Well, to use the old Krusty the Clown meme: “What the hell was that?!”. There’s a lot to digest here but so much of it was visual spectacle over any actual sense of plot or well-written dialogue and the return of Omega was absolutely awful for this long-time fan. The Rani was wasted, more heavy-handed social commentary and then we get the final 10 or so minutes and suddenly it was actually well written and interesting… until the last shot. Yes, there’s no point in hiding it, this was Ncuti Gatwa’s regeneration story, and boy that was some cliffhanger… Let’s take a look and try and make sense of it all…
Where to start with this thing? I guess at the start, where we see The Rani (Archie Panjabi) find the “seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son” which meant the baby was an incarnation of Desidirium, the God of Wishes from that same God pantheon that’s been plaguing the Doctor, and uses it to give Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King) control over the entire Earth, turning it into what he thinks the Earth should like and due to essentially being the incarnation of all that’s wrong with the internet he turns the world into something similar to the 1950s, with women all being housewives and pumping out children while the entirely straight and not-disabled males go and work. This includes The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu), who are a couple with their own child in this version of reality. So far, so… sort of comprehensible. But we also see a giant “Bone Palace” above London where The Rani is using the Vindicator The Doctor had been building up power with to break reality using the power of doubt in order to access the “Under-verse”. Oh and there’s giant skeletal dinosaurs walking around called “Bone Beasts” as well… So much nonsense thrown around!
The Doctor and Mel in a false reality… can I just say again how weird it is that Mel is a recurring character in the mid-2020s?
While this is going on Ruby (Millie Gibson) manages to “break the spell” so to speak and meets Shirley (Ruth Madeley) who is in hiding with a bunch of other disabled people so we can get a bunch of scenes where Russell T. Davies can tell us how disabled people are often invisible to people but are actually capable and strong, which as per usual, great message but delivered so heavy-handedly that I felt like I was being directly preached to despite never having thought otherwise. The Doctor eventually regains his memories after a whole lot of nonsense with broken cups, the UNIT crew being regular office workers and a very brief cameo from Rogue (Jonathan Groff) which looked super cheap and filmed at home, so I kind of wish they hadn’t done that… The Doctor confronts The Rani, or I should say the Ranis as Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) is constantly hanging around as the previous Rani, subservient to the current one for… reasons, and we get more of the “plan” in that they needed the “doubt of a Time Lord” to reach the Under-verse and they were doing so to reach Omega, who somehow became banished down there at some point. The first half ends with reality folding in on itself and The Doctor falling to his doom…
Ruby can’t believe her plan to infiltrate a floating “Bone Palace” from the ground has failed.
Only “The Reality War” opens with The Doctor being saved thanks to Anita (Steph de Whalley) from the Christmas special who is now in charge of the Time Hotel from that episode and so opened a door to pull The Doctor out in time. She reveals that time has reverted back to May 23rd and that its been doing that over and over, so The Doctor uses the Time Doors to waft in regular timeline… juice to the UNIT HQ and bring everything in that building back to reality, the people included. This soon includes Belinda and Ruby, along with the Doctor and Belinda’s daughter Poppy much to everyone’s surprise, though The Doctor says that just because it was wished into existence doesn’t mean she isn’t real, after all “all babies are made from wishes”, which was at least a nice line. The Rani soon turns up and delivers some exposition about how the surviving Time Lords/Ladys are now sterile due to The Master’s genocide (and by a consequence of that Bigeneration became a thing, apparently, which at least explains that!) and says she plans to bring back Omega and use his non-sterile Time Lord genes to recreate Gallifrey and the Time Lords in her image. There was a good line from Mel (Bonnie Langford) who perfectly describes The Rani as a heartless scientist who experiments on anything without seeing death of innocents as a reason to stop, which just made this dancing, monologing universe-conquering Rani seem even less Rani-ish…
Anyway, once she was done with informing the audience of the rest of the “plot” The Doctor heads to where she is while Ruby heads to Conrad and Belinda and Poppy get put in a Zero Room to prevent Poppy from being erased from existence when the timeline resets. Oh and UNIT HQ starts firing large laser guns at the incoming Bone Beasts, because that’s a sentence I needed to write…
I’ll obviously leave the conclusion to the Spoiler section, but it was two-thirds nonsense but the final third was actually well-written and genuinely interesting, which is why it’s so annoying it’s Ncuti Gatwa’s last few scenes!
