It was difficult not to feel trepidatious heading into Doctor Who’s season 2 finale. Last year’s Empire of Death ended the Fifteenth Doctor’s first season on a disappointing note: a perfectly watchable final episode that didn’t resolve the season-long mysteries in a particularly satisfying way (even if it’s easy to see why certain creative choices were made). The Reality War, on the other hand, is a complete mess of an episode from start to finish. There’s clearly an attempt to bring the entirety of this era of Doctor Who together like in Series 4’s finale The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, but it all feels like a last-minute scramble to resolve a 21-episode run that’s primarily suffered from overblown stakes, an overabundance of gratuitous fan service and a distinct lack of character development.

Opening the episode with a call-back to Joy to the World – the most recent Christmas Special, and the up until now the worst episode of this era by far – certainly started things in an odd place. In a way, it’s good to see that the Time Hotel hasn’t been entirely forgotten about, and in a timey-wimey way it does make sense that it can help reality reassert itself at U.N.I.T Tower, but then everything stops dead. Director Alex Sanjiv Pillai leaves virtually the entire cast standing still for about five minutes so that the Doctor and the Rani can talk at each other, throwing out references to Time and the Rani, bizarre lore changes (apparently Time Lords are infertile now) and clunky exposition. Bonnie Langford’s Mel meeting the Rani again (albeit now played by a wasted Archie Panjabi) seems ripe for some interesting character development, but that’s immediately squandered. The Rani wanting to start a new race of Time Lords is an interesting idea left half-baked. After hanging around for two whole seasons, Anita Dobson’s Rani is still pushed aside and left as a dangling thread for future episodes. Yasmin Finney returns as Rose only to stand around with nothing to do…just like in last year’s season finale. It’s difficult not to feel that Finney has been wasted in a role that seemed on paper like a new great recurring character. Shirley’s rebellion against Conrad set up last week is retconned out of existence, but at least Ruth Madeley gets to fire lasers at the giant bone beasts, so she’s not completely wasted here.

This two-parter as a whole is filled with wasted potential. The concept of the Wish World could probably sustain an entire eight-episode season of Doctor Who and develop in interesting ways that fully explore the concept and the characters living through it, but it’s rushed through by the time The Reality War even gets going. The Doctor having a daughter in Poppy is an idea filled with dramatic potential but the whole thread feels like hollow emotional stakes that haven’t been earned. Omega returning should feel like a big deal – he’s the Time Lord who gave the Time Lords time travel, and he’s trapped in another universe – but he’s left as a giant lumbering corpse, not dissimilar to the huge Sutekh dog last season. Even a human-sized corpse would be more creepy and threatening. It’s fair to say that these classic villains always need some kind of reinterpretation in the 21st century, but the way that Russell T Davies has handled Sutekh, the Rani and Omega is incredibly frustrating. These are villains with so much dramatic potential but Davies refuses to explore any of this.

The Reality War rushes through so much that it’s a bit of a whiplash when it screeches to a halt to end on Ncuti Gatwa’s regeneration sequence. It had been rumoured for months, but the moment of realisation — that the Fifteenth Doctor’s in the TARDIS had already come to an abrupt end — was genuinely so disappointing. Whatever the reasons were behind the scenes for his departure (this evidently wasn’t the plan, given how much of the ending appears to be last-minute reshoots), to have the Fifteenth Doctor depart after only 19 episodes with no sense of resolution to his journey as a character is a real shame. Gatwa’s run on the series may not be the shortest, but it already feels like one littered with wasted potential. His reunion with his granddaughter Susan, set up back in The Devil’s Chord and reiterated in the last two episodes, is left unresolved. The Fifteenth Doctor will never find Rogue in the Hell Dimension. And, unlike almost all of his predecessors, he didn’t even fight his greatest enemies, the Daleks. Ncuti Gatwa was such an exciting choice for the Fifteenth Doctor, and it’s clear that he’s thrown so much into his performance over the last two seasons that it will be difficult not to miss him in the role.

And, if Doctor Who: Unleashed is anything to go by, this is the last time we’ll be seeing companions Ruby Sunday and Belinda Chandra. Despite her strong performance in Lucky Day, Millie Gibson was wasted in this two-part finale, and her final scene didn’t even register as one on a first viewing. It was difficult not to assume that she’d have a larger role in this season finale but like with most of the cast she seemed to just stand around waiting for something to do. Varada Sethu is as excellent as ever in The Reality War but despite the strong introduction to Belinda in The Robot Revolution, the character has been pushed aside for most of this season, relegated to a generic companion role. It’s probably fair to say that the Fifteenth Doctor has had good companions, but both of them needed more screentime to develop into all-time great companions.

On a positive note, it was lovely to see Jodie Whittaker cameo as the Thirteenth Doctor, bringing her familiar energy and enthusiasm for the role in a pre-regeneration scene which strangely didn’t feel too out-of-place, even if it may have done so on paper. To have the Doctor’s predecessor support them in a regeneration is a nice idea, and it’s always good to see Whittaker don her rainbow-striped-top. Credit also has to be given to the VFX artists for going all-in on such a bonkers sequence as the U.N.I.T Tower battling the bone beasts as the Doctor skis into the Rani’s bone palace, Flash Gordon style.

It’s probably too early to determine exactly how disappointing The Reality War is – as a finale to Season 2, as the Fifteenth Doctor’s last adventure, or as the last of this era of Doctor Who (although we’ll have to wait and see on the latter) – but there’s no denying that this was a spectacular letdown on almost every level. It’s not a complete trainwreck: the cast are game, and as with any Russell T Davies story, there are some strong moments sprinkled throughout, but the script overall is a mess, and most surprisingly, directed in a pretty lacklustre manner. Some episodes grow on us over time (The Giggle is more satisfying on a rewatch than on first viewing, for instance), while others don’t hold up particularly well. Perhaps The Reality War will shift into the former category, but as it stands, it’s a disappointing end to a mixed bag of a season.

As for the future of Doctor Who? Time will tell. It always does.

Doctor Who will return

Catch up on our series blog reviews for every episode