Latest news with #LastoftheTimeLords
Metro
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Doctor Who's finale infuriated fans – but the next series will fix everything
Doctor Who is in an odd place both in the fictional universe it inhabits and our mundane reality. Last we saw, the tenacious Time Lord Ncuti Gatwa was burning away to reveal the Doctor's new face, and it looked very familiar. For whatever reason, the Last of the Time Lords appeared to have taken on the form of his old companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Needless to say, this sudden and unexpected transformation has left a lot of fans very curious – and in some cases downright furious – about what's next for the good doctor. Annoyingly, however, the BBC and Russell T Davies have remained tight-lipped on the situation and at the time of writing, there's been no word on the beloved sci-fi series' future or whether Disney is interested in helping finance another run. So what's a Gallifreyan superfan to do then? Well, here at Metro we've gathered our team of dedicated Doctor Who experts – Deputy TB Editor Tom Percival, TV Reporter Asyia Iftikhar, and Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cooke – and cracked out the crystal ball to predict what's next for the show, both in terms of the story and the thorny world of TV production. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. Don't worry, though, most of us are predicting a happy ending for the Doctor. It might just be me, but it seems painfully obvious where Doctor Who is going next. Regardless of Disney's involvement, I think we're getting at least one more special, and I don't believe that Billie is playing a true incarnation of the Doctor. Instead, it seems far more plausible that she's the Bad Wolf entity borrowing the Doctor's body. Basically, in this imagined special, we'd learn that Rose's consciousness exists in the Time Vortex as Bad Wolf. When 15 poured his regeneration energy into the time vortex to bring back Poppy, part of that consciousness merged with the Doctor. Sadly, it's not a true regeneration, and this new 'Meta-Crisis Rose Doctor' has a limited time until the body finishes 'cooking' and the true 16th Doc emerges. In that time, though, she has all Rose's memories and all the Doctor's abilities, so she decides to track down her Doctor… aka David Tennant. Over the course of a special, we then get 'Rose Doctor' travelling through the Doctor's timeline, running into some familiar faces (old companions and some returning Doctors perhaps?) before one final tear-jerking run-in with the 10th Doctor giving closure on Davies' tenure and the revived Doctor Who series. Basically it's one big happy ending. What happens next depends on whether the BBC wants more Doctor Who or not. But either way, I think it'll end with the Rose Doctor regenerating into the true 16th Doctor. This will either lead to a third season or, if the BBC decides it's done with Who, the regeneration will be left open-ended for some future writer to pick up a decade or so from now. Whatever happens, though, I think it's time for some fresh blood, and that means two things. Drop Russell T Davies and leave the nostalgia for New Who behind. Change is part of the show's DNA, and the refusal to 'regenerate' has been holding the series back. Disney will pull out of the deal, and the show will fall back into the BBC's hands, returning with a 2026 festive special by which time they will have chosen the 16th Doctor proper. In the Christmas special, much like Susan's cameo was teased and never addressed again in season two, Billie Piper will make a fleeting appearance before the show quickly moves on. I believe she won't even last the full episode, and her cameo will be resolved perhaps even in the first 5 to 10 minutes, as the Doctor's regeneration goes wacky due to Rose's energy being in the Time Vortex after the Bad Wolf incident. Billie will then regenerate into thetrue16th Doctor, who will have their introductory adventure. The show will then return in 2027 for a full season three (ideally returning to, at least, the 10-episode structure provided for Jodie Whittaker's era) with a brand new companion. Belinda Chandra, Ruby Sunday, the 15th Doctor, and whoever Billie is portraying will be firmly left in the past – and, like you, I hope and assume there will be a new showrunner. It's fair to say the Billie Piper reveal has not gone down well. Most see it as the Whoniverse putting the brand on life support, where the memories of the good ol' heyday of the Russell reboot are intravenously administered to keep the dwindling fanbase hopeful that our ailing Tardis might pull through. So, if an idea like, say, bringing back a beloved companion and defying show logic by making her a Time Lord were to backfire, how best to style it out? This season gave fans a lot of things on their wishlist: big budget, stellar Doctor, lovable companion, some cracking episodes (Lux, The Well, etc). But still, it seemed the only fans tuning in were the meta superfans we met when the Doctor battled Mr Ring-a-Ding. Let's go out on a limb here and say that Disney won't back out. That Rose is the Sixteenth Doctor. (All the logical predictions have been taken.) In order to get fans back in and keep Disney sweet, we might have a big shake-up on our hands. Huge. Piper is so bonkers and out-there a person to appear in the regeneration, it could upset the time-space continuum enough to usher in the new normal: a Doctor-of-the-week