Latest news with #RealityWar
Daily Mirror
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Corrie icon addresses speculation she'll play the Doctor in Doctor Who spin-off
The Whoniverse is set to expand with an animated Doctor Who series on CBeebies in the future and Loose Women's Denise Welch has addressed speculation that she could be involved A former soap star has addressed speculation that she's being considered to voice the title role in a Doctor Who spin-off. The upcoming project is in development at the moment but no casting has been unveiled for it yet. It was announced recently that there are plans to launch a pre-school animation series about the Doctor on CBeebies. The BBC said that the Doctor Who spin-off for a younger audience will "run independently" from the main show. There's been speculation about the project, with a thread on Reddit last week naming actors who could voice the Doctor. It claimed that the broadcaster's shortlist includes Justin Fletcher, Richard E. Grant and Denise Welch. Denise, 67 - whose acting career has included roles on shows like Coronation Street and Waterloo Road - has since addressed the speculation. She reacted to being named in the thread in a post on Instagram this afternoon. Alongside a photo showing part of the thread, she wrote in the post: "I definitely think this job should be mine." Denise, who tagged Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies, 62, then used two thumbs up and the 'flushed face' emoji. Although they don't appear to have previously worked together, Denise and Russell are both patrons of the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. They both took on the role in 2019, joining Tracie Bennett, who became a patron in 2016. Loose Women panelist Denise has appeared in numerous TV shows over the course of her career, including having played Natalie Barnes on Corrie. Her other credits include Waterloo Road, Benidorm and more recently Hollyoaks. The BBC announced the CBeebies spin-off of Doctor Who on June 12. It shared that the animated show will see the Doctor travelling through time and space, solving mysteries and problems alongside companions and other friends. In a statement issued at the time, Patricia Hidalgo, Director of Children's and Education, said: "Everyone is welcome at CBeebies, including the Doctor!" Patricia went on to describe the upcoming series as an "exciting opportunity". Patricia said: "This much-loved franchise entertains millions around the world, so it is only right that our younger audience get to experience the wonder and the magic of the Doctor in a brand new format. This is an extremely exciting opportunity, and we are looking forward to welcoming companies to pitch for this new project, as we continue our commitment and investment in the UK's animation industry." The news comes just weeks after the latest series of Doctor Who concluded last month. The season finale, the Reality War, which aired on May 31, marked the departure of lead Ncuti Gatwa, who had played the Doctor since 2023. At the end of the episode, viewers saw Ncuti's Fifteenth Doctor regenerate - with Billie Piper then shown in his place - in a bid to save Poppy (played by Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps). In one reality, Poppy was the child of the Doctor and his companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu).
Daily Mirror
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Doctor Who star breaks silence on exit after taking time to 'process'
Doctor Who aired its latest season finale on Saturday night, in which the likes of Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu and Millie Gibson appeared to bid farewell to the BBC show Cast member Varada Sethu has now broken her silence following the season finale of Doctor Who on the weekend. The episode, which featured the departure of her co-star Ncuti Gatwa, is thought to mark her exit from the show. Varada, 33, played companion Belinda Chandra in the latest season of the BBC show. The character made her debut in the first episode, which aired in April, and then bid farewell to the Doctor - played by Ncuti, 32 - in Saturday's finale. The actor has since addressed her apparent departure from Doctor Who in a lengthy post shared on Instagram today. Varada wrote about her experience as a cast member alongside various photos, including several of her and Ncuti. She wrote in the caption: "Wow wow wow wow wow. I'm sooo late to the party (as always), but needed to take a few days to process this show, this finale and everything & everyone it has brought into my life, what it all means. "My heart has doubled in size. I have felt so so full of gratitude and love, I still feel I haven't found the words to express it. It has been a true gift to know a woman like Belinda, I will never forget our journey together." Praising her co-stars, she continued