Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

A crazy ride in the TARDIS ends with enjoyable broad strokes and a frustrating lack of depth.

Spoiler Warning

The second season of the Fifteenth Doctor comes to an end and what can we say? It has been joy. Frustrating at times, especially when it refuses to go beyond the surface with its storytelling, but as the TARDIS door closes on another chapter, there is much to love.

In many ways, the 60^th anniversary specials and the two seasons form an interesting arc beginning with the Fourteenth’s re-emergence, tumbling through the Pantheon of Gods and the bi-generation, and ending with the Fifteenth’s Doctor regeneration. I’ll come onto the craziness of that in a moment, but there are three different aspects to review: the whole arc, this last season as a whole, and the episodes which make up this season. Let’s start there with my ranking them from not impressed to impressed.

The Second Season Episodes   

The Robot Revolution: The first episode of the series was my least favourite. There is a lot to admire in the production quality and the overall aesthetic of the set design and worldbuilding, I just really hated the robot design and was not impressed with the storytelling. I was impressed with Belinda who was sassy, brave, and determinedly doing her job as a nurse despite the surrealness of her situation. The scene where she remonstrates with the Doctor for scanning her DNA without asking and calls him dangerous was the best thing about this episode. Varada Sethu did a lovely job.

The Interstellar Song Contest: It was probably a toss-up between this episode and The Robot Revolution for my least favourite. I used to love the Eurovision Song Contest on which this is based, but here the desire to play into the campiness of that contest is at odds with the terrorism of Kid and the plight of the Hellians.

This could have been a real exploration of that conflict, of terrorism versus freedom fighting, of conflicting points of view from those terrorised. Unfortunately, the juxtaposition with the silliness of the song contest, along with the showbusiness cameos, just dilutes this completely. The result for me is a mess.

Moreover, I don’t buy the angry descent into torturing Kid by this version of the Doctor. The storytelling does not sell it and neither does Gatwa’s performance. I was also kind of ‘meh’ about the bi-generation and the reveal of the Rani shown right at the end.

Wish World: The first part of a two-part finale is a difficult spot in which to be an episode. There is a lot of set-up which naturally has to take place and this is laden with it. When one of the characters has to explain why they are providing so much exposition, perhaps it should be a signal that the plotting is too obtuse and the exposition too heavy.

What I loved about this episode was the imagined reality and the design of that. The happy conventional family dystopia on one side, and the forgotten of the disabled on the other. That latter note of ‘this imagined world didn’t think about us; we’re invisible’ hit hard.

Yet here again it is the juxtaposition of the dramatic Rani on her quest to bring about the return of the first Time Lord, Omega, with this more intrinsically interesting world examination that does not work. It would have been great to have seen that dystopia explored more for its own sake rather than in a convoluted nonsensical plot.

The Reality War: The finale also ends up in the middle of the pack because overall I think it was messy. I loved the return of the Time Hotel and Anita as a way of rescuing the Doctor and giving him a means to save the day eventually. I will say that the defeat of Omega and the end of The Rani (even if Mrs Flood made her escape) made for an engaging enough episode.

The whole Poppy as the Doctor’s daughter…it is an interesting story device and yet I feel it also lands in the criticism of too much convoluted plotting. The obvious plot hole of ‘he could have simply wished to make Poppy real before wishing to end all wishes’ is not really addressed. I personally feel that if it had been written from the start that Belinda had a daughter and it was that daughter who ceased to exist in the reality shift back, the Doctor giving his life to save Belinda’s daughter would have still worked without necessarily having to make Poppy his daughter.      

The Well: I’m not a horror fan so this was not a favourite episode. It was cohesive, well-acted, and well done overall. I have no real complaints per se about the actual episode, (not even the very annoying stereotypical mistrusting military guy who leads the mutiny). If there is one substantive criticism, it is that it did not need to be a sequel to an existing monster and could have been its own thing. Returning to the positive, I will also give a shout out to Rose Ayling-Ellis who was phenomenal as Aliss.

Lux: I really enjoyed Lux. I thought it was a well-thought out and executed episode with the great twist of the special effects of the cartoon. Lux was suitably villainous, the segregation issues of the time were neatly explored without being overly preachy, and it was nice to see the building of a relationship between the Doctor and Belinda – something which they skipped over in the previous season with Ruby.

