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Misha is really doing the most to keep the tumblrinas fed

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In Every Other Universe, We're Still Dancing (858 words) by RegulusStars79 Chapters: 1/8 Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: The Doctor/Rogue (Doctor Who: Rogue), Art/Rogue (Doctor Who: Rogue), Belinda Chandra & Fifteenth Doctor, Belinda Chandra & Fifteenth Doctor & Ruby Sunday, Fifteenth Doctor & Ruby Sunday, Belinda Chandra & Poppy (Doctor Who: Space Babies), The Doctor & Sutekh (Doctor Who) Characters: Rogue (Doctor Who: Rogue), Art (Doctor Who: Rogue), Fifteenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Sutekh (Doctor Who), Belinda Chandra, Ruby Sunday, Poppy (Doctor Who: Space Babies) Additional Tags: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Multiverse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Random & Short Summary: After Rogue dies in the baron dimension something unexpected happens: Sutekh shows Rogue every universe where he and the Doctor make it. Rogue runs through door after door, universe after universe, trying to escape the God of Deaths grasp and stumbles into another version of the Doctor and his love story over and over again. In every other universe the Doctor and himself dance, and this is the only one where they loose each other. Or maybe it isn't.

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i rewatched season 10 yesterday :’)

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I’ve seen some posts floating around saying things like, “Belinda was always a mom, the Doctor just corrected the timeline,” and I genuinely cannot stress enough how little that addresses the core issues people have with how her story was handled.

First of all, if that was the intention—if the idea was that Belinda was always meant to be a mother and the timeline just needed to be “set right”—they did a poor job of executing it. A twist that major, one that fundamentally alters a character’s identity or arc, requires setup. Foreshadowing. Emotional groundwork. You can’t just spring something that massive on the audience in the last five minutes and expect it to feel meaningful instead of disorienting.

And here’s the thing: Doctor Who has done that kind of plot before—successfully. A great comparison is Amy and Rory. The show literally did the “someone you love was erased from time and the universe needs to be corrected to bring them back” storyline already. And while I’ve got my own qualms with how Amy’s arc was handled overall, that particular beat actually worked.

Why? Because there were signs. The cracks in time. The missing memories. A sense of loss Amy couldn’t place. Little inconsistencies that made the audience lean forward and feel that something was wrong. Not to mention: Rory was introduced before he disappeared. We knew him. We saw his dynamic with Amy. We cared about him. We barely see Poppy in these two episodes, other than "child missing bad" we really have no attachment to her.

Now imagine if we never met Rory. If Amy had been introduced as a fierce, independent woman with no attachments, someone whose refusal to be tied down was a defining trait—and then the show suddenly revealed, in the finale, that actually she was about to get married the whole time to a man we’d never seen, and now she’s a devoted wife. No buildup. No context. Just surprise! emotional transformation. That would feel bizarre, right?

That’s exactly what happened with Belinda.

The final minutes of the finale reframe her not just as someone who once had a child, but as someone whose true self is supposedly defined by that role—and we’re meant to believe that this identity has now been “restored” to her, and we’re told it’s been restored to her as a reward. But it doesn’t feel like a revelation. It feels like a contradiction.

It’s like they wanted to write her as fierce and independent, but didn’t also want to imply that she wanted kids or thought about kids—because society still tends to associate maternal longing or caretaking instincts with weakness, or with not being a “strong” woman. So instead of exploring that complexity, they just didn’t. They wrote her as a fully autonomous character, with no visible yearning or absence, and then stapled a child onto her arc at the end.

And just to be absolutely clear: the problem is not that Belinda is a mother. You can write a fierce, independent, female-presenting character who’s also a parent. Those things are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that the story didn’t earn it.

Writers often avoid giving powerful women maternal traits because they assume femininity and strength can’t coexist—but that’s a separate conversation. The real issue here is that the show never showed us that this part of Belinda was missing. It never laid the groundwork for that emotional restoration to resonate. It didn’t feel like they revealed who she truly was—it felt like they replaced her with someone else.

It’s not that you can’t tell a story where a forgotten child or a missing family is recovered from a broken timeline. That kind of emotional twist can be powerful. But if that’s the story you want to tell, you have to earn it. You have to make the absence felt before you try to fill it. You have to let us sense the missing piece and ache for its return. Without that, it doesn’t feel like a twist—it feels like a contradiction.

And no, Poppy showing up once in The Story & the Engine is not proper setup. If this was truly the intended arc from the beginning, then it needed clues. Give us subtle signs. Let Belinda hesitate when asked simple questions. Let her glance at a photo and seem unsettled. Let her correct someone’s memory and then immediately second-guess herself. Plant a sense of wrongness in her own life that even she can’t quite name.

