Wish World/The Reality War
Sep. 1st, 2025 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI went into Wish World/The Reality War knowing it was likely to be a hot mess and I was not wrong.
Of the two Disney Who finales, I think this was more fun but less coherent. Not that I'm claiming that The Legend of Ruby Sunday/The Empire of Death was particularly coherent but it had less of a sense of everything being thrown at the screen. Both two parters have been constructed much more like a Moffat finale than an RTD1 finale, in that each episode has a distinct feel and, to a certain extent, is self-contained. Wish World in particular had its own distinct feel and, as a piece of set up, was excellent.
I enjoyed watching The Reality War as it was going on but at the end I was a bit "well that happened!". Omega and, more criminally, Belinda and Susan were all wasted, their roles in the story failing to pay off the set up and being less than the characters deserved. Now, obviously, what we got to see was some kind of frantic re-working of a different plan. This was most obvious in the way Susan completely fails to show up at all in The Reality War when, if I were guessing, she would originally have turned out to be Poppy's daughter in some way, shape or form.
Is Billie Piper the Doctor? I don't know and, more importantly, I strongly suspect no one knows. I imagine the regeneration at the end was deliberately set up to allow everything from a frantic hand wave while muttering Bad Wolf/Heart of the Tardis/The Watcher through to a series with Billie Piper in the lead (though the latter seems frankly unlikely given everything I've heard Piper say recently about her relationship with celebrity). I'm sad to see Ncuti go though, so I'm hoping that schedules will align and then the hand wave will involve him popping magically back.
Eh! There are worse end of season finales out there. There are even worse ones written by RTD.
Of the two Disney Who finales, I think this was more fun but less coherent. Not that I'm claiming that The Legend of Ruby Sunday/The Empire of Death was particularly coherent but it had less of a sense of everything being thrown at the screen. Both two parters have been constructed much more like a Moffat finale than an RTD1 finale, in that each episode has a distinct feel and, to a certain extent, is self-contained. Wish World in particular had its own distinct feel and, as a piece of set up, was excellent.
I enjoyed watching The Reality War as it was going on but at the end I was a bit "well that happened!". Omega and, more criminally, Belinda and Susan were all wasted, their roles in the story failing to pay off the set up and being less than the characters deserved. Now, obviously, what we got to see was some kind of frantic re-working of a different plan. This was most obvious in the way Susan completely fails to show up at all in The Reality War when, if I were guessing, she would originally have turned out to be Poppy's daughter in some way, shape or form.
Is Billie Piper the Doctor? I don't know and, more importantly, I strongly suspect no one knows. I imagine the regeneration at the end was deliberately set up to allow everything from a frantic hand wave while muttering Bad Wolf/Heart of the Tardis/The Watcher through to a series with Billie Piper in the lead (though the latter seems frankly unlikely given everything I've heard Piper say recently about her relationship with celebrity). I'm sad to see Ncuti go though, so I'm hoping that schedules will align and then the hand wave will involve him popping magically back.
Eh! There are worse end of season finales out there. There are even worse ones written by RTD.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-02 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-03 06:04 pm (UTC)