I’m so sorry but I’m still thinking about that season finale of Doctor Who and have to put down my thoughts so they will leave my brain. Obviously this will have tons of spoilers so beware. It’s also very rambly.

Well ok, that was a weird and frustrating one. For the most part I really loved this season of Doctor Who. I would even go as far as to say that it’s probably the best season the show has had in a long time. I even really liked the first episode of the finale and lots of parts of the second episode too. I don’t think it’s RTD’s worst finale, he’s had other ones that I think were stinkers, but man oh man, parts of this were very frustrating. A lot of that frustration is maybe unfair. Ncuti has left the show and I wanted him on for many years. He was fantastic and I would have no problem if he had stayed on for another 10 seasons. To some extent I feel that way about everyone that stars in the show, but he was great. There’s also the aspect of the fandom being total chuds. I guess every fandom can be bad but it seemed to really stand out that parts of the fandom were basically rooting for the show to fail and kept pointing out the ratings. This never made a whole lot of sense because as far as I can tell, people were also streaming the show instead of watching it live so yes, of course tv ratings are going to be off. That’s kind how that works. Didn’t really make things less frustrating.

It doesn’t help that the regeneration itself seemed to be pandering to those people and stunt casting to boost the chances of Disney picking it up or whatever the logic was. I’m sure she’ll be great, she’s a fantastic actress, but we just had a stunt regeneration two years ago so it’s tiring to see it again. It sounds like the show is still happening whether Disney picks it up or not and there will just be a delay if they don’t. This is also going to kill me if we have to wait two years to see what happens next, because I’m still a fan and need to know. Everyone keeps being coy about how the credits don’t actually introduce her as The Doctor, so maybe the Doctor immediately changes their face to someone else and Jeff Minter is actually the next Doctor, but I’m going to contradict myself and say that if she is the next Doctor, she should stay on for 8 years. If someone is the Doctor, I want them to stay on for a very long time! I know this comes at the expense at whatever actor comes along next and also kicks ass but I want someone to beat Tom Baker’s record.

I’m also not going to dig into it but that finale had some really weird gender role stuff too that I didn’t care for and it just feeling like a very rushed episode.

So what did I actually like about it? Well, quite a bit actually. It was great to see Jodie come back. She’s great and I’m looking forward to her audio dramas with Big Finish. Ncuti was great as usual and some of his best acting was in this. I don’t see him doing audio drama stuff but I thought that about Eccleston and was wrong there. The two Ranis were also great and it’s too bad we’ll probably never see one of them again. I know Doctor Who can write itself out of anything but…well, it doesn’t seem super likely. A lot of people hate what they did with Omega but I don’t really mind. It’s fine.

Anyway, lots of people were yelling about how RTD has killed the show and I don’t think that’s true. I’ve actually really enjoyed most of his run so far, which has surprised me since I was so ready for him to leave during his original run, but I also wish it wasn’t looking backward so much.