[This is a brand new spin-off at time of writing, so beware spoilers ahead.] Present day. The aquatic earth reptiles from prehistoric times, who humans now erroneously refer to as Homo Aqua, are no longer dormant. They're pissed off at all the pollution humans have created in the sea. A UNIT mission investigates the initial signs that they've awakened, before their full appearance to the people of the world. The team includes a UNIT desk jockey, Barclay, because of an HR error. When he shows respect to a dead earth reptile that the team find, he is selected to be ambassador in peace negotiations on behalf of the Land. The ambassador for the Sea is Salt, a Homo Amphibia. Barclays and Salt are attracted to each other. Negotiations initially take place in a special water tank in a building in London, then in an environment created by the earth reptiles deep underwater. A show of strength early on by the forces of the Sea causes all the detritus from the oceans to be pulled up into the sky and rain down onto the land. This, plus threats to lose access to sea crossings, makes a shadowy cabal of rich businessmen, politicians and military folks hatch a plan codenamed Severance. One of the party who has descended to the deeps is part of the Severance conspiracy and lets off a sonic bomb, killing himself as well as the rest of the Land party and many of the earth reptiles. Only Barclay is saved, by Salt.

Severance conspirators try to assassinate Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. She is saved by her lover Colonel Ibrahim, who shields her from the bullet and is killed. A deepfake of Salt claiming responsibility for the underwater bombing goes viral, meaning she is enemy number one on the Land; she's also disowned by her people in the Sea too, branded as a traitor for saving Barclay. Barclay and Salt go on the run, and have an intimate moment when alone together. Soon, though, they are cornered by UNIT on a bridge. Salt escapes into the water. Over the next while, Barclay regularly tries to find her by calling out for her on the shore. When he finally finds her he's been secretly dosed with a virus engineered by the Severance conspirators. She is immune and survives, but most of the earth reptiles are killed. The survivors accept terms that they will restrict themselves to the deepest parts of the ocean and not threaten humans again (though it is shown in flashforwards that they will have revenge on the leaders of the Severance conspiracy). Kate drives Barclay to the sea where he is reunited with Salt and grows gills (yes, really); the two swim off together. Kate sees someone on the beach drop a plastic bottle, and pulls a gun on him.

Context:

My rewatch of the episodes of this spin-off from the iplayer over a few days during the Chrimbo limbo period between the 25th and 31st December 2025 marked the point when, after having been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, I finally caught up. I have covered all series and specials of 15 Doctors across 41 seasons, plus at least one story from every official spin-off like TWBTLATS. Doctor Who will return to TV for Christmas 2026, so this is a pause rather than an end.

First Time Round:

I watched both the new omnibus of The Sea Devils as a lead-in, and then the first two episodes of the spin-off, live on the BBC iplayer as they went out on Sunday 7th December 2025. The omnibus was fine, if a bit pointless as the creatures were so different in it that it didn't really work as backstory for the new show. Still, it flowed nicely and didn't have any excessively choppy moments. I felt a bit gaslighted when a line of 1972 dialogue was altered. A Sea Devil says "We shall be the victors in the war between the land and the sea" in the new omnibus, making it look like the cumbersome title (more whinging about that in the Reaction section below, by the way) is a quotation from classic Who. But in the original, the underwater reptile man is confident of winning a "war against mankind". It's seamlessly done, which seems to make it worse somehow. Anyway, the next two episodes episodes I caught up with on the Monday following the Sunday 14th broadcast as I'd been out the night before. Finally, I watched the fifth episode live again on the 21st December, when I was accompanied by the eldest, young man of 19 years of age. He'd watched the previous episodes of the series at university, but was back home for his Christmas hols by the time of the finale. Nobody else in the household could be tempted to watch, not even middle child, boy of 16, who's the biggest Who fan bar me in the family. He's much more interested in the final season of Stranger Things at the moment.

Reaction:

A note before I begin to cover this story proper: I'm sick to death of typing the overlong title in full, so will be abbreviating it as TWBTLATS throughout. Even that initialism is a bit cumbersome, mind (and somehow a bit rude-looking). In the Doctor Who Magazine that previewed the story and featured many interviews and articles about it, they used TWB. When you get the official magazine having to abbreviate the abbreviation, you'd think someone might have twigged that the title was too long. Sheesh! Having got that off my chest, I think the rest of this review will not veer too far into the negative. TWBTLATS was not without flaws, but was broadly very enjoyable, and in many places magnificent. It was also a relaxing watch as whether it was good or bad made not a jot of difference to the Whoniverse. Okay, tiny additional moan before I'm done: I know people wanting online engagement for their content have got to get their clicks somehow; but, if that's by going down the route 666 of devilish exaggeration or downright lying, it does tend to get on my wick. I saw many an article online around the broadcast of this spin-off talking about how it represented 'make or break time' for Doctor Who and the Whoniverse. Such bollocks! TWBTLATS represented the least consequential Whoniverse story ever in terms of its performance with an audience. It was made with funding from a coproduction partner who has already pulled out of making any more Doctor Who or spin-offs. Disney+ wouldn't really care about how it performed on their own platform (if they ever release it there) let alone how it fared on the BBC. And the Beeb had already decided to make more Doctor Who plus at least one more spin-off and announced both a good while before TWBTLATS aired.

It didn't matter how well it did, but in the end it did rather well. The overnight rating for the first episode did better than every episode of Ncuti Gatwa's two series, and its final consolidated rating was only beaten by one ep from them (2024 opener Space Babies). The final rating for the second episode beat most of those for Ncuti's most recent series too. It was on in a later slot at a different time of the year, and was released differently (premiering on TV and streaming simultaneously). On the other hand, the initial episodes held their own against stiff competition (the live final of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, one of ITV's biggest hitters). The BBC will be pleased with that, and the makers should take a little pride in it too. It might have had something to do with having a lovable leading man in Russell Tovey, who is excellent throughout. Ncuti Gatwa is sexy and charismatic for sure, but maybe doesn't have the lovable quality that Tovey, or David Tennant say, bring to the screen. I have seen some fans online reporting that they find Gatwa's screen presence a little off-putting. In a mass audience there are probably also some people who sadly won't watch a programme with a black or gay lead character, which will also have impacted Gatwa's figures. I don't condone such small-mindedness of course, and hope that future casting of the Doctor continues to challenge those viewers - hopefully, they can be won round eventually. If not, fuck 'em quite frankly. Anyway, other than the white male cishet (or should that be fishhet) lead character, the rest of the spin-off story is populated by a diverse set of characters and actors. Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Salt, and Colin McFarlane as General Austin Pierce were both particular standouts for me.

