News Doctor Who

Doctor Who Spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea Gets a New Trailer — but Still No U.S. Release Date

The Doctor is also nowhere to be found

By Molly Templeton

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Published on December 1, 2025

Screenshot: BBC

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Screenshot: BBC

The future of Doctor Who is a bit wibbly-wobbly at the moment. The show’s partnership with Disney is over, but it’s set to return an entire year from now with a new Christmas special. There is some confusion and/or denial about who exactly is the Doctor after the last season’s finale, which saw Ncuti Gatwa regenerate into Billie Piper.

But there is one certainty: The next bit of Who to hit screens is the baffling miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea, which turns back to the Sea Devils, and to two previous Who actors in new roles. Russell Tovey (previously seen as Midshipman Frame in “Voyage of the Damned”) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (previously seen as Martha Jones’ sister, Tish) join recurring Who star Jemma Redgrave (as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart) in a tale with a very short synopsis: “When a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered. With the entire population at risk, UNIT step into action as the land and sea wage war. ”

A UNIT-focused spinoff was announced back in 2023. Focusing on UNIT is still a strange choice, but no stranger, really, than the choice to bring back Mbatha-Raw and Tovey in new roles. Which, in itself, isn’t new for Who: Let us never forget that Peter Capaldi was at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (along with future companion Karen Gillan), and then appeared on Torchwood, well before he became Twelve.

This spinoff is written by creator Russell T. Davies and Pete McTighe and directed by Dylan Holmes-Williams. The latest trailer is a mere 30 seconds of footage that mostly serves to remind UK viewers that it’s only a week until they get to watch this story of interspecies conflict and possible cooperation. Those of us in the US will continue to wait for Disney to announce a premiere date.[end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Doctor Who to Return Christmas 2026, But the BBC’s Disney+ Partnership Is Over. What’s Next for the Show?

The series has been in limbo since the 2025 season finale.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 28, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

We finally have an update on the fate of Doctor Who after the season finale in which Ncuti Gatwa, who plays the Fifteenth Doctor, bow out.

Today, the BBC announced that the series will come back in December 2026 with a Christmas special penned by Russell T. Davies. The statement also confirmed that the partnership with Disney is officially over.

“We’d like to thank Disney+ for being terrific global partners and collaborators over the past two seasons, and for the upcoming The War Between the Land and the Sea,” BBC Director of Drama Lindsay Salt said in a statement. “The BBC remains fully committed to Doctor Who, which continues to be one of our most loved dramas, and we are delighted that Russell T. Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas special for 2026. We can assure fans, the Doctor is not going anywhere, and we will be announcing plans for the next series in due course which will ensure the TARDIS remains at the heart of the BBC.”

This news wasn’t surprising. Ever since the finale of the latest season (which also saw the Doctor regenerate into Billie Piper, though it’s unclear if she’ll be the next Doctor), fans have been waiting to hear the show’s fate. The series didn’t appear to get the ratings that Disney hoped for, though Davies and the BBC remained publicly committed to the show. It’s good to see that their promises that the series would continue with or without Disney proved true. 

And before we get the Christmas 2026 special, we will have The War Between the Land and the Sea, a five-episode limited series that’s set to premiere on Disney+ at some point in the near future (no official premiere date has been announced yet). The show sees an ancient sea-dwelling species emerge from the ocean and cause an international crisis that UNIT must work to resolve. Once that show streams, the Who partnership between Disney and the BBC will formally be done. [end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

When Will Doctor Who Return? Here’s What We Know

The status of the show is unclear after the last season finale.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on September 10, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

Just a heads up that this post will spoil some of the (major!) events that happen in the “season two”/season fifteen finale of Ncuti Gatwa’s run on Doctor Who.

The last season of Doctor Who ended with a lot of significant events. It saw Ncuti Gatwa end his time as the Fifteenth Doctor and regenerate into none other than Billie Piper, who Whovians know as Rose Tyler in the series. (Whether Rose is, indeed, the Doctor or this is some other timey wimey is purposefully vague.)

The move was a surprising one, even by Who standards, and came at a point when the future of the show was uncertain. As of now, that future is still unclear. For the past two seasons, the BBC developed the show in partnership with Disney, and there is no guarantee that partnership will continue as the show has fared poorly, ratings-wise. The BBC and showrunner Russell T. Davies have said that a decision about season three would come after the finale for season two, and we’re still waiting.

In August 2025, however, BBC Content Chief Kate Phillips said (via Deadline) that the show would continue regardless of whether the partnership with Disney continues. “Rest assured, Doctor Who is going nowhere,” Phillips said at the Edinburgh TV Festival. “Disney has been a great partnership—and it continues with The War Between The Land And The Sea next year—but going forward, with or without Disney, Doctor Who will still be on the BBC… The Tardis is going nowhere.”

The show Phillips is referencing, The War Between the Land and the Sea, is a Doctor Who spinoff that’s set to come out on Disney+ sometime in 2026. The five-episode limited series will focus on an ancient species that emerges from the ocean and causes an international crisis that UNIT (and others) must mitigate.

And while no definitive statement has still been made about getting production for season three up and running, in early September, Jane Tranter, the CEO of Bad Wolf, the production company behind Doctor Who, said that Disney is obligated by to run 26 episodes. “Then, and only then, does Disney+ have to make a decision about whether or not they want to do more,” she told the Royal Television Society. “I imagine, at a time when Disney are having huge cuts themselves, and there have been slashes in program budgets, they’re looking to take their time to balance everything out and decide what they want to do.” The first two seasons under the deal were 16 episodes total, and the spinoff adds an additional five. Add in the three episodes featuring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and Gatwa’s two Christmas specials and we’re seemingly approaching that number.

Still, when we’ll get an update on Doctor Who’s fate remains up in the air. Two things, however, appear to be certain: Gatwa will not be returning as the Doctor, and the BBC will make sure the show continues on. Former showrunner Steven Moffat has even said that the BBC has a “national duty” to continue the series. But when, exactly, Who will return is unclear at the moment, as is who the Sixteenth Doctor will be. [end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Stop Doomscrolling and Watch Every Use of Psychic Paper in Doctor Who

The paper is slightly psychic, and often cheeky.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on August 25, 2025

Screenshot: BBC

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Screenshot: BBC

One of the many delights of watching Doctor Who is the ongoing gag where The Doctor befuddles and/or fools various lifeforms via the use of “psychic paper,” a paper that is, as its name suggests, slightly psychic, convincing whomever reads it that The Doctor is a very important person and they should do whatever the Gallifreyan says.

What the psychic paper appears to say has more often than not been funny for us viewers. And thanks to the folks over at the official Doctor Who YouTube channel, we now have a 21-minute video of every use of psychic paper in the series, all the way through Ncuti Gatwa’s last season.

It is, in a word, enjoyable. The paper conjures up identifiers like “King of Belguim,” “Mature and Responsible Adult,” and “Marble Inspector.” A more recent one occurs in the 2024 episode, “Rogue,” where Gatwa’s Doctor shows the paper to Jonathan Groff’s character, who reads the words, “You’re hot.” Who thinks who’s hot, exactly? Groff? Gatwa? The answer is yes.

The video is worth the watch if you’re seeking some joy, and gives us a new way to appreciate all things Doctor Who as we wait for news on when we’ll get another season—something that is definitely happening, though it’s unclear if the BBC’s partnership with Disney+ will continue.

You can check out the clip below. [end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Doctor Who: Book on Ace’s Jacket Includes Writings From Many Doctors

Former showrunner Chris Chibnall also contributed.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 18, 2025

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Actor Sophie Aldred first played a Companion in 1987 to Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. She was in her early twenties at the time, and is arguably best known for beating up a Dalek with a baseball bat and sporting a jacket covered in different patches (also making so many explosives). Aldred and her jacket also reprised their roles in 2022 with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor.

Since that return to the world of Doctor Who, one fan, whose name is Shawn Levy, suggested making a book about Ace’s jacket. (Is this the same Shawn Levy who directed Deadpool & Wolverine and is currently working on a new Star Wars movie? Probably not! But WOW, if yes!) A book was born, and soon evolved into two volumes: Ace Jacket: The Inside Story, which was just released, and Ace Jacket: The Outside Story, which will soon be open to pre-orders.

The books include fictional takes from more than fifty people connected to the world of Doctor Who about how those patches ended up on Ace’s jacket.

“I went off to various Doctor Who alumni like David Tennant, Chris Chibnall… I said to them, could you write a story about one of the badges that takes your interest?” Aldred told the BBC. “They’ve written little short stories or poems—we’ve had paintings, we’ve had cartoons, we’ve had all sorts.”

Ace Jacket: The Inside Story features a foreword by David Tennant, an afterword from former showrunner Chris Chibnall, and includes contributions from most of the surviving Doctors, including Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Capaldi, and Jodie Whittaker.

Some book sale proceeds will go toward Autism All Stars and the National Autistic Society. “We wanted to choose charities which had some kind of association with Doctor Who and there’s a lot of Doctor Who fans who do have autism. I’ve met so many of them,” said Aldred. “They’re such incredible, amazing people. I just really felt that it would be good to raise some awareness and some money as well for these charities.”

You can order Ace Jacket: The Inside Story here, where it will ship worldwide from the UK.[end-mark]

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News The War Between the Land and Sea

The War Between the Land and the Sea: Doctor Who Spinoff Gets an Epic Trailer

The Whoniverse expands?

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on June 2, 2025

Credit: BBC/Disney+

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Credit: BBC/Disney+

The latest season of Doctor Who just ended (and what a finale it was!), but that doesn’t mean we don’t have additional Whovian goodness to look forward to in the near future.

There’s a five-episode spinoff coming to Disney+ called The War Between the Land and the Sea, and Disney+ released a trailer today that suggests that the battle will be epic.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“The excitement is beginning to build, as the Whoniverse expands,” Russell T. Davies said in a statement. “I can’t wait for people to see this magnificent cast in such a powerful, vital, epic story. Look to the seas!”

The War Between the Land and the Sea stars Russell Tovey as the human Barclay, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the ocean-loving Salt. The limited series also stars Jemma Redgrave, Alexander Devrient, Ruth Madeley, Colin McFarlane, Adrian Lukis, Patrick Baladi, Francesca Corney, Mei Mac, and Vincent Franklin. Additional guest stars who can be spotted in the trailer are Waleed Hammad, Iestyn Arwel, Hannah Donaldson, Manpreet Bachu, and Ann Akinjirin.

Alas, there’s no news yet on when we’ll see the series stream on Disney+.

Check out the teaser trailer below while we wait.[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Drops a Surprise-Packed Finale in “The Reality War”

That… was all entirely unexpected.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on June 2, 2025

Image: BBC

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Image: BBC

Oh, hello! 

HELLO.

Recap

The Doctor seems to be falling, but the door to the Time Hotel opens, and Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley) appears. She knows that everything’s gone wonky—she’s currently manager of the hotel, and pregnant to boot, and she’s been looking in on the Doctor frequently. Meanwhile, everyone wakes up on May 23rd again, doomed to repeat the same day until the Rani can break through to May 24th and locate Omega in the Underverse. The Doctor has Anita bring him home to the house he shares with Belinda in the Wish World. He takes Belinda and Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) into the hotel with him, dressed back in his lovely pinstriped skirt. Belinda remembers who she is, and she and the Doctor marvel at Poppy, a child who has been created in a day. Anita opens a hotel door to UNIT tower, and the Doctor reminds everyone of who they are. Gradually the group comes back to themselves and reality starts asserting—the Vlinx appears, Kate is mortified to be wearing tweed, Rosie (Yasmin Finney) materializes out of thin air, mugs break left and right. They send out signals to the chips in every UNIT worker and call them back in—Shirley heads to work, along with Mel and Ruby. There’s a lot of hugging.

The Rani tells Conrad to find and locate the Doctor, and is directed to UNIT Tower. She arrives and explains to the Doctor how she survived the Master’s destruction of Gallifrey (by shifting her genetics and using a Time Ring to travel), and that her plan is to use Omega to rebuild the Time Lord race. The Doctor knows this won’t work because he knows exactly why Omega was banished, for being a “mad titan.” Mel points out that the Doctor and the Rani could potentially repopulate together due to their sexes, but the Doctor explains that the Time Lords are sterile, making Poppy a particular miracle. The Rani notes that Poppy is no good because she’s only half Time Lord, however, offending everyone in the room. She points out that Poppy is soon to vanish anyway, once the wish ends. She has the Bone Beast attack UNIT to distract them and heads back to the bone palace. 

Susan Triad (Susan Twist) has created a Zero Room that might keep Poppy safe from the Wish World’s destruction, and Belinda insists on entering it with her despite the dangers that they could wind up in there for eternity. UNIT gives Ruby a transmat vest so that she can transport in to see Conrad once the Doctor takes down the Rani’s defenses in the palace. The Doctor manages this because he nabbed the Rani’s code when they used their sonic devices against each other. He gets access to her hover scooter, and takes it to the palace, shutting off the defenses. Ruby arrives in the room with Conrad. But rather than punching him, as she intended to, she notes that Conrad is an incredibly lonely and unhappy person. He gave everyone a family when he created Wish World because he clearly wished he’d had one (his father wasn’t around growing up). Ruby picks up Desidirium, and makes her own wish, for Conrad to be happy.

As she does this, the Rani and the Doctor are waiting for Omega to emerge from the Underverse. He does and reveals himself to be a monster—he has existed in a place of myth and legend for so long that he’s become one. Omega takes up the Rani and eats her to get more power. Mrs. Flood picks up the Time Ring and flees, leaving the Doctor to battle Omega with the Vindicator, holding the power of one billion supernovas. Omega is shoved back into the Underverse as Wish World begins to unravel. The place where Desidirium and Conrad were being held turns out to be the TARDIS, which the Doctor finds as he flees. Ruby points out that the Doctor could use his own wish to make Poppy real, but the Doctor does what needs doing: His wish is for no more wishes, making Desidirium a normal boy. They head back to UNIT and the Zero Room, and the door opens—Poppy and Belinda are both safe and sound. The Doctor and Ruby bring Desidirium to Carla to be raised, and Cherry names him Joseph, after her late husband. 

The Doctor and Belinda put a cot in the console room of the TARDIS and make their plans to travel with their kid while Ruby watches. She notices that as they speak that Poppy’s coat keeps shrinking, and Ruby watches the Doctor and Belinda forget her as she vanishes. They head out into UNIT and Ruby presses the Doctor about his memory. Everyone tells Ruby she’s mistaken, but she points out that this has happened to her personally before, and many people who the Doctor has saved. Ruby knows she’s right and that Poppy is missing. So the Doctor vows to find her and bring her back. He leaves in the TARDIS, and knows that to shift reality by a single degree, he’ll need to give up regeneration energy. The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) appears, telling him it’s impossible… but she knows better than to talk him out of it. She tells him to go with a smile instead of in fear, and notes that he’s absolutely gorgeous. Fifteen tells her that he loves her, and Thirteen notes that she never says things like that. He tells her that’s why he exists. When Thirteen suggests she should say it to Yaz, he tells her that she never does, but that Yaz knows.

The Doctor unleashes regeneration energy into the Time Vortex and awakes on Belinda’s lawn. Poppy is there, but she’s fully human now, and a new reality exists: the Doctor was always getting Belinda home on this day at this time so she could be home to care for her daughter (who’s father is Richie, but he and Belinda aren’t together). The Doctor is heartbroken for the loss and happy Poppy is here. Belinda knows something is different and hopes that the Doctor will return to see her when Poppy is grown, and the Doctor says he’s sure he will, but he won’t be the same. He leaves on the TARDIS and goes to get a sight of Joy the star as he finally regenerates…

…into the very familiar visage of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper).

Commentary

I—!!! What an absolute heart attack of a finale.

Hang on, I need a moment.

YES.

Hang on.

I have to start with a couple terrible caveats. First: Doctor Who hasn’t been renewed yet for the next season yet. This is likely because the BBC needs to wait and find out if Disney still wants in on this partnership so they know how much money they can count on. Could the show just get flat-out cancelled? It always could, but the talk from showrunner Russell T. Davies suggests that it might just “pause” for a bit, which isn’t too much of shock given how little rest the series has had since it’s continuation in 2005.

The second caveat: The credits show Ncuti Gatwa and Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor, and then simply say “and introducing Billie Piper.” Obviously, Davies intends to keep the nature of this surprise to himself for the time being, and quite a few other things could be at work here because… well, Doctor Who.

That said: Billie Piper absolutely better be the Sixteenth Doctor.

There’s really not enough room here for me to get into exactly all the reasons why this is a brilliant choice, both within the universe and without. But, just for starters: Billie Piper deserves this. Some folks really can’t stand the fact that the series revival worked in large part due to her presence, but it did. Rose Tyler remains one of the greatest stories Doctor Who ever told, and it did that by recognizing all the ordinary beauty in the life of a poor, dead-end jobbing teenage girl who—against all hope and reason—took her shot at something extraordinary. She spoke to so many people (women especially), watching the show for the first time.

And in that time, Rose Tyler learned many of the Doctor’s skills and tactics, effectively becoming her own version of him by the end of season four. So the real point is, Billie Piper has experience being the Doctor already. It just took two decades to make it official. And then there’s all of the delicious in-and-out universe suggestions this makes for the character themself, but again, there’s too much to talk about here!

There’s also the extra fun with which side you come down on in the regeneration dramatics argument—because the Doctor regenerates, but it’s usually a big to-do. The actor announces that they’re leaving, there’s a big announcement on the BBC of the new Doctor, it’s a whole thing with pomp and circumstance, mostly made to give the new actor a loving welcome and get audiences used to the idea of them before they show up. Which I’m normally all for! But it’s true that the act of regeneration always means that the show has the ability to simply do that without warning. And plenty of fans have been pulling for the show to try that move for ages.

On the one hand—it hurts because we didn’t get long enough with Gatwa, so maybe this wasn’t the place to do it. On the other hand—maybe that’s exactly why you should do it. So many fans are never going to be ready to see him go, so you simply rip off the band-aid and cross your fingers. As for the why, Gatwa has already given interviews saying the role is a marathon that’s tough on the body—which it certainly is—and we all know his meteoric star is only at the start of its rise. I certainly can’t blame him for not wanting to stay too long, if that’s truly the reason… (See down below for other, far more aggravating, possibilities.)

And they gave him Jodie in his run-up to the end! Ugh, the instantaneous comfort of seeing her face. The joy of multi-Doctor interactions, which should never be over-used, but always do something extra special to your heart. And they’ve now proved the point I’ve always made about regeneration: that the previous Doctor influences the next ones. Thirteen never said she loved anyone, was never effusive about her feelings… and the Doctor realized that was no good, and came out differently next time around. Both Fourteen and Fifteen cannot stop saying how much they love everyone because they couldn’t manage it when it mattered.

That said, Thirteen’s regeneration advice is the best the Doctor will ever get.

And now I’ve got to get into the plot that was actually wrapped up with this, and I’m unfortunately of two minds about it entirely. Doctor Who is already being plagued by the main problem with television these days, in not getting enough time to set things up. If this had been a full three-part finale, and the three parts had all been the Wish World plot, we really could’ve dug into the concept, particularly where Poppy was concerned. (I’m having thoughts about the nature of queer families, particularly the fact that Belinda is happy to travel the stars with Poppy and the Doctor when she’s his kid—but not so much when she’s a normal human baby and not biologically related to him? I… I’m having feelings about this, and they are painful ones. About the fact that this occurs to a Doctor who is explicitly gay and explicitly stated to be incapable of having children. It feels so pointed, consciously or not.)

Then again, I cannot pretend that I don’t love how this story mechanic means that the Doctor—retroactively—just had an entire season-long adventure with a single mother?? That is objectively great, and I sort of wish it had been there from the beginning.

And then there’s the Davies penchant for big finales where everyone shows up and hugs each other, which I’m also an absolute sucker for. Hug Rosie! Hug Mel! Hug Kate! Hug Ruby! Traumatize Ruby again! Wait, crap, maybe not that…

Because she did get traumatized again, and after doing the most loving thing she could possibly do. This is where I’m furious once more that we don’t get more time with any of this because it needed space for the impact and a longer setup: Ruby stood in front of someone who used and belittled her, who thinks she’s pathetic and wants to destroy a reality he cannot conceive of, and she essentially deprograms him with kindness. Which is what Doctor Who is all about on its best days. But you can’t feel it if you don’t give it room.

After all that, Ruby has to watch her friend forget his child? A thing she has very personal trauma around in multiple ways? (Shoutout to the world’s greatest practical effect in all that—watching the Doctor and Belinda pass Poppy’s coat back and forth, as it gets smaller and smaller, until it’s a scrap of fabric and then nothing… oof.) All of that deserved time to build up before it broke. It’s hard to buy Poppy’s existence as the Doctor’s actual kid—who somehow is more real than the major wish powering this place?—without having time to feel that from the actors playing it. Moments like this are not made real with sci-fi explaining; they’re made real by the actors emotions and interactions, and we barely had any space for those.

All of it in service of telling one of Davies’ favorite Doctor Who stories: The myriad and byzantine ways the Doctor will sacrifice themself so others can have the sort of life he wishes he could have. He makes Poppy real at the expense of his own life, but she’s no longer his child. And in some ways it feels a little gimmicky to make her the same Poppy of “Space Babies,” but I was struck by it at the same time? The idea that the Doctor met this child and some part of him desperately wished that she were his. It screams of all the little things the Doctor never admits to feeling.

I’m incredibly glad that Omega ended up being nothing more than a great big monster because that’s all he deserves to be at this point—it’s kind of what he always was, in any case. The bogeyman of the Time Lords. However, he ate the Rani we deserved to keep! At least Mrs. Flood’s survival means she’ll be back one way or another, but Archie Panjabi deserved better.

