By Roy Mathur, on 2025-06-16, at 23:59:59 to 01:04:50 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Fifteenth Doctor: Ncuti Gatwa, Companions: Belinda Chandra: Varada Sethu, Ruby Sunday: Millie Gibson, The Rani: Archie Panjabi. Writer: Russell T Davies, Director: Alex Sanjiv Pillai. Episode 8 (finale) of series 15 of New Who or season 2 on iPlayer and Disney+ (story 319b), 1 x c.70 min, released simultaneously on iPlayer and BBC1 Sat 2025-05-31 18:50 and watched by me live in a somewhat subdued mood.
We pick up following the Rani's use of the vindicator to destabilise reality and free Omega, which leaves the world warping chaotically, Ruby with some differently abled rebels, and the Doctor plummeting to his death. A door appears, opened by his friend, Anita, from the Time Hotel, and into which the Doctor Escapes. The Rani reveals her plan to use Omega, the last fertile pure Time Lord, since the Master's destruction of Gallifrey, to create new Time Lords and bring Gallifrey back. The Doctor puts Belinda and Poppy into a Zero room, to prevent their dissipation when normality returns. Unfortunately for the Rani, Omega has turned into a huge, mindless monster in his anti-matter prison and eats her. Brandishing the vindicator, the Doctor pushes him back in. Ruby uses the baby god of wishes to restore normality, then adopts him into her family, now she is the only one left who remembers Poppy. The Doctor uses his regeneration energy to return Poppy to Belinda, says goodbye, then regenerates into Rose.
Before we get to the controversy, here's a small point of interest. The Rani's Seekers reminded me of the Lord Marshall's Lensors from The Chronicles of Riddick and or Baron Vladimir Harkonnen's hideous humanoid spider pet from from Villeneuve's Dune.
I'm not saying this only as a brown person, but factually, RTD ended a black Doctor, an Asian Companion, and an Asian Rani during the course of only one episode. The disabled rebels, after such a big build-up in Wish World, had no further role, other than their initial one of saying they were special. That strikes me as incredibly condescending.
What a waste of Omega, now a mindless brute, dispatched back to hell with the Vindicator. It said in my notes, "Vindicated!".
Deus ex via Ruby's wish was all it took to restore normality.
Ncuti regenerating into Billie Piper? Is she the Doctor or just a holding pattern, until the new Doctor or what? She isn't introduced as the Doctor in the credits, so I think the latter more likely. First Tennant returned, then Russell Tovey in The War Between the Land and the Sea, and now Rose? Rose was a great companion, but RTD needs to learn to let go.
In Unleashed, Ncuti, RTD, and the crew gushed in an orgy of luvviedom. I almost choked when Ncuti unironically thanked RTD for the writing. While I sometimes like seeing behind-the-scenes, this was mostly faked fanservice, which is why I generally avoid watching special features.
A hideous CGI'd Omega-monster reduced the hyper-intelligent crazed Time Lord to a disrespectful joke, the Rani gobbled wasted the first Asian Rani, no Susan Foreman fanservice, the Doctor in that bad dress again, a script with zero science or logic; I didn't like it. At least this was a longer episode, which I appreciated because it may be the last we see of the Doctor for quite some time. Literally, a long goodbye.
I hate bigeneration. I'm okay with the timeless child change to lore, but not bigeneration because it was a cowardly decision, seemingly made to keep a popular white doctor in pocket in case the first black full-time doctor didn't work out.
I'll let Ncuti's campness, emotion, and flouncing stand because it's not just a gay thing. I'm a highly strung, occasionally flamboyant, straight man, so the confused homophobes can bugger right off. However, Ncuti's swings of emotion is not normal behaviour for the Doctor. Sure the Doctor is eccentric, but he isn't actually mad, unless you count the other mistake that was the writing of Colin Baker's Six. First he's tough, cool, charismatic, next he's bawling his eyes out. How do I know? That behaviour sounds like me and I'm far from normal.
Is this big, colourful, and silly because of bigger budgets, but also Disney expectations?
The preachiness can grate, but RTD gets a pass because perhaps it's more noticeable in New Who because a lot of this same finger-waving washed over my head as a child watching Old Who.