by writing: "Thank you [Ncuti] for being my partner in crime, my beloved Doctor. You are unending, pure magic, what a privilege it's been to bear witness to it. Mom & Dad forever. My sweet angel [ Millie Gibson ], thank you for your kindness, for always lifting me up, you have stolen everyone's hearts!! I cannot wait to see what life has in store for you." Varada then expressed gratitude for some colleagues who worked behind-the-scenes. She wrote: "For teaching me and showing me love & support like I've never known before." She added in the post this week: "Thank you to every beautiful soul involved in this madness." She concluded: "And of course to the beautiful fans, thank you soooo much for embracing Belinda, for all the kind words, all the joy! I think I finally understand what you meant [ Russell T. Davies ] when you said my life would never be the same. I feel transformed. Thank you thank you thank you." The post has amassed more than 16,000 likes and former colleagues reacted in the comments section. Ncuti wrote: "MOM AND DAD FOREVER. Love you endlessly." Whilst co-star Millie said in her reply to Varada: "I LOVE YOU." Varada's post comes after lead Ncuti addressed his own departure from Doctor Who. Last week's season finale, the Reality War, on Saturday night saw his Fifteenth Doctor regenerate - showing Billie Piper in his place - in a bid to save Poppy (played by Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps), who in one reality was the child of the Doctor and Belinda. In a video message shared by the BBC, Ncuti said: "It's a role that demands a lot of you physically and emotionally and mentally. The actors playing the Doctor are only actors playing the Doctor. Unfortunately, we are mere mortals." Ncuti, who also reflected on the experience elsewhere in the video, released on Saturday, added: "I would love to have the energy and the youth to be able to do this full time for the rest of my life, but my knees are telling me it's time." And in a statement, he said: "You know when you get cast, at some point you are going to have to hand back that sonic screwdriver and it is all going to come to an end, but nothing quite prepares you for it. This journey has been one that I will never forget and a role that will be part of me forever." Ncuti said elsewhere in the statement: "The fans are truly the final character and beating heart of this show and I can't thank the Whoniverse, and the Whovians, enough for welcoming me in, and making this such a touching experience. I've loved every minute of it, but now is the time to hand over the keys to that beloved blue box." There had been speculation over his potential departure in recent months. It came after Ncuti, who starred in two seasons of Doctor Who, reportedly revealed in an unaired moment on the Graham Norton Show in October last year that he would be "filming the third series next year". Amid recent speculation, just days prior to the finale's broadcast, the BBC confirmed to the Mirror that Ncuti had not been "axed". A spokesperson told us at the time: "Whilst we never comment on the future of the Doctor, any suggestion that Ncuti Gatwa has been 'axed' is pure fiction." Addressing the future of the show, they added: "As we have previously stated, the decision on season 3 will be made after season 2 airs and any other claims are just pure speculation. The deal with Disney+ was for 26 episodes – and we still have an entire spin off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, to air. And as for the rest, we never comment on the Doctor and future storylines."
Gizmodo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Doctor Who' Needs to Go Away and Think About What It Did
Doctor Who is frequently bad television. In some ways, it's part of the charm: dodgy production values redeemed by inspired storytelling or character work, or clunkily camp B-movie sci-fi elevated by glimmers of spectacle, the perpetual promise of big ideas yearning to escape one holdback or another. So rarely do those myriad failings combine, so rarely do those big ideas fail to emerge, to deliver a truly wretched piece of television. That scrappy charm in spite of it all is one of several reasons that, just like its protagonist, the series has managed to cheat death for over 60 years. Unfortunately, all those things combined this past weekend in 'The Reality War.' And they made for a state so dire that maybe Doctor Who shouldn't get out of this one, at least for a good long while. You can't really describe the plot of 'Reality War,' in so much that it is less a coherent narrative and more of a collection of scenes that barely hold things together—some altogether good, some altogether frustrating—before they are forced to collapse with still a good third of its run time to go, to give way to a sudden long goodbye to Ncuti Gatwa's 15th Doctor—one sudden surprise