Tag: bbc

Good news: Doctor Who is alive. Bad news: Doctor Who is now alive and probably has to deal with one of the most bizarre cliffhangers in over 60 years of cliffhanging history.

With yesterday’s news that the BBC would be continuing Doctor Who‘s future after the termination of its partnership with Disney starting with a new Christmas special in 2026, the series now has an equally as important task to deal with beyond its continued survival: just who the hell is Billie Piper meant to have been playing in those closing moments of “The Reality War”, anyway?

Even before the future of the series was stuck in limbo for months, creatives involved in the series, from Piper herself to showrunner Russell T Davies, wanted to suggest that the returning actress was not necessarily playing the 16th incarnation of the Doctor, despite her regenerating out of departing star Ncuti Gatwa. Piper was not credited in “Reality War” as appearing as the Doctor, as has traditionally been the case for new Doctors, and there was enough going on with Gatwa’s regeneration and the reasoning process for it to suggest that not everything was as it seemed. And since then, any willing commentary that has been made about the decision is purely speculative, other than to indicate that there was not a clear plan in place as to how the outcome would play out, with no guaranteed future for the series.

But now that future is at least guaranteed. So while we now have a long wait until Christmas 2026 to actually see who Piper is playing, we have some suggestions… admittedly only mostly silly ones.

9) Rose Tyler, Again

The climax of “The Reality War” was meant to be about the use of regeneration energy to shunt reality itself… but what if it didn’t just affect Doctor Who‘s prime reality and translocated noted reality hopper Rose Tyler into the Doctor’s place, and now she has to figure out how to get whoever they’ve become back?

8) The Master

The last time we saw the Master, we did see him attempt to violently take over the Doctor’s body during the regeneration process. What better way to mess with the mind of your oldest frenemy than by forcing them to have the face of one of their closest former companions while also being you?

7) The Bad Wolf, Again

The 15th Doctor’s regeneration centered the TARDIS in such a way that it feels like it’s going to play an important factor in just whoever Piper is meant to be (if not the Doctor, that is). The Doctor blasted the console with all that energy, we cut to that ominous shot of it darkened and lit only by the regeneration process itself… and we know the ship’s heart is already familiar with using Rose Tyler’s face as an agent of its will. What if the TARDIS feels that’s necessary once more?

6) Susan Foreman

It’s probably too late for the show to use whatever plans it had for Carole Ann Ford at this point after whatever was cut from “The Reality War”—and we don’t know yet if Russell T Davies is going to carry on writing Doctor Who after this 2026 special. Given that Susan was brought up multiple times during the 15th Doctor’s era even before she made those mental appearances (depicted in the TARDIS console room; for some reason, again, the TARDIS is key!), what if whatever she was trying to warn the Doctor about was so dire that this shifting of reality allowed her to somehow transpose herself onto the Doctor’s being, and we tie it all up here?

And now she looks like Billie Piper because she regenerated. For some reason. Time Lord stuff!

5) The Moment, Again

It was never actually used to destroy Gallifrey, after all. If the veil between the nature of reality itself was so thin after whatever the Doctor did to change it, did something activate the Moment, a weapon capable of consuming galaxies in its devastation?

Plus, a familiar interface would just be a logical solution for a massive temporal weapon that now has a lot of history with the Doctor to take.

4) The Actress, Billie Piper

In the 2025 season’s “Lux,” one of the many bizarre things that happen to the 15th Doctor and Belinda while battling the reality-warping Mr. Ring-A-Ding is that they briefly get pulled through a television into a reality where the Doctor’s adventures with their many companions are the subject of a long-running hit TV show named Doctor Who.  See where I’m going with this? Don’t have to think about who Billie is; she simply is Billie! Who doesn’t love an existential crisis at the holidays?

3) The Heart of the TARDIS (Again)

We’ve already had one instance of the TARDIS itself embodying a physical form. Given how intrinsic it was to the 15th Doctor’s process of “death,” maybe the TARDIS is trying to save her pilot by taking over their body for a bit, to sustain it until an actual regeneration can occur?

And then you can blame the Rose Tyler of it all on the Bad Wolf stuff again, or something. Hey, I’m not the one making the show.

2) The Valeyard

This is just because everyone always says whenever there’s some mysterious regeneration stuff happening, it simply must be the Valeyard, a strangely sinister emanation of the Doctor introduced in “The Trial of a Time Lord” meant to reflect a future, malicious incarnation that could only be postponed and never truly avoided. Choosing the moment the Doctor’s just sacrificed themselves to move all of reality enough to let baby Poppy exist in some form or another seems like a suitably sinister thing for the Valeyard to do.

1) Okay Maybe She’s Just the 16th Doctor

Or maybe we just skip all this nonsense, and Billie Piper is a one-off Doctor like David Tennant was for the 60th anniversary specials? This era of the show has been very much about trying to repeat the old hits—maybe 2023 will be old enough by Christmas 2026 to be considered for dipping back into the same bag of tricks.

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