*All the spoilers*
About a week out now. I’ve watched the finale a second time, and I’m not as raw as I was last week. But the feels are still going strong. Let’s get into it.
We’ll start with Belinda, who, for my money, is the one done dirtiest by this episode. In my “Wish World” review, I said I hoped Belinda would get more to do in the season finale, since that episode had her constrained in “brainwashed housewife” mode while Ruby got in on the action more. And what does Belinda get in the finale? She gets put in a literal box for the entirety of the action. The Wish World gave the Doctor and Belinda a daughter named Poppy, and Belinda goes into the Zero Room with her during the fight, hoping it will protect Poppy when the rest of the wish is taken down. When she comes out of the box, with everything seemingly fixed without her, she just doesn’t feel like Belinda. She’s giddy and bubbling in a way she really hasn’t been before, and the compassionate nurse laughs at and dismisses Ruby’s concerns that something has gone very wrong. She doesn’t mention her parents once, even though she spent most of the season afraid that she wouldn’t be able to get back to them.
After a brief fakeout, Poppy vanishes after all. Ruby’s the only one who can remember her, and she manages to convince the Doctor that the post-wish world is still incomplete. The Fifteenth Doctor gives up his life to shift reality a fraction and recover Ruby. But what does that accomplish? Belinda’s life has been rewritten. She’s no longer living with roommates and eager to get back to Earth in time for her morning shift, worrying that she’ll never see her parents again. She’s now a single mother needing to get home to her (100% human) daughter. This is mainly framed as the Doctor’s loss of his daughter, wistful that Poppy isn’t his anymore, and there really isn’t any attention given to the fact that Belinda’s entire life changed. I hate that for her.
I’m not ready to get into the regeneration quite yet, so let’s move onto a list of assorted grievances. I don’t want to believe that we already lost the Archie Panjabi Rani. I’m praying that the Rani is like the Master and very-definitely-for-sure “dies” at least once before popping back up and regenerating at a later date. (Side note: if she is gone, what does that mean for the Rani’s regeneration abilities? The Mrs. Flood Rani already bigenerated once. Did all the regenerative energy pass on to the Panjabi Rani, or will the Mrs. Flood Rani be able to regenerate again in the future?) Then there’s Omega, who was 1) not Omega and 2) dispatched in about five minutes after two episodes of buildup. The Rani’s plan to resurrect the Time Lords from Omega’s DNA feels like something she would do, but it’s marred by Omega crawling out of the Underverse as a “mad god” monster version of himself. Not to mention, the canonical Omega no longer has a body, so there wouldn’t have been anything to replicate anyway. (I don’t think the Rani would know that, but it could’ve been something the Doctor was banking on, with him getting thrown when monster-Omega shows up.)
I’m also annoyed with how the Conrad part wraps up. I can understand Ruby wanting to appeal to his humanity and defeating him “kindly,” wishing for him to be happy, but in doing so, she ignores the reality of the Wish World. She tells him how “nice” it is, how she likes that he tried to give everyone a family. Conrad’s idea of family, however, marries off the Doctor and Belinda without their consent and gives them an insta-child out of thin air. His “nice” world subjugates the Doctor for his queerness, positions women’s rightful place as in the kitchen, makes disabled people like Shirley all but invisible, and erases trans people like Rose Noble from existence. Ruby herself is disowned by Carla (again—this has happened way too many times,) because Conrad’s “nice” world is a police state that criminalizes doubt. If the show was going to have Ruby say these things to Conrad, I wish it was a pretext to get him to lower his guard, buying her time so she could beat him.
Okay, let’s talk about the Doctor now. I didn’t know that this was a regeneration episode, and as I realized what was about to happen, that crowded a lot of the rest of it out of my brain. I know that having a short tenure doesn’t make a Doctor matter any less—Nine, my beloved!—and if Ncuti Gatwa was ready/needed to leave, I can respect that. But personally, it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. Two short(!!!) seasons doesn’t feel like nearly enough time with Fifteen, and his era feels really unfinished. It makes me so sad that he died to find his daughter, using the regeneration energy to move reality, only Poppy isn’t even his daughter anymore. And the end result is doing that to Belinda. It feels like such a waste of a life—I didn’t want to lose him at all, but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to lose him this way.
Let me take a moment, though, to celebrate some of the beautiful things. Because even Who episodes that are a complete mess have something beautiful about them. Right to the end, Gatwa’s performance is just stellar. He has such great physicality in the role—I adore the way he blows on his hand and shakes it to temporarily hold back the regeneration energy. And I love Thirteen popping up in the TARDIS just before Fifteen reaches the point of no return. I had issues on and off with the writing of her era (sound familiar?), but Jodie Whittaker herself was always wonderful as the Doctor, and it’s just delightful to see Thirteen and Fifteen together, even if it’s just for a couple minutes. This exchange is everything to me:
FIFTEEN: (as Thirteen is about to go) I love you, Doctor!
THIRTEEN: I never say things like that.
FIFTEEN: That’s why you’ve got me.
My heart!
Finally, that regeneration, huh? No shade to Billie Piper, who’s an amazing actress and I’m sure could play a bang-up Doctor. After all, I wound up loving Fourteen more than Ten. And it’s possible she’s not actually playing the new Doctor. Her end credit just says, “And Introducing Billie Piper,” when new Who has always done “And Introducing _______ as the Doctor,” so this may very well be something else altogether. But pulling this kind of move twice in such short succession doesn’t inspire confidence in me. It feels like RTD pulling his 1.0-era favorites out of the toybox whenever he needs to play for time, and that feels too recursive for me. Part of the sadness of being a Doctor Who fan is that every era ends, but part of the beauty is that the show can continually reinvent itself. Holding on too tightly to the past runs the risk of cheapening it with diminishing returns.
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