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Geek Vibes Nation
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
'Doctor Who: Pursuit' Review - A Mind-Bending Trip Through Multiversal Horrors
Big Finish Productions sends listeners back into the depths of the Time War with Doctor Who: Time War – Uncharted 2: Pursuit . When we last saw the Doctor, Alex, and Cass in last year's Reflections , Alex had just stolen the Doctor's TARDIS and taken Cass alongside him on adventures unknown, determined to prove that he could do a better job saving the universe than the Doctor does. But unknown to Alex, untold horrors await the pair of them as they journey further into the uncharted. Continuing from where the previous Uncharted box set left off, Doctor Who: Pursuit offers an even more mind-bending exploration of the horrors of a Time War through a collection of thrilling and horrific stories that manage to perfectly straddle the line between epic war adventures and intimate character drama. Put simply, it's Doctor Who at its very best. 'Spoil of War' by Mark Wright When Alex (Sonny McGann) and Cass (Emma Campbell-Jones) arrive at a strange manor crewed by a staff that seems to have expected their arrival, they uncover an unusual auction where little is as it seems. Meanwhile, as the Doctor (Paul McGann) and Hieronyma Friend (Niky Wardley) chase after them, they discover they've all fallen into some kind of an alternate universe ruled by Gallifreyan Sontarans. But what exactly is being auctioned at this mysterious manor and can the Doctor and Hieronyma find Alex and Cass before it's too late? Mark Wright's 'Spoil of War' acts as both a continuation of the Eighth Doctor's previous Time War box set, Reflections , and as a pilot for a new kind of Doctor Who adventure. The story itself is a bit lowkey, with Alex and Cass mostly trying to find their footing in their new dynamic. Who are they without the Doctor? Is Alex really so different from his great-grandfather? And how does their relationship change as Alex desperately tries to run away from his great-grandfather while Cass finds herself caught in the middle of this spat? These are the questions at the heart of the story, and Wright delves into them in a wonderfully thorny and vulnerable way. 'Spoils of War' is Alex and Cass's story, even as the Doctor and Hieronyma lurk on the outskirts of the story, trying to break in. It's the kind of story that acts more as a prelude for what's to come rather than a fully formed story in its own right, but it proves quite enticing nonetheless. (8/10) 'The Tale of Alex' by Katharine Armitage Hot on the heels of Alex and Cass, the Doctor and Hieronyma arrive on the planet of Igg—only to find the citizens blame the Doctor for their plight as Tarsin the Bard (Sam Stafford) sings stories of the Doctor's last visit and how he left the population to starve after saving them from a deadly blight. Meanwhile, Alex and Cass arrived a week earlier, hoping to undo that damage. Time, however, always finds a way to reassert itself, and the planet Igg finds itself caught between two warring potential timelines leaving Alex to decide the planet's future. What makes Katharine Armitage's 'The Tale of Alex' so compelling is that it's simultaneously a critique of the Doctor's habit of leaving a world directly after saving it and an exploration of what might happen if someone like the Doctor did stay to help the citizens rebuild. 'The Tale of Alex' is a story of two warring viewpoints—the Doctor's and Alex's. Alex feels the Doctor's approach to the universe is fundamentally flawed and tries to do things differently, to save people regardless of the wider context of the situation surrounding him. And the drama rests in that tug of war between those viewpoints. Sonny McGann shines here in delving into the notion that the harder Alex tries to rebel against the Doctor and his actions, the more Doctor-like he becomes. Armitage does something quite compelling with her script too, playing with the idea of how stories can shift and change, altering your view of who the 'hero' is and who the 'villain' is. 'The Tale of Alex' asks the audience to decide whether Alex is the hero and the Doctor is the villain—or vice versa—and it thrives in those twisty, shifty, murky waters. It's a clever, well-paced little character study that dives deep into both Alex and the Doctor in the most compelling of ways. (9/10) 'See-Saw' by James Moran When Alex and Cass arrive in 1924 London, answering a distress signal of some kind, they find the city freshly abandoned; a place they shouldn't be able to get to as the Earth has been time-locked to protect it from the Time War. And yet, here they are, hot on the trail of a strange little girl singing a haunting nursery rhyme they feel compelled to complete. