October 15: "The Reality War"

The Rani is ready to use Omega to resurrect the Time Lords, even if it means getting rid of everything that was wished into existence -- including the Doctor's daughter, Poppy...

And it was going so well too.

Ruby and Rose meet Belinda and Poppy. ("The Reality War") ©BBC

To be fair, the issues with "The Reality War" don't immediately raise their heads, and for the first third or so things aren't too bad, other than somehow stuffing even more references into the show.  And so we get Anita from "Joy to the World", now working at the Time Hotel, ready to rescue the Doctor from that plunging balcony we left him on last time.  She apparently went looking for him, which means we get clips of the 11th Doctor from "The Wedding of River Song", the 3rd Doctor from Day of the Daleks, and the 15th Doctor from "Rogue", which apparently upset Anita enough to go run off and find someone else to fall in love with.  (So we couldn't even let that remain as a friendship; it had to be another woman pining after the Doctor...)  We also get the return of Rose Noble, brought back into existence via some technobabble with the Time Hotel letting reality into UNIT -- it seems Conrad couldn't even conceive of the existence of transgender people.  And Mel's back at UNIT with the rest of the UNIT team (having been summoned back thanks to an implanted biochip that UNIT placed in its people to track them, which is definitely not creepy at all).  Mel's being at UNIT means that when the Rani shows up, they get to spit poison at each other, having met back in Time and the Rani.  All this and a Zero Room (Castrovalva) too.

So yes, overstuffed, but it's not the worst of sins, honestly.  None of the references to the past are crucial to understanding what's going on, so we haven't sunk into the dark days of the 1980s again.  And you can tell everyone involved is having a lot of fun -- I know I keep raving about Archie Punjabi, but come on, she is so clearly having a blast as a glam villain that it's difficult not to get wrapped up in it.  Ncuti Gatwa is also clearly enjoying himself, running around joyously when UNIT comes back, contronting the Rani with an amused-yet-serious demeanor, or even just wishing himself up a new suit consisting of a sleeveless vest and matching kilt with trousers underneath.  At this point, the main fault is just that since this is a season finale, we need lots of shouting and explosions while giant CGI Bone Beasts attack a rotating UNIT Tower with guns.  In other words, a big dumb action sequence.  But honestly that's pretty much par for the course for modern Who season-enders.  The Rani's plan even makes a sort of sense, even if it involves some minor retconning of the events described in "The Timeless Children".  Apparently the Master sent out a "genetic explosion" (whatever that means) that turned all the Time Lords sterile so that they could never have children.  (And then I guess he went and killed all the ones he could find on Gallifrey for good measure?)  The Rani saw it coming (somehow) and so "flipped" her DNA (somehow) so that it didn't affect her, but she still needs a source of pre-sterilised Time Lord DNA: hence the quest for Omega.  (And curiously, Gatwa keeps pronouncing it the American way, with the stress on the second syllable, while everyone around him pronounces it the British way, with the stress on the first syllable.)  As far as villain plans go, hers is downright prosaic.  So you can just about accept what the show is presenting to you and have fun with it.

The Doctor and the two Ranis prepare for the return of Omega. ("The
Reality War") ©BBC

But the bigger problem starts to set in with the discussion of Omega, as once again (much like in "Empire of Death"), Russell T Davies is changing what we'd been told before about returning characters to suit his own needs.  Back in The Three Doctors, Omega was referred to as a forgotten hero who had created the source of the power that the Time Lords used to gain mastery over time, but who was trapped in an antimatter world and presumed lost.  (Arc of Infinity, Omega's other appearance, tells a broadly similar story.)  It was only his isolation in the antimatter realm that drove him mad.  But now we're told here that he's "the original sin of the Time Lords.  Cast out from Gallifrey, legend says that they bound him and banished him because he is insane!"  Even allowing that something happened during the Time War to change things, this feels a bit difficult to swallow.  And the only reason this change is happening is so that there's an excuse for Omega to have turned into some giant weird half-skeleton CG monstrosity, justified with some bafflegab about him turning into what the legends said he was during his time trapped in a vault in the Underverse.  All this so he can literally eat the new Rani (oh come on, really?!  Punjabi was wonderful, why are you getting rid of her?) before getting blasted back into his vault by the Doctor, thanks to the Vindicator the Rani stuck on the big clock last episode.  (Chekhov, eat your heart out.)  The Doctor even yells "Back into hell!" at Omega as he does it!  In other words, this feels pointless: Omega could have been any random imprisoned Time Lord and nothing would have changed -- indeed, it might have been easier for long-term fans (well, me) to accept -- just so they could have a surprisingly macho conclusion.

Now, that said, the climax of the story isn't all bad.  The resolution of Conrad's story, where Ruby transmats in to grab Desiderium and then wishes for Conrad to have a happy life, where he won't be getting people angry or raging against the world, is nicely handled; I like the way Ruby wins through kindness.  And there's something right about giving Desiderium over to Carla to foster (since, as the Doctor points out, he's still a human baby).  I also like the triumph of the Zero Room having worked, with Poppy and Belinda (who's still rather unfairly sidelined this episode, just like last) still remaining safe and sound even after Ruby ends Conrad's wish world.  It's a sweet, hopeful ending.

Which is why it's really weird how the rest of the episode then seems to backtrack on that ending, with Poppy saved but then disappearing from existence anyway, with Ruby the only one the wiser (again, probably because of the events of "73 Yards" that caused her to be resistant to Conrad's illusory world).³⁰⁶  Honestly, the moments of everyone not believing her go on a bit too long, but eventually the Doctor decides that yes, he should save Poppy, even if it kills him.  This involves him summoning up regenerative energy (somehow) so that he can redirect it into the TARDIS console and reset time -- but not before we get a rather sweet cameo from the 13th Doctor.  It's genuinely lovely to see Jodie Whittaker back again and connecting with Ncuti Gatwa, even if the scene itself isn't anything too substantial.  But then it's time to shatter reality (based on the visuals, at least) and wake up once more to say goodbye to Belinda.

Ncuti Gatwa regenerates into...Billie Piper? ("The Reality War") ©BBC

Honestly, divorced from everything else, this isn't a bad scene.  Poppy has been saved, at least, and it's a bit bittersweet how she's no longer the Doctor's daughter (time having been rewritten to make Poppy the daughter of Belinda and an old boyfriend named Ritchie).  It's only in the larger context of the episode that things really sag.  Instead of a nice denouement after defeating the Rani and Omega, we get scene after scene, all of which are fine on their own but strung all together feel a bit interminable.  And then, after saying goodbye to Belinda and Poppy, it's finally time for the Doctor to regenerate - - but not before we get one more reference tossed in, as the Doctor decides to regenerate out in space in the company of Joy the star from "Joy to the World".  It does give the Doctor some nice final words though: "This has been an absolute joy."  And so the 15th Doctor regenerates into... Billie Piper.  Sigh.  Twenty years on and the show still can't escape the shadow of Rose Tyler.³⁰⁷  Although if you pay close attention, you'll note they never actually introduce her as the Doctor: the credits just say "Introducing Billie Piper", and if you look carefully at the regeneration sequence, you don't see her face emerge from Gatwa's (although she is wearing his clothes).  So it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that shenanigans are going on.  But we'll have to wait and see what the future holds...