The PR was handled appallingly. RTD preparing us for a dreaded "pause" with hints over the last few months was incredibly unprofessional. Unless it was a strategic, though morally and ethically dubious, attempt to stir up the fandom? If it was, it strikes me similar to rumours that BBC controller Michael Grade faked a cancellation in 1985, prior to The Trial of a Time Lord in 1986. It ruined my enjoyment of the series more than the disgusting UK right-wing press and alt-right social media's crusade against woke; partly because they are evil bastards, but also because negative clickbait produces clicks and clicks sell advertising.
Ignore what I said in previous pods about how there is much Whovian media left to pore over because, it turns out, that was unconscious and nonsensical bravado. Actually, I've dealt with the "pause" very poorly. I feel let down by the hiatus. It, along with other personal reasons unrelated to Doctor Who, triggered a depression, hence another reason for my later than expected pod. Also, remember how I said, when Ncuti became the Doctor I would not cover every episode because I'm an Old Who podcaster, and then, of course, that was exactly what I did? That was because, guest Fugitive Doctor aside, as a black Doctor, his tenure was a landmark in DW history, so his truncated lifespan and the break is doubly sad.
I have been a fan since the 70s, podcasting about Old Who since 2014 and I'm not looking forward to suffer through another dose of the wilderness years. There were a few Virgin New Adventures books I enjoyed, but that wasn't enough. I don't like Big Finish audio or the new books much, but maybe The War Between the Land and the Sea or that new children's animation the BBC are inviting pitches for will be good. But mostly, I find Doctor Who spin-offs hit or miss. I liked The Sarah Jane Adventures and Class, but not so much others.
As this is the end for some time, let me say what I think future Doctor Who should be. While Doctor Who excels at social commentary, pompous pronouncements ham-fisted down viewers' throats, and nonsensical science abound in both New and Old Who. I was more forgiving when I was younger, but we have strayed far from Sydney Newman's orginal vision. (Listen also to pod 576).
I was intent upon it containing basic factual information that could be described as educational, or, at least, mind opening... All the stories were to be based on scientific or historical facts as we knew them at the time.People like RTD mostly have their hearts in the right place---I agree with much of what Who writers Old and New espouse---but Doctor Who is a story, not a lecture, so show, don't tell and more real science, please.
It's bad enough that there's no Christmas Special this year, so I hope it is not years until the good Doctor returns. Otherwise, I will be officially a codger by then. I was hoping that the series would accompany into codgerdom. If the production has gone pear-shaped for whatever reason and the BBC officially confirms that this is it for New Who for a while---the disgusting right-wing UK press cannot have helped---console yourself, that if you need more Who in your lives, my Classic Doctor Who revisit will continue to the bitter end. And what if, after all this, there is no hiatus? I'm livid either way, so bloody bang up job on the PR, Davies.
NB Enjoy this correction of a correction. In 582, I said I was irritated with millennial splainers. Then, in 583, I said I meant previous generations; Boomers, Gen Y, and Z. Clearly I haven't a clue about generations because millenials are Gen Y, so what I said in the first place was factually correct.
In 583 I complained about Davies' New Who preachiness, forgetting Chibnell's 13th Doctor's debut in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, when the Doctor cheerfully blathers without context.
Sonic screwdriver. Well, I say screwdriver, but it's a bit more multi-purpose than that. Scanner, diagnostics, tin opener. More of a sonic Swiss Army knife. Only without the knife. Only idiots carry knives.Whereas in Old Who---which, to be fair, shared its own number of brain-dead clangers---there are also sublime examples of dialogue. In Doctor Who and The Silurians (pod 182), regarding the Brigadier's genocide, the Doctor speaks with gravitas, rather than tut-tutting.
But that's murder. They were intelligent alien beings. A whole race of them. And he's just wiped them out.
I forgot to mention in 583 my theory of whether the Rani's Bone Palace was Kroll. Or was it Flintstones LAX? Turned out... we'll never know.
In 583, I meant, "Queer as Folk was watercooler TV", not, "watercolour TV".