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Starting off on a journey to get up all 214 of the Wainwright fells in the Lake District.

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Just me, some stepping stones, a waterfall and a very small train

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OK, shower idea for how I'd follow up the end of The Reality War.

Billie Piper is playing a character I'll call the Last Doctor. After all the damage that's been done to reality and time recently by the Flux, the release of the Toymaker/Pantheon and the Doctor smashing reality with their recent regeneration, a combination of the Vortex and the Moment has taken matters into its own hands to repair everything by taking the Doctor's place in the universe. Once the repair is complete, there'll be no more need for the Doctor.

However, like the Guardians of the Edge Thirteen encountered, the Doctor's previous incarnations are still inside the Last Doctor and pleading for their continued existence. However, we only see them through the Last Doctor, so we get to see Billie playing the various incarnations.

Concurrent to this, some of the regeneration energy the Doctor launched into space struck a nearby space station, which now needs saving so the Last Doctor has to use the previous incarnations to do that whilst also judging them.

The Doctors save the day and convince the Last Doctor to let them continue in the new universe which they agree to "but with a few conditions that I'll explain later".

The universe then gets rebooted as the regeneration kicks back into gear at which point we get to see if Billie wants to do a whole series, if Ncuti wants to stay on or if there's a whole new Doctor.

(And yes, never going to happen, but an hour or so of Billie talking to herself while playing a dozen or more different characters would be fun, right?)

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I agree with this. Two extra thoughts:

First, I think the character of Belinda had already been created for the Robot Revolution, then got hastily retooled when they needed a new companion. The way RTD talks about characters he creates makes me think he'd upgrade one he already created. (It would also be the inverse of what happened to Penny, the initial S4 companion before they realised Catherine Tate wanted to come back, who became a single episode character in Partners In Crime)

Second, if Ruby was continuing as companion, I wonder if Lucky Day would have been the opening episode of the season? It works as showing us what's happened in her life since she left (and while the Doctor's been caught up in the hotel in Joy To The World) and then explaining at the end why she's ready to get back in the TARDIS and travel again.

One day we may get the full story of what went on behind the scenes with the New New Series, but I suspect it won't come out in as neat a form as The Writer's Tale. (Which is where I got all the information about Penny and Donna's return from)

I do not like to consider behind the scenes stuff when talking about Art, but I do think that this episode fully sealed the deal on the 'Millie Gibson left the show unexpectedly for Some Sort of Reason so they had to cast someone else as a new companion on short notice and quickly rewrite completed episodes to compensate' theory.

That whole maternal bit with Belinda? Out of nowhere. Nothing to do with Belinda. Belinda got very little characterization overall, but none of it was that.

But let's say instead that the companion for this season remained Ruby. We get a little timeskip in between the two seasons, in which Ruby dates Conrad. Maybe the Robot Revolution initially featured him. Then we have a whole season in which none of the other stories (except a new version of Lucky Day) center around her, which makes a lot of sense because the previous season was all about her. She doesn't feel undercharacterized, because she had a whole-ass season of characterization already. Most of the season could have her in the place of Belinda with literally nothing changing, which, well.

And then we get to this finale. The Doctor and Ruby get magicked into a world where they have a magic baby, who looks just like a baby they met previously. Despite the fact that the baby and their life isn't real, Ruby can't possibly find it within herself to abandon - or forget - a child. It doesn't matter whether the child is really hers or not. It matters that someone needs to take care of her and that Ruby steps up to do it. That's a core Ruby character value! That's something that would follow up on a previously established theme!

So, the ending in which she raises the child isn't weird, it's the conclusion to Ruby's character arc. There's no extra character who needs to be shoved into a literal box. The UNIT reunion is a reunion of characters who actually know each other, unlike Belinda, who doesn't know any of those guys. Space Babies is retroactively vindicated.

I cannot believe this was not the intended model of the series. We know these two seasons were written and filmed concurrently. There's no reason for the result to be so awkward if there wasn't some bullshit afoot, given that there was ample opportunity to plan it properly. When Belinda was announced, RTD explicitly said that Varada Sethu was cast because they had already filmed 'Boom' and they knew she had good screen chemistry with Ncuti. She herself said that she was just offered the role out of the blue. This was a rush job. I really liked Varada Sethu as Belinda. She did a lot to disguise the patch here, and it's too bad that she couldn't do more. But we shouldn't think of these seasons as something that was designed to be this way. I'm pretty sure they weren't.

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Latest video of one of my walks

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Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor has shared scenes on screen (not including regenerations) with seven other Doctors: Fugitive (several times) 1,5,6,7 and 8 (Power of the Doctor) and 15 (The Reality War). I think that's the most of any of them.

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TV idea: House Returns. One of his former patients discovers he's still alive and leads a class action suit against him for all the medical bills they still have to pay for all the tests and failed procedures he put them through. Also, Wilson is present but as a ghost everyone but House can see.

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New Medium post, looking back at my first month in my new place.

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🦔

This is Charles. He wants to go on a journey around tumblr. could you show him around?

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A quick update (and some views of Ennerdale)

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Another one of my long walks around here before I move (less than a week away!) This time, I'm off doing a circuit of the city on the Colchester Orbital.

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All aboard, Rupert the Bear