So in the end, "The Reality War" is an overstuffed episode that starts decently but then fumbles its ending, both the Rani and the Poppy storylines.  It's a shame; up to this point, series 15 was running pretty much at full clip, so it's unfortunate that it falls during the final stretch.  Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu both deserved a better swan song.

But really, other than the end, series 15 was a very strong season -- possibly the strongest since at least series 10.  After the more experimental, somewhat uncertain approach of series 14, this year found the show on more confident footing.  While there were still some more unusual episodes, they felt more self-assured this time around, with less of a sense of trying to throw tons of things against the wall to see what would stick.  It helps that this time around they had a new and different storyline for the companion with Belinda -- not that this is a knock on Ruby or Millie Gibson, mind.  But the fact that Belinda was just looking to get home, and that she wasn't necessarily in this for the wonders of the universe, provided a new dynamic that shook things up.  Belinda had a fire to her that the Doctor reacted well to.  Between her, the 15th Doctor, and some really wonderful stories, series 15 proved that there's still plenty of life in the show.

However, this means that it's time to say farewell not just to Belinda, but also to Ncuti Gatwa and the 15th Doctor.  If I were to sum up Gatwa's performance in a word, it would be, as he says at the end, joy.  This was a Doctor who embraced life, who saw the wonder and beauty in everything, and who was so eager to share it with people.  But if he was more open with his joy, he was also more open with his other emotions, from his anger (as we saw a few times this series) to his sorrow (all right, since we're here at the end, I'll just come out and ask it: can Ncuti Gatwa cry on command?  Because it did feel like this Doctor cried a lot).  Watching this Doctor's ebullience was infectious, and I only wish he'd stayed around longer; much like Christopher Eccleston by the end of series 1, you could see Gatwa really coming into his own throughout this series, and it makes you wonder what could have been had he stayed.  So goodbye, Fifteen: you will definitely be missed.

But even if he hadn't decided to go, we might not have gotten more of the 15th Doctor.  Doctor Who is currently in an unusually precarious position: apparently the show wasn't the ratings bonanza that Disney had hoped for, and so they haven't chosen to pick up the option to co-produce more episodes.  In some ways this is just due to the fragmented nature of TV these days: although we don't have any viewing figures from Disney+, we do have the BBC figures, which typically hovered around 3 million for the week (with 4 episodes actually coming in below Battlefield Part One's record of only 3.1 million viewers) -- and yet every episode was among the 40 most watched programmes of the week in the UK.  So it's not so much that people have stopped watching Doctor Who so much as that there are very few shows these days to be gain a widespread audience.  Perhaps Disney was hoping the show could become a crossover hit again, but that's harder to do for a show that's been on reasonably consistently for 20 years than for one that's still pretty fresh and new, the way it was during David Tennant's era (and Matt Smith's, in the US).  But regardless, this means that there currently is no new series of the show in production.  The BBC have insisted that they intend to bring it back (it is still one of their flagship shows), but they need to work out how to make it, now that Disney is no longer footing part of the bill.  One can only hope it's not as long a wait as the last time.  Because Doctor Who, despite the occasional bumps and missteps, is still the greatest television show ever created, and series 15 has simply underlined that point.

(Oh, but we're not quite done yet: next year we can at least look forward to the UNIT spinoff show, The War Between the Land and the Sea.  So (assuming it airs before October) I'll see you again on 16 October 2026...)







³⁰⁶ It feels so bizarre and ill-fitting for the story they'd been telling up to that point, in fact, that a rumour has sprouted up that this wasn't the intended ending, and that things only changed after Gatwa unexpectedly decided to leave.  As with all rumours, this should all be taken with a very large grain of salt, but there are some corroborating details.  We know that at one point Gatwa had expressed an intention to do a third series.  We also know that something happened after principal filming wrapped that required extensive reshoots for this episode.  There's also a promo shot of Belinda and the Doctor dancing at a party that doesn't appear in the final episode.  And Billie Piper has said that she was asked to make a cameo appearance at the end of the episode very late in the day.  So does this mean that the original plan was in fact for Gatwa to stay on, and that he only later in the day decided that two series was enough for him, requiring a major sea change?  The modern Who production office has a reputation for not letting leaks or anything other than the official version of a story out, so this is all still rumour, and it could of course be nothing.  But based on what we get on screen, it seems plausible...
³⁰⁷ The one saving grace here is that 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the show's return, so there's actually a reason to bring back Piper besides desperation.

October 14: "Wish World"

It's another beautiful day in London for John Smith, his wife Belinda, and their child Poppy on the eve of May Day -- so long as they don't have any doubts about the perfect world they live in...

So this is what they've been building up to for all of series 15, and it certainly feels exciting and also (intentionally) a bit askew.  It starts with an introduction involving the new Rani kidnapping the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son, where she uses the powers of the newborn to reshape reality.  I think it was one of the novelisations (I forget which one for sure but it was probably The Giggle) that mentioned that the Toymaker and the other members of the Pantheon are using their own form of science from their own dimension/universe/whatever you want to call it, and it just looks like magic to us.  So this could be me bringing more into it than what's actually there, but thematically it makes sense that the Rani -- in some ways the archetype of the scientist who puts science above everything else, including morality -- would take the time to learn this new science of the Pantheon and turn it to her own ends.  And so that sets the stage for everything that follows.

Mind, what we get does occasionally feel a bit overstuffed at times -- it's Ruby!  It's Mel!  It's Shirley!  It's Susan Triad and UNIT!  It's Susan Foreman!  It's Rogue somehow! -- but, to a fan like me, this isn't a bad thing.  It's fun to have all these references back to earlier stories and such, and so long as you're not expecting more then there's quite a bit of fun to be had in spotting old faces -- although one wonders what any casual viewers (if in fact there are any left by this point; although chart placement hasn't been terrible, actual raw numbers of viewers are down pretty far) made of this.  (I will admit, the only one I felt cheated by was Rogue, but that's just because I'm very selfish and wanted more than just an appearance on a screen.  In other words, bring back Jonathan Groff!)  Plus it means they can use a bit of shorthand, where they can just introduce returning characters without needing to spend a lot of time on, say, Shirley Anne Bingham's motivations.  Indeed, if there are any criticisms to be had here, it's that some of the groups of characters feel a bit shunted to the side: Belinda is reduced largely to being the wife of John Smith, while Ruby, Shirley, and company get their own plot thread that doesn't seem to go anywhere yet.  That said, since this is pretty explicitly part one of two, some of these concerns may be addressed in the follow-up episode.  But otherwise this feels like great fun.

Winnie, Ruby, and Shirley hide from the police after curfew. ("Wish
World") ©BBC

Another interesting returning character is Conrad, who's using the power of Desiderium, the god of wishes (aka the baby the Rani kidnapped), to create a perfect world as he sees it.  What's interesting about this is that Conrad's world doesn't seem to be particularly racist (in addition to the Doctor and Belinda, we see people like Colonel Ibrahim, and some of the background characters walking to work and such are Black), but it does seem to otherwise be rooted in a rather conservative, '50s/'60s-style vision, with some pretty prominent heteronormativity.  Note, for instance, the way John Smith remarks that if Ibrahim and Kate Stewart got together, Kate wouldn't have to work anymore ("It's undignified"), or how John can't even express that Ibrahim is a beautiful man without causing some major shocks.  And there's the way all the disabled people can get away with doubt because Conrad doesn't even consider them, meaning they're able to avoid his control and so can see things others can't.  (Ruby, it seems, has similar abilities -- the suggestion is that on some level she may remember the events of "73 Yards".)  But yes, Conrad is creating his utopia from a weird bone structure high in the sky over London, telling stories about the Doctor to the populace and using Desiderium to maintain his reality.  " It's such a lot of hard work," he tells Mrs Flood.  "All the thinking.  Sometimes I forget about the weather and... and South Africa gets flooded."