This is me cackling over the fact that they’ve canonized sterile Time Lords now, though. I am genuinely pleased by it, even though it feels as though it exists in this episode only for Davies to say ‘no they’re really dead, you don’t understand how dead the Time Lords are, okay?’ (This conceit existed in Doctor Who novels, the idea that Time Lords cannot have children and therefore have to create babies on, I kid you not, devices called looms. There’s a whole subsection of Doctor Who jokes devoted to this, and for some reason my brain elects to retain things like this and not anything remotely important.)

Everything with the Rani is entirely on form, though. Her assuredness in her own superiority (and need to make better Time Lords that inherently accept this), her disgust at the idea of mixing human and Time Lord DNA, and her belief that humans are cattle. Also her wryness at everyone else’s shock and horror over said belief (“I’ve lost the crowd,” yes, flawless, continue). I wanted more time with her, come on, you had such a good thing going.

All in all, a finale that could have been stupendous, were we not at the whims of mega-corporations and how they spend their money. I’m already missing Gatwa’s Doctor, but I imagine he’ll find time to pop back in now and again. And while he was here, he shone brighter than the power of one billion supernovas…

Time and Space and Sundry

• It’s possible that this episode had a completely different ending that didn’t contain a regeneration sequence at all… and that Gatwa leaving the show had more to do with the likelihood of the series being on pause for the foreseeable future. There are scenes in promo from the finale that didn’t make it into the final cut, and pickup shots for the episode (which occurred early this year) seem to encompass the ending that we saw, and explains why Poppy suddenly appears older toward the end of the episode. Frankly, it would make sense for the current actor to want to leave if an uncertain hiatus was clearly on the table, and if that’s the case, even more power to this team for pulling this ending out of a flipping hat? Still sad that Gatwa couldn’t get the send-off he so rightly deserved, if true, though.

• The Bone Beasts feel like the natural embiggening of the creatures (called Reapers) we see in “Father’s Day,” trying to sterilize the time stream.

• The Zero Room! I love a Zero Room! The TARDIS used to have one of those, but the Doctor had to eject it at a certain point. It was first seen after the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration into the Fifth—the Fifth Doctor had a rough start, and needed the Zero Room to essentially stabilize himself.

• Okay, but if Rogue is just Jack in another body, he’d lose his mind at Billie Piper Doctor. He was in love with the Doctor and in love with Rose, and now the Doctor is Rose?? Poor guy.

• And of course… who is the Boss that Anita was referring to? Surely that won’t come up ever again.

And that’s maybe it for Doctor Who for a bit. We’ll (hopefully) meet again, don’t where, don’t know wheeeeen…[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Sends Us to a Disturbing New Reality in “Wish World”

The world is wrong, which means it’s probably a Doctor Who season finale!

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on May 27, 2025

Image: BBC/Dan Fearon

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Image: BBC/Dan Fearon

How many lives has John Smith had, anyway?

Recap

In Bavaria 1865, the Rani arrives as the midwife to a woman who has just birthed the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. The Rani steals the child and unmakes the family entirely, saying this special infant has a job to do granting a very special wish. In the present, the Doctor (now called John Smith) and Belinda wake—they are married and Poppy is their daughter. On the television Conrad is promising nice weather and telling stories to the population. Whenever anyone expresses doubt in this reality, a cup falls to the floor and breaks. It’s called a “slip.” John Smith leaves for work and Ruby is at his door. She asks if he knows her because she knows him, and also knows that Poppy isn’t his child. Belinda calls the authorities to tell them that someone is expressing doubt and Ruby runs away, bumping into Mel, who lives next door. There are dinosaur skeletons walking the earth and John Smith can’t believe anyone would doubt this reality.

The Doctor heads into work at the UNIT building with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in charge, but the whole thing is an insurance company now. When the Doctor tells Chistofer to ask Kate out and admits he thinks the man is beautiful, it causes another major slip. Belinda welcomes her mother and auntie over, and they talk about how their duty is to be wives and mothers as Conrad says. Belinda realizes that she can’t remember giving birth to Poppy, causing another major slip. She rushes out into the woods to scream. While John Smith is at work, Conrad is telling the people a story about the Doctor and the death of the Time Lords, and how one Time Lady survived their destruction. The Rani appears on a sky scooter and the people at the insurance company marvel at her entrance. John Smith wonders who she is, which is another forbidden slip. The Rani brings mortadella to Mrs. Flood to make a sandwich for Conrad. Doubts are building up nicely, just as she wants. When Mrs. Flood brings that sandwich to Conrad, he gets a break—this world is powered by his wish and he has to focus on it endlessly to keep it going. The infant the Rani stole is powering this wish, and it gives the Giggle.

The Rani snaps the Vindicator onto her large lair clock, and preps the balcony for her plan. Mrs. Flood points out that sort of birthed the current Rani, which she finds disgusting. Ruby runs into Shirley Bingham, and tries to avoid talking to her because she knows it’s not right, but they recognize each other. She brings Ruby to the camp of unwanted people: all of them disabled, poor, queer. They all know the world is wrong and no one notices them. They think they’re suspended somehow, and one of them believes it’s a perception bias in Conrad—because he’s not disabled, he literally can’t see them, and so no one else can. They ask Ruby if she wants to join their plot to bring this all down. John Smith is at home listening to Conrad’s stories when Rogue (Jonathan Groff) pops up on his TV. He tells John that he doesn’t have much time because he’s in a hell dimension that might be subsumed, but he has time to send a warning: “Tables don’t do that.” He tells him that he loves him before vanishing. Belinda wakes and finds John at the table watching the mugs fall through to the floor. But tables don’t do that. Belinda calls the authorities over John’s doubts and Mrs. Flood appears to take him away, then takes Belinda too, leaving her mother with Poppy.

Ruby is working with Shirley and a friend to disrupt the world; Shirley has her UNIT tablet, a “relic,” from the other world that has power. They have a link to the signal where Conrad is broadcasting from the bone palace. Ruby thinks she’ll remember if she can look him in the eye. John and Belinda are brought to the bone palace and he steps over a threshold, encouraging Belinda to do the same because he has doubts but never doubts her. They meet the Rani, who is trying to trigger John’s memory—she shows him the seal of Rassilon, clone classiforms, mentioning the TARDIS. Belinda brings up Poppy, but the Rani says they don’t have a child. The Rani dances with John and asks if he can remember when they danced long ago and people said they were lovers. She says everyone called them enemies, only they weren’t; that all the Doctor’s villains wanted death, but she only wanted life. She shows him Conrad and the baby—Desidirium, the God of Wishes, the most powerful of all. The Doctor woke him with the Pantheon, and boosted him with a powered up Vindicator.

The doubts are not a problem—they’re the point. Doubts will crack open this world, and a Time Lord’s doubt could break reality as they know it. The world begins to break apart, allowing the Rani to see the Underverse and find the One Who is Lost: Omega, the first Time Lord and creator of their people. The Doctor finally remembers who he is, but the Rani has locked him on the balcony and detonates it off the palace. Belinda is brought back over the threshold and disappears, the world begins to fall and dissolve. The Doctor shouts back to the Rani that Poppy is truly his daughter, and she knows what that means…

Commentary

The framing on this episode hurts something fierce.

Davies loves finales that are all about the world being wrong. (I have, shall we say, big feelings about this because I think it comes from a deep-rooted fear that lives in the mind of most marginalized folks—it’s a feeling that’s never far away.) But this might be the most direct he’s ever been with that narrative because it’s a world coming from the mind of Conrad Clark.

Davies has called Conrad, the Rani, and Desidirium the “Unholy Trinity,” for all intents and purposes here—it occurs to me that you could read that in multiple directions if you’re intending to graft them onto the holy version.

This world is perfectly constructed in its framework and its holes, both. We get overt sexism evident in the positions women are “meant” to fulfill, but less overt racism—because with everyone “in their place,” the audience is going to see less of it, and because Conrad has clearly applied his nuclear-family-suburban-hellscape to everyone. It’s unsurprising that a post-truth thinker like him has layers on layers of retro, conformist beliefs forming the bedrock of his desires, but I appreciate that the episode tells us it’s hard for Conrad to maintain. That there’s any measure of suffering attached to this devil’s bargain. Sorry, that’s where my own “oncoming storm” feelings come into play.

The sharpness of making disabled and gender-nonconforming people functionally invisible—that’s where the nasty dose of realism enters the conceit. The suggestion that Conrad makes an entire population of people “unreal” to the rest of the world because his own lack of disability (and therefore lack of empathy) means he simply edits them out. This segment of the episode, with Shirley and her cohort, seamlessly illustrates the intersection of disability and transness because they are both groups that a certain segment of humanity simply refuses to believe in. They are linked for that in this strange pocket of the world.

But then everyone in the forgotten camp talks about how they all remember a “better” world and I cringe a little because… well, they’re all being held “in stasis,” as they say. Shirley literally points out that she doesn’t have to take her meds right now because of it. No one is battling with their insurance at the moment; trying to get in to see a doctor that believes them; going into piles of medical debt. I’m not saying that being effectively homeless is the better option, but I would like to point out—for some people in that camp, this version of reality might actually be easier than their normal lives, a thing this episode is not prepared to consider.

So all of that is going on while the world stays wrong, and the Rani reigns supreme. This brings up so many questions, but they do start with the stories Conrad is being forced to tell the populace…

One story Conrad tells contains a segment that reveals the Doctor and the Rani were enemies for a long time and fought about “irrelevant” things—and that the Rani knew they could be friends if only the Doctor knew how clever she was, and I am about to eat my own tongue over this. Oh nothing, just the Doctor and his two former school buddies who both know that the Doctor would love them if only he could see how smart they are. You know, who cares if the smart things are viciously amoral and unhinged, if he knew they were clever, he definitely wouldn’t care, right?

I am incapable of not taking this personally, as a former weird kid who also thought that being smart and obsessed with stuff was how you made friends. Help me, I’m not okay about all of them.

On the other hand, if this turns into some weird “they dated once and Poppy is their illegitimate child” thing, I’ll be pissed. The Rani is commonly depicted as very Time Lord-ish about how she views organic matter—the point where Mrs. Flood says her newest iteration sprung from her loins and the Rani tells her that’s the most disgusting thing she’s ever heard is exactly in line here. I don’t believe for one second that she wants a lover of any kind. The argument that she cares about life while the Doctor’s usual antagonists only want death is hilarious, however. Yeah, subjugation is cool, so long as things live! Good one, Rani.

And now we come to the re-introduction of Omega, who has only been showcased in a couple of classic Doctor Who serials, the first being the 10th anniversary special that featured the first three Doctors (helpfully called “The Three Doctors”). The Time Lords basically had to recruit the Doctor to fight Omega, the first of their kind who discovered time travel—making them Time Lords—because they’d banished him to an antimatter universe and he wanted out. So the Rani trying to pull the guy back from the Underverse is, uh, exactly right. I’m guessing she thinks he can restore Time Lord society, which doesn’t sound like a terrible idea at all.

Which brings me back to Rogue in all this because I’m calling it right now: This guy is either Jack Harkness (who has somehow figured out how to regenerate), or the Master acting like Jack in order to mess with the Doctor. Fine, maybe it’s a whole new character, but as I said in his introduction last season—that doesn’t make any sense. He’s written exactly like Jack, but more importantly, there are so many clues that tell the audience he’s hiding something and knows the Doctor from well before that “first” meeting.

(A red manicured hand took the ring holding the Master from the scene of the Toymaker’s demise during the 60th anniversary special: It easily could have been the Rani. Rogue’s message to the Doctor actually plays directly into the Rani’s plan, suggesting that he could be deliberately working with her, or been forced to work with her. Either way, it’s a fun premise.)

And then Murray Gold sails in with a soundtrack cue that made me throw a napkin at my television: When the Doctor is telling Belinda that the man in the TV said “tables don’t work like that,” the soundtrack literally hits us with the Master’s “drums” double-heartbeat rhythm. If that wasn’t intentional, it’s wildly sloppy, and Gold is usually precise about this stuff. Just… ugh, let me be right. This once? Please?

But now we’ve got to take bets on what it means that Poppy is the Doctor’s actual daughter somehow… particularly when Susan is popping up left and right.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Okay, but John Smith’s work fit with the bowler hat looks an awful lot like the “Inspector Spacetime” uniform, right? The Community Doctor Who knock-off?

• They really need to stop creating realities where Carla betrays Ruby because I both hate it and don’t buy it for a second. (There’s something in here about Davies offering very few examples of decent parenting as a rule—and also constantly pointing out that being a good parent is less about personal virtue than it is about luck and stars aligning just right, but even so. We don’t need this many alternate realities where Ruby gets dumped by the mother who was there for her.)

• The echo of Omega comes from one of the Big Finish audio plays, which actually makes it the first time any bit of media from those plays has been used in canon. (Former companions from the audio plays have been canonized on the show before, however.)

• “This isn’t just exposition, Doctor.” …I love her so much. 

Next week we’ve got an explosive finale coming. Hang on tight.[end-mark]

The post <i>Doctor Who</i> Sends Us to a Disturbing New Reality in “Wish World” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Welcomes Back Two Key Characters in “The Interstellar Song Contest”

The only issue here is a severe lack of space tunes.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on May 19, 2025

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It’s Eurovision time, and Doctor Who wasn’t about to miss out on that…

Recap

It’s 2925 and Rylan Clark (playing himself) is pulled out of cryo-freeze to host the Interstellar Song Contest (which is what Eurovision turns into down the years). The TARDIS materializes in a fancy pod booth and the Doctor takes his Vindicator readings, but when he and Belinda see where they turned up, Belinda decides they can stay for this one. Mrs. Flood is in the audience, and very pleased that the Doctor has taken the final reading needed, but she’s in no rush to leave. Outside the Doctor and Belinda’s pod, Gary (Charlie Condou) and Mike Gabbastone (Kadiff Kirwan) are trying to get to their seats, but no one will help them as said seats are already occupied. Mike doesn’t understand why this is such a big deal anyway, as it’s just silly music, hurting Gary’s feelings. On asking the Droneguard for help, they’re only told “Phase One has been activated.”

The Harmony Arena control room is broken into by Kid (Freddie Fox) aided by his girlfriend—and fellow Hellion—Wynn Aura-Kinn (Iona Anderson), who is working there. He’s armed and in control of the Droneguard, easily taking over operations from Nina (Kiruna Stamell). Wynn cues up the dress rehearsal recording of the contest (which didn’t contain Rylan, as he hadn’t been unboxed), claiming the publicity comms will say he has food poisoning, and beaming that version out to all the viewers currently watching. An alarm goes off on the sonic screwdriver, and Doctor realizes that the version of the contest being transmitted is not the one they’re currently watching. He starts messing with the pod mechanics to figure out what’s wrong. As the show begins, Kid and Wynn turn off the safety and break the air shield keeping everyone in the arena, sending 100,000 people into space. The Doctor and the TARDIS are blown out, but Wynn reactivates the pod canopies, saving Belinda. Nina is mortified by Kid and Wynn’s actions, but notes that the audience isn’t dead yet due to the mavity shell remaining in place.

Kid has a delta wave device ready for phase three of the plan and hooks it into the system. Belinda heads out into the hallway to find Cora Saint Bavier (Miriam-Teak Lee), one the contestants from Trion, out there with her manager and writer, Len Kazah (Akemnji Ndifornyen). They can’t call for help due to gambling rules in place while the contest is broadcasting. Belinda begins to have a panic attack over the thought of never getting home, but Cora calms her down. The Doctor is freezing in space, but has a vision of his granddaughter, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), telling him to go back and find her. He snaps to and grabs a nearby confetti canon, which he uses to propel him back toward the arena. Mike and Gary witness this, and open the airlock to let the Doctor in. Mike is a nurse and helps the Doctor revive. He reveals to Mike and Gary that the audience can be revived too, thinking Belinda is out there. The delta wave is set to be broadcast to three trillion viewers during Cora’s song. The Doctor hacks the system and finds Hellion code, accidentally setting off the delta wave in the halls and nearly killing them—this is what will happen to the viewers if it transmits.

Gary tries to help the Doctor hack into the arena systems from the contest museum on the station—he helped design the thing, hence his good tickets. The Doctor has another vision of Susan. Their interference get Kid’s attention, and the Doctor tells him off, promising to find him and destroy him for the horrible things he’s doing. Belinda sees this via video and is stunned to hear the Doctor sounding so unlike himself. Kid orders the Droneguards to kill the Doctor, but he easily stops them with the sonic screwdriver when they show up. Cora finally admits to Belinda and Len that she is Hellion too—she cut off her horns to hide— and that she knows Kid and Winn. She explains to Belinda that the stereotypes around their kind are false, perpetuated so that the Corporation could destroy their planet to make the flavoring for Poppy Honey, an artificial sweetener. Because the Corporation sponsors the contest, Kid has decided that anyone who is watching can be labeled an enemy. Len is disgusted to learn Cora is Hellion, telling them that he’s abandoning them once he gets the hall doors open. 

In the control room, the delta wave is ready to be employed, but the Doctor shows up to stop Kid. It turns out to be a hologram version, but the Doctor is truly in the control room, switches off the delta wave device, and notes that he can make a hologram more dangerous by turning it into hard light. He does so and lets his hologram torture Kid, but Susan appears to him again and tells him to stop, followed by Belinda. The Doctor stops and begins working on a plan to rescue the audience with Gary and Mike’s help. With the audience eventually revived, groups at a time, the contest resumes. Belinda tells the Doctor that he scared her, and he admits that Kid’s actions reminded him of Gallifrey’s destruction at the Master’s hands, that his people are gone. At the mention of getting Belinda home, the museum holographic interface of Graham Norton (playing himself) is activated, and explains that the Earth, where the contest originated, ended on May 24th, 2025, and no one knows why. The Doctor and Belinda rush back to the TARDIS and get ready to head back to that very date now that the Vindicator has all its readings: The Cloister Bell begins to ring.

In a mid-credits sequence, Gary and Mike revive Mrs. Flood, who is pleased because she’s safe with the Doctor gone. Unfortunately her double brain stem froze, which is lethal for a Time Lady—she begins to regenerate with the words “Let battle begin.” Then she bi-generates, just as the Doctor did last time, but Mrs. Flood changes in the split, becoming timid and subservient to the newest version (Archie Panjabi) of herself. She explains that Flood is now a Rani, while she is the Rani… and sets about getting to work

Commentary

I’m about to be insufferable, y’all. This was my top pick for the Mrs. Flood reveal: I’ve been waiting for this character return for decades. If you’d been in my living room when this tag scene took place, you likely would have been as frightened as my dog. The screaming went on well after the episode closed out.

The Rani has been due for a comeback since the show’s relaunch in 2005: She’s another member of the “Renegade Time Lord” set that the Doctor attracts to himself, and a contemporary of his at that. See, the Doctor and the Master were best friends growing up, but they had another good buddy during school to get in trouble with, and it was this fabulous lady. While the two of them were busy pining being dramatic and awful to each other, she just wanted to do science, damnit.

She is literally here for nothing but amoral experiments, ruling over anyone with a lesser brain than hers (which is everyone), and dressing like a drag queen. (She was introduced in the ‘80s, give her a break.) Her iconic moves include pretending to be Mel Bush while the Seventh Doctor had regeneration amnesia, and kneeing the Master in the unmentionables when he messed up her dinosaur lab. She is, in short, the perfect person to go up against Gatwa’s Doctor because she is rooted in camp and understands its power. I cannot wait to see what Panjabi does with it.

And I’m still not done because this episode gave me two (2!) of the greatest gifts. It has been over forty years since we last saw Susan Foreman, the Doctor’s granddaughter, on the show’s 20th anniversary special “The Five Doctors.” Even then, she was appearing out of order: Her farewell happened in the 1964 serial “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” when the First Doctor locked her out of the TARDIS and told her that she had to get on with her life (now that she’d found a man, natch). That heartbreaking speech always contained a promise in it:

One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back.

But he never has. And he also seems to believe that Susan died with the rest of the Time Lords, interestingly enough. This is a reunion over half a century in the making, and it’s finally happening, somehow, somewhen. Maybe this season, maybe another one, but they’re coming for us. The full body chills I got when Carole Ann Ford appeared on screen, I’m unwell. Send help.

I guess I should probably get around to the episode itself, which was charming as all get-out, if a little obvious in execution. (How quickly did you guess that Cora was secretly Hellion? Or that poppy honey was the true villain here?) It was still a good excuse to give Fifteen another chance at going all Oncoming Storm, as he does have that mode if you swipe at the wrong trauma. It’s incredibly sweet to watch Belinda grow more attached to him, and more worried as a result.

Gary and Mike were absolutely adorable, and I hope this bonding event helps them smooth areas of their relationship. A little admiration and mutual respect is needed here, as they’re both highly skilled and lovely fellows. Also the Doctor noting how camp his journey by confetti canon was to them felt like a meta wink to the audience; this queer Doctor acknowledging said queerness to fellow queers. We all get to be in on that.

I wish we’d seen a little more of the music (that muppet-y song, drop the full track), but even though Cora’s final performance is the important one, I did love her initial number for getting into the unpleasantness of wearing high heels? It wasn’t surprising that we didn’t get to see much of the contest itself, but it does feel like a missed opportunity to let songwriters go ham.

The prejudices against the Hellions feel a little over-the-top without getting to see any of the propaganda generated against them, but while it’s easy to have nothing but sympathy for Cora and Wynn, the Doctor’s likely right that Kid is merely using this as an excuse for brutality. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t mistreated, of course—only that the mistreatment has twisted him into a malignant person. It’s an important differentiation to highlight: Being oppressed doesn’t mean you can never oppress others. It feels a touch oversimplified here due to the lack of detail, but it does need saying all the same.

