Review: Doctor Who: The Reality War

Sorry it's taken me a bit of time to get to reviewing the climax to the latest season of Doctor Who. Blame too much else happening in my life!

But here we are at last, and despite a couple of weeks wondering how to approach the review I'm still no closer, so I'm just going to start typing and see where it all takes me.

Fundamentally, the episode had too much to do. Russell T Davies had decided to try and bring together all the threads from Ncuti Gatwa's second season, but also to introduce aspects of his first season, and to try and bring together the concept of the 'Gods' which started in the 14th Doctor specials before that. And on top of all this, there was an apparent change of direction somewhere in there which meant that Gatwa was leaving and so the whole thing needed to end on the usual (traditional?) cliffhanger of a new Doctor coming in. That is a fair amount to try and juggle in about 66 minutes!

Sad to say that I don't think the final episode was wholly successful in its aims. There's just too much to try and sort out. There's too many hanging threads which were not addressed, and this is important as in this day and age of TV series apparently needing to have a 'season arc', if you're going to do that, then it's important that you actually complete the arc and have the whole thing making sense at the end. If you don't then you're going to alienate your audience who then may not come back for more the following season. These endings are important!

Thus not addressing who 'the Boss' is as referred to by the Meep way back, not addressing why the Doctor saw his granddaughter Susan in the episodes leading to the climax, not addressing how this Vindicator device, supposedly invented and built by the Doctor to triangulate routes back to the Earth, ends up being the perfect fit for a giant clock face that the Rani has built (and even has a hand which points the time), but then is also some sort of ultimate weapon thing which can fire power beams to force Omega back to his Underverse place. This was just so convenient that it beggared belief.

And what about all the 'clues' that the Doctor was not in the real world anymore? An entire episode about fiction and imagination 'The Story and the Machine' in which Mrs Flood and Poppy seemed to be stories. Mrs Flood breaking the fourth wall all the time and speaking to the audience ... nothing came of it all.

The Rani's plan, as discussed in my review of the previous episode, 'Wish World', also made no sense whatsoever. She wanted to create a world based on the wishes of Conrad (who we discover here learned from the Doctor's little lecture, and created the world were people were nice to each other) so that the Doctor could doubt it, and that doubt would crack reality and release Omega. And why did she want to release Omega? So that his DNA could be used to repopulate the Time Lord race as they are all infertile from the Genetic explosion during the Time War. Twice the Doctor refers to Omega as a Time Lord, but he was never this - he was a Stellar Engineer who detonated the black hole which then gave the Gallifreyans the power they needed to become Time Lords. Omega himself was thrown through the black hole into a universe of anti-matter where he stewed and plotted and lost who he was, becoming an entity of matter created by his own mind. He was not a Time Lord.

As someone in the episode commented, why not use the DNA you have: the Rani's and the Doctor's? But that wasn't going to work for some reason as they are sterile. But the Rani is a genetic scientist and genius (even if she seems to have inherited some of the Master's craziness here) and so couldn't she create Time Lord babies in test tubes if she had the DNA?

In and around all this jiggery pokery we have the mystery of Poppy - supposedly the child of the Doctor and Belinda while in Wish World (except that neither could actually remember having her or bringing her up - we just have to accept that this is the case) but then, because reality shatters, Poppy isn't the Doctor's child at all, and even though he gets Susan Triad to create a handy (and impossible) Zero Room at UNIT HQ and puts Belinda and Poppy in there so they don't get affected when the Wish is cancelled, Poppy still vanishes shortly after.

What I really didn't understand about this sequence was that everyone else remembered everything that had been the case, but that was now not the case (like the actor Ernest Borgnine not being dead), but could not remember Poppy being there, or anything related to her. And this included the Doctor (who usually can remember stuff from alternate timelines and so on as he's a Time Lord). Only Ruby could remember, but there's nothing to explain why this would be. It just is. So Ruby has to convince the Doctor that Poppy being missing is one of those 'glitches' and he decides to use his regeneration energy to force the universe to slip a gear and to set things back right again.