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Hieronyma Friend (Lizzie Hopley) arrive in 1924 London, answering a distress signal of some kind, and find the city freshly abandoned. They're in the same time and place as Alex and Cass, and yet they can't see them. And Alex and Cass, in turn, can't see the Doctor and Hieronyma. But what could have possibly happened to London? And what role does the strange little girl and her unsettling nursery rhyme play? After the previous, more character-focused, stories, James Moran's 'See-Saw' offers a dose of psychological horror. Building on some of the themes in 'The Tale of Alex', 'See-Saw' furthers the exploration of how Alex's methods differ from those of the Doctor—except this time, it focuses on how well the Doctor and Alex work together nonetheless. It's a very timey-wimey story, perfect for the Time War series, complete with the kind of psychological threat that makes your brain hurt the more you think about it. But Moran's script works exceedingly well, even if it feels very small and contained. Though the box set's overarching story kind of takes a back seat here, it all feels like it's leading somewhere, with 'See-Saw' the opening salvo of a grander battle to come. As it is, 'See-Saw' offers a self-contained dose of psychological horror in a tightly-paced, immensely creepy package. (8.5/10) 'The First Forest' by Tim Foley When the Doctor, Hieronyma (Niky Wardley), Alex, and Cass crash in the most unusual of forests, they find a world besieged by shifting timelines. But with Cass missing, can the Doctor and Alex set aside their differences and come together to find their missing friend? Or will the ever-changing winds of time bring an end to the TARDIS team? All roads lead here, and this uncharted universe is finally beginning to unfold. With 'The First Forest', Tim Foley takes various story threads led across both Uncharted box sets and begins to weave them into some kind of a tapestry. Expect answers to long ruminating questions alongside a bushel of new questions. Naturally, the less you know about 'The First Forest', the better. But Foley delivers the auditory equivalent of a season finale in the best of ways—it's an ending of sorts that also throws open the doors for the next Uncharted box set. At its heart, though, underneath all of the mindbending shifting timelines, 'The First Forest' is a story of forgiveness. It's the culmination of the Doctor and Alex's journey across both Reflections and Pursuit and even if it's perhaps a bit too easy of a culmination, it's no less emotionally satisfying. Put simply, 'The First Forest' does everything a good finale needs to do; it brings Pursuit 's ongoing storylines to some kind of conclusion while leaving you desperate to hear what happens next. (9.5/10) Final Thoughts Doctor Who: Pursuit proves exactly why Big Finish's ongoing Time War series is some of its most experimental and intriguing work. Sure, it's still very Doctor Who-shaped , hardly straying away from the general structure of a Doctor Who story. But it pushes the Doctor Who format down such unusual avenues, often eschewing the kinds of plots Doctor Who often tackles in favor of telling these very introspective stories set against an almost incomprehensible, unknowable conflict. And that dichotomy is exactly what makes these stories so compelling. They're not bogged down by the immense lore that comes with the Time War, instead the freedom of the Time War's strangeness gives them this palpable energy that permeates every single story. It's Doctor Who at its very best and a must-listen for all Whovians. Doctor Who: Time War – Uncharted 2: Pursuit is available now from Big Finish Productions.
The Sun
05-06-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Doctor Who's demise is an overdue lesson for woke BBC – & a warning to other companies who've become slaves to diversity
SO farewell Fifteenth Doctor, off to fiddle with your sonic screwdriver in some woke utopia at the end of a Gallifrey rainbow. Doctor Who's demise has been an overdue lesson for its smug producers. 4 High on their own self-importance and right-on zealotry, they managed to ruin a franchise that was beloved by millions. As we revealed this week, audiences for Ncuti Gatwa's truncated Time Lord found it 'rubbish', 'boring' and 'woke' and complained producers had put social justice issues above quality. And who let them get away with that? Craven BBC executives terrified of appearing homophobic, transphobic or displaying some other LBGTQ+ phobia by pointing out how utterly crap it was, I suspect. They gave overbearing writer Russell T Davies far too much freedom and, in return, he turned the 62-year-old show into a pulpit for his own sermons on gender ideology. We can only hope that whoever gets the gig next lives on the same planet as the rest of us. Of course, the Doctor Who debacle is not just a lesson for the BBC. It is a vivid case study of what happens when you become so weak and battle-worn by the 'culture wars' that you roll over and let others do things in your name that just p**s people off. And it isn't the only casualty of this crisis of confidence. Just last month Jaguar, the British car brand once the ultimate status symbol of middle England, canned its advertising agency. We didn't need Jag fan Inspector Morse to work out why. Billie Piper announced as new Doctor Who as she replaces Ncuti Gatwa in BBC series Jaguar had allowed a pretentious advertising firm to reinvent the company with a Technicolor 'inclusive' ad campaign that would make Benetton cringe. The resulting backlash was an avalanche of derision. When it aired, I gave the ailing company the benefit of the doubt on these pages for at least having the balls to try something different. But I assumed — naively it seems — that a brand whose parent company recorded £29billion in revenue last year would have done its homework and formulated its new direction after listening to prospective clients. Apparently not. So the big cat of motoring became yet another dog humiliatingly wagged by its own tail. That disaster would follow this collective decision to let people, many who are essentially activists, determine how an organisation should behave was all too predictable. When the first drumbeats of wokeism started emanating from the US, social justice campaigners over here tuned in with great excitement. The Great Overcorrection began. Fingers were pointed, social media pile-ons were unleashed and all our political, educational, cultural and corporate institutions panicked. 