The use of Rylan (the cyro-freeze, how plastic they make him look, it’s so good) and Graham Norton here is fabulous, and highlights perhaps my favorite aspect of the episode: In this version of the timeline, the Earth is destroyed shortly after Belinda leaves. But even taking that into account, Eurovision survives and transforms into this intergalactic party that dozens of species participate in. This weirdo music performance competition is what continues in our absence. Because if humanity went out into the wide galaxy, that is precisely what we’d gift to the universe. Our greatest legacies as a species can be found in things like Eurovision—places where we make room for skill, yes, but also absurdity and vibrancy and light.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Mavity will never die. Long live mavity.

• Cora’s cover homeworld is Trion, which is the same planet that Fifth Doctor companion Vislor Turlough came from.

• You’ve got to appreciate that right on the heels of watching Ghorman get vilified by the Empire in order to desensitize the galactic population to their extinction as their planet is destroyed for an energy compound on Andor, we’ve got Hellions getting vilified by a ultra mega-corp so that the galaxy is desensitized to their extinction over artificial sweetener flavoring. What tweaks most in these equations is that both resource options are realistic as motivators for genocide. One for power, the other for profit.

• The way the Rani treats her previous incarnations is perfectly in line with the character: The Doctor bickers with themselves and occasionally adores themselves. The Master maybe wants to bang themselves, and hates themselves, and betrays themselves, and can’t help but hatch nefarious plans with themselves. The Rani loves to have servants and believes herself utterly superior—it makes perfect sense that any previous regenerations encountered would be considered lesser beings on account of being “younger” and therefore less experienced.

• Archie Panjabi’s casting here helps to alleviate some of the awkward racist leanings around the Rani’s name. After all, the Doctor and Master are English words, but Rani is Sanskrit, basically equivalent to “queen” in that language. It’s awkward to have a white woman walking around using a title commonly allocated to India, and Indian and Pakistani people—especially considering the fact that Time Lord names should be translating into the language of the listener. It’s not like we’re hearing their names in Gallifreyan.

Next time, we should see a certain Time Lady in action…[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Considers Some Metatextual Roots in “The Story and the Engine”

In an episode where all stories have value and every life is precious.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on May 12, 2025

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Who wants that story screen, though?

Recap

Omo Esosa (Sule Rimi) is getting a haircut and tells a story about how he met the Doctor when he was a boy. Images play out on a wall to showcase this story, and a light on the wall turns from red to green. The other men in the room calm visibly at this, and Omo assures them that the Doctor always comes when needed. The light flips back to red and the room shakes. Omo calls for the Doctor knowing that “it” is hungry. The Doctor and Belinda land in Lagos, Nigeria in 2019 to take another Vindicator reading. The Doctor tells Belinda that he loves it here, specifically a barbershop he frequents. Belinda notes that the TARDIS does his hair for him, but the Doctor tells her that being the first time in “this Black body,” the shop is a place that allows him to feel a sense of community. Belinda sees how much this means to him and tells him to go off and enjoy himself while she waits on the TARDIS.

The Doctor heads into Lagos, weaving through the streets and greeting folks left and right. Upon nearing Omo’s shop, he notices that there are missing signs for Omo and several other men. He finds the shop and enters, the door slamming behind him; simultaneously, an alarm goes off in the TARDIS. All the missing men (Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, Michael Balogun) are present in the shop; the light goes red once again. One of the men sits down in the chair to get a haircut and tells a story about Yo-Yo Ma and a shaman. The Doctor sees the story appear on the wall and is excited, wanting to know how it works. He’s informed that he can only learn by telling a story himself while getting his hair cut. Omo is no longer the barber; there’s a new Barber (Ariyon Bakare) who came recently and seemed to magically take over the shop. A woman enters (Michelle Asante) and brings food, but the door closes behind her; the alarm goes off on the TARDIS again. The Doctor recognizes this woman, but can’t remember why—she’s working to help the Barber.

The Doctor sits down to tell a story, and decides to tell one of an ordinary life, about Belinda. He tells a story about how she correctly diagnosed a woman who was receiving the wrong treatment from her doctor, and was required to stay by the woman’s side, even though she missed her grandmother’s birthday for it. Weeks later, the woman appeared to thank her, knowing Belinda was truly responsible for saving her life. The Doctor’s story powers the “engine” better than any of the others, and the Barber and woman leave to recalibrate it, locking the door behind them. The TARDIS alarm goes off again, and it shows Belinda an image of the barbershop. The Doctor berates Omo for betraying him when he thought this place was safe for him; the men have all been missing for a long time and are missing important parts of their lives being stuck here. The Doctor insists on opening the door despite warnings from the other men, and reveals the vacuum of space outside, with a large spider machine walking across a web. He makes it back inside and explains that the web is in space and Lagos at the same time. Outside, Belinda is pointed toward the shop by a young girl, and is the next person to get trapped.

The Doctor calls the Barber a coward and demands to know who he is. He claims to be an array of gods that deal in chaos and tricks and creation: Anansi; Sága; Bastet; Dionysus; Loki. The Doctor and Belinda burst out laughing because the idea is ridiculous. The Doctor has met many of these gods and hung out with them, including Anansi, who tricked the Doctor into marrying his daughter once. Rumbled, the Barber admits the truth: He was the person who took the gods’ stories, refined them, and packaged them to be told by humanity, keeping the gods alive. But they abandoned him once achieving that power, so the Barber created this web, which he calls the Nexus, to erase the gods from existence. Doing so would prove destructive to humanity, preventing humans from being able to tell stories. The woman criticizes the Doctor, and he finally recognizes her: Abena, Anansi’s daughter. He apologizes for not helping her, but we see another aspect of him—the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin)—tell Abena that she was busy with another story at the time.

The Barber tries to force the Doctor to tells another story, but Abena stops everyone and agrees to tell one of her own. As she braids the Doctor’s hair, she tells a story about enslaved Black women, who would braid maps to freedom into their hair and pass down the knowledge to help others escape. The Engine stabilizes again; the Doctor and Belinda escape deeper into the ship and find the engine room—due to the map Abena has braided into his hair. The Barber follows them, but the Doctor insists that he’s disrupting the engine by bringing up Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word story, which he goaded him into creating. The Doctor has one of his own: “I’m born. I die. I’m born.” All of the energy from the Doctor’s story, his life, begin to run through the engine and the screens in the engine room show countless incarnations. The engine can’t process the power, so the Barber has two choices: Let everyone die here, or open the door and let others escape to safety. The Barber unlocks the door. The Doctor talks him into joining them and finding a new life for himself. The engine self-destructs.

Outside the shop, which has now reverted to a normal shop, Omo apologizes to the Doctor: He knows the man is powerful, but also that he should have protected him from this as a member of his community. The Doctor offers his own apology and they reconcile. The group offer their thanks to Abena for keeping them alive, and Omo decides he’s going to retire, giving the shop to the Barber. He points out that he has no name, so Omo recommends Adétòkunbo: his late father’s name. Belinda asks the Doctor about the child who guided her as they head back to the TARDIS, but the Doctor has no idea who that might be. They continue on their journey home.

Commentary

Inua Ellams wrote this episode (and has a little acting spot as a market seller in it!), and it’s a gorgeous piece of work. There’s a lot packed into this script, so let’s jump right in.

In so many ways, this episode is an explicit gift to Ncuti Gatwa himself, his position in the canon of Doctor Who, and the labor required of him in taking on the role. We begin the episode straight away with the Doctor confessing to Belinda that things are different being the Doctor in his body. (Am I still pretty miffed that this point got glossed to hell with Jodie Whitaker’s iteration? Yes—but it’s important to every iteration of the Doctor who isn’t a cisgender white man, so I’m glad they’re making space for it now.) The Doctor needs that sense of belonging and community, so he’s sought it out in places where he fits in seamlessly. The barbershop in Lagos is one of those places.

It’s important to consider how painful this would be for the Doctor—who is now engaging in multiple levels of diaspora. Though the character may not conceive of it most days of the week, that is the nature of his existence. The Doctor was already a diaspora-of-one when he was taken in by a Gallifreyan “mother” and made the foundation of Time Lord society. The Doctor furthers this narrative by essentially adopting Earth and humanity as their second home following the destruction of Gallifrey. And now, again, because his body is different this time around, the Doctor finds himself cast out once more, and in need of new homes where he feels connection and belonging on the planet he’s chosen as his harbor.

All of this is being brought to the forefront by a Rwandan-Scottish Doctor and a Nigerian-born British writer—something that the show has never rightly tackled.

In a painful twist, that feeling of disconnect from the homeland in diaspora communities is brought to the forefront in the Doctor’s fight with Omo. The Doctor believed he’d found a safe place at the barber shop, but he’s still ultimately an outsider to them. While it’s important that they reconcile—that Omo acknowledges that he wants the Doctor in his community and therefore should have treated him as part of it—it’s still true that this experience is a constant one for the character. We get the beauty of belonging on the meta-narrative front for Gatwa himself, but the Doctor has just been forced to confront how deep this feeling can go, how specific it can become.

We’ve also got a fairly major reveal in the Doctor recalling his relationship with Abena. (Forever angry that I’m not getting to see Fugitive Doctor in a showdown with flipping Anansi while he tries to get her to gay-marry his daughter??) The memories before the Doctor’s “reset” by the Time Lords, including those from working with Division, are supposed to be in a Chameleon Arch tucked away in the bottom of the TARDIS somewhere. The Thirteenth Doctor did have some bleed-through on those memories during the Flux incident, but this suggests that those memories are either leaking through more frequently now or always have been. It’s possible that much of the time, when the Doctor mentions a thing from their past that we haven’t seen on screen, they’re referring to these pre-reset memories and simply don’t realize it; their brain is complicated and operates on so many levels, it’s hardly surprising that they don’t notice.

This helpfully gives us the treat of allowing the only two Black actors who have played the Doctor to appear in an episode together. More Jo Martin, please? Jo Martin all the time.

Another aspect here that I adore: The Barber (Ariyon Bakare is mesmerizing in this episode) makes the claim that he’s several different gods, a favored storytelling trope among plenty of fantasy writers in various mediums. It’s the sort of concept that sounds so cool the first time you ever hear it, and is diminishing returns forever after. Like yeah, we get it, humans like to tell similar stories across the world and that’s very cool! But you’re robbing each individual story of its unique patina by suggesting that they’re just scratch off versions of the same thing. And, moreover, it’s usually white writers and/or characters making this claim, smacking of the desire to basically colonize other cultures’ stories and gain some form of ownership over them. With the Barber making the same claim, I assumed the subversion of the trope was going to be in allowing a Black character that same journey, which would have still been an enjoyable change from the norm.

But Ellams turns this on its head by having the Doctor and Belinda laugh outright because the idea is, in fact, ridiculous. And the result is a much more enjoyable concept: The artist who perpetuated these stories and never got the credit for building those beings into gods.

While I wanted a little more time to dive into his desire for recognition, the ultimate point made here is far more imposing: Those stories built and shaped the world; they’re a part of humanity’s innate fabric. Removing them would kill our ability to tell story collectively—an abstract threat that manages to be far more terrifying than a specific one, and much more interesting than a multi-god being being a pain in the butt. 

Everyone in this story is redeemable and everyone matters: The Doctor tells them a story of Belinda’s life (how does he know it, I wonder?), something ordinary and smart and brave that has a beautiful ending. Each of the men in the shop tells their story, places they need to get back to, loved ones they are missing. No one’s humanity is ever questioned here, and true to Doctor Who’s best ethos, there is nothing more precious than a normal human life. Because of this Doctor, this writer, this story’s heritage, it also tells us explicitly that nothing is more precious than the normal human lives of Black people. It reminds us of this again when Abena tells her story of braiding hair towards freedom, and again when the men bow down before her at the end—saying that the Doctor rescued them, but she kept them alive, like all the women they know and adore.

Mechanically, it’s one of my favorite types of TV episodes: A locked room with a few people just talking and gargantuan stakes in the background. Emotionally and contextually, it’s a tour de force that I’m sure I’ll revisit again and again.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Inua Ellams also wrote a prequel to the episode that you can read here! Ellams is primarily a poet and playwright, and it’s been noted that there are many aspects of his previous works that show up in this episode—check out Barber Shop Chronicles and The Half God of Rainfall to see some of those connections.

• There are all sorts of items related to story within the engine room, but the one that excited me most was the Jumanji game board??

• The design of the spider-bot. That is all.

• Obviously the little girl who pointed Belinda toward the shop is important, though we likely won’t find out how until the end of the season.

• I might have been a little dismayed at Belinda using the “hurt people hurt people” precept with Abena, but only because it’s a very cheesy way to point out a very complex and difficult thing. On the other hand, I am liking how adamant she is about sticking to the plan! She tries not to leave the TARDIS and everything.

• The six word story commonly attributed to Hemingway (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”) was not, in fact, written by him. Which makes that reference funnier, really, because then we have to imagine the Doctor getting an entirely different six word story from him. And also imagine the Doctor giving Hemingway a hard time for being the soul of brevity, which is never a mistake in my book. Thanks for that, Doctor.

See y’all next week![end-mark]

The post <i>Doctor Who</i> Considers Some Metatextual Roots in “The Story and the Engine” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Wants to Talk About the Post-Truth Era in “Lucky Day”

They also want to talk about PTSD? Frankly, it’s a mess.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on May 5, 2025

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It’s time for a Doctor-lite episode that shows us how Ruby has been doing. Uhhh…

Recap

It’s New Year’s 2007, and Conrad Clark (Benjamin Chivers) is an eight-year-old kid who witnesses the Doctor and Belinda exit the TARDIS and use the Vindicator on their next stop. The Doctor offers the kid 50p he found in the street, saying it’s his lucky day, and Conrad runs off to tell his mother what he’s seen. She accuses him of lying and smacks him in the head for spoiling her night. Years later, Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) runs a podcast and is interviewing Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) for it. He details how last year, he saw the blue box for the second time, and walked into an empty department store, getting his hand covered in green slime. A monster with red eyes gets zapped away from his location, and he sees the Doctor and Ruby. The Doctor gives Ruby an antidote—she’s also been covered with green slime, which is how the creature known as a Shreek (Gethin Alderman) marks its prey.

During the podcast, Conrad asks about what the Doctor and Ruby did together, wondering about aliens they’ve encountered. Ruby can’t tell him much, but notes that everyone knows aliens are real, and that UNIT is doing great work protecting folks, despite the trolls online who insist that it’s all a coverup for something else. The interview ends, and Conrad asks Ruby out for coffee, telling her that he met the Doctor once. They go out on another date, and Carla (Michelle Greenidge) and Cherry (Angela Wynter) are excited—Ruby is finally getting on with her life. On the date, Conrad admits that he only had his mother growing up, and she died of liver cancer. Ruby tells him that he was marked by the Shreek the day that he saw her and the Doctor, but thankfully she’d got the antidote, and UNIT captured the Shreek anyway, so he’ll be safe.

A little while later, they go on a weekend away to a town where many of Conrad’s buddies still live. Ruby admits that Conrad is her boyfriend, and he seems pleased about that. At the local pub with his pals, the lights start flickering—a sign of an impending Shreek attack. She goes outside and calls Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), who’s working late at UNIT. Kate finds no activity in the area and suggests that maybe Ruby is experiencing PTSD or something similar after her time with the Doctor. Ruby thanks her and hangs up. She tells Conrad about how she’s been feeling and he’s sympathetic. Then the lights go out and two Shreek appear: Conrad didn’t take the antidote, wanting to be brave like the Doctor. He apologizes, and Ruby rushes off, calling UNIT to the scene. She goes outside to confront the creature and Conrad joins despite being marked as prey; he wants to help after making such a big mistake.

UNIT arrives as they get cornered by the two Shreek, and Ruby realizes that… they’re not real Shreek. The two creatures stand and take off masks: They’re people in costumes, and this whole thing was a set up: Conrad reveals himself to be part of Think Tank, a group that work to “expose” the lies of UNIT, and they’re live-streaming the entire event. Conrad admits that getting to know Ruby has been a chore and his only goal is to show how their tax dollars are being wasting paying for their lies. When Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley) offers to show him proof of alien existence, he accuses her of personally stealing tax dollars due to her disability while lying. They group are arrested and news goes wild about how this brave young podcaster stood up to UNIT and confronted them about their work; he’s quickly released and doxxes all UNIT employees. Ruby is at UNIT talking to Shirley about how Conrad was likely desperate for attention because he got none from his now-dead mother. Shirley tells her that Conrad’s mother is alive and living happily in a French villa he pays for: Conrad is wealthy from his subscribers and also a tax dodger.

Conrad breaks into the UNIT building with help from a man on the inside, Jordan Lang (Kareem Alexander). UNIT figures out that Jordan is their inside leak too late, and Commander Christofer Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) asks Kate to order a deadlock seal on the floor, but Kate insists that they confront him. Conrad is live-streaming again, has stolen a weapon, and demands a confession from the group about their lies, insulting Kate’s father—Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart—as well. They learn that Jordan has been hurt by Conrad and Kate decides to show Conrad what they’re protecting the world from, releasing the Shreek to go after it’s prey. It hunts Conrad down, and he begs them to stop it, admitting everything he said was a lie. Before it can kill him, Shirley hands Ruby a taser and she stuns the thing; Kate was unmoved to do anything, furious at the man for lying for profit.

Conrad stands, insisting that it was probably all faked, and the Shreek bites into his arm. The next day, Commander Ibrahim tells Kate that Conrad is fine, Jordan is out of the ICU, and that she went way too far this time. Kate is unbothered, but very worried for Ruby, who realizes that she’s in limbo and needs a real change. Kate tells her that she should do what she needs to do, and that she’ll always be there to talk. Shirley teases that Ruby keeps collecting mothers. In prison, the TARDIS materializes around Conrad and the Doctor tells him off for all the stupid things he’s done. Conrad laughs at him and gives the Doctor spoilers about Belinda being his next companion, so the Doctor returns the favor, letting him know that he’ll die alone and unimportant, forgotten by history. Conrad says that he rejects the Doctor’s reality and tells him to get off “his” world. Conrad is back in his cell and a guard approaches with keys—Mrs. Flood. He asks if that was real, and she tells him it was… and that she’s releasing him.

Commentary

This episode could have been so good, and I can’t decide if this is down to eight episode seasons and not having the time to develop things? Or if folks are just letting things slide when they shouldn’t. This reveal could’ve been built to over time! It could’ve taken all season, and would have likely been so much better for it.

Peter McTighe wrote “Lucky Day,” and also the thinly-veiled Amazon commentary episode “Kerblam!” a few seasons back. Many folks found “Kerblam!” similarly overwrought, and while I was (mostly) a fan, this episode takes a lot of the same weaknesses and dials them up past the point of credulity. I simply cannot get over the fact that the setup of Conrad’s little social media empire makes no sense. At the very least, it makes every one of the Doctor’s friends look utterly brainless. 

To start: If this is Think Tank’s big reveal to the public, then Conrad wouldn’t have the level of followers he’s attained, and certainly wouldn’t be rich already. But if this is just the first big antagonistic move by an already sizable platform then… what podcast did he put Ruby on, exactly? Is it the Think Tank podcast, or a fake one he created to make her look like a fool, one where he pretends to be a more moderate guy? If the whole podcast had turned out to be fake, it might have made a little more sense, but we know that’s not true because we see his listeners tuning in, Jordan Lang included. Sure, he’s trying to bait Ruby, but this kind of scheme demands way more forethought than the episode has built in.

Ruby looks him up on the internet! They talk about his Instagram! He’s not using a fake name, so all of his alt-truth fear mongering should have turned up in that search, especially if he’s got enough followers to make a considerable amount of money off of them. More importantly, if he’s reaching enough people, UNIT should have already flagged and tagged this guy—so now they look like idiots, too.

Moreover, using UNIT as the scapegoat we’re supposed to ally with exposes a horrific flaw in the mechanics of Doctor Who’s universe: Sure, the audience knows that UNIT is (eh, mostly) doing good stuff. But that doesn’t change the fact that shadowy militarized government organizations that hoard technology, keep off-the-books prisoners, and operate largely without oversight are bad. We all know they’re bad, right? We are aware of that, yes? But the viewer is meant to trust UNIT, and know they’re the good guys in this instance, which is always how military/police/intelligence agency propaganda works in entertainment. “Sure, maybe that wouldn’t be okay in real life, but these are my shadowy agents and I love them.”

As a viewer and a critic, I’m usually willing to accept those mechanics because I am capable of separating fiction from reality, and accepting different parameters in each. But making UNIT the heroes in a plot line designed to interrogate the post-truth information era is a sizable misstep in this. 

That’s all without even getting into the fact that UNIT originally stood for the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, but was later changed to the Unified Intelligence Taskforce when the real-world U.N. expressed displeasure at being associated with the militarized fictional force in 2005. And even so, Doctor Who has suggested that UNIT still answers to the U.N. somehow? But also is maybe funded by U.K. tax dollars? And the U.N. isn’t demanding that UNIT develop alien tech for the betterment of humanity, they’re just allowed to warehouse these things and keep it to themselves? Sorry, this could warp into a much longer tangent, I’m just fascinated by the fact that they chose to shorthand this conflict in a way that actively makes Conrad’s point for him.

And I understand the impulse to let the Doctor have the last word with him, but this is one situation where it doesn’t really make sense. Ruby should have been given that moment, or even Belinda, but again, rules for this season prevent that. Humans are the ones affected by Conrad’s lies more than the Doctor could ever be. It’s a point where the desire to let the actor deliver this important lesson is superseding the character. And I want Gatwa to do everything, but this didn’t ring true the way it needed to as a result.

Hauer-King’s performance gets better once the reveal takes place, but the episode couldn’t be more obvious in how it telegraphs that he’s lying to Ruby. No guy is this tuned in and precious on a first cup of coffee. We can all tell something’s up, and again, it makes Ruby seem dim for not seeing it coming. Which is, in turn, extra insulting in an episode that is also trying to tackle her PTSD??

