TL;DR – After a better season overall, it felt like it fell apart in the final moments.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

Well, here we are. The end of the season is upon us, and what an interesting season it was. It was full of fascinating highs and frustrating lows. But, unlike other seasons of Doctor Who, this one has been clearly building through the season (and also retroactively throughout Season One). That build has hit its crescendo this week, and the question is: was the song worthy of Dugga Doo, or did we not even make it to the grand finale?

So, to set the scene, The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Miss Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) finally make it back to Earth on the day Belinda leaves, only to find that everything is not well. Indeed, they have fallen into a deadly trap of one of The Doctor’s great foes, The Rani (Archie Panjabi) and have lost their memories. But The Rani wanted this because she was powering a machine on all the doubt of a whole planet, and what is more potent than the doubt of a Timelord? The Rani is looking for someone so ancient they have been lost to time and space, Omega (Nicholas Briggs), the first Timelord, and she is willing to destroy the Earth to find him. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

Exasperated Sigh. Okay. Look. Wow. This week and finale are going to take a lot to pass because it is hard to disentangle what we finally got with all the behind-the-scenes calamity that has permeated this season. But before we start tackling that, there are parts of this episode that I did like. Now, we always knew that The Doctor was going to get out of the apparent doom that he found himself at the end of Wish World, and while I didn’t see it coming, I love the use of the Time Hotel from Joy to the World to do that. Partly because it gave them a chance to bring back Anita (Steph De Whalley), who might be the best addition to the lore that they have added to this series. Using the hotel to flood the UNIT headquarters with ‘real-time’ was one of those silly Doctor Who things that just works.    

To add to this, I thoroughly enjoyed everyone’s performance in this episode. Everyone gets a moment to shine, most notably when The Doctor gets to meet The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker). Nchuti and Jodie are wonderful in that scene, and it fills that moment with so much joy that it makes you want to see them again in a future work. Also, to be fair, I didn’t mind much of the story up until a point. I have no skin in the game when it comes to Omega or The Rani, so I was fine with Omega being turned into a monster and The Rani immediately getting hoisted on her own petard because they ignored all the warnings that danger was ahead. A Timelord causing a big mess and The Doctor having to clean it up, feels very much like how an episode like this should end.  

However, there was a tipping point in this episode where I found myself starting to get concerned and then realising that the concern was greatly warranted. As Belinda and The Doctor were folding Poppy’s (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) coat and it was slowly disappearing, I felt that something was off, and then I looked down and saw we had half an hour to go. Everything about the regeneration sequence, bar The Doctor team-up moment, felt so profoundly forced. It has been said that this was not the original ending, and you can kind of feel that with how slapped together it all felt. For example, it is clear that Murry Gold did not have time to properly mix the music for the end sequences because it felt like themes were just being slapped down without much thought.

You can feel the narrative straining to make this regeneration happen because it likely was not meant to be there. Then, they set Susan (Carole Ann Ford) up all season, but it went nowhere. It involved completely shifting and changing Belinda’s character at the last moment to give a forced justification while also creating a convoluted confusion about what is and is not real. Like you were not confident in your writing and were pre-baking an undo button into the story. All of this was frustrating, but then for the show to go and be coy when the surprise dropped Billie Piper as the new Doctor, but then didn’t credit her as The Doctor in the end credits. Well, sorry, to me, it felt like an insult to the viewers and also Ncuti’s time as the Doctor. Especially when it is probably only going to last for a Christmas special, so they have time to cast a new Doctor.           

Okay, I need to stop talking about the finale for a moment and talk about the season as a whole. I honestly felt that, up until this point, it was a vast improvement on Season One. Gone were many of the frustrations I found with Season One. While The Robot Revolution might not have started it off as well as it could have, from there, we got a solid episode, one after another. Lux produced a fascinating villain and took interesting experimental risks with its story. Even without its link to the past, The Well was a truly unsettling episode, one we had not seen in an age. The Story and the Engine showed why a diverse writer’s room is a benefit because it told a story that a lot of the regular writers would have struggled with or, at best, overcooked. Then we had the delightful, if also a bit horrifying, The Interstellar Song Contest, where we finally got to see Ncuti’s range as The Doctor. This build during the season is some of the best work that Doctor Who has done in an age.

