What is reality? On his 2003 album of the same name, David Bowie declared that reality had become an abstract, unreliable concept. And in the post-truth world we find ourselves navigating two decades later that seems to be ever more apparent.
Case in point: The Reality War, 2025’s season ‘two’ finale of Doctor Who, had had many scratching their heads, featuring, as it does, Ncuti Gatwa as our favourite Time Lord in Family Guy mode. Basically, the Doc faced old Gallifreyan nemesis the Rani in order to save a little girl, with surprise cameos from two formidable females from New Who as the Doctor appeared to travel through alternate universes.
The completion of the second Doctor-Disney series attempts to ties up many threads and narratives but, amid myriad ideas and gimmicky fanboy moments leaves the world’s longest-running sci-fi series in a strange, unsettling place.
Alright, there’s no point in hiding it, this was the Fifteenth Doctor’s goodbye. Ncuti Gatwa ended his time piloting the TARDIS in the weirdest possible way, via one coruscating cliffhanger. Not to mention a shock moment especially as never before has a Doctor’s regeneration and successor not been officially announced in advance. Just when will the Doctor return and just who is the latest actor to play the title role? Oh, hello!
Although Doctor Who is a decidedly British series, the show has become a staple for sci-fi fans across the globe. As such, a whole lot of Whovians are in danger of losing their minds about what has just transpired.
Even with the franchise’s spin-off The War Between Land And The Sea imminent, the future of the Whoniverse’s iconic flagship is entirely up in the air. Curiously, there won’t be a Christmas special (bah, humbug) and a new season has yet to be commissioned by Disney or the BBC.
In his article debut for stevepafford.com Paul Richard Evans feels baffled, overwhelmed, frustrated, and uncertain about the overstuffed over the top finale as speculation mounts over the show’s future.
Let’s try and make sense of it all…
With viewing figures in decline and a savage press seemingly obsessed with the show’s cancellation, Doctor Who has faced a turbulent couple of weeks, accelerated by the leading man’s decision to pull out of being the successor to 2024‘s Joanna Lumley role in announcing the UK national jury’s points at Eurovision, due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
It’s a shame as Ncuti Gatwa’s involvement was supposed to be the denouement of a BBC crossover double whammy, with an episode titled The Interstellar Song Contest airing immediately before the land-based song contest’s grand final in Switzerland.
Airing on all platforms around the world simultaneously two weeks later, Saturday night’s finale The Reality War arrived to little fan fair. Wish World, its scene-setting first part, offered plenty: the two Ranis, Omega, and faces from the past, a plethora of faces in fact. The scene was set, the Doctor was ready to face the unholy trinity as Anita from last Christmas’s Time Hotel pops up as the deus ex machina door lady to resolve the cliffhanger. Oh, Joy.
As is often the case with Russell T Davies’ writing, there was loadsa ideas to take in, but much of it was bombastic visual spectacle over any actual sense of plot or well-written dialogue and characterisation. When you wish upon a star?
Russell gamely tried to tie together the bigger budget Disney-Doc era — two series, and one forgettable Christmas special — and he gave himself a big task. Sadly he was a little optimistic. With so many characters, the butter was spread very thinly. Myriad faces from the past popped up, seemingly to serve no purpose other than to fit on a jam-packed credits roll and create hype from fanboys on social media, with the aim to lure back doubting Thomases from the classic era.
The return of Omega was absolutely awful for this long-time fan. Last year we had Sutekh, a giant CGI monster rework of a villain from a classic serial, which was an all-powerful entity suddenly dispatched far too easily. This year we had Omega, a giant CGI monster rework of a villain from a classic serial, which, again, under RTD’s crash-bang-wallop script, was an all-powerful entity that ultimately came to nothing, appearing in little more than name only, and a presence that merely served as silly fanwank.
Even the sneering superiority of the Rani, the story’s shining light, served merely as a thinly buttered slice of toast, a sliver of a snack rather than full-blooded antagonist. All this while more heavy-handed social commentary was served as the main course.
Archie Panjabi and, after two years of teasing mysterious appearances, Anita Dobson were both brilliant yet utterly wasted. There are lots of connections to previous serials, such as Mrs Flood tracking the Doctor and Ruby Sunday’s every move, Rogue from, er, Rogue, Conrad from Lucky Day, and what have you. Chuck in a roll-call of cleverly incorporated archive clips — everyone from the Bakers, Pertwee, Tennant and Troughton (not to mention a brief new scene featuring a Dalek cameo making sure the Terry Nation Estate are still on side by keeping to the one-Dalek-a-year deal) — and John’s your grandfather.
It was great to see Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Susan Triad back at UNIT HQ, too, but what about the other Susan? The Doctor’s granddaughter and very first companion had ably assisted William Hartnell in the sixties and in the Gatwa era many references to her had been inserted into scripts.
Alas, six decades on and Carole Ann Ford deserved more than a brief random vision, a one-off mental cheerleader beamed in for the fanboys. This is maddening gimmickry. This finale was probably better plotted and more complete than 2024’s, but felt, in a way, much more pernicious.
Susan’s woeful under-use feels like a betrayal to me, dammit. It’s been so long, cats. It was wonderful to see her, and in seemingly rude health, but it begs the question why couldn’t she have been given a more substantial face to face role now rather than later — perhaps as the Watcher, the ghostly transitional being who aided the Doctor as he prepared to mutate from the legendary Tom Baker into fresh-faced Peter Davison in 1981’s Logopolis.