The fact that this is shoehorned into an episode that’s meant to be about something else entirely is such a shame. The woman is literally targeted and trapped by people who use her trauma against her, and there’s only time for lingering closeups of the heartbreak on her face. I’m still glad that Kate is making it her personal mission to be there for the Doctor’s former companions, but she’s drowning, y’all. Help a girl out.

All in all, this episode was trying to make a lot of very important points, but botched the execution entirely. I really wish we’d been given time for Think Tank to build steam, like the “Vote Saxon!” days of old.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Cherry is worried about small towns because of racism the bees, because she’s just watched Wicker Man. My love for the Sundays overflows with every new scene they offer up.

• There’s something strange happening in the harbor in Sydney, huh? Hope Mel is okay. Wonder if that’s coming back…

• Yeah, I really love the idea that Kate is staying late for work because she’s maybe got a thing going with Ibrahim. And that said thing might be a little rocky now that she’s done something morally squiffy. It’s a standard flip of the usual power dynamic in this sort of situation—normally the guy would be in charge and a female subordinate who is into him would be talking him down. They’ve even got the (typical, annoying) sizable age gap included on the flip! Not saying that age gaps are suddenly fine when they’re gender-reversed, just that it’s always fun to see a trope inverted.

• Conrad mentions yeti in the Underground when he sites all the things UNIT has ostensibly made up. Always mention the yeti, Doctor Who. (It’s from the Second Doctor story “The Web of Fear,” which also marked the first appearance of Kate’s dad, the Brigadier.)

Next week, everyone! See you then![end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Revisits a Terrifying Villain in “The Well”

It’s not the Weeping Angels.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on April 28, 2025

Image: BBC/James Pardon

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Image: BBC/James Pardon

This did not go at all where I expected, and it turns out there’s an interesting reason why…

Recap

The Doctor and Belinda have landed 500,000 years in the future and need to take another Vindicator reading. They wind up on a drop ship and jump down to a planet below with a crew that question who they are. The Doctor uses the psychic paper to suggest that he’s everyone’s superior and here to test them. The group commander, Shaya Costallion (Caoilfhionn Dunne), explains that they’re here to investigate a diamond mine that’s gone quiet. There’s galvanic radiation suffusing the entire planet, so it’ll take five hours before their ship can pick everyone up, leaving the Doctor and Belinda with five hours to kill.

The mine is full of dead bodies. It appears that everyone has been shot or broken into pieces, and all the mirrors have been shattered. The group eventually comes across the lone survivor, Aliss Fenly (Rose Ayling-Ellis), the mine’s cook. She’s terrified, and uses both sign language and speaking to explain that everyone went mad; she had to kill her friend to stop herself from getting killed. The crew activates text-to-speech tech in their gear to communicate with Aliss, while the Doctor uses sign language. They ask her questions, and it’s eventually decided that part of the group will go to the control room to find more information. The Doctor goes with them, leaving Belinda behind. Talking to Mo Gilliben (Bethany Antonia), Belinda learns that no one in this group has heard of humans or Earth (they’re all Lombardians, who look similar, but are not the same species). Suddenly, Belinda starts seeing something move behind Aliss. She keeps insisting that it’s nothing.

The rest of the group begin to see something as well, and grow more paranoid. Aliss grows even more distressed, as this is what happened last time with all the miners before everyone started killing each other. The group fans out and, when one of the crew walks directly behind Aliss, she is thrown into the air and killed. In the control room, the Doctor and Shaya find out that whatever caused this came out of the well they’d been drilling down into. The Doctor asks about the history of this planet, because something feels familiar. Shaya explains that it used to be under an X-tonic star and that the planet used to be covered in diamonds. The Doctor asks what its ancient name was… and Shaya replies that it was called Midnight.

The Doctor rushes back to find the dead crew member. Aliss explains that the thing behind her is what’s killing people or causing them to kill each other. Cassio Palin-Paleen (Christopher Chung) decides that the easiest way to end said threat is to kill her, but Aliss warns him that it will just attach itself to his back if he tries that. Belinda explains that the entity kills anyone who stands directly behind the person it hides behind. Basically, if the room is a clock face, you die at midnight. Cassio gets angry that Shaya keeps listening to the Doctor’s advice and issues a usurpation of command with one crew member seconding to make it official. He tells the group to fan around her, which leads to multiple deaths as Aliss turns in a panic, including Cassio’s—caused by Shaya herself. She apologizes, but the Doctor insists that this is what the entity is good at. 

Shaya tells the Doctor that they’ll need to abandon the mission as a failure, but the Doctor isn’t willing to leave Aliss behind. He tries to speak to the entity like he did years before, and comes up with an idea. He has Shaya shoot pipes and bring up mercury, creating a reflective surface that allows them to see the entity. Aliss is shoved forward, free, and the Doctor instructs everyone to run. Aliss and a few others escape through the airlock. As he and Belinda rush to get their spacesuits refitted at the airlock, the entity catches up. The remaining four—the Doctor, Belinda, Shaya, and Mo—look back and forth to figure out who it has attached itself to. It’s Belinda. Shaya decides to shoot Belinda in such a way that she can hopefully narrowly avoid death, taking on the entity herself. She does so, and runs to the well, as the Doctor tries frantically to catch up to her. Shaya lets herself fall down the well backwards, and the Doctor, Belinda, and Mo get to escape.

Mo contacts her superior (who turns out to be Mrs. Flood), and heads off to write her report. Another crew member who didn’t go down to the planet seems to see something behind Mo… but dismisses it as nothing.

Commentary

There is a bit of context here that is important to know: This episode was not originally intended to showcase the Midnight entity as antagonist.

Early on in interviews after being cast, Ncuti Gatwa was asked where he would take the TARDIS during his tenure if he had any choice. His reply was that he would love for the Doctor to visit Nigeria and meet the orishas, spirits of the Yoruba religion. The original draft, written by Sharma Angel-Walfall, featured the orisha as the antagonists of this story. According to showrunner Russell T. Davies, the orishas weren’t working within the Toymaker Pantheon he’d been setting the Doctor against, so he rewrote the episode with the being from Midnight instead.

It’s heartening to know that Doctor Who is employing Black writers again, and so cool that one of them wanted to give Ncuti the adventure that he asked for. I’m not sure if the point about the Pantheon was the entire reason for the rewrite; often the need for rewrites are more complicated that a single soundbite can entail. (Orishas are not generally depicted as malevolent spirits within the Yoruba religion, to my understanding; perhaps that had something to do with it?) But either way, this is far from the original concept of the script, and results in bringing back one of the most terrifying antagonists the show has ever conceived.

The difficulty with bringing back a being so frightening is that it’s always diminishing returns after the first run. (See: The Weeping Angels. I’ll never stop being depressed over how their continued reuse and expanded mythology turned them into little more than a gimmick.) It’s hard to replicate everything that made “Midnight” one of the best locked-room style episodes that sci-fi television has ever produced. The whole story was largely an acting exercise meant to showcase the dramatic chops of a few extremely talented people. The entity of Midnight was terrifying because it was unknowable; filling in more information strips some magic away.

A number of clever techniques have been utilized here to make up for that, and many of them are successful. For one, we don’t ever really see the entity full on, only out the corner of our eye. For another, setting this story 400,000 years ahead of the first one means that the entity should have evolved somewhat—and so should its methods. There’s also a new suggestion as to how the creature manages to sow paranoia amongst the people it contacts: a whisper almost impossible to detect, but affecting anyone who can hear it. Thankfully, we don’t really learn anything more about it; its only desire still seems to be toward some form of escape, and beyond that… who knows?

The trouble is, because this wasn’t initially conceived as a sequel to “Midnight,” the setup has none of the punch of the original. It’s still creepy, but supplies none of the terror at having one’s voice subsumed. The entity outright kills now by simply tossing folks into the air? But only if you stand directly behind the person it is behind. (Which is a “rule” that gets enforced pretty willy-nilly within the episode itself, when all is said and done.) Furthermore, the idea that the creature doesn’t want to be seen feels arbitrary; it’s only in the script to make the creature more frightening, but without cause. Does something happen to it if you observe it? Is there a reason it’s difficult to see? Does it have a natural inclination toward camouflage?

Moreover, the core of “Midnight”’s premise—the presence of the entity bringing out the absolute worst in normal people via their own fear and panic—doesn’t play out here. Or rather, it did, before we arrived. The group that heads down to the base with Doctor and Belinda are a militarized outfit who are ostensibly prepared for potential threats, and the person who is the most aggressive in that group (Cassio) continues to be so throughout the episode up to his death. When Shaya causes said death, the Doctor immediately forgives it because “that’s what this being does to people,” a pretty casual out given what’s occurring around them.

It seems to me that a far more substantial rewrite needed to take place in order for this to feel like a worthy successor. As it is, the episode feels nice and spooky at first. We are given a lot of little clues throughout the opening that cue in the audience about where we might be: There’s talk of galvanic radiation, then the diamond mine, then the mention of an X-tonic star. We get to watch the Doctor reliving this terror as he realizes where he is. All of those elements are spot on, but once the reveal has taken place, the whole things starts to wobble.

I’m of two minds about how Aliss’ character was used in all this. Creating more disabled characters and having disabled actors to portray them is something the show has been working on consistently, which is impressive to see. There are a lot of touches to that effect, including the point where Aliss tells Belinda that it’s illegal in this time/place for medical personnel not to know sign language. The Doctor does know sign language (yes!), and the group has voice-to-speech tech that they’re required to use in communication with Aliss (yes), but they frequently leave her out of the loop regardless (unsurprising), and the Doctor still has to be called out for failing to suspect that Aliss can also lipread (it’s important for even the Doctor to be imperfect in this). Aliss is not the only disabled character in the episode either. One of the soldiers has a prosthetic leg, so this all feels a bit less tokenizing and, importantly, more realistic: Disabled people exist everywhere, all the time.

That said, the episode started with the better conceit for her being the last one standing among the diamond mine crew, and ended on a worse one. The initial suggestion is that the entity didn’t go for her because she wasn’t “important” enough as the crew’s cook. The episode then turns around and makes her specific disability the cause: If she can’t hear the entity, it can’t affect her as well. It’s the more obvious choice and, awkwardly, only works because the entity’s parameters have been altered for the episode. The being from Midnight operated by “stealing” people’s voices initially… and Aliss has a voice. It might have been far more interesting if the episode had used that as a starting point, rather than making Aliss’ disability essential for her character’s relevance to the plot.

And, of course, Shaya is a pretty great character whose death ultimately means nothing by the end. So that was disappointing.

Overall, we’re left with a tense episode and more clues about what’s coming: Mrs. Flood has her designated appearance (and I do like how exaggerated they’re becoming as we continue), the Earth has vanished, and Belinda still hasn’t made it home.

But the entity of Midnight has been freed—the one thing it truly wanted. Who knows where it might show up next.

Time and Space and Sundry

• The idea of the entity hiding behind people also draws similarities with the “there’s something on your back” accusations leveled at Donna throughout the (previous) fourth season, culminating in “Turn Left.”

• Doctor Who’s last “Toxic” cue occurred during “The End of the World,” the second episode of Nine and Rose Tyler’s tenure.

• So, does the Doctor have a 3D clothing printer in the wardrobe room now that scanned the ship they landed on, or… has he hung out with this group before? I’m gonna have to assume the former.

• Ncuti Gatwa is (obviously) a phenomenal actor, and now suffering from the common affliction that faces any actor housing so much raw emotional power: Every episode is churning out excuses for him to cry.

• Murray Gold used a few 20-year-old soundtrack flourishes on this one, but I almost wish I’d heard some echoes of the original “Midnight” score—that episode’s soundtrack was devastating.

See you next week![end-mark]

The post <i>Doctor Who</i> Revisits a Terrifying Villain in “The Well” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Takes Metafiction to New Heights in “Lux”

Don’t make him laugh!

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on April 22, 2025

Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf

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Image: James Pardon/BBC/Bad Wolf

We’re back once again with your regularly scheduled reviewer *waves* and an absolute delight of an episode.

Recap

At a cinema in Miami, Florida in the year 1952, a group of viewers are watching news reels about the atomic bomb. Next up is a cartoon about Mr. Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming, back again after his turn as James I in “The Witchfinders”) that contains a very catchy little tune. While it plays, moonlight bounces off a spoon in the projector room and onto the screen, which somehow brings Mr. Ring-a-Ding to life, and he comes through the screen to greet the audience as they scream.

Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor tells Belinda that he’s got a plan to get her home to May 24, 2025. It involves landing and using a contraption called a Vortex Indicator, which will act as an anchor that draws them back to the desired date very slowly. They land in 1952, and Belinda notes that her clothes wouldn’t be appropriate for the past. After the Doctor gleefully hauls her off to wardrobe, they both reemerge in stunning period-accurate getups complete with hair and makeup. It’s the middle of the night in; they have landed next to a movie theater that has been chained shut. There are flowers and notes on the doorstep, mourning multiple people. The Vortex Indicator does its job and Belinda wants to be off, but realizes the Doctor wants to investigate. They head to a diner across the road, where the server (Lewis Cornay) tells them all about the 15 people who disappeared from that theater three months ago. The police searched it up and down, finding nothing. There’s films still playing at night because the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) keeps them going, despite the place being locked up.

They’re introduced to Renée Lowenstein (Lucy Thackeray), who is happy to let them sit with her and ask questions if the diner doesn’t mind bending the rules; 1952 Florida is a legally segregated place, and “blacks” (which would include Belinda, regardless of specific ethnicity) aren’t allowed to sit. The server doesn’t mind, as it’s the middle of the night and no one is there to complain. Renée tells them about her boy who disappeared that night in the theater, and how she comes there often, unwilling to give up her search. The Doctor tells her to hold onto her hope, as it’s the most powerful thing she has. He promises to find her son. Inside the theater, the Doctor arrives on the stage and calls up to Mr. Pye, who is silently begging them to leave. They are met by Mr. Ring-a-Ding, who seems to be a living cartoon, a being made of light.

For every question, Mr. Ring-a-Ding tells the Doctor not to make him laugh (his cartoon catchphrase), until the Doctor finally asks why. The reason is because his laugh is “The Giggle,” indicative of the Toymaker’s children. Mr. Ring-a-Ding is truly Lux Imperator, the god of light, who is one of the Gods of Chaos. Before he can descend on them, the projector begins to play and traps Lux into the Mr. Ring-a-Ding dance number. The Doctor and Belinda flee to the projector room to talk to Reginald Pye, who admits that the reason he’s been playing movies is to feed Lux light, in exchange for the chance to see his dead wife as a resurrected image. The Doctor finds the 15 missing people, imprinted on cellulose and trapped. Lux finally finds them; the Doctor reminds him that he must admit how he can be beaten, the same rules that apply to the rest of his kind. Lux tells the Doctor to think about what he never does, then turns the Doctor and Belinda into cartoons.

The Doctor and Belinda realize that when they discuss complicated feelings, they become more three-dimensional, until they’re finally fully human again, but still stuck in the film. The Doctor suggests that they try to escape the reel and they find themselves back in the theater—only to be set upon by Renée and a cop (William Meredith), who are there to arrest them for being in a “whites only” space and suspicious activity. The Doctor quickly sees through this ruse: They’re still in the film. Knowing that pulling at the reel doesn’t work, he realizes that perhaps they have to push their way out of the screen. They do, and arrive in the living room of three Doctor Who fans: Robyn (Steph Lacey), Hassan (Samir Arrain), and Lizzie (Bronté Barbé). They tell the Doctor that he’s the main character of a TV show and they are super fans. (Their favorite episode is “Blink,” dismaying the Doctor.)

The group thinks this episode is kind of obvious, but urge the Doctor to get back to the plot and stop Lux, telling him not to worry about them. Belinda is confused by this, but the fans explain: They’re actually the characters in all this, and not even ones important enough to get last names. They thank the Doctor for allowing them to exist in this moment and meet their best friends. The Doctor tells Belinda that they need to halt the film by holding the frame and make it burn under the projector’s heat, which works and pops them back into the real world. The Doctor’s hand is burned, but he’s saved a little extra regenerative energy for this and heals himself. Lux reemerges and ties the Doctor up with film stock; he plans to use the Doctor’s regenerative energy to build himself a body.

The thing Lux never does: Go outside. He wants more light, but he cannot step into it, and hopes that by creating a new body for himself, he can then absorb even more, from something like an atomic explosion. Lux begins to drain the Doctor, becoming hideously three-dimensional. Belinda rushes to burn the film stock and the cinema with it. Mr. Pye is the one with matches, but he’s too afraid, until the image of his wife (Jane Hancock) comes to him with matches in hand and tells him to do this in order to find her again. Pye tells Belinda to flee and burns the stock himself. An explosion from the fire puts a hole in the wall of the building and daylight hits Lux, who reverts to two dimensions and grows and grows in the sunlight until he’s ever-expanding and everywhere and dissipates into nothingness. The missing people are returned to the world and reunited with their loved ones. As the Doctor and Belinda leave, Mrs. Flood shows up and encourages everyone to watch the TARDIS’s departure, saying it’s a great show—one that will be ending on May 24th. And that’s a wrap.

Suddenly there’s a mid-credits scene where the trio of fans begin criticizing the episode… only to realize, with joy, that they are still here.

Commentary

Okay, there are layers to this one. 

This episode is steeped in metafiction, but in the best possible way—with a wink and a nudge, rather than the insistence that everything is so much deeper that way. It’s buzzy and quick and clever, rather than ponderous and tired. And my favorite meta aspect is probably not the most obvious one at first glance…

You see, the Disney-partnered restart of Doctor Who has resulted in labeling all of Fifteen’s episodes as though they’re a new show. Just like the restart of 2005, Gatwa’s era began as another “season one.” (Do I agree with this in practice? No, it’s incredibly confusing. But that’s still how they’re going about it.) So “Lux” is labelled as season two, episode two. In this episode, a being made by moonlight is defeated by destroying it with even more light. When Belinda questions this, the Doctor tells her, “We’re 60 percent water and we can still drown.”

Any of that sound familiar?

Oh right, “Tooth and Claw,” a delightful adventure in Scotland with the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler. Where the antagonist was a werewolf—made by moonlight. And the creature is defeated with an abundance of focused moonlight. And when Rose questions this, the Doctor tells her, “You’re 70 percent water—you can still drown.”

In season two, episode two. 

I may have punched the air when that came to me.

There’s so much to love about this episode. It’s simultaneously expansive and extremely low-rent; obviously the Lux special effects weren’t cheap, but everything else has that old school soundstage feel that sets Doctor Who apart. (Some folks do not like that, but it’s a big winner for me.) All of the animations have clearly been meticulously researched and matched to very specific art styles from different eras. This is technically a first companion adventure (being the first time the companion agrees to join in rather than getting waylaid or kidnapped), and Belinda is jammed through an emotional meat grinder as all the things happen to her at once.

Though I’m sure all viewers will feel differently, I’ve been overall impressed with how Doctor Who is handling racism in Gatwa’s episodes: not shirking the idea out of discomfort, but only allowing it to dominate the narrative when there’s a purpose. Here, we’ve got an acknowledgment of segregation in America at the point when they’ve landed (something Thirteen had to confront more openly due to her companions, but it’s different when it applies to yourself). They’re helped out by a few factors. For one, it’s the dead of night, so there are fewer people to encounter. Helpfully, the white people in the diner across the road aren’t bigots (this coming with the caveat that we don’t know if they’re fighting segregation in any meaningful way aside from not being awful, but hey, every little bit counts). They don’t really get into it, but the fact that they’re from the U.K. helps, too; Americans are largely suckers for those accents in every era, which is the height of irony for obvious reasons.

But Lux’s trick with the police officer was an excellent handling of those themes as well—not just for the continuity joke, but because it metafictionally points out that the way popular fiction addresses racism is often, well, kinda cheap. You feel it when they get stormed in on; the threat has the potential to be real, but it’s also incredibly boring and does nothing to actually help the audience understand how racism affects people. Better for the Doctor to erase it with a smirk here, where it serves no purpose.

Also worth mentioning is that this episode is incredibly low on shooty, explodey action style sequences, and boy do I miss when more television did that. Doctor Who should do that more often than not. This is largely a puzzle episode, with a lot of enjoyable jokes packed in, and it proves how well you can write something that moves and jives without needing all that excessive violence.

This isn’t the first time a show has directly called out its own fandom, but it might be my favorite? Sherlock did it as a send up of all the theorizing fans were doing after the “Reichenbach Fall,” and Supernatural dredged up their own fans more than once, very awkwardly. Superhero yarns will often touch on this conceit through in-universe fans (like Shazam!) or deep fourth wall breaks (She-Hulk). Doctor Who arguably did this with the character of Osgood in a similar vein.

But here, we have a fourth wall break that boomerangs back on itself: The Doctor is being (accurately) told that he’s a fictional character on a television show, only for us to find out that the fans are the fictional characters, created to distract the Doctor from what’s really going on during the episode.

These fans look like many Whovian nerds I’ve met at conventions over the years, unglamorous, bright, and brimming with deep cuts. (The shirts, they’re all more telling than that scarf could ever be.) They feel more real than any version of fandom I’ve ever seen on screen. But… they’re not. And once they come to that realization, they know they’ve got to let the Doctor get back to doing what he does best. But it’s okay. They were born with best friends, and they got to meet them a few minutes ago. That’s a pretty great life, no matter how truncated.

Wasn’t really expecting to cry during this episode, but that’s often how Davies works.

And then they’re not really gone. Because television is magic and the Doctor is magic and there’s no reason not to summon a little more magic after fighting a being made of light and urging him into an existential crisis death that fills the cosmos.

Damn, I love this show.