UNIT regulars of recent years are present and correct, but more in the background. From commentary around the time of its broadcast, I sense that some fans were disappointed that this was not the pilot for a full UNIT spin-off series, but it should have been clear from all pre-publicity and trailers that this was more the story of Barclay and Salt. The only UNIT regular with a significant role is Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. She gets some great material. Obviously, there are the harrowing scenes of her grief at the loss of Colonel Ibrahim; presumably neither of the characters are aware of the events of Torchwood's Children of Earth or Ibrahim would have taken a holiday: don't be the lover of the highest credited regular in a five-part Doctor Who spin-off, you'll never make it to part five alive! My favourite Kate moment is in the first episode when she's in the back of a car with Barclay. She jokes about having forgotten her gun before turning serious and revealing that she's done no such thing. Nice. Alexander Devrient as Ibrahim and Ruth Madeley as Shirley Bingham don't have as much to do, but get a few nice moments (not least being Devrient's self-sacrifice). Some actors in the large ensemble seem a bit wasted without much screen time (Vincent Franklin, for example), and some (like McFarlane or Patrick Baladi as the villainous Spears) feel like they're killed off too soon. Nonetheless, all performances are strong throughout whether small or larger role, regular or guest. Props to director Dylan Holmes Williams and the whole crew for that, and for the handsome, expensive look of the piece throughout.

The scripts by Russell T Davies and Pete McTighe are not subtle (the greedy villains are seen greedily tucking into a lavish spread in one early scene) but we've probably passed the point of subtlety for any story with an ecological theme. The environmental situation is such that some things need to be hammered home, as they are in well-visualised set pieces like the sequence of chaos where trash rains down on London. Foreign filming adds global scale to proceedings; as does Davies's standard approach, which McTighe adopts too as he did in Lucky Day, of cutting to various examples of world media during the action. This means that we get more scenes of Lachele Carl as Trinity Wells appearing in yet another Whoniverse show (she's appeared in almost every 21st century spin-off as well as the main show). Obviously TWBTLATS wasn't going to end with everyone living together in harmony, and neither was it going to solve the world's ecological problems at a stroke. It was therefore clear that at some point it would morph from eco thriller to love story. Though the romantic subplot is seeded in from the beginning and highlighted throughout, the gear change towards the end still feels clunky. I think it boils down to minor mistakes in the pacing of the last couple of episodes. If the earth reptiles are powerful enough to create the trash rain, which looms large in the imagination because of the impressive visuals achieved, why don't they retaliate quicker to the sonic bomb? Why piss about with stuff like kidnapping and eating pet dogs, leaving the humans time to develop their virus? A few script changes could have created more urgency. It's nonetheless a good fun story, and though it wasn't a UNIT series per se, it could lead to more spin-offs featuring UNIT in future. That's of course assuming that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart gets away with pulling a gun on a civilian for littering.

Connectivity:

Both The War between the Land and the Sea and Kinda feature reptilian adversaries that have something of a moment of intimacy with a lead character (if kissing was allowed on screen in Doctor Who in 1980s, I can definitely envisage the Mara being passed from victim to victim that way rather than by holding hands).

Deeper Thoughts:

Predictions for the gap year. It's been a tradition here in the last few years for the Deeper Thoughts of posts around New Year's to make predictions, and review how well - or how clownishly - the last ones panned out. My predictions for 2025 can be found in the Deeper Thoughts of the Joy to the World post from December 2024. Starting with my one prediction that was not about Doctor Who, I'm a tiny bit disappointed that Wham's Last Christmas hasn't proved to be the UK's Christmas number one forever. I thought it would take "a change in how the chart is put together" to stop it. In the end, it just took Amazon slightly gaming the system by pushing Kylie Minogue's song XMAS to anybody asking their Alexa to play Christmas music during the festive period. Still, XMAS is a good song, and Kylie's both a Doctor Who star and an (inter)national treasure, so it was a worthy winner. Last Christmas came very close to beating XMAS despite all that, so will probably achieve its hat trick of Yuletide top spots in 2026. Sticking with festive predictions, at the end of 2024 I believed that regardless of coproduction decisions Doctor Who would be on at least at Christmas every year including 2025. I was only a year out: without Disney money, the BBC have confirmed a Christmas special for 2026. TWBTLATS had a slightly odd compressed scheduling (two times two episodes per week, with a fifth and final episode on its own in a third and final week). I get the feeling that it was intended to air weekly in 2026. Its being somewhat tossed away in three short weeks may be because it was pulled forward to plug the Christmas 2025 gap.

It's hard to predict anything about the content of the 2026 Christmas special; Billie Piper will be in it, but maybe not as the Doctor. It's also rumoured that David Tennant could make an appearance. His fourteenth Doctor is still hanging around on Earth following the bi-generation, so I can definitely see a possible plot of him helping out Billie with some regeneration weirdness that's turned the Doctor temporarily into a Bad Wolf form. At the end of the special, he can send this interim Doctor on her way to regenerate into the new incumbent. Plus Daleks and/or Cybermen. Come back in a year to see if any of that is even remotely correct. Talking of those two august enemies, I predicted a year ago that at least one of them would feature in the show in 2025, "probably Skaro's finest". I was technically correct - the Daleks featured briefly in a flashback scene in The Reality War - but full deployment of those 'big guns' still feels overdue (and will feel even more so by December 2026). With Doctor Who absent from TV until Christmas, home video and other extended universe will have to suffice for eager fans. My predictions about Blu-ray box sets proved correct for the second year running (a sign, I think, of the ever dwindling number of choices rather than any increase in my powers of prognostication). In December 2024, the season 7 box set had already been announced. I guessed, and it so transpired, that season 13 would be next and that there wouldn't be another Doctor Who set in 2025, only Blakes 7 series B.

