Doctor Who (2023) 2-08: The Reality War - Part 1

Episode:

892

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Serial:

319

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Alex Sanjiv Pillai

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Air Date:

31-May-2025

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've reached the conclusion of Doctor Who season 2. Maybe even the conclusion of Doctor Who entirely! I doubt it, the brand is one of the strongest and most enduring that British television has, though anything can happen these days. We're definitely not getting a Christmas special this year, that much I'm sure of.

I usually try to write this bit before watching the episode so I can be authentically clueless, but I have to mention here that this turned out to be an extra long episode inspiring lots of words, so I'm splitting this review into three parts. This is going to make things confusing, because the episode is already the second part of a two-parter.

These links should help make sense of it:

• Wish World
• The Reality War - Part 1 <-- You are here.
• The Reality War - Part 2
• The Reality War - Part 3 

If you don't know what happens in the story and want to keep it that way, then I'd suggest you avoid reading any further. There will be SPOILERS ahead.

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Previously, on Doctor Who:

The Rani (last seen 234 episodes earlier) kidnapped a god baby from 1865 Bavaria and gave it to a podcaster she'd broken out of prison so that he could make reality great again. Conrad rewrote the present day with a wish, but people like Shirley were able to see through the lie as they had no place in his world. Meanwhile the Doctor and Belinda fully believed that they had a daughter, Poppy. But their happy domestic life was shattered when they were arrested for having doubts.

They were brought to the Rani's Bone Palace where she revealed that she actually intended Conrad's world to create doubts, because it'll tear reality apart and release the legendary Time Lord Omega (last seen 309 episodes ago)! Her exposition restored the Doctor's memory but he fell for her exploding balcony trap, and now he's falling onto a world that's literally falling apart. His story is about to end in absolute terror.

And now, the continuation:

The teaser is a hilarious brief, almost subliminal, 14 second clip from the previous episode, where the Doctor is dropped from the Bone Palace, and then the episode goes straight into the opening credits.

But afterwards he's immediately saved by Anita (last seen 8 episodes ago), everyone's surprise favourite guest star in Joy to the World! That episode was all about how hotel rooms have a mysterious second door in them that leads to the Time Hotel, but now Anita can just make magic doors anywhere, so that spoils that a bit.

This is a bit of a deus ex machina rescue, seeing as the character wasn't even reintroduced this season, and she's using a power that wasn't previously established, but I think the episode gets away with it because viewers are so happy to see Anita back.

Then Ruby and Belinda wake up in their homes back at the start of May 23rd.

To be honest this is the kind of non sequitur cliffhanger resolution I was expecting, because it's what I've been trained to expect. I mean the last episode went from 'the TARDIS is exploding!' to 'the Doctor and Belinda wake up in bed together'. Though I half imagined it would start with a series of close up shots of someone putting on classic song from the '50s before preparing a meal.

Back in the Time Hotel, Anita gets a hug from the Doctor and then shows him how the world is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop. May 23rd has happened hundreds of times apparently. Oh, plus she's pregnant, which earns her a second hug. That's the third mother in this story so far after Carla and Belinda, and it's only a minute in.

The Time Hotel is in the 4200s and the world keeps ending in 2025, which is a bit awkward for everyone. It's also similar to last season's finale, Empire of Death, where the Doctor found what he needed to save post-apocalyptic 2024 by travelling to a past version of 2046.

Hang on, why do all the doors look boring now? I guess they're all featureless on this floor as the staff haven't chosen where they lead to yet.

Anita knows about Time Lords and TARDISes now, because it turns out that she's spent her days off watching Doctor Who from doorways. We get a montage with Anita opening a door to three different stories and I have to imagine there's some relevance to what RTD chose. For instance the first clip, from Eleventh Doctor story The Wedding of River Song, has a bit of a 'the Doctor is getting married to someone who isn't Anita' theme to it.

Then there's a shot from the 1972 Third Doctor story Day of the Daleks, which finally introduces Ogrons to modern Doctor Who! Took their bloody time on that one.

They were also cutting it close with the Daleks, as this the only time they've appeared during Fifteen's run. He and Fourteen are the only Doctors to never face either the Daleks, Cybermen or the Master on screen. They even Trials and Tribble-ations'd in a newly filmed Dalek driving past the door, who's completely oblivious to Anita's presence despite her looking in from an open door. Maybe she should've gone in and offered them a ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte.