format. More Trending Hear me out. Perhaps Piper is explained away with some timey-wimey nonsense, and perhaps it turns out the mechanics of Time Lord-dom are broken. He/she/they is regenerating every hour of television, to be precise. Which Doctor Who prediction do you think is right? So, for a one-off special season, playing the Doctor will be the new equivalent to hosting Saturday Night Live. Or going on Snack Wars. Or eating some chicken in whichever poultry promotional content you prefer. A rotating cast of 'Doctor Who's who'. The whiff of desperation is already in the air, so why not lean in? View More » Doctor Who is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Bake Off legend claims she's been dropped by the BBC after 10 years on TV MORE: Psychological thriller labelled a 'masterpiece' free to stream on BBC iPlayer MORE: TV fans have days to binge BBC's 'best crime drama' before return
Engadget
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Doctor Who 'Wish World' review: The Last of the Time Lords (redux)
Spoilers for 'Wish World.' Even the most daring artists, those that actively seek reinvention on a regular basis, will eventually wind up repeating themselves. If they're lucky and self-aware, the artist may even get the chance to rehabilitate some of the lesser works in their canon. Sadly, it's at this last hurdle that Russell T. Davies has fallen, with 'Wish World' not quite able to do more than become a bizarro remake of 'The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords.' James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf We open in Bavaria, 1865, where a cloak-wearing woman on horseback rides through a forest to a remote cabin. It's classic series villain the Rani, resurrected at the end of last week's episode, who is greeted by Otto Zufall (German for 'coincidence'), a storybook villager-type who expected to greet a midwife to help his ailing wife, Violett. Otto is the seventh son of a seventh son, who has just welcomed his seventh son into the world. Violet lays in bed cradling the newborn, which the Rani says is — as the third-generation seventh son — gifted with unbelievable power. She plucks the newborn from her arms, killing Violet by blowing on her, turning her into a pile of violet petals. She then blows on the other six children and turns them into ducks, and Otto into a wise owl. Then, we're on Earth on May 23, 2025, where the happily married couple John Smith — the Doctor — and Belinda wake up side by side in bed. Their daughter, Poppy (from 'Space Babies' and 'The Story and the Engine') pads in from her bedroom. The trio live as a picture of domestic bliss, with a distinctly fake-looking '60s style kitchen filled with bright colors. It may be the present day, but there's little-to-no tech on show except that every room has a 14-inch CRT TV that only plays a broadcast of Conrad (from 'Lucky Day') who tells them the whole world is going to have great weather that day. At breakfast, the Doctor's mind wanders for a moment, and suddenly his mug (which was in the middle of the table) inexplicably smashes to the floor. Never mind, as there's a whole cupboard of matching mugs to replace the ones that fall during a 'slip.' Each house even has a large, bright orange trash can just to get rid of the mugs that fall during a 'slip', including their next door neighbor, Mel. When the Doctor greets Mel, he asks what her plans are for May Day, and she says as an unmarried woman with no children, she'll just sit inside in quiet contemplation. Looming over the heart of the city, taller than any skyscraper, is a structure made out of bone that stands tall on spindly spider legs. Similarly incongruous is a series of massive, dinosaur skeletons that stomp around the landscape. We'll see later that the dinosaur skeletons don't actually interact with the world around them, phasing through the space below. The only person (for now) that doesn't seem to be affected is Ruby, who turns up at the Doctor's house. She thinks she knows the Doctor, and Belinda, but can't quite work anything out, and then blurts out that they don't have a child when she sees Poppy. That prompts Belinda to call the police, as having doubt or sowing confusion is a crime here. The Doctor heads to work in UNIT HQ, suitably redecorated as a 1950s office despite the sci-fi trappings in the periphery. Kate Stewart is an officious boss, Colonel Ibrahim is the Doctor's colleague and Susan Triad has been turned into the '60s tea-lady from 'The Devil's Chord.' Colonel Ibrahim still has the hots for Kate, but thinks that she's so far out of his league that she'd never go out with him. The Doctor disagrees, saying that Ibrahim is a 'beautiful' man, which prompts Ibrahim to get very angry. After all, it would be wrong, impossible or deviant for a man to find another man beautiful, even intellectually. But the Doctor manages to avoid having him call the secret police as the staff of the office all stop to spot the Rani flying by on her hover scooter, which they believe is a sign of good luck for May Day the following day (another deliberate incongruity given May Day takes place on May 1). The Rani lands on the spider skeleton / looming tower of doom, handing Mrs. Flood some Italian meat and tells her to make Conrad a sandwich. He's up in the tower, as it's his imagination that is shaping the world, with his regular broadcasts informing the people of his choices. But he's also nervous — saying that the effort of maintaining