Latest news with #Gallifrey
Pink Villa
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Doctor Who Season 2 Ending Explained: Has Billie Piper Returned and Why Did Ncuti Gatwa Exit?
The Doctor Who Season 2 finale, titled The Reality War, brought major changes to the Whoniverse. The mystery behind the destruction of Earth on May 24, 2025, was finally solved, but the episode ended with a big twist. The 15th Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, regenerates and is replaced by a familiar face: Billie Piper. This marks the end of Gatwa's time as the Doctor after just two seasons, which the actor confirmed in a behind-the-scenes video. "Yes, this is the end of my Doctor," Gatwa said. While it's a short run, his Doctor had just started to find his place. What Happened in The Reality War? The episode picks up from the Wish World cliffhanger, with Anita (Steph de Whalley) saving the Doctor from his fall. Now promoted to manager of the Time Hotel, Anita has access to a key that opens doors to any time. However, on May 24, 2025, the hotel is destabilized due to the Earth's collapse on that date. With Anita's help, the Doctor wakes UNIT from their Wish World illusion. They return to fight the Rani (Archie Panjabi), Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), and Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King). The Rani plans to revive Omega to create a new Gallifrey and a new Time Lord race, as the Master's destruction of Gallifrey left survivors infertile, except for the Doctor and Belinda's daughter, Poppy. Despite the contradiction, Poppy is proven real. The Doctor tasks Susan Triad (Susan Twist) with building a Zero Room to keep Belinda and Poppy safe. After Omega is defeated, Belinda and Poppy return, but Poppy vanishes and is forgotten by the Doctor and Belinda. Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) notices this and begs the Doctor to fix it. The 15th Doctor tries to shift time using his regeneration energy. Jodie Whittaker's 13th Doctor appears briefly to stop him, warning that it could destroy reality. "It could end everything," she says, but gives in when the 15th Doctor explains what's at stake. After believing Poppy is safe and realizing she was never his daughter, the 15th Doctor regenerates. The twist? His new face is Billie Piper, who played companion Rose Tyler in earlier seasons. "Oh, hello," she says, recognizing her own face. The credits list Piper as Introducing Billie Piper, not as the Doctor. This raises questions. Is she really the 16th Doctor, or another Bad Wolf moment? Fans are speculating whether this is a glitch, a tease for something bigger, or just nostalgia.
Gizmodo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The History of Omega, the Beginning and the End of the Time Lords
If we thought all Doctor Who was going to build its upcoming finale around was the return of one classic villain from its history in the Rani, 'Wish World' told us to think again in its final moments, as it invoked the name of an all-time terror in the history of the Time Lords: the dread Omega, not seen in the show properly in over 40 years. But Omega's history is, fitting for a key player in the origins of the Time Lords themselves, paradoxically much old and yet also much more recent than that. The First History of Omega A solar engineer and a prominent figure in early Gallifreyan society—and, as later audio stories would reveal, a close confidant and schoolfriend of Rassilon, another key player in the foundation of the Time Lords—Omega first appeared in Doctor Who's first anniversary special, 'The Three Doctors,' in late 1972. There it was revealed that it was Omega's research that unlocked the key to time travel that would radically overhaul Gallifreyan society and create the Time Lords as we'd come to know them. Deploying a powerful relic known as the Hand of Omega, Omega made a star go supernova before harnessing its energies to fuel the first acts of controlled temporal manipulation. But while the Hand of Omega, and the research it bore, would be recovered by Gallifrey, Omega himself was seemingly lost in the destruction. Revered as a hero and made legend by his people as they used the Hand to become lords of Time, Omega had actually survived his experiment, flung into a black hole and deposited into a universe of pure antimatter. Not knowing that his people thought he was dead, Omega grew bitter as his acceptance at not being rescued turned to fury that he had been abandoned in his moment of triumph by the Gallifreyans. In time, Omega sought his own way out of the antimatter universe, experimenting on his power to manipulate it and even create his own life—at a cost that he failed to realize, as his own physical body broke down into nothingness. By the time the Time Lords tasked the First, Second, and Third Doctors with attempting to stop Omega from destroying the universe in his attempts to acquire more energy to fuel his escape, all that sustained Omega's form was the original suit that he wore during his experiments with the Hand. After battling with the Third Doctor in an attempt to trade places in exile with him, Omega was left in the antimatter universe as it was seemingly destroyed. But his 'death' had not stopped diehard followers of his own arising on Gallifrey, creating a legion of cultists that swore to bring one of Time Lord society's foundational forces back to reality. In the 1983 serial 'Arc of Infinity,' a member of Gallifrey's High Council, Hedin, secretly plotted to steal the Doctor's biological data to create a new physical form for Omega's will to inhabit. Although the plan was foiled, Omega managed to briefly escape his antimatter universe and emerge on Earth, only to find his form destabilizing until he was imprisoned in the antimatter universe for good… again. Omega and the Timeless Child It would take Omega almost 40 years to return to Doctor Who on-screen… technically speaking. Because while Omega's history as the creator of Gallifreyan time travel hasn't changed, his broader part in the creation of Time Lord society on a biological level did in Chris Chibnall's re-working of the Doctor's origins in the 2020 episode 'The Timeless Child', in which Omega makes a brief, uncredited appearance in flashbacks alongside Rassilon and Tecteun. Although the character is never explicitly named onscreen, the officially released production script for