"The Reality War" - Doctor Who s15e08 Review
It's been an absolute joy... but... reality has a way of mucking with that.
Apologies for the long windup. This review is gonna be a bit more therapy than normal. If you watched this episode, you can understand why.

The rumors on this season have been flying for several months, reaching a fever pitch right before the premiere when some insider used specific markers to let everyone know that when they said “Gatwa’s regenerating” that wasn’t just some cock-and-bull story they were making up for clicks1. Doctor Who has always had a problem with leaks, but this person came with specific confirmed details, and when episode two dropped it was ominous that a lot of these were, in fact, correct2.
I did get spoiled on this season, and basically have been since “The Robot Revolution”. It harshed the buzz knowing what’s coming, but enabled an appreciation for what we had while we had it, especially as it became clear that it was almost a certainty that Gatwa would be regenerating. And… because I didn’t get to see this episode until 29 hours after Gatwa went all glowy on the telly, that means that I’d been spoiled for………… roughly 29 hours.
When living in a world of Doctor Who, the spoilers are impossible to avoid. Try as we might to avoid social media, the BBC has always blasted its reveals immediately. Given that the Beeb caters specifically to the UK’s linear television viewing audience this might be annoying, but it’s perfectly understandable. This spoiler cannon compounds when something big happens. It’s impossible to avoid a regeneration once the energy starts fountaining.
Much as I’d love to have the regen not take over the entire discussion of a solidish episode, that’s simply impossible. But… let’s talk about some stuff and then circle back to what’s going to be a lot of talk about the regeneration, the surprising leadup, the big reveal at the end, and the state of the show overall.
And apologies in advance for the length.
The Big Davies Finale
Going back to when Russell T. Davies took over the show in 2005, general consensus is that his finales are rough. They might have the emotional moments, but going and looking at the plots themselves they’re a bit slipshod. Common wisdom is they go for big opera moments and then have lackluster payoffs and deus ex machina solutions. This is inaccurrate. Davies being a dude who doesn’t outline, he has an ending in mind when he starts. He plants the outs early and when the time comes to pull them out as a big reveal, they can feel rather wonky because he telegraphed them from the jump.
Davies realizes (and he’s right) that what really matters to people are the big emotional moments. Sure The Doctor and Rose at the top of Canary Wharf might have a moment where Pete’s World Pete saves her, but the thing the audience remembers is Rose and The Doctor on either side of that wall. We remember them sharing that last scene at Bad Wolf Bay. Even the complete mad cap of “The End of Time” withers in comparison to the extended ending as the 10th Doctor steps into that glass cabinet for Wilf and then does his farewell tour to everyone else.
As such, this finale more or less works for what RTD does in finales. It’s big and messy and bombastic. The cliffhanger out is about as “and then it worked out okay!” as they ever are, though it’s nice to see the Time Hotel again. The callback to Anita is a lovely reveal that brings back the best part of “Joy to the World” and her pleasure at being a member of the hotel staff is delightful. It feels like a celebration of the mundanity of the infinite. Like there’s a sense of purpose and dignity to a standard mundane job as long as you love doing it.
Seeing The Doctor return to the world, wearing that skirt and being utterly fabulous is the sort of great thing that we want. And… as a standard finale it works. Watching him upend UNIT through the use of the Time Hotel’s time doors is a nice cheat to get everyone back up to speed. And it also manages to get the entire UNIT crew in the same place at once so they can do the big action while The Doctor does the big confrontation.
Conrad’s perfect reality
Maybe the best thing in the whole story is the revelation of Rose Temple-Noble in the UNIT HQ offices once the room starts to return to normal. The idea that she’s been there the entire time only invisible is a dark, biting commentary on the world that Conrad imagines. His wish that the world would be a place of safety and security turns back the clock to one that’s heteronormative and very post-war (re: 1950s).
It’s also a world where Rose isn’t allowed to exist.
In a world where JK Rowling has the ear of the Prime Minister and has made it her life’s work to erase trans-people from living a free and open life in society, Davies draws a line in the sand. It’s important that Conrad didn’t wish for some “return to normalcy” or “family values”. What he wanted was safety. And Rose’s presence (or lack thereof) fills that old adage about freedom vs security. Was Rose’s existence actually causing anyone to be safe? Who in the world is demanding that Rose not exist in the name of their own security? What a damning indictment of this particular worldview. To live in Conrad’s particular vision of security means not allowing freedom for Rose or people like her.
