i was expecting to be pissed off by this episode, but the particular ways in which it pissed me off surprised me a fair bit. i did enjoy many aspects of the episode! there were jokes that got me, visuals i really enjoyed. it wasnt life-ruining trash for me. im still not happy, though.

i understand that there were reshoots and things had to be quickly rewritten to accommodate Gatwa leaving the show early (which is a whole other matter that i have many thoughts about) but i don't think that is a satisfactory explanation for any of the things that bothered me here.

thing number one: the pacing and overall plot. there are approximately one million things happening in this episode, most of which require a heap of exposition that is delivered in RTDs classic Explain Everything Completely And As Fast As Possible So We Can Move On style while everybody stands around listening. absolutely nothing gets space to breathe here for even a second. i saw somebody say this episode was edited like a tiktok and i think there is some truth to that, it was a total sensory/emotional overload and not even in a fun way. plot beats burst out of the ground and then are immediately euthanized like a manic game of whackamole, omega shows up looking weird as all hell, has his weirdness sort of half heartedly explained away and then is immediately blasted back into hell, unceremoniously taking the main villain with him over the course of, i dont know, 60 seconds. this is similar to how Empire of Death felt to me, except that one actually stopped to let the cool stuff bask in being cool for a minute here and there. reshoots and rewrites dont excuse this either. clearly RTD isnt afraid to just let some of those plot threads dangle (susan, the gold tooth, etc) so why not just drop a few of these plot lines and clean things up? its a hot mess already.

thing number two, my personal favorite: Belinda. utterly betrayed by the writers.

Wish World: the world has been reshaped into a sick, saccharine, authoritarian society where the only acceptable relationship dynamic is the heteronormative nuclear family. every man has a wife, every wife is a mother. and if they dont, Conrad's wish conjures one out of the ether and rewrites their memories so that it has Always Been This Way, and they have Always Loved These People. every person on earth has had their memory and personhood violated so they can be dolls for Conrad to play happy families with, and they need to break out of this and remember who they really are, outside of a reactionary's idealized world.

except for Belinda, apparently. in Belinda's case it is of utmost importance that she keeps the emotional bond that was shoved into her brain by a misogynist so that the Doctor can have a baby. and we're somehow not supposed to find that horrifying. it is never once framed as a negative thing after the revelation that Poppy is the Doctor's daughter.

this ties in with another issue thats been coming up here and there: the inconsistency of what the narrative considers ethical. authoritarianism and rewriting people's existence against their will is bad when a creepy guy does it, but when the Good Guys do it it's actually really really cool and heroic and really sweet of them to care like that. see also: the first episode of the season, the Robot Revolution, has a planet of people living under complete control of their robot overlords, who monitor their every word (or at least most of them) for any sign of dissent on punishment of death. that seems pretty bad. the villain even gets reduced to a few non-sentient cells for his trouble, and then comedically swept up by a roomba. in this finale UNIT reveals that they've had their employees microchipped like dogs all along so that their movements can be surveilled at any time within the radius of UNIT HQ, including at their homes. you know, UNIT, who also have been secretly building time technology that even the Doctor doesn't want them to have, the guys with the Death Laser on their roof, and the armed soldiers, and the ability to seemingly build/keep whatever the hell weapons they want with no oversight from the UK or any other government. the good guys! i see no way any of this could possibly be used for evil, ever. and neither does the show, apparently, because listen to that victorious fanfare when they bring out the microchips. remember, Good People are allowed to do whatever they want and it's always right, because they're Good and not Bad.

anyways. Belinda. kind of messed up that she literally was locked in a crate for like a third of the episode (while still essentially brainwashed) while all the important stuff happened, huh.

And thing number three: that regeneration scene was very sweet. I will give it that. and I understand it having to be tacked on pretty abruptly on account of Gatwa's sudden departure. but keeping it a secret literally until the episode was released just felt cruel. other Doctor Who actors get to make an announcement, be in control of their own narrative before the second the story became available to the public. the fans got time to mourn. it feels disrespectful. worse, it gives me the suspicion that it was a move purely to get people talking. something to generate youtube clickbait, which, it seems, is the meat of RTDs writing method these days, based on some of those interviews he's been putting out.

i do have more issues here, but I'll cut it short before this turns into full-on essay. i never thought i would be this put off by the TV series again. i really, truly, tried to trust RTD and the whole team here. still, taking all of this in with the highest degree of optimism i can, the absolute best i can say about what happened here is that it was thoughtlessly written without consideration for how the treatment of these characters (Belinda in particular) would come off. even believing in RTD with every ounce of optimism in my heart, this is part of a clear pattern of behavior on RTD's part in his treatment of women, motherhood, and characters of color. seeing a woman of color as a companion get utterly used and sidelined a second time did not feel good to me (third time, really, if we count his Doctor Who debut, Damaged Goods, in which our long-time Black woman companion is barely a character for the bulk of the book). and neither did seeing the Rani (the one who isn't white) get unceremoniously murked by a big monster that is then removed from the story entirely.

I really, really hope RTD can't outrun the criticism on this one. I hope he gets fan pushback he can't avoid and has to learn a bigger lesson than "if people get mad its free advertising". if I wasn't ready for a new showrunner before, I am now.