had grown to have Susan. In which
case Disney robbed us of an ending that might not have made up for the
clumsiness of most of the episode but would at least have given us the happy
ending it felt we were heading towards, with a universe that’s free for us to
be whoever we want to be and the bad people banished. Having The Doctor
regenerate changes all that and makes it seem like a lose, as if we’re sacrificing
the first man of colour to play The Doctor because the world was too prejudiced
to let it (as far as I know Ncuti left because he couldn’t keep his career on
pause any longer, but that’s what the critics will say. They’re already crowing
online that they ‘won’, when the entire point of this story was to shut them
up).
A third season exploring some of the things in this
season would make sense because it felt as if all the interesting points were
squandered, because unfortunately we have to review what’s here, not what might
have been. In which case having Carole Ann Ford return for a ten second cameo
in ‘Interstellar’ and then not use her is perhaps the biggest waste of any
character so far. This is a story about family – she really ought to have been
here properly, not as a few second afterthought. Carole Ann Ford is righty-five
and our last survivor from the show’s early days. She deserved to be there
properly – we deserved to see her there.It’s not just Susa though. We had a
full episode of world-building that effectively ended as soon as the door into
the time hotel was opened (and they brought Anita back basically to usher The
Doctor through to a door and nothing more). They teased us with Mrs Flood for
two full years before having her make a bad ‘Two Ranis’ quip (ahem, one I made
myself in the review for last week but…forget that for now, ahem) and taking a
backseat to The Rani proper. As for Rani II, Archie Panjabi huffs and puffs for
an episode and gets one not terribly good sparring scene with The Doctor before
getting chewed. Omega doesn’t even get that. They bring everyone back to UNIT,
with big celebratory hugs in a scene that feels like it goes on forever, then
The Doctor runs off and we barely see them again. Its a particular waste of Mel,
who had her hair permed apparently so The Rani would recognise her from 1987
and everything, yet doesn’t say anything beyond how they’ve met before (was she
intended to have the lines that Ruby ended up with? It would be very Mel to see
through the truth). Ruby is sidelined, sent to see Conrad even though she’s the
last person who should be sent to see him (Conrad is dangerous and she’s
effectively his ex with a grudge against him; why doesn’t he just shoot her? In
fact why does he get the gentle farewell he does, of becoming s hapless chef in
some parallel world – The Doctor electrocuted someone two weeks ago for
effectively doing what he did). It’s Belinda who comes off worst though: the
character who started off so strong and so independent spends a third of the
story in blissful ignorance apparently happier than we’ve ever seen her stuck
at home as a housewife, then a third hiding with her daughter in a big box,
then a third telling The Doctor how she’s found the life she always wanted as a
mother, all the ambition and drive of her earlier stories evaporated. I’m sure
it wasn’t the intention to write her so that she only ‘matters’ because she can
have children but that’s how it comes across and in a story about the dangers
of rightwing propaganda you have to be especially careful about details like
that (I’ve also seen people online pick up on something that I never noticed,
that this story is in effect anti abortion: Poppy has to live at all costs,
even if it means hurt to those around her and even if she’s, crucially, not originally ‘supposed’ to live with The
Doctor, it’s ‘parent’, preferring to die rather than let it go. Which would be
another Conrad message, not a Dr Who one). Ending up a housewife always happens
to the companions you least expect it to (Susan, Leela and now Belinda). I’m
convinced Belinda’s companion path was originally written for Ruby as it just
makes no sense having her become a mother out of nowhere, someone Poppy didn’t
even meet (whereas Ruby, an orphan herself, would totally want someone to care
for her child come what may: her story contrasts so much better with Conrad as
she had no family either but defied everything against her to grow up kind).
Perhaps most of all it’s a waste of Dr 15 in what at
least turned out to be his final story (I can’t believe he never got to meet
The Daleks, Cyberman or The Master. He’s the only one not to meet at least one
on TV. And Dr 8 only had one story). Ncuti spends his big farewell being asked
to stand around looking shocked, pulling the same expression over and over. He
doesn’t get any last big important speech, he doesn’t get to save the universe,
he doesn’t heroically sacrifice himself to keep the universe safe and on the
right path, the way his compassionate courageous emotional Doctor deserved. He
doesn’t even get the apparently planned celebratory ending with all his friends
around him ‘Stolen earth’ style. Instead he just sort of slinks off into the
sunset, glowing. Russell kind of gives him a last minute reprieve by having him
regenerate in front of the stars (one of which, of course, is Joy) but it’s
still a rotten, flat ending to the most sociable Doctor we ever had. He
deserved a proper send off not an afterthought and even if these were last
minute rewrites on a nothing budget, surely they could come up with better than
this? At least he gets one last ‘I love you’ in, as well as an ironic ‘don’t
ever change’ just as he’s about to regenerate. If this ends up being Russell’s
requiem, too, then it’s a rotten way to go after all that love and hard work
and emotion.