The chances of Rose Temple-Noble being a future TARDIS companion seem very low. That’s a shame. Despite her few appearances to-date, she’s one of the best things whenever she appears. Having someone like Yasmin Finney on the television and with infrequent regularity has indescribable value for creating the sort of empathy that will change hearts and minds for the better. She’s maybe my favorite characters since RTD’s return.
Long live the Rani
It’s not surprising that The Doctor meeting face-to-face with The Rani is an excuse for a big exposition dump. Hell, it really helps the show gets back to its roots as a series with no budget. The show is famous for scenes where The Doctor stands in a room with some villain and the two shout each other down.
But it does lead to an interesting development. The idea that the Time Lords are a genetic dead end is a fascinating one, and really opens the door for Susan3 and explaining that there’s something going on there that isn’t traditional. The Doctor has said they were a parent once, that they had children. This idea that Time Lords are sterile slots nicely into Davies flooding his return with nontraditional families. Ruby’s upbringing as a foster child is perfectly in line with Susan (or Poppy) as something that isn’t a traditional nuclear family. Again, this is a strength that Davies really is consciously bringing into the show and making it a stronger vehicle for diverse stories. Whatever its future (we’ll get there), this is something that the show should do well.
On the other hand, while it’s nice to see Archie Panjabi going toe-to-toe with Ncuti Gatwa for an extended scene, it really isn’t like The Rani proved to be… much of anything. The show vaguely waves at her thinking of the universe as her petri dish, but because her plans are so megalomaniacal it doesn’t do a great showing like… other smaller experiments.
It was nice to see Mel talk about having a previous encounter with The Rani, though. It’s far from the big face-to-face Sarah Jane has with Davros in “Journey’s End”, and really stretched credulity in that like… really? We’re talking about The Rani as some great intergalactic genocidal monster? Like… The one from “Time and the Rani”? Like… no shade, Davies, but that’s just hilarious.
That said, turning her into some Time Lord supremacist eugenicist is a fabulous, dark turn for the character. It really crystalizes her worldview and helps to give her something far beyond what Pip’n’Jane Baker were ever capable of. It’s not about “experiments”. It’s about flexing intergalactic power through genetic superiority and sculpting Time Lord culture into whatever she wants. If anyone is ever to bring The Rani back again, this is a great baseline from which to start. I just hope it’s……… more next time.
Om nom nom
It feels silly to spend time talking about Omega, especially considering that he was such a nothing burger in the end. He chomped down on The Rani, yes, but… he’s just a big CGI beastie that The Doctor has to face down with a giant space laser. And… yes that’s cool (if unsatisfying).
The best thing about it was (and my partner keeps talking about how uninteresting it is for me to consistently sledgehammer people in the face my proclamations that Doctor Who is not a science fiction show at all, but… I’m never gonna stop) how Omega’s existence became a manifestation of his legend itself. By this point, living in his little Tomb, he’s warped beyond recognition to be this weird undead monstrosity. That idea of legends warping and changing a living thing’s existence is a wonderful not-sci-fi idea at the core of this big noisy laser light show.
So… it’s disappointing, but it really is a question of what exactly we’d want from an Omega story at this point. Last week it seemed possible The Rani would turn the tables on him somehow and harness him for her evil ends. That might have seemed the case, but it’s funny watching him eat her because she with her big science brain doesn’t understand the power of myths and legends that have gotten far beyond anyone’s capacity to control.
Diverging timelines
I admit to being extremely confused through the big resolution of this story, specifically what was happening with Poppy. A lot of that was the forthcoming regeneration casting a long shadow, and trying to parse out exactly what was happening felt like a rushed patch job. Sitting with it for the few hours I have, I’ve gotten to… events as I understand them.
The reason it’s so hard to parse is because there’s a point where RTD’s finale… splits. If Gatwa’s regeneration was primarily a product of reshoots (and we’ve little reason to think it wasn’t), then there has to be a point at which Davies swerves what was meant to be a standard season finale into something that would tie up Gatwa’s loose ends.
It’s difficult to not overspeculate here, but if I had to guess, I it seems that everything from when The Doctor departs UNIT all the way to the end is all reshoots. So… that would mean his surprise reunion with Whittaker (more on her in a minute), everything with Belinda and Poppy at the house, and then the final scene with Gatwa’s actual regeneration is all footage that’s less than six months old. All of these are relatively simple lifts where everything is on either standing sets (the TARDIS) or easy locations (the house) and with limited cast to minimize setups. Remounting that entire UNIT set with all that cast and all those extras with all that coverage is probably too big of a lift for reshoots. But Poppy is too intrinsic to remove her completely.
