‘Doctor Who' Needs to Go Away and Think About What It Did

Gizmodo

2 days ago

Doctor Who is frequently bad television. In some ways, it's part of the charm: dodgy production values redeemed by inspired storytelling or character work, or clunkily camp B-movie sci-fi elevated by glimmers of spectacle, the perpetual promise of big ideas yearning to escape one holdback or another. So rarely do those myriad failings combine, so rarely do those big ideas fail to emerge, to deliver a truly wretched piece of television. That scrappy charm in spite of it all is one of several reasons that, just like its protagonist, the series has managed to cheat death for over 60 years.
Unfortunately, all those things combined this past weekend in 'The Reality War.' And they made for a state so dire that maybe Doctor Who shouldn't get out of this one, at least for a good long while.
You can't really describe the plot of 'Reality War,' in so much that it is less a coherent narrative and more of a collection of scenes that barely hold things together—some altogether good, some altogether frustrating—before they are forced to collapse with still a good third of its run time to go, to give way to a sudden long goodbye to Ncuti Gatwa's 15th Doctor—one sudden surprise among several that feels less like it was the plan for this story, and more like bracing for the show's still-uncertain future. Characters, sometimes literally, vanish in and out of proceedings as they're needed (some are shoved into a box, actually literally, which we'll get to). Plot threads built up across the season either get left hanging, cut off abruptly, or in some cases, just undone for the sake of a completely different change in direction.
A mess from a production standpoint, again, might be redeemed in part if 'Reality War' had anything incisive to say about the mishmash of characters it starts flinging about its myriad plot threads, but alas, it is a story as incoherent from a thematic and narrative standpoint as it is logistically. From the moment the Doctor is saved from last week's cliffhanger—falling into the underverse, alongside the rest of reality—by the arrival of Anita from the 2024 Christmas special (who has fallen in love and become pregnant, a point that will become important later, but otherwise largely exists to hold doors open, a way for the Time Hotel she now works for to let the prime reality begin to flood back into existence), 'Reality War' is on a scramble. First, to snap our various heroes and UNIT out of Conrad's Compulsory Heterosexuality Reality from last week (that will also become important later), and then to have them thrust into the path of the vengeful Rani as she explains why she is trying to provoke the rules of existence into granting her access to Omega's imprisonment beneath reality itself.
That reason is, rather succinct, and in a moment where 'Reality War' slowing down to actually have its characters discuss something together works. Desperately seeking a way to restore her people with Omega's body to save the Time Lord race from the aftermath of genetic sterilization (although it's unclear just which calamity the Time Lords and Gallifrey faced the Rani is referring to here), it lets Archie Panjabi's Rani become, in contrast to last week's Master-like villainess cackling about wishes and prophecy, that cold, sinister woman of science she was in classic Who, ruthless and blinded at any cost of finding the answer wrought of her experiments. A Rani who makes a callous remark about humanity as impure cattle beneath her—because Poppy, the Doctor and Belinda's Wish-World child is a combination of human and Time Lord DNA—and then jokes that she's lost the room for making a discriminatory remark is pure Rani, and far away from the essentially new character with an old name we'd been delivered last week.
It's a shame then, that as spectacle forces all the talking to stop and the action to commence, that 'Reality War' the just as quickly discards this Rani, and its bizarre take on Omega, and brings the episode's whole set of stakes to a juddering crash of a conclusion. As soon as the Rani departs, the Doctor shoves Belinda and Poppy into a literal box—a tiny room built in a handful of hours by Susan Triad, of all people, to protect anyone inside from the effects of the Wish World reality being erased entirely—and tasks Ruby to go confront Conrad, while he chases after the Rani… only to watch Omega emerge from his prison as a giant, baby-ish skeleton, eat her, and then be blasted back into his prison by the Doctor shooting him with the charged up Vindicator.