The first Blu-ray box set for 2026 has also already been announced. It's season 21 (where Peter Davison bows out and Colin Baker debuts). It's slated for March following a release of TWBTLATS on Blu-Ray in February. There will almost certainly be one more Doctor Who set released around six months later, with Blakes 7 series C then arriving towards the end of the year. The gap in Summer where a new series box set would normally be scheduled might mean that second set comes a little earlier, but I doubt it will mean an additional classic Doctor Who box set is squeezed in. The reason for that is the previously mentioned dwindling number of seasons to choose from, many with challenges around restoration or missing episodes. Once season 21 is released, there will be seven seasons of classic Who left, only two of them in colour. The biggest question when trying to predict which season will be next is whether it will be a black and white set. I think not, for the same reasons I touched on last year: it would be too messy to have a mixture of reconstruction and animation to replace missing episodes on any one set, so I think there will be a wait for the monochrome sets while their final story or stories are animated. As such, I predict that the second box set of 2026 will be the final Jon Pertwee set, season 11. I do think that there will be another animation released during the year too; my money's on The Space Pirates, as it would complete animation of the missing parts of season 6 and make that a contender for release in 2027.

What of the blog in 2026? I've covered all 15 Doctors' stories in random order now, so I can and will add in some indexes of the posts per Doctor in broadcast order (we Doctor Who fans love a list, after all). That'll keep me busy for a while. Then, when it gets closer to Doctor Who's December return - which I'm going to go out on a limb and say will not be a one-off, I predict an announcement about Doctor Who's future to be made before the end of the year - I will probably start blogging a few other bits and bobs. I've done every official spin-off, but there are many unofficial fan-made efforts out there. For now though, like for the show, there will be something of a hiatus... but we Doctor Who fans are used to such things.

In Summary:

Very enjoyable, but I'm glad it isn't the last Doctor Who-related story on the BBC, as it would have been an odd note to end on. Wishing you a Happy 2026 (with some Happy New Who at the end of it)!

Monday, 8 December 2025

Wish World / The Reality War

Chapter the 343rd, features a world and society from wish.

Plot:

Just like a Doctor Who producer in an anniversary year, the Rani wants to bring back Omega. He can apparently help to restart the Time Lord race - the only known surviving Time lords (her two bi-generated selves plus the Doctor) having become sterile following a "genetic explosion". Omega is trapped in a dimension that can only be reached by trapping the Doctor on Earth and then destroying the fabric of reality on that planet, over and over until it wears thin, using the power of doubt. To facilitate this, she travels back to Bavaria in 1865 to collect a baby who is one of the pantheon, the god of wishes. She has freed Conrad Clark from prison (after the events of Lucky Day) and has him wishing an approximation of Earth society into existence, warping reality for humans, and repeatedly replaying the 23rd May 2025. [Just as an aside: the Rani once ridiculed the Master for his plotting of silly, labyrinthine schemes - what a hypocrite!] On this version of the world, the Doctor believes he is John Smith, with a wife called Belinda and a daughter called Poppy. Conrad can't imagine a whole world, so people's experiences are created from their warped memories; this includes Poppy, who looks like the baby of the same name from Space Babies. The world adheres to Conrad's old-fashioned and heteronormative values (women should be wives and mothers rather than have paid work, a man can't find another man beautiful, disabled people are kept out of sight, trans people don't exist). Conrad appears on every TV as a cross between a Cbeebies presenter and God, telling stories of Doctor Who and the Rani. Anyone with doubts about this reality is carted off by the police. There are also giant dinosaur skeletons called Bone Beasts roaming about (don't ask why).

Ruby Sunday knows that something is wrong with the world and doorsteps John Smith, but he doesn't remember her. Smith goes to work at a drastically changed UNIT HQ (UNIT is an insurance company in this reality) where everyone but Shirley and Rose has an office job (Susan Triad is the tea lady). Shirley lives in a urban camp with other disabled people, and Rose isn't around at all. On John Smith's TV, Rogue appears, breaking through Conrad's transmission, and explains something about the falseness of Smith's reality. The resultant doubt gets Smith and Belinda carted off to the Bone Palace, the Rani's lair. The Rani explains her plan, and the Doctor realises who he is. She locks him on a balcony as the collective doubt of the populace tears the world apart. The balcony crumbles and the Doctor is falling to his doom when a portal opens, and Anita pulls him through into the safety of the Time Hotel. The day resets again. Anita explains that she has been searching for the Doctor through time, and found him stuck in the Rani's trap. The day keeps repeating, ending with the destruction of the world, but each time reality is wearing thinner, and soon the Rani will be able to free Omega. Anita opens another Time Hotel door into UNIT HQ and keeps it open; this brings reality to everyone there, and they all realise their true identities. Rose appears. The Doctor has a plan to restore reality, but he's worried that it will mean Poppy, who might be his actual half-Time Lord daughter, will cease to exist. Susan Triad (very rapidly) builds a zero room, which Belinda and Poppy get in. The Rani gets the Bone Beasts to attack UNIT HQ and there's a big battle.

The Doctor confronts both the Ranis at the Bone Palace. They have located Omega and free him; he's become a giant ghoul; Omega eats one Rani, and the other one flees. Ruby uses a UNIT transmat to reach Conrad and the wish god baby. She makes a wish and ends Conrad's world. The Doctor fights off Omega with the vindicator, then rushes to find his TARDIS as the Bone Palace disappears. Everyone returns to UNIT HQ, and opens the zero room. Poppy's still in there with Bel. The Doctor leaves the wish god baby, his power removed by the Doctor wishing for no more wishes, with Carla and Cherry Sunday to look after. He and Belinda plan to travel with Poppy in the TARDIS, but they start to forget her as does everyone else except Ruby. Poppy vanishes. Ruby persuades the Doctor that Poppy should exist, and he knows there's only one way to get her back: to use his regeneration energy to adjust the timeline. He goes off alone in the TARDIS and sees his previous Jodie Whittaker incarnation, who gives him a pep talk then disappears. He forces a regeneration, but doesn't change yet - he floods the TARDIS with the energy streaming out of him, then finds himself in a garden (somehow). He finds Belinda and her daughter Poppy. In this timeline, Poppy is 100% human and is Belinda's child with an ex; she has been wanting to get back to Earth on the 24th May 2025 as Poppy needed looking after. The Doctor says goodbye, then materialises the TARDIS in space near to the star that used to be Joy Almondo, and his regeneration takes place: he changes into a body that looks exactly like Rose Tyler, "Oh hello!".