Talking of all things ’80s, there was also a pertinent line from another one-time teenage TARDIS regular in the shape of Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford, who’d travelled in the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy eras). Face to face in the Bone Palace, the redhead sums up the Rani as a heartless scientist who experiments on anything without seeing death of innocents as a reason to stop. The unfiltered hatred was good but kind of made this dancing, monologuing universe-conquering Time Lady seem even less Rani-ish. Still, at least she hasn’t ballooned.
The Doctor and companion Belinda Chandra (an excellent Varada Sethu) portraying a parallel universe couple (here they are seen waking up in bed together in an interesting false reality) is a plot device lifted from a DWM comic called The Glorious Dead, featuring the Eighth Doc Paul McGann, while our favourite Gallifeyan living a normal life as John Smith only to be snapped out of it is also reminiscent of the superb Tenth Doctor story Human Nature.
As the Doc bids farewell to his spiky new companion, Gatwa made his own wish: “I hope you’ll see me again, but not like this.”
By all accounts, the Doctor bowing out to save a daughter that wasn’t his (Poppy, one of the infants from the dreadful Space Babies) was a last minute rewrite, with the final third of the 106 minutes the result of reshoots which took place in February of this year, ten months after the episode was thought in the can back in May 2024.
So, just what was the original ending? According to industry insider Daniel Richtman, the first filmed ending saw the Doctor, Ruby, Belinda et al dancing at a big party DJ’d by UNIT’s The Vlinx robot thing, and similar to Amy and Rory’s wedding in the Eleventh Doctor’s era.
However, Richtman added that in the original shoot, Susan Foreman was seen watching over the characters celebrating from afar. This should have been the cliffhanger for the show going forward, and an intriguing tease for a potential third season, showing that there is more to be revealed regarding their reconnection. Drat.
Without getting too morbid, it would be heartbreaking if the show goes on hiatus and Carole Ann Ford falls sick or worse and is unable to film again. The woman is about to turn 85! I have no idea why RTD is so sure she can just return whenever the show comes back on air
Moreover, the Who rumour mill suggests that NG only decided to up sticks after Disney couldn’t decide whether to renew their involvement in the programme (alas, we still don’t know where or when Who will return next).
A good actor hampered by uneven scripts, even in lesser episodes, Ncuti’s unbridled energy carried us along, infectious and attractive. It’s a genuine shame to see him go, and his hasty departure from Doctor Who bestows on him an unenviable runner-up status: the actor who’s served the second shortest time in the role after Christopher Eccleston. As the Ninth Doctor, Chris’s lasted just one solitary season of 13 eps in 2005 whereas most modern Docs committed to three.
By contrast, Gatwa appeared in 19 episodes, though four of those were ostensibly ‘Doctor Lite’ stories that saw him as more of a supporting player.
Talking of which, with the brief but heart-warming appearance of Jodie Whittaker as the kookily charming Thirteenth Doctor, that leaves only Eccleston, Matt Smith and one-time superfan Peter Capaldi as the only core Time Lords who have never returned to their television iterations on screen ever since the programme first aired in 1963. In a spectacular sequence, Doc 15 underwent his regeneration and, shock, horror, timey-wimey, reappeared as Billie Piper, who arrived on screen by saying “Oh hello!”.
Whether we wanted it or not, Billie’s return came as a genuine shock to many, impressed that the BBC had managed to avoid the usual leaks. Of course, it appears to suggest the actress who played Rose (and the Moment, the sentient doomsday weapon made in Rose’s image) is taking over the celebrated role as the Sixteenth Doctor.
However, eagle-eyed Whovians quickly noticed the credits referred to Gatwa and Whittaker as ‘the Doctor’ but did not do the same for Piper but instead said simply, ‘Introducing Billie Piper’.
Lest we forget, it was Christopher Eccleston himself who told an event in the US in 2021 that he backed the idea of his former assistant assuming the role.
“I was saying to somebody today in the green room that Russell T Davies is coming back, right, and who’s going to be his Doctor? I think it should be Billie Piper actually. Catherine Tate’s great but, I think there’s your Doctor.”
Some were over the moon at the return of Piper and Whittaker, while others bemoaned the lack of new ideas and likened the cartoonish soapy romance subplots to EastEnders in space. OK, SPOILERS! Some assume the stunt is, as the Curator predicted in The Day Of The Doctor, 15 revisiting a few faces — “just the old favourites” — before landing on whomever is actually next.
However, my theory is perhaps we’re seeing Billie Piper is because in 2005 Doc 9 saved Rose by absorbing the time vortex energy so she survived. That energy was sucked back into the TARDIS along with Tyler’s identity imprint.
Twenty years on and we witness Ncuti shooting his regeneration energy into the TARDIS to fix the timeline, which could be the energy he inputted all those years ago to bounce back onto him along with Rose’s identity, which is why he took on the visual form of his former companion.
Tennant and Gatwa’s bi-generation in 2023 means they are two separate entities, and I have a suspicion David and Billie might merge into one Bad Wolf body and regenerate into Doctor’s official 16th incarnation, simplifying everything again.
But what of the show’s future? If you were less charitable you would suggest Billie’s appearance also confirmed Russell’s obsession with remaking the show’s past and an inability to move on. A good idea in theory, the Rani’s return served as a bad omen, and I fear, as another Welsh wonder once warbled, it’s all just a little bit of history repeating. Hi Shirl!
Right, I better go and lie down before something else happens. In the words of Mrs Flood, with her admittedly hilarious Two Ronnies in-joke, “It’s goodnight from her.”
Paul Richard Evans
Edited by Steve Pafford