among several that feels less like it was the plan for this story, and more like bracing for the show's still-uncertain future. Characters, sometimes literally, vanish in and out of proceedings as they're needed (some are shoved into a box, actually literally, which we'll get to). Plot threads built up across the season either get left hanging, cut off abruptly, or in some cases, just undone for the sake of a completely different change in direction. A mess from a production standpoint, again, might be redeemed in part if 'Reality War' had anything incisive to say about the mishmash of characters it starts flinging about its myriad plot threads, but alas, it is a story as incoherent from a thematic and narrative standpoint as it is logistically. From the moment the Doctor is saved from last week's cliffhanger—falling into the underverse, alongside the rest of reality—by the arrival of Anita from the 2024 Christmas special (who has fallen in love and become pregnant, a point that will become important later, but otherwise largely exists to hold doors open, a way for the Time Hotel she now works for to let the prime reality begin to flood back into existence), 'Reality War' is on a scramble. First, to snap our various heroes and UNIT out of Conrad's Compulsory Heterosexuality Reality from last week (that will also become important later), and then to have them thrust into the path of the vengeful Rani as she explains why she is trying to provoke the rules of existence into granting her access to Omega's imprisonment beneath reality itself. That reason is, rather succinct, and in a moment where 'Reality War' slowing down to actually have its characters discuss something together works. Desperately seeking a way to restore her people with Omega's body to save the Time Lord race from the aftermath of genetic sterilization (although it's unclear just which calamity the Time Lords and Gallifrey faced the Rani is referring to here), it lets Archie Panjabi's Rani become, in contrast to last week's Master-like villainess cackling about wishes and prophecy, that cold, sinister woman of science she was in classic Who, ruthless and blinded at any cost of finding the answer wrought of her experiments. A Rani who makes a callous remark about humanity as impure cattle beneath her—because Poppy, the Doctor and Belinda's Wish-World child is a combination of human and Time Lord DNA—and then jokes that she's lost the room for making a discriminatory remark is pure Rani, and far away from the essentially new character with an old name we'd been delivered last week. It's a shame then, that as spectacle forces all the talking to stop and the action to commence, that 'Reality War' the just as quickly discards this Rani, and its bizarre take on Omega, and brings the episode's whole set of stakes to a juddering crash of a conclusion. As soon as the Rani departs, the Doctor shoves Belinda and Poppy into a literal box—a tiny room built in a handful of hours by Susan Triad, of all people, to protect anyone inside from the effects of the Wish World reality being erased entirely—and tasks Ruby to go confront Conrad, while he chases after the Rani… only to watch Omega emerge from his prison as a giant, baby-ish skeleton, eat her, and then be blasted back into his prison by the Doctor shooting him with the charged up Vindicator. All this—the moment the series has been building towards all season, the return of villains from its past for the first time in decades—is resolved in a handful of minutes in the middle of the episode. The Mrs. Flood incarnation makes a glib Two Ronnies joke and promptly vanishes, but Omega and the new Rani are dealt with all the dramatic weight of a dull thud. The day is not quite yet saved though, as meanwhile, Ruby has to confront the man who first harassed and stalked her, and then re-wrote the entirety of earth into a dystopian reality where strict traditional roles of gender and sexuality rule the day (trans people literally cannot exist in Conrad's world, we learn this week, when Yasmin Finney's Rose Noble pops back into existence early in the episode, if you were excited to add another bigotry to Conrad's long list!) and minorities like the disabled are an invisible second class. Her resolution to this confrontation with arguably one of Doctor Who's most compellingly awful villains in years? To tell him he must be awful because he had a bad childhood, and then use the wish baby the Rani picked up to facilitate this whole wretched thing to wish him a happy life, free of any of the consequences of his heinous actions from either these episodes or earlier in 'Lucky Day'. Doctor Who loves itself a sympathetic villain, sure, but Conrad never argued for, or justified, his retrograde attitudes: he happily was just an awful person, and instead of facing any kind of reckoning or even acknowledging that, one of