Context:

I watched both episodes back-to-back from the Blu-ray box set on an evening early in December 2025. I viewed it in this way to see how well, or how not so well, both parts cohered as one story, given the major reworking of the ending that I know about now, but didn't know to quite the same level of detail on first viewing (see the Reaction section below for more on that).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up. This story completes a season (new series 15, as I call it) and another Doctor's era. Ncuti Gatwa makes it 14 Doctors whose televisual eras have been completed (Doctors 1-4, 6-15), and 40 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20-26, and new series 1-15). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, four now remain. There is also at the time of writing a new 5-episode spin-off that has begun broadcasting.

First Time Round:

I first watched Wish World on the BBC iplayer around 10am on Saturday 24th May 2025 (the day which the episode revolves around); I was accompanied, as I was for most of the series, by middle child (boy of 16, 15 at the time). The two of us also watched the second and final part The Reality War together, but not on the TV. We occupied two seats in a full house of people watching the episode in the Duke of York's cinema in Brighton. As for the previous year's finale, there were cinema showings across the UK. I couldn't interest either of the other children, though the eldest - back from university - joined his brother and I for a meal in the next door pub The Joker before the screening, then afterwards went out with mates for the evening rather than watch Doctor Who on the big screen. Once we'd said goodbye to him, the two of us went to the cinema and settled in our seats just as the introduction by Varada Sethu was starting. The crowd, including the two of us, made all the right noises of enjoyment throughout. We gasped in amazement at the surprise appearances (Anita from the Time Hotel! Rose Noble!), and were shrieking in amazement by the time we heard Jodie Whittaker's first line of dialogue. I think most people had lost their voices to amazement by the time Ncuti regenerated into Billie Piper at the end. One audience member still mustered decent projection, though. At the very end, as the lights came up - he had held it in through the full credit sequence and the teaser for The War Between the Land and the Sea - he very loudly and in heartfelt fashion exclaimed "What the f**k?!" to everyone in the cinema, and we all chuckled with understanding at his shellshock.

Reaction:

I obviously have to give my reaction to the version of this story that ended up on screen, but before that I'll briefly cover the version that didn't. For Who's 62nd anniversary, Sunday November 23rd 2025, deleted scenes from Ncuti Gatwa's second season were released online for fan appreciation. Not all the deleted scenes, though. As fans instantly pointed out, the clips package had an omission as big as an elephant in the room. Many of those involved had leaked the nature of The Reality War's original ending, but the production team still seemed to want to pretend it didn't happen. The Doctor and his friends were to have finished up in a club dancing in celebration and happiness (an accidentally uploaded promo picture showed a moment from this scene), watched from afar by the Doctor's granddaughter Susan played by Carole Ann Ford, accompanied by Poppy. Both observers would have then slunk away, with Susan saying to Poppy 'Come on, Mum'! It would have been a wonderful moment. The puzzle remains as to what connective story tissue would have joined that final scene to the earlier narrative. It's hard to tell exactly what's been added later, but I think there may be a hint from paying attention to the presence or absence of Rose Noble. The character appears once reality is reintroduced to UNIT HQ, to be emblematic of people of whom Conrad's narrow worldview can't conceive. The character isn't given enough to do, just as she wasn't in the previous year's finale; but, she's there, alongside the rest of the UNIT gang, helping to rescue Poppy (who might cease to exist). This is the first time that Poppy needs to be rescued after the first threat of non-existence. The second time this happens (this egregious double story beat is no doubt a side-effect of the rewrite), everyone else from the gang is still present at UNIT HQ, but Yasmin Finney obviously wasn't free and Rose is absent.

So, everything up to Poppy's miraculous survival in Susan Triad's zero room was probably material from before the rewrite. Then, perhaps, everyone forgot about Poppy in a similar way to how they do in the final version, but without Ruby as the lone dissenting voice. Poppy wouldn't have vanished, and would instead have met up with Susan for the original ending. This would explain loose ends in the final version; the cameo appearances of Susan earlier in the season, for example, end up going nowhere and linking to nothing, as does the stand-out line from 2024's finale where the Doctor explains that he has a grandchild but no children (as Time Lords tend to do things out of chronological order). A neat little tie-up that we did end up getting is Ruby's awareness of parallel realities because of her experiences in 73 Yards. This is used to good effect in Wish World to explain her distrust of Conrad, then used again in The Reality War as an explanation for why she alone still remembers Poppy. Unfortunately, this creates what for me is the most unfortunate impact of the rewrite. In the - rather wonderful, horror-inflected - scene of Bel and the Doctor passing Poppy's coat between them as it gets smaller and smaller, Ruby sees what is happening, and knows what they've forgotten. Was this scene in the original version? Could have been, but I think probably not. The next sequence can't have been, though: the Doctor arrives at UNIT HQ and - with persuasion from Ruby - goes off to realign the universe to bring Poppy back, with a hint that it will cost his life. The surprise of Jodie Whittaker's cameo, and the scene where the Doctor returns to normality and finds that everything has changed, with Bel always having had a child to whom she has been trying to get back all this time, distract one on first watch from the the devastating truth that the Ncuti Doctor never says goodbye to Ruby.

