A wish granting god baby, granting Conrad's wishes in service of the Rani, turns London into a misogynist utopia and The Doctor into a good husband and insurance worker.
Hard to say why misogynists are so keen on the American 50s. Perhaps because it was before blacks had the vote and women could do banking.
And if anyone doubts this ridiculous tale, their table stops working and their family might call the doubt police, so they soon learn not to. All very oppressive and subversive.
Ruby manages to doubt anyway. And all the disabled people who simply never enter into Conrad's mind. Nice touch that. Great scene in the tent city filled with the dispossessed. They don't seem to have actually done anything so far but maybe they'll get more useful in part two.
Conrad is on TV telling a story about a man named Doctor Who.
Giant dinosaur skeletons walk the city, stepping over sky scrapers, and a bone palace towers above the city. Because I guess Conrad wishes for it to be so in order to give the Rani somewhere to live.
The palace is beautiful and Gothic.
But doubt is seeping in. Rogue is back, on the TV in hell, telling the Doctor that tables don't work like that. So he investigates. Gets himself reported to the doubt police who take him and Belinda to the bone palace.
The Rani's split from Miss Flood gives the pair of them a good chemistry. Queen and her maid of honour. Seems like Mrs Flood is likely to be the Rani's downfall. She doesn't like being told to make a sandwich.
A lot of exposition going on, but they at least put a hat on it: "Isn't just exposition, I need you to doubt"
So that's the reason for the strange wishes: To make the doctor have doubts so severe that the reality collapses, and Rani can rescue Omega. Omega is the dude in a Mask from the first 3 doctors episode, who gave the timelords time travel and got trapped in the underworld in the process. Timelords forgot him and never mounted a rescue, but presumably Rani is now hoping he'll bring back Galifrey.
And with London collapsing into the underworld and the doctor falling from the sky, we get the episode break and have to wait until next week.
That's not a cliff hanger, that an already-falling-from-the-cliff hanger.
Poppy really is his daughter he's shouting as he falls. And you know what that means?
🤨🤔
Back in Space Babies, the worst episode of the Nchuti seasons, that space baby asked if he was her parents and he said he wished that he was their parents.
That wish has been granted somehow?
Is this space baby Susan's mother? They have very different skin tones, but that doesn't matter much in a regenerating species.
Never have found out much about The Doctor's child. When he traveled with his granddaughter everyone assumed he'd met his own kid, the grandchild's parent.
But that doesn't have to be true for a time traveler. Maybe he met the granddaughter before he met his own kid, and maybe his own kid was just wished into his family line 60 years later (or billions of years in his timeline I guess).
Pretty fun episode but not sure it makes much sense. Why doesn't the Rani just wish for Omega to be back instead of all this doubt and underworld bollocks?
Last one next week. Super long episode. Hope it's all cleared up. Good chance we'll meet Susan again I think. And maybe see Omega's mask once more.
I'm afraid this is true. I already struggle to raise enough money to keep the very talented young scientists I have working with me (from many different countries already), finding funding for more will be difficult, and why should US scientists essentially queue jump just because of their nationality ? I know that sounds harsh, I have very good US colleagues, but I have to be fair to all, regardless of where they come from. OTOH, if you are a US scientist and you are interested in exploring possibilities in Denmark, give me a shout and we'll see what we can do.
https://mastodon.world/@davidho/114620044303457868
davidho@mastodon.world - Unless you’re a Nobel laureate, the brain drain will be away from science and not to other countries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/trump-federal-spending-grants-scientists-leaving.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ME8.sh9q.qy7jX0S1ZrBa&smid=url-share
Fluctuations in the number of local minima in discrete-time fractional Brownian motion
Maxim Dolgushev, Olivier B\'enichou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04159
In summary then: Pop goes the timeline.
Madness. So many lose ends, so much barely making sense. Great epic adventure though.
So farewell then to Nchuti. He has been great, sad to see him go. Probably he left because who knows if there'll even be a show next year. Actors can't be refusing work to be on a series that might not even happen.
Except Billie I guess? Maybe she's not otherwise busy.
No more episodes till maybe xmas 2026 they say? Or maybe some specials next year? Please god we don't have to wait until spring 2027 to know what's happening here?!
Meanwhile the fans are all like, "oh it says 'and introducing' instead of 'as the doctor'". Heh. They want it to be a switcheroo of some kind and she's not really The Doctor, but I want to see Billie's Tennant impression for at least a three year stretch.
She's likely just be staring in a couple of specials in the gap to a proper new season I'd expect. Probably regenerate again before there's a full series. Excited to see her David Tenant impression though. 😆
"Inspired by the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies."
...
Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet."
#OligarchApocalypse #Oligarchy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
#Mexico forbids killing bulls and subjecting them to the most extreme forms of torture.
#Spain is, sadly, still far behind... but I suspect that Mexico's precedent will help, not just as a good example, but also because it will severely decrease the income of many of those bullfighters (toreros).
Toreros usually travel through many countries to participate in these bloody spectacles and make a living out of it. Removing Mexico from their list will be a big thing, so it is likely that many of them will have to do something else with their lives.
I think someone has a lot of spare time, money, and energy.
#AI #LLM
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7fNYj0EXxM
So, we have a song-contest blighted by a genocidal unethical corporate sponsor, with the remnants of the wiped-out race threatening a revenge genocide of their own.
Unusually political with the allegory there then.
Great looking scene when the roof was blown open, thousands of people all being sucked off! Looked great, but what a body count?! And the Doctor and his Tardis both sucked off too! He's frozen.
"The Mavity Shell is still open." Lol. Still doing that then.
Susan is here! His granddaughter. Just in visions though, not actually really there. She looks older now. Sixty years on. She's like 80 years old now. "Find me" she says. Not this season though I suspect.
I liked him using the Confetti Cannon to fly though space. Peter Davidson used a cricket ball to bounce off a space ship when he was stranded in outer space. And Peter never froze.
Also a great prat-fall after landing, pointing and gasping and then just toppling.
Silly muppets-aliens song was fab.
Anti-gambling fraud laws prevent calling for help. Brilliant.
Expected that hair to be hiding a set of horns, not that she'd have cut them off.
The Doctor has ice in his heart now, more angry than we've seen Nchuti's Doctor. Trillions gonna die, Belinda dead, Tardis lost. Almost genocidal himself. Certainly vengeful. Timelord victorious.
Belinda is scared too: "If he's angry, this whole world is going to shake", but it ain't a world is it? It's a space station. Much easier to shake 😝
Explosion breaking through the Tardis doors near the end is quite a cliff hanger, but not even actually the end.
Because Mrs Flood is the Rani, finally! Every mystery character has had the fans hoping it's the Rani for years. Like it never being Lupus for the other Doctor: Doctor House. Finally it is Lupus, I mean the Rani.
Not sure I like this bi-generation again though. It's supposed to be rare, but now it feels like it's every time. Still, at least it keeps Miss Flood there as Rani's lackey.
Who actually was the Rani again?
She's from the first McCoy episode: she tries to build a time control device by gathering geniuses from time and blowing up a planet. Pretends to be Mel, the Doctor's companion at the time, to fool McCoy into hhelping. So interesting that her new regeneration looks a little like Belinda. 🤨🤔
I figured Mrs Flood was just Missy, the female Master. But then The Rani was always just a female version of The Master before Transsexual Regeneration was a thing anyway.
Well, just the double finale left then. Exciting.
#watching #tv #doctorWho #interstellarSongContest