The Reality War: A Finale That Wishes Itself Out of Every Corner
The Reality War discards the Rani, invents a daughter, rewrites Belinda’s whole series, and regenerates the Doctor into a face it refuses to explain.
The Reality War discards the Rani, invents a daughter, rewrites Belinda’s whole series, and regenerates the Doctor into a face it refuses to explain.
Wish World rewrites reality into a sunlit suburb where the Doctor has a wife and a daughter and no memory. Strong premise, and it’s all setup again.
The Well returns to the planet from Midnight five hundred centuries later and finds the thing still there. The best episode of the Gatwa era.
Lux traps the Doctor and Belinda inside a 1952 cinema with a cartoon god made of light, and then steps outside the screen entirely. Strange and uneven.
The Robot Revolution introduces Belinda Chandra via a star certificate, a robot uprising and an AI villain. Varada Sethu is excellent. The plot is not.
Empire of Death kills the entire universe, then undoes it and drags Sutekh behind the TARDIS on a rope. The Ruby Sunday mystery deflates completely.
The Legend of Ruby Sunday spends an hour setting up its finale and ends on a genuinely great reveal. Getting there is a lot of people watching a monitor.
Dot and Bubble looks like a social media satire about a city of influencers, then lands a final scene that reframes the whole episode. Genuinely nasty.
73 Yards strands Ruby in Wales with a figure always standing the same distance away, and gives her a whole life. Eerie, ambitious, and never explained.
The Devil’s Chord sends the Doctor to Abbey Road in 1963 to face a god who devours music. Jinkx Monsoon is magnificent. The Beatles material is not.
Space Babies opens the Gatwa era with talking infants running a space station and a bogeyman made of mucus. Gatwa is great. The episode is not.
The Church on Ruby Road launches Ncuti Gatwa with a goblin musical number and a plot built on coincidence. He’s excellent. The episode is thin.
The Giggle gives Neil Patrick Harris the best villain the show has had in years, then ends the Doctor’s story with a fudge nobody asked for.
Wild Blue Yonder strands the Doctor and Donna on an empty ship at the edge of the universe with something wearing their faces. Genuinely frightening.
The Star Beast reunites Tennant and Tate for the 60th anniversary, and they’re magnificent. The resolution to Donna’s metacrisis is the weak link.
While getting coffee for Clara, The Doctor uses the TARDIS to rescue Journey Blue, a soldier fighting the Daleks, from her exploding spaceship. Returning her to command ship Aristotle, he…
The End of Time Part Two answers four knocks, reveals why the Doctor ended the Time War, and gives the Tenth Doctor the least noble death imaginable.
The End of Time Part One brings the Master back wrong, gives Wilfred Mott the best scene of the era, and ends by opening a door onto the Time War itself.
The Waters of Mars traps the Doctor on a doomed Mars base where everyone must die, and watches him decide that the laws of time no longer apply to him.
Planet of the Dead sends a London bus through a wormhole to a devoured world, and ends with a prophecy that finally puts a shape on the Doctor’s fate.
The Next Doctor drops the Doctor into 1851 London to meet a man claiming to be him, in a Christmas special about grief, identity and a very large Cyberman.