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| The new Doctor Who themed "Souls-like" game is looking really weird... |
1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 66 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Alex Sanjiv Pillai. Produced by: Chris May.
Note: This review contains spoilers.
THE PLOT:
The Rani has won. As the clock sounds midnight on May 24, 2025, Earth hurtles towards its destruction, with the Doctor helpless to stop it.
Then a door opens. Anita (Steph de Whalley), the hotel manager the Doctor spent a year with before getting her a job at the Time Hotel, uses the hotel's capabilities to rescue him. The doors to the hotel also allow reality to disrupt Conrad's "wish," meaning that the Doctor can quickly restore the memories of Belinda, Ruby, and UNIT.
Conveniently, the Rani needs one more cycle to gather the energy to let the first Time Lord, Omega, into reality, so she has to reset the Earth to May 23 once more before the end. This gives the Doctor and his friends time to zap a bunch of CGI before he returns to her Bone Palace to try to stop her.
But it may be too late for that. The Rani's plans come to fruition (on May 23, squashing any significance to the May 24 date). Omega is returning to reality - but the wish has transformed him as well, and not for the better...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: In a confrontation with the Rani in which he appears to come out the loser, he actually tricks her into providing data to bypass the Bone Palace's security. He tries to argue against the Rani's plan to bring back Omega, reminding her that the Time Lords of that era were despots, but Mrs. Flood silences him with a single question: "Don't you want to see him?" - and he has to acknowledge that yes, he does. He draws on all his ingenuity to try to protect his and Belinda's "wish" daughter, Poppy, from being overwritten when the wish is broken.
Belinda: The Doctor/Belinda partnership has been a joy, with Belinda's mix of enthusiasm for and wariness of the Doctor helping to make many of this year's episodes sparkle. Her reward... is to spend the finale sidelined, right down to being locked in a cupboard for the climax. I don't object to her being protective of her "wish daughter." Belinda as a mother would be fiercely protective. I object to her entire personality being reduced to only that and nothing else.
Ruby Sunday: Internet rumors suggest that Millie Gibson's Ruby was meant to be the companion for both seasons, with Belinda's presence in Season Two being a change of plans. I don't tend to put much stock in Internet rumors... but if it's true, it makes a lot of sense with regard to how this episode plays out. Belinda, the season's actual co-star, is sidelined, while Ruby plays a key role in resolving the crisis. After the wish is broken, it's not Belinda - Poppy's mother - who insists on the child's reality, but Ruby, with Millie Gibson doing the emotional heavy lifting for the early epilogue scenes. The story would make more sense, both in terms of emotion and plot, if Ruby was Poppy's mother... and given that Ruby was more prominent than Belinda in both of the final episodes, I'm not sure why that wasn't the case.
Recurring Cast: The UNIT crew are all there... and that's most of what there is to say about them. Kate barks orders to facilitate the Doctor's plan and gets a slightly bizarre mini-speech in which she refers to them all as the Doctor's children, while UNIT's role is basically to add to the CGI activity by breaking out big guns to zap monsters that serve no actual narrative purpose. Mel probably gets the best bit, reacting to the Rani with a loathing that would suggest the existence of a much more interesting version of Time and the Rani than the one that aired. All of these characters could be removed entirely. Not only would the story not be harmed, I think their removal would help the episode to feel less overloaded.
The Rani: In one of the few clever bits of scripting, she fully anticipates the Doctor's attempt to trick her. As a result, she's ready when he arrives at the Bone Palace to confront her. She goads him about his compassionate nature, sneering that all he's armed with are "dazzling words, maybe a pun, and then... platitudes." She's eager to use Omega's power to recreate the Time Lords of old...
Omega: ...Except that Omega is a CGI monster who looks like he stepped out of a Dark Souls game. Kind of like Empire of Death's Sutekh. This episode isn't as bad as that one, but the treatment of Omega is actually worse than that of Sutekh. At least the Egyptian god had always been portrayed as a monster devoted to destruction. Omega's main ambition in his two Classic Series stories was basically just to live. Now he's a parasitic creature who wants to "feast upon this world." Sure, there's the excuse that this Omega has been twisted by the wish into the mad titan of legend - but when the character (if you can call him that) bears no resemblance to the original Omega, then I'm left wondering why the script bothers to even call him that. Other than empty fanservice, that is. Oh, wait - I think I just answered my own question.
THOUGHTS:
The Reality War has a few good moments. I enjoyed the Rani and Mel sniping at each other, even if that scene doesn't actually lead to anything. The acting is generally good. Though there's the usual RTD finale "frenetic activity" going on, it is competently structured and is legitimately telling a story, albeit badly, and that's more than enough to make it a step up from Empire of Death.
Which doesn't change that I'd still rank this as a bad episode.
It repeats some of the same mistakes as Empire of Death. When Omega finally appears, he's a cannibalistic CGI monster that looks like it stepped out of a video game. When it speaks (briefly), it's not to bemoan its fate. Instead, it boasts of how it intends to feed. The Doctor doesn't defeat it through cleverness. Instead, it conveniently turns out that the Vindicator gadget he's been playing with all season just happens to double as a big gun. Because nothing says Doctor Who quite like watching the Doctor zap a CGI beastie with a ray gun, right?