Time and Space and Sundry

• A very neat little nod to the fan characters saying that they aren’t important enough to get last names—they are listed in the credits with last names. Welcome to Hassan Chowdry, Lizzie Abel and Robyn Gossage. It would be a real treat to see them again, though I’m not sure how they’d manage it.

• All I can think about is how confusing it would be to view a two-dimensional being in a three-dimensional world? Because it doesn’t seem like Lux is flat, exactly. It’s more like the perspective of him shifts as though he were 3D as you move around him, which I imagine would do such a number on your brain and sense of space. (Also, I love when they render human-ish designed cartoons as 3D beings and we get to see how heinous they’d look in realtime.)

• The palette for this episode was glorious, basically variations on primary colors for the entire wardrobe set. It’s most obvious at the end when the theatergoers come back, but you get the idea well enough with the Doctor’s blue, Belinda’s yellow, and the rich red of the theater itself.

• There is no way you can convince me that the Doctor didn’t do Belinda’s hair. I don’t believe that any other Doctor would have the desire or the patience, but Fifteen absolutely does, and it brings me endless happiness.

• The mention of Rock Hudson feels particularly meaningful for Gatwa’s Doctor—connecting him with queer icons of the past will always wring emotions out of me. Particularly a figure who was officially “outed” for his contraction of HIV, leading to his eventual death from AIDS… the primary reason behind an entire generation of missing queer elders.

• Of course the Doctor is Velma. Most queers are Velma, this is just A Thing That Is Known. This is also not the first time Doctor Who has played with Scooby-Doo references, the most obvious being the chase scene at the start of “Love and Monsters.” The Hanna-Barbera cartoon style was an excellent touch, too.

• Mr. Pye and his wife also made me teary, though the idea that her image is sort of inducing him to suicide is maybe a bit darker than the episode realizes.

• I know that they needed to show the fancy Time Lord energy to seed the idea that Lux would drain him, but it seems incredibly silly for the Doctor to use his all-important leftover regenerative energies to heal a tiny burn.

• Okay, Mrs. Flood, we get it, you’re eternal and everywhere, just tell us who you are already.

See you next week![end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Teases About Generative AI in “The Robot Revolution”

Welcome to the new season of Doctor Who, and to planet… Missbelindachandra?

By Sylas K Barrett

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Published on April 14, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

Doctor Who is back! But your regularly scheduled Reactor reviewer is on hiatus until next week, so you get a special guest review for the season premier from me, their beloved companion. Just think of it like one of those episodes in which the Doctor mysteriously disappears, and the companion has to Become the Doctor in the errant Time Lord’s stead. That always goes well. Right?

Recap

Seventeen years earlier: A girl named Belinda (Varada Sethu) is courted by a boy named Alan (Jonny Green). Alan has bought a certificate to name a star after Belinda, but she is dismayed to note that the full name includes the title “Miss.” They share an awkward kiss.

In the present day: Belinda is a hard-working hospital nurse. After a day spent working and narrowly missing the Doctor as he swans about the hospital, Belinda returns to the home she shares with too many roommates, only to be woken in the middle of the night by huge robots, who inform her that she is Queen of the planet Missbelindachandra. As she’s taken aboard their ship, she asks her neighbor, Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) to send a message to her parents. The Doctor arrives in time to see the ship take off.

Belinda tries to convince the robots that they want Alan, not her, and experiences a strange warping of time before arriving on the planet, where she finds that the local people have been turned against and enslaved by the “robot overlords.” She is greeted by Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller), and the Historian—aka the Doctor—warns her of an impending rebel attack. He rescues Belinda, but many rebels die in the process, including Sasha 55, who the Doctor was close with. A rebel named Manny (Max Parker) blames “the Queen” for their deaths.

The Doctor fills Belinda in on how the robots and Missbelindachandrians once lived peacefully, but ten years ago turned violent and took over. Belinda helps out with the wounded and learns that her Star Certificate, which the robots made her bring when they left Earth, is already on the planet, and has been for a long time. The Doctor confirms that they are the same object appearing twice, and that the same atoms cannot exist twice in the same place without a very big boom.

Belinda alerts the robots to her location in order to save the lives of the rebels, and is brought to the AI Generator (the overlord of the robots), which she is supposed to “marry” by becoming a human-robot fusion. She discovers that the AI Generator is actually the AL Generator, her ex-boyfriend Alan, who was accidentally brought to the world ten years earlier at her suggestion, through the time distortion. Alan, who saw the world like a video game he could play and win, is controlling the robots. When Belinda realizes that the Alan-robot hybrid has the duplicate Star Certificate, she uses her own to connect to his, initiating an explosion in which she sees Alan at every age. The Doctor wraps his arms around her, absorbing Belinda’s half of the explosion and saving her.

With Alan gone, the robots are no longer against the humans; the rebels declare their intention to rebuild together and to rename the citadel in honor of Shasha 55.

The Doctor takes Belinda onto the TARDIS, where he tells her about her descendant, Mundy Flynn, saying they must be destined to know each other. But she resists his attempts to make her the new companion and demands to be taken home in time to get to her morning shift. The Doctor tries, but continually finds the TARDIS blocked by a mysterious force. He promises to get her home even if it’s the long way ‘round. As the TARDIS dematerializes, a destroyed taxi and some iconic Earth buildings float through space.

Analysis

This was a delightfully whimsical season premiere, and very on brand for Russell T. Davies. The Doctor uses onomatopoeia to quickly (and adorably) describe some weird time-and-space phenomena. There’s the good old “timey-wimey” paradox of so many of the Doctor’s adventures, with Alan being brought to Missbelindachandra because Belinda told the robots to look for him, while Belinda only arrives because Alan requested her, and while the Star Certificate is somehow already a foundational piece of the planets’ history—a mystery that probably won’t be explained until the end of the season, at the earliest. There’s the Doctor running around looking for the companion as the companion goes about her day and the two continually just miss each other. There’s the Doctor arriving somewhere at the wrong time and having to take the slow path while he waits to catch up to events. There’s a tiny retro robot who all the main characters (and me, the viewer) want to keep as a pet. There’s a misdirect when you think the “other”—in this case, big robots—is the villain when it’s really just a crappy human man. 

And there’s a rule of time travel that should never ever ever be broken, except for this one time because it’s the only way and the Doctor is here to—literally—absorb the explosive results.

It’s a very busy episode, but impressively tight for all that. Every necessary detail is well seeded throughout the script, and somehow there’s still room to breathe and to get to know the new companion as well as some of the secondary characters, like Sasha 55 and Manny. And did I mention that the polish robot was delightful? Because it was. Though it is hard not to notice, at this point, that every robot on Doctor Who sounds like Nicholas Briggs—every single one is either a little bit Cyberman or a little bit Dalek.

It’s also a solid introduction to the character of Belinda, who is endlessly charming and promises to be a very interesting companion. She is somewhat reminiscent of Martha, not just because she works in a hospital but because of the way her personality balances practicality, a strong drive to care for others, and the impression that she maybe lets people walk all over her a little too much but is in the process of growing beyond that. Also, she’s a medical professional who learns about the Doctor’s two hearts on their very first adventure, though Belinda gets to do it using much fancier and more futuristic medical equipment than Martha does. Lucky duck.

Like many of the Doctor’s more recent companions, Belinda is ready to call him out for his behavior when necessary. She particularly notes his scanning of her genetics without asking first, and curtails his enthusiastic desire to travel with her by telling him that she is “not one of his adventures.” In that moment, the viewer is reminded of Donna a little, and of the fact that this Doctor is more ready to accept such a reminder than earlier versions of him were, in part because his most immediately previous personality spent/is spending his life on Earth, learning to heal and being kept in line by one Donna Noble (and family).

Davies also loves to take a thematic cause in his stories, and “The Robot Revolution” is no different. But while his style has never been subtle, and recent trends in television and film run towards scripts that are more obvious and direct, “The Robot Revolution” is particularly engaging because its subject isn’t quite what you first think… except for the fact that it actually is.

We are presented at first with a narrative about the evils of generative AI, a topic that is particularly on the minds of today’s viewers. It is later revealed that the AI Generator is not a robot consciousness at all, but a human one—a surprising turn of events until one considers that the AI generator of our time has no sentience of its own, either. All its evils, as well as any of its goods, are actually those of its creators, sellers, and users. Alan, meanwhile, is initially presented as a condescending and sexist young man, but is later revealed to be the architect of an entire civil war which has resulted in the death and enslavement of a whole planet of people. But, as the flashback scene when he arrives on Missbelindachandra shows, these two aspects of Alan are actually one and the same: He is a man who views an alien world as nothing more than a plaything, as a game he can win over everyone else, be that an entire population, or just one girl who dumped him seventeen years ago.

All in all, this season premiere has been a delight, and I am so excited to see what else Russell, Gatwa, and Sethu have in store for us.  

Time and Space and Sundry

• Another aspect of Belinda’s character that is reminiscent of Martha is the fact that Sethu already played a character on an earlier season of Doctor Who, one who was retroactively declared a relative of the companion she is now portraying. In Sethu’s case it’s Mundy Flynn, a descendant of Belinda’s, while Freema Agyeman first played Martha’s cousin, Adeola, who died at Canary Wharf.
• Belinda’s story is also evocative of the classic Doctor Who character Tegan Jovanka. An Australian stewardess who ended up on the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS by accident, Tegan’s desire to be returned home was continually thwarted by the TARDIS, the universe, and occasionally the Doctor himself, which seems to be exactly the problem Belinda is going to run into.
• Belinda’s Star Certificate, so important to the history of the whole planet, and probably to the entire mystery of the season, is as without substance as everything else Alan does. It’s implied that Belinda loves some aspects of the gift: She doesn’t like the “Miss” part, and breaks up with the man who gave it to her for being controlling and dismissive, but she did keep the Certificate, and seems genuine when she tells him it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever given her. But if the Star Certificate program in the Doctor Who universe is anything like the International Star Registry of our universe, the gift is also not real, whether Alan knew that or not. Despite being hugely popular, the ISR has no license to register star names, and no professional astronomical organization recognizes any name purchased through them. (On our world, anyway. On some other planet, it may be the foundation of a society. Only Time, and maybe some big red robots, can say for sure.)
• Ncuti Gatwa has such star power that it’s sometimes hard to see anything else while he’s on screen, but I really appreciated how well balanced the episode was. Gatwa continues to shine, but both his performance and the scripting and cinematography really made space for Belinda to take center stage in the episode. Sethu and Gatwa played really well off each other. I particularly enjoyed the humorous moments Belinda was given, including her chugging of chocolate milk before collapsing face down into bed, and her outrage over the fact that the robots killed a cat that didn’t even belong to her.
• Do I think they had to dress the Doctor in the drab clothing of the enslaved Missbelindachandrians in order to make sure Belinda had our complete focus? Yes. Yes I do. Did you see that pinstripe vest and long kilt-trouser situation? I could die. Absolutely iconic.
• And hello again, Mrs. Flood. I did, in fact, see you.

Next week![end-mark]

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Doctor Who: Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu Discuss the First Episode’s True Villain

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 14, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Warning! This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who’s first episode this season, “The Robot Revolution.”

The latest season of Doctor Who is upon us! We finally have more episodes with Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor and this season’s new reluctant companion, Ms. Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu.

We’ll dig into all the details of “The Robot Revolution” elsewhere on Reactor. This post is about Gatwa and Sethu’s thoughts about the ending of the episode, which they shared at a press conference that Reactor attended.

Here’s your second spoiler warning! We’re about to delve into the reveal at the end of the episode… where the Doctor and Belinda disover that the mysterious “AI” that made the robots attack the humanoids is actually a guy named Al, Belinda’s misogynist ex-boyfriend, who—through timey wimey machinations—corrupted the robots on the planet a decade ago. This ending touches on toxic masculinity, which could be argued is the real villain of the episode.

“It’s interesting, because in toxic masculinity, there’s no survivors, and Al is a victim of it too,” said Gatwa. “I think in our society, when we think about young boys: Are they the villains or is it systemic?”

He later added, “Look at what [Al’s] done to himself because of toxic masculinity. He’s completely mutilated himself and made himself into a machine. And like, metaphorically, that’s really interesting: What happens when you deny yourself the ability to feel, to have compassion for others?”

Varada agreed that there’s a question of whether the “messaging that they receive” is the main issue. She also added that the episode has a counter-message to toxic masculinity, which we get through Belinda. “I think the most important thing, regardless of gender—I think that’s quite arbitrary in this case—is to lead with compassion and kindness and to be authentic to yourself, and to not have to try and follow some kind of structure that someone’s trying to put on you.”

New episodes of Doctor Who premiere on Disney+ on Saturdays. [end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who: Ncuti Gatwa & Varada Sethu Dish on Their Characters’ “Partnership”

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 3, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

This upcoming season of Doctor Who sees Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor with a new companion, played by Varada Sethu. Whovians, of course, have seen Sethu before: She had a lead part in 2024’s “Boom” as a soldier in the devastating war on Kastarion 3.

When Sethu got that part, she thought she was done with Doctor Who. “I literally could not believe that I was able to come back,” she said in a press conference with Gatwa that Reactor attended. “I didn’t know there was a history of actors who had played another role and then came back as a companion. So I just thought, once I got to play a guest lead in ‘Boom,’ that that was the shot, and I was very sad about that, because I had such a great time.”

Sethu’s new role is Belinda Chandra, a nurse who apparently has ties to her previous Doctor Who character. “I was very, very curious to see how [showrunner Russell T. Davies] would write in, how he would make a nod towards that connection,” she said. “And I love that he’s managed to tie it into the story, into how and why their relationship is so special… there’s an importance to why the Doctor keeps coming back to this person.”

Belinda, as one of the show’s trailers makes clear, isn’t eager to find herself inside the TARDIS. “They’re very much equals,” Sethu said about her and Gatwa’s characters. “They’re a team figuring out how to get back home. She’s got very much her own life, her own plot, her own main character journey. And when she gets plucked out of that by the Doctor, in some ways, all she wants is to go home. She doesn’t want to be somebody else’s little adventure. She wants to go back to her life. And she challenges him, she holds him accountable. And eventually, they become very aligned, and they realize they need to work together to be this team to get back to Earth.”

Gatwa agreed and called Belinda and the Doctor’s relationship a partnership. “Belinda has absolutely no interest and is not charmed at all by the Doctor at first,” he said with a laugh, adding that they do eventually form a bond that “is just as deep as any that that there’s been, maybe more.”

He continued, “The payoff is that they really value each other and they value each other’s value systems. But yeah, she challenges him and calls him out.”

We can see Belinda and the Doctor’s bond begin to grow when Doctor Who premieres on Disney+ on April 12, 2025. [end-mark]

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Ncuti Gatwa’s Favorite Doctor Who Episodes May Surprise You

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 2, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Another season of Doctor Who is premiering on Disney+ in mere days—the perfect time to rewatch some of your favorite episodes of the decades-long series.

If you’re having trouble narrowing down what to revisit, however, the current Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, has some suggestions for you!

In a recent press conference that Reactor attended, he and Varada Sethu, who plays the Doctor’s companion this upcoming season, shared their favorite episodes of the series.

One of Gatwa’s favorites is an episode often recommended to those new to the Who. I’m talking, of course, about “Blink”: the tenth episode from the 2007 season, where David Tennant’s Doctor and introduces us to the Weeping Angels, statue-like beings who remain statue-like—as long as you’re watching them. When your eyes turn away, however, they rush toward you and cause death in conceptually devastating ways.

Gatwa’s other favorite is an excellent two-parter from 2006, which was Tennant’s first year as the Tenth Doctor. “I really, really love—I don’t know why, I guess it’s my religious upbringing—but I really loved when [the Doctor] faced the Devil, and the Devil took over the Ood and brainwashed the Ood,” he said. “That episode I found so brilliant, because I feel like it was the start of [past and current showrunner Russell T. Davies] incorporating fantasy. It was like a slight deviation from sci-fi… it felt like the first episode of that season that was less sci-fi and more mystical.”

The names of those two episodes are “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit.” They, along with “Blink,” are currently available for streaming on Max (Disney+ is home to Gatwa’s first season of Doctor Who, as well as the 2023 specials).

You’ll also be able to watch Sethu’s favorite episode on the streaming platform, though you’ll have to wait a few weeks. “I’m going to say an episode from our season,” she said during the press conference. “My favorite episode is the second episode—it’s set in 1950s Miami and we become animated, very briefly, so I just loved that. I loved the process of filming that, but also I love that it was a cartoon villain. It was just so much fun.”

Doctor Who premieres on Disney+ on April 12, 2025. [end-mark]

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Reality Is in Danger in the Upcoming Season of Doctor Who

The Doctor always takes the long way round.

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 24, 2025

Image: BBC

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Image: BBC

The new season of Doctor Who (confusingly being referred to as the “second season,” but we can’t do anything about that) is coming our way in just a few weeks. Naturally, that means there’s a new trailer, which like the previous one focuses heavily on Varada Sethu’s character, Belinda Chandra—though when she finds out her new traveling companion is just called the Doctor, she says she’s the Nurse.  “Good team,” Ncuti Gatwa immediately replies.

And they do seem like a good team! The trailer is essentially a more mellow remix of the previous look at the season: a little less adventuring, a little more feels, a Phil Collins song with lyrics that are way too on the nose. Belinda really wants to get home, but something seems to be awry with the TARDIS, which keeps not taking them to the right year. And in the future, no one’s even heard of Earth.

Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday appears briefly, as does the creepy cartoon voiced by Alan Cumming, who turns our dynamic duo into cartoons too:  “I’m all flat!” Belinda says.  “And this waistline is impossible!”

The BBC has also announced the episode titles, writers, and directors for this season:

“The Robot Revolution” written by Russell T Davies, directed by Peter Hoar
“Lux” written by Russell T Davies, directed by Amanda Brotchie
“The Well” written by Russell T Davies & Sharma Angel Walfall, directed by Amanda Brotchie
“Lucky Day” written by Pete McTighe, directed by Peter Hoar
“The Story & the Engine” written by Inua Ellams, directed by Makalla McPherson
“The Interstellar Song Contest” written by Juno Dawson, directed by Ben A. Williams
“Wish World” written by Russell T Davies, directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai
“The Reality War” written by Russell T Davies, directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai

Some notable names on this list: writer Juno Dawson has written for Who-affiliated podcasts and is the author of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven and its sequels. Director Peter Hoar previously directed The Last of Us’ “Long, Long Time” and episodes of Altered Carbon and The Umbrella Academy. Amanda Brotchie’s resume includes episodes of Gentleman Jack and Renegade Nell, Alex Sanjiv Pillai returns to Who following last year’s Christmas episode, and Pete McTighe wrote two Who episodes in the Jodie Whittaker era.

Doctor Who premieres April 12th on Disney Plus.[end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Doctor Who Trailer Introduces Us to Varada Sethu’s Nurse

He’s Velma, thank you very much.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 3, 2025

Credit: Disney+

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Credit: Disney+

There’s another round of Doctor Who episodes coming our way! This spring, Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor is coming back for his second season, and we got a trailer today that gives us a glimpse of what’s in store, including a look at the Doctor’s new companion, Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu.

The two-minute trailer is, in a word, amazing. It introduces us to this iteration of Sethu, who we’ve seen in another role in previous Who episodes, which the Doctor (and this trailer) is quick to point out. This character is called Belinda and is a nurse (or at least calls herself one, though she might be joking) and just wants to go home instead of deal with the Doctor’s shenanigans.

Things don’t turn out the way she initially hopes, however, and she’s off on adventures involving an intergalactic Eurovision contest, dinosaur-like skeletons coming to life, and Alan Cumming voicing a cartoon that literally jumps out of a screen. The duo appear to be facing a threat to the entire fabric of reality, because Doctor Who.

The trailer also gives us a delightful moment where the Doctor is offended that Belinda calls him Scooby-Doo, causing him to respond, “Honey. I’m Velma.”

And if that wasn’t enough, we also see Millie Gibson, who played the Doctor’s previous companion, in a reprisal of her role as Ruby Sunday.

Doctor Who returns with one episode on April 12, 2025 on Disney+. The remaining seven episodes will drop weekly.

Check out the trailer below. (And yes, the trailer says it’s “Season Two” of the show, which, of course, is confusing at best. But let’s just accept it and move on.)[end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Doctor Who Returns In April—With Alan Cumming as a Cartoon

Is your brain making the TARDIS noise now? Mine is.

By Molly Templeton

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Published on February 26, 2025

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You’re going to see a lot of headlines about how Alan Cumming returns to the world of Doctor Who in the upcoming season, and they may largely be slightly misleading: This time, Alan Cumming (who previously appeared in “The Witchfinders”) simply provides the voice of an animated character, Mr. Ring-a-Ding, in the season’s second episode. Temper your expectations accordingly.

But with that reality check out of the way: Hey, Doctor Who is back very soon! Disney announced today that Gatwa’s much-anticipated second season arrives in April on Disney+ and the BBC. This time around, the Doctor has a second companion, Belinda Chandra (Andor’s Varada Sethu) along with returning companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). The brief season synopsis puts the focus on Belinda:

Disney’s announcement has more to say about Cumming’s Mr. Ring-a-Ding, “a happy, funny, singalong cartoon, who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally. However, in 1952, after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside—and the consequences are terrifying.”

Along with Cumming, the upcoming season’s guest stars include Rose Ayling-Ellis, Christopher Chung, Anita Dobson, Michelle Greenidge, Jonah Hauer-King, Ruth Madeley, Jemma Redgrave, and Susan Twist.