Doctor Who (1963) 9-04 - Day of the Daleks, Part Four

Here's what the original episode looked like, so you can see how they extended the sides to make it widescreen. The image on the monitor has been updated as well, though that was a change made for the 2011 Special Edition. The screen looks really out of place whatever version you're watching to be honest.

Why was this clip chosen? Well Daleks is probably the main reason, though it's also showing us an averted timeline. This future never happened, so the Time Hotel is able to do some clever stuff with its time doors.

It's a shame the Doctor didn't get to see this clip for himself otherwise he'd know that they could open a time door to an episode with Time Lords in and go do some DNA scans to make the rest of the Rani's evil plan redundant.

And finally there's a clip from the episode Rogue showing the Doctor dancing with the love of his life, Rogue. A person he had known for about 20 minutes of screen time by this point. 

This scene's important for two reasons. First it showed Anita that the Doctor already had someone, so she could move on and get pregnant. Second, it reminds us of Rogue, a character doomed to remain in a hell dimension and never again see the face of the man he loves. Hey Doctor, why not ask Anita if she can open a door to where Rogue is now? Or to your granddaughter Susan.

The Doctor's figured out that the Rani is keeping the day looping so it'll keep getting thinner, until it's thin enough for her to see underneath and release the most fearsome Time Lord to ever live. They can't open time doors directly into her Bone Palace though, so stopping her is going to take some work.

The episode cuts directly to her Bone Palace, showing that she's pissed off with Mrs Flood. She was supposed to be following the Doctor everywhere, but she took Christmas off and missed Joy to the World so they had no idea he knew someone with a magic door. Mrs Flood has to remind her that they're the same person with the same past, so it's equally her fault.

I'm still baffled by the relationship the two of them have. Mrs Flood is still resentful for having to be the second banana and it's weird because the Rani never pressured her to behave like this. What's even weirder it's that this whole thread ultimately goes nowhere, she never turns on the Rani, and it's basically just a red herring that makes bi-generation more confusing.

With the Doctor freed of the wish they need to wrap this project up quickly. Fortunately by pure chance they have at this very moment gotten reality thin enough to free Omega! Creator of the Time Lords! 

Doctor Who (1963) 20-04 - Arc of Infinity, Part 4

The episode's trying to build up Omega to be an absolute badass and give us a feeling of dread about his return but I don't think it's really pulling it off.

Anyone who knows about Omega from the classic series is thinking 'Oh, that guy? I can't really remember him doing much,' and new viewers (ie. people who started watching in the last 20 years) are thinking 'Oh is that a classic villain? I don't know that one'. 

Meanwhile the Doctor takes a magic door to his daughter's bedroom and snaps at Anita when she says she isn't real. Poppy is more important than anything! And if you don't buy into that, you're going to have a hard time with where this episode is going.

Then the Doctor MAGICALLY SWITCHES CLOTHES so that he's wearing a kilt, which is some Devil's Chord-level disregard for reality. It wouldn't be so bad if the episode established that this is how the Wish World works, but it makes a point later of showing that it's not.

Look, RTD, if you don't want to take Doctor Who seriously anymore I'm sure there has to be someone else (with tons of talent and experience) who can take over. Clothes don't do that.

The Doctor gets Belinda and Poppy through a door to the Time Hotel, and she gets her memories back! She's in her right mind again... and she's not freaked out at all by having a daughter with the Doctor. In episode one she was freaked out that he did a DNA scan without her permission and now all she's concerned about is keeping their daughter safe.

I said in my Wish World review that one of the problems I had is that the Doctor, Belinda and Poppy were too cute together and it made me kind of want them to keep what they had. Turns out it wasn't a problem after all!

The Doctor struts into UNIT HQ to shock them with his futuristic attire and let a bit of real time leak in through the time doors. Reality reasserts itself and makes the Vlinx and Rose appear!

So if anyone was wondering if Rose had entirely ceased to exist in Conrad's world, the answer is yes. She could've turned male, but I think this is probably a case where RTD made the correct choice. Though it's funny that after the Doctor says "He couldn't imagine you for a second", she basically disappears from the story as RTD couldn't imagine anything for her to do.

See, they're all still wearing the same clothes even after Rose is back and they've got their memories restored. They don't even remember the other reality, so the bone beasts outside come as a bit of a shock.