a world is difficult since he has to run so many complex systems or else let whole nations be destroyed. It may be his imagination, but it's being powered by the nameless baby from 1865, who never cries, just smiles. Conrad, being the show's avatar of so many alt-right figures, has built a reality to reflect his worldview. Heterosexuality is compulsory and loudly and rigidly enforced, there is a secret police ready to seize anyone off the street at a moment's notice and everyone is constantly asked to inform on their family members. The culture of paranoia is rife. It also explains why Mel, as an unmarried and child-free woman, is expected to sit away and quietly contemplate her implicitly-poor choices, because naturally Conrad only values women for their utility, birthing and taking care of men, rather than as people with their own agency. Even Mrs. Flood, a Time Lady in her own right and the architect of this whole scheme, is relegated to the thankless role of 'mother.' James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf His regular broadcasts are even used to taunt the Doctor, reading a story about the Doctor from a book that apes the original British Harry Potter covers. It is, without a doubt, intentional that Davies' would make his alt-right villain a fan of the series in 2025. Meanwhile, Belinda remains at home looking after Poppy, and gets a visit from her mum and grandmother. They are talking about motherhood, and the fact Poppy is expected to grow up and become an obedient wife to her husband. But when Belinda's grandmother asks how long Belinda's labor took, she can't remember — prompting a small crisis of her own. There's one UNIT regular who isn't up in the office, Shirley Bingham, who is in a wheelchair begging out on the street. Conrad's worldview has no room for people with disabilities (or queer and gender non-conforming people) and so she's homeless. Ruby initially brushes her pleas for money away before stopping and realizing that she's met them before. Ruby is taken to a hidden homeless encampment where the ignored have gathered to create some sort of community. Ruby explains to them what they already know — something about all of this is wrong , and that she's lived through 2025 already (during '73 Yards') and it didn't play out like this. Shirley has a plan to bring down Conrad, and Ruby wants in, saying that if she can get face to face with him, she'll be able to remember what's locked in the back of her mind. That night, the Doctor is at home, furrowing his brow, and in the background Susan appears on his TV in a brief flash. But she quickly disappears, only to be replaced by Rogue (Jonathan Groff, from last season's 'Rogue') who only has time to tell the Doctor two things. First, 'tables don't do that,' and that he loves him. Belinda wakes up to the sound of mugs smashing, as the Doctor experiments — every time he feels doubt, a mug falls through the solid wood onto the floor. Belinda can see what's going on, but is horrified enough to call the police and get them to arrest the Doctor for having doubts. But Mrs. Flood doesn't just arrest the Doctor, she hauls Belinda's mom there to look after Poppy so Belinda can be arrested too. Shirley and Ruby are camped out below the stone tower, and Shirley pulls out a UNIT tablet that's a relic from the old world. Up in the tower, the Doctor and Belinda are pushed over a threshold and into the safety of the Rani's lair. But the pair still don't have their memories, and so are confused when the Rani starts expositing at them, at length. She points out the seal of Rassilon, and asks if that jogs his memory to no avail, similarly her robot assistants that are looking for signs of doubt among the population. The Rani even dances under a disco ball to a dumbfounded Doctor, who just pleads for mercy. The Rani explains, in a way that made no sense to me at least, that all of the villains the Doctor ever faced wanted death, but her, who wants life. She somehow survived all the various destructions of Gallifrey and is now looking for a lost soul in the heretofore unknown 'underverse.' She achieved this by, uh, blocking the Doctor's route back to Earth and instead, forcing him to criss-cross around the universe with the Vindicator. Each reading the machine took was, in fact, creating a universe-wide network of power all feeding back to the Earth. As the Doctor's memory returns, the Rani explains that being trapped in Conrad's reality was to create and foster doubt. Much in the same way a human being's doubt can damage their world, a Time Lord's doubt should be enough to crack open the universe. As the clock ticks closer to midnight, she sends Belinda back outside the bone tower to her doom. Then, the Rani locks the Doctor on the bone tower's balcony to witness as London is swallowed by a series of enormous black voids with only remnants emerging from the other side (such as the burned Black Cab at the end of 'The Robot Revolution'). Why? Because the lost soul, trapped in the 'underverse' she's desperate to reach, is Omega. The Doctor, trapped on the balcony, tries to break back into the tower and stop the Rani but it's too late. She has laid explosive charges and when they blow, the balcony tumbles down toward the void beneath. But the Doctor screams, 'Poppy is real! Don't you know what that means?' as he tumbles into the darkness. To. Be. Continued. James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf If there's one thing Russell T. Davies doesn't