Russell T Davies continues to serve as writer and showrunner on Who, which premieres Saturday, April 12th, on Disney+ in the U.S. and the BBC and BBC iPlayer in the UK. This season has eight weekly episodes total.[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Celebrates Christmas With a Fizzle in “Joy to the World”

Doctor Who Christmas Specials are always hit or miss. This one was extremely miss.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on December 31, 2024

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We open on the London Blitz, and like Dr. Sam Beckett at the start of every Quantum Leap episode, I mutter “Oh boy…”

Recap

It’s the London Blitz and the Doctor enters in on a couple, asking if they need a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte. They don’t appear to, so he moves on, arriving on the Orient Express in 1962, a Mount Everest basecamp in 1953, and the Sandringham Hotel on Christmas 2024. Before he arrives there, though, a woman named Joy (Nicola Coughlan) gets a room from the proprietor, Anita (Steph de Whalley). Right after she checks in, a Silurian (Jonathan Aris) holding a briefcase appears. He tells her “The star seed will bloom and the flesh will rise.” The Doctor enters and quickly knows he’s found the right spot. It turns out that the Doctor is at the Time Hotel in London on Christmas, year 4202. He arrives to get some milk for his coffee and is spotted by Trev (Joel Fry), who works at the hotel. The Doctor heads back into the TARDIS, but notes that he’s put on his coat and grabbed the sonic—he noticed something.

He emerges into the hotel lobby and sees a man with a briefcase (Joshua Reese) chained to his wrist—and Trev wants to know what he’s doing here. The Doctor claims that he’s a special investigator and that Trev works for him now. He figures out the conceit of the Time Hotel, orders his toastie and pumpkin latte, and lets that fellow with the briefcase head off to the bar. Mr. Briefcase hands the case off to the barman (Liam Prince-Donnelly), who is now chained to the case and possessed. He tells the man that he’ll be dead shortly. The barman calls Trev into the bar and hands off the briefcase to him as the first man disintegrates. As the Doctor heads into different rooms and offers his snack tray, Trev heads to reception and hands the briefcase to the Silurian hotel manager—the case is trying to upgrade its access. Trev dies, disappointed that he’s let the Doctor down. The Doctor meets Joy and hotel manager, and he wants to know what the briefcase is, but he also knows that the manager is far too keen for him to take it. Joy gets irritated that everyone is ignoring her and grabs the briefcase instead.

Joy is now possessed and tells the manager that he’s dying. The Doctor talks the manager through his death, then opens the briefcase to find a star seed inside. The briefcase says that the wearer will be disintegrated if it’s not closed, but then demands a security code that they don’t have. The Doctor from the future bursts in to give them the code—he takes Joy and tells himself that he needs to go the long way around to get the code. The current Doctor starts yelling at himself that this is the reason why everyone leaves him, and that he lives in a spaceship with chairs and doesn’t even notice because no one comes around. The future Doctor locks him into the hotel room and breaks the connection. The Doctor goes downstairs and asks Anita if she needs any help around the place. He works at the hotel for a whole year, becoming close friends with Anita and upgrading everything with Time Lord tech. He eventually asks her about the door in his room that’s always locked; she says that most of those doors lead to cupboards, but the one in the honeymoon suite isn’t. 

At the end of a year, the Doctor has to leave, but he tells Anita that he enjoyed this sample of the slow path in life because he got one whole year of her. They share a tearful farewell and the Doctor finds another door to the Time Hotel in New York City. He breaks in on himself to give the code and breaks the connection so previous him has to take his year-long break. The Doctor learns that the thing possessing Joy is looking for the right time zone to leave the star seed in; the Doctor realizes that a corporation is using the Time Hotel to get their own custom-made star for a energy source in no time at all. The Doctor starts tweaking at Joy about what kind of person would choose the hotel room he found her staying in, insisting the hotels are mirrors that show how people truly think of themselves. He starts to tease her for her name, saying that it doesn’t suit her at all, and wondering why her mother named her that. Joy begins to get angry and tells him that she couldn’t see her mother when she died because of the “rules” in the hospital during the covid pandemic. She said goodbye to her mother on an iPad on Christmas.

Joy breaks down, not realizing that the Doctor was trying to get her roused because her emotions broke the connection, and the suitcase is no longer attached to her. He figures out that the people behind using the star seed is Villengard (the same arms manufacturer from “Boom.”) all over again, completely fine with destroying the Earth to get their star. He also didn’t notice that they walked into a room linked to the late Cretaceous Period: a T-rex eats the briefcase, giving the star seed time to mature. Back in the hotel halls, the Doctor panicking, but the sonic starts buzzing—Trev and all the victims of the briefcase have been uploaded into the Villengard systems, and Trev has been working from the inside to help the Doctor locate the star seed. He leads them to the next time period, and the briefcase has been buried in a temple millions of years later. The Doctor drags rope from the Everest crew through several time periods within the hotel and attaches it to the temple wall to free the briefcase.

The Doctor gets back to the temple, but he can’t find Joy or the briefcase. Ascending a staircase, he finds Joy outside glowing. She’s absorbed the star seed (along with the fellow occupants who held the briefcase), and plans to take it away far enough that it won’t hurt anyone. Joy is happy to be saving the world, and doesn’t mind becoming a star. She ascends into the heavens and is reborn. Everyone across the timelines sees her shining, including Ruby, at home, who calls her mom. A representative (Fiona Marr) from the Time Hotel comes to see Anita and offer her a job, with a card from the Doctor. During the pandemic in 2020, we see Joy saying goodbye to her mother, but after they get off the phone, the star shines on her mother and the two join together. The Doctor sees the star and realizes the importance of it: She is the star shining over Bethlehem on the day that Christ is born. 

Commentary

When “Bethlehem: 0001” flashed on the screen, I shrieked “noooooo” at my television like Darth Vader learning that Padmé died.

Wow, I hate it so much? And that’s without getting into niggling pedantic things like—the hotel is supposed to be Christmas everywhere you go, but if you do believe that Jesus was one real-life person who was born on planet Earth, it was absolutely not on December 25th. Or other pedantic things like—Joy absorbs the star seed (somehow) and once she does that gives her the ability to fly into space, billions of lightyears away in an instant and also for the star’s light to reach Earth IMMEDIATELY.

Oh fine, it’s Christmas magic? Yeah, let’s go with that because it’s super meaningful that this woman, whose only characteristics are “plucky” and “lost her mom during the pandemic in an extremely traumatic way” is now a shining star that makes people feel things. Anita actually gets more character build-up than their major guest star (Nichola Coughlan deserved so much better than this), and it turns out that wasn’t part of the original plan either: Anita’s character originally had far fewer lines, but the production team liked her so much that the part was expanded.

As a result, we have an incredibly unbalanced episode where the Doctor forms this sweet bond with a woman he gets to take the slow path with for a year. We don’t know enough about her either, but we know more enough that it feels as though she should be the co-star of this tale. Her story is this lovely little microcosm of the bonds the Doctor sometimes forms with people, and how that bond can be both painful and uplifting at once. But again, we have no idea why anything in Anita’s life is this way, and why she’s so alone with only this hotel to look after. If her character and Joy’s had combined, we’d have had one solid piece of plot and a whole character to enjoy.

Look, I was ready to get swept away. When we started on the London Blitz, I assumed Moffat was having a dig at himself, and I appreciated the impulse. But then we immediately get into the bit about how one hotel door is always locked and no one ever asking why or where it goes. Which is Moffat 101 for creating horror: name a normal thing that people don’t realize is extremely creepy, then give it a reason for existing.

The problem is, people do usually ask what that locked door in a hotel room is about. I always asked. I’ve never known a person to not ask on entering a room. And the two primary answers are boring and pretty obvious—they’re either cupboards full of cleaning supplies, or they’re doors that connect private rooms, so that large parties can bug each other without having to head out into the hallway. This is not much of a mystery or an effective way to build tension.

Then there’s the whole speech from the Doctor about Joy’s room, and how a hotel room is actually “you without makeup.” Which, yes, he’s trying to upset her, but he should be doing that by saying something true? Hotel rooms don’t indicate anything about a person aside from economic status—if you’re in a crappy room, it’s what you can afford, and maybe you were also really bad at researching to boot. Turning it into a chance to psychologically evaluate someone into losing their temper doesn’t come off clever here. It feels like a sloppy deduction from the BBC Sherlock days, but at least Sherlock was frequently told he had it wrong.

But moreover, this episode manages to be neither comforting, nor sad enough to be a moving experience. If the episode had been more silly or more serious, we might’ve had something to enjoy. As is, this felt like a sizable train wreck of cringe after cringe after cringe. The first ten minutes were far more enjoyable than the rest of the episode. Give me a new version that’s just the Doctor and Trev bumbling about the place, and we’ll have something to work with next time.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Special Agent Clint Rock? Really, sweetie?

• The never-ending mansplain joke is at least a decade too late, and not well executed in the slightest. Sigh.

• Jonathan Aris made a great Silurian, and it was sad that he and Frenchie from Our Flag Means Death both died so soon. RIP, Trev, you were a real one.

• I do love the idea that there are little TARDIS sculptures all over the world that people make because they see it all the time without entirely knowing it. And that does play into the religious aspect of the episode in a way that doesn’t feel forced and gross—the TARDIS as this emblem of faith that people don’t even realize they’re perpetuating.

• It’s been a while since we’ve had a full romp with dinosaurs on Who (“Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” is a dozen years old, if you can believe that), but I’m a little disappointed that they’re still going for the old standbys when they could be the folks who tried to conceptualize dinosaurs with feathers? Doctor Who is a perfect place to try that out, and it would’ve made for great paleontology jokes.

Here’s hoping that next year’s holiday special will do anything else…[end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

“The Savages”: Lost Doctor Who Episodes to Return in Animated Form

“The Savages” serial was the last appearance of companion Steven.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on December 13, 2024

Screenshot: BBC Studios

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Screenshot: BBC Studios

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, you likely know that dozens of episodes have been lost to time because the BBC didn’t preserve the original tapes.

We have the audio to some of these lost episodes, however, and BBC Studios is now creating animated versions of them. The latest is “The Savages,” a four-episode First Doctor story that originally aired from May to June 1966 and was also the last appearance of the companion, Steven, played by Peter Purves.

Here’s the synopsis of “The Savages,” provided by the Doctor Who website:

Want to watch it? BBC Studios is releasing a DVD and Blu-ray version as well as a fancy Blu-ray steelbook this upcoming Spring. It will be a three-disc set, and will include all four episodes, which run at twenty-five minutes each in both color and black-and-white, and other yet-to-be-announced bonus features.

And if you don’t want to wait until Spring 2025 to get a sampling of the animated version of “The Savages,” I’ve got good news for you: the BCC also put out a trailer featuring the animation, although it frustratingly doesn’t include a real sample of the audio.

You can now pre-order the DVD or Blu-ray at the retail establishment of your choice, and can check out the trailer announcement below.[end-mark]  

The post “The Savages”: Lost <i>Doctor Who</i> Episodes to Return in Animated Form appeared first on Reactor.

News Doctor Who

The Doctor Makes New Friends and Annoys Himself In the Trailer for Doctor Who’s Christmas Special

Is it possible to see a train in a Christmas story and not think of The Polar Express?

By Molly Templeton

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Published on December 5, 2024

Screenshot: Disney Plus

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Screenshot: Disney Plus

It’s Christmas in Doctor Who land again—holiday fun times for all, including dinosaurs. This year’s Christmas special comes from longtime Who writer Steven Moffat, who once again has a Who character bantering with themself. (Who can forget Amy Pond flirting with herself? Not I.) Somehow, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) ends up talking to a future version of himself, who is most frustratingly vague about what he needs to do next. “You have to be mysterious all the time! That’s why everyone leaves you! That is why you were always alone!” the Doctor yells at the Doctor, presumably referencing the end of the previous season (and a lot of other bits of his history as well).

“Joy to the World” stars Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan as Joy, who really, really likes it when the Doctor compliments her name. According to the very brief synopsis, “When Joy checks into a London hotel in 2024, she opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel — discovering danger, dinosaurs, and the Doctor. But a deadly plan is unfolding across the Earth, just in time for Christmas.”

The episode also features Our Flag Means Death‘s Frenchie, Joel Fry, as well as Steph de Whalley, Jonathan Aris, Peter Benedict, Julia Watson, and Niamh Marie Smith. It’s directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai (Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and, of course, Russell T. Davies is the showrunner.

The Christmas spirit arrives December 25th on Disney+.[end-mark]

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News Doctor Who

Doctor Who Christmas Special Preview Gives Us a Very Merry Dinosaur

The dinosaurs aren’t on a spaceship anymore…

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on November 15, 2024

Screenshot: BBC

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Screenshot: BBC

Christmas came a bit early for Doctor Who fans! The show released a preview of the upcoming Christmas special, titled Joy to the World, as part of the BBC’s Children in Need fundraiser. In it, we see the current Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, introduce the clip, which features him and Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan, who plays a character named Joy (note the reference to the title!)

Once the proper preview starts, we see the Doctor deliver some choice lines (“evil is logo” is my personal favorite) as we find out that a nefarious corporation is growing a star seed over Earth’s timeline, an act that may very well burn every living thing on the planet if the Doctor doesn’t intervene.

The kicker, of course, is that it takes millions of years to grow a star, and as such, the two are 65 million years in the past. That puts them in the time of the dinosaurs, and we see a T-Rex (at least I think it’s a T-Rex, I’m not a paleontologist!) take a chomp out of the tree house they’re sitting in.

The clip cuts off right as the two head toward the dino’s maw. What happens next? We’ll have to wait until December 25, 2024, to find out! I will note, however, that the CGI behind this dinosaur looks much better than previous iterations of the animals in the series—it’s good to see that the reportedly expanded budget is showing up on-screen.

Check out the three-minute preview below, and catch the full special on Disney+ when it drops on Christmas day.[end-mark]

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Excerpts Full Speed to a Crash Landing

Behind the Art of Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Check out an illustration plus the first chapter from Revis’ sexy new space heist!

By Beth Revis

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Published on September 19, 2024

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We’re thrilled to share an illustrated scene from Full Speed to a Crash Landing, plus commentary from author Beth Revis and a preview of the first chapter! A high octane sexy space heist, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is the first novella in a new trilogy, available now from DAW.

Full Speed to a Crash Landing is a book of joy for me—I put in all the tropes, ideas, and scenes that I love and didn’t hold back anything. One of the elements I wanted to include was a scene that I’ve loved since Doctor Who‘s Ten and Rose days–when the Doctor and Rose each have their hands pressed on opposite sides of a wall, so close and yet so far away. Toward the end of Full Speed, I found a way to sneak a subtle homage to that scene. It’s not got the same context at all (don’t worry, this book isn’t a tragedy like that episode of Who was!), but the image is there, for a flash, on the page. When it came time to illustrate a scene for the book, I contacted Marina Charalambides and sent her a clip of the Who episode. She took the concept and ran with it, adding a spin to the idea to make it look almost as if they’re dancing, and it ended up beautifully!

Chapter 1

So. I’m not in an ideal situation right now.

I’ve got ten percent of air left in this portable tank. Ship’s been decompressed, which . . . not great. Have to rely on   the tank. Okay. Okay. I’ve got maybe an hour of air left.

But I also know for a fact that there’s another ship here. It’s the competition, sure, but my radar shows they’re in range, and surely a fellow scavenge ship wouldn’t be so ruthless to ignore a distress call?

“Come on, come on,” I mutter, staring at the slowly blinking communication light. I sent out the signal back when I still had half a day of air left. This nearby ship, I can tell on the radar, it’s big, so there’s got to be a whole opera- tion going on, crew and everything. It’s not a little rig like what I have. So, even if I’m the competition to them, I wouldn’t be much of a one.

Plus, my ship has a hole on one side. A big one. The air gauge ticks down to nine percent.

The comm light blinks.

Eight.

Blink. Blink.

Seven.

“You have got to answer this comm signal!” I scream at it, deeply aware that takes extra air. I’d like to punch some- thing, but gravity’s out on the ship too, which means if I hit the console, I’d just fly backward in the opposite direction. Ricocheting around my own ship doesn’t seem like a good use of my limited time.

Blink.

Blink.

The other ship is not that far away. It’s been well within range for the past hour. What are they all doing, just laugh- ing at a distress signal and rubbing their hands with the knowledge that my ship, though damaged, is another one to loot?

They’re not going to let me die, right?

. . . Right?

Blink.

And then—

“Hello?” It’s staticky and dim, but it’s an answer.

“Hello, yes?” I say. The ship’s signal’s already routed to my earpiece. “Took you long enough to answer!”

“You’re not authorized to be in this sector,” a different voice says, one that rings with authority and contempt.

“Neither are you!” I take a deep breath, then silently curse as the gauge ticks down another percent. “If you’re going to get nitpicky about laws, you ignored a live distress signal for hours.” I can hear them start to answer, but I plow on. “And now I’m down to six percent in my air tank.”

“What?” The first voice again, sounding a little confused. Male, I think. “This is a real distress call?”

“It is for the next thirty minutes or so, because after that, it’ll just be body removal,” I snap. “My ship had a breach. I’m in a suit, breathing what’s left of the only tank I’ve got.”

“What are you even doing out here?”

“Can I answer that when I have more than half an hour left to breathe?” I say, eyes wide at the shock of how dim this other crew is.

“We’ve got a lock on your signal. You really only got half an hour?”

“Mm-hm.” I’m too tense to put it into words, but I try  to get the full gravity of the situation in that grunt.

“We’ll be cutting it close.”

Great. Great.

“I’ll try to hold my breath, then,” I say. Because what the fuck else can I say? I can’t exactly refill an oxygen tank in a breached ship.

Whoever answered my call sends me a locator signal. My radar picked them up in this sector, but they’ve got some basic anti-detection shields up, so I didn’t have an exact location. They really aren’t far, but are they near enough? I check my tank again. I don’t like this. I don’t like cutting it this close.

But I can’t risk doing this any other way.

I stare out the hull window. The planet below curves into view. I’ve been in orbit for about a week. First to the scavenge site. Not an easy haul. When I picked up the other ship approaching, I knew I couldn’t compete with them, even if I’d only finished half the job.

A breach in my cargo hold followed by explosive de- compression and total life support failure hadn’t exactly been in the original plan. But what’s a girl to do? I know how to improvise.

The air tank gauge flashes red before my locator shows the larger ship moving closer to me. I’m at two percent by the time they’re in sight, and I’m taking shallow sips of air, keeping still, trying my best to convince my body that oxygen’s optional.

I was right. Not about oxygen; things are going to get real dicey soon on that front. I was right about the other ship. It’s a big one. Maybe even government-issue. It’s not a looter, that’s for sure; it’s far too sleek and new. I bet every part of that ship is original, not held together by cheap welds and luck like my little Glory.

Another voice clicks onto my comm. “D-class, our scans show your breach.”

“Did you think I was lying?” I mutter.

“Do you have a port for our cofferdam?”

“Yeah, that’s part of the problem,” I say. The breach broke the airlock system. Again, plans awry, improvisation, the usual.

“How are you going to—”

I do not have time to mince words. “Get as close as you can,” I say. I’d had my foot latched to a hold bar, but I let go and twist around, already heading aft, using the bars to propel myself through the micrograv as I float down the corridor. I go through the bulkhead door, the heavy metal seals wide open to allow me passage. Straight to the ripped-out hole blown in one side of my ship. “If you pull up starboard and open up an airlock transfer, I should be able to get to  you without a cofferdam.”

“Without a . . . D-class, how are going to—”

“I have a name,” I say. “Ada Lamarr, nice to meet you, thank you for saving my life.” I’m already at the hole in the side of my ship, careful to avoid the sharp edges of metal that could compromise my suit. I stare out at the massive A-class vessel sidling up alongside my little bird. Dozens of positioning thrusters blow out, edging the leviathan a little closer to me. I scan the side of the ship. Various portholes, a few cargo loader arms, a large shuttle bay—there. An escape airlock hatch for emergency use.

“D-class—Lamarr, exactly how do you intend to reach the Halifax?”

Halifax. Old name. Classic. Maybe not government- issue.

“I’m at one percent,” I mention as if it weren’t my life with minutes to spare. “Can you maybe just trust me on this and open up a door?”

I hold my breath—ironically—and count a few more seconds down. Midship, the airlock door on the side of the Halifax pops open.

“Thanks,” I say. “See you in a bit.” I check my suit and fling myself into the void.

An object in motion stays in motion, that’s what New- ton said, and the proof of it’s here in space. As I kick off the side of my ship, past the jagged metal edges of the hole, I would keep going forever through the black at this exact same speed and direction if I didn’t hit something. I mean, I’m hoping I hit the Halifax, which is absolutely my intent, but if that fails, I’ll either get sucked into the gravity of the planet below us—unlikely, given my weight compared to  the planet—or I’ll, you know, float in the empty black void of space until I die.

Which, according to my air gauge, is any second now.

I’m missing my target. The Halifax is coming at me a little quicker than I’d thought. Turns out flying  through space without a tether can fuck up your concept of relative locations. Also, while it looks pretty certain I’m going to hit the side of this other ship, I’m not at the best angle to hit the open airlock, which is what I need in order to actually board the ship.

My O2 tank may be almost empty, but my propulsion tank is aces. I ignite the jetpack, which does speed me up but at least also speeds me up in the right direction. That little door open on the side of the Halifax is calling my name, and even when I reverse the thrusters, I still come in hot enough to slam into the interior door. I would’ve bounced right off it, but I have the wherewithal to grab on to the latch and  hold as the outer door seals shut behind me.

I get a blur of faces at the porthole, a flurry of movement behind the interior wall. This is a classic hyperbaric chamber airlock—a tiny room with one door that opens to the outside, one door that opens to the inside. The inside door won’t open until the chamber is repressurized and air’s pumped back in. Even as the outer door seals shut, I’m still floating. There’s no gravity, no pressure, no air.