The Story and the Engine: This episode had a really interesting concept with its the exploration of the barber shop culture and the idea of the storyteller and his vengeful desire to bring down the gods he’d made. I loved the character of Abena who in the end helps to save them with the braiding of the maze into the Doctor’s hair. I loved the brief cameo from Jo Martin’s Doctor. The performances all round were excellent. I admit that there were likely cultural nods here that went over my head, but it was an episode which lived up to the show’s original purpose – to give a window of exploration into something interesting in time and space.

Lucky Day: The best episode of the season for me was the Doctor-light story of Ruby and Conrad. There was a well-written narrative, great performances, and a lovely nod to societal commentary with the fake news, conspiracy theory, and suppression of information notes. Millie Gibson did an outstanding job as Ruby and Jonah Hauer-King was exceptional as Conrad. As always the return of Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT was great to see.

Is it weird that the best episode of Doctor Who did not have much of the Doctor? Given that one of the most popular episodes historically is Blink, not so much. Sometimes using the Doctor sparingly provides an opportunity for other stories in the universe to be explored without having to be constrained by the Doctor saving the day or failing to save the day.

The Second Season of the Fifteenth Doctor

Comparatively, this season was a much, much stronger season than the first for me. The episodes overall are more tightly written and executed. Some aspects do not work, but nothing descends to the complete silliness of Space Babies or the final minutes of The Devil’s Chord, and the finale episodes are much better than those of the first. If I had to rank all the episodes across the two seasons, the first ends up with more at the bottom of the pile. The rest of my commentary is going to touch on aspects of the whole arc from the 60^th anniversary specials to this finale so…

The Whole Arc of the Fifteenth Doctor

In many ways, the Fifteenth Doctor’s time in the TARDIS has come together in a fairly cohesive arc for the broad strokes, while unfortunately it misses something by not deepening the detail where it needs to deepen the detail.

On the positive, the broad stroke of the Fourteenth Doctor opening up the universe to the Pantheon allowing for a more fantasy element to be introduced provided a broader canvas for the Doctor’s stories and allowed for a creative exploration of the various God villains and the Doctor’s defeat of them one by one.  On the downside of this stroke, those stories have been variable in execution.

The Giggle was excellent, The Devil’s Chord hit and miss, Lux was solidly good, and the God of Wishes an interesting element of the season finale but not actually the main villain at all. Given the Harbinger was used for Sutekh making the old villain suddenly a part of this new broad stroke, this was very much a fail for me.

A second good broad stroke is how everything across the seasons ties together. Ruby’s experiences allow her the insight to know someone is missing in the finale story and to convince the Doctor to fight to save that life. Anita and the Time Hotel turn up to save him nicely ties in the event of the Christmas episode. He’s with Joy’s star at the end, in many ways his journey treading the same path as hers – sacrificing himself to give life to a child. Yet aspects of this do go awry – Rogue turns up briefly only for that storyline never to get properly revisited, Susan appears to mentally reach out to her grandfather only for that never to be fully explored in the finale, Donna’s daughter, Rose, pops up haphazardly in cameos but does nothing of substance. These threads feel unfinished.

Another broad stroke I’ve enjoyed is the repeating themes. In the most obvious way, we have the tease of Susan Twist in the first season, which is turned into the tease of Mrs Flood in the second (an excellent outing on all fronts by Anita Dobson); the tease of Susan the granddaughter turns into a truly unexpected cameo by Carol Ann Ford.

At the episode level, repeating themes are also used: the first episode explored made-monsters, the second a Pantheon God, the third was the almost death of a Companion, the fourth being Ruby centric, the fifth examined race, the sixth involved people conspiring to murder people at a party, the seventh and eighth being the finales, reappearances by old foes and Gods, and over the top CGI monsters. I like the symmetry attempted to provide similar beats even if I haven’t always liked the episodes.

While others may complain about some of the social commentary of the episodes, the show has always tackled those themes. Some of the episodes did it better than others. Dot and Bubble was excellent as was Lucky Day. On the other hand, The Interstellar Song Contest missed the mark because of the silliness. Again, in some episodes the social issue was posed but lacked any commentary or depth of exploration.