And of course, there's the Doctor and Belinda, who've been put together as a married couple complete with child: Poppy, last seen (if you don't count the cameo in "The Song & the Engine") in "Space Babies", where she rather decidedly was not the Doctor's daughter.  As I said, Belinda doesn't get a lot to do in this episode, other than be scared of doubt, but it's interesting how much the Doctor is integrated into this reality.  You'd think he'd be one of the most resistant to Conrad's reality, but he seems to accept it pretty readily, despite the Ranis' efforts to have him question things.  Because apparently that's part of the Rani's plan: to create a fake reality that the Doctor can doubt so intensely that it will rip a hole in the fabric of reality itself.  For his part, Gatwa plays John Smith as someone with a great deal of curiosity and doubt that he's trying to keep bottled up -- it's a fascinating performance, one that feels like the Doctor being forcibly suppressed, as opposed to, say, a completely different character.  Even when the Rani is explaining the whole plan to him, to get him to doubt, he seems to cling onto the perceived reality, and it's not until we get a flash of every Doctor that he fully recovers, right in time for the cliffhanger.

I also haven't properly discussed the Rani yet.  As I noted last time, Archie Punjabi feels very much indeed in the same vein as Kate O'Mara's Rani (who also gets a flashback), with the same sense of style and superiority.  She does seem a bit more relaxed at times though, and the moment where she's trying to get the Doctor to remember who he is by describing their old history at the Siege of Persephone is a bit difficult to envision O'Mara playing.  (That said, it also feels a bit like it's retreading similar ground as Missy and the 12th Doctor.)  But while Punjabi is being sensuously haughty, Anita Dobson also gets the chance to expand her Rani's character (though I'm going to keep calling her Mrs Flood just to try and reduce confusion).  When she's not being asked to be mysterious or subservient to her successor, we get some flashes of the Rani we'd expect shining through.  Her conversation with Conrad, for instance, feels much more manipulative and calculating than we might otherwise have expected, and it feels like Dobson is relishing the opportunity to expand her character a bit more.  Both of them turn in excellent and thoroughly enjoyable performances.

But yes, the Rani's plan is to create a fake reality with inconsistencies and then, at the right time, harness all the doubt, including especially the Doctor's (via some technobabble involving the Vindicator), in order to tear a hole in reality.  This will let her see into the Underverse to find the One Who Is Lost: in other words.... ah.  Remember last time when I said the only realistic options for returning villains were the Rani, the Black Guardian, and Omega?  Well check another one off the list: the Rani is trying to find Omega, for reasons as yet unclear.  (But at least we get a vocal cameo from the original Omega, the late Stephen Thorne, taken from a Big Finish audio from 2015, which is pretty neat.)  And so we get a great big cliffhanger, with pretty much of all of London falling into the holes in reality while the Doctor falls from the Bone Palace on a balcony the Rani has blown free from the structure (since she doesn't need him anymore)...

So yes, "Wish World" may be a tad overstuffed, and there's a lot of fan service happening, but the whole thing moves at a good clip and everything is just about plausible enough to hold together, at least for now, that the final result is still pretty enjoyable.  Of course, as with all multi-part stories, we'll have to see how they wrap things up before we can pass final judgment, but for now things are looking good: "Wish World" continues the trend of stories that are never less than solid and frequently are wonderful indeed.

October 13: "The Interstellar Song Contest"

Stopping off one last time for a Vindicator reading, the Doctor and Belinda decide to take a break and enjoy the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest -- only a pair of terrorists have decided to make a statement by planning to kill not just everyone at the Harmony Arena, but all 3 trillion viewers as well...

"The Interstellar Song Contest", as its name implies, is a take on the annual Eurovision Song Contest (this episode actually aired the same night as the final), which is a very big deal in the UK and Europe.  US viewers might therefore not quite get just how much of a loving tribute this episode is.  It even has Rylan Clark and Graham Norton in it!  And this episode does a good job of pastiching the sort of songs you get in Eurovision, from the triumphant ballads to the upbeat pop songs to the slightly weird acts (stand up, "Dugga Doo"), with everyone coming together to have a good time and enjoy a wide variety of music.

Well, in theory.  This is Doctor Who, of course, so things can't go as simply as that.  This time around we've got a couple terrorists from the planet Hellia, who've decided the best way to protest the destruction of their homeworld by a corporation only interested in a honey flavouring from the Hell Poppy is to kill everyone on the Harmony Arena (where the contest is taking place) as well as everyone watching at home.  You can understand Kid and Wynn's frustration, but this seems like a very bad way to garner sympathy and/or put blame on the Corporation that's sponsoring the Interstellar Song Contest, since it will almost certainly turn public opinion against Hellions.  (And here we'll note the real-world protests against Israel's participation in 2025 in the wake of the Gaza War and then quietly move on, since it doesn't seem like writer Juno Dawson -- our first openly transgender writer for the show -- wrote this with that deliberately in mind.)  Kid feels like a child lashing out, which is why (despite the magnitude of his attempted crime) it feels a bit off for the Doctor to be so angry and full of rage against him.  Mind you, it's not completely unjustified -- he did watch 100,000 people nearly die, saved only by his turning up the strength of the (sigh) mavity field³⁰⁵ so that they're merely frozen in suspended animation, rather than just dead, including (he thinks) Belinda, who he promised to take home.  That plus the 3 trillion viewers Kid plans on killing with a primitive delta wave (the same wave, you may remember, that the Doctor was rigging up back in "The Parting of the Ways") does seem to push the Doctor over the edge.

The Doctor's hard-light hologram shocks Kid. ("The Interstellar Song
Contest") ©BBC

And to be fair, we've seen the 15th Doctor have this anger inside him before -- witness his confrontation with Conrad in "Lucky Day", for instance -- so I think it's more justified than some commentators felt.  But since Kid seems more angry and misguided than truly evil, the intensity of the Doctor's rage may be what put people off.  (Particularly when you contrast this with the previous episode, where the message was about forgiveness and redemption -- the Doctor offers nothing like that here.)  That's made even more clear when Cora, the contestant from Trion (Turlough's homeworld, interestingly enough), reveals that she's also a Hellion, and that Hellia was a beautiful place before the Corporation razed it.  That may be the point, that Cora's approach is more likely to change hearts and minds than Kid's, but if that's the case then it makes the Doctor's rage stand out even more.  I don't find it as out of character as some did, but I do wonder if it's maybe they didn't spend quite enough time with Kid to really justify the Doctor's reaction.  Mind you, even the Doctor seems to recognize on some level that he's reacting too strongly, given he has a vision of his granddaughter Susan telling him to stop that he ignores.  (Oh right!  Susan is back!  It's a rather odd cameo, since she only appears as this vision, but still!  Is this foreshadowing for the series 15 finale, maybe?)  It's only when Belinda appears, having not been sucked into space after all, that the Doctor seems to realize he's going too far.  This should probably be a more powerful moment than it is, mainly because they don't really spend enough time examining the after-effects of this.  The Doctor stops shocking Kid and then what feels like a minute later is back to his old self, rescuing everyone and celebrating along with the crowd afterwards.