Which is a damn shame because there’s also no oxygen left in my tank. I suck at nothing, my lungs left wanting. I get up to the porthole window, and through the heavy carbonglass and the thick protection of my helmet, it’s hard to see too clearly who’s on the other side. I bang on the window with a gloved fist, but I know it’s pointless. They can’t hurry up a hyperbaric chamber. It’s a failsafe to prevent someone from getting the bends and gravity sickness with the artificial grav generator, but at this point, I’d trade that for some air. Black dots dance behind my eyes. Glory’s chamber can take up to five minutes to normalize, but she’s an older model. I can probably hold my breath two minutes? My feet hit the floor, then my knees. Gravity’s back on.

I can barely think; my body keeps trying to breathe air that’s not there. My panicked heartbeat in my ears doesn’t distract me from the emptiness of my lungs, a sensation I’ve never had before. Screw decompression sickness—I rip my helmet off. Bent over, my body makes a gagging-gasping noise. The air is too thin. But there is air, I think, registering that I can actually hear that dying-choking sound streaming out of my raw throat—no sound waves without air.

My arms give out, and I fall fully on the floor, face against the metal. My body bucks, my shoulders spasming as I gasp at air too thin to fully inflate my lungs. My vision goes red.

The last thing I think before it all goes black is:

Fuck.

Excerpted from Full Speed to a Crash Landing, copyright © 2024 by Beth Revis

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Full Speed to a Crash Landing

Beth Revis

Chaotic Orbits Book 1

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Full Speed to a Crash Landing

Beth Revis

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Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw Will Star in the Doctor Who Spinoff Series The War Between the Land and Sea

The sea devils will also make their return

By Molly Templeton

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Published on July 29, 2024

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It’s not quite a shocker on par with Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU—after all, actors have returned to the world of Doctor Who before (hi, Peter Capaldi!). But it is kind of funny that the just-announced Doctor Who spinoff series The War Between the Land and Sea is set to star two actors who previously had small but key roles in the main Doctor Who series: Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

The five-part The War Between the Land and Sea, which was announced at San Diego Comic Con, seems to be the UNIT-focused spinoff that was announced last year. The BBC’s synopsis says, “When a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered. With the entire population at risk, UNIT step into action as the land and sea wage war.”

Sea devils? Yep, sea devils.

Jemma Redgrave returns as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, as does Alexander Devrient as Colonel Ibrahim. Tovey and Mbatha-Raw, on the other hand, are playing different characters than they did in the past.

Mbatha-Raw played Tish Jones, Martha Jones’ sister, in the third season of new Who. (More recently, she’s been in Loki, pictured above, and The Morning Show.) Tovey, who starred in the original British Being Human, played Alonso Frame in “Voyage of the Damned,” the third Christmas special of the Who revival era.

Both actors appeared in episodes written by Russell T. Davies, who was the Who showrunner then and, of course, is the showrunner now. He’s the creator of this spinoff series, which he wrote with Pete McTighe (who has two previous Who episodes to his name). It’s directed by another Who vet, Dylan Holmes-Williams.

The War Between the Land and Sea begins filming next month; no premiere date has been announced. [end-mark]

The post Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw Will Star in the <i>Doctor Who</i> Spinoff Series <i>The War Between the Land and Sea</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Finds Itself a Family in “Empire of Death”

The series gets its very own “dusting” event…

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on June 24, 2024

Image: Disney+

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Image: Disney+

Mrs. Flood out there breaking the fourth wall like it’s made of eggshells…

Recap

The Doctor and Mel run from Susan Triad, who is now an agent of Sutekh (Gabriel Woolfe). All of Sutekh’s minions begin spreading the dust of death, which wipes out the entire population, Mel manages to get the Doctor to Ruby in the Time Window, and her memories allow the TARDIS within the Time Window to grow stronger so that they can board it. The console room is a very hodgepodge affair of the memory of all previous TARDISes packed into a pretty tight space. Sutekh shows up and tells the Doctor that he has been following him throughout the universe, latched onto the outside TARDIS, and planting his own agents (copies of Susan) that the Doctor couldn’t see due to perception filters. They are now destroying every place the Doctor has been to, taking up the majority of the universe.

The Doctor, Ruby, and Mel escape in the remembered TARDIS. The Doctor uses “intelligent rope” (similar to the glove he made) to keep the ship stable and materializes in space, mourning the loss of the universe. An unknown amount of time passes and the Doctor arrives on a world that is only half-gone, meeting a woman (Sian Clifford) who can barely remember who she is, or the family she’s lost. The Doctor asks if she has any metal and she gives him the last bit in her possession—a spoon. He thanks her and promises to use it to save the universe.

Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor uses the spoon to repair a screen from the Time Window. It only responds to Ruby’s questions and sends her bit of video, including footage of her mother’s blank visage, and interview from Roger ap Gwilliam. The Doctor remembers that Gwilliam made DNA testing compulsory, so they can go to the future and find out who Ruby’s mother is; apparently this mystery has been haunting Sutekh as well. As a being who has been able to see all of Time and Space, not being able to see Ruby’s mother is driving him mad. They land in 2046 and go looking through the DNA records right as Mel finally falls prey to Sutekh’s control, and she transports them all back to UNIT HQ with the answer to Ruby’s parentage.

Sutekh demands the name of Ruby’s mother, and she makes to offer it, but smashes the screen with her identity at his feet and attaches the intelligent rope to his neck. The Doctor attaches the rope to the console and they drag Sutekh through the time vortex, forcing him to undo all that he’s done. Then the Doctor tells Sutekh that he must be life’s champion if Sutekh is the bringer of death, but the God has made him a monster because he must kill him now. He releases Sutekh into the time vortex, where the god disintegrates.

Back at UNIT, the group brings up the file on Ruby’s mother, Faye McKeever—just an ordinary woman who had Ruby when she was fifteen years old. It turns out that Sutekh only believed that she must be the key to defeating him because of the mystery and attention Ruby placed on her; their belief that she was important is what made her so. The reason that she was pointing in the Doctor’s direction on the old tape wasn’t to make note of him, but the street sign: She gave Ruby her name. Ruby wants to go meet her mother, and the Doctor suggests that perhaps she shouldn’t because the woman never attempting to contact her. Ruby ignores him and introduces herself at a coffee shop, prompting a tearful reunion. Faye comes home to meet her family and they get in touch with the man who was her father as well. Ruby wants the Doctor to come meet everyone, but the Doctor knows that she needs this time to herself. He promises that she’s changed him and that he will see her again, leaving in the TARDIS.

Mrs. Flood is one the roof of the building, telling us that Ruby got a happy ending, but the Doctor’s story will end in terror…

Commentary

Look, I know it’s convenient (and less gory) to vanish everyone in a puff of dust, but it hasn’t even been a decade since the Marvel Snapture, so it’s still abjectly hilarious to use it.

The mechanics of the episode are pretty downright silly, which is a usual thing for these finales. Of course we could only see the Susans now that Sutekh’s power is reaching some sort of critical point. Of course Sutekh is completely defeated by his own hubris and could have easily avoided this issue if he’d only come into his power a little earlier or a little later. That’s how the universe looks after the Doctor, and we should count ourselves lucky, really. And it still results in a wonderfully neat ending that harbors very few loose ends. The ones that we’ve got will likely be ported to next season anyhow.

The Doctor has to have his moment of agony over the idea of being a murderer, and Gatwa does a beautiful job acting that moment (as always), but it is a little goofy how the character gets caught up in the idea of murder only some of the time. Technically speaking, he murdered Sutekh the last time he defeated him (or thought he did, at any rate)… the only difference is that he thought Sutekh was going to die of old age within that time tunnel, cut off from the universe. That’s still ultimately a form of murder! Just really slow murder, one where Sutekh is pointedly all alone for the rest of his life, which seems crueler? I dunno, it just seems like a thing that Doctor could stand to examine a little more carefully in the future, if they’re gonna get all angsty about it.

The reveal that Ruby’s mother is just a person, that they are responsible for giving her power, is a great theme that Davies in particular loves to highlight in Doctor Who. The Doctor himself always has a love for people, but it is fun to track the balance on that scale, and how often they counter by railing against their pettiness and stupidity. (Eleven and Twelve were not Doctors blessed with much patience for humans, which is saying something when you consider how grouchy Nine could also be.) But bringing the point out here, in this story, at a point where the Doctor has been connecting with his friend over the idea of needing family, of wanting to understand where he comes from, of longing for those reunions himself, is a gorgeous place to end the season.

Of course he doesn’t want to stick around for the aftermath, but he says it outright—Ruby has taught him about family in a way that no one else could. And she’s coming back at some point in the next season, according to promotional materials, so he’s not going to leave her be forever, another comfort to take from that teary ending.

The clue as to who Ruby’s mother is ultimately came from Carla in the last episode, and I still think it’s a such a powerful choice: She’s the one who notices a scared young woman in tears, and she’s the one who talks to her like a person across time and tells her what she needs to hear. Carla always knew that she was probably just some scared kid and never loses sight of that, no matter how magic or otherworldly the situation gets. Absolutely beautiful.

And I love that the Doctor tries to stop Ruby from connecting with her mother when they find her. It’s… such a perfect mistake for him to make. One that he thinks is fair and pragmatic and kind, but is actually selfish and a bit jealous and centered around a decision that he should absolutely not insert himself into.

It’s so in keeping with what we know about the Doctor throughout his entire history: trying to stop Amy from going to find Rory in the past; attempting to hide that they’ve (finally) landed at the airport from Tegan; sulkily dropping Sarah Jane off across the country from where she needed to be. The Doctor is terrible at letting people go—and that’s without taking into account that some small part of him must fear never getting this moment for himself. Never finding out where he comes from and whether or not there are people out there who love and miss him.

Ruby doesn’t let him stop her and I have such respect for it. For knowing what she needs and deserves, and taking the chance that this encounter will go poorly. For being that brave despite her very best friend telling her not to be. That might say more about her character than the entire season has, when all is said and done.

There are so many great little bits in this episode. The hodgepodge console room that I want to be real at some point in the future. The intelligent rope acting as a leash? The “cultural appropriation” comment to hang a very large lantern on the racism in the original serial. The suggestion that the Doctor might be coming around to the idea of seeing Susan again one day.

But my absolute favorite? Mel cuddling the Seventh Doctor’s sweater vest and clutching at the sleeve of Six’s rainbow coat.

Bonnie Langford is an absolute MVP all the way around of late, but these moments in particular really zero in on one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the show in a way that nothing else can: that the Doctor is always the Doctor, but when they regenerate, that piece of them is truly gone. It is an actual death, the way the Doctor always insists it to be. Mel isn’t napping with Seven’s sweater under her chin because Fifteen won’t let her snuggle up—she’s doing it because she misses him specifically. Those Doctors were hers, and she loved them, and they’re gone now. When Fifteen is gone (and Fourteen too), if she’s around to see it, that will also hurt. Being in the position to be a friend to this strange immortal being comes with all sorts of weird grief built-in. While it’s painful for the Doctor to feel unseen when they change, there’s another kind of sadness that happens on the other end. And all they had to do to communicate that was focus on Mel’s need to touch a few pieces of clothing.

Time and Space and Sundry

• The one major mystery left over is Mrs. Flood, of course. I’m guessing that Cherry barely remembers anything the woman said (Kate claimed she only recalled flashes of the end), which accounts for her being so happy to see her when they both reconstitute, but it would have been much funnier if she’d shoved the woman out of bed. She’s dressed very Mary Poppins there at the end, which has echoes of the Master, of course—Missy loved the Poppins look. But Flood also has godly connotations as well as nihilistic ones. Après moi, le déluge, and all that.
• The Doctor riding on the back of Mel’s orange scooter. That is all.
• So Sutekh has just been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS all this time, which means that when Jack Harkness was doing the same thing, he was probably pretty displeased to share the space.
• Kate kvetching about the bullets dissolving to dust is a callback to her father, the Brigadier, who always complained that bullets never work on alien threats. Which is good for UNIT, honestly. Be more creative, y’all.
• Okay, but the idea of Ruby’s mom pointing to the road sign to indicate her name was a bad idea, though. Come on, you could’ve given us something more interesting than that. How would the monks even know she—you know what, I’m leaving it alone. It will only upset me if I think too hard about it.
• Moments like this in fiction are everything to me: Ruby gives her name for the coffee. The whole conversation with her mother is prompted by the guy calling out her name to hand her the drink. Which means that while this tearful reunion is taking place, that guy is still probably standing there like… do you want me to hold on to the cappuccino? I—you know what, you’re busy. All good. I’ll just… leave it here.

And that’s the season! See you over the holidays, I suspect… [end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Is Getting to the Bottom of Several Mysteries in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”

We finally know who the Doctor is up against for the finale, and we bet you didn’t guess who…

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on June 17, 2024

Credit: BBC / Disney+

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Credit: BBC / Disney+

The One Who Waits is waiting no more, and you might be surprised to learn who he is…

Recap

The Doctor heads to UNIT—which contains Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney), Morris Gibbons (Lenny Rush), Colonel Christopher Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), and Harriet Arbinger (Genesis Lynea) in HQ today—to ask them for help with the woman that keeps appearing in his travels. The group is generally unsurprised to see her pop up; they’ve been tracking a woman on Earth who looks the same, a Susan Triad (Susan Twist), who is the leader of Susan Triad Technology. They’d already flagged her because “S Triad” is an anagram for TARDIS, and they figured that meant something. Mel (Bonnie Langford) has been undercover working with her PR team, and has found her to be very… nice. The Doctor has a thought that perhaps Susan could be his granddaughter, owing to her having the same name, leading to a conversation with Ruby about regeneration.

The Doctor then introduces Ruby to UNIT, explaining all the strange happenings that have occurred around her. The group thinks that they might be able to shed some light around Ruby’s parentage, so Ruby heads home to pick up the VHS tape of the CCTV footage from the night she was dropped off at the church. Carla insists on coming with Ruby, and the Doctor gives her UNIT access to Kate’s dismay. They leave Cherry at home with Mrs. Flood, who proceeds to be very unconcerned with taking care of Cherry; Mrs. Flood claims that she’s always “hidden away” for whatever reason, but that now there’s a storm approaching and “He waits no more.”

The Doctor asks if UNIT has a Time Window, even though he long ago made them promise never to mess with time technology. Of course they have one, though it’s very bare bones. They use the tape and Ruby’s memories to help the window along, producing a landscape of that night. Though Ruby’s mother is there, she has a hood up and no one can see her face regardless of the angle. When the Doctor arrives to stop the goblins in the past, Ruby’s mother seems to point at him, or possibly beyond him. Colonel Winston Chidozie (Techie Newali) goes to investigate and walks behind the TARDIS. The Doctor then leaves and the TARDIS disappears, with Ruby’s mother now gone—but directly behind where the TARDIS had been is a fiery swirling vortex using Chidozie’s voice.

The Time Window overloads and shuts down, leaving behind only Chidozie’s body, which has practically turned to dust. The Doctor goes with Mel, who is preparing Susan Triad for the launch of a major free technology she’s offering to the world. When he has a little breakdown before meeting Susan, Mel helps him buck up and keep going. The Doctor meets Triad and knows she’s not his Susan, but when she mentions trouble sleeping, he asks if she’s been having dreams of the other places he’s seen her. It’s clear that she has, but she rushes away to begin her presentation.

As UNIT analyzes the data from the window, they realize that the swirling vortex had the TARDIS at the center of it. It occurs to them that the entity they saw is now in their time and around the TARDIS itself. They analyze the ship and find the entity is there and invisible. Harriet starts speaking strangely and it becomes clear that she’s the harbinger (H. Arbinger) of The One Who Waits, who appears to UNIT and reveals himself to be Sutekh (Sue Tech, get it?), the god of death. The god has Susan possessed as well and she kills her assistant mid-broadcast, then reaches for the Doctor…

Commentary

I missed finale lead-ups like this. No one does mounting tension quite like Davies, and he’s really good at one thing that always works on me: Keeping the viewer looking so many directions at once that you don’t really have enough time to figure out what’s going on until it’s right on top of you.

Of course, if you’re familiar with the serial that Sutekh heralds from—Pyramids of Mars—you know this is gonna get gnarly. The Fourth Doctor failed to prevent the escape of Sutekh from a prison created by brother Horus, but he solved that initial problem by messing with the time tunnel that would release him by essentially making it so long that Sutekh would die of old age by the time he emerged. Sounded good at the time, but now he’s free of it and unsurprisingly pissed and ready to wreak vengeance on the one who did this to him.

As a general side note, the Pyramids of Mars serial is casually racist in a way that many earlier Who stories unfortunately were—yes, they did that thing where they posit that the ancient Egyptian gods (and their tech) were obviously aliens. (They did it before Stargate, too, which is always funny to me.) Sutekh and Horus are Osirans (which, that’s also cringey), a race which is largely gone from the universe… but Sutekh is still kicking and trying to get free to conquer all with death.

So far I’m appreciating the revival because Davies is very clearly showing us in no uncertain terms that alien or not, Sutekh is, in fact, a god, on par with any other god. To that end, the reveal of Sutekh has a great deal in common with the way that they released the Devil on the show in season two’s “The Satan Pit,” particularly with Harriet’s litany proceeding it. But even with that coming for the season finale, there’s so much else going on that needs unpacking, starting with Ruby’s mother and the possibility that maybe Susan could somehow be related to all of this? Or to Ruby herself?

The choice to make Ruby’s biological mother within in the Time Window like something directly out of a horror movie was an excellent ploy, and so effective as a red herring during the entire sequence. Also, the introduction to that with the Doctor knowing that UNIT has been experimenting with time tech despite his mandate, and then coming in to laugh at their shoddy work was beautiful. Fifteen is just so good. (Also, this week’s outfit? The costume changes have been brilliant, but to have him go full modern rockabilly right now was a thing I was not prepared for, you gotta warn me.) I also need to give a moment to the fact that Kate seems to have finally internalized the fact that she’s going to be spending her entire career working with and around her childhood hero, and that means she’s allowed to hug him, and will now do it whenever she thinks either of them need it? I sniffled.

Gibson turned in a stellar performance here, but the one place in the episode where I actually cried was when Carla started talking about Ruby’s mother weeping at leaving her child behind, and trying to call across time to a woman she doesn’t know to tell her that she took care of her daughter and that she was safe and loved. We still have no idea who Ruby’s mother is, but Carla Sunday instantly feels this need to bond with her, to empathize with her, to assure her that her child has this wonderful future ahead of her. Carla is incredible. Also, the Doctor just fully granting her access to UNIT when he used to be such a grump about any companion’s mother hanging around, this is growth, yet again. We love it.

I do need to take a moment and acknowledge what a big deal it is that we now know for sure that (1) Susan is a Time Lord, which wasn’t a given, and (2) the Doctor hasn’t actually had kids yet. That’s… so good? It gives the story an entirely new weight and makes so much sense out of the Doctor’s relationship with Susan back when he show started—there were many questions about how they wound up traveling together that needed answers, and now we’ve got new but far more interesting ones.

For example… when the Doctor has kids eventually, will it be a version of them who has recovered all their memories? Because if so, that makes the Doctor’s choice to run away with his grandkid that much more heartbreaking; he’s just started in on a forced regeneration cycle with his memory erased and is subconsciously reaching for a part of himself that knows who he is. Moreover, did Susan know her grandfather before meeting this version? Because she either came with him to get to know him better, or she came with him because she knows about this time in his life, and is actively choosing to safeguard him at a point when he’s vulnerable and relearning who he is. Like… do you see? The possibilities here are endless and so good.

Also we have to talk about Mel! Mel being such an absolute star, who can wriggle her way in anywhere because she’s peppy and sunny and generally wonderful. But she still gets that moment when the Doctor is drowning in his feelings to stand there and tell him that the universe doesn’t have time for it, he can go down that well after the work is done. From anyone else that would feel unnecessarily callous, but from her it’s just a reminder of all the things she’s already been through with him—she knows how he gets, and that he needs the tweak sometimes. (Six could be so dramatic; she’s dealt with far worse.) It’s a moment borne of their specific history, which is something the show has been so great at tackling of late. You can see it when she turns away and continues on, and he just… grins. He adores her and she’s right and he would never let her down. That was how they worked.

But who is Mrs. Flood? Because I don’t buy that she’s just an agent of Sutekh, something else is going on here. And we’ve only got one more episode, so I’m guessing not all the mysteries will be solved.

Time and Space and Sundry

• Okay, but if Ruby turned out to be Susan’s daughter, and the Doctor was accidentally now tooling around with his great-granddaughter, I would love it? That’s a genuinely beautiful loop around for the show to take, a great way of rebuilding the original (OG 1963) dynamic of the series in an entirely new way. It’s fine either way, but I’m excited at the prospect.
• The Doctor asks about Rose’s mom and her “uncle” and I desperately wanted her to say “Mum’s on holiday with uncle because if he’d gotten wind of the stuff with Susan Triad, he’d be living under a desk here driving everyone mad, so her job is to distract him until you figure this out.” Because you know that’s exactly what’s happening. (Also, Rose and Ruby bonding is my other favorite thing, yes, more.)
• Sorry, but the Doctor and Colonel Ibrahim clearly have a thing going on the same way Ten did with Ross. The Doctor loves very specific UNIT boys…
• Apparently Lenny Rush was going to be one of the voices in “Space Babies,” but the producers were so impressed with him that they wanted to give him a bigger role. Which then further plays into UNIT employing various brilliant and disabled folks, which is continuing to make me so very pleased.
• Davies does love his wordplay/anagram stuff (there was the Yana thing and the “Bad Wolf” prevalence, and so on), and I genuinely never want him to stop doing it? Especially because the twist in this is down to the Doctor being so grandiose in his own legend-ness that he effectively mutes his best asset: UNIT also comes to the same anagram conclusion with S. Triad, because to them, he is the greatest thing in universe. It never occurs to them that it could be something else, and it also never occurs to him because of course it doesn’t.
• The person doing the voice of Sutekh is in fact Gabriel Woolf, the man who played the part way back in 1975, so this return was literally a half-century in the making—the man is now 91 years old. I am… so happy about this? I might explode.