In a funny way we’re back where we started when he
took over, with a series the right are saying are dead and a fandom in
disarray, these three years having changed nothing since we were last here with
‘Power Of the Doctor’, a story that was all
written and for the most part recorded when it was thought that episode was
going to be the end of Dr Who. In a neat twist. Then, Russell gives us one last
surprise, borrowing from Chibnall’s idea of having subconscious Doctors come
forward to help Dr 15 out only with Dr 13 the Doctor helping out rather than
the one being helped. It’s a revelation and easily the best scene in the story:
I’ve long been one of the biggest critics of the Jodie Whittaker era and have
long wondered how Dr 13 might have fared had she been written by someone who
‘got’ her (rather than her creator Chris Chibnall, who never got past seeing
her as a sort of diluted version of Drs 10, 11 and 12). In Russell’s hands she
glows in a few pithy rounded sentences more than she did across three seasons,
as he totally digs into her reputation as the most awkward and anti-social of
Doctors, too uptight to express herself – yet does what Chibnall could never
do, which was point to all that depth behind, the fact that she never ever
wanted to end up like this, but couldn’t help it. Having her time in the Tardis
end with the series finally embracing her romance with Yaz as a ‘thing’ and Dr
15 near closing out his time with a comforting hug, the way he began comforting
Dr 14, is on its own a neat way to go. If only Russell had come back to the
series sooner Dr 13 could yet have been a great Doctor, rather than the
gormless one people won’t remember in years to come – dare I say it, as things
stand, ‘Power’ would have been a far more deserving sendoff. Although I am
rather frustrated that in this story at least Dr 15 seems to have ‘borrowed’
from her the tendency to stand around listening to the baddies discuss the plot
rather than actually get involved (then again so do most people this story:
UNIT spend taxpayer’s money staring into space, Mrs Flood is a spare part and
perhaps worst of all the ‘wish child’s dad doesn’t lift a finger to save his
son from The Rani).
Talking of never quite telling people you love
them…perhaps that why we get what seems to an incredibly random regeneration
into…Billie Piper. Given that Dr 14’s whole shtick was that he borrowed Dr 10’s
face because of ‘unfinished business’ of his subconscious reminding him to heal
(and that he ‘borrowed’ Dr 12’s face from ‘The Fires Of Pompeii’ to remind him
to save somebody, even if it’s just one person) It’ll be hilarious if she ends
up with either Dr 14 or Martha as her companion, though if I know my Dr Who she’ll
turn out not to be The Doctor at all but a matrix/reality/Tardis glitch (she’s
still in there as her ‘Bad Wolf/Moment’ persona and Billie isn’t introduced as ‘The
Doctor’ the way the majority of her predecessors were). I think the idea, were
Dr Who comes back, would be to have The Doctor continue his journey of expression
and telling people they’re loved. Rose’s heart was, after all, her greatest
feature in the eyes of The Doctor and most of her fanbase, her ability to love everyone
from all walks of life. It would make a fine coda if they ever get a chance to
make it. Instead, though, reduced to what we have now it seems a bit desperate,
stunt casting for the sake of getting a big name the fanbase will like back
again, at a time when Who – more than ever – needs to be off doing things that
are entirely new and appealing to an entirely new fanbase, capturing the
imaginations of the world’s current Poppies so that they grow up feeling save
and loved and protected and giving them the confidence and strength to be
themselves.
Instead of that, though, we have an episode that
leaves a bitter taste in the mouth with what’s actually a pretty horrible ending
where Belinda is suddenly happy with the sort of thing Conrad promised and The
Doctor dies for nothing. That isn’t an ending, it’s a sacrilege of everything
this episode abut especially the series as a whole stands for. nd there’s no
reason for it: even if Disney decided to take their ball back there must have
been a better way to conclude this era than this. Have Ncuti run off with Rogue,
even if it’s a CGI Rogue because they couldn’t get the actor back at short
notice. Have Belinda tell him ‘all your friends are here’ (even if he and we
can’t see them). At least have Belinda tell
this Doctor, the one who really needs to hear it most in many ways, how great
he was and how wonderful it was that he fought to keep her daughter and all the
other little kids out there safe. At least give us a happy ending. In a
universe where so much is going wrong for open-hearted open-minded Dr Who fans.
At least give us that. Don’t give us this. Don’t let the monsters win!
If you’ve come to this review without reading the
others for the season then I might surprise you to learn that I really liked
this era. I loved the new emotional Doctor we had with Ncuti, who was a
fascinating mixture of raw emotional trauma and accepted healing. I grew to
like both Ruby and Belinda and The Doctor’s playful yet paternal relationship
with both of them. I adored the politics of this era, with Dr Who the last bastion
of sense that recognised the real monsters were the right-wingers trying to
control and divide people (a theme that kept cropping up again and again cross
this era). But a lot of this era was built on trust, that a lot of the weird
things that kept happening these past two series and three specials would be
explained away somewhere and the explanations we had were either weak and
obvious (Susan Twist, Mrs Flood) or missing (what’s with the Mavity thing then?
What’s with the salt Donna knocked over in ‘Wild Blue Yonder’? What’s with the
fourth wall breaking that led to The Doctor meeting his own fans? Why did it
snow in Ruby’s memories? What was all that gubbins about the Al-generator
giving Belinda different lives? What was all that commotion about the Space
babies having a story generator? What happened to the wish baby Conrad was
looking after? Why did everything have to happen at this particular time? And
no, because Belinda didn’t have a childminder is not a proper answer!) Instead
of a planned celebration this feels more like a wake, with Ncuti definitely
gone and Dr Who apparently going.
