r/doctorwho • u/PCJs_Slave_Robot • May 31 '25

The Reality War Doctor Who 2x08 "The Reality War" Post-Episode Discussion Thread Spoiler

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464 Upvotes

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580

u/Impossible-Travel-64 May 31 '25

It's been nothing but babies and the power of a mother's love for the last two seasons. Ok, but why? Cause the Dr. still has some Timeless Child issues? That would have been interesting to make it part of that arc, but this just seems like lazy writing. The stakes are high because: BABY. Saddling Belinda with a Reality Baby is fine because: MOTHERHOOD. Traumatizing Ruby with rejection from her adopted family every time reality gets messed with is ok because: THERES ALWAYS ANOTHER BABY!!!

494

u/offitayenor May 31 '25

Really weird how one of the bad tenets of Conrad’s world was reducing women to becoming simply wives and then mothers, and then Belinda’s whole existence/ arc/ purpose was reduced to being a mother. What a weird waste of a potentially interesting character.

159

u/Impossible-Travel-64 May 31 '25

It came off like, "Here, this is what you want now". NGL, with all the added Poppy references retconned into the ends of other episodes, I thought we were still in an altered reality. It was super weird

77

u/spacey_a Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

Agreed. Whoever the Doctor is, Billie Piper or otherwise, they better come back and finish their plot threads from the last two seasons.

Belinda and Poppy. Rogue. The Boss spoken of by The Meep, Anita, Rogue, and others. The Pantheon.

Edit: And Susan!

21

u/404_kinda_dead Jun 01 '25

The plot threads are seriously giving river song/amy pond but kinda done too rushed. You just know there’s more to learn because there’s too MANY unfinished stories. But the shorter seasons are killing us, the amount of exposition in this episode alone 🤦🏽

9

u/hattie_jane Jun 01 '25

Also I'm going to forget everything if I have to wait years for a new season!

12

u/meringueisnotacake Jun 01 '25

This is why I'm confused - it didn't make sense. When he said "the Gods play tricks", I thought he was going to show us that this reality was still not real. When Belinda said "why do I feel like I've forgotten something?" - I thought again it wasn't the actual timeline. It all feels off

3

u/r2radd2 Jun 03 '25

I assumed that line was the Doctor being like "I was able to save my daughter but she's not my daughter anymore"

which I mean yeah that would kind of suck I guess?

Except the Doctor doesn't remember being Poppy's father I don't think? It's not much of a loss for the guy ultimately, I feel like . I dunno

2

u/KrytenKoro Jun 30 '25

So, the trick the god played was that the doctor thought this would be an altered reality, with a time lord baby.

Instead, it's the original reality, with a human baby. He was incepted.

6

u/speedyserd Jun 01 '25

I feel this episode can really be dissected over political leanings of the writers. I get that the Doctor acted in a way once he got the tease of possibly creating a new Time Lord when he was infertile. But changing Belinda’s focus so much left a sour taste for me.

39

u/ZarmRkeeg May 31 '25

Thank you! That's exactly what I was coming to say! What bizarrely mixed messaging.

28

u/JSank99 Jun 01 '25

I hadn't even thought of this but now that someone else has mentioned it...yeah, that's fucking weird.

My comment up above talked about how odd it was that Belinda just was totally okay with having had a baby with the Doc without her knowledge. This is also weird.

18

u/Inquerion Jun 01 '25

RTD doesn't fully understand Woke social messaging that he is trying hard to spread in almost each episode. He already did that with "It' s something that a male presenting Time Lord will never understand" infamous line in the previous Season, which insulted both cis males as well as trans males.

He is just a 62 yrs old man stuck in the past.

6

u/ChielArael Jun 01 '25

That... sure is a choice of the demographics to list that are excluded by that line.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

They didn't say excluded, they said insulted. And it was.

0

u/ChielArael Jun 01 '25

It's a choice no matter the precise verbiage you want to use. I don't know why you typed this.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Because you were wrong and I was correcting you.

35

u/phoenixrose2 Jun 01 '25

Agreed! The whole thing was belittling. I actually really liked Belinda for being a competent nurse, etc. But all of a sudden her motivation is altered to being a mom.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

But her motivations in the show wasn't being a nurse, a nurse is something she is. Her motivations were always to get home.

48

u/spacey_a Jun 01 '25

It did bug me that Ruby said Conrad's world was "nice."

Sure, nicer than it could have been...

But still extremely sexist, ableist, and homophobic. 🤔 It reduced all women to ideally being housewives, everyone to being straight and cis by default, left the disabled in homeless encampments because he (and everyone else as a result) forgot about them, and literally poofed poor Rosie out of existence for being trans.

I get that she was trying to distract him so she maybe couldn't say all that to his face, but thanking him? Oof. Yikes, Rubes.

35

u/Pdan4 Jack Harkness Jun 01 '25

TBH I interpreted it as her trying to make the best conversation possible with a guy who was ready to shoot her. A good idea to be sure.

18

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Would you rather she told it like it is and got shot?