Millie Gibson might appear instantly that the Christmas special starts in 2026, of course, but the damage is done. Ruby was Gatwa's first and most important companion. She sends him on the mission to save Poppy, but by the end of The Reality War hasn't seen him again, and knows nothing of whether he's been successful or not. His sole goodbye scene is with more recent companion Bel, who - unlike Ruby - was blissfully unaware that anything was wrong before. If he had had the choice, I don't think writer and showrunner Russell T Davies would have structured the story like this. Wish World / The Reality War as a whole is therefore compromised, and doomed always to be seen more as a set of scenes than a story. Luckily, most of its individual scenes are great - imagine if they weren't? - but there will always be the lingering impression whenever one watches it that they don't quite fit together. The story has forced upon it the job of completing a Doctor's era thematically, and instead summarises the last two years of Doctor Who more as a highlights package. Everyone significant returns for at least a brief moment. All the many UNIT regulars are there, as mentioned, including Susan Triad and Mel, who hadn't returned earlier in the season. They are given fun alter egos in Conrad's world as employees of the Unified National Insurance Team. It's great to see Rogue appear on John Smith's TV to alert him to the inconsistencies of his current reality, and to say "I love you"; Ruby's mum and grandmother get to adopt the wish god baby at the end, which is a perfect fit and harks back to Ncuti's very first full story The Church on Ruby Road; best of all for me was the unexpected return of Anita from the time hotel, one of my favourite characters of recent years. The Doctor regenerates in the presence of the Joy star (like Anita, returning from the last Christmas special). Even the Giggle is heard from the story in which Ncuti first made an appearance.

Another regular guest star returning who's featured throughout Ncuti's two seasons is Anita Dobson as Mrs. Flood, one of the Two Ranis (Dobson's exit line doing a gag about The Two Ronnies got a good, groanful reception in the cinema where I first watched the story, though I'm sure a lot of the audience were too young to have got the reference). She's very good value as we've come to expect, and has great screen chemistry and interplay with Archie Panjabi as the lead Rani. Every scene with Panjabi is lifted by her presence, the costume is great and it's great to see her zooming about the sky on her space jet-ski. It's also great to have a brief flashback to Kate O'Mara playing the character, and to have a Mel-Rani face-off . It seems a shame for Panjabi to be killed off, but maybe she could survive being eaten by Omega and return one day. The Omega creature is nicely realised, but it does seem odd to bring him back not looking or acting anything like the character previously did. At least the difference is explained in the script, and it is hard to think what other Gallifreyan MacGuffin could be the Rani's goal. Also unfortunate is Gatwa's stressing of a different syllable when pronouncing Omega's name compared to everyone else in the story (and everyone through Doctor Who's history); but, he's a Time Lord, so can say things however he wants. The larger-than-life villainy on display somewhat overshadows Conrad Clark, but the script makes a virtue of this. Conrad finds some measure of goodness and humanity within himself in wishing his world (as Ruby says, it could have been a lot worse) and he gets a happy ending. There's freaky visual interest provided by the Seekers and the Bone Beasts, as well as a nice action set piece involving the latter when they attack UNIT HQ.

Varada Sethu gets less interesting, and less effective, material here than Millie Gibson: the moment where she runs from her house into the woods of Conrad's world and screams in despair is great. If she has such doubts, though, then the various moments where she seems disproportionately aggressive at the idea of Poppy not being her daughter don't ring true. Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps as Poppy is astonishingly good, though, and Sethu works well with her. With any time-travel story where history is altered, there is always uncertainty about whether things have been put back as they always should have been at the end, or have changed. Which was the prime timeline? Did Bel always have a daughter, and the initial timeline was the one that was out of whack? Maybe it doesn't matter, but personally I'd like to know one way or the other. Talking of the end, I'll finish by looking at the denouement as it finally ended up, rather than the one in a parallel universe of potential story energy. The accumulation of returning elements already there before the story had to become a regeneration story look difficult to top, but Davies pulls out all the stops such that the last 20 minutes or so achieve an operatically unhinged energy. With everything else seeming to leak, the production team's keeping Jodie Whittaker's appearance secret was a major coup. Every moment and every line of the scene of her and Gatwa is wonderful. She was always a more awkward Doctor when dealing with emotions than Gatwa's take on the Time Lord, and this is addressed in the final exchange where Whittaker feels she should tall Yaz that she loves her, and Gatwa replies "You never do... but she knows". Just when one might think that the surprise level has peaked, Gatwa regenerates into Billie flippin' Piper. As the man in the cinema suggested (see First Time Round section above) the story ends with the consummate WTF moment.

Connectivity:

This is irritating; the connection between Wish World / The Reality War and Redacted could have been the slam dunk that both have surprise appearances by Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor towards the end. Unfortunately, that's only true of Redacted series 1, not series 2. Oh well. Instead, it will have to suffice that both stories feature displaced people living in a makeshift community ruled over by a cruel female villain (the Rani, Honour Bray).

Deeper Thoughts:

Ncuti in summary. In the first month or two of 2025, it didn't feel (at least to me) like the year would see the end of an era. 2024's Christmas special Joy to the World was fresh in my mind, Doctor Who was gearing up for the second season of a bright, young and relatively new Doctor, paired with an intriguing new companion. At that point or thereabouts (the producers of Doctor Who are being a bit cagey about the exact timing), Ncuti Gatwa had already finished filming on the series. As mentioned in the Reaction section above, it's common knowledge that the ending originally planned for The Reality War would have seen some loose ends left to be tied up about the Doctor, his granddaughter and daughter; but, at the end of it, the Doctor would be unregenerated and celebrating with his friends. The next season, which was already at least partially scripted, would have picked up from there. It didn't come to pass: either Disney+ delayed too long in making a decision on whether to coproduce that next season, or they had already made a decision but it wasn't communicated publicly, and the BBC needed time to decide what to do next with Doctor Who. It doesn't really matter why or how, the important thing is that it was too much of a delay for Ncuti Gatwa and, no doubt, for his agent. Put yourself in the agent's place: your client is a hot property, and he's getting offers for movies. As I said on the blog back in 2023 (see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Boom Town post for more details), Gatwa was probably "the most up-and-coming" of any actor on taking up the Doctor role, "young and exciting, and clearly has the potential to move on to greater things". A man in a hurry, in other words (even if he hadn't had an agent pushing him onwards).

