Written by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: Alex Sanjiv Pillai
That’s it? That’s the lost Time Lord? It was one minute of a bony CGI monster! Defeated with a secondhand thought, literally the secondhand to a clock! I guess I do kind of like tying how the Rani thought herself so superior to the human race but then being so unceremoniously finished in return. I don’t like how Omega was just “grr, me hungry.” I thought his main motivations was from being lonely and I think back to him trying to have the Doctor(s) stay with him.
The whole Poppy subplot kind of rubs me the wrong way. For one, there is a non-consenting aspect to it, suddenly having a hybrid child. Belinda didn’t really want for one, and it’s a bit of an “accident.” The Doctor didn’t really ask for it either. I don’t see them as a romantic pairing, and the forcing of them to be one in the Wish World was supposed to be uncomfortable, as the Doctor in this generation is supposed Gay coded (could be pan, but doesn’t matter) and the Doctor generally doesn’t romance his companions. All right, so they had a wish baby without clapping humie cheeks, that can be an interesting consequence. But then they pull the rug and make that baby just a human baby, and the manner of which this baby was placed into existence was by force much like how the secondary antagonist of the last couple episodes did to the whole world. Once again Belinda didn’t ask for this child as she has forgotten about Poppy and is disturbed at (and laughs off) the implication of having a (forgotten) child with the Doctor. It just all feels without express consent, uninvited/forced, unearned, and uncomfortable. For the other, it feels irrelevant as a consequence and forced the co-lead Belinda to basically have nothing to do. We didn’t have many moments with her having her own agency as a character all eight episodes this season and Poppy was the contrived reason she was put in a box this finale—not even a figurative box, a literal box. There could have been some sort of parallel of Belinda and Poppy being stuck in eternity in an unchanging prison like Omega, but they didn’t do something with that either.
Anyway, I was sad to see Ncuti Gatwa go. It feels so soon. He didn’t even face Daleks. He’ll probably be remembered as the one who cries every episode and was too short lived. At least he had a couple good episodes like Dot and Bubble, Lux, or 73 Yards. If they were going to bring in one of the other Doctors anyway, I’d have liked for the cameo for Matt Smith to have been extended, or at the very least do something with the bigenerated doctor too. I’m sure introducing Billie Piper is going to result in some gimmicky contrived mess.
The ending just left me rolling my eyes, extraordinarily self serving in typical RTD fashion. Hoping it’s just going to be for a brief spill like Tenant’s return was but I guess we’ll see.
I kind of enjoyed this, at least the first half.
On the first half, It was alright. The big thought I had was - if this whole Whoniverse thing doesn’t pan out, RTD and Bad Wolf would be great fit for doing a live action reboot of Captain Scarlet. A massive sci-fi weapons battery in the middle of a London disguised as a skyscraper is very spectrum.
- Using the time hotel’s doors was a great plot device to bridge from the last episode. It’s one of those times that make you go “well, why didn’t they use that big deus ex they had a few episodes ago…”. This time they remembered!
- The bone beasts were alright, but I feel like the explanation didn’t really make much sense, and surely they could have found a better name than “bone beasts”.
- The box that exists outside of time is a pretty scary concept, that you could end up stuck for eternity in a non-space, with no escape. I don’t know that I would have made the same choice given those circumstances.
- In the week between episodes I rewatched the old series serial which introduced omega. I didn’t really feel like the big bad we saw here was the same one. Omega, to me, seemed kind of stuck and abandoned and redeemable with a bit of work, here it was an eldritch bone beast that could speak.
- On seeing everything start to come back from the wish world, I had forgotten that rose hung out / worked at Unit, and seeing that she was basically denied out of existence is pretty blunt, but I am glad it was pointed out. The doctor’s new skirt dress was fantastic.
The “epilogue”, I guess you could call it, was not great. I think I would have enjoyed it most if they had wrapped it up after Ruby notices that poppy has disappeared. It would have been tragic, it would have been emotional, it would have had punch, it would have been a pretty clean ending - just sometimes you don’t get the happy one.
- I really don’t like that Gatwa only had 2 seasons, he should have been allowed more.
- Getting 13 in for a cameo was unexpected, and I quite liked the dig at it usually being 10 that turns up, but I don’t really get why she was there. The regen (?) into Rose(?) is weird, but very much RTD’s thing. There have been a LOT of cameos and references recently, and I feel like Doctor Who really shines best when it acts as a set of mostly independent sci-fi anthologies with maybe a little bit of overarching story. When it gets too up itself with the self referencing fanservice I am beginning to feel it weakens my enjoyment of it. The middle of this past season had the best episodes for this very reason.
Also, a thought that occurs as I type this - they had a Susan foreman reference not too long ago. She is established as being a descendant. But they’re sterile, so can’t have kids let alone grandkids? I know this is a timey wimey thing, and I really don’t want to encourage yet more cameos and self referencing, but surely this should have at least merited a mention. I really like the idea that you have a race of sterile people somehow trying to fix things, (I recently read The Old Axolotl, which touches on this concept) so why didn’t they do anything with it.
The “epilogue”, I guess you could call it, was not great. I think I would have enjoyed it most if they had wrapped it up after Ruby notices that poppy has disappeared. It would have been tragic, it would have been emotional, it would have had punch, it would have been a pretty clean ending - just sometimes you don’t get the happy one.