The Continuity:
Who had a Multi-Rani story on their list of things likely to see?
Pfft. Where to begin? The Rani first appeared in Sixth Doctor TV story “Mark of the Rani”, then later appeared in Seventh Doctor TV story “Time and the Rani” and the charity special “Dimensions in Time”. Due to rights issues she’s only had a few appearances in other media. Omega likewise made two appearances on regular TV, in the Third Doctor anniversary special “The Three Doctors” and the Fifth Doctor TV story “Arc of Infinity”. He also appeared in the Audio Drama “Omega”, which is a personal favourite of mine.
There are lots of connections to prior Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor stories, like Mrs. Flood following them around, Poppy was one of the space babies from the God-awful “Space Babies”, Rogue from “Rogue”, Conrad from “Lucky Day”, Susan Twist from “The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death” is now alive and working for UNIT, more Gods of the Pantheon, etc etc, plus mentions of The Master’s genocide of the Time Lords from the Thirteen Doctor run. Throw in a bunch of archive footage for when The Doctor regains his memories and there you go.
Oh on that note The Doctor waking up in a false reality in bed with a companion as they’re now portraying a couple was a plot device lifted directly from the Eighth Doctor comic “The Glorious Dead”, which is a new one to add to the long list of ideas RTD has taken from that run of DWM comics, by his own admission. The Doctor living a normal life as “John Smith” only to be snapped out of it is also reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor book / Tenth Doctor TV story “Human Nature”.
Overall Thoughts:
Belinda holds The Doctor’s daughter… wait, what happened with all the Susan stuff from the last few episodes?!
“Wish World / The Reality War” was mostly nonsense words and flashy CGI which when coupled with more heavy-handed preaching and the character assassination of two returning enemies made for quite an annoying majority of the double bill, luckily the last 10 or so minutes arrive and it was so well written and acted that it at least ended Ncuti Gatwa’s run on a very strong note. Go figure!
The Doctor is too late to stop Omega’s resurrection but during his time in the Under-verse he has mutated into a large, comically disproportioned skull… thing, that is now apparently the God of Time and wishes to eat people, which he does by eating The Rani. What happened to my scenery-chewing monologuing masked man talking about how he was wronged by his own kind? What a disappointment to see another classic villain re-written to be some big CGI God monster. Anyway, while Ruby gains control over the Wish Baby and wishes Conrad into a happy harmless life The Doctor uses the Vindicator as a large gun to shoot Omega back to Hell, or um, the “Under-Verse”, sorry, and everything is all back to normal… even Poppy survived! The Doctor, Ruby and Belinda all get on board the TARDIS and talk about taking Poppy around the universe but slowly but surely she vanishes and The Doctor and Belinda don’t remember her, but Ruby does…
#NotmyOmega
After several scenes of Ruby trying to convince The Doctor that Ruby exists The Doctor comes up with a plan to “nudge reality” a bit back onto a track where Poppy exists, or something, but to do so he has to use regeneration energy, which he can do even though Bigeneration was now a thing due to Time Lords being sterile…? Well, he starts to wonder if he can do it and then meets the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), who has been bumped into his timeline accidentally. She gives him a pep talk, he criticises Chris Chibnall for not having The Doctor tell Yaz she loves her, and then The Doctor pours regeneration energy into his TARDIS and bam, reality is still as it was but with one difference: Belinda is living with Poppy. Only snag: Poppy is 100% human, the result of Belinda and another human, nothing to do with The Doctor. Heart(s)broken but happy that Poppy and Belinda can be happy, he leaves in his TARDIS and soon regenerates while looking out across space, but the face that pops up at the end belongs to (a much older and lots of plastic surgery-ised) Rose (Billie Piper) ! Dun-dun-dun!
Well, didn’t expect to be talking about a Regeneration again so soon… Goodbye Ncuti, you were good while you lasted!
This… isn’t great, if I’m honest, never really rated Billie as much of an actress in the stuff I’ve seen, but she isn’t credited as The Doctor and given Ncuti leaving was quite last minute, plus the uncertain future of the show, this could well have been a make-do until they can cast an actual 16th Doctor. Who knows?
Hogan Reviews 