The Tomb of Omega

Story: The Reality War
Written By: Russell T Davies
Length: 45 Minutes
Year: 2025

The Doctor is saved from his fall by that lady he made friends with at Christmas at the Time Hotel.  He then has her open various doors from reality into UNIT HQ, this brings all of UNIT back to reality and they begin to fight these wild giant bone monsters that wander around the planet for some reason.  The Doctor goes off to stop the two Ranis from unsealing Omega but they do it anyway, and Omega is not like a mutated giant skeleton and heats the younger Rani while the Mrs. Flood version fucks off as quickly as possible.  The Doctor then uses the Vindicator to push Omega back into his tomb of hell. Meanwhile Ruby teleports into Conrad's weird little room and manages to get to the baby, wish Conrad a happy life and then wishes things to be normal. 

During all of this crazy battle stuff at UNIT, the Doctor put Belinda and their dream child into a zero room hoping that the child would somehow survive the return to reality. And she seems too, even though the Doctor used the wish baby to ask for no more wishes.  And the Doctor and Belinda plan to travel the universe with their weird child.  But then the child disappears and only Ruby can remember her.  She convinces the Doctor that the universe is still not right, there are other minor glitches but the only wish that seems to have survived is the one for Conrad to be happy...and if even one person is missing he needs to fix reality, and bring the dream child back.  

To do this, the Doctor decides he must use up regeneration energy into the TARDIS to alter the timeline slightly...and the Thirteenth Doctor shows up to warn him about the dangers of this.  What a shock to see Jodie Whitaker show up for this.  Almost as shocking as what this is all leading towards: Gatwa is leaving the show already and going to regenerate.  The Doctor does his goofy regeneration time altering madness and wakes up in a back yard.  He then finds that Belinda is home and Poppy exists! All is well...except it turns out that Belinda had been telling him all along that she needed to be home to get back to her child, he just can't fully remember it. We get tons of flashbacks of her throughout the series talking about needing to get home in time for her child, and how the child is totally human, a product of her and her ex.  

The Doctor even scans and confirms Poppy is fully human.  He says his goodbyes to Belinda, who is a responsible parent who wouldn't dare risk her child's life in TARDIS adventures...and the Doctor heads back into the TARDIS to change his face yet again...and into Billie Piper! 

The show is going to devour itself one day if it can't move forward.  Are we going to get a face from the past in between every new Doctor now? Oh boy, it'll be interesting to see this former companion's take on the Doctor I suppose.  

This episode is messy in my opinion.  We have now had essentially three big finales that end with big cluttered battles at UNIT Tower.  The 60th Specials concluded with the UNIT battle against the Toymaker, last season ended with the Sutekh thing at UNIT...and now we get the Two Ranis and Omega and bone monsters all shooting it out at...you guessed it...UNIT Tower.  It feels pretty fucking repetitive.  I miss the old days where every series had its own flavor and its own ending.  Series 1 in that space station and a horde of Daleks, Series 2 in Torchwood and the Cybermen/Dalek fight, Series 3 in the Valiant against the Master...I mean They felt like distinct endings to distinct seasons.  This finale just feels like treading water a bit. I hope the next season can end on something other than "the end of everything...at UNIT!"

I also think that after 20 years of fans saying "its gonna be the Rani" its kind of hilarious that RTD gave us two Ranis and ultimately made them useless and thrown out halfway through the finale.  But hey what if we brought back Omega, and then made him feel almost exactly like last year's Sutekh?  And then have him taken care of immediately. The villains of this episode are pretty weak.  Even the lesser villain of Conrad is just wished away.  

I will say the idea of the Doctor having a child was irking me until she disappeared, I thought that was pretty interesting.  And the Doctor giving his life to save a daughter that turned out to have never been his at all...I thought that was all good stuff. And so ends the season...time to do a little recap!

NEXT TIME: Series 15 Recap