the episode names two Time Lord figures seen alongside Tecteun as to be assumed as Omega and Rassilon, making them aware of the true origins of Time Lord society as we come to know it in that story. As established in 'The Timeless Child', Tecteun was the scientist who found, and then successfully exploited, the genetic material of the titular child—the mysterious being who would eventually become the Doctor—to give themselves the ability to regenerate their physical form upon mortal injury. In 'The Timeless Child''s brief explanation of Gallifrey's history, Omega's discovery of time travel occurs during a golden age of advancement for the Shobogans, the native peoples of Gallifrey, during the construction of the Citadel and even before Tecteun decides to offer up the genetic inheritance of regeneration to the Citadel's denizens, formally renaming their society as that of the Time Lords. But Omega is still considered a foundational member of this triumvirate that makes the Time Lords, even if, presumably, his loss in experimenting with the Hand of Omega now comes at a point separated from his discovery of time travel. What Omega's Return Means for Doctor Who Interestingly, what little we got to see—or rather hear about, Omega is namechecked but left pointedly offscreen—of Omega in 'Wish World' keeps vague about where exactly he has been kept since we last saw him. The Rani describes Omega has having been kept in an 'underverse,' access to which required a fracture in reality itself, rather than the black holes and matter/antimatter that were previously established in Omega's prior appearances. Whether or not the underverse is intended to be the same reality that Omega was trapped in in those original stories, or somewhere else he was potentially sent to after those events, remains to be seen. But that detail aside, Omega's potential return to reality is largely irrelevant next to what the Rani intends to use him for: the resurrection of the Time Lords from their latest extinction. Again, just how remains to be seen, but if Doctor Who does once again bring the Time Lords back for a third time—after their apparent destruction during the Last Great Time War, undone during the events of 'The Day of the Doctor,' and then the Master's eradication of his own people a few years later. As far as we know, while Gallifrey the planet still exists in some form, unlike its prior fate in the Time War, the Time Lords themselves, save for the Rani, the Doctor, and the Master were seemingly all exterminated. Just how Omega's power could restore the Time Lords, again, remains to be seen. But with the revelation of the Timeless Child, and the Doctor's understanding of their connection to Gallifrey, Omega is now even more important to the foundations of the Time Lords than he already was with the invention of time travel—'Wish World' even describes him as the first Time Lord, and creator of their society. If he really is the key to their return–or a continuation of their absence from Doctor Who's current mythology—we'll find out once and for all as the current season of Who comes to its end in 'The Reality War' this weekend, on May 31.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
DOCTOR WHO's Rani Plans to Bring Back Another Classic Villain
One of the hallmarks of the 1970s and '80s in Doctor Who was the appearance of dozens and dozens of other Time Lords and Ladies. The planet Gallifrey and its denizens were frequent focal points of the Tom Baker years and beyond and with it we got several characters of varying states of exciting. Like, the Rani, for example, the villain of two eponymous stories from the mid-80s, 'The Mark of the Rani' and 'Time and the Rani.' The Rani, as we now know, is the current villain of the second Fifteenth Doctor season and in 'Wish World,' she dropped the name of another, even more notorious Time Lord she wants to revive: Omega. In terms of on-screen appearances, Omega has a pretty small footprint. In the lore of the series, Omega is the first Time Lord. That, as we know from 'The Timeless Children' is not exactly true. (The Doctor is, apparently, the source of regeneration energy.) But Omega was the Gallifreyan who harnessed and perfected time travel technology, the other pillar of Time Lord near-omnipotence. Various pieces of spinoff media have described Omega as a contemporary of Rassilon, another hugely important figure in Time Lord history. Whilst harnessing a supernova to secure Time Lord time travel capabilities, Omega became lost and the Time Lords believed him dead. The truth, as we learn in the 10th anniversary serial 'The Three Doctors,' his first appearance, is that he hadn't died. Not really, anyway. The supernova had sent Omega into a pocket dimension, an anti-matter universe, which he was able to control and construct through sheer force of will. He blamed the Time Lords for abandoning him and remained alive specifically to return and seek revenge. As stated, Omega's first appearance in Doctor Who was in 'The Three Doctors.' Largely, the Second and Third Doctors, plus members of the Third Doctor's UNIT family, squared off against Omega within the antimatter universe. During the course of that story, Omega finally got close to breaching his kingdom prison and returning to the pro-matter universe. (That is not what it's called; calm down, astrophysicists.) However, the Doctors rightly sus out that Omega isn't technically alive. Like the pocket universe itself, Omega only exists because his will power forces him to. A full 10 years later, in the serial 'Arc of Infinity,' which began Doctor Who's 20th season, Omega returned. Looking much stupider, the angry Time Lord made of antimatter attempts to gain reentry into the proper universe by fusing with the Doctor. Fearing that the collision of matter and antimatter would destroy reality, the Time Lords call the Doctor back to Gallifrey to execute him. Surviving that (obviously), it's up to the Doctor to stop Omega once again. Not on TV, though technically we see both him and Rassilon during the interminable flashbacks in 'The Timeless Children.' Omega has appeared in several Big Finish audio dramas, novels, and comics, however, and will very possibly make his grand return in 'The Reality War,' due to air on Disney+ May 31. The Two Ranis plus Omega? Our dear Doctor is really in for it this time! Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
