Doctor Who Social Club

Sunday was a bit of a spoiler minefield

A lot of it was driven by the BBC, too - normally, I would consider spoilers like that to be fair game to share, because if the production itself doesn't care, why should we? But this offended even my lenient sensibilities.

There were more emotional payoffs here than actually narrative ones

This is one of my favourite things about Doctor Who, really - the show often operates on emotional logic far more than, you know, logic-logic. Of course, that's a dangerous game to play, and there's a higher risk of a story doesn't quite land right with everyone, and...the more I think about it, the more that was probably the case for me with "The Reality War."

It was lovely seeing Anita again

I think it was intentional, but it was interesting that Anita was constantly sidelined by the narrative, kind of ignored by the other characters. A little heartbreaking, and I'm not sure what, exactly, the message is, but it did seem intentional to me. Also, I assume RTD had to write around Steph de Whalley's actual pregnancy?

And finally, a sitdown with Belinda in a new timeline where she’s now (and somehow always was) happily Poppy’s mum and the Doctor can wash his hands of paternity.

My initial reaction was that maybe this had been the case all season, and we had just been seeing the Doctor's altered memories, but...that doesn't really work at all, so never mind. It's a shame, too, because that could have been interesting.