Ncuti was clearly up for doing a third year (likely no more than that) if and only if he could go straight into making it after his second season. The delay scuppered that, and so the finale needed to be rewritten and reshot to divest him of the baggage of association with a high-profile role, letting him move on. I can forgive showrunner Russell T Davies's white lies stating that Gatwa's two-year stint was "always the plan": hell hath no fury like a mass of Doctor Who fans scorned, after all; it's not Gatwa's fault the plan changed, and nobody sensible wants him to be hounded by those fans forever more. The pronouncement had some traces of truth, anyway: the plan probably always was for Gatwa to film his regeneration in 2025, but he was almost certainly expected to film another season's worth of episodes first. In that Boom Town post's Deeper Thoughts section, I drew parallels with Gatwa's and David Tennant's profiles when they were cast as the Doctor. It's an intriguing counterfactual to consider what might have happened if Tennant in 2007 had faced a delay before his third season went into production: would his fan love for Doctor Who have made him hang around for an extended period associated with but not playing the role of the Doctor? It's nice to think that fandom would conquer all, but Tennant too was a young actor with bags of promise, and he too would likely have bowed to pressure from his agent. The November 2025 comments from The Rest is Entertainment podcast (amidst an otherwise even-handed reaction to the Disney+ decision) that Gatwa wasn't sufficiently ambassadorial - with the hint that this was because he wasn't sufficiently invested in the hugeness of the role - were therefore a bit unfair. Could anything Ncuti have done in promoting the show have got more people subscribing or watching on Disney+? I doubt it.

I think the situation probably arose simply because the first few Gatwa stories didn't land with a lot of the audience. I didn't mind any of his opening three stories (The Church on Ruby Road, Space Babies and The Devil's Chord), but I nonetheless look back and think they are probably the weakest three stories of any that he did. Even when his first series hit its stride (with 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble, stories that were - for me at least - up there with some of the best that Doctor Who of any era has had to offer) Ncuti Gatwa was barely in it. With hindsight it's easy to suggest it was a bad move to cast someone who couldn't start straight away (Gatwa had commitments to Sex Education, the series that had first brought him to the public notice, that overlapped with the recording dates for those first Who stories made for his era, meaning they had to be 'Doctor lite'). I'm terribly conflicted on this: 73 Yards wouldn't work if the Doctor was in it throughout, and it's marvellous exactly how it is. Did the programme win that battle only to lose the war? People carp about the finale of that first year (I think both parts, The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death, are cruelly underrated), but was its quality irrelevant? Had people already given up because the first part of the season featured stories that were either a bit naff, or didn't feature the Doctor, or both? We'll never know for sure. At the end of 2024, Joy to the World came along and was simply joyful (as mentioned above, the character of Anita from that story returning unexpectedly in The Reality War was a glorious high point for me, and I'm sure for others too). No matter how good any story was from then on, though, the series was a lame duck as far as the press was concerned.

If the first season was under-Doctored, the second was overshadowed. From months before its first episode aired, the tsunami of speculation about Doctor Who's future could only ever drown out anything positive about the 2025 run. By that time, those reshoots had been done to change the ending of the final episode, and some details of that had leaked. This was a shame as - despite some issues with script logic in a few of the stories, though nothing bad enough to impact their initial viewing - the series had corkers enough for everyone: if you liked action, there was The Well; if you liked quirkiness, there was Lux; if you liked camp splendour, there was The Interstellar Song Contest. As detailed above, the finale proved to be a bit lumpy and bumpy, with the story equivalent of crunching gear changes happening in a number of places towards the end of the second part. This was probably unavoidable given the behind-the-scenes reworking. I'm still fixated on just how extensive those reshoots were. Behind the scenes footage shows producer Vicki Delow paying tribute to Gatwa as he wrapped on the series. This takes place on the UNIT set, which is hosting a veritable gang show - not just the UNIT regulars who might have been around anyway then for production of The War Between the Land and the Sea, but also Steph De Whalley as Anita and Susan Twist as Susan Triad. That's a lot of people to pay, and they also got Jodie Whittaker in for a day too. Given time, maybe Andrew Pixley will get sufficient access to document the truth for posterity. Or maybe not (there are still details from Christopher Eccleston's turbulent time filming his single season of the show that are tantalisingly unclear over twenty years later). Anyway, I doubt they'd have faked Delow's tribute just for Doctor Who Unleashed. (Side note: Unleashed and its energetic presenter Steffan Powell are a highlight of this era; I hope both show and presenter return when the main show comes back in 2026).

Whatever else one thinks of the creative decisions of showrunner Russell T Davies, one has to concede that he made original choices during his second tenure regarding the use of returning elements from the show's history. If you truly had the Toymaker, Sutekh and the Rani on your returning foes bingo card before the Bad Wolf Studios era of Who began in November 2023, then I salute you. This desire to do something a bit different, though, leaves Gatwa as the only Doctor never to have stories fighting against any of the 'big three' forces of antagonism of the Whoniverse (the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master) and only the second not to have faced off against the Daleks. David Tennant's 14th Doctor at least got the Children in Need short with a Dalek (and, you know, he'd already played the part and had three full-on Dalek stories first time round). For Paul McGann, though, Skaro's finest only featured as off-camera voices. He only did the one story, though. It would be a shame if this dented Gatwa's legitimacy in anyone's eyes. Ncuti himself covered this in a The One Show interview in July 2025, saying "I never got to fight a Dalek. A Dalek or a Cyberman. I mean, just the crux of Doctor Who", then adding a tease: "So, might do that! Might go fight a Dalek!". He won't, of course. Even if he was serious, his agent wouldn't let him, much as I'd love to sit down on Christmas Day 2026 to a surprise reappearance of Gatwa allying himself with Billie Piper to defeat the dastardly dustbins. What about a few years after that? I suspect that Gatwa is going to be as busy in that time as Matt Smith - who has never returned to Doctor Who despite seeming quite enthusiastic about the idea. So, even if enough time passes to pacify an agent, it seems improbable. Nothing's impossible though, and Gatwa's Doctor clearly has unfinished business with his granddaughter Susan: one day, he could come back - yes, one day...