That would be true if we were meant to sit on this two-parter till Christmas as per usual, with a lopsided story that wasted so much of its great potential for scenes of endless exposition, clichés, recycling and a CGI dinosaur. It’s far far worse if this is it till 2027 (the earliest any new series could possibly be on the air if Disney finally made their minds up either way, perhaps with the series reverting back solely to the BBC (we probably wouldn’t lose out that much. Most of the budget this episode went on bone dinosaurs we didn’t need and smashed mugs), but they would have to start tomorrow (or more likely it won’t be till 2028. Or longer). Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Dr Who was cancelled at the worst possible time in 1989, when it was getting really good again, but fans had to sit through a difficult five year period 1982-1987 when the people making it didn’t know what to do with it and by and large didn’t want to be there when the series suffered. In a sense we’re there again: Russell’s heart just isn’t in Who the way it once was and the re-set button we were promised quickly gave away to moments of panic and resting on past laurels in a hope to win over a fading audience who were put off even more. Dr Who needs fresh blood in charge, perhaps with old friends back for occasional stories but not running things again. Dr Who needs to live up to that promise it made to Poppy, rather than playing things safe and confined and regulated, the way the wish baby wants. I’m not one of those fans who thinks the series is now hopeless and is dead and should be buried. Dr Who is too brilliant, too elastic, too magical to ever end. But like all of us it can get stuck and, after two years of brilliant inventiveness coupled with hesitant throwbacks, Dr Who can’t be contained anymore. It has Sutekh’s gift of death hanging over it, in every muddled concept and clumsy half-idea unfulfilled. Dr Who needs to live and grow and change and evolve, not be genetically spliced with more CGI monsters holding it together. It’s become sterile by repeating itself too often. Whoever makes the show in the future will inherit a show much like it was in 1963, full of endless possibilities. So let’s explore them! So we end up with a two part finale that’s one part bad wolf to one part just bad and an era that’s been as much of an rollercoaster ride. ‘It’s been an honour, a nightmare and a triumph’ says Ncuti in his near-closing speech. The trouble with this era was that it was all three at once.
And just like that I was in a rotten reality, where
the greatest show in the galaxy was no more and all that hope and promise of
reuniting with one of my favourite ever writers had all added up to nothing.
And yet, to have been brave and tried to make Dr Who take a stand and be a safe
space for everyone, regardless of race gender and species, while it might not
have led to a longer series and put food on the table for longer for the people
making it, this was still the better honourable thing to have tried. It was a
reality I’m glad I lived through, even though it became increasingly less safe
in fandom to say so. For all the scars though, for all the accusations of woke,
for all the trolls, I knew in my hearts that this was reality and that only Dr
Who would ever be brave enough to tell it for the way it was. Exit left, pursed
by a Bandril.
POSITIVES +
They don’t say anything about it but they finally made The Rani Indian. The
name ‘Rani’ means ‘Queen’ in Indian, which is where Pip ‘n’ Jane Baker got it
from before Kate O’Mara was cast (it’s a common name, which is why Rani in ‘Sarah
Jane Adventures’, a Russell creation, had the same name – and boo to not doing the
obvious and having Anjil Mohindra in the part). Archie Panjabi might not get
much to do but she really makes the most of it, tapping into Kate O’Mara’s
glamour and arrogance but also finding a way of making the character her own.
Some of the Master actors should take a tip from this. Oh and full marks for renaming ‘Dr Who
Unleashed’ ‘John Smith Unleashed’, just for one episode!
NEGATIVES – Anita
had a great character arc in ‘Joy To The World’. She was The Doctor’s friend
for a year and at one time they had a ‘thing’, but he had to leave and she had
to stay. However they made a sort-of pact to lead their best life and the last
we see of her in that story, she is. So it’s upsetting to find out in this
story that instead Anita has been moping over The Doctor, looking through doors
to follow his story (though how she even guesses those other very different
looking people are one and the same Doctor is anyone’s guess). She’s distraught
when she finds him dancing with Rogue, with the hint that she’s distraught at
finding out he was gay. But why doesn’t she wonder if he’s bisexual? Which,
courtesy of the biregeneration, is closer to the truth. Instead of a happy
ending it sounds as if she ran off with the first bloke she met on the rebound
and while she doesn’t say anything about what he’s like the fact that the
actress is sporting a whacking great black eye, whether by coincidence or
design, suggests he’s not the best person to be with. The Doctor hugs her
gratefully at first, but instead of checking she’s alright he’s all ‘don’t tell
me my child isn’t real’ (even though, as it turns out, Anita’s right). Her plot
function this entire story? She holds a door open. Yes, they brought her back
just for that. Though Davies ‘improves’ on Chibnall’s characters he can’t write
for Moffat’s for toffee.
BEST QUOTE:
Dr: ‘She is made of hopes and dreams and wishes’ Belinda: ‘So is every child’
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