But in some ways it doesn't matter.  Although Kid is driving the Doctor Who part of the story, that doesn't really seem to be what interests Dawson and the rest of the production team.  They seem to be having far more fun with the contest side of things, from all the musicians to Gary the super-fan and his partner Mike to the joy everyone seems to be experiencing during the show, from the Doctor and Belinda on down.  This feels, more than anything else, like it's meant to be fun, and at that it succeeds.  Pulling Rylan Clark out of suspended animation just to host the show, or having the Doctor rescue himself via a confetti cannon, is far more in tune with the tone of "The Interstellar Song Contest".  The celebration of rescuing everyone at the end to the tune of "Making Your Mind Up" may be the perfect encapsulation of what the episode wants to be.

So yeah, this episode does suffer from some tonal whiplash.  But when it's on it's a big success.  The fact that this is probably the weakest episode of series 15 to date says more about the quality of the previous episodes than anything else.  It's by no means perfect, but there's enough charm to "The Interstellar Song Contest" to keep you entertained.

Mrs Flood and the newly bigenerated Rani ("The Interstellar Song
Contest") ©BBC

And so as the credits roll it's time to finally head to 24 May 2025 to find out what's happening to Earth.  Will the Doctor be able to—wait, what's going on?  It's Mrs Flood, and she seems to be bigenerating?  Yes, this is the moment where we finally learn just who Mrs Flood is: namely, the Rani (at Ncuti Gatwa's request, apparently).  To be fair, there weren't a lot of options left from the 20th-century run for Mrs Flood to be (unless you thought she was somehow the Black Guardian or Omega), but it's still thrilling to have her officially reveal herself as the Rani.  I know my wife, who's been waiting for the Rani's return since basically 2006 or so, was literally bouncing up and down on the sofa in excitement.  And it helps that Archie Punjabi plays the new Rani to the absolute hilt, making a huge impression just from these few moments as she stalks sensuously around.  It really feels like the Rani of old, the way Kate O'Mara might have played her.  (She also makes an interesting contrast with Mrs Flood, who Anita Dobson plays as much more obsequious once the new Rani appears, but who even before that point seemed less commanding than Archie Punjabi does here.)  So then what does the future hold?  "Wish World" awaits...







³⁰⁵ Do we really have to keep this "joke" going?

October 12: "The Story & the Engine"

The Doctor decides to visit his old friend Omo at his barbershop in Lagos -- but something else has taken the shop over, and it demands stories...

"The Story & the Engine" is by Inua Ellams, who's a well-regarded poet and playwright and who also happens to be the first black male writer for the show (and the fourth black writer overall).  And as you perhaps might expect from someone known as a poet, what we get here is something magical and lyrical.  It starts out rather sweetly, with an explicit acknowledgement of the Doctor's skin color: "It's the first time I've had this black body.  In some parts of the Earth, I'm now treated differently.  But here, in Africa, in that barbershop, I'm accepted.  I'm able to forget."  It's a nice moment without making too big a deal of it (and it implies that this Doctor has travelled a lot more than we've seen).

But that's just the setup.  The heart of the episode involves people trapped in a barbershop in Lagos, being forced to tell stories to power an engine created by a character called the Barber.  It's a cool idea, bringing to mind both things like One Thousand and One Nights and the general idea of a "story engine", as in the literary device that drives a story.  These stories are needed for a transport that resembles a spider, crawling along a web made of cross-cultural concepts so that the Barber can destroy the gods (such as Anansi and Loki) by cutting off their access to stories.  (Or something like that.  It seems a bit daft when I explain it like that, so just trust me that the episode does a far better job of making this seem natural.)  The Barber, it seems, was the one who went around telling the stories of the gods so that they would grow in power, and while doing so created the web of concepts (the Nexus), doing such a good job that the gods decided they no longer needed him.  Now the Barber is furious that his part in their myth has been forgotten (and here seems like a good place to note that one of Ellams's inspirations for this story was the fact that, until very recently, the French word for "ghostwriter" was the same word as their version of the N-word, in the slavery-coded meaning of "someone who does the work while someone else takes the glory"), and he wants vengeance.  Hence his Story Engine, making its way to the heart of the Nexus.

Abena tells a story as she cuts the Doctor's hair. ("The Story & the
Engine") ©BBC

In some ways this is one of the harder episodes to discuss analytically, because it sometimes feels more like a dream logic at work here.  But it's a consistent and coherent internal logic, one that sets out its own rules and sticks to them.  It's a script that simply sparkles with magic and delight.  Part of the joy is from the stories that are told: we hear about a shaman singing a song, someone's life that Belinda saved as a nurse (in the only part of the episode to feature white actors), how the Doctor helped with a fire...  Even when it's in service of the engine, there's a joy present in the telling of these stories that helps elevate the whole tale.

But what really makes this work, more than the script or the stories, is the committed performances from everyone here.  For the most part this story is confined to a single room -- one with a magic window that can visualize the stories as they're being told, but a single room nonetheless.  So it's to the credit of Gatwa, Sethu, Sule Rimi as Omo, Michelle Asante as Abby/Abena, and Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, and Michael Balogun as Rashid, Tunde, and Obioma, respectively, that this never feels like it's just spinning its wheels or sagging in the middle.  And special credit to Ariyon Bakare as the Barber, who plays the character at just the right intensity so that he feels like a believable threat without going too far into ranting territory.  The Barber and Abena make a formidable duo, and Abena's desire to punish her father Anansi for trying to wager her away is also a believable motivation -- and even though it's too quick, I really like the cameo from Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor, as she tells Abby that she couldn't take her along as she was in the middle of a different story then.  It feels important, somehow, for the only other non-white Doctor to date to make an appearance in this story.  (A proper appearance, I mean, not like the (thrilling!) appearances of all the other Doctors (save the 7th, for some reason -- maybe he just was in the background when they showed his clip) when the 15th Doctor takes control of the Story Engine.)  And it's also a nice reminder that Davies is willing to engage with the Chibnall era (despite what some fans hoped, presumably).

But my favorite part comes at the end, after Abena decides to help the Doctor and he hijacks the Story Engine.  Rather than have the Barber die with his ship, still raging against the gods, the Doctor makes a point of saving his life -- and, more importantly, everyone forgives him.  "I don't deserve this kindness," the Barber says, but it still shows the best of humanity.  I also like how the Doctor forgives Omo, after having initially raging against him for trying to leave him alone with the Barber so the others could go free, and how Omo apologizes to the Doctor.  This ending is the key moment of the whole story.  As Belinda tells Abena, "Hurt people hurt people. ... The difference between good and evil is what we do with that pain."  The Doctor and his friends show that there's another, better way.

So maybe that's the magic of "The Story & the Engine".  The way it takes a slightly fantastical concept and weaves (sorry) a spell of hope and compassion in the face of despair is something we could all use more of these days.  The fact that this is mixed with a fabulous cast and some marvelous storytelling along the way only sweetens the pot.

Series 15 has gone five for five in high-quality episodes.  This is shaping up to be the strongest run of Doctor Who in quite some time.  How long can they keep this up?

(Oh, and what's the deal with the cameo from Poppy from "Space Babies"?  Even knowing how series 15 ends, it's still odd.  Maybe the Doctor's right; maybe a future story was leaking out...)

