I see Pete McTighe has taken over the writing duties for this episode (and the next two). That's perhaps appropriate, given that one of the Doctor Who episodes he (co-)wrote was series 12's "Praxeus", which was about plastic pollution and is in some ways a sister episode to "Plastic Apocalypse".
This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, another fairly talky episode. The primary focus is on Barclay's new position as ambassador, dealing with all the political juggling among many nations as he tries not to screw things up. And while we get a couple early series of Barclay being sternly questioned by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart ("What communication have you had with with Homo aqua prior to today?" Kate demands. "None, never," Barclay responds. "I had a goldfish once, is that relevant?" he adds. "This isn't a joke, Mr Dupont," Kate says sternly. "I wasn't joking," Barclay says quietly. "His name was Simon"), fortunately we don't spend too much time questioning Barclay's background and allegiance. We do get a nice scene between Barclay and Kate in the back of a van, where she can let down her front with him a bit, though: "Barclay, I need someone I can work with," she tells me. "And I think I can work with you."
But it still feels like a fair amount of setup is happening in this episode. This is where the initial negotiations between humanity and Homo aqua begin, but we only get a couple sessions, both of which are controlled by the Homo aqua's ambassador, Salt, despite humanity (aka Kate)'s best efforts. Salt is played by another familiar Who veteran: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who played Martha's sister Tish back in 2007. She, like Russell Tovey, also does a good job of staying engaging (no mean feat under that makeup), and you kind of wish we could get more scenes of her and Barclay talking, since they're both compelling performers. Salt is obviously the aggrieved party, dealing with all the pollution that humanity has been pumping into the oceans, so that means she has to be a lot more severe and solemn than Barclay. Barclay is doing the best he can, and while the moments where he goes off-script are fun ("This is like working with the Doctor," Kate grumbles), he also does a good job of sticking to the script and trying to negotiate in good faith with Salt and not assuming that he knows better. It's kind of refreshing, to be honest, to be provided a protagonist who doesn't automatically assume he knows what's best and has it blow up in his face, the way you could see the American version of this series going. Instead we get someone who seems reasonably competent and only sometimes speaks his mind. It's a good balance.
That said, there are still a couple odd moments. The titular apocalypse comes after Salt basically does a "are you sure that's what you want? OK then" rugpull and sends all the trash from the oceans onto the land. And while it looks dangerous and all falling from the sky (theoretically, at least; I'm not convinced they really sell this the way they're hoping to), it also doesn't look like that much? I was sort of expecting literal mountains of trash, not just a couple feet of it. I'm sure it damaged a bunch of stuff falling from the sky (another thing that isn't remotely explained how), but it also doesn't look that apocalyptic. It'll be a pain to clean up, but not insurmountable. I can see why it would upset humanity and make them scared, as Barclay states, but it seems like it could have been worse.
There's also a short scene (with no closure, so I'm sure we'll see them again in future episodes) with a British oil baron, an American general, and a French general where they plot against peace in such cartoonishly evil ways that they might as well wear signs saying "Villain". There's probably a point to be made about how people with financial investments and short-sightedness are going to working against some sort of treaty if it means they have to stop polluting, but this isn't it. They sit around cackling and eating fish and caviar to ram home the point that these are Bad People and you kind of wish they'd just go away; we're a long way away from the nuance of a Malcolm Hulke308 character here.
Don't get me wrong, there are some good moments in "Plastic Apocalypse", such as Barclay's interaction with his teenager Kirby, where we see that they have a nice loving relationship, or the way we see that the relationship between Kate and Colonel Ibrahim has actually developed, and the interactions between Salt and Barclay are also worth watching. But so far this series has been more interested in talking, and while Tovey and Mbatha-Raw do a great job with this (not to belittle people like Jemma Redgrave, of course, who are also doing a great job), now that we're getting to the halfway point here, it's time for some action. Let's hope "The Deep" can start to deliver.
308 The writer of Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea Devils, if you've forgotten.
October 26, 2026: "Homo Aqua" (The War Between the Land and the Sea)
OK, sorry about that. Jet lag is a real pain. But I'm back now and ready to resume!
So part of the deal the BBC made with Disney wasn't just for two seasons (and a handful of specials) of Doctor Who: the intention was to also launch a brave new world of spin-offs (just like 2006 again!), with the first being a five-episode UNIT miniseries called The War Between the Land and the Sea.