his biggest victims instead gets to wish him to freedom. Oh, and Ruby's adoptive mother gets a new baby to raise too, giving Ruby the extended family she'd been seeking throughout her time on the show. So after doing away with all three (technically four, if you count the Ranis) of its villains with a good 20 minutes to go, what other ignominy can 'Reality War' offer? The complete and total re-writing—and essentially assassination of—Belinda Chandra as an interesting character. As Conrad's wish world reality begins to buckle, it initially seems like shoving Belinda and Poppy in a box has worked, but just as soon as she, the Doctor, and Ruby begin to celebrate, Poppy vanishes from reality and their memories… save for Ruby's, whose prior experience with altered realities gives her some ability to retain some recollection. After being gaslit for a few minutes by the Doctor, Belinda, and her UNIT colleagues, Ruby's pleas eventually break through, and Belinda—who had briefly escaped the tradwife version of herself that Conrad had wished her into in his reality—suddenly flips back into her singular driving desire being safeguarding Poppy. It's her wish to see the child again that sees the Doctor similar make a sudden pivot, deciding to give his current incarnation's life to fuel the TARDIS with an overwhelming shunt of regenerative energy, allowing it to twist reality just enough to save the life of a child that otherwise wouldn't exist. On the surface, this would be an incredibly compelling way for the Doctor to go out. The Ninth Doctor died to save Rose from the power she absorbed to become the Bad Wolf, the Tenth gave his own to save Wilfred Mott, even all the way back into the classic era, you can see the Fifth Doctor's relentless, fatal quest to save Peri, a girl he'd just met, in 'The Caves of Androzani'—echoed here. But 'Reality War' never actually builds up to this decision in a dramatically organic way. The Doctor isn't fatally wounded in the process of stopping the Rani and Omega or anything; part of the initial tragedy is that he seemingly forgot Poppy's existence along with the rest of the world when Conrad's wish dissipated. He just decides that now he has to die, to do this one thing, even if it potentially means sundering all of time and space, as he's warned by none other than the 13th Doctor, who gets to make a brief, reassuring appearance as reality begins to crack, first to try and stop her future self but then to ultimately aid him, realizing the noble intent behind his actions. It is again, another rare moment where in isolation 'Reality War' shines, but only in that isolation, removed from any of the incoherence that lead to the moment in the first place. The Doctor's plan works, however, and we return to earth with a dying Time Lord reuniting with a happily mothering Belinda. Reality has shifted, we're told via retroactive flashbacks to points throughout the season, to establish that Poppy was always Belinda's daughter, and her reason for getting home wasn't because she had her work and life to get back to. It was once a life that the Doctor and his world had whisked her away from with little in the way of consent—but now, that life is Poppy herself. Retroactively having reality itself establish an entire character arc that previously dig not exist throughout the season might carry a level of existential horror to it, akin to Belinda's initial challenging of the Doctor's own invasive attitudes at the climax of 'The Robot Revolution'. But that version of Belinda Chandra—a strong, independently minded person, one who forced the Doctor to earn her trust by realizing where her boundaries were—is discarded with a handwave. She's replaced by a Belinda whose sole defining trait is motherhood to Poppy, a desire she never even expressed before (and was arguably against, in some ways, when we met her with her first toxic boyfriend Alan!). That familial desire isn't inherently a bad trait to give a character, but it's one that was never once actually indicated as part of Belinda's story during this season. If anything, it feels more true of Ruby, after her search for her birth mother and her own feelings about being adopted. This entire plotline is thrust upon Belinda in a choice she doesn't actively make—either when Conrad wishes Poppy into existence in the first place, or when the Doctor decides to break reality for her—and the nail is hammered into the coffin when we watch her not say a single word as the Doctor, without even asking, scans Poppy with his sonic screwdriver to confirm that she has been restored to reality as completely human, rather than with any Time Lord DNA. The very thing Belinda first challenged the Doctor on back in the first episode of the season now goes by unquestioned! For a season that started so strongly with this vision of Belinda, only to end it with a complete absence