do well, it's narrative coherence in the run-up to his big finales. Problems and solutions are equally contrived, pulled out of left field and generally don't stand up to much scrutiny. In his mind that's okay because what interests him is the emotional resonance and character moments created by that drama. Given he's one of the few name brand writers in the UK, it's not as if this approach hasn't been enormously successful. But it does make 'Wish World' a frustrating beast since it is, as usual, playing with so many good ideas it squanders most of them. That wouldn't be so bad, but for the episode's conclusion being handed over to incoherent technobabble. It doesn't help this is the second series in a row that hinges on the audience recognizing the significance of a villain not properly* seen on screen for more than four decades. It's worth looking at the first two thirds separate from the last, since there's so much good stuff early on. One of Davies' usual fixations is on the rise of middle-class British fascism, and the moments when we're just inhabiting Conrad's world are wonderful. This time, it's centered on the stultifying environment for the so-called 'respectable types,' whose position and status are perpetually tenuous. The paranoia that manifests out of that means everyone is looking for signs of deviance in their own communities. Those deemed unfit, especially people with disabilities and queer folks, are rendered as un-persons, invisible, shunned and isolated. 'Wish World' picks up on another recurring theme in the show, which is to ask what happens after the war has ended . Conrad's utopia may have lovely weather, but everyone is dressed in uncomfortable clothes and at perpetual risk of being kidnapped off the street by police. If I have a nitpick (and I do) it's that I wish we hadn't needed to see the Rani's baby kidnapping in the opener. Starting with the Doctor and Belinda waking up as a married couple would have been a bigger shock. And it's a shame the episode can't commit hard enough to the 'we're trapped in a bizarro world' bit as Ruby turns up so quickly to let the audience know Things Are Awry. Imagine if the first twenty minutes had played out just from John Smith, or Belinda, or Ruby's perspective and the creeping horror as they realized what was wrong. Sadly, it's the usual problem of having maybe 30 minutes at most to gesture to those ideas rather than explore them. Because we then have to stop the episode to get Ncuti Gatwa to look perplexed while the Rani spouts nonsense at him. Her evil plan doesn't stand up to much scrutiny even as we're being told it. After all, why does she need the Doctor to leap between planets when she has her own TARDIS? And if all it takes is a Time Lord's doubt to rip open the universe, she could have easily done that herself. It's not as if the Doctor is affected by the doubt since he's able to carry on until the Rani explodes the balcony and casts him into the void. Oh, there's one thing that's good in those last moments — the scene of the Doctor realizing something about Poppy is a nice hook into the finale. James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf I don't get why the Rani would be motivated to go looking for Omega, the scientist who helped co-found Time Lord society. If Rassilon was the political mind, Omega was the engineer who created the power to make it all happen. He created the stellar manipulator that put a stable black hole at the heart of Gallifrey — the Eye of Harmony — to power its TARDISes. Omega's backstory was flimsy in his two televised appearances, essentially being an overpowered villain for the Doctor(s) to battle in two different anniversary specials, 'The Three Doctors' and 'Arc of Infinity.' The rest of his backstory was filled out in the spin-off material, but he's essentially just a big name baddie trotted out when, say, the Master wouldn't cut it. There are thematic parallels between Omega and Conrad, however, since Omega's antimatter universe was sustained entirely by his will and imagination. Is that a comment on something, or just a nice way of dovetailing toward Omega. Who knows? I'm not sure I do. It's hard not to notice the extreme similarities between 'Wish World' and 'The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords,' including the fact both stories got started in the previous episode. For a start, there's the whole Britain-under fascism angle, with the Doctor incapacitated by the villain. Not to mention both feature a sequence in which a Gallifreyan foe taunts our hero with a high camp dancing sequence in a room hovering above the sky . If there's a shame, it's that while the runtime has been cut in half, the actual quality of the denouement seems to have gotten worse. Oh, it was nice to see the seal of the Prydonian Chapter of the Time Lords of Gallifrey Seal of Rassilon on the wall of the Rani's HQ. The bronze and red stylings looked gorgeous and while I'm never going to bang on about fan service in production design, it was lovely to see. And wasn't it nice to get a bone structure hovering over London which is an unintentional callback to 'The Ancestor Cell.' Just a shame that you're then reminded that the book was designed to burn all the great ideas created by Lawrence Miles out of Doctor Who. After all, Miles has been at times the most interesting writer the series' leadership refused to engage with. * Yes, I know Omega and Rassilon are standing beside Tecteun in 'The Timeless Children.'
