'Doctor Who fans are furious again, but they should just enjoy the ride'
In fact, divisive might be the wrong word. The reaction has been almost universally negative, whether it's to the return of Omega, the resolution of the story involving the Rani or, of course, that big surprise in the final few moments of the episode. With so many rumours about the cloudy future of the show, many fans were disappointed to see this series end in the way that it did.
Note: There are spoilers ahead for the Doctor Who finale, so tread carefully.
Many of the headlines in the wake of the episode are, naturally, focused on the surprise regeneration scene that ended the series. Ncuti Gatwa has said farewell to the TARDIS and, barring any sort of further twist, it appears that Billie Piper will be the next incarnation of the Doctor — 20 years after she became the first companion of the revival era when she debuted as Rose Tyler alongside Christopher Eccleston as the Time Lord.
Notably, though, Piper's name in the final credits was not listed as playing the Doctor. So there's something afoot and the door is very much ajar for a different actor to jump in and grab the TARDIS key in the near future.
In a series dominated by big, audacious swings on the part of showrunner Russell T Davies, this surprise regeneration was arguably the biggest risk of all. After all, it's very rare that a Doctor's goodbye is a complete shock. In 2013, the BBC dedicated an entire TV special to revealing Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor and, back in 2022, Gatwa was announced as the new permanent Doctor several months before Jodie Whittaker regenerated on screen.
Read more: 'Doctor Who's new series is its boldest ever, and you should be watching' (Yahoo Entertainment, 4 min read)
Times have changed. Unless you really had your ear to the ground in hardcore fan spaces, Billie Piper's return was an enormous surprise. And ultimately, that's the sort of thing we should welcome. The fact that a 60-year-old TV show covered in breathless detail by the tabloid press can still pull off a shock like this is worthy of celebration.
And broadly, that's how I feel about the episode as a whole. The Reality War was Doctor Who at its silliest, moving at a breathless gallop of the kind that Davies proved so good at back in his previous tenure as the head Whovian.
This episode had a lot of plates to spin and a smorgasbord of baddies to dispatch. There was slimy manosphere scumbag Conrad, two incarnations of the Rani, returning uber-Time Lord Omega, and the infant god of wishes Desiderium — not to mention the marauding Bone Beasts. Almost all of them were swatted aside with quite frankly hilarious ease via the sort of writing trickery that only a show this frantic can allow.
Read more: This Is Why Doctor Who Fans Aren't All Convinced That Billie Piper Is Really The New Doctor (HuffPost, 5 min read)
Doctor Who excels at getting itself out of corners, whether that's with a wave of the sonic screwdriver, a flourish of timey-wimey nonsense, or a smart line of dialogue. That sort of thing has been part of the show forever. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's profound, and sometimes it's frustrating, but it seems churlish to start complaining about it now.
Put simply, this episode of Doctor Who was loads of fun. It never paused for breath long enough to allow you to think about how messy it all was — and it was — but delivered very impressive spectacle and joyous energy. It's hard to imagine the Doctor Who of old giving us an enormous battle between UNIT and skyscraper-sized bone critters and you just have to Google images of Omega's classic form to show how much he has changed thanks to the influx of Disney cash.
If this was the last hurrah for Doctor Who's bond with Disney, then Davies decided to make sure he was spending every penny of that money and embracing every inch of the increased scope he was allowed. His series finales over the years have always delighted in testing the limits of the show's spectacle and The Reality War had more than a few echoes of the 2008 two-parter The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, which also featured a surprise regeneration — albeit one used as a fake-out cliffhanger — and brought back just about every significant companion of the era.
Read more: Ncuti Gatwa blames bad knees for Doctor Who exit (BANG Showbiz, 3 min read)
More than anybody else, Davies understands that Doctor Who is at its best when it's speedy and silly, capering through time and space with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek and its two hearts beating double-time. Why not have the Rani munched down by Omega? Why not resolve the most powerful god of the pantheon with a single whisper? Why not bring Jodie Whittaker back for a two-minute cameo?
Doctor Who fans need to relax and enjoy the silly sci-fi show. It's absolutely capable of being profound and smart and intricate at times, which is great, but its default setting is to be a rollicking adventure through time and space with an immortal hero at the top of the cast list.
It would be wrong to say that The Reality War completely stuck the landing or that it managed to deliver satisfactory pay-offs to the myriad plot threads introduced throughout the series. Those brief appearances of the Doctor's granddaughter, for example, came to precisely nothing. But what this finale did do was provide a healthy dose of chaos for the "mad man with a box" — and tease plenty more chaos to come. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Doctor Who is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.
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