In Summary:

What the f**k?!

Monday, 24 November 2025

Doctor Who: Redacted (series 2)

Chapter the 342nd, which poses the question 'Is Apex a predator?'.

Plot:

The Blue Box Podcast is still going strong, but there's conflict within the three woman team who run it (and who recently saved the world from the Redacted virus). Ally and Shawna are now an (imperfect) couple; Cleo feels a bit isolated: she's sad that she didn't get to travel the universe with the Doctor, and feels that the other two are not taking her seriously. Ally and Shawna are investigating a spate of burglaries of alien tech from different locations across the country; Cleo is looking into mutant rats in Docklands; she's almost attacked by these, but is rescued by Apex. He is an alien who protects endangered species across the universe, and is looking for the Doctor. He has brought various aliens to sanctuary in an underground shanty town hidden somewhere on the Bakerloo line in London. But Apex isn't as nice as he's making out. He's the one behind the thefts, and the aliens living underground are being charged for the privilege by the avaricious landlord, and Apex's ex, Honour Bray. Honour wants to own the TARDIS, and Apex has been trying to get to the Doctor through Cleo to obtain it. When Honour tries to evict all the underground dwellers, Cleo stands in her way. With the help of Rani Chandra, Abby and Shawna use computer Mr Smith to fight off Honour's robots. Apex sort-of redeems himself, and Cleo manages to persuade Honour to do the right thing.

Context:

As covered in more detail in the Deeper Thoughts section below, not only am I reaching the end of any official stuff to blog, I've also now run out of things I haven't ever watched (or in the case of Redacted, listened to). Redacted series 2 is - at least until something new is broadcast after the time of writing - the final Whoniverse story previously unexperienced by me that also qualifies as per my standard canon questions. Does it feature the Doctor or key characters that have appeared in Doctor Who? Yes. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Yes. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. With all that confirmed, I listened to the six episodes of the story from the BBC Sounds app over the course of approximately a week in November 2025, finishing on what some brand manager somewhere and a lot of excitable fans call Doctor Who Day (i.e. the 23rd November, the anniversary of Doctor Who's BBC1 debut in 1963).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up. Aside from occasional side trips into spin-offs like Redacted, the blog has seen 13 Doctors' televisual eras completed (Doctors 1-4, 6-14), and 39 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20-26, and new series 1-14). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, six now remain.

First Time Round:

This is my first listen to the second series of Redacted. It was originally made available to stream on BBC Sounds from the 18th September 2023, a couple of months before the Doctor returned to TV screens after a short gap between The Power of the Doctor in 2022 and the 60th anniversary specials with David Tennant and Catherine Tate in November and December 2023. I am sure I knew that it had become available at the time, but I hadn't then caught up with series 1 (which I finally listened to earlier in 2025), so wouldn't have been in a position to jump to the second run anyway.

Reaction:

The second Redacted series is markedly different to the first. My main reservation about the former was that - at 10 episodes - it was too long, and the action to fill up that lengthy running time got repetitive. The second series comprises a comparatively svelte six x 30 minute episodes. One of the things that has been jettisoned to get the overall running time down is baggage from the history of Doctor Who and its spin-offs. That first run was crammed with many different surprise cameo appearances from across the Whoniverse, including ultimately the Doctor herself. It was fun, but I'm glad not to have so many distractions this time. Only Rani Chandra (in the universe of Redacted, Rani is a rival investigative podcaster looking into weird phenomena) and computer Mr. Smith appear to assist the Blue Box Podcast team towards the end. There's no Doctor - it would have been difficult as this was broadcast before the 14th Doctor (and second David Tennant Doctor) had been properly featured onscreen. The script suggests there's something wrong with the Doctor's timeline, but this is never resolved and doesn't seem to relate to anything from the TV. Maybe it was planned to be the lead-in to the plot of a Redacted series 3 that hasn't come to pass. Even without recurring elements, though, the series still manages to weave itself into the Doctor Who tapestry with throwaway continuity gags. Cleo's pollution-affected, oversized rats in Docklands are linked in dialogue to similar cases of Spiders (from Arachnids in the UK) and maggots (from The Green Death), and would also have echoes to any fan in the know of the giant rats in the same London location as featured in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

The three central characters of Redacted are now firmly established, and it's much more interesting to focus on them. The structure of the narrative means that the three aren't all together much across the six parts; in the tradition of many a Doctor Who story, they are split up early on, and occupy parallel plots - the action intercutting between them - that gradually come together. The reason Cleo is off on her own, and Abby and Shawna are investigating separately, is because of intra-team conflict. This is a dangerously difficult line to tread in an adventure drama. The key conflict should be between the team and external forces; the longer they don't cohere into a single unit, the longer they bicker at one another, the less effective it is. There should have been the satisfying (and maybe hackneyed, but clichés are clichés because they work) story beat where all three forgive one another, put their differences behind them, and unite to fight the real enemy. It doesn't happen quite that neatly. Even Abby and Shawna have some moments where they argue - at humorously inappropriate points - about their relationship. It would be fine if it was all ironed out by the end of the penultimate episode, but it continues into the climactic action. Obviously someone was thinking along the lines that 'conflict = drama' but there is more than enough conflict already without putting in material that might make it more difficult for an audience to warm to the central characters. For example, Cleo is paired throughout with the slippery character of Apex, and their interactions keep listeners on their toes for all that running time: how trustworthy or not is Apex? How much does he care for Cleo, or is he just using her? We see him doing seemingly altruistic acts, but how much is that for money or expediency, rather than heroism? The series comes to an end with these questions still not 100% answered, which I think is a strength.