October 11: "Lucky Day"

A year after seeing the Doctor defeat some kind of monster in an abandoned store, Conrad Clark has finally found someone who knows him: a woman named Ruby Sunday...

In some ways this is the dark flip-side of "Love & Monsters".  That episode, you may recall, involved an ordinary man whose life got caught up with the Doctor's, and who found friends and happiness because of it.  This time around, we're introduced to Conrad Clark, a young boy who first encounters the Doctor in 2007 and then spends a great deal of time trying to find him and to find more information about him.  But unlike Elton, Conrad doesn't want to meet the Doctor to learn about him or to tell him the impact he had on him; instead, Conrad appears to be jealous of the Doctor and wants to drag him and his friends through the mud.

That seems to be the overarching theme, at least, but "Lucky Day" lulls the viewer into a false sense of security.  It starts as we follow Conrad from that first meeting to him spying on the Doctor and Ruby while they take care of something called the Shreek (in an adventure set right after "The Devil's Chord", it seems) in an abandoned store.  It initially seems like Conrad is genuinely interested in the Doctor and his life, and so he invites Ruby onto his podcast, "Lucky Day with Conrad Clark", to talk a bit about the Doctor and about UNIT.  (This is actually the one place where things don't quite make sense.  Has Conrad been faking this persona to everyone in the world?  It doesn't seem like it's a brand-new podcast, given how many followers he has when the twist happens, so that's the best explanation for why Ruby (and the people at UNIT we see listening along) didn't sense anything amiss with Conrad.  Which seems like a lot of work and a pretty involved con to pull, but Conrad does seem driven and bitter enough for this to be plausible, just about.)  Ruby seems very charmed by this attractive, earnest man, and Conrad seems sweet and charming through the first half of the episode, getting closer to Ruby and eventually entering into a relationship with her.  So far so good, and it seems like the episode is going to turn into a standard Doctor Who story by the halfway point, with the seeming return of the Shreek to hunt Conrad (see, he got tagged with their spoor when he saw the Doctor and Ruby) and the Doctor not being around this time to help.

It also serves as an interesting look into the PTSD a companion may experience after leaving the Doctor.  We've gotten hints of this before, with Sarah Jane's confrontation of the Doctor back in "School Reunion", or the conversations between Tegan and Ace and their respective holographic Doctors in "The Power of the Doctor", but this is the first time that an episode seems to really tackle this head-on.  "Do you think, maybe, with everything you've been through..." Kate Stewart asks Ruby.  "That I'm paranoid?" Ruby finishes.  "That you're on alert all the time," Kate replies.  "Trust me, I know what that's like."  And then later, when she's talking to Conrad, Ruby confesses that "I think I'm in shock.  Like... PTSD?  Because what happened last year was just not normal.  I mean, I fought gods.  Like, actual gods.  And I was eaten by a double bass and kidnapped by goblins.  I dangled on a rope ladder above London.  And I watched the world turn to dust.  And it's just like... every day is, like, fight or flight, and I'm just waiting for something to go wrong."  This feels like it's going to be a character study of a companion post-Doctor, and not just how they readjust to ordinary life but also but how travelling with the Doctor may lead to unprocessed traumas.

So it's consequently quite a surprise when the episode performs its rug-pull: Conrad reveals that all the monsters and strange power surges that have been following him and Ruby aren't because of the Shreek, but because he and his friends have been staging an alien attack, in order to draw out UNIT and "expose" them to the public.  Jonah Hauer-King does a really good job with this heel turn as Conrad.  He's just as believable as an angry, conniving activist as he was as a caring boyfriend, and rather than feel like there's tonal whiplash happening you really hate what Conrad has done to Ruby -- so full credit to Hauer-King for pulling this off.  Because yes, Conrad reveals that he's part of an organization called Think Tank (which is the same name as the group of scientists run by fascists in the Tom Baker story Robot -- and don't think that writer and Who fan Pete McTighe (officially credited as a writer again for the first time since 2020's "Praxeus") didn't know that), which argues that there's no such thing as aliens or monsters and that it's all a front for Kate Stewart's secret agenda.  So we get lots of moments that feel rather familiar in this day and age, with Conrad and company loudly proclaiming how UNIT is trying to keep people afraid (interesting to see how Trinity Wells apparently went right-wing after leaving AMNN, and that her appearance in "The Giggle" wasn't as far off her normal programming as it may have seemed).  It seems Conrad has a grudge against UNIT (Kate turned him down eight years earlier, deeming him untrustworthy), but he's used his charisma to loudly proclaim conspiracies and get people to turn against UNIT along with him.  Again, this feels rather familiar these days.  McTighe and the rest of the production team are making the point that some will prey on other people's fears to turn it to their own advantage: indeed, at the end of this episode, the Doctor shows up and utters a speech that feels like McTighe talking directly to the audience:

You see, I am fighting a battle on behalf of everyday people, who just want to get through their day, and feel safe, and warm, and fed.  And then along comes this... noise.  All day long, this relentless noise.  Cowards like you, weaponising lies, taking people's insecurity and fear and making it currency.  You are exhausting.  You stamp on the truth, choke our bandwidth and shred our patience.  Because the only strategy you have is to wear us down.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Lucky Day)

The other interesting thing about this moment at the end is how angry the Doctor is.  We've seen flashes of anger from the 15th Doctor before (perhaps most notably in "Joy to the World", although there it was to break the hold of the briefcase on Joy), but here the Doctor really lays into Conrad.  Gatwa does a great job of playing this, making it still seem like part of his Doctor, even as he's being cruel to Conrad: "You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison until your heart packs in at age 49, alone and unloved.  Forgotten.  The world carries on, the world gets better.  You aren't even a footnote, just ashes on the wind."  The 15th Doctor, it seems, is a Doctor who feels every emotion strongly, not just sadness and joy.

The Shreek prepares to feast on Conrad. ("Lucky Day") ©BBC

I'm getting slightly ahead of myself here though.  Conrad is turning the entire country against UNIT, doxxing its employees and causing a culture of fear.  This is Doctor Who though, so we know that monsters are real, so all it takes is to convince Conrad of that.  He's really taking this far though, breaking into UNIT (and shooting someone on his side, albeit accidentally) so he can demand that UNIT "confess".  This is the probably the darkest we've seen Kate get -- particularly when Conrad calls her father (the Brigadier, if you've forgotten) a coward.  That's why she's willing to unleash an entity she knows is deadly against Conrad, just to demonstrate how wrong he is.  It's interesting how Conrad begs for his life when confronted by the Shreek and then immediately goes back to his old ways after Ruby tases it, as if to try and recover some of his bravado.  Must have been a surprise for him when the Shreek suddenly woke up and bit his arm off then.  But so UNIT gets back into the public's good graces (since Conrad was live-streaming the whole thing) and Conrad goes to prison, where the aforementioned confrontation with the Doctor happens.  (This is also the moment where Conrad name-drops Belinda, presumably leading to the events in "The Robot Revolution".)  But it seems Conrad's story isn't quite done yet: Mrs Flood appears to have plans for him...

"Lucky Day", then, is a very well-crafted episode, with an examination of the darker side of humanity and chance encounters with the Doctor.  I hesitate to say I like it, just because of how uncomfortable it is to watch, to see Ruby gaslit so completely and to see Conrad trying to drag UNIT down to his own level, in the mud.  But it's certainly another strong episode, and I can easily admire the care that's gone into it.  If things keep up, series 15 will be one to remember and treasure indeed.