So really, that just means it’s about unraveling whatever’s going on with Poppy.
The Poppy Problem
The big cliffhanger of “Wish World” was The Doctor’s proclamation that Poppy is real and The Doctor’s daughter and how that’s a huge deal. Given this episode’s reveal about Time Lords being sterile, that means that Poppy has tremendous value in the future of the Time Lords as a species. As such, the episode puts a tremendous focus on keeping her safe, with Belinda staying with her in the Zero Room and then having The Doctor sacrifice his own life in the name of bringing back a reality where she exists.
Of course, the story ends with The Doctor burning a regeneration and nudging time just enough that it brings Poppy back into reality, though it then reveals a truth where Poppy is actually just Belinda’s child (not one she had shared with The Doctor). This is… somewhat disappointing. It feels like Davies pulling a particular punch on a specific development. Maybe this wasn’t the plan (we’ll find out what it was originally eventually), or maybe Davies was like “no way am I ever giving The Doctor a kid”.
Whatever the case, it’s a far cry from “The Doctor’s Daughter” back in 2008, where Davies originally said that Jenny had to die “of course” but changed his mind after Steven Moffat pointed out that killing her off would be “too obvious”. While Jenny has not returned on television (Big Finish has brought her back for her own series of audio adventures), Moffat (and then Davies) recognized that keeping narratives open for more possibilities is far preferable to closing them off because it’s what the show’s “supposed” to do.
If nothing else, making Poppy Belinda’s kid might have been the original plan. The episode takes the time to cut to little moments from previous episodes where Belinda mentions “Poppy” (though none of those are in the transcripts online; without rewatching, it’s a montage that’s gonna make a rewatch more interesting), and there’s also the complication that Poppy appears in “The Story & The Engine” and the primary crop of the Hellian homeworld is “PoppyHoney”. So this is one of those season arc catch words that Davies was at the very least working into here. It also explains why Belinda spent the entire season deadset on returning home to the detriment of everything else in her life. “Wish World” just glommed The Doctor into this reality as it existed and rewrote the past based on what The Doctor wants and combined that with existing backstory for his companion.
It’s a lot.
And the way that it’s handled (especially in this weird Frankenstein version) is extremely disorienting to the point of confusing. Maybe it’ll be different on rewatch, but for now it basically works on an emotional level.
What it also does is help contextualize Belinda. Watching Ruby (her mind altered by the events of “73 Yards”) see the shift between The Doctor and Belinda is a chilling scene, and true to form Sethu takes full advantage of the giddy “I get to travel with The Doctor” that’s been so missing this entire season. But what’s great about it is how wrong it feels to see Belinda so eager. For all that it feels this season shortchanged Belinda, Sethu’s performance does reveal a new take on the character unburdened by the demands of raising a child.
It still feels like it’s limiting to Belinda and her characters. But also, she was only really in seven episodes so… whatever, I guess? Bye, Belinda?
Harbinger of regeneration
Given that RTD didn’t build this as a vehicle to support a regeneration, it’s no surprise that he pulls out the stops to try to make it the big operatic event it’s been for every other regeneration of the New Era.
The big move he makes? Jodie Whittaker.
It’s lovely to see her again, though a bit awkward. The problem with Chibnall writing her is that there wasn’t a lot of character outside of odd quirks. Davies has a bit of a blank canvas, but she’s basically doing a job of bolstering Gatwa’s forthcoming regen. He does what he can with limited time, taking full advantage of the freedom to have The Doctor admit she’s in love with Yas and she should tell her only for Gatwa’s Doctor to retort with what amounted to “yeah you fucked that one up a bit, huh?” It’s a nice moment, but… Chibnall man. And knowing how giddy she is to have been in the role, it’s impossibly exciting knowing that this is almost certainly not going to be the last time we see her in that gorgeous blue coat. Next time there’s a multi-Doctor crossover, she’s gonna be there. I can’t wait
God. The Chibnall era wasted her so hard.
And it sucks that she’s all part of the sweaty desperate gamble this regeneration is.
Regenerative patterns
If you look at the Classic series, Doctor Who has a really weird relationships with its Doctors and how much they stuck around.
Hartnell played The Doctor first, but there was no sense that he was “The 1st Doctor”. His departure after three years (29 stories) was a way to keep the show going.
Troughton played the 2nd Doctor, and left after three seasons (21 stories). The show was just too grueling (they were doing more than 40 episodes a year at the time) and he peaced out.