The overarching theme of found family is evident in the Doctor’s arc and in Ruby’s arc. The struggle that the Doctor has in realising that he was essentially a foundling and who is searching for family is contrasted with Ruby’s search for her mother, and Belinda’s determination to get home to hers, and it is an interesting idea. Is it executed well? I don’t think so.  

Which brings me onto how the whole arc lacks depth, firstly in the use of the Companions. The seeming need to have the Poppy dilemma (the Doctor sacrificing himself for who he believes is his daughter) ends up with two Companions across the two seasons even if Ruby continues to play an important role in the second. Individually both Millie Gibson and Varada Sethu are great in their respective roles. They both have great chemistry with Gatwa. But in the end, neither season really executes on embedding the Companion well and I feel the overall arc misses something in not having a consistent Companion throughout or combining the two earlier.

Imagine that Boom introduces a stranded Belinda in time and space who needs to get home to her daughter and the Doctor has to find when and where she was plucked from to get her there. It would have been interesting to have had one Companion searching for her mother, the other for a daughter.

Admittedly, my preference though would have been to have had one solid Companion for both seasons. I feel that Millie Gibson’s Ruby should have continued into the second season as the Companion although I would also have revised the Christmas episode which introduced her and the first season’s earlier episodes to have eliminated the ‘off-screen’ friendship building that took place between the Doctor and Ruby and had this more on screen instead. There was not enough focus on the deepening their relationship through the storytelling; we were asked to accept that they came to love each other as friends sight unseen. While they attempted a different approach with Belinda, it too did not last long before her initial challenging and questioning of the Doctor slid into the same ‘bestest friends ever’ mode.  

The other part of the arc which misses depth is the Doctor’s own part of the arc. There is not enough storytelling which explores his angst. It is hinted at that he clearly is missing an anchor of family in finding out he was a foundling. He’s also scared to find out if Susan is alive or whether she died in the genetic genocide. In the finale, he’s excited at the idea of being a Dad with Poppy and clearly heartbroken when he realises that she’s manifested in the reality only as human and Belinda’s. That moment of disappointment was well acted by Gatwa.   

Ncuti Gatwa seemed much more comfortable inhabiting the Doctor in this second season than the first even though I do think that the show never really settled the question on how stable and how emotionally adjusted this variant of the Doctor really was versus the inner struggle of his family angst and coming to terms with the events of the Thirteenth Doctor – and this was very much to its detriment.

I also think his performance in portraying the Doctor as that serious dangerous Time Lord who lives under the skin of the charming adventurer saving the world lacks a gravitas and strength that other Doctors have been able to portray in those moments. That said, Gatwa shines as the charming adventurer who is empathetic and bubbly, who has an inner sorrow about his situation. Overall, I’ve enjoyed Gatwa’s Doctor.

His regeneration was and was not a surprise. There were rumours that he was leaving, and I suspect that he was probably helped contractually in finalising an exit at this point in time (these seasons have been part of the Disney deal which was known to conclude at the end of this one). I was surprised by Billie Piper emerging in the regeneration. It will be interesting to see if a female Doctor goes better with a fan favourite actress returning to the show, or whether she will face the same dislike of the Doctor being female that Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor received – or whether she is the Doctor at all as she is not credited as ‘Introducing Billie Piper as The Doctor.’

The cameo by Whittaker was also a surprise and a welcome one. I think it was a nicer ending for her than her exit at the end of her actual tenure which was beset with writing and show-running issues that reduced the overall quality of her time as the Doctor. One good broad stroke from the Fifteenth Doctor’s time is that it feels like it is in a stronger place than it was at the end of the Thirteenth’s.   

In conclusion

That’s the beauty of Who, it regenerates. It has been a crazy ride with Fifteen, with broad ups and downs mostly revolving around a shallowness of storytelling, but it has been an overall enjoyable ride and Gatwa, Gibson, and Sethu along with the crew and production team deserve a round of applause.

Hopefully there will be a resolution sooner rather than later on when production can continue with the Sixteenth Doctor and I look forward to seeing what that era brings.

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