It’s hard to know where to start with “The Reality War,” a finale so bloated and scatterbrained it feels like it’s held together with spit, tape, and a vague memory of decent television from 20 years ago. It lurches from one half-formed idea to the next, villains are discarded like empty props, the emotional payoffs land with all the weight of a soft breeze, and the story builds to a regeneration that feels less like a triumphant handover and more like a disconcerting shrug.
If there’s one real flicker of life buried beneath the chaos, it’s Jodie Whittaker. Her brief return as the 13th Doctor is effortlessly charming, a reminder of the presence and heart she brought to the role, even when the material didn’t rise to meet her. In just a few minutes, she brings more clarity and personality than much of the episode manages with its actual lead. That contrast stings. Ncuti Gatwa has the charisma and range to define a whole era of Doctor Who, but across the show’s latest short season, he’s been handed little more than fragments to work with, despite there still being plenty of bright sparks along the way. Here, he’s shuffled off with all the ceremony of an underwhelming CW character written out mid-season. For an actor as good as Gatwa, it’s hard not to see it as a total waste.
And yes, it all comes down to that regeneration. A clumsy, hand-waved transformation that sees a return of series star Billie Piper, awkwardly composited into frame wearing a remarkably bad wig and playing like a muddled teaser that wandered in from the early 2000s. While it seems unlikely that Piper really is the 16th Doctor – it feels like her cameo is a hastily thrown-together pause button while the future of Doctor Who gets quietly reshuffled – that doesn’t make it feel any less hollow. This isn’t the only big swing that lands like an afterthought in the finale, either. Omega finally turns up after being teased last week, only to look like a PS3 end boss and get obliterated before he can finish a few sentences. The Rani, whose return had heaps of potential, is even more squadered here than in “Wish World” and erased with the same casual indifference. Belinda, once one of this era’s more promising new additions, is shoved into a literal containment box and rewritten as a one-note protective mother, completely out of nowhere. It’s not just lazy, it’s a borderline insulting mistreatment of the show’s characters… again! And it’s not because the ideas are inherently awful, but because they’re so painfully rushed, flattened, and treated with so little conviction.
And hiding behind all that noise is something worse: the creeping sense that Doctor Who doesn’t know what it wants to be anymore. The big blue laser climax, the over-designed CGI villains, the endless cameos and callbacks, they’re all straining to be something. Maybe it’s Marvel. Maybe it’s Star Wars. But it’s not Doctor Who. This was a show that once wore its wobbly sets and rubber masks like a badge of honour. It didn’t need scale to have soul. Now it’s all Avengers-level threats that are about as interesting as a puddle, and there’s a real sadness in that. Because buried beneath the fan-service fog and production panic is a brilliant actor (maybe two, if you count Whittaker) who deserved better.
Gatwa’s Doctor had flashes of brilliance: warmth, vulnerability, wit. All the makings of a defining era. But with short seasons, inconsistent writing, and an exit that feels hastily stapled together, it’s hard not to feel like he’s been short-changed. “The Reality War” should have been a coronation, or at least a proper goodbye. Instead, it’s a confused, crowded mess that treats its lead like a footnote and its own history like a toybox to be dumped out and sifted through.