Pertwee stuck around for five seasons (24 stories). At that point, regeneration was still insanely new. Hell, the term “regeneration” doesn’t come up until the 3rd Doctor’s final episode. Based on how his seasons broke down, Pertwee probably should have left after his fourth season; that last season is a bit long in the tooth.
Tom Baker was in the role for seven seasons (42 stories), and the only reason he left was because new producer John Nathan-Turner passive-aggressively pushed him out of the role. While Baker had been on autopilot for quite some time, it really was a huge moment. For all intents and purposes, the dude was Doctor Who and had been the show’s lead for more than a third of its life span to that point.
Davison was around for three seasons (20 stories). According to the legend, he talked to Troughton during the filming of “The Five Doctors”, who urged him to step down and not let the role define him. That the writing in his era is extremely pitchy probably made Davison’s decision easier.
Colin Baker had two seasons (8 or 11 stories depending on how you count), though if you go by episode-time spent4, it’s closer to a season and a half’s worth.
McCoy stayed for the final three seasons of the Classic era (12 stories) and really only left because the BBC cancelled the show.
I mention all of this because the Tom Baker of it all warps the fabric of how to read those seasons. There’s 11 seasons pre-4th, 7 seasons of the 4th, and then 8 seasons after the 4th. Having watched the show all the way through there is a sense of acceleration as Doctor Who approaches cancellation, with the regenerations coming rapidly in the 80s.
In the New Series, the show has previously been more regimented.
- Eccleston did one season (10 stories), and in watching it really feels like he’s there to set the table for the series and get everything established before swanning off. An appetizer, really.
- Tennant did three and a half seasons (36 stories) and really locks in that “three season” run as standard operation procedure. It was Davison (paying forward the Troughton legacy) on the set of “Time Crash” who purportedly told Tennant to not lose his career to the role. His subsequent departure really was a big question mark for the show. It was only towards the end of his run that he’d started to destabilize Tom Baker’s mantle as “definitive Doctor” in the eyes of the general populace.
- Smith did three seasons (39 stories) and from the halfway point there was a sense that Smith was getting restless in the bowtie. The gap year that was Series 7 came with him going off to do other things, like the way he shaved his head for his role in Lost River which meant he was wearing a wig for “The Time of the Doctor”.
- Capaldi did three seasons (35 stories) and… well… by this point it’s just established that Doctors typically do three seasons. It allows them the manic energy of a first season as they settle into a role, a second where they really explore the character, and a final run that’s mostly victory lap.
- Whittaker did three seasons (24 stories). Again. We’ve got the three seasons thing. There was also discussion of the show being in serious trouble towards the end there, with showrunner Chris Chibnall saying there was at least an hour in the midst of COVID where the show was literally cancelled.
- Tennant returned for three specials (3 stories) to ease us back into a new normal.
- And Ncuti Gatwa did… two seasons (16 stories) and… well. Now he’s done.
If for the sake of argument Tennant 2.0 is a strange doesn’t-count interlude (and if we leave out John Hurt, which we should), Gatwa is the equivalent of Colin Baker in terms of raw “how many Doctors have had a tenure in the Classic series”. Leaving aside whatever’s going on with the final shot of “The Reality War”, whoever is the next Doctor is going to end up filling that McCoy slot, a role that signaled the functional petering out of Doctor Who on television. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it’s possible Doctor Who 0will not return in RTD’s lifetime if this New Era goes off the air.
This feels like such a dumb thing to say, but it sucks that this is all the Gatwa we’re going to get. It feels selfish and not fair to a rising star of an actor that we demand more of him. Poor viewers don’t get enough Doctor Who. Wailing baby. Stomping feet. Gnashing teeth. And yet, it feels like this is what happens in the streaming age. Shorter seasons with longer gaps between them. Actors gets restless waiting around for studios to move their ass.
This all feels so avoidable. Gatwa wanted this part. He’s been great in the role. They cast him in May of 2022, his first appearance didn’t air until December 2023, and his first full series didn’t start until March of 2024. Now it’s June 2025 and he’s gone. We live in a world where he did 18.5 episodes in that stretch of time. This is no way to celebrate an actor of Gatwa’s caliber. Of course he felt like this was a waste of his time.
