Doctor Who Season 2 Finale Review – “The Reality War”

It’s hard to cognize wherever to commencement with “The Reality War,” a finale truthful bloated and scatterbrained it feels similar it’s held unneurotic with spit, tape, and a vague representation of decent tv from 20 years ago. It lurches from 1 half-formed thought to the next, villains are discarded similar bare props, the affectional payoffs onshore with each the value of a brushed breeze, and the communicative builds to a regeneration that feels little similar a triumphant handover and much similar a disconcerting shrug.

If there’s 1 existent flicker of beingness buried beneath the chaos, it’s Jodie Whittaker. Her little instrumentality arsenic the 13th Doctor is effortlessly charming, a reminder of the beingness and bosom she brought to the role, adjacent erstwhile the worldly didn’t emergence to conscionable her. In conscionable a fewer minutes, she brings much clarity and property than overmuch of the occurrence manages with its existent lead. That opposition stings. Ncuti Gatwa has the charisma and scope to specify a full epoch of Doctor Who, but crossed the show’s latest abbreviated season, he’s been handed small much than fragments to enactment with, contempt determination inactive being plentifulness of agleam sparks on the way. Here, he’s shuffled disconnected with each the ceremonial of an underwhelming CW quality written retired mid-season. For an histrion arsenic bully arsenic Gatwa, it’s hard not to spot it arsenic a full waste.

And yes, it each comes down to that regeneration. A clumsy, hand-waved translation that sees a instrumentality of bid prima Billie Piper, awkwardly composited into framework wearing a remarkably atrocious wig and playing similar a muddled teaser that wandered successful from the aboriginal 2000s. While it seems improbable that Piper truly is the 16th Doctor – it feels similar her cameo is simply a hastily thrown-together intermission fastener portion the aboriginal of Doctor Who gets softly reshuffled – that doesn’t marque it consciousness immoderate little hollow. This isn’t the lone large plaything that lands similar an afterthought successful the finale, either. Omega yet turns up aft being teased past week, lone to look similar a PS3 extremity brag and get obliterated earlier helium tin decorativeness a fewer sentences. The Rani, whose instrumentality had heaps of potential, is adjacent much squadered present than successful “Wish World” and erased with the aforesaid casual indifference. Belinda, erstwhile 1 of this era’s much promising caller additions, is shoved into a literal containment container and rewritten arsenic a one-note protective mother, wholly retired of nowhere. It's not conscionable lazy, it’s a borderline insulting mistreatment of the show’s characters… again! And it’s not due to the fact that the ideas are inherently awful, but due to the fact that they’re truthful painfully rushed, flattened, and treated with truthful small conviction.

And hiding down each that sound is thing worse: the creeping consciousness that Doctor Who doesn’t cognize what it wants to beryllium anymore. The large bluish laser climax, the over-designed CGI villains, the endless cameos and callbacks, they’re each straining to beryllium something. Maybe it’s Marvel. Maybe it’s Star Wars. But it’s not Doctor Who. This was a amusement that erstwhile wore its wobbly sets and rubber masks similar a badge of honour. It didn’t request standard to person soul. Now it’s each Avengers-level threats that are astir arsenic absorbing arsenic a puddle, and there’s a existent sadness successful that. Because buried beneath the fan-service fog and accumulation panic is simply a superb histrion (maybe two, if you number Whittaker) who deserved better.

Gatwa’s Doctor had flashes of brilliance: warmth, vulnerability, wit. All the makings of a defining era. But with abbreviated seasons, inconsistent writing, and an exit that feels hastily stapled together, it’s hard not to consciousness similar he’s been short-changed. “The Reality War” should person been a coronation, oregon astatine slightest a due goodbye. Instead, it’s a confused, crowded messiness that treats its pb similar a footnote and its ain past similar a toybox to beryllium dumped retired and sifted through.