Now, now. It's not that bad yet. It's just a bad finale in an otherwise very good season.
Spoilers The Reality War grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
If she’s not (and she isn’t) what did the Doctor give up that life for? A Facsimile?
Last episode ended with the Doctor yelling that she was real. In a way that suggested that should have import to the Rani (which it would have done.) At the same time Belinda was unable to remember anything about the pregnancy or birth.
What the rewrites for this ending we got do, is make all of that (and other things) make no sense.
So, if that isn’t the *real* Poppy (daughter of the Doctor and Belinda — I shall put aside how wrong that is for now — and the one from the Unit Blue Peter Zero Room) then what was the point? What weight narratively, in a positive way, does any of it carry?
It isn’t the real Poppy.
That isn’t the real Belinda.
There is also the not-real Conrad.
So precisely what is the moral victory of one wish world, over another?
(And while I am at it, there was a mother, a father, and three siblings, essentially killed — especially given an owl would likely eat the ducklings — that are ok to be of zero importance?)
It’s poorly written and doesn’t stand up to anything more than a cursory bit of attention.
The Doctor was aghast at Cassandra proclaiming Chip "just a half-life".
He fought for the Flesh.
And the New Humans.
Hell, the last had less going for them upstairs mentally than a child.
"If you're Death, then I must represent Life... EVERYWHERE!!"
Sacrificing himself for one person? That's the Doctor. Always. Does it only matter if that person is a girl from a London council estate or someone in a bikini he picked up in Lanzarote?
The way I'm seeing it is that is that all of this took place in a reality where Poppy was just a creation of the wish world, and all of those memories of Poppy were seeded by the wish.
Ruby, for some timey-wimey reason held onto those memories after they had faded for everyone else and she guilted the Doctor and everyone else into trying to save Poppy. Just as Anita was holding the door from reality open into the wish world, so that the UNIT folk had their original memories, Ruby was a metaphorical door into what was left of the wish, bringing those fake Poppy memories back.
And so the Doctor, guilted into believing in Poppy, burnt out his life to jump from this timestream, into a timestream where Belinda always was a single mom to a daughter named Poppy. And the original timeline still exists, with no Poppy, and just the 14th Doctor having to come out of retirement.
Ruby, for some timey-wimey reason held onto those memories after they had faded for everyone else and she guilted the Doctor and everyone else into trying to save Poppy. Just as Anita was holding the door from reality open into the wish world, so that the UNIT folk had their original memories, Ruby was a metaphorical door into what was left of the wish, bringing those fake Poppy memories back.
And so the Doctor, guilted into believing in Poppy, burnt out his life to jump from this timestream, into a timestream where Belinda always was a single mom to a daughter named Poppy. And the original timeline still exists, with no Poppy, and just the 14th Doctor having to come out of retirement.
You’re missing the point.
*if* he had done it and *actually brought back Poppy* it would make sense. Sure, him and Bel would have had to process what had happened to them to make her, but they had already been doing that, Bel had done that when going into the Zero Room with Poppy.
But that isn’t what happened here.
This is a Poppy that didn’t exist before his actions with the regen.
This is a Belinda that has essentially replaced a *very* different Belinda (who was shown to be very much about the level of agency and autonomy outright stripped from her) to the point where the original Belinda is basically dead.
That’s the problem with the story as shown. (Well… one of them. The biggest, I think.)
Assuming it is a facsimile, yes. He sacrificed his incarnation to save a life, whatever her origins. That seemed to be the point of the episode — despite what the Rani says, he does identify with humanity.
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With respect, you’re missing the point, quite strongly. Yes, this Poppy didn’t exist before. It doesn’t matter.
Ayup. Poppy exists.
Same as Amy would have existed even if (as he thought) he didn't survive Big Bang 2. He got lucky, but he sacrificed himself knowing the new reality would be different from his. Amy would be different.
But alive. And loved.
The more I read Jaime's critiques of the show, the more I'm glad he is not, and never will be, the showrunner.
QFT.
Even though I've not seen the finale (or any of this season), Fifteen sacrificing him/themself to save someone/right a wrong/rewrite reality should be the least surprising decision in history.
A-fucking-men to that!
The stuff with Mel was bad, especially the scooter scene.
And then all of the stuff about children being important coming out of nowhere. It was one big retcon explaining why Belinda always wanted to return to Earth on a specific date. It was bad.
I did like the time hotel, but even that was ruined with the woman getting knocked up.
That doesn't correlate. So what if Anita is pregnant?
It matters from a narrative perspective.
Otherwise, you could just pump some regen energy into vortex and just pop some people into existence whenever you fancied. The whole of last seasons finale could be avoided too, especially since the Doctor was the TC and has infinite juice. Flux? Half an hour in the vortex with the swoosh stuff.
But that’s just the usual broken story logic RTD always does in his finales, that’s no problem.
All of which puts aside that Belinda was essentially memory altered into having a baby she didn’t consent to. (As were they both in the episode prior, but that was bad because… the baddies did it?)
That *is* the problem.
As is the fact the Doctor saved no-one, he just willed someone that looked the same into being.
Arguably, Ncuti clocked this (even if Rusty Dee didn’t) because of how he plays some of the scenes.
Didn’t save it though.
As to Amy in the Big Bang, that wasn’t a different Amy, it was Amy, that was the point. She was essentially the compressed HD backup for the universe because of the crack in her wall. That was the point of the denouement. That’s why she could ‘remember’ the Doctor back into existence.
As to my ability to be showrunner — well, not that good with budgets and no experience. On a good day I could Script Edit Who though probably. And write a decent yarn.
There’s more chance of a camel passing through the eye of a needle than anyone from my class and cultural background getting such a job at the Beeb though these days. (And that ain’t a dig at DEI hires or whatever we’re calling that these days. Since I am not talking about ethnicity, for the record.)
Presumably, the actress who plays Anita really was pregnant when the episode was filmed and it was decided it was easier to acknowledge that rather than spending the extra effort to film around her pregnancy. How is this an issue?
Even much of the more fervently anti-RTD, anti-Gatwa, corners of fandom went absolutely gaga over her at first. And are annoyed on her (and Archie Punjabi’s) behalf. Some of them have even moved fully — following some of Ncuti’s acting here, maybe he improved with some stage experience under his belt I guess — into ‘good actors, shit scripts’ territory.
Mel bad yes, weird Poppy retcon bad, yes.
But… the woman getting knocked up?
Careful. You’re starting to sound like RTD.
Plus it had no real baring on anything. Poor character was a doorstop and still had more character development than anyone else in the room. Probably cos she was a Moffat job.
Missed opportunity to have one of the reality shifts being that mavity is now called gravity.
Oh OK, I knew there was some overlap, but I didn't realize it was so little.
Do you mean bring her back as Jenny or as a new character
That's a good point? Can a Time Lord who's bigenerated once do it again? Or only a regular regeneration? Or will they just die?
I'm leaning on this right now. I can't imagine they're going to set up something like that and just drop it.
I'm fine with that. I don't go into things like Doctor Who for "substance" I just look for a fun sci-fi time travel adventure and that's exactly what this one. It's nice when they can work deeper themes and things into the fun, but I don't need that to enjoy it.
Has anyone actually said the word since the shift? For all we know, it has changed.
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