(Oh, and shout out to the YouTube channel Bramble & Stars, who've done some truly wonderful covers of the incidental music for series 15.  You should definitely have a listen!)

October 10: "The Well"

Still trying to triangulate 2025 Earth, the Doctor and Belinda arrive on a planet in the far distant future -- a planet that the Doctor has visited before...

So here's my basic question.  They've created this tense, suspenseful episode with some kind of thing that kills people when they see it, and people can only see it when they're behind the person the thing is hiding behind, which means we get lots of slow movement and building dread as people slowly circle the possessed (for lack of a better word) person.  It's dramatic, it's spooky, and because everyone is playing this deadly straight, it's very compelling.  They pretty much have a winner on their hands here with "The Well".  So then what's the point of tying this into an episode from 13 years earlier?  What purpose does that serve?

Because really, other than a creepy monster and the same planet (we're told, not that it looks anything like it did), this episode doesn't really share that much with "Midnight".  And the creepy monster here doesn't even act the same as the one in "Midnight".  In that episode, as you'll recall, the entity took over Sky's body and was mimicking everything the Doctor said, keeping him powerless.  There was nothing about mirrors, or things behind your back, or whispering in your ear like we get here.  Yes, OK, sure, it's been 400,000 years, that's plenty of time for the creature to have evolved.  But it still begs the question, why?  What do you gain from tying these two together, other than maybe having the Doctor already know the creature is malicious?  It almost feels like the production crew weren't confident that this episode would stand on its own, so they wanted to tie it back to a well-regarded 10th Doctor episode, just to be safe.  But if that truly was the case (and this wasn't just something like a draft artifact, where earlier version had the creature be far more similar to the version we saw in "Midnight"), then they should have had more belief in the episode they were making.  Because "The Well" is a real winner.

It starts up straight on from "Lux", with the Doctor plotting a new course for the Vindicator and another quick wardrobe change to have them appropriately dressed for the far future.  This sequence brims with a sense of fun -- which is good, because after the cold open, there's not going to be any more fun moments in "The Well".  Instead we get a pervading sense of tension as the Doctor and Belinda join a platoon investigating a colony that went silent, only to find that almost everyone is dead.  They do a great job of building the suspense throughout this first sequence, culminating in the discovery of Aliss, the ship's cook, who's the only one left alive.  (Possibly because she's deaf?  The Doctor suggests this might be the reason, as she can't hear the whisper of the thing that drove the others mad, but it could just be so that the creature has a host left alive.)  There are some great scenes between Aliss and the Doctor, and it's really wonderful how the Doctor just knows British Sign Language; that feels right and proper.

The Doctor and company prepare to save Aliss. ("The Well") ©BBC

But it's really after the Doctor leaves, and Belinda (and the audience, if they're paying very close attention) sees a flash of something peeking behind Aliss, that things really start to ramp up.  We get lots of paranoia and tension as Belinda and the remaining troopers start questioning whether they can actually see anything behind her.  (Oh, and look, it's Doctor Who monster actor Paul Kasey as the creature (officially credited as "It Has No Name"), back on the show for the first time since 2020.)  Then we get all sorts of scared and nervous acting, along with the one soldier who's trigger-happy and basically declares a mutiny.  (And it seems like kind of a bad idea to have a procedure for replacing the senior officer if only two people decide to go along with it -- that seems like a disaster just waiting to happen.)  The deaths themselves, frankly, aren't anything spectacular -- it's just people flying around, apparently dead -- but because the episode has done such a great job building up the atmosphere, the deaths feel more meaningful and scary.  Plus I do like the way Cassio (the aforementioned hothead) starts panicking and moving back and forth, thus inadvertently getting other people killed as Aliss keeps turning to face him.

I also like how the Doctor's clever plan for getting out of the base (create a reflection so that the creature ends up seeing itself and turning its power against it) only works for a moment, before they're stuck with the creature once again -- and making Belinda the host in this case feels dangerous, rather than "oh well of course she'll get out of it".  This whole sequence ends with Belinda actually getting shot, while the leader of the platoon, Shaya, gets to sacrifice herself to save the others by jumping down the well that the creature came up out of.  It's all just really well done.  (And then there's the suggestion at the very end that Shaya's sacrifice may have been in vain, and that the creature may have escaped the planet after all...  Bleak and entirely in keeping with the tone of the episode.)

So really, if "The Well" suffers at all, it's because it goes out of its way to invite comparison with "Midnight", a story that it simply can't match -- but then few other episodes of Doctor Who can.  "The Well" is a very strong episode in a run of strong episodes.

(Mrs. Flood sighting: here she's the superior officer at the end asking if the Doctor had the Vindicator with him, complete with a photo of it from the last episode.  So it does indeed look like there are time travel shenanigans at work...)

October 9: "Lux"

Trying to find a way back to 24 May 2025, the Doctor and Belinda stop in 1952 Miami -- where they encounter a closed-down cinema harbouring a dangerous secret...

The second episode of last series involved the Doctor and Ruby encountering one of the Pantheon, Maestro.  This time around, we get another member: the titular Lux, god of light.  What is it with second episodes and the Pantheon?

It must be said though, that, from a visual standpoint, this episode is a real tour de force.  The sets look fabulous, with a bit of a heightened realism effect happening in the main Miami set, all clean and neon and glistening with wet, while the diner and the theater both look just as a great.  But the real star of the show is Lux himself: Mr Ring-a-Ding the cartoon looks absolutely gorgeous, and they do a great job of integrating him into the picture, with eyelines generally lined up properly and nice use of shadows and such.  I also love how there's some subtle film noise flickering through him even when he's left the silver screen.  They've also really nailed that "bouncy" elastic feel of early cartoons.  It's really well done, and that's before we even get to the mad middle third of the episode, with the Doctor and Belinda converted into Scooby-Doo-esque cartoons themselves.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.  The episode starts with the TARDIS traveling to Miami so that the Doctor can use his newly-created Vortex Indicator (or Vindicator for short) to triangulate 2025 Earth and basically force the TARDIS to land there.  The fact that they've landed in 1952 means the Doctor and Belinda get an excuse to dress up ("this is the fun bit, honey," the Doctor tells Belinda), with both of them looking absolutely stunning their clothes: the Doctor in a nice blue suit and Belinda in a fun yellow poodle skirt.  Of course, being the first completely non-white TARDIS team means that, since we're in 1952 Miami, the Doctor and Belinda do have to deal with racism, as segregation is the still the law of the land in the United States.  It's a bit odd; the script brings it up and devotes a couple lines to it, but they don't make a big deal of it, as if they wanted to have an adventure in 1950s America but not deal with the consequences.  Granted, they'd already tackled this more directly in "Rosa", but it still seems slightly insincere; the Doctor and Belinda are lucky to have encountered people who were so open-minded, with the only person making a fuss being the false reality they get put into by Lux.  But since this isn't the focus of this story, and, as I said, they'd covered similar ground before, we can perhaps forgive them this.

