I Just Made £300 Betting On Doctor Who (Spoilers)
Which might make up for the £50 I lost in 2009
In 2009, I broke the news that Matt Smith would be the new Doctor Who on what was then called Twitter. It was announced for real later that day.
Annoyingly, up until then, I had been convinced it was Paterson Joseph, so I put £50 on the bookies at 20/1. I lost the lot, and only later would we learn that he came second to Matt Smith. I learned my lesson not to bet on Doctor Who.
Until 2025, when I put £30 on 10/1 for a certain someone a couple of weeks ago. What can I say, the odds were there, and my mind started racing. Russell T Davies never got to do a surprise regeneration before; it was denied to him by BBC policies and practices back in 2005. He’d already revisited David Tennant as The Doctor. The Great Curator, a far future doctor, looked rather like the Fourth Doctor. When the Eleventh Doctor said “I never forget a face”, he replied, “In the years to come, you might revisit a few, but just the old favourites". Russell T Davies picked up on that to bring David Tennant, but could he do the same with the other star of that show? It just felt nostalgically and thematically like it was on the cards. I will try not to spend it all at once. And I will mentally deduct the £50 I lost sixteen years ago.
So Billie Piper is playing The Sixteenth Doctor Who, breaking the fourth wall already, and I am £300 up. And if we get a new series (2027 at the earliest, though maybe Christmas Day 2026 if we are very good), depending on BBC and/or Disney+, the odds are that she will at some point meet Rose Tyler on her pocket Earth with her old and ageing Spare Rib Doctor.
As for the episode itself, we were shortchanged on Omega, I think. The Rani lost fast, but not before calling out Russell T Davies’ usual “power of love” endings. We got something different this time, more like the power of hope. Losing Poppy and then regaining her in a different way also smacked of Douglas Adams’ Shada and Dirk Gently, and there was no moment harder than when the Doctor doubted Ruby over the very existence of Poppy.
There are lots of rumours about major reshoots, how there was originally no regeneration. And while I reckon that could explain the return of The Thirteenth Doctor and Billie as the Sixteenth, the whole regeneration was so baked into the third act it would have needed a lot more than that. Also, I want Russell T Davies to write Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor now, that scene just sparked so much.
Also, as for Archie Punjabi’s Rani meeting a sticky end, there’s plenty more of her running around Space and Time, grabbing up gods and maps, still to fill in. Maybe she could get River Song to dig up Omega in the Big Finish audios?
I will say, though, that Russell T Davies did answer almost every posed question I asked a year ago on this Substack… nice one. And some of those he didn’t answer, got teased further. Here’s what I’m left asking.
Who is The Boss, of The Meep, Rogue and now The Time Hotel, obsessed with those with two hearts. I thought it could have been the Rani or Omega. Seems not.
Which woman stole the Toymaker’s tooth, holding the Master inside?
Where is Susan? And is Poppy her mother?
What about time having been changed, far more malleable and change-sensitive, and now more supernatural, giving us insectoid humanity, mavity, fairy circles, gods and goblins? And causing the Robot Panet loop? Will that ever go back, is that the new norm, and does the Doctor even care?
Why was Billie Piper not credited as The Doctor in the final credits when Ncuti Gatwa and Jodie Whittaker were?
No Daleks for Ncuti? Even Anita from the Time Hotel saw more Daleks than he did…
When is Doctor Who coming back? One way or another, Doctor Who always does. It’s too good an idea to lay fallow for long. And if they need to just have episodes of Billie Piper standing on a land mine, that will be fine by me.
Doctor… Who? But more importantly… Doctor When? Disney, pull the Band-Aid, and go for season three or just let the BBC get on with it in a broom cupboard.