'Is my leaflet about breastfeeding transphobic? Are my lessons racist? Is saying 'ladies and gentleman' a microaggression? Does my washing powder have white privilege? Oh God, what shall we do? HELP!!!' That help came quickly in the form of right-on diversity 'consultants' — cynical agents, who for a large fee, could ensure that you avoided what they deemed 'problematic' practices. Ideological madness Value systems were franchised out to strangers with agendas. Like the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, which charges £3,000 for companies to become 'diversity champions' and be advised (read 'bollocked') about gender issues by blue-haired busybodies. Everyone from the Bank of England to the House of Lords signed up to this hustle until they realised they were being conned. At one point £1.2million was given to Stonewall by public bodies. HR bosses lapped this stuff up, relishing a new level of importance, a world where they didn't just sign off maternity leave or work out how to sack people for shagging on the photocopier. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion departments mushroomed, not least in the civil service where, we learnt this week, £27million of taxpayers' cash has been spent on DEI officers. Thankfully, the worm appears to be turning. Just as Reform UK is purging its council DEI departments, smart private sector operators are starting to realise themselves that much of what they have been taught to be worried about is nonsense. They already know it is simply good business to be inclusive and respectful of their customers, employees, students or patients. But they also know there is a line — where common sense ends and ideological madness begins. So Stonewall is out (even the BBC has ditched it) and the fight back is on. People are finally, to coin a phrase, waking up. The Doctor is not the only one regenerating. THANK GOD IT'S FRYDAY HAPPY National Fish and Chip day, folks. There are few things more exciting in life than a chippy tea, right? Will it be a jumbo cod or haddock? Maybe they've got skate tonight. And what about a chaser of a crunchy saveloy or pickled egg? Decision, decisions. Whatever I choose, it will always be accompanied by a bag of chips so enormous Desperate Dan would struggle to finish the lot. And if 50 per cent of them aren't stuck to the paper I'm taking them back. I'm lucky I have a good chippy nearby. Many are dying out, forced to close thanks to energy costs soaring and Rachel Reeves' hike of employers' National Insurance. So if you haven't been to your local for a while, get yourself down there today . . . before they have had their chips. It's a jaw-dropping look, Si THAT squeaky-voiced youth who won Britain's Got Talent had some very clever tricks. But nothing as mesmerising as how Simon Cowell looked in a promo for the show. Simon, 65, hasn't looked like himself for a good few years but in an Instagram reel his hollow eyes and gigantic lantern jaw made him look utterly insane. And the teeth! They looked whiter than Liam Gallagher's mirror in 1996. What's going on? I like Simon and used to speak to him pretty much every day when The X Factor was huge. He's a pretty down-to-earth bloke and part of his charm was that he was just a normal-looking geezer (albeit one in weirdly high-waisted jeans) who had no time for showbiz tweakments. Now he looks like he's auditioning for Love Island. It's a no from me. WHAT A RIGHTS TO DO REMEMBER when the luvvies were in a tizzy over London's snooty Garrick Club refusing to allow women to be members? Folk like Stephen Fry and Sting demanded ladies be let in, despite having been members of this 200-year-old anti-oestrogen institution for many years. Well, the ban was lifted last year, the floodgates opened and a whopping, er, three women have joined – acting dames Judi Dench, Sian Phillips and Celia Imrie. What a result! Treble G&Ts all round. You can hardly blame women for giving it a swerve. Paying two grand a year for the privilege of sitting near the host of ITV's Jeopardy as he eats a coddled gull's egg in an oak-panelled library doesn't seem that much of a draw. ER, SO WHAT TAYLOR? NOW I confess I'm quite the fan of Taylor Swift's music – she has a good ear for a melody does our Tay-Tay. But please tell me why I should care that she's bought back her master recordings. The breathlessly announced purchase was treated as if she'd discovered the Holy Grail hanging up behind the bog door in her tour trailer. Unless I'm missing something, it was simply the culmination of her amassing so much cash that she was able to pay around £220million for the rights to her first six albums. And as she admitted herself, a lot of that loot came from fans paying eye-watering sums for tickets to her Eras tour last year. So will that make parents feel better about shelling out the price of a small car to take the kids to see their favourite pop star? No? Thought not.
Pink Villa
01-06-2025
- 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.