The Doctor and Belinda meet Mr Ring-a-Ding. ("Lux") ©BBC

Because the focus of this episode really is Lux Imperator, taking the form of Mr. Ring-a-Ding, who's voiced to perfection by Alan Cumming.  Cumming really nails the cadence and accent, both when he's just a cartoon and when he's revealed himself as one of the Pantheon and thus can be more "evil", for lack of a better word.  He comes across as properly sinister but with a madcap undertone.  In this way he's quite similar to his "brother" the Toymaker as seen in "The Giggle".  There's also a similar vibe with that episode, in that Lux appears to really enjoy toying with the Doctor, turning him into the aforementioned Scooby-Doo cartoon (nice touch with the animation on that, by the way, with it being like those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, instead of similar in style to Mr Ring-a-Ding) and then trapping him in various fictional worlds.  The part with the racism is handled reasonably well, and you do get a sense, through Belinda's eyes, of how unjust segregation could be, but it's the part after that that gets a little too meta.  I'm not completely sure what point Russell T Davies is trying to make with the Doctor Who fans, Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn.  Like, I understand the meta-ness of the Doctor appearing to be fictional to these three (complete with tons of DVD and Blu-rays in the background), but I'm not sure why he has them go out of their way to say others find them annoying.  Despite a bit of effort at some depth (and a rather wonderful send-up of "Blink"), it feels like Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn are generally designed to be the outdated conception of Doctor Who fans -- Hassan is literally wearing a UNIT anorak -- rather than a broader, more expansive idea that anyone can be a fan of the show.  I dunno; it just feels weird for the person who brought the show back in 2005 and demonstrated that it could be for anyone would now have a more insular view.  I'm sure I'm reading too much into this, and it's not a huge part of the episode.  It just feels slightly off, that's all.

The climax of this episode works reasonably well, though -- better, I would argue, than the defeat of Maestro in "The Devil's Chord".  I like the idea of Lux using the Doctor's bigenerative energy to turn himself into a (quite horrifying-looking) real three-dimensional being, and the idea of Lux receiving so much light from the sun, and subsequently all the stars in the universe, that he expands into nothingness is well done.  (Although what's up with the weird bit about the Doctor using some leftover bigenerative energy to heal himself?  That sounds like either they didn't want to deal with putting make-up on his hand for later scenes or they felt they needed to remind people that the Doctor can change into someone else before Lux started pulling that energy out of him.  Either way, it feels tacked-on.)  It's more satisfying than "The Devil's Chord" in that regard, and the smaller stakes (a roomful of people in a cinema, rather than the entire world) make this feel a bit more believable.

So in the end, "Lux" is another strong episode for this series, with some truly outstanding effects and performances.  It's more experimental than "The Robot Revolution", but it still hits the mark.  If things continue in this vein then we're in for a strong series indeed.

(Oh, and look: there's Mrs Flood again at the end, in 1950s America.  Now there really is a mystery going on: can she travel in time?  Or is she just very long-lived?  We'll have to keep watching to find out...)

October 8: "The Robot Revolution"

A nurse is kidnapped by robots from another planet who want her to be their queen, only to discover that there's a rebellion going on when she arrives, and that this may all be her fault...

So here we are, four months after "Joy to the World", with the official start of series 15 (or season two, as they keep insisting on calling it), and it has to be said: this is a much stronger series opener than last year's "Space Babies" was.  That episode spent a lot of time awkwardly explaining the basic conceits of the series and involved a rather lightweight plot.  This one, by contrast, effectively sets up who the Doctor is and how he can be wonderful and dangerous, and it does it in the midst of a much higher-stakes conflict.

Although the Doctor shows up a little bit at the start, apparently looking for someone, the main focus of the beginning is Belinda Chandra, a nurse who once got a star named after her by one of those star-naming companies thanks to an old boyfriend.  We see that she's competent but overworked, and so just about the last thing she needs is a spaceship landing in the back garden of the house she shares with roommates (and which is very clearly a redress of the Noble house from the 60th specials), with giant robots coming along to take her back to a planet named after her.  See, somehow the robots have gotten their hands on a future version of the star certificate with Belinda's name on it and have come to make her their queen (for some never-clearly-explained reason).  The design of the robots is great, looking all shiny and clunky, and I like the way their "faces" change to display emotions.  There's a nice retrofuturism look to them that translates to the rest of what we see of Missbelindachandra One.

Belinda arrives on Missbelindachandra One. ("The Robot Revolution")
©BBC

But yes, it's off to the planet named after her, despite her protests (and despite the presence of Mrs. Flood again, who's next door to Belinda now for some reason), and despite a time fracture causing things to go all wonky.  And this is where the Doctor really enters the story.  It's something of an interesting conceit, having the Doctor following Belinda but arriving six months earlier due to the time fracture -- and the fact that his hair is longer than it was when we first saw him in his fetching kilt outfit is a nice touch.  This means he's already ensconced among the rebels, who've been fighting the robots for the last ten years, and is ready to rescue Belinda when she arrives (since, as he says at one point, "he told me your name, like you were important", so the Doctor was looking for her -- we'll pick this piece of foreshadowing up again in "Lucky Day").  But in many ways, it's Varada Sethu, playing Belinda, who steals the show here.  She portrays Belinda as strong and fierce, but with a side of compassion to keep us from finding her too abrasive.  Plus, she has some great line readings: "I'm saying no," after she learns she's going to be turned into some form of cyborg and married to the AI Generator, is delivered in a wonderfully matter-of-fact way, for example. Or the absolutely glorious send-up of one of the modern show's catchphrases:

DOCTOR: It's not a copy.  It is the exact same diploma.  Look.  It's older, obviously, because it's been here longer, but it's got the same exact tear, do you see?
BELINDA: Just like mine.
DOCTOR: Ah ha.  It's the same object twice.
BELINDA: Do you mean it's literally the same diploma, like in a time-travel way?
DOCTOR: Timey-wimey.
BELINDA: Timey-wimey?
DOCTOR: Yup.
BELINDA: Am I six?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Robot Revolution)

Sethu shines as Belinda, and the way she keeps insisting on fighting her own battles -- even to the point of summoning the robots back to capture her and stop the fighting, in order to end the bloodshed -- makes her a good match for the Doctor, in a way we haven't really seen from a companion in quite a while.  Plus I really like the way she's not particularly interested in traveling with the Doctor.  She would much rather go home, thank you very much, then deal with this sort of madness on a regular basis.  That's something we haven't seen since Tegan back in the 1980s, really (unless you want to count Donna's first appearance in "The Runaway Bride"), and it's a rather refreshing change.

Mind you, Belinda's desire to just go home doesn't come out of nowhere.  She witnesses the death of Sasha 55 at the hands of the robots, and it's made very clear that the Doctor was planning on taking her along in the TARDIS before she died.  It's a good moment that highlights how dangerous the Doctor's lifestyle can be, and that, combined with the way the hunky rebel, Manny, blames everything on her, goes a long way in justifying Belinda's decision to turn herself over.  It's not fun to be kidnapped, told you're going to be forcibly converted and married, watch people die for you, and then having people blame you for all the deaths while you still have no idea what's going on or why this is happening.  So even though we, as Doctor Who viewers, may think Belinda's making a big mistake in summoning the robots, it's not hard to see her point of view on this.  Plus it shows that she's willing to take responsibility for things.

