Warning: This article contains spoilers
Surprise! Without warning or trailers, without press or fanfare, Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor has sensationally regenerated into former Doctor Who actress Billie Piper, who played 2005 companion Rose.
No, I can’t quite believe it either. It is a bold piece of stunt-casting; a full-circle tribute to modern Doctor Who’s 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, it also came at the end of a finale which felt frenzied at best, baffling at worst.
The first half of The Reality War, written by showrunner Russell T Davies, is a break-neck whiz through the plot that was set up in last week’s Wish World: the Doctor battling Archie Panjabi’s wonderfully camp Rani to stop her unleashing classic villain Omega, the first Time Lord, in the hope of rebuilding Gallifrey.
To achieve this she has enlisted an infant god of wishes and a human conspiracy theorist called Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) to turn the world into a conservative utopia, ripping reality apart and freeing Omega from his ‘under-verse’ prison.
Doctor Who finales are hardly subtle, muted affairs, but this entire section is a cacophony of nonsense and noise. Omega himself is something of an anti-climax: a big CGI generic monster who is vanquished as fast as he arrives.
Time Hotel employee Anita (Steph de Whalley), from Christmas special Joy to the World, makes a welcome return to snap everyone out of Conrad’s fantasy, but she is but one of many cogs that are given no room to breathe. It is, at once, frantic and inert; people in rooms speaking very, very fast to justify a plot that can essentially be boiled down to gods and magic.
Gatwa in his final episode of Doctor Who (Photo: BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon/PA Wire)The second half of the finale slows down into something a bit more interesting. Conrad’s traditional fantasy world had blessed the Doctor and companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) with a daughter called Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps).
Even after the Doctor and Belinda know the truth – that the wish world is a lie – that does not stop them from feeling the burning love of parents. “She’s made of hopes and dreams and wishes,” says the Rani at one point, arguing that Poppy isn’t real. “That is every child,” replies the Doctor.
Having only been introduced an episode prior (although first introduced in 2024 episode Space Babies, as a different character), it is initially jarring to put so much emotional weight on a child that the audience barely knows.
It also doesn’t help that the Poppy plot seemingly turns Belinda into a totally different character; a far less interesting one. After the evil is defeated and the world is reset, however, Poppy is forgotten by everyone except former companion Ruby (Molly Gibson), who pleads with the Doctor to bring her back.
Thus begins Gatwa’s march to regeneration. Having realised that he has saved the world at the expense of one person, he hatches a plan to shift reality by “one degree” using his life as the fuel.
Piper has replaced Gatwa as the Doctor, without warning or trailers, without press or fanfare (Photo: BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon/PA Wire)There is a touching beat here in which the Thirteenth Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker, returns to give Gatwa a regeneration pep talk. Fitting, considering they have both broken ground as the first woman and first black man to play the role. “Don’t go in fear,” she says. “Go out with a smile.”
It is a shame to lose the supernatural charisma of Gatwa, whose human star quality often had its own alienness. His regeneration into Bille Piper however raises more questions than answers.
Some of them are story-related. Why, for instance, has the Doctor chosen that face? But others are more profound. Is Billie Piper actually the Sixteenth Doctor or is she a placeholder name for a series we’ll never get to see? Until producing partner Disney renews its lucrative co-producing deal, and/or the BBC recommissions Doctor Who for a new series, the show’s future is unknown.
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