But as with many things involving the Disney partnership, things didn't shake out the way they'd first been envisioned. In October 2025, Disney announced that they weren't renewing their deal with the BBC for Doctor Who -- although it wasn't officially confirmed, part of the issue was apparently that Disney was suddenly worried that an unapologetically progressive series starring a gay person of color wouldn't play as well as they thought it would in the US, in the wake of Trump's 2024 reelection, and so they were no longer that interested in promoting (or paying for) the series.
Somewhat awkwardly, however, that still left a five-episode spin-off still to air. The show did end up airing in December 2025 on BBC One, but as of writing there's still no sign of it on Disney+ in the United States, either available or even scheduled. Consequently, that means that I've gone ahead and imported a nice Blu-ray copy from the UK for these purposes -- and that, perhaps more importantly, I haven't actually watched this yet. That means in some ways you'll be getting my first impressions of this series, without any idea of what's actually coming up. So with that understood, let's go ahead and dive in (sorry not sorry).
This first episode, "Homo Aqua", opens in grand Who tradition with a never-to-be-seen-again group of people (Spaniards in this case, it seems) fishing while also tossing garbage into the sea and inadvertently catching something. But where we might then expect to cut to some familiar faces in UNIT, we instead move to a slightly different (but still familiar) face: Russell Tovey is back, having last been seen in 2010's "The End of Time Part Two", but this time (also in grand Who tradition) playing a new character. Here he's Barclay Pierre-Dupont, a low-grade civilian UNIT employee who's in charge of transportation but who has been accidentally pulled into this situation due to a bureaucratic cock-up. (Nice to know that one of the most advanced organisations on Earth isn't immune to stupid human error.) What this effectively means is that Barclay is the audience surrogate, experiencing this new situation the same way we presumably would. In this case, it's the accidental killing of a new form ofSilurian Sea Devil Homo reptilia ancient Earth inhabitant that looks rather like a fish. (Though the dialogue says they appear to have evolved from temnospondyls, which were (maybe) a form of amphibian.) General Pierce (last seen in Torchwood: Children of Earth, of all places, taking command of the operation to hand over the kids to the 456, if you've forgotten) refers to them as Homo aqua, and that seems to be the name that sticks. But this is the situation Barclay finds himself in, dealing with the body of a Homo aqua that everyone else seems pretty sanguine about.
This episode moves at a pretty brisk pace, introducing Barclay and his family, the UNIT crew, and the new Homo aqua presence. It's to Tovey's credit that we get a reasonable sense of Barclay as just an average guy who's been thrust into a strange situation. His general sense of alarm and confusion comes off as rather endearing, rather than just annoying, and so we're interested in seeing where this is going. That said, where it's going seems to be, at least at this stage, a retread of Children of Earth, only with Homo aqua revealing themselves to the world instead of the 456. Humanity even builds a holding tank to interact with Homo aqua, just like we saw in Children of Earth. (The presence of General Pierce does little to dispel this sense of familiarity.) The main difference here is that we don't have the underlying sense of conspiracy that pervaded Children of Earth (but then again they've still got time to go down that path if they want). So instead of conspiracy, or possibly wonder, we get a vague sense of unease. It's not perhaps the most exciting feeling in the world, so it's good that Barclay's presence really anchors this -- to the point where when a bunch of familiar UNIT faces show up (Kate Stewart! Colonel Ibrahim! Shirley Anne Bingham!), it actually feels mildly like a distraction. It doesn't help that the episode seems to assume that the viewer will be vaguely familiar with these characters, so they don't really get a proper introduction. (Mind you, the moment where the camera goes out of its way to delay showing us what Sir Jonathan Hynes looks like, only to show someone we've never seen before, has the opposite problem of building up a reveal that doesn't actually seem to warrant it. (Unless we're just meant to be excited that it's Adrian Lukis?)) That means that our sympathies lie with Barclay while we wait for all this to unfold.
