By Roy Mathur, on 2025-05-25, at 23:27:09 to 00:05:46 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Fifteenth Doctor: Ncuti Gatwa, Companions: Belinda Chandra: Varada Sethu, Ruby Sunday: Millie Gibson Melanie Bush: Bonnie Langford, Susan Foreman: Carole Ann Ford, The Rani: Archie Panjabi; prolific TV actress, inc. Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Anita Dobson, writer: Russell T Davies, director: Alex Sanjiv Pillai; Joy to the World, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Episode 7 of series 15 of New Who or season 2 on iPlayer and Disney+ (story 319a), 1 x c.45 min, released iPlayer Sat 2025-05-24 08:00 or scheduled broadcast BBC1 18:50, watched by me about an hour later, and talked about by me today on Towel Day back on the Shure SM7B, you'll literally be pleased to hear.
The Rani kidnaps a woodsman's baby, the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore the god of wishes in old Bavaria. The Doctor and Belinda awake in bed together in the British version of Pleasantville. Belinda is a stay-at-home mum and the Doctor a pin-striped and bowler-hatted Unified National Insurance Team office worker. No one can remember their past lives because the Rani, using the vindicator, is destabilising reality to free the Doctor's old enemy, Omega, from the underverse. As the world warps around them, Ruby teams up with rebels and the cliffhanger ending sees the Doctor hanging onto a balcony, blown off the Rani's bone building, and plunging to his doom.
The opening was pure Hammer Films, which I enjoyed, but turning Mum into petals, kids into geese, and dad into an owl was comedic, rather than horrific. It was as ridiculous as Luke exploding into a tree in The Mark of the Rani (pod 569).
The vindicator charging up to power a big boom sounded dumb and unscientific. RTD is not a bad writer, but he needs to bone up ojn science and technology and, once in his life, attempt actual hard science fiction or get writers who can. "Underverse"? Looks like RTD enjoyed The Chronicles of Riddick.
The Rani was good, though she was far too camp and bonkers, more like the Master/Missy than the cold, sadistic Doctor Mengele-type of Kate O'Mara's Rani. The humourless mad scientist Rani would certainly not trip the light fantastic with the Doctor. It's a pity that she's written as a slot-in to fill the gap left by the Master.
I've banged on about Omega for years. It is egotistical and paranoid to contemplate the Beeb giving two hoots about me, but making Omega the villain of season two seems like they are paying attention. Perhaps they were, perhaps not, or perhaps they were, though not just to me, but all the fans expecting someone more significant than Sutekh in season one.
For gods' sake, when is Susan coming back? Yes, it was nice seeing Mel again for a moment, but only seeing Susan on a monitor this week was irritating. And it better not be a fanservice one second pat on bottom in next week's final episode. That's not the way to end before the hiatus. This is not the way.
The music was unrelenting and unbearable and so over-used that it deafened rather than enhanced the drama. In the musical excess of season 2, I'm now realising how much I hate the bombast and saccharine of Gold's work.
I enjoyed seeing another sonic screwdriver, but the grip was weird. I suppose the white syringe look makes sense, given that the Rani is a genius geneticist.
I would have said the homophobic exchange between the UNIT officer and the Doctor was old hat, but I was recently talking about how homophobia seems to resurging, so...
The script was ambitious as Grant Morrison's The Filth comic in meta weirdness. An evil fantasist, like Conrad, feeding the baby god of wishes his ideas to make his awful conservative worldview reality was clever and imaginative. The reality slip dustbins were a nice lightening touch of comedy to a depressing concept.
This colourful, kitschy, ambitious mess wasn't for me, but I don't think RTD should listen to what fans want either, as some articles have suggested. Once you do that, you cease being an artist and you become a production line factory worker, dancing to someone else's tune. However, while I enjoyed his early scripts like Rose, The Christmas Invasion, Tooth and Claw, Love and Monsters, Smith and Jones, Midnight, Turn Left, The Next Doctor, and Planet of the Dead, since 2022, I only truly enjoyed Wild Blue Yonder and 73 Yards. The rest have been average. Outside of Doctor Who, his writing in The Sarah Jane Adventures was great, Queer as Folk was watercooler TV and Years and Years was enjoyable science fiction. RTD's got the goods, but he's also too much about feelings, about what RTD wants to preach at us, and not about even attempting hard science fiction. The Doctor is a time traveller and the Rani a genetic meddler. You don't get more sciencey than that. At least we have the expectation of Susan Foreman and Omega in next week's, no doubt, explosive and noisy ending. Bring earplugs.
(NB I mistakenly said in 582 how irritated I was with millennial splainers. I meant previous generations (Boomers to Gen Y and Z) because I am too old to have any millennials in my life).