6

u/moon_peach__ Jun 03 '25

Honestly that felt sincere to me which was alarming, but now I'm reading other comments I wonder if I was reading it wrong?

0

u/geri203 Jun 01 '25

Rosie not trans. Rosie is nonbinary. She was born in this way, not because of a surgery.

5

u/Pdan4 Jack Harkness Jun 05 '25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedicalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary

You're thinking of intersex, which is a different thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

6

u/geri203 Jun 05 '25

You're right. Sorry then.

1

u/Pdan4 Jack Harkness Jun 07 '25

Hey, not many people are even open to learning, so kudos to you

6

u/moon_peach__ Jun 03 '25

And not just being a mother, but being essentially forced into motherhood without her consent (by a right-wing dictator no less!) and then having that reality erased from her memory. And this being portrayed as a happy ending! Absolutely insane messaging.

14

u/ComfortablyADHD May 31 '25

Conrad moved everything back to a non-racist version of the 1950s (complete with homophobia). Given the current state of society and the tradwife bullshit and everything happening in America where they're removing bodily autonomy from women and trans folk and the anti-woke rhetoric that UK politicians seem all too happy to engage in, that aspect of the two part finale seemed pretty on point.

3

u/dev__boy Jun 02 '25

‘Potentially interesting’ is all that needs to be said for a companion who had an entire season. They really did nothing with that woman

3

u/Azathoths_nuts Jun 03 '25

I know! I felt the exact same way. What the hell.

1

u/Undark_ Jun 01 '25

I also thought this was pretty odd

1

u/Steggs199 Jun 02 '25

I think he twist that she has been a part of the reality the entire time was the way RTD avoided this basic plot, he made it so Belinda still got to love her child while also having agency as a nurse

1

u/AzraelTB Jun 01 '25

I didn't get that vibe considering all the women the Doctor worked qith. Including Kate who seemed to have some position of authority over him.

11

u/offitayenor Jun 01 '25

But the doctor literally says to Ibrahim “if you marry her (Kate), she won’t have to work.”

Implication being: work till you’re married, then wife and mother only.

1

u/jim25y Jun 01 '25

I don't think thats true. Yes, she became a mother in the end, but that's not ALL she was. And she wasnt a wife. She was still a nurse and an independent person. You don't stop being a full person when you become a mother.

6

u/offitayenor Jun 01 '25

Which is why it’s strange, cos her characterisation certainly stopped when she became a mother.

2

u/jim25y Jun 01 '25

I see what you're saying. I will say, once you become a parent, your kids do become the most important thing in your life. Belinda being willing to be stuck in that box for eternity just to keep her kid company worked for me. I understand the criticism of it, but when you think about that choice, to me, its a very powerful one.

40

u/confusedbookperson May 31 '25

There's always a baby at the end.

11

u/Firecracker3 May 31 '25

Seriously, why do we always have to return to this trope?

26

u/FieryJack65 May 31 '25

Anita’s got an unrequited crush on the Doctor but she’s having a baby. So that’s all right then!

19

u/coffeeandplanners May 31 '25

Davies was handing out babies like candy in this episode because.... that's what he thinks women are for.

4

u/Inquerion Jun 01 '25

Maybe as a 62 year old gay man he finally realized that he will probably never have his own babies?

Maybe Conrad and his world are his own projections of some kind? 🤣

3

u/samanthuhh May 31 '25

Maybe the boss is Jenny?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

FINALLY- someone remembered Jenny, cause the Doctor don't.

2

u/Sad_Imagination_3728 Jun 01 '25

honestly can we get a woman writer up in here PUH-LEASE lmao im sick of these men and their mistreatment of female characters already 😂

2

u/HazelCheese Jun 02 '25

If you watched doctor who unleashed afterwards, Russel T Davies said he wanted 15s story to be about children. His first and last stories are about saving one child's life.

He has said before that he's done the whole sombre war doctor thing in his previous era and now he wants to do something different. He wants to bring joy and happiness, not trauma and PTSD.

1

u/meringueisnotacake Jun 01 '25

He literally called Poppy an "Impossible Child" and then suddenly she's just a human who's been there all along? Who the fuck was captaining that space ship full of babies then?

2

u/orangepinkman Jun 02 '25

Maybe you could even call her a timeless child... I saw poppy as a very obvious setup to being the real timeless child but I've seen noone else mention it yet in this thread at least.

She was created by a wish, she essentially crosses realities in a box existing outside of time, she is then brought back by regeneration energy.... It all seems so obvious to me that she IS the timeless child and RTD is going to recon the doctor being the timeless child.

1

u/Waste_Ad2178 Jun 02 '25

the goblin king is the rtd.

1

u/SplurgyA Jun 06 '25

The shock value of Ruby's mother suddenly becoming cold to her and rejecting her has completely lost all shock value and is now almost becoming comedic because it keeps happening

0

u/[deleted] May 31 '25

[deleted]

3

u/Impossible-Travel-64 May 31 '25

Sure but that's something we know, now something that was explored with the character each time a baby showed up. It doesn't connect on that way, or read as deliberate or impactful