The Doctor gives them some exposition about how they're creatures from the Underverse attracted to excited atoms caused by realities colliding. So a bit like the Reapers in series one episode Father's Day, except more benign. 

Fortunately everyone in UNIT is biochipped so they can track their missing employees. Hang on, that sounds a bit dodgy, especially as they look like Stenza gene bombs when they're activated. Imagine if Conrad had been telling people about that on the news.

Kate thinks that they can use the chips to give their missing agents their memories back, which makes no sense at all. It works though, so welcome back Ruby, Shirley and Mel!

Though Shirley races to work using the turbo mode on her wheelchair, leaving Back to the Future DeLorean fire trails, and there has to have been a less cringey way the episode could've handled this. Especially as they've got her friend bouncing in her chair in delight. Shirley's too grounded as a character to be treated like this.

Incidentally, I was curious about what the hand symbols behind her meant, so I looked it up. That's British Sign Language and they spell out the word "Love".

Hey it's Rani and Conrad, I'm not sure these two have ever had a conversation before.

Conrad asks if what he's doing is working, same as he did with Mrs Flood last episode, but she's not interested in giving him any praise. He doesn't even get a sandwich this time. In fact she insults him by saying that if the baby was older he'd be able to imagine complicated things, but instead she has to settle for him. Though she does find him incredibly handsome.

He says "I'll do anything for you, mistress", which is a bit weird. One Rani is a mother figure, the other... isn't.

The Rani wants him to find the Doctor for her, which shouldn't be too hard seeing as he's right below her in UNIT HQ, uploading plans for a zero room (first introduced in the Fifth Doctor story Castrovalva). I like that they thought to include a 'import from sonic device' message on the top right.

The Doctor needs Susan Triad to build it for him. You know the computer genius who wrote some of the code that UNIT's systems run on, not the 'building stuff' person. But she says sure, she can get this Time Lord device built within 8 minutes of episode time. This is how I know that RTD had been watching The Flash and/or Star Trek: Discovery during his years away from the show.

Then the big music starts as Ruby runs in and gets a hug! Shirley appears and gets ambushed with a hug! Then Mel drives her scooter right into the office and gets a hug! Also she's changed her hair and gotten a perm on the way. None of the other dozen or so extras standing in the background get a hug though. Also Anita's still there holding the door, yay!

Okay, exposition time. 

First the Doctor has a minute to explain who they're up against, then the Rani teleports in (alone) for six minutes of dialogue. This means that we finally get Mel and the Rani in the same scene! Mel was the companion during the Rani's second and final story, Time and the Rani, so this is a real 'Sarah Jane meets Davros again in Journey's End' moment. Well, kind of.

The Rani recognises Mel right away and says she expected that she'd be dead by now. Mel replies that she hasn't thought about her at all, which is probably true for a lot of Doctor Who fans too. And that's the end of that epic confrontation, the two of them never speak to each other again. In fact the heroes mostly just stand there and listen while the Doctor and Rani do all the talking.

Doctor Who (2005) - Resolution

Did RTD bring in his friend Chris Chibnall to write this scene or something?

RTD is pulling a Stolen Earth/Journey's End here by bringing everyone back, so we've got Anita, Kate, Rose, Ibrahim, Mel, Ruby, Shirley, Belinda, the Vlinx and Susan in the UNIT building right now. It's appropriate for the story that UNIT is made up of a diverse group of heroes, but the trouble is that they have overlapping roles at the best of times, and right now their role is to be 'the crowd'.

The Rani explains that she survived the destruction of the Time Lords by reacting to the genetic explosion within a split second, flipping her DNA and making a biological sidestep.

Uh, what the hell are you talking about? What genetic explosion? Is this something the Master did during the Thirteenth Doctor's era? Also no you didn't react in a split second and 'flip your DNA', that's just stupid.

The Doctor asks how she got here when he has the last remaining TARDIS. Uh, since when?

There's a TARDIS left disguised as a tree, Clara has a TARDIS, the Master had a TARDIS, Fourteen has a TARDIS. Yaz would've had one too if the Doctor hadn't murdered it. 

And the Rani had a TARDIS too last time I checked.

Doctor Who (1963) 22-06 - Mark of the Rani, Part 2

She had a newer one than the Doctor in fact, with an awesome black console room and a baby dinosaur in a jar.