Much as I loved him in the role and quite enjoyed a majority of his episodes, nothing is ever going to change this sense of waste. Reshoots aside, Gatwa and Sethu wrapped shooting over a year ago and there’s currently not even confirmation of a next-season pickup. Davies can write all the episodes he wants, but if there’s no promise, why in the fucking world would Gatwa stick around in the vain hope that maybe something will happen? Like… bitch go do you. I love this show. It’s my favorite of all time. But there’s no reason to squander our precious time on this earth with this waffling dickishness.
Gatwa’s departure is going to have ripple effects moving forward. UNIT is coming back for The War Between the Land and the Sea but past that? Is this it for Millie Gibson? Verada Sethu? Maybe this was always meant to be it for them. It makes sense of them to fade into the background for whatever comes next, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of this rapidly destabilizes Doctor Who when the whole point of RTD coming back to the series was to put it back on solid ground.
… and it’s also not even RTD’s fault.
Did Doctor Who sell its soul?
When RTD came back, the big announcement that came with it was the partnership with Disney+. Disney’s need to feed the endless abyss of subscribers’ attention requires a diverse portfolio. They need international content. Doctor Who was flagging because of the Chibnall era (though it was starting to see a ratings dip under Capaldi5). The influx of Disney cash was a mutually beneficial solution. Whoniverse, baby. New Doctor(s). Let’s get the spinoffs going. Global reach. Let’s go.
Only… it seems to have not worked out, has it? Disney did basically no marketing push on this season. The internal rumors (which, again, we should probably believe based on how the rumors for this season went) are that the streaming numbers for the show might have started off promising but have gotten abysmal. Yeah, Disney picked up the series for those first four specials and then two eight-episode seasons, but… to what end? What do we have to show for it? 21 episodes in 45 months?
The problem is that Doctor Who just isn’t built for the streaming era. The lead time is too long. For all that “Lux” is amazing and needed the extra time to do the effects of Mr. Ring-a-Ding, nothing is going to change that twenty years ago Davies brought the ruthless drive to make Doctor Who consistent appointment television. 13 consecutive Saturday nights out of the year, you could expect the TARDIS to land somewhere wonderful. Is it spring time? Here comes Doctor Who. Moffat buckled under this somewhat, but did his best. Chibnall tried, but couldn’t make episodes work in a calendar year.
And now… what? We just wasted a fucking great Doctor? For what? So Disney could dump the show? We’re gonna get The War Between the Land and Sea and then… what?
The truth is that it’s hard to not look at Disney and see it as the source of all these problems. It might have saved the show from cancellation when Chibnall stepped down, and no I’m not trading anything for the Tennant specials or the precious little Gatwa we got… but it stands to reason that this manner of producing the show has really killed the momentum. Is anyone happy with this? It feels like the writing’s on the wall, but until Disney+ announces it’s not renewing its contracts, the BBC can’t start production. Without confirmation that Disney will pick up the tab, the show is completely stuck.
That’s just not feasible. And it’s not fair to compare Gatwa to Tennant or Smith or Capaldi. Those guys all took the job and knew there was a regular work schedule. Tennant was shooting from June to January every year. Smith was shooting a similar schedule. Same with Capaldi. Even Whittaker was able to work her schedule around it because Chibnall was clear about what the production schedule would be. They announced Gatwa’s casting three full years ago.
God was I excited for the Disney+ era. There was such promise, and even the episodes that Davies made have made it clear that he doesn’t give a flying fuck what Disney might thing about DEI or appealing to the bigoted censorship demands of authoritarian countries. RTD can be as progressive as he wants. He can prep a show that’s brimming with good representation and diversity, but none of that matters if no one is making the show.
But the truth is that this limbo is actively choking the series. As this episode ended it feels like the show is on life support. It’s like watching a dude on oxygen try to do a rigorous tap dance. At a certain point… it really does just need to end.
All of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever was… where do you want to start?
Which… brings us to what’s next.
… who knows?
The thing is… who doesn’t love Billie Piper? She’s the secret weapon that enabled the show’s resurrection. She was terrific as Rose and she was amazing in her brief role in “Day of the Doctor”. Any time she wants to come back and play in the Doctor Who space she’s more than welcome to do so. I’m always over the moon to see her.
… and yet.
When RTD came back it was a shock. What was more of a shock was the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate. Those three specials were an engine revving, a plane taxiing on the runway waiting to take off. It was a massive PR stunt to heal a decades-old wound, the equivalent of pure adrenaline shot to the heart. But the thing about adrenaline shots is they’re desperate moves. They’re hail mary passes. Glasses to break in case of emergency. You only get to do it once.
