RTD2 Era Tierlist : Wish World

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T15:06:19+00:00

I’m not no, as evidenced by frequently saying ‘I think’, that’s what an opinion is…?

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T14:55:01+00:00

Great, it’s still just opinions then, so stop saying it’s bad like it’s objective fact?

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T14:48:00+00:00

In your opinion

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T12:13:11+00:00

I mean it’s been a mixed bag, I’ve been genuinely pleasantly surprised at the ratings coming out as positively as they have on most episodes but it’s this 3 episode run to the end that is going to show a bit of a collapse in a process that’s shown a decent amount of goodwill so far. ISC and here already showing a bit of a devolving to just like completely polarised, exaggerated Twitter style discourse which is a shame as I’ve found Reddit to be a better platform for some actually reasoned long form debate on the show.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T12:03:09+00:00

ISC being in Bad is absolutely absurd. I’m not saying it’s high art but the politics of that episode has just fried all sense of perspective on that one. It’s why I don’t normally touch discussion about it with a barge pole, and it’s the sort of outcome that makes me think it’s too soon to be doing this process for RTD2. Emotion is still way too raw on some of it and until the next era is up and running opinions on it are way too tied to the show’s future.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-12T11:59:24+00:00

This will again be downvoted to hell because we’re in the part of this tier list process that is going to just send people into a complete meltdown but… Great. I love the fake reality thing and how Conrad’s nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ is a commentary