This decision leads to the big reveal: the AI Generator isn't actually an AI, but a person named Alan Budd (so it's actually the AL Generator, even though no one calls him Al) who once dated Belinda and who bought her the star certificate in the first place.  She had demanded that the robots go get him instead of her while she was being kidnapped, and it seemed they obliged: only, due to the time fracture, they arrived ten years earlier and brought Alan back to Missbelindachandra One a decade before they left.  Alan isn't a particularly nice guy: the scene we see with him at the beginning has him state, "The thing is, Belinda, I look up at the night sky, and it is so beautiful, and I think, 'How can I capture this?'" (in addition to a crack about women being mad at maths), demonstrating that his worldview is much more self-centered and avaricious than Belinda's.  Reinforcing this is the way we learn that Belinda ended the relationship because Alan was being emotionally abusive, always putting her down and trying to control her.  And so when the robots come to capture him, he treats everything as a game, ordering the robots to kill someone because it's fun without considering the effect this has on actual people's lives.  "Planet of the incels," Belinda breathes, upon learning everything Alan has done on Missbelindachandra One.  (It's around this point where the plot threatens to collapse on itself, since it seems like the robots only captured Alan because Belinda told them too, but she was being transported because Alan ordered her capture.  Yes, it's the second bootstrap paradox in as many episodes, although "The Robot Revolution" doesn't lampshade it in the way "Joy to the World" did.)  It's only due to some technobabble that things are resolved, as the Doctor absorbs a time explosion caused by two versions of the star certificate making contact.  Alan is thrown back into time to before he was made part of the machine and so the world is saved without any major subsequent damage.  (Incidentally, is this explosion what caused the time fracture in the first place?  Things really are getting bootstrappy around here...)  Then it's just time for some clean-up, with a quick half-explanation of why Belinda looks like Munday Flynn, the character Sethu played last series in "Boom" -- apparently she's a distant descendant of Belinda, and time for new adventures.  Except, as Belinda firmly states, "I am not one of your adventures."  So it's time to take Belinda home; only, something is preventing the Doctor from heading back to 24 May 2025 (no points for guessing when the first part of the series 15 finale airs), so they're going to have to take Belinda home the long way round...

Overall, then, "The Robot Revolution" is a strong episode.  It drops us into a dangerous situation without needing to hold our hands and carefully explain how the show works, trusting that we'll pick things up.  Other than a couple tonal issues (such as the way the death of the cat is treated as a joke, or the rather out-of-character way the Doctor seems happy that Alan's zygote gets cleaned up by the Polish Polish robot, rather than regretful at the loss of a life) and the slightly confusing plotline, this is an episode that demonstrates clearly what Doctor Who can do.

October 7, 2025: "Joy to the World"

It's been six months since "Empire of Death" (and a year since my last entry; hello again!), and now it's once again time for a Christmas special.  So let's welcome back Steven Moffat, writing his first Christmas special since 2017's "Twice Upon a Time".  Fortunately, this episode is an improvement on that one.

There's a fun vibe running through the first part of the story, with the Doctor popping up at various times and places, apparently looking for someone who wants a sandwich and a pumpkin latte.  This is because he's at the Time Hotel, which offers package holidays to all sorts of places in Earth's history, letting people stay in hotel rooms which are accessed via that locked door that you always see in the rooms.  Then we take a step back to see how he came to be looking around the hotel in the first place; namely, that he noticed something amiss with a man holding a briefcase chained to his wrist, checking into the hotel without gazing at the spectacle.  It doesn't seem to be that long since the Doctor left Ruby behind, as he's still holding two tea mugs when he stops to get some milk.  ("Habit," he notes with slight bemusement after Trev questions him on it.)  Watching Gatwa smoothly manuever through these scenes is a delight.  It's interesting; both here and in "Boom", Moffat tends to write the Doctor more like he wrote the twelfth Doctor than how others have been writing the fifteenth Doctor, being a bit more abrupt and brusque.  But it's a characterisation that Gatwa seems to relish playing, tossing off lines like "I hate following people, you've got to stay at the back" like he was born to it.  It also means things stay interesting as the plot runs along, dealing with a briefcase that's controlling people for some reason.  We get a good sense of speed and fun, and since we're dealing with time shenanigans we get lots of crowd-pleasing elements, including a past Doctor yelling at a future Doctor after the future Doctor refuses to tell the past one how to get the code to disarm the briefcase.  "Do you see?  This is why nobody likes you!  You have to be mysterious all the time," the past version yells to his departing future self.

The Doctor and Anita enjoy Chair Night. ("Joy to the World") ©BBC

It's at this point, though, that the episode suddenly slows down, with the Doctor forced to take the long way round in order to close the loop.  The hotel manager, Anita, who up to this point had been a slightly two-dimensional character reacting to strange events such as a Silurian in her 2024 hotel room with an unflappable demeanor ("Look, I'm just going to put these towels in the bathroom"), suddenly gets to develop a bit, as the Doctor realizes he needs to stay at the hotel for a year in order to make it back to the Time Hotel.  Steph de Whalley plays Anita with a quiet charm, as she clearly enjoys running this little London hotel, and the friendship that develops between her and the Doctor (who stays on to complete odd jobs and such in order to pay for his room) is lovely indeed.  (And it's nice that we don't really get the sense that her affection for him is romantic in any way -- sometimes it feels like all the people the Doctor encounters fall in love with him, so when that doesn't happen it's a breath of fresh air.)  We get the sense that the reason the Doctor made sure he took the long way round wasn't because of maintaining causality or anything like that, but because he wanted to ensure that he took the time to get to know Anita better.  It's a sweet little interlude in an episode that's generally rushing along.

The rest of the episode, in some ways, feels like typical Doctor Who.  We get a race against the clock, both with the briefcase controlling people and then killing them, and with it preparing for some sort of super-destructive action.  We have a rather bemused guest star (Nicola Coughlan, playing the titular Joy) who falls under the control of the briefcase.  We have a callback once again to Villengard, the weapons manufacturer last seen in "Boom", who want to create a new star that they can harness the energy of, and so they choose Earth as the location of this new star (probably because of the presence of the Time Hotel).  It's fun and entertaining, and the Time Hotel gives them the opportunity to play with different times and places, including an inaccurate-but-still-impressive-looking dinosaur.  Really, if there's any issue with this sequence, it's that the moment where the Doctor is harsh to Joy in order to break the hold the briefcase has on her feels a bit out of place: not so much because of what he does, but because Joy's speech afterwards, about needing to travel with a friend, suggests a harsher portrayal of the Doctor than Gatwa gives us outside of that speech.  (But we do get confirmation in the main show that COVID did indeed happen in the Doctor Who universe, with Joy's mother dying in the hospital while Joy couldn't be there in person.  This is important in part because it felt like the show wasn't interested in dealing with COVID during Chibnall's tenure (somewhat understandably), so it hadn't come up before outside of the Lockdown mini-episodes.)

It's not all perfect, of course.  Villengard's basic scheme is straightforward enough in principle, but it's not quite clear how they intend to actually pull off the "harnessing energy" part in a way that is a) safe for them, and b) less complicated than just finding a star somewhere and harnessing its energy.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, the actual logic of how Joy becomes a star doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.  OK, she joins with the starseed, sure, but how does she travel away so quickly to both avoid destroying the planet and also be seen right away?  Finally, the Bethlehem gag is really a bit too obvious, so it doesn't land the way they presumably wanted it to.

But overall, "Joy to the World" is an episode with more hits than misses.  At the very least, it fulfills the Christmas function of being accessible and entertaining, without being too demanding.  It may not be the most impressive episode ever, and it's not one that lingers long in the memory afterwards, but it's fun enough while it lasts.