All this—the moment the series has been building towards all season, the return of villains from its past for the first time in decades—is resolved in a handful of minutes in the middle of the episode. The Mrs. Flood incarnation makes a glib Two Ronnies joke and promptly vanishes, but Omega and the new Rani are dealt with all the dramatic weight of a dull thud. The day is not quite yet saved though, as meanwhile, Ruby has to confront the man who first harassed and stalked her, and then re-wrote the entirety of earth into a dystopian reality where strict traditional roles of gender and sexuality rule the day (trans people literally cannot exist in Conrad's world, we learn this week, when Yasmin Finney's Rose Noble pops back into existence early in the episode, if you were excited to add another bigotry to Conrad's long list!) and minorities like the disabled are an invisible second class.
Her resolution to this confrontation with arguably one of Doctor Who's most compellingly awful villains in years? To tell him he must be awful because he had a bad childhood, and then use the wish baby the Rani picked up to facilitate this whole wretched thing to wish him a happy life, free of any of the consequences of his heinous actions from either these episodes or earlier in 'Lucky Day'. Doctor Who loves itself a sympathetic villain, sure, but Conrad never argued for, or justified, his retrograde attitudes: he happily was just an awful person, and instead of facing any kind of reckoning or even acknowledging that, one of his biggest victims instead gets to wish him to freedom. Oh, and Ruby's adoptive mother gets a new baby to raise too, giving Ruby the extended family she'd been seeking throughout her time on the show.
So after doing away with all three (technically four, if you count the Ranis) of its villains with a good 20 minutes to go, what other ignominy can 'Reality War' offer? The complete and total re-writing—and essentially assassination of—Belinda Chandra as an interesting character.
As Conrad's wish world reality begins to buckle, it initially seems like shoving Belinda and Poppy in a box has worked, but just as soon as she, the Doctor, and Ruby begin to celebrate, Poppy vanishes from reality and their memories… save for Ruby's, whose prior experience with altered realities gives her some ability to retain some recollection. After being gaslit for a few minutes by the Doctor, Belinda, and her UNIT colleagues, Ruby's pleas eventually break through, and Belinda—who had briefly escaped the tradwife version of herself that Conrad had wished her into in his reality—suddenly flips back into her singular driving desire being safeguarding Poppy. It's her wish to see the child again that sees the Doctor similar make a sudden pivot, deciding to give his current incarnation's life to fuel the TARDIS with an overwhelming shunt of regenerative energy, allowing it to twist reality just enough to save the life of a child that otherwise wouldn't exist.
On the surface, this would be an incredibly compelling way for the Doctor to go out. The Ninth Doctor died to save Rose from the power she absorbed to become the Bad Wolf, the Tenth gave his own to save Wilfred Mott, even all the way back into the classic era, you can see the Fifth Doctor's relentless, fatal quest to save Peri, a girl he'd just met, in 'The Caves of Androzani'—echoed here. But 'Reality War' never actually builds up to this decision in a dramatically organic way. The Doctor isn't fatally wounded in the process of stopping the Rani and Omega or anything; part of the initial tragedy is that he seemingly forgot Poppy's existence along with the rest of the world when Conrad's wish dissipated. He just decides that now he has to die, to do this one thing, even if it potentially means sundering all of time and space, as he's warned by none other than the 13th Doctor, who gets to make a brief, reassuring appearance as reality begins to crack, first to try and stop her future self but then to ultimately aid him, realizing the noble intent behind his actions. It is again, another rare moment where in isolation 'Reality War' shines, but only in that isolation, removed from any of the incoherence that lead to the moment in the first place.
The Doctor's plan works, however, and we return to earth with a dying Time Lord reuniting with a happily mothering Belinda. Reality has shifted, we're told via retroactive flashbacks to points throughout the season, to establish that Poppy was always Belinda's daughter, and her reason for getting home wasn't because she had her work and life to get back to. It was once a life that the Doctor and his world had whisked her away from with little in the way of consent—but now, that life is Poppy herself. Retroactively having reality itself establish an entire character arc that previously dig not exist throughout the season might carry a level of existential horror to it, akin to Belinda's initial challenging of the Doctor's own invasive attitudes at the climax of 'The Robot Revolution'. But that version of Belinda Chandra—a strong, independently minded person, one who forced the Doctor to earn her trust by realizing where her boundaries were—is discarded with a handwave. She's replaced by a Belinda whose sole defining trait is motherhood to Poppy, a desire she never even expressed before (and was arguably against, in some ways, when we met her with her first toxic boyfriend Alan!).
