‘Doctor Who’ Finale Recap: Doctor Whaaaaat?!

Previously, on Doctor Who: The Two Ranis and their pet Conrad used a magic baby to create a reality-splitting dystopia in order to bring back Omega from the Underverse, and that is absolutely a sentence I never thought I would write.

This week: Reality breaks and then so does the internet. Please, please, please watch it before I spoil the heck out of it in 3, 2, I’m not kidding, spoilers are coming and they are doozies, 1…

‘The Reality War’ is relentlessly bonkers and so chock-full of ‘what the chuff’ moments that you think you’ve seen everything, and then another one pops up to knock you down again. If this is Russell T Davies campaigning for a new series with Disney+ money, he’s not holding back. Does it stand up to scrutiny? Well, no, not really. Is it an enjoyable ride? Sure. It’s a loving tour of Fifteen’s time in the Whoniverse, building up to the realisation that this is it, and our fabulous Fifteen is bidding farewell. But I am jumping ahead.

Fifteen’s saved from plummeting to the ground by Anita and the Time Hotel, from the last Christmas special. The Time Hotel exists in a kind of interdimensional ‘real time’ future space and can break the Wish World’s hold on the mind. Fifteen and Anita open more doors into UNIT, and everyone inside snaps out of it thanks to the cross-draught. Ruby, Melanie, and Shirley are summoned, Rose rematerializes (Donna’s daughter Rose, not Rose Tyler, that would make no sense, right?) too. Melanie seems to stop for a perm on the way. The Two Ranis pay UNIT a visit and do some more timesplaining about their plan. They want to use Omega to rebuild the Time Lord race because all Gallifreyans are sterile now. Fifteen’s like, uh, Poppy’s real. The Ranis aren’t into human / Time Lord babies though and then everyone seems surprised that a villain has gross ideas about racial purity.

The Poppy problem is where this gets unwieldy. Poppy is real and not real, a memory of a Space Baby, and a wish, and the Doctor’s baby and not the Doctor’s baby. Undoing Wish World might or might not undo Poppy. Fifteen and Belinda can’t risk it, and Techy Sue builds them a Schrodinger’s Baby Box to try to keep Belinda and Poppy safe while everyone else goes to stop the Ranis.

It’s surprisingly easy to stop the Ranis after all that. UNIT fights the enormous skeletons, Ruby has a kinder confrontation with Conrad than he deserves, and Fifteen scoots on up to the bone palace for a chat with the Ranis. When Omega shows up, he’s a huge monster and immediately eats The Rani, while Mrs Flood nopes out with a Two Ronnies joke. You’d never catch me doing something so cheesy. Cough. Fifteen blasts Omega back to the Underverse with his special sat nav.

Ruby asks Magic Baby to undo the wish, and everything goes back to normal. Almost. Conrad’s room turns back into the TARDIS. Fifteen wishes for an end to wishes, and just like that, Magic Baby is just a regular baby. Poppy survives and then she fades away and Ruby’s the only one who remembers her. When Fifteen finally realises that fixing the world cost the life of a child, his child no less, he promises to fix it, knowing that it would take an extraordinary amount of power to give reality another nudge and fix the glitch. Regeneration energy into the vortex, in fact. At that moment, Thirteen pops up for a visit to try and talk him out of it, and then give him some advice to do it more efficiently. It’s a lovely moment between them, and a wonderful surprise.

He’s got a few moments to see if it worked, and that’s when he discovers that he has brought Poppy back, but she’s not his. In this new reality, Belinda’s been talking about Poppy the whole time, and desperate to get back to her. Fifteen would have done this for any child, so it’s still on brand, but Poppy is a Paradox Baby, and it feels like a sad twist. Back on the TARDIS, he stands at the door, leaning out into space, to regenerate with Joy from the Christmas special shining on him to keep him company, and go out with a smile on his face like Thirteen recommended. Farewell, Ncuti Gatwa, you wonderful and beautiful Doctor; we’ll miss that warmth, that energy, and that smile.

I was already applauding RTD for managing to do a surprise regeneration because having this unspoiled was fantastic, and we were all squinting at that regeneration light trying to see who was joining the cast, when there was a piercing sound, as if thousands of Whovians had gasped and then called for their fainting couches. BILLIE PIPER! WHAT? WHAAAAAT?!

I have a lot of questions, and only half of them are WHAT? Are we in a parallel dimension now? When did the Time Lords go sterile? What was with the clips of Susan? Why does Ruby always remember things that other people don’t? How come Belinda’s daughter is the spitting image of a Space Baby she never met? Who’s the boss of the Time Hotel? How come Ruby’s hair looks different after Poppy disappears? RTD magically dodges all of those questions by hurling a zinger in the closing seconds and dropping his mic. Cancel this, bitches. Is Billie officially Sixteen? Is she here for a few specials? She’s not listed as The Doctor in the closing credits so she might be a parallel universe Doctor. Is this what The Moment meant when she said the Bad Wolf face was from the Doctor’s past or maybe his future? Is this nostalgia-baiting? Is she going to seek out Fourteen and make things very confusing? Take him on the world’s most awkward double date with Rose and Ten-Too?

Fetch my smelling salts; I need a lie down. Timey-wimey, going strong.

So it turns out my Glitch theory was perhaps a little generous and maybe those glitches were not intentional, but there are official and intentional glitches all over the shop now, so that kind of counts. We’ll wait to see what happens with Doctor Who, and see how and when it will return. In the meantime, we have a UNIT spin-off to look forward to!