This is exactly what I thought was happening. I didn’t really expect her to stop existing, but I thought it would just be one of a thousand things that’s like “Well, she’s out there somewhere and maybe we’ll revisit this plot in 20 years.” The Susan Foreman connection was probably the main factor that made me think this, as it would have ambiguously set up a “future” plot point without needing to actually do the work, which is fine in a show like Doctor Who.
The retcon of Belinda’s history also bothered me. It kind of gave me those Moffat-era vibes, where women could go on fun, exciting adventures and all of that but eventually they’d settle down in the wife and/or mother role that represents the person they’re really supposed to be. Boo. I didn’t think RTD2 would echo Moffat like that and I’m as much disappointed that Ncuti Gatwa only had two seasons as that Varada Sethu is gone after just one.
Unsurprisingly, I fell off the show pretty hard in the Moffat era; I’ve seen most of those episodes by now just catching repeat broadcasts, but I stopped purposely watching the show. I know everybody hates it, but I picked it up again when the Chibnall era started and never felt like I wanted to drop the show in that period. This finale has brought me closest to that feeling and sapped my enthusiasm.
I’m interested enough to know what’s going on with Billie Piper that I’ll probably watch as many episodes as it takes for that to be explained, but beyond that I’m not sure. I guess the Billie Piper stuff will have to really wow me.
The retcon of Belinda’s history also bothered me. It kind of gave me those Moffat-era vibes, where women could go on fun, exciting adventures and all of that but eventually they’d settle down in the wife and/or mother role that represents the person they’re really supposed to be. Boo. I didn’t think RTD2 would echo Moffat like that and I’m as much disappointed that Ncuti Gatwa only had two seasons as that Varada Sethu is gone after just one.
This bugged me as well. I was very surprised in the last ep and the beginning of this one to see just how protective and loving Doctor and Belinda were being to poppy. But then by the end, only Belinda is the one that seems to care deeply for the child. The doctor is given a chance to make a farewell, but then he just leaves with (as I understood it) the implication that he is never going to come back and that he’s been replaced by a human dad. It just confuses me why any of that needed to happen.
One thing I find interesting: Billie isn’t credited as “the Doctor”. Usually the credit for a new doctor goes “And introducing Actor as the doctor”.
And I can’t figure out why? She is as far as we can tell the next doctor (unless they throw a curveball and she actually is the Valeyard or something) so why not credit her as such?
I just watched it tonight.
I struggle to really pin down exactly what the difference is between the good and bad Doctor Who episodes/seasons. Like if I was going to give a general complaint about this episode or season, I’d say that it felt like confusing nonsense but… I feel like that’s Doctor Who most of the time and I usually loved it even when it was in spite of the confusing bits. The more recent seasons have been confusing in a boring way that’s just hard to put into words. I think this Doctor started out pretty strong but somewhere along the way it lost it’s magic.
The one thing that comes to my mind as a potential difference, but honestly I could just not be remembering right, is it feels like the Doctor kind of just stands around listening to exposition a lot more in recent seasons. Like we’re being told a lot more than we’re being shown and The Doctor doesn’t really run around solving problems as much as they wait around for the bad guy to explain everything and then we reach the end of the episode and the plot happens to wrap things up somehow. Then there is just this over-reliance on reveals of things that I don’t even know why I should be surprised because it’s based on some random reference from a long time ago.
There’s definitely some important differences, I’m just not 100% sure that those are it or not.
Others have done a great job of breaking down the specifics of this episode. I just wanted to air my more general thoughts as they relate to the newer seasons.
EDIT: Also, whether or not the new Doctor turns out better or not, it’s kind of sad to see this Doctor getting the short end of the new paradigm of shorter seasons for streaming shows. Eccleston was only on for one season and he got nearly as many episodes as this one got in two.
I feel like the RTD2 era doesn’t have as many “quiet” moments as RTD1. As an example, in David Tennant’s final episode, they’d break up the action with little scenes like this where they’d just let the actors sit there and carry the scene themselves, and I don’t really remember there being many of those in the recent finale. I wonder if maybe it’s kind of a budget thing, where before they’d have to use CGI and big effects sparingly? In the new era, when they need to, say, have 15 travel from UNIT to where the bad guys are, instead of using that moment to take a breather and have the Doctor talk about the Rani or Omega or the implications of the Wish World or whatever, they just stick him on a CGI space scooter and make everything blow up instead.
It’s a good spectacle and makes for higher production value, but I think it comes at the expense of letting the episodes breathe and the characters talk about things. There’s no time to really process anything that happens because there’s always something happening, if that makes sense.
Yeah I think it’s some of that. I feel like there is often an inverse relationship between budget and how interesting/emotionally resonant a show/movie is. More time for action is less time for human moments.
I imagine if you have a script deadline it’s probably much faster and easier to write the latter one of those scenes than the former too lol.
I don’t know how they do it for Doctor Who, but I remember reading that for Marvel movies they often do work on the CGI scenes before they’ve even finished the script or hired some of the key talent. It can’t be easy to try to stitch together a narratively coherent and emotionally resonant movie when before you begin you’ve been told which action scenes you need to work into your script.
That’s definitely the case when they use a “volume” AR wall, which I know they used during Season 1. Since the CGI environment is projected live behind the actors, it all has to be prepped in advance of filming.
From what I’ve seen of “Unleashed,” though, they’ve also been using a lot of old-fashioned green screen.
Is the doctor being sterile new information or have I completely missed it? I thought he was spared by the genetic bomb/master’s genocide of gallifrey.
