Ok. Had a nap, calmed down a bit.

Overall, an excellent episode. Not keen on how they did Omega, (the “dusty CGI” idea gave me Sutekh vibes, even if it looked a bit different), but the idea and a nice ironic “death” for The Rani worked well. While still leaving one escaping so her inevitable return won’t be as unexplained as several of The Master’s.

Ruby yet again proving why she’s good enough to be a Companion by giving Conrad a compassionate ending (instead of what I suspect most of us would have done).

I loved the return of Anita! Having some random ass-pull trick to get The Doctor out of an inevitable death would be very on brand, but actually bringing back something we’d seen before was much more fulfilling.

Project Indigo was another example of that. Sure, UNIT could just have “found” a teleport, but having already explained how they built it was a nice treat for long-time fans.

I think the tease of Rogue and (especially) Susan last week was disappointingly not paid off. But as I mentioned in another toot, RTD seems to be playing the long game with seeding ideas, so assuming they don’t just cancel the whole thing, I’m assuming he has a Plan for that.

I’m sad about the whole Poppy thing just ending up as a gimmick to write out Varada Sethu. Neither she nor Millie Gibson really had enough time in the role (hell, Ncuti Gatwa didn’t really have enough time in the role!!), although as I mentioned for the first Conrad episode, Gibson came back with enough presence to believe she was still a companion. We’ve not had that with Sethu, and now I doubt we will.

I do miss the way Companions used to carry over and had to re-acclimatise to a new Doctor. From memory, only Rose and Clara have had this in New Who.

Now. The regeneration.

It hurt. This is the first time I’ve ever watched Doctor Who and not known that it was coming. Is this how non-Brits feel the first time they watched Eccleston regenerate into Tennant in The Parting Of The Ways?

I’m still in my usual post-regeneration grief phase. I’ll work through it. It’ll help if they announce a Christmas special or that they’re filming the next season though…

It was fantastic to see Whittaker again 😀. All too brief, but, like Jo Martin, it’s nice that she’s prepared to come back just for one-off scenes.

And now… Billie Piper is back. Conspicuously, I’ve not seen anything actually referring to her as “The Doctor”. I am fascinated to see where they’re going with that. I have no reason to believe RTD is just doing a stunt casting and hasn’t planned it out.

Still. Must look to the future. And I’m very keen to see where we go from here!

#DoctorWho #NcutiGatwa #VaradaSethu #MillieGibson