And here we are again. With another stunt casting. And a very specific credit at the end where it says “Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor” then “Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor” then “and introducing Billie Piper”… but it doesn’t say “as The Doctor.” There’s already a whole manner of conspiracy theories about this online. If you go to that Doctor Who subreddit6 there’s all these theories about who “she really is” even though the visual text of the episode is very much “Billie Piper is the new Doctor” regardless of what the credits say.
I’m sure Davies has some idea, but given literally everything we know it’s probably extremely loose. Gatwa was on the Graham Norton Show back in October talking about how he was planning to go back and shoot his third season, and nine months later he’s in the past tense. He shot his regeneration and everything around it within the past five months. Do we think they’ve done the big epic casting for a new Doctor? Especially when the show isn’t even picked up for another season? As if this timeframe is even enough to pull off that big a casting job. It’s certainly already underway... or… maybe Billie Piper is the new Doctor and RTD wanted her in the same way Moffat wanted Capaldi.
… or maybe… we’ve seen this exact thing before.
Because what David Tennant’s return did was buy RTD time. Davies knew Tennant could do the job and so he brought back him back and wrote some episodes under the pretense of something they could shoot quickly and soon. While they were shooting, they started the search for the new Doctor. It was precious time to start paying off Disney’s demands of getting the show back up while also working behind the scenes to establish stability.
And now it’s another round of stunt casting, RTD breaking another emergency glass so he can shoot another blast of adrenaline right to the show’s heart because it’s already starting to stutter again. What Piper’s casting does is give Davies time. If she’s the new Doctor, great. We saw what we saw. We can move forward in this new reality. If she’s not, then this is another interrim and it buys Davies time to pick up the pieces of the show’s yet again detonation. Only this time, the show detonated on his watch.
Again, none of this is a condemnation of Billie Piper, nor is it even a slam on RTD, who is just trying to keep the show alive even though it’s becoming increasingly clear that maybe it’s time to stop pretending. I hate that I’ve been saying all season that maybe it’s time to give Doctor Who a rest, but here at the end of the season that future is all I can see.
This isn’t what I want from this show show. Is it worth it to have bad Doctor Who if the alternative is no Doctor Who? Which is preferable?
The answer, for me, is no Doctor Who. We have plenty of it. It’s been twenty years. It’s a good run. No one should be sad or upset or disappointed. But the last thing that we want is for the show to be a shell of its former self, limping along to some eventual yet predetermined cancellation. That is the current state of the show.
Before this season, I blindly hoped that maybe the Gatwa run would be some creative burst of creativity. A bold, McCoy era “we survived the dark period and now we’re on the road to cancellation. Nothing can stop it. Let’s just be geniuses.” So much for that theory. If anything, this is the most it’s ever felt that cancellation is inevitable if not imminent.
And that’s okay. Maybe we’ll get more in this iteration. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it’ll be a run of a robust seasons and amazing stories that don’t have to live in whatever secret Disney confines they’ve been in. Or maybe it will go away and we’ll see it again soon. The show went into the wilderness before and it emerged as an incredible cultural force. History can repeat itself and this show will almost certainly never die.
It just needs to have the courage that based on past precedent regeneration is not only possible but necessary for the show to rise from these ashes.
Season 15 Episode Rankings
The Story and the Engine
Lucky Day
Lux
Joy to the World
The Interstellar Song Contest
The Well
The Reality War
Wish World
The Robot Revolution
The subreddit was a nexus for all of the rumors in one spots. It included posts consolidating batches and then amended with followups. ↩
The leaker’s drop for “Lux” said it would “feature a ‘breaking the 4th wall’ scene where we see a group of Doctor Who fans watching and critiquing he episode.” It’s such a granular level of detail that it shifted the conversation from “what if these are real” to “so I guess we know what’s gonna happen next week, huh?”. ↩
There’s not really room for me to talk about her, but man… what a waste for Carol Anne Ford to appear in the last two episodes only to get barely a passing mention here. Current rumor is that she was in the original version of this but cut when it became clear Davies needed to wrap Gatwa. Understandable, but god what a disappointment. ↩
As opposed to episodes; Colin Baker’s first full season took episode runtimes from 25 minutes (as they’d been for 21 seasons) to 45 minutes. That season is roughly the same amount of raw minutes as any of Davison’s seasons. It’s half the episodes, but twice the length. Math! ↩
I’ll be completely honest about the idea that the golden age of the show did see a rapid decline in viewership for a number of reasons. But Chibnall accelerated this. ↩
Not reading any theories about this. No plans to. ↩