Finale’s coming. How do you stop a god of death?[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Doctor Who

Doctor Who Came to Dance and Break Hearts in “Rogue”

There’s romance and longing in the air this week, along with Bridgerton shenanigans.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on June 10, 2024

Credit: BBC / Disney+

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Credit: BBC / Disney+

We need to have a talk about the definition of the term cosplay, methinks.

Recap

In 1813 in Bath, England, Lord Galpin (Maxim Ays) is berating Lord Barton (Paul Forman) for leading on his sister. Galpin eventually realizes that Barton is getting to have all the fun here, and decides he would rather do that; he kills the Lord with lightning powers of some kind and takes on his likeness. Later on, the Doctor and Ruby are at the home of the Duchess of Pemberton (Indira Varma) for a party. Ruby is wearing psychic jewelry that allows her to do all the dance moves, and the Duchess takes a liking to her, deciding to show her off to the eligible young men. The Doctor tells her not to get engaged or accidentally invent anything, and lets her go, noticing a handsome man on the balcony (Jonathan Groff).

The Doctor introduces himself to the man by teasing him for his brooding—he introduces himself as Rogue and the two go for a walk. Ruby meanwhile catches Lord Barton breaking the heart of Emily Beckett (Camilla Aiko), and moves to comfort her in the aftermath. The Duchess finds her housekeeper outside on the ground and berates her, but the woman insists that she made a mistake becoming staff and would much rather experience the party as the Duchess. As the Doctor and Rogue are walking—and flirting—they come across the Duchess’ body and both accuse each other of her murder. Rogue has a weapon, however, giving him the upper hand. He believes the Doctor is a Chuldur, a shapeshifting species, and Rogue is a bounty hunter sent here to imprison and execute him.

On Rogue’s ship, the Doctor learns that he likely got his name from playing Dungeons & Dragons, and that he likes Kylie Minogue. Rogue is about to incinerate him when the Doctor forces his ship to do a deeper scan and it comes back with an assortment of his old faces (including that of Richard E. Grant, importantly). He tells Rogue that he is far more ancient and powerful than the Chuldur, and that the man needs his help. Then he shows Rogue the inside of the TARDIS, which the man adores, and asks him who he lost. Rogue is vague about his former partner, and the Doctor suggests that they argue across the stars together.

They head back into the ball and the Doctor figures that the Chuldur are “cosplaying” other people, and that they’re fans of things like Bridgerton—they like a scandal. So he suggests that they cause a big one by dancing together. At the end of it, the Doctor calls Rogue out publicly for dramatic reasons like asking him to give up his title for love. Rogue kneels and proposes to their Doctor, offering him a ring. The Doctor takes it and runs off, Rogue following. The Chuldur follows as well, which leads the duo to discover that they’re not looking for one Chuldur—there are four of them. They need to reconfigure Rogue’s trap. Meanwhile, as Ruby talks to Emily, she learns that the young woman is also a Chuldur and gets attacked. The Chuldur accelerate their plans and begin a mock wedding, with Ruby now presumably dead and played by formerly-Emily. The Doctor is furious and perfectly happy to kill them all, thinking back on his promise to Carla to keep her daughter safe.

Once the Doctor has trapped all the Chuldur, he learns that Ruby isn’t dead—she was pretending to be Chuldur after fighting off Emily, who shows up in a huff. The Doctor can’t disengage the trap to let Ruby go without freeing the entire crew, something that Rogue insists he mustn’t do for the safety of the world. The Doctor can’t hit the button to trap the Chuldur in another dimension and lose Ruby. Rogue kisses the Doctor, saying that he knows, and taking the switch from him. He picks up Emily, swaps places with Ruby, and tells the Doctor to come find him before pushing the button and vanishing. The Doctor puts Rogue’s ship in orbit around the moon, but knows that finding him is likely an impossibility. Ruby insists on hugging the Doctor despite his desire to move on immediately, and he puts on Rogue’s ring before they depart.

Commentary

Oh, we’re canonizing Shalka Doctor now? That’s how hard we came to play this week? Let’s gooooo—

For those who were possibly confused, one of the Doctor’s previous faces according to Rogue’s little machine was one Richard E. Grant, who has played the Doctor twice, and appeared on the show elsewhere as the Great Intelligence. His two Doctor appearances were in a parody Red Nose Day special written by Steven Moffat called The Curse of the Fatal Death and an animated Who serial by Paul Cornell titled Scream of the Shalka—both of which pointedly aired while the show had its sixteen year hiatus. Shalka is frankly a lot of fun, but went ignored when the series was revived two years later. No longer, it would seem.

This is, uh, ironic because Russell T. Davies was quoted as saying that he didn’t like Grant’s performance as the Doctor, so who can say what prompted this change of heart. But if Shalka is now in any realm of canon, I have, shall we say, questions. We can get to that later, though.

But here is my real question as it pertains to the episode: Rogue, who the hell are you, my guy?

Look, it’s entirely probable that he’s just a new character intended to fill a similar role to Captain Jack Harkness in the Doctor’s life, particularly if we won’t be seeing Jack again (which is likely after the flashing accusations that I’m not going to get into here). But if that’s true, I’ll be disappointed because there is too much in this script to suggest that Rogue is someone we know already.

First off: Why hide the name? Why give him an obvious alias that is very in-line with both Time Lord titles and the Toymaker and his kids? You could easily give him a normal name that’s not his own. Jack did that. But instead we’ve got a name indicative of an archetype, and presumably something he’s come up with recently because the D&D dice are on the table of his ship. Secondly: Why don’t we get any detail about the person he lost, and why did he use “them” as the pronoun for that person? Perhaps they’re non-binary, or perhaps the guy doesn’t want the Doctor to know their gender. Or perhaps they were a person who could also change their gender via regeneration…

But the thing that really makes me feel that they must know each other is the final scene between them. When Rogue gives the Doctor the choice between his friend and the world. When the Doctor cannot make that choice and Rogue wipes his tears away, kisses him, says “I know” and makes the choice for him—that entire sequence is familiar in a way I absolutely don’t buy if they only met this evening. Not a chance.

Y’all know who I’m hoping this person is. Someone who once stored his entire person in a signet ring? Who also had playlists full of queer anthems that applied a little too easily to the situation? If Rogue isn’t someone known, the whole character is way too convenient and a little too cloned for comfort. Sudden Jack-alike who knows just what to say and how distant/intrigued to play in order to get the Doctor falling head over heels? Look, I don’t enjoy any version of love-at-first-sight, even if it’s queer. (Do I like it better than usual? Sure! It’s still silly.) But I would happily dig into someone who came here with a plan.

This episode is wall-to-wall fun regardless, and I would like Kate Herron and Briony Redman to write more for the show, please. The banter between Gatwa and Groff is on point, and they both look like they’re having a ball together. The Bridgerton-ness, up to using their soundtrack picks, is pretty cute. And the Chuldur are a fun new villain, in that they’re over-the-top, but not in a universe-ending way. It’s going to be fun to watch them come back for other episodes—in fact, I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t meant to be a replacement for the Slitheen, who were a fun species for story purposes, but outrageously fatphobic in concept. The Chuldur are much the same as the Slitheen, stealing people’s forms to cause trouble, but without that aspect leaving a sour taste in its wake.

I’ve got two very specific quibbles. One is around use of the term cosplay because cosplay refers to the act of dressing up as a specific character, and sometimes is applied to taking on aspects of a thing. But the play-acting factor isn’t commonly referred to as cosplay; it would be more accurate to say that the Chuldur are historical LARPers. Even role-players, which works with Rogue’s D&D reference! It wouldn’t bug me so much if the episode weren’t absolutely adamant about using the term “cosplay” every chance it gets. It got weird.

The other is the Doctor telling Rogue that the two of them dancing will cause a scandal, which… isn’t necessarily true. Same-sex dancing partners were more common than people seem to think in the past. There are two potential issues at play here that might make it a problem, one, that it would be considered rude to dance together if there were young women on the floor looking for dance partners, and the other being that it might be frowned upon if they’re in an area where folks were getting particularly prosecution-happy about even the barest whiff of sodomy. But the idea that seeing two men dancing together would come as a complete shock to this crowd is plain erroneous. People generally learned to dance in gendered groups at this point in time—meaning all of the men on this floor have danced with other men before and all the women with other women.

I can buy that it’s scandalous if you’re going to give us more information, but a generalized “you should have researched this time period” isn’t going to cut it. The lack of specificity threw me right out of what should have been an absolutely dazzling scene. At least I got pulled back in time for the proposal.

And as we’re getting to know Fifteen a little better, we’re finding that he has his own Oncoming Storm mode—he’s fully ready to destroy the Chuldur crew for possibly killing Ruby. Two things to keep in mind there: We’re given a flashback to a scene with Carla where it’s made clear that he promised her he’d keep Ruby safe, a promise that I don’t think we’ve seen him make so blatantly since Rose. It feels important.

The other thing: The instant that the Doctor chooses rage, he loses. He gives in to that impulse and traps his best friend in with the bad guys. And in giving over to that anger and grief, he forgot that his friends are never so helpless. (Look, I’m not saying that the way the Doctor lost Bill has kind of permanently screwed him up on this score, but it wouldn’t surprise me.) He forgot that Ruby is clever and capable and would never go down without a fight.

And then he gets to pretend he’s fine, but at least this time he acknowledges that he’s doing it on purpose. He doesn’t shut Ruby out the way he has for past companions, just acknowledges that this is a bad coping mechanism. Onwards.

Time and Space and Sundry

• The episode was dedicated to William Russell, who passed away last week and played one of the very first companions, Ian Chesterton. He was last seen on the show in Graham’s lovely companion support group.
• The Doctor gave Ruby jewelry that basically invades her brain without letting her know it does that, all for the purpose of having a reveal where he gets to tell her that he gave her jewelry that does that? We need to work on this, sweetie.
• Okay, but it’s really funny that this version of the Doctor is not okay with “Doc” as a nickname, after allowing both Jack and Graham to use it without issue. I love specific Doctor preferences, and also seeing what carries over. (Like the fish fingers and custard.)
• You cannot have this man singing “Pure Imagination” to me, I will die. This is my personal Achilles, Doctor Who. How dare you.
• And there’s Susan Twist on the wall again. At least we’ll be getting an answer to that mystery next week.
• I guess the Chuldur are musical fans too, because the Duchess potentially gives reference to both Cabaret and Camelot with “Willkommen, bienvenue! C’est moi!”
• But again, Shalka Doctor had a robot version of the Master on his TARDIS (played by Derek Jacobi before he played the Master on the show) as his basically live-in partner, and you’re just telling me this is canon now? So Missy wasn’t even close to being an anomaly is what you’re saying? Right in front of my (Time-and-Relative-Dimension-in-)Salad? Bring them back.

See you next week! See Mel next week, too![end-mark]

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Featured Essays Doctor Who

11 Hot Takes About Doctor Who 

It’s such an exciting time to be a Who fan! Here are some opinions and ideas about the greatest show in the universe—let’s discuss!

By Charlie Jane Anders

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Published on June 10, 2024

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Doctor Who is so, so alive. The world’s oldest and arguably greatest science fiction (and occasionally fantasy) series is firing on all cylinders this year, thanks to Ncuti Gatwa’s high-energy performance as the Doctor and Millie Gibson’s super-engaging turn as Ruby Sunday, not to mention the return of Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat on top form.

To celebrate, here are some HOT takes about the greatest show in the galaxy. Vworp vworp!

(Missed the previous entries in this series? Here are some grab bags of brief hot takes about Batman, Star Wars, Star Trek, and shared universes.)

Doctor Who has wasted some great story seeds from “Genesis of the Daleks”

Steven Moffat has mined this 1975 classic for story ideas at least twice: in “The Magician’s Apprentice” / “The Witch’s Familiar” and more recently in “Boom.” But there’s still some great material that nobody has touched. In particular: the Doctor’s suggestion that “many future worlds could become allies” because of the threat of the Daleks, and that something good could come of the Daleks’ evil… this is something I’d love to see dramatized on screen. (When Terry Nation wrote this line, the memory of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill joining forces against the Nazis was somewhat fresh, but of course that alliance didn’t exactly last.)

Also, I’ve long been tantalized by the bit at the very beginning where a Time Lord warns the Doctor about a possible future where the Daleks have won—becoming the only surviving life form in the universe. It would be fascinating to visit that alternate future and perhaps see the Daleks trying to establish it as the main timeline.

It’s time to have another companion who’s not from present-day Earth

The TARDIS crew regularly used to include people who came from the past, the future, or other worlds. But since 2005, every companion (barring Captain Jack Harkness, Nardole, and arguably River Song) has come from Britain in the early 21st century. A contemporary companion has obvious advantages in relatability, but the show also makes the most of the companion’s ability to pop back home between adventures and visit their family and other loved ones. It keeps the show a bit more grounded, and makes Who a bit more of a portal fantasy. But on the flipside, a companion from further afield could do a lot to defamiliarize the present and shake up the Doctor-companion relationship. And instead of popping back to London to visit a family dealing with domestic issues, they could, I dunno, go visit a family that’s dealing with some Game of Thrones shit. Give us an Ice Warrior companion, the people demand it!

Leela was a gay icon

I’m not even kidding. For those who haven’t watched classic Doctor Who, Leela was a barbarian warrior (think Red Sonja or Sheena) who traveled with the Doctor for a couple of years. Leela doesn’t often share screen time with other women, because (allegedly) Robert Holmes didn’t like writing female characters. But just watch her and Toos in “Robots of Death”—first she gives Toos advice on how to deal with a nasty injury, then they wind up canoodling until a robot interrupts them.

(Let’s leave aside “Horror of Fang Rock,” where Leela decidedly does not have chemistry with Adelaide.) And then in “The Invasion of Time,” Leela definitely starts a smoking romance… I’m just not convinced it’s with Andred, that walking wet blanket. Just watch Leela running hand-in-hand with Rodan, and tenderly sheltering Rodan in the wilderness. I do not for one second believe that Andred was the reason Leela decided to stay on Gallifrey.

The Doctor is responsible for all of humanity’s future crimes

If you watch enough Doctor Who, two things become clear. First, humanity would not have survived the past few decades without a lot of help from the Doctor. Humans are the Doctor’s favorite species, which is why they’ve bailed us out so many times. Just watch “Turn Left” for a selection of all the ways humanity would have been doomed without the Doctor’s help. And second, humanity will go on to swarm across the universe, colonizing and laying waste to everything in our path. Some of Doctor Who’s most interesting stories deal with the destructive effects of Earth’s future empire, and it’s all the Doctor’s fault. When we became the Doctor’s pet project, countless other worlds were doomed to untold suffering. The Doctor has been put on trial twice for largely bogus reasons, when there’s an actual crime to hold them accountable for…

The Doctor occupies a space somewhere between fool and anti-hero 

The Doctor is a rambling adventurer, with no permanent affiliations, who shows up out of the blue (box) and solves problems (and occasionally overthrows the government). At times, the Doctor seems to have deep knowledge or special abilities, but mostly their only superpower is time travel. At one end of the extreme, the Doctor can be seen as a fool, who blunders into situations and then has to find a way out, while saving as many lives as possible. Or the Doctor can be an anti-hero, who has secret knowledge and manipulates everybody to achieve some benevolent outcome.

Lately I’ve been reading James Cooray Smith’s excellent newsletter Psychic Paper, which analyzes a lot of 1980s Who stories. And it’s clear that the Eighties pushed both of these aspects of the Doctor as far as they could. The Fifth Doctor is very much a fool, who stumbles into trouble and hardly ever manages to save anyone. Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor is an extreme anti-hero, who keeps his cards close to his chest. And Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor is… a bit of both? He has no clue, but he’s also a jerk. Newer Doctor Who has also played around with anti-heroism, most notably with the Tenth Doctor declaring himself the Time Lord Victorious, and the Twelfth Doctor lying and manipulating people—but it’s mostly tried to steer a middle path, with the Doctor having elements of both extremes but also carving out a third space in which the Doctor knows more than anyone but also identifies consciously as a fool (see Peter Capaldi’s speech in “Death in Heaven”). I kind of think that middle space is where Doctor Who lives most comfortably. 

Chris Chibnall had the right approach to history 

There’s much to celebrate about the period from 2018 to 2021, when Jodie Whittaker was the Doctor and Chris Chibnall was the show’s head writer. Including Whittaker’s dazzling performance, Jo Martin’s startling turn as the Fugitive Doctor, and Sacha Dhawan as the Master. (Plus Yaz, who rocked.) But the thing that really sticks in my mind is the show ‘s thoughtful, sensitive approach to history—an important aspect of a show about time travel. Prior to 2018, Who tended to focus on historical figures like Shakespeare or Napoleon, but suddenly we were meeting Rosa Parks, Ada Lovelace, Mary Shelley, and Mary Seacole. These are important historical figures that a lot of viewers might not be as familiar with. We also witnessed the partition of India and King James’ witch hunts. Not only that, but Chibnall brought in writers like Malorie Blackman, Maxine Alderton, Vinay Patel, and Joy Wilkinson to write these stories, bringing new perspectives. You can’t imagine a better future without reconceiving history, and Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who showed the way. More please.

It’s time to see the Thals again

I just got the Blu-ray of the first ever Dalek story, colorized and edited down to a more watchable length… and it started me wondering about the Thals. The Thals are basically a whole society of ski-instructors, who fought a devastating war against the Daleks’ ancestors, and they’ve turned up twice since 1964: once in “Genesis of the Daleks,” and once as a space-faring people in “Planet of the Daleks.” We haven’t seen the Thals for fifty years, and it makes me wonder: How do you deal with the legacy of an endless war that your ancestors fought, which gave rise to the most horrific war machines in history? How do you survive that? Do the Thals try to hunker down someplace where the Daleks might never find them, and return to their pacifist agrarian ways? Or do they keep trying to fight the Daleks forever, as in “Planet,” with the knowledge that they are the species the Daleks hate most of all? There’s so much historical trauma and guilt and resilience tied up in the story of the Thals, and I would love to see a Thal story where the Daleks never turn up. (I also want to meet some Thals who don’t look blonde and Nordic!) And speaking of the Daleks again…

“The Chase” should have been the scariest story of all time

The second Dalek story, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” did a masterful job of upping the stakes, having the Daleks show up on Earth and subjugate humanity. The follow-up story, “The Chase,” is basically a farce in which the Daleks quickly lose all sense of menace, and eventually get fucked up by a bunch of anhedonic D20s called Mechanoids. It’s embarrassing! But “The Chase” contains an incredible premise that Doctor Who failed to take advantage of: an enemy who is bent on wiping out the Doctor, pursuing the TARDIS in their own time machine, killing everyone in sight wherever the Doctor goes. A threat the Doctor can’t escape just by popping into the TARDIS and disappearing. Relentless, implacable, inescapable. Anyone who meets the Doctor is marked for death. The Terry Nation who wrote the first two Dalek stories and “The Keys of Marinus” (and Blake’s 7) would have had a field day with that premise.

It makes total sense that the Fifteenth Doctor gets to be sad

In “The Giggle,” Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor tells David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor to go get some therapy and deal with all the trauma the Doctor has been through over the centuries. (“I’m fine because you fix yourself.”) The strong implication is that the Fourteenth Doctor will spend decades healing and focusing on self-care. But now, we regularly see the Fifteenth Doctor looking sad, and even crying—and some corners of the internet seem to view this as a contradiction. First of all, the Fifteenth Doctor also appears way more joyful, curious, and open to new experiences than some previous incarnations. And to be honest, I don’t believe that getting over trauma makes you less prone to sadness or weeping—if anything, dealing with your shit allows you to express sadness in a healthier manner, and that’s what we see happening right now. The Fifteenth Doctor seems like someone who has gotten a new lease on life, and is able to let both positive and negative emotions flow through him without shutting down the way you saw some of the previous Doctors do. (There’s a reason so many men can’t cry, and it’s not because they’re mentally well.)

The Doctor needs a new archnemesis 

The first decade of classic Who introduced the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, and the Master, with the Sontarans showing up in year eleven. Since then, we’ve gotten some memorable one-off baddies, but arguably nobody with real staying power. The closest new Who has gotten to creating an iconic new baddie is the Weeping Angels, who seem to lack a strong motivation to keep driving new stories. (What do the Weeping Angels want? It’s not always clear, but mostly they seem to like to touch people and send them back in time, which makes them more of an infestation than an army. Oh, and they want the TARDIS, but everybody wants the TARDIS.)

To be sure, most of the classic series’ villains were intended as one-offs, until their popularity took everyone by surprise. (That’s why the Daleks were originally unable to leave their city, and why the Cybermen can’t survive the destruction of their planet Mondas.) The Master remains the most successful example of Who setting out on purpose to create a recurring foe, with a whole season of stories in which he terrorized the Doctor and friends—and some version of this strategy might work again, if the villain in question has enough charisma or a compelling ideology.

Doctor Who could have beaten Star Trek to the Borg

Doctor Who featured the Cybermen quite a bit in the 1980s, but for whatever reason the show never seemed to explore the basic concept of “cybernetic people who want to turn everyone else into cyborgs.” Imagine if “Attack of the Cybermen” had delved deeper into the inherent creepiness of the Cybermen trying to convert everyone, instead of including it as one plot element among a thousand others. Imagine if 1980s Who had bothered to explore what makes the Cybermen the Cybermen, instead of just treating them like generic stormtroopers. A lot of what made the Borg so chilling in Star Trek: The Next Generation could have appeared on Doctor Who first.

[end-mark]

An earlier version of this piece neglected to mention Nardole. It’s now been fixed.
This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.

The post 11 Hot Takes About <i>Doctor Who </i> appeared first on Reactor.