'The Reality War' (Story Code 2.08) by Russell T Davies

“I have a daughter.” - The Doctor

As the Doctor plummets to his impending death in the disintegrating London far below, Anita from the Time Hotel suddenly appears through a magic doorway and pulls him to safety. In the Bone Palace, the Rani’s clock ticks to midnight and time resets: Ruby wakes up back in her bedroom in the Sundays’ flat, and Belinda awakes alone in bed in the Smith household. Now manager of the Time Hotel, Anita shows the astonished Doctor a time portal leading back to London, where time has reset to 7am on May 23rd hundreds of times before. Anita has been searching through time for the Doctor, but when she saw him dancing with Rogue, she moved on and is now with Richard from HR, the father of her unborn child. With the Time Hotel now in spasm, the Doctor tells Anita about the Rani’s mad scheme to wear down reality and free the legendary Time Lord Omega from the Underverse. The Doctor is unaware that the Rani’s Seekers have already located their target.... Using a time portal to return to the Smiths’ house, the Doctor changes out of his business suit, then takes Belinda and Poppy into the Time Hotel to meet Anita. Although Belinda’s memories of the Doctor restore, she still firmly believes Poppy is their child. In the offices of UNIT, Kate and her insurance salesforce are surprised to see Anita and the Doctor arrive via magic door. Anita opens more doors, keeping them open so that real time spills into the Wish World, reasserting itself in UNIT HQ. The UNIT team regain their true memories, many mugs slip to the floor, the Vlinx bursts out of a nearby crate, and Rose Noble appears out of thin air. Kate activates the bio-chips implanted in all UNIT operatives to restore their memories too - this affects Shirley, Mel and Ruby, who all race to the UNIT Tower. In the Bone Palace, the Rani uses Conrad’s connection to his Wish World and the baby Desiderium to find the Doctor… As UNIT steps up to Gold Alert, the Doctor orders Susan Triad to build a special cuboid room for him. After Ruby, Shirley and Mel arrive on the scene, the Doctor briefs everyone on the threat from the ‘Unholy Trinity’ - the God of Wishes, the Rani and Conrad - and their Wish World. His tale is interrupted by the arrival of the Rani herself, as she materialises in UNIT’s control room. When the Doctor asks how she escaped the genetic explosion that destroyed the Time Lords, the Rani reveals how she flipped her DNA, then used a Time Ring to escape to Earth. The Rani also quickly summons Mrs Flood to surprise her former neighbours Ruby and Belinda, before sending her away again. When the Rani explains how she wants to use Omega as a gene bank to resurrect the Time Lords in her own version of Gallifrey, Mel asks why she and the Doctor cannot create their own offspring; the two Time Lords explain that their race is sterile, which is why Poppy is such a miracle. The Doctor is now caught in a dilemma, as stopping the Rani’s mad plan would mean the end of the Wish World and his daughter, Poppy. Seeing the bigger picture, the Doctor vows to stop the Rani, but she zaps his sonic with her own device, then teleports back to her palace. The Rani arrives in her control room just as Mrs Flood activates the chronon beam that will pull Omega out of the Underverse. The Rani provokes the giant Bone Beasts stomping across London into attacking the UNIT Tower. As the creatures close in, Kate puts UNIT in battle mode: her troops take up arms, and the Tower’s weapons platforms come online. The Doctor takes Belinda and Poppy to meet Susan, who has created a Zero Room to the Doctor’s specifications; the room’s interior is set aside from reality, to safeguard Belinda and Poppy when the Wish World ends. As the battle between UNIT and the Bone Beasts wages, Ruby dons UNIT’s portable transmat pack, the Indigo Device, to take her to Conrad. Having tricked the Rani into thinking his sonic was destroyed, when in fact he copied her device’s coding, the Doctor summons his enemy’s sky-bike and flies to her Bone Palace; he smashes into the Rani’s control room, disabling the threshold force-field and enabling Ruby to transmat to Conrad’s room; but Ruby’s ex-boyfriend has been waiting for her, and he pulls a gun on her. The Doctor is too late to stop the Rani and Mrs Flood, who have already locked onto Omega. They open the portal door to free Omega from his prison in hell - but to everyone’s surprise, the ancient Time Lord has become a giant, terrifying skeletal monster. It seems the Underverse has turned Omega into his own legend of a titanic mad god, the Time Lords’ Original Sin. Omega grabs the Rani and eats her, then destroys her robot Drones with a horrifying scream. While the Doctor confronts his old foe, Mrs Flood grabs the Rani’s dropped Time Ring and teleports away. As Omega gloats of feasting on the world, the Doctor backs into the Rani’s clock - then grabs his Vindicator from its mechanism and unleashes its stored power on Omega. Elsewhere, Ruby transmats past Conrad and reaches baby Desiderium; Ruby uses the infant god’s power to wish Conrad to be happy, and Conrad vanishes into thin air. Using the Vindicator, the Doctor forces Omega back through the portal door, which reseals, locking him in the Underverse. Ruby uses the baby to end the wish that created the world, causing reality to start to disintegrate. As the Bone Palace dissipates, the Doctor sees the TARDIS door appear in a nearby wall, and he manages to escape just as the palace vanishes. Inside the TARDIS are Ruby and baby Desiderium; the Doctor uses the baby to wish for “no more wishes”, depowering the god. The TARDIS returns to UNIT HQ, where the Doctor and his friends are delighted to find that the Zero Room has kept Belinda and Poppy safe and sound. Later, the Doctor puts the now-human Desiderium into the care of Carla and Cherry Sunday, who name him ‘Joseph’. Joining Ruby, Belinda and Poppy in the TARDIS, the Doctor makes plans to baby-proof the ship. But as Ruby watches, the Doctor and Belinda’s memories of their daughter slowly fade away - as does Poppy. Acting as if nothing has happened, the Doctor throws Belinda’s star certificate into space to be found by the robots who abducted her, then takes his ship back to UNIT HQ, arriving just as Big Ben chimes midnight - it is the 24th May at last. With things back to normal, Anita returns to the Time Hotel, and UNIT identify a few small glitches in the restored timeline, such as Conrad working as chief cook in a Lewisham restaurant, all memories of his former self now gone from the world. Only Ruby is still concerned, as she is the one person who remembers Poppy. At Ruby’s insistence, the Doctor resolves to look for the child, and he departs in the TARDIS once more. In the TARDIS console room, the ship anticipates the Doctor’s plan by showing him images of his old faces. To the Doctor’s astonishment, his Thirteenth incarnation appears - she has been transported out of her timeline to stop her later self from causing a time schism, from his intention to send his regeneration energy into the Vortex in a bid to find Poppy. Warning that shifting time could damage all of creation, the Thirteenth Doctor shows her older self a safer way, then returns to her own timeline. The Doctor channels his energy into the TARDIS console, and then the universe shatters…