There’s even a interview with RTD about reshooting the beginning of The Robot Revolution to give Belinda roommates, because he thought no one would buy her owning an entire house by herself.

But if this twist with Poppy was truly planned from the start? Then leave her in that big, echoing house. Let it be part of the unease. Let there be a child’s toy tucked into the back of a drawer she doesn’t remember buying. A room she avoids, too pristine and untouched. A lullaby she hums under her breath without knowing where she learned it. Give us texture. Give us silence that feels too quiet.

Let us feel the shape of what’s missing before you tell us what it was.

That’s how you write a twist that resonates—by trusting your audience to notice the gaps, to feel the ache, and to recognize the truth when it finally appears. Not by pulling a rabbit out of a hat and calling it destiny.

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seeing everyone come together and actually agree with each other for once bc the ending was that bad

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🌸 Little Guys™️ collected this season 🌸

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15th Doctor

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Where did this photo come from?

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SPOILERS

Translation: Goodbye

Sad to see Ncuti Gatwa go - loved his doctor!

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either rogue returns, and the beautiful interracial gay couple becomes a straight white couple, or rogue doesn't return, and russell t davies has just done the bury your gays trope in 2025. awesome. thanks for that russell.

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poor rogue saved the world from compulsory heterosexuality and is still chilling in gay super hell (only other occupent: castiell)

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I love you, Doctor. I never say things like that. That's why you got me.

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Can’t believe the BBC posted this anyway I’m crying again

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I've had this mental image of 15 regenerating and Rogues ring falling off and 16 catching it then going to find Rogue

I guess rtd ruined that for me

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Okay so major Reality War spoilers below:

I felt like this episode could have been so much more. Like Wish World set everything up beautifully, but then it just... Didn't really go places. And the main conflict, the stuff that had a full episode to be set up, just got written off in the first thirty minutes. Disappointing in my opinion.

That's not to say that there's not plenty of things that I like about this episode - there are!!! But I made this post with a specific point in mind, a point which is, sadly, a negative.

This is not the point of this post at all but I just want to mention that I'm absolutely bloody fuming about what they did to Belinda. Like no, why the hell would you do that???

The point of this post is that I'm so sad that Ncuti Gatwa didn't get a third series. There are multiple reasons behind this, ranging from the shorter series' to the lack of real development to the fact that I just really liked his Doctor and wanted to see more of him. However, there is one major reason why I'm so annoyed, and that may be due to personal bias towards this certain character but uhh, I'm allowed to be a tiny bit biased right???

THE ROGUE STORYLINE IS GOING TO FALL APART WITHOUT THE 15TH DOCTOR.

Let me explain. So basically, Rogue can only work with the fifteenth Doctor at the moment, in my opinion.

Rogue and the Doctor have very little by way of backstory. They had beautiful chemistry and a dynamic I adore, but they don't really have anything deeper than beautiful, raw potential between them. Which isn't to say that their romance is bad or insincere - it's not! However, it is very very new. It also wouldn't have worked anywhere near as well with any of the previous Doctors - Fifteen is an outlier in that he is flirtatious, charming and socially smooth, unlike his predecessors. And his blossoming romance with Rogue was quite reliant on that to build foundations before a deeper, personal connection could be formed. We got tastes of a more mature connection with the discussion about those they lost, but other than that they were going mostly off of chemistry.

Which is why having the Doctor regenerate before he found Rogue could easily destroy their entire dynamic.

It feels to me like too much was left undone - the mysterious Boss that kept showing up, how Belinda knew what a TARDIS was, and obviously leaving Rogue stranded in a hell dimension that is rapidly falling into the void.

A new Doctor generally represents new beginnings - often a new companion (although that doesn't have to be the case, but any recurring companion throughout regenerations is generally present for their Doctor's regeneration), a new TARDIS and a new outwards personality for the Doctor to match their new face. So typically, plots wrap themselves up during that Doctor's run - for example, 9 and Bad Wolf, 10 and Harold Saxon, 11 and the Silence, etc. Therefore, it would only be logical to similarly wrap up the Rogue plotline during Ncuti Gatwa's run.

The way I see it, there's really only two possibilities now - leave Rogue to fall into the void after suffering in the hell dimension for god knows how long (unsatisfying, dull, feels very incomplete); or have Rogue appear again with a different Doctor, which would mean a completely new dynamic between the Doctor and a character he only had one episode with (jarring, will feel like wasted potential, will essentially be like creating a whole new ship because there isn't a strong, pre-established bond present).

So, in summary, my timerogue loving heart is very very sad to see Ncuti Gatwa go. I'm just saying, Big Finish has the perfect opportunity to complete what RTD failed to finish.

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Doctor Who (2005 ) I The Reality War