of her starting characterization, taking an actual characterization of motherhood and watering down to a singular, flat trait is beyond disappointing. Last week, the enforcement of a traditional, matronly role on Belinda by Conrad's usurpation of reality was a horrifying thing, a breach of consent and sign to the audience of his dystopia being wrong and aberrant. Now the Doctor essentially re-enacts that same reality back onto her, and it is Belinda's happy ending. While that's where we leave Belinda, seemingly for good, 'Reality War' has one last confounding twist to give, as the 15th Doctor prepares to say goodbye. Again, this is a fleeting moment that in isolation works: it's a beautiful goodbye to a Doctor that embodied so much joy and lightness, to want to go out sharing his explosive energy one last time with a universe he cherished, regenerating as he flings the doors of the TARDIS out to see the great breadth of the cosmos beyond him. Except, that regeneration ends with a familiar face: Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor gives way in a flash of light to Billie Piper, who, of course, is famous for having played Rose Tyler (and the Bad Wolf, and the Moment) across Russell T Davies' initial term as showrunner. Having a landmark Doctor in terms of representation regenerate into a familiar face from that 2005-2009 era of the show might be a surprise, albeit a slightly questionable one if we hadn't already done this two years ago. Gatwa's time as the Doctor, already cruelly short, is now bookended by two 'weird' regenerations that overshadow both his arrival (especially in so much as that, in bi-generation, David Tennant's 14th Doctor got to stick around) and his exit with a play to nostalgia. A play that we have no idea exactly how it's going to play out any time soon, given that Doctor Who's latest end has yet to come with news of its renewal. This is the last Doctor Who we will get to see for at least several years, and it is a moment where the show's future should feel bursting with potential. Instead, it's closed doors and rehashed cheap tricks. If 'The Interstellar Song Contest' represented a vision of Doctor Who at its most cowardly from a politically minded standpoint—so unwilling to be seen as saying anything it offered singsong in the face of genocide, while torturing its victims—then 'Wish World' and 'Reality War' together as a whole represent a vision of the show at its most creatively cowardly. A companion that challenges the Doctor? Out the window for a one-note character to be discarded and defined by a singular motherly trait. The return of classic villains with something to say about their place in the modern era? Smoothed over, cut short, discarded as emptily as they're introduced. A bright future of new promise? Only old faces, old ideas, reheated and re-delivered at the expense of wasting a generational talent. Whoever Billie Piper's mysterious figure portends to be as the show clumsily teases that there may be more than meets the eye to this regeneration, whenever we get to find out, should the BBC's deal with Disney fall through or carry on, the only thing that is clear coming of out 'The Reality War' is that the current version of Doctor Who cannot carry on like this. Doctor Who has no future without building on its past, to be sure, but as it stands, its creative guideline in the here and now has no interest in building on it: only returning to it in increasingly arcane and shallow ways, pointing fingers and jangling keys over any meaningful engagement that would set the stage for future ideas and vitality. Perhaps, for now, this should be the end. The moment has certainly been prepared for, in delivering an era of the show at its absolute nadir.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Doctor Who fans are furious again, but they should just enjoy the ride'
Doctor Who fans are furious. That's probably an evergreen sentence, to be quite honest, but in this case it's truer than usual. This weekend saw the latest series of the time-travelling show come to an end with hour-long epic episode The Reality War. To say it has been divisive would be the understatement of the year. In fact, divisive might be the wrong word. The reaction has been almost universally negative, whether it's to the return of Omega, the resolution of the story involving the Rani or, of course, that big surprise in the final few moments of the episode. With so many rumours about the cloudy future of the show, many fans were disappointed to see this series end in the way that it did. Note: There are spoilers ahead for the Doctor Who finale, so tread carefully. Many of the headlines in the wake of the episode are, naturally, focused on the surprise regeneration scene that ended the series. Ncuti Gatwa has said farewell to the TARDIS and, barring any sort of further twist, it appears that