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After sleeping on "The Reality War", I've come to a sort of verdict on it: I don't think this episode can be properly judged without acknowledging the behind-the-scenes issues that heavily impacted it.

Specifically, Gatwa's decision to step back due to the postponing of a formal renewal of the show.

This image has been kicking around. It's a promo image from "The Reality War" of a scene that isn't in the final episode.

It's known that reshoots for the S15 finale took place in February. Based on what the rumours and leaks say, the episode originally had a totally different ending, involving that dance party. I've also heard speculation that it would have set up Poppy as a plot hook for the next season, and there would have been a cameo from Susan Foreman to set up the plot about her return that RTD has been teasing from as early as "The Devil's Chord".

It's clear that RTD and co. were expecting the renewal to come much, much earlier than it did, and that waiting until after S15 had broadcast was not actually the original plan at all. Gatwa gets fed up because he doesn't want to put his career on hold like this, so RTD quickly concocts a new ending with a regeneration.

Poppy was never, ever intended to be turned into Belinda's daughter in the original ending, but whatever RTD had planned for her, he clearly felt it would only work with Gatwa, and so he hastily wrapped that up while also setting up a regeneration. (Incidentally, this also may have left answers to the Belinda/Mundy resemblance hanging.)

As for the Billie Piper of it all? The reshoots being almost last-minute meant RTD didn't really have time to do a full-blown casting for a new Doctor, and he clearly decided to go for shock and spectacle (for reasons that have yet to be determined). I suspect he decided on this rather than a mid-regeneration cliffhanger as a way to have a more decisive cliffhanger, hoping that people will want to know why this happened.

I will also add that Piper probably isn't playing the Doctor: no official source up to and including the episode credits have referred to her as such, and the regeneration itself also looks off.

Although RTD bears some of the responsibility for the messy way things went down, he doesn't own all of it since the lack of decision on a renewal was clearly the inciting incident here. I do hope that someday we learn what the original ending was – it doubtless would have fit the story better. And it would have fit Belinda better as well.

At least we got Jodie Whittaker in a scene not written by Chris Chibnall. The way Thirteen is written there tells me that RTD hasn't completely lost his touch.

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alright so the credits and the bbc press release are specifically avoiding calling billie piper the new doctor. ncuti gatwa apparently left due to being busy with other projects which makes sense (having had a lot of doctor-lite episodes for that exact reason). the finale had a lot of last minute reshoots. all of this to say i think they maybe suddenly found themselves in a position where they needed a new actor for the doctor quickly and didn’t have the time to go through the casting process, so they got someone old and available back for some weird timey wimey hand-wavey nonsense? and bp is not actually the doctor but there is something weird in-universe going on that they now have to come up with retroactively before the next episode?

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Not Carla Sunday clocking in for her shift at the Disown Ruby factory

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i have 1 thing to say about this week's Dr Who and it's that Turlough would fucking hate Eurovision

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There's a theme going on in this run

1.7 Rogue

2.3 Lux

2.7 The Interstellar Song Contest

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one of my favourite theories as to why the rani is waging war against the doctor is because she’s pissed the universe is now being ran by magic and superstition instead of reason, science and logic.

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DOCTOR WHO | 2.06: THE INTERSTELLAR SONG CONTEST + TEXT POSTS

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DOCTOR WHO The Interstellar Song Contest

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Why was the Rani dressed like you? Perhaps she's fashion conscious. She was in disguise. Practising another one of her talents.

THE RANI COSPLAYING THE DOCTOR'S COMPANIONS SINCE 1987

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84-year-old white woman calls 32-year-old black man grandfather, crowd goes wild

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the doctor: I'm the last of the time lords....I'm all alone in the universe....and I'm dying in the vacuum of space....

susan:

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Really spent twenty years theorising that every female character in Doctor Who was secretly Susan or the Rani for them both to turn up in the same episode - one of them twice.

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I'm seeing speculation, and discussion of speculation I haven't seen, that the fugitive Doctor cameo in The Story and the Engine means the Doctor has opened the Tectuen fobwatch offscreen. But the Division memory wipe has always leaked.

The Doctor told Ian and Barbara that he built the TARDIS, when Idris states that she was a "museum piece" when he and Susan left with her. The Doctor told Jo Liz that he was thousands of years old, when otherwise he only claimed hundreds between Totter's Lane and the Tower of London, at which time he says eleven hundred. The Doctor told Bill he was having trouble remembering when in his life he'd been a woman before, when she told the fam and the fugitive that she'd never been a woman before.

Then the Doctor met her fugitive self several times post-wipe.

There's nothing unprecedented in the mustache Doctor remembering his fugitive self and her encounter with Anansi and Abena when confronted with it even without having hunted up the hidden keyfob from Tectuen.

(Contrariwise it seems natural to me for him to refer to his present incarnation as nevertheless the first time he's been black because the fugitive Doctor, with any experience of racism she encountered, is not usually present in his memories. This life is, functionally, his first time dealing with colorist racism.)

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What else could hold all stories?

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS | THE STORY & THE ENGINE

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yes maybe rtd referring to previous seasons will be plot-relevant and/or he is just being lazy and self-aggrandising, but i think it could also just be a 20th anniversary of nuwho thing