That familial desire isn't inherently a bad trait to give a character, but it's one that was never once actually indicated as part of Belinda's story during this season. If anything, it feels more true of Ruby, after her search for her birth mother and her own feelings about being adopted. This entire plotline is thrust upon Belinda in a choice she doesn't actively make—either when Conrad wishes Poppy into existence in the first place, or when the Doctor decides to break reality for her—and the nail is hammered into the coffin when we watch her not say a single word as the Doctor, without even asking, scans Poppy with his sonic screwdriver to confirm that she has been restored to reality as completely human, rather than with any Time Lord DNA.
The very thing Belinda first challenged the Doctor on back in the first episode of the season now goes by unquestioned! For a season that started so strongly with this vision of Belinda, only to end it with a complete absence of her starting characterization, taking an actual characterization of motherhood and watering down to a singular, flat trait is beyond disappointing. Last week, the enforcement of a traditional, matronly role on Belinda by Conrad's usurpation of reality was a horrifying thing, a breach of consent and sign to the audience of his dystopia being wrong and aberrant. Now the Doctor essentially re-enacts that same reality back onto her, and it is Belinda's happy ending.
While that's where we leave Belinda, seemingly for good, 'Reality War' has one last confounding twist to give, as the 15th Doctor prepares to say goodbye. Again, this is a fleeting moment that in isolation works: it's a beautiful goodbye to a Doctor that embodied so much joy and lightness, to want to go out sharing his explosive energy one last time with a universe he cherished, regenerating as he flings the doors of the TARDIS out to see the great breadth of the cosmos beyond him. Except, that regeneration ends with a familiar face: Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor gives way in a flash of light to Billie Piper, who, of course, is famous for having played Rose Tyler (and the Bad Wolf, and the Moment) across Russell T Davies' initial term as showrunner. Having a landmark Doctor in terms of representation regenerate into a familiar face from that 2005-2009 era of the show might be a surprise, albeit a slightly questionable one if we hadn't already done this two years ago. Gatwa's time as the Doctor, already cruelly short, is now bookended by two 'weird' regenerations that overshadow both his arrival (especially in so much as that, in bi-generation, David Tennant's 14th Doctor got to stick around) and his exit with a play to nostalgia. A play that we have no idea exactly how it's going to play out any time soon, given that Doctor Who's latest end has yet to come with news of its renewal. This is the last Doctor Who we will get to see for at least several years, and it is a moment where the show's future should feel bursting with potential. Instead, it's closed doors and rehashed cheap tricks.
If 'The Interstellar Song Contest' represented a vision of Doctor Who at its most cowardly from a politically minded standpoint—so unwilling to be seen as saying anything it offered singsong in the face of genocide, while torturing its victims—then 'Wish World' and 'Reality War' together as a whole represent a vision of the show at its most creatively cowardly. A companion that challenges the Doctor? Out the window for a one-note character to be discarded and defined by a singular motherly trait. The return of classic villains with something to say about their place in the modern era? Smoothed over, cut short, discarded as emptily as they're introduced. A bright future of new promise? Only old faces, old ideas, reheated and re-delivered at the expense of wasting a generational talent.
Whoever Billie Piper's mysterious figure portends to be as the show clumsily teases that there may be more than meets the eye to this regeneration, whenever we get to find out, should the BBC's deal with Disney fall through or carry on, the only thing that is clear coming of out 'The Reality War' is that the current version of Doctor Who cannot carry on like this. Doctor Who has no future without building on its past, to be sure, but as it stands, its creative guideline in the here and now has no interest in building on it: only returning to it in increasingly arcane and shallow ways, pointing fingers and jangling keys over any meaningful engagement that would set the stage for future ideas and vitality.
Perhaps, for now, this should be the end. The moment has certainly been prepared for, in delivering an era of the show at its absolute nadir.