So this is definitely an episode all about setup, which is why it's a touch odd how many things get just sort of glossed over. I get that they want to get to the "monsters" as soon as they can, but it means we're left with questions such as, how much contact has UNIT had with Homo aqua before? Given the general is coining the name in this episode, it seems like not much, but then how can they translate their language? But then they also know about the pearls in the throat, so maybe there has been contact before. But if they have been in contact before, why does Homo aqua (and specifically them, no Silurians or Sea Devils in sight) decide to reveal themselves to the entire world now? Are they just fed up? And why is General Pierce so casual about Barclay's revelation that he has no real clearance and is basically there due to a clerical error? Maybe some of this will be addressed later, but right now it feels like we're being asked to just go along with it for now and not worry. Which isn't perhaps the worst of sins, but there's not enough action or drama in this episode that they can get away with that just yet.
I'm worried I may be making this sound worse than it is. To be fair, this is a well-crafted and reasonably self-assured piece of television: it looks great (even if for every shot of Mallorca there's a shot of Wales pretending it's Spain), and none of the performances let the side down. The writing, at least at the dialogue level, is also pretty good, as you'd generally expect from a Russell T Davies script. (Although there's a weird moment where Barclay and his family discuss the pejorative meaning of "homo" in a joking manner that falls really flat, even while they try to acknowledge it's outdated.) It's just that there are just enough flaws to be noticeable, to bring things down to the level of "Wait and see" rather than "This looks like it will be excellent". And to be fair, the idea that Homo aqua want Barclay to be the representative of humanity because he was the only one to show some respect to the body of their killed comrade (making a rather sloppy-looking (to my Catholic eyes) sign of the cross) is an interesting one, setting up the "civilian" compassionate viewpoint as a potential contrast to the more military-minded approach of the rest of the UNIT. (Although composer Lorne Balfe seems to have over-scored this episode rather, with a number of lighter moments sounding like they're just as dramatic as the rest of the episode: the ending, where Barclay squeaks out "OK" to being asked to represent humanity, being underscored with serious dramatic music instead of a lighter touch is only the most noticeable moment.) So we have reason to be cautiously optimistic about where The War Between the Land and the Sea is going, even if it's not yet eager anticipation for what's coming next.
But as with many things involving the Disney partnership, things didn't shake out the way they'd first been envisioned. In October 2025, Disney announced that they weren't renewing their deal with the BBC for Doctor Who -- although it wasn't officially confirmed, part of the issue was apparently that Disney was suddenly worried that an unapologetically progressive series starring a gay person of color wouldn't play as well as they thought it would in the US, in the wake of Trump's 2024 reelection, and so they were no longer that interested in promoting (or paying for) the series.
Somewhat awkwardly, however, that still left a five-episode spin-off still to air. The show did end up airing in December 2025 on BBC One, but as of writing there's still no sign of it on Disney+ in the United States, either available or even scheduled. Consequently, that means that I've gone ahead and imported a nice Blu-ray copy from the UK for these purposes -- and that, perhaps more importantly, I haven't actually watched this yet. That means in some ways you'll be getting my first impressions of this series, without any idea of what's actually coming up. So with that understood, let's go ahead and dive in (sorry not sorry).
This first episode, "Homo Aqua", opens in grand Who tradition with a never-to-be-seen-again group of people (Spaniards in this case, it seems) fishing while also tossing garbage into the sea and inadvertently catching something. But where we might then expect to cut to some familiar faces in UNIT, we instead move to a slightly different (but still familiar) face: Russell Tovey is back, having last been seen in 2010's "The End of Time Part Two", but this time (also in grand Who tradition) playing a new character. Here he's Barclay Pierre-Dupont, a low-grade civilian UNIT employee who's in charge of transportation but who has been accidentally pulled into this situation due to a bureaucratic cock-up. (Nice to know that one of the most advanced organisations on Earth isn't immune to stupid human error.) What this effectively means is that Barclay is the audience surrogate, experiencing this new situation the same way we presumably would. In this case, it's the accidental killing of a new form of
This episode moves at a pretty brisk pace, introducing Barclay and his family, the UNIT crew, and the new Homo aqua presence. It's to Tovey's credit that we get a reasonable sense of Barclay as just an average guy who's been thrust into a strange situation. His general sense of alarm and confusion comes off as rather endearing, rather than just annoying, and so we're interested in seeing where this is going. That said, where it's going seems to be, at least at this stage, a retread of Children of Earth, only with Homo aqua revealing themselves to the world instead of the 456. Humanity even builds a holding tank to interact with Homo aqua, just like we saw in Children of Earth. (The presence of General Pierce does little to dispel this sense of familiarity.) The main difference here is that we don't have the underlying sense of conspiracy that pervaded Children of Earth (but then again they've still got time to go down that path if they want). So instead of conspiracy, or possibly wonder, we get a vague sense of unease. It's not perhaps the most exciting feeling in the world, so it's good that Barclay's presence really anchors this -- to the point where when a bunch of familiar UNIT faces show up (Kate Stewart! Colonel Ibrahim! Shirley Anne Bingham!), it actually feels mildly like a distraction. It doesn't help that the episode seems to assume that the viewer will be vaguely familiar with these characters, so they don't really get a proper introduction. (Mind you, the moment where the camera goes out of its way to delay showing us what Sir Jonathan Hynes looks like, only to show someone we've never seen before, has the opposite problem of building up a reveal that doesn't actually seem to warrant it. (Unless we're just meant to be excited that it's Adrian Lukis?)) That means that our sympathies lie with Barclay while we wait for all this to unfold.