Anyway it turns out that the Rani used a Time Ring (seen in the Fourth Doctor story Genesis of the Daleks) to follow the Doctor around for all those episodes she appeared in. She says it wasn't hard to find him, she just had to look for a stupid blonde Earth girl. 

Okay, shots fired at Ruby, but if she's saying the Doctor's had a lot of blonde companions then she needs to recheck the TARDIS Wiki site because she's way off.

She brings in Mrs Flood so she can shock them with how she was both Ruby and Belinda's neighbours. And then just gets rid of her while she's in the middle of talking! She just doesn't respect herself at all.

The conversation turns to Omega, who has been banished to the Underverse by the Time Lords. Uh, that's not how I remember it, but okay. Kate says her father fought Omega back in the '70s (because she can't make it through one episode without mentioning her dad). He didn't exactly 'fight' Omega in The Three Doctors, he was mostly just confused the whole time, though he would've certainly known how to deal with two Ranis beaming into his HQ right in front of him. Five rounds rapid, and the crisis is over.

Wait, she said '70s! You can't do that, you have to say ''70s or '80s', because they never quite pinned down the decade that the UNIT episodes took place during.

The Rani believes that Omega will work as a gene bank, allowing her to resurrect the Time Lords, which is hilarious if you've seen any of his stories.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-04: The Three Doctors, Episode Four

In The Three Doctors has he has no genetic code, or cells, or body at all. And in Arc of Infinity his mind has been transferred to a decaying clone of the Fifth Doctor. He is the absolute worst Time Lord to choose if you're after proper Time Lord DNA (with the possible exception of the Master).

But I like the idea of bringing the Time Lords back from extinction with genetic engineering, it's right in the Rani's wheelhouse. They just need one of those machines from The Doctor's Daughter that you put your hand in and it makes an instant clone!

Then we learn that creating a Time Lord child the traditional way is impossible because the genetic explosion left them all sterile! So this must have happened to the Thirteenth Doctor and then she just didn't tell anyone. Well that's in character for her at least.

The Doctor thinks that bi-generation is their bodies trying to avoid complete extinction, which kind of makes sense if it's a reaction to being made sterile. I still don't like it though. Why was the Doctor even affected, anyway? He's a foundling - the Timeless Child, not Gallifreyan.

But Poppy is the miracle they need to bring the Time Lords back. A mad Time Lady and a maniac podcaster came up with a ridiculous plan and accidentally created a new life! The Rani's aghast at the idea though, as she's after genetic purity! And the crowd groans.

She clearly sees the human race as insects and playthings compared to her. The Doctor said in Robot Revolution that "If you start deciding which body is best, you're going down a very dangerous path," and Rani is way down that road. Though I do kind of see her point...

I mean, if you're trying to bring back a specific species from extinction then creating a new hybrid species isn't really achieving that goal. You can't make a modified wolf and call it a dire wolf. She's not trying to make sure that her Time Lords have blonde hair, blue eyes and the right shaped skull, she just wants Time Lords back... and she also she wants them to appreciate her, like the old Time Lords never did.

She says that when she gets what she wants she'll leave their world alone, which would be more convincing if Graham Norton hadn't already told them the outcome. But the Doctor's more concerned about Poppy disappearing when the wish ends. Rani tries to convince him that his kid's not real, she's made of hopes and dreams, but that just sets up the Doctor to reply that this is true of all children.

So they have a wand battle!

This is typically when the Doctor wins, but this time the Rani's the one that shoots his sonic out of his hand! I have to wonder what the Rani thought he was doing with it, because it doesn't work against people. If he'd pointed his sonic at another Doctor, they would've asked if he was going to assemble a cabinet at them, but she doesn't question it.

Anyway she teleports out so the scene is finally over! I gotta give Archie Panjabi tons of credit, as it's the second time she's been asked to keep a long block of exposition interesting and she did a great job of channelling the original Rani while doing it. Really helped get me through those 6 long minutes. 

She returns to her Bone Palace, where Mrs Flood has been busy without her. They'll use the Chronon Beam to pull Omega out of the Underverse and fake an excitation of the UNIT Tower's atoms to lure the bone beasts over to attack it. 

Begun this Reality War has.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's part two of my The Reality War review. Sorry for making you wait for this, the episode's given me more than expected to write about, and I'm still writing!

I should've seen it coming though really. My review of Jodie Whittaker's last story dragged on for three parts as well.