Doctor Who: The Reality War Review - 4 Ups & 7 Downs
1. DOWN - Jumping The Shark
Oh dear.
To those of you who are delighted at the reveal of our (potential?) Sixteenth Doctor, no slight intended, but this, to me, is a big mistake.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but this episode ended on the bombshell reveal of Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into Billie Piper. Would Billie Piper make a bad Doctor on paper? Not at all, actually – I think she’s got the range to pull this off, and a clear love for the show. In the right hands, she’d be really good. The thing is… I’m no longer convinced this show is in the right hands.
I can’t abide the fact that the show has, once again, at the height of desperation, fallen back onto nostalgia. There comes a time when we must move onwards from the 2005-2008 era of the show and do something new. Quite frankly it’s a move we’ve really needed to make for a very long time, and this is an enormous leap in the other direction. It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth that these writing decisions are being made by the same man who penned this ‘golden era’ (was always more of a Moffat man myself). There’s something off about treating your own work as the pinnacle of Who, even if it was for a whole load of people.
Billie feels like a stunt casting, and the Doctor is not a role that should ever be cast for those reasons.
Side note: is it weird to change yourself to look like the girl you used to fancy? I feel like it is.
I’m also absolutely devastated that we’ve lost Ncuti so soon. It feels like we only just got him truly settled in the role, with only 19 episodes to his name (and he was barely in half of them). There’s a ghost of squandered potential in the air, and his regeneration hurts for all the wrong reasons. In many ways, Nine felt like he did more in a single series than we’ve had with Fifteen. It’s the end of an era that really should have been a lot better than it was…
Now we wait to see whether a new era is coming or not. If I were Disney, I’d be unconvinced right about now. Still, the trailer for The War Between Land and Sea looked pretty good… perhaps there’s hope yet.