Of course once he does this, Poppy does now exist, but she's still not his child. She's Belinda's. And we further discover that she is the reason that Belinda wanted to come home on 24 May - as Poppy and Belinda's mum were waiting for her. This all seems a very weak and 'normal' reason. And it's backed up by lots of clips of Belinda explaining to the Doctor all about Poppy - clips that we didn't see in their respective stories. I wondered whether the clips were recorded at the same time as those stories which would mean that Davies had this ending in mind all along, or whether they were reset with the same costumes and CGI backgrounds and so on while the final episode was being recorded. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it was a nice way of showing how reality had shifted and that things were now not the same as before.

On this subject though, how many beings lost their lives or just ceased to exist because the Doctor jogged reality over a cog. Maybe more actors are now dead who were not before. Maybe more were alive who had been dead? The Doctor doesn't seem concerned about any of this.

His and Belinda's reactions too when Poppy is being erased and Ruby is trying to let them know seemed callous and harsh. Not like the Doctor at all. He and Belinda are just self-obsessed with where to travel to next, even ignoring Ruby and the obvious pain this was all causing her. 

There's just so many elements in the episode which don't make sense when you think about them. Kate uses a chip embedded in all the UNIT personnel to 'wake them up' and to bring them to UNIT HQ. But they are all in the Wish World. UNIT is only reverting back to the real reality because Anita is keeping the Time Hotel door open. So in the Wish World, why would these people have a UNIT chip? And why would it work? Shirley 'didn't exist' in the Wish World but she was obviously there and functioning, if not realising that she had been a UNIT officer. And Mel? Well she did exist in the Wish World ... and Rose (Donna's daughter), well she just appeared from nowhere as Conrad had literally made her vanish as she was trans. And how did Mel ride her scooter through London and up into UNIT HQ, up in the lifts (or did she take the stairs) and then drive straight into the main control room without anyone questioning it? Was it just the control room which reverted to real reality or the whole building? Didn't it have any security at the front entrance? How did she get it through the revolving doors and turnstiles? Too much is just handwaved away and shortcut in the narrative for it to really make sense. You just have to smile and move on - it's not meant to make sense, it's just nice and dramatic.

So opposite the giant clock in the Rani's bone palace we have a giant Gallifrey logo. Not sure why. And then it changes to the symbol that Omega had on his costume in 'Arc of Infinity'. And then it's a doorway to the Underverse. And then Omega is there, but rather than being a powerful and vengeful creature of thought, he's a giant CGI monster (as Sutekh was) and he's so big he can't even get through this doorway! They didn't think that through did they. So he scoops up and eats the Rani with no apparent ill or beneficial effects. The other Mrs Flood/Rani grabs the Time Ring (she never had a TARDIS, apparently the Doctor has the only one) and vanishes off somewhere else. I guess she lives to fight another day. 

But why was she swanning around dressing as all the Doctor's previous companions? Was this solely because in 'Time and the Rani' she pretended to be Mel to try and trick the newly regenerated Doctor who was confused at the time? There was a reason for it in that earlier story. I got that she was monitoring the Doctor and making sure the Vindicator thing was doing what it was supposed to, but why dress as his companions?

And if you've got a Time Ring that can apparently take you anywhere and anytime, then why do you need a TARDIS anyway? If you really want one then you could just use the Time Ring and go in time and space to somewhere where you knew there were operational TARDISes (the Master's? The Monk's? The War Lord's SIDRATs? The Doctor's? The Daleks'?) and just steal one? When you're talking about a Time Machine, how can there only be one left? Have all others been erased from all of time? If that happened then the whole of the Doctor's past history would be rewritten if there was no Master and no Dalek time machine etc etc ... so it doesn't seem likely.

And while we're back on the whole Rani plan thing, why, at the end of 'The Robot Revolution' did we see fragments of the Earth floating in space, suggesting that the Earth has been destroyed on the 24 May? The plot at the end suggested that the 24 May never came as the world 'reset' at the end of the 23 May and the only day they all ever lived in Wish World was the 23 May. Was this a suggestion that if Omega had emerged and run riot then the Earth would have been destroyed on the 24th? And the Doctor's actions stopped that happening and thus when the Wish ended, it all carried on (mostly) as it had been before, but then the Doctor jumped reality a little more ...

And then we get to the ending. There's lots of speculation online as to what happened, what the 'original' ending should have been - that it involved Susan and a party or something - that there were hasty remounts and material recorded late in the day ... all sorts of stuff. But of course we can only really judge on what we actually saw.