So this is definitely an episode all about setup, which is why it's a touch odd how many things get just sort of glossed over. I get that they want to get to the "monsters" as soon as they can, but it means we're left with questions such as, how much contact has UNIT had with Homo aqua before? Given the general is coining the name in this episode, it seems like not much, but then how can they translate their language? But then they also know about the pearls in the throat, so maybe there has been contact before. But if they have been in contact before, why does Homo aqua (and specifically them, no Silurians or Sea Devils in sight) decide to reveal themselves to the entire world now? Are they just fed up? And why is General Pierce so casual about Barclay's revelation that he has no real clearance and is basically there due to a clerical error? Maybe some of this will be addressed later, but right now it feels like we're being asked to just go along with it for now and not worry. Which isn't perhaps the worst of sins, but there's not enough action or drama in this episode that they can get away with that just yet.
I'm worried I may be making this sound worse than it is. To be fair, this is a well-crafted and reasonably self-assured piece of television: it looks great (even if for every shot of Mallorca there's a shot of Wales pretending it's Spain), and none of the performances let the side down. The writing, at least at the dialogue level, is also pretty good, as you'd generally expect from a Russell T Davies script. (Although there's a weird moment where Barclay and his family discuss the pejorative meaning of "homo" in a joking manner that falls really flat, even while they try to acknowledge it's outdated.) It's just that there are just enough flaws to be noticeable, to bring things down to the level of "Wait and see" rather than "This looks like it will be excellent". And to be fair, the idea that Homo aqua want Barclay to be the representative of humanity because he was the only one to show some respect to the body of their killed comrade (making a rather sloppy-looking (to my Catholic eyes) sign of the cross) is an interesting one, setting up the "civilian" compassionate viewpoint as a potential contrast to the more military-minded approach of the rest of the UNIT. (Although composer Lorne Balfe seems to have over-scored this episode rather, with a number of lighter moments sounding like they're just as dramatic as the rest of the episode: the ending, where Barclay squeaks out "OK" to being asked to represent humanity, being underscored with serious dramatic music instead of a lighter touch is only the most noticeable moment.) So we have reason to be cautiously optimistic about where The War Between the Land and the Sea is going, even if it's not yet eager anticipation for what's coming next.
An Apology
So yesterday I should have started discussing The War Between the Land and the Sea, the most recent (and, as of this date, final) televised Doctor Who show. But I've actually been out of the country the last couple weeks and only just got back, and my schedule ended up precluding my ability to blog. I promise I'll dig into this spinoff in the next day or so, but if you've been wondering what happened, well, that's what happened. Normal service will resume shortly.
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.
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.
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.
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 that can still command 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.
And it was going so well too.
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| Ruby and Rose meet Belinda and Poppy. ("The Reality War") ©BBC |
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.
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| The Doctor and the two Ranis prepare for the return of Omega. ("The Reality War") ©BBC |
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.
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| Ncuti Gatwa regenerates into...Billie Piper? ("The Reality War") ©BBC |
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 that can still command 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.
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.
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.
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| Winnie, Ruby, and Shirley hide from the police after curfew. ("Wish World") ©BBC |
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.
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 that 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.
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?
"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 |
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 |
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.
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...)
"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.
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| Abena tells a story as she cuts the Doctor's hair. ("The Story & the Engine") ©BBC |
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...)
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