The other villain of the piece is similarly painted in shades of grey rather than black and white. This is Honour Bray, played with relish by Dervla Kirwan (in fact, all the voice cast delivers the goods, particular Charlie Craggs as Cleo). Characterising a villain as a slum landlord who exploits refugees is something new for the world of Who, and is sadly very relevant to the real world. The relationship triangle between Honour, Cleo and Apex is a nice way for the script to frame the scenes between the three: that this tale of intergalactic refugees ends up with three characters discussing the vicissitudes of love while eating vegan nuggets in a fried chicken shop is so Doctor Who (in the best possible way). As the main show often does, Redacted samples existing texts to great effect: aliens living amongst humans unnoticed, forming their own communities in an urban space, and the existence of covert authorities and commerce connected to this secret world; it's all very Men in Black. This allows for some colourful characters appearing for a scene or two (a sentient room, a time-travelling black marketeer that links the supply and demand of different historical periods). There's some laugh out loud dialogue too. The only issue is that it ends leaving lots of potential unrealised. It doesn't look like there is going to be a Redacted series 3, which is a shame.

Connectivity:

Both Redacted series 2 and The Well feature a guest appearance from a Whoniverse character that first appeared in 2008 (Rani Chandra in the audio story, the Midnight entity on TV).

Deeper Thoughts:

All Ticked Off. So, this is it. Now I've listened to the second series of Redacted, I have seen and heard it all, every official piece of Doctor Who entertainment produced by the BBC. I am something of a completist Doctor Who fan (had you noticed?!); as such, reaching this milestone is bittersweet, but nonetheless an achievement that is worth stepping back and reflecting upon briefly. I have watched every available main series Doctor Who episode from 1963 to 2025, and listened to every audio for those where the pictures are not known to exist; I’ve watched the animated or reconstructed versions of all of those that have had official imagery made to accompany those audios (and I’ve watched quite a lot of the unofficial versions out there too). I have watched all the webcasts that debuted online in the early 2000s, including the fully-animated Scream of the Shalka. I have watched the two David Tennant animations made at the height of his ‘rock star’ pomp in the late 2000s. I’ve listened to all the Doctor Who stories like Redacted made for BBC radio or audio. Of the spin-offs, I’ve watched every episode of Torchwood, Class and The Sarah Jane Adventures. I’ve also watched every episode of K9 and Company, but that only takes 50 minutes so isn’t as impressive. I've watched every Doctor Who charity quickie made for Children In Need or Comic Relief. I've watched every episode of tie-in factual shows Doctor Who Confidential, Totally Doctor Who and Doctor Who Unleashed. I’ve watched every special feature on every BBC DVD and Blu-ray (there was the odd extra on videos on occasion, and I watched all of them too). I even watched or listened to a couple of BBC educational shows, and an online video recording of a theatre production. All of these have been covered on the blog in some form or other, some in depth, some just in passing.

This is all evidence of my being something of a completist. If I were a true completist, I'd have listened to all the Doctor Who Big Finish audios, and all the many Big Finish spin-offs that feature characters from the Whoniverse; I'd have read all the 1990s New Adventures and Missing Adventures, read all the BBC Doctor Who books, and all the books by any publishers featuring characters from Doctor Who. Maybe some fans out there have found time for such a rigorous endeavour, but I doubt they'd have found time to do much else. For the blog, I've again covered a little of these surrounding texts, again some in more depth, some more in passing. I've sent the odd probe out into the extended universe, but not attempted to start a colony there. At the time of writing, I have two more stories to blog before I have done everything that's available according to the remit I set myself. There's also spin-off series The War Between the Land and the Sea; it is still in the future as I write this, but it will be broadcast in December 2025: not too soon in my opinion, as it's got an overlong title that I've had to type quite a few times as I've anticipated its arrival in blog posts during 2025. I'm tried of typing all that, and am lobbying all fans to start using the initialism TWBTLATS, even though it looks a bit rude somehow. Anyway, I should be able to post about all three before the end of 2025, and then I will be done. Or will I? Even if I were to use the year long gap to cover all the books and audios mentioned above (and I'm not going to, don't worry, life's too short), more would be made. Then there's comic strips. I forgot the comic strips - there are so many comic strips (at least one publication, and often more, has been publishing a Doctor Who comic strip since 1964, only a year into the life of the TV series, and continuously thereafter - they didn't even stop during the wilderness years).

There's also The Daleks and The War Games in Colour. I wrestled with whether they count as versions different enough to be covered separately to their originals here, and eventually decided they didn't. I'll mention them in passing on the blog now, so we can consider them done: they're fun enough as alternate versions, and its neat to have things like the Daleks' Exterminate catch phrase retroactively added to their debut, a Troughton Pertwee regeneration, and fan in-jokes about the War Chief being an incarnation of the Master; what they most demonstrate to me, though, is that what might be considered padding by some is to others vital character and colour. The range is sort-of continuing with a new updated omnibus of The Sea Devils having been made for broadcast before TWBTLATS. It suggests that it was the editing more than the colourisation that was perhaps the motivating factor. It would get quite boring quite quickly to cover every alternate cut of a Doctor Who story, as there have been quite a few and there will likely be more in future. So, the definition of 'done' is only ever going to be where one chooses to draw a line. Even, then, though, one can't define away the future. And why would one want to, given that - for the Doctor Who fan at least - the future's looking brighter. New Doctor Who will be back on TV a year after I reach my imminent temporary pause, and then the whole shebang should get going again. There's even the very real possibility of new old Doctor Who turning up in that time too. The pre-announcements from the Film is Fabulous organisation (see here) are suggesting it's not an if but a when for that good news. Who knows, I could be doing a new blog post for [insert your favourite missing story here, if I name one hypothetically it will only spark speculation] in 2026. I'll never be done, but on some level I'd be sad, maybe even a little ticked off, if it were any other way...

In Summary:

I want more Redacted (and not to have more stuff to blog, just because these characters have more to give)!

Doctor Who - Done To Death

Friday, 7 August 2026

Index: Jodie Whittaker

Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor Stories ...

Saturday, 20 June 2026

Index: David Tennant

David Tennant's Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor Stories ...

Wednesday, 31 December 2025

The War Between the Land and the Sea

Chapter the 345th, serves up a generous portion of Surf and Turf.

Monday, 8 December 2025

Wish World / The Reality War

Chapter the 343rd, features a world and society from wish.

Monday, 24 November 2025

Doctor Who: Redacted (series 2)

Chapter the 342nd, which poses the question 'Is Apex a predator?'.