For reasons I can't recall, the 13th Doctor appears in the TARDIS and gives the 15th a bit of a talking to, advising him on how to make the regen energy into the TARDIS thing work, and then she vanishes off again. Then the Doctor fires his regeneration energy into the TARDIS which causes reality to skip. But then the Doctor is about to actually regenerate, so he puts it off so he can be sure that Poppy and Belinda are safe ... and then he's off in the TARDIS. He wants to have a witness to his regeneration and so turns to Joy - the lady from 'Joy to the World', the Christmas Special, who became a literal star - and he blasts his regeneration out into the universe of space (where does all this energy go I wonder. I thought the point was to turn it inward to make him regenerate, not to allow it all to escape ... but anyway) and he regenerates.

Next thing we have Billie Piper saying Hello! But the end credits don't credit her as the Doctor, just 'introducing'. What a strange way to end the episode. Especially when, if you can believe half of what is talked about on the interwebs, there is no interest from Disney in more Doctor Who, and the BBC is trying to find another partner to continue it.

Why do that? Why introduce an apparent new Doctor which a new production partner might not even want? It seems very strange. Unless of course the new Piper Doctor has a role in the forthcoming The War Between Land and Sea series? Or all this internet gossip is just that and there is a new season or Christmas Special in the offing and something will resolve there.

However on this occasion I doubt it. There are too many loose ends and elements introduced which are then skipped over for me to be wholly convinced that there is any game plan at work here. As I said at the start, for a series arc to work, it has to be an arc, it has to make sense in the end, and the season needs to come to a conclusion which is worked for and which doesn't feel like 'stuff happens because'. Sadly for the Gatwa years, this seems to be the main takeaway.

Looking back over the individual episodes though, for the most part I have enjoyed them all. There's lots to like, some great performances, good and interesting ideas, and some absolute standout drama. Possibly my least favourite was 'Rogue' as I just can't get on with the Doctor falling in love with someone he just met. Yes he can care about others, he can try and make things better for them. He obviously loves and cares for the people who travel with him as he develops a bond with them as a result - it would be hard not to care for someone you have so much shared experience with. But the Doctor going all googly eyed over someone he (or she) just met just didn't sit with me. I felt the same about 'The Girl in the Fireplace' where the Doctor falls for Madame de Pompadour.

I loved Gatwa as the Doctor. Bags of charisma and energy, and he seemed to put his all into playing the role with gusto. I enjoyed Ruby and Belinda, again great performances and the actresses were believable in their respective roles. Even if Ruby's story last season was a little too 'normal' as well. She found her mother ... nothing unusual ... the whole season-long mystery of who she was and why she was abandoned as a baby wasn't a mystery at all. It had nothing to do with anything.

And so we come to the end of another era in Doctor Who's long history. Another Doctor has come and gone ... maybe to come back as a surprise guest in a future story ... maybe not. I have no crystal ball to tell me what the next few years will bring. Maybe Doctor Who will be back with another streaming company (I've seen Amazon mentioned) with a new Doctor (maybe Billie Piper, maybe not). Maybe there will be another 'hiatus' and we won't have any more Doctor Who on television for the next few years (except maybe a made-for-preschoolers cartoon version, and I have no idea what the BBC is thinking on that score. I fear it will be dreadful with only the name and perhaps some characters in common with the show I love. It certainly won't get pre-schoolers wanting to watch the live action version, and if they do then they will be in for a shock!)

There will continue to be the fans of course, endlessly creating new audio dramas and books (for as long as the BBC wants to license them for). And even if the official licenses drop away, there will be fan produced adventures and books and audios and dramas. Technology is such that it's much easier to do all these things now than the last time the show went off air.

So it's probably going to be an interesting and exciting time ahead. I hope I manage to stay around to enjoy it!

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And if you enjoy my ramblings, please check out a new book I have coming from Bedford Square Publishing on October 9. Called WHO ME! it's my Doctor Who Memoirs ... my life in Doctor Who!

Signed copies are available from me direct: https://samantha-lee-howe-ltd.sumupstore.com/product/who-me-david-j-howe-signed-hardback

And it's also on Amazon UK :)