Billie Piper will be the next incarnation of the Doctor — 20 years after she became the first companion of the revival era when she debuted as Rose Tyler alongside Christopher Eccleston as the Time Lord. Notably, though, Piper's name in the final credits was not listed as playing the Doctor. So there's something afoot and the door is very much ajar for a different actor to jump in and grab the TARDIS key in the near future. In a series dominated by big, audacious swings on the part of showrunner Russell T Davies, this surprise regeneration was arguably the biggest risk of all. After all, it's very rare that a Doctor's goodbye is a complete shock. In 2013, the BBC dedicated an entire TV special to revealing Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor and, back in 2022, Gatwa was announced as the new permanent Doctor several months before Jodie Whittaker regenerated on screen. Read more: 'Doctor Who's new series is its boldest ever, and you should be watching' (Yahoo Entertainment, 4 min read) Times have changed. Unless you really had your ear to the ground in hardcore fan spaces, Billie Piper's return was an enormous surprise. And ultimately, that's the sort of thing we should welcome. The fact that a 60-year-old TV show covered in breathless detail by the tabloid press can still pull off a shock like this is worthy of celebration. And broadly, that's how I feel about the episode as a whole. The Reality War was Doctor Who at its silliest, moving at a breathless gallop of the kind that Davies proved so good at back in his previous tenure as the head Whovian. This episode had a lot of plates to spin and a smorgasbord of baddies to dispatch. There was slimy manosphere scumbag Conrad, two incarnations of the Rani, returning uber-Time Lord Omega, and the infant god of wishes Desiderium — not to mention the marauding Bone Beasts. Almost all of them were swatted aside with quite frankly hilarious ease via the sort of writing trickery that only a show this frantic can allow. Read more: This Is Why Doctor Who Fans Aren't All Convinced That Billie Piper Is Really The New Doctor (HuffPost, 5 min read) Doctor Who excels at getting itself out of corners, whether that's with a wave of the sonic screwdriver, a flourish of timey-wimey nonsense, or a smart line of dialogue. That sort of thing has been part of the show forever. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's profound, and sometimes it's frustrating, but it seems churlish to start complaining about it now. Put simply, this episode of Doctor Who was loads of fun. It never paused for breath long enough to allow you to think about how messy it all was — and it was — but delivered very impressive spectacle and joyous energy. It's hard to imagine the Doctor Who of old giving us an enormous battle between UNIT and skyscraper-sized bone critters and you just have to Google images of Omega's classic form to show how much he has changed thanks to the influx of Disney cash. If this was the last hurrah for Doctor Who's bond with Disney, then Davies decided to make sure he was spending every penny of that money and embracing every inch of the increased scope he was allowed. His series finales over the years have always delighted in testing the limits of the show's spectacle and The Reality War had more than a few echoes of the 2008 two-parter The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, which also featured a surprise regeneration — albeit one used as a fake-out cliffhanger — and brought back just about every significant companion of the era. Read more: Ncuti Gatwa blames bad knees for Doctor Who exit (BANG Showbiz, 3 min read) More than anybody else, Davies understands that Doctor Who is at its best when it's speedy and silly, capering through time and space with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek and its two hearts beating double-time. Why not have the Rani munched down by Omega? Why not resolve the most powerful god of the pantheon with a single whisper? Why not bring Jodie Whittaker back for a two-minute cameo? Doctor Who fans need to relax and enjoy the silly sci-fi show. It's absolutely capable of being profound and smart and intricate at times, which is great, but its default setting is to be a rollicking adventure through time and space with an immortal hero at the top of the cast list. It would be wrong to say that The Reality War completely stuck the landing or that it managed to deliver satisfactory pay-offs to the myriad plot threads introduced throughout the series. Those brief appearances of the Doctor's granddaughter, for example, came to precisely nothing. But what this finale did do was provide a healthy dose of chaos for the "mad man with a box" — and tease plenty more chaos to come. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Doctor Who is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.