The Doctor comes to in a garden, and forces his body to hold back his oncoming regeneration. Greeted by Belinda, the Doctor races inside her house, where he is delighted to find Poppy playing happily. In this new timeline, Belinda’s desire to get home was due to her need to return to Poppy; however, the child’s father is no longer the Doctor, instead that is Belinda’s ex-partner, Richie. After a sad goodbye to Belinda and Poppy, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS. Setting the ship hanging in space, the Doctor opens the doors and looks out at Joy’s star, as his body is consumed by regeneration energy. But this time the Doctor’s appearance transforms into one that looks just like his former companion, Rose Tyler - or could it be the Moment…?

Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor),Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Billie Piper, Varada Sethu (Belinda Chandra), Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), Archie Panjabi (The Rani), Anita Dobson (Mrs Flood), Steph De Whalley (Anita Benn), Sam Lawton (Winnie Petheridge), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Bingham), Michelle Greenridge (Carla Sunday), Jonah Hauer-King (Conrad Clark), Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps (Poppy), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Susan Twist (Susan Triad), Alexander Devrient (Colonel Christofer Ibrahim), Aiden Cook (The Vlinx), Jasmin Finney (Rose Noble), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Angela Wynter (Cherry Sunday), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of Omega), Nila Aaisa (Lakshmi Chandra)

Directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai

Produced by Chris May
Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins and Phil Collinson
A Bad Wolf / BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
31st May 2025 at 6.30 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Fifteenth Doctor, the Thirteenth Doctor, Belinda, Ruby, Mel, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT

*Part two of a two-part story

*Time-placing: The Thirteenth Doctor knows Yaz loves her, but cannot reciprocate, so I’m placing her appearance between ‘Eve of the Daleks’ and ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’

*To avoid online spoilers, this seventy-minute episode had a simultaneous worldwide premiere on Saturday night (unlike previous episodes, which premiered in the UK on the BBC's iPlayer in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) at 08.00 in the morning, and simultaneously streamed on Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland)

*The episode also premiered in UK cinemas on the evening of 31st May, after a screening of 'Wish World'