Bizarrely, I think the best part of the episode is the epilogue, much of which consists of reshoots that were hastily thrown together after Ncuti Gatwa opted to leave. There's an excellent scene in which Ruby watches the Doctor and Belinda giddily debate their next destination while they forget something that should matter to them.
The scene is pulled off through the simplest techniques: a series of edits, a shift in the performances of Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu, and Millie Gibson's horrified nonverbal reaction. It's by far the episode's best moment, and the follow-up scene in which Ruby persuades the Doctor, Belinda, and UNIT that her memory isn't at fault is almost as good. It's as if Russell T. Davies is able to create something reasonably involving when he's forced to put down his CGI toolbox.
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| The 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) shows up for the outgoing Doctor's sendoff. |
A REGENERATION, A WELCOME CAMEO, AND A MASSIVE MISJUDGEMENT:
In October 2024, while guesting on The Graham Norton Show, Ncuti Gatwa briefly confirmed plans to shoot Season Three in early 2025. Disney delayed making a decision about renewing their co-production deal (as of this writing, they still have not handed down their verdict), and the remarks were edited out before broadcast. By February 2025, Gatwa had decided to exit the role. He publicly cited the physical toll of being the Doctor, but his October remarks indicate that he would almost certainly have done a third season had the show been renewed promptly.
Regardless of the exact reason or combination of reasons, February saw last-minute reshoots that resulted in the surprise regeneration of Ncuti Gatwa's 15th Doctor in an epilogue that was very much bolted onto the end of the episode.
As I've observed, many of these scenes are better than the episode itself. While he's contemplating sacrificing this incarnation, the 15th Doctor receives a visit from Jodie Whittaker's 13th Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed the interplay between Whittaker and Gatwa. I wouldn't have minded a proper multi-Doctor story with these two, as they're a natural contrast: Thirteen was arguably the most emotionally guarded incarnation, while Gatwa is the most emotionally open. He blurts out that he loves her, which stuns her: "I never say things like that."
The cameo does have one unfortunate knock-on effect, however: Whittaker's appearance makes me realize that I feel more of a connection with her Doctor than with the one who is actually departing. I think Gatwa really needed that third season. He's been good to great throughout Season Two, and for all my issues with this episode, his second season has been generally quite good. But I came into Season Two feeling zero connection. Ultimately, eight episodes, even with most of them being of high quality, were not enough to make up the difference.
The regeneration sequence is mostly decent on its own terms. My issues with this episode's treatment of Belinda aside, the Doctor's goodbye to her is enjoyable in its quietness. I also rather like him choosing to look out into the Vortex as he regenerates.
Then all of that gets overshadowed by what I consider to be a serious misjudgment.
A MISJUDGED ENDING:
The regeneration ends with another surprise cameo, this one seemingly designed to get viewers talking. It worked... if you don't mind that many viewers vocally wondered if the show was disappearing so far up itself that it might just create a singularity.
The credits fudge the exact nature of the cameo, and RTD has indicated that even he isn't completely certain what he's going to do with it. I wish I thought he was just baiting people, as he's done multiple times in the past... but in this case, I believe him. I suspect much of what comes next will be down to one actor's availability whenever the show gets back into production - which doesn't strike me as a recipe for quality or even internal consistency.
Say what you will about Chris Chibnall, but he had the right idea for how to handle a regeneration in the face of a potential gap. Initially, The Power of the Doctor was meant to end with the regeneration in longshot, with viewers not seeing the new Doctor. This allowed freedom for the next showrunner to properly cast and plan, allowing them to either pick up at that moment or well in the future, maximizing creative freedom while maintaining unbroken continuity. It was a good plan, one that became unnecessary once Davies came back to helm the next era... and it was exactly what should have been done here.
Wherever this final turn goes, it cements one of my fears about RTD's return: Looking backward. Doctor Who is at its best when it puts a new spin on its own tropes. "RTD 2" has done this multiple times - in midseason standalone episodes, such as Dot and Bubble and The Story and the Engine. Unfortunately, its event episodes have leaned on the series' worst tendencies, creating empty spectacle that relies on fan buzz in response to references to characters last seen decades ago!
When Doctor Who returns - and I believe that it will, and likely sooner than Internet rage-baiters believe - I fervently hope that the series focuses on moving forward again.
OVERALL:
The Reality War is a bad end to a good season. I almost wrote that it was a "disappointing" end, except that it was pretty much what I expected: lots of activity, urgent pronouncements that the actors seem to be barely managing to utter with straight faces, and too much CGI. The most involving part of the episode is the epilogue, which mostly consists of last-minute reshoots!
It's a poor finale for Varada Sethu's Belinda, who helped to make this season better than the previous one, and who is rewarded by being reduced to a plot device while being upstaged by her predecessor. As if to make that upstaging a theme, the 13th Doctor pops into Gatwa's extended farewell just long enough to make me realize that, for all of her era's flaws, she feels more like the Doctor to me than he does.
The very good set of episodes leading up to this is an excellent argument that Doctor Who has plenty of life left in it... but I have to admit that it's hard to cling to that in the face of this dreary final episode. Ncuti Gatwa deserved better. Varada Sethu deserved better. This season deserved better. And the viewers certainly deserved better.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
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