The Review Geek
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Doctor Who – Season 15 Episode 8 Recap, Review & Ending Explained
The Reality War Episode 8 of Doctor Who season 15 begins with the Doctor saved by Anita from the Time Hotel, with a magical doorway opened up in the balcony and pulling him out to safety. Anita is now head of HR but the hotel is in limbo because when it comes to Earth, the timeline keeps resetting to the same day as soon as it hits midnight. Rani is doing all of this so reality stretches thin and then breaks so Omega is unleashed. The Palace is a point of no-entry so Anita can't get in there… unless it's a falling bit of balcony, that seems to be okay. Anita brings The Doctor back to his old house, where he rocks up in a dress to see Belinda and Poppy. Anita saves them both, bringing them into the Time Hotel which snaps them out of this fantasy world funk. Next, the doorway arrives in UNIT, where the Doctor shows them all the truth. It works to see reality start to reset, and here we learn that large skeletal creatures patrolling London are Bone Beasts, creatures that feed off the energy being created by projecting this new reality. There are trackers inside every member of UNIT, and Kate presses a button which sees all of these guys snap out of their funk and head off to the palace, including Shirley, who presses a button on her wheelchair and zooms off, leaving skid marks and flames on the floor. At UNIT, the Rani pops up and explains that she had a split second to survive back in the day – and she took it. She flipped her DNA and made a biological side-step. She has a Time Ring and this led her to the TARDIS. Now, Poppy is apparently a biological anomaly. There can't be another child of Gallifrey given all the Time Lords are sterile. Poppy has come out of this wish as an accident and she's half-Time Lord. Belinda and the Doctor are determined to save their make-believe daughter, and refuse to let the Rani press ahead with her plan of turning Earth into the next Gallifrey. The Doctor decides to use a contraption called the Zero Room to save the day. This will allow them to place Poppy inside and if the Wish comes to an end then Poppy will still be alive. Belinda decides to join Poppy and leave the fighting to the rest of the group. The rest of UNIT fight off the Bone Beasts, which the Rani has managed to manipulate into fighting the group. The Doctor though, flies straight into Rani's palace and hangs back, watching as the Rani summons Omega. Omega has now become his own legend, the Mad God, coming in the form of a large creature crawling out the portal. It eats the Rani, while the Doctor just stands and watches, while Mrs Flood (the other Rani) grabs the Time Ring and leaves. The Doctor grabs the Vindicator and fights back, pushing Omega back into its tomb while Ruby also makes it inside the palace, thanks to a UNIT teleporter that jumps her into Conrad's room. Ruby brings up his daddy issues before grabbing the baby from the crib, wishing for Conrad to be happy, and leaving. The Palace disintegrates as the fantasy world ends, with the Doctor making it back with Ruby and wishing for no more wishes. The Zero Room has also been successful in keeping Poppy alive… or has it? When Belinda and the Doctor make it back into the TARDIS, Poppy disappears completely and both the Doctor and Belinda have no memory of it. Only Ruby does. Ruby is the only one who remembers the imaginary child, while everybody else has been course-corrected. Ruby convinces The Doctor to remember, and after a bit of a monologue, heads off in his TARDIS to change reality and get Poppy back. Jodie Whittaker shows up and speaks to the Doctor, explaining that he could damage the whole of creation if he ruptures the Time Vortex, which is what he intends to do in order to get Poppy back. In the end, she decides to help and gives some words of encouragement and affirmations before leaving. After all, on her watch half the universe was obliterated with the Flux which – if we're taking count – still hasn't been resolved. The Doctor uses his Regeneration energy to shatter reality and when he awakens, he finds himself face down on grass in Belinda's garden. Poppy is alive in this world, ands after some reunions, the Doctor leaves. Just before he does, he thanks Joy before regenerating into… Billie Piper. The Episode Review It's quite funny to see Ncuti Gatwa touching grass because that's precisely what all the Doctor Who fans have been doing this year – in their masses. The writing this season has been nothing short of disastrous, with Russell T. Davies determined to rip every shred of Doctor Who apart. The entire finale continues to violate parts of Doctor Who's past, and the desperate call-backs to old Doctors, along with contrived writing like the Time Hotel (which can apparently open a doorway anywhere except the Time Palace unless a chunk is falling off?) feels like sloppy writing and a poor excuse to find the easiest way to 'save the day.' Speaking of which, the Doctor brute-forces his way into defeating Omega, using a Vindicator rather than his intelligence (a hallmark of the Doctor's character of course) while also standing back and letting the Rani get killed and not even batting an eyelid. This is the same Doctor who tries to save The Master numerous times, and also forgives a psychopathic barber hell-bent on destroying reality. With poor writing and one of the worst companions we've ever seen in Belinda, season 15 has solidified itself as the absolute worst in the show's history and a feeble attempt at a regeneration into Billie Piper feels like the rotten icing atop this lop-sided cake. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a cancellation notice soon for this one. Previous Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