However, while that build was strong, we now need to look at it in the context of its legacy. I know there has been a lot of pressure on the show, thanks to the Disney/BBC collaboration. You get a feeling from the narrative points that they were not planning on shaking up the Companions. But they had to try and make it work, Like Babylon 5 having to change things up when Michael O’Hare left. Also trying to film around Ncuti’s availability. However, the buck has to stop somewhere. During this regeneration period, we didn’t get a single Dalek or Cyberman. I mean, even Christopher Eccleston got that opportunity. I think this legacy will also be impacted by Ncuti’s Doctor being bookended by profound nostalgia, David Tennent on one end with The Giggle and Billie Piper on the other. Let me be clear: this is not a slight on either of the actors because I know how good they are and how much they love the show. But the choices made above them in how everything is structured. I am not sure if it was worse if this was an active decision or narrative negligence. Look, it feels personal from a viewer’s perspective.  

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: The Reality War & Season 2? Look, that is hard to say. There were some fantastic episodes this season. Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu made a great team, and we got to see The Doctor being The Doctor. But the way this ending was managed has left me incredibly concerned about the show’s future. I think there needs to be some cold, hard explorations at the BBC if they want to continue the show with this much dysfunction, irrespective of whether Disney pulls out or not. It is clear that there are good writers out there who can write for Doctor Who, and it is clear that there are actors who love the show and can bring the vision to life. If that is not enough, well, then you need to have some genuine self-reflection before this becomes a terminal issue for one of the longest-running series on Earth. If it is not already.             

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Alex Sanjiv Pillai, Amanda Brotchie, Peter Hoar, Makalla McPherson & Ben A. Williams
Written by – Russell T Davies, Sharma Angel-Walfall, Pete McTighe, Inua Ellams & Juno Dawson
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Millie Gibson, Jodie Whittaker & Billie Piper with Archie Panjabi, Anita Dobson, Steph De Whalley, Ruth Madeley, Michelle Greenidge, Jonah Hauer-King, Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, Jemma Redgrave, Susan Twist, Alexander Devrient, Aidan Cook, Yasmin Finney, Bonnie Langford, Angela Wynter, Nila Aalia, Sam Lawton, Nicholas Briggs, Carole Ann Ford, Jonathan Groff, Ryland Clark, Kiruna Stamell, Iona Anderson, Charlie Condou, Kadiff Kirwan, Freddie Fox, Miriam-Teak Lee, Graham Norton, Sule Rimi, Ariyon Bakare, Michelle Asante, Jo Martin, Faye McKeever, Lachele Carl, Gethin Alderman, Bethany Antonia, Christopher Chung, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Rose Ayling-Ellis,Alan Cumming, Linus Roache, Lewis Cornay, Samir Arrian, Bronté Barbé, Steph Lacey,Evelyn Miller, Jonny Green & Max Parker and Atilla Akinci, Leni Adams, Josephine Lloyd-Welcome, Hermon Berhane, Joshua J Parker, Julie Dray, Imogen Kingsley-Smith, Akemnji Ndifornyen, Christina Rotondo, Abdul Sessay, Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, Michael Balogun, Benjamin Chivers, Kirsty Hoiles, Kareem Alexander, Madison Stock, Paddy Stafford, Blake Anderson, Aoife Gaston, Paul Jerricho, Michael Woodford, Tina Gray, Reeta Chakrabarti, Joel Dommett, Alex Jones, Annabel Brook, Luke Rhodri, Gaz Choudhry, Gary Pillai, Frankie Lipman, Paul Kasey, Jermaine Dominique, Amy Tyger, Ian Shaw, Cassius Hackford, Millie O’Connell, Lucy Thackeray, Jane Hancock, Thalía Dudek, Jeffin Kunjumon, Tom Storey, Stephen Love, Robert Strange, Charles Sandford, Lucas Edwards, Caleb Hughes & Nadine Higgin
Episodes Covered – The Robot Revolution, Lux, The Well, Lucky Day, The Story and the Engine, The Interstellar Song Contest, Wish World & The Reality War