ValueSubtracted

Yeah, my brain definitely made a connection that wasn't supported by the story.

I'm terrible at gauging whether an opinion is popular, but I'm chock-full of correct opinions, so here goes.

• The Timeless Child is basically fine, and served its function of injecting some new mystery and story hooks into the Doctor. RTD in particular has used it pretty effectively (read: sparingly), toying with the idea of the Doctor being a Foundling and embracing the Fugitive Doctor.

• The worst thing the show can do is bore me, so I can't get too mad at episodes like "Love and Monsters" and "Kill the Moon", because for all their flaws, they are not boring.

• I have no idea where the fandom eventually landed on Clara Oswald, but after her "recalibration" for "The Day of the Doctor", she was an all-time great companion. Danny Pink was good, too.

• This is broad, but internet culture seems to insist that everything has to be either the best thing ever, or the worst. Most things are actually pretty average - that's why it's called an average.

Now, on to yours, OP...

I LOVED the first series of both 12

"Listen"! "Time Heist"! "Mummy On the Orient Express"! "Flatline"! Great stuff.

and 13

Look, "Demons of the Punjab" is a Hall of Fame-level episode, as far as I'm concerned. "It Takes You Away" deserves recognition for its delightful weirdness. "The Woman Who Fell to Earth", "Rosa", and "The Witchfinders" are all good outings. I'm probably more willing to defend "Kerblam!" than many are.

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.

The kid's manifesting - let's check back in 20 years.

I personally liked "Lucky Day", though neither of his Chibnall-era efforts are particuarly inspiring (it's also sometimes very difficult to separate the episodic writer from the showrunner). I'm really not familiar with his other work.

Oh.

I'd never heard of this channel, and I'm very wary of strange YouTubers...but this was pretty good.

It lays out a compelling narrative for how this may have been an unplanned exit for Ncuti, with a very plausible-sounding explanation of "he wasn't willing to wait around while they sort out when season 3 will happen." I do hope the truth comes out in short order - I'd rather not put up with the equivalent of two decades of speculation over what went down with Christopher Eccleston.

I do think there's a third option amongst the narratives, too - it may have been "always the plan" in the sense that Ncuti had a 2-season contract, but that he had planned on renewing until all the waiting started to interfere with him picking up new projects.

I kind of expected Omega to be a big ol' nothingburger, kind of like Rassilon in "The End of Time", so I wasn't disappointed on that front.

There's a lot of potential in Omega, though, and to be honest I don't think any of the stories in which he appears have come anywhere close to taking advantage of it. He's always just a generic madman.

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about the Poppy stuff - you make some very good points. I do think the Doctor and Belinda were planning on being...non-romantic parents toward the end there, which seemed to make sense to me. But I'm really not sure what to make of the whole thing, on a logical or thematic level. Like I said in my first comment, they did manage to take it from something I had no investment in to something I was actually kind of sad about, so they get some credit there, but...I won't be surprised at all if we learn that there was an earlier version of this story that went in a different direction.

Nope - at the end of this video, RTD says "quite soon" twice, which could mean...a lot of things.

But I'm pretty sure we'll see it before 2025 is out, so there's that.

Oh?

I think something like that is happening - available rooms are being prioritized for evacuees with medical or accessibility needs, as the article says.

The issue with proactively evicting people is...those people have to go somewhere, too.

"I ask all levels of government, please come together, work together, ask that these hotels and these accommodations make space for our people. We are in a state of emergency, you can give that directive."

I find this a little confusing - are they to "ask" the hotels to make space, or are they to "direct" them? Those are two very different things.

And if it's the latter...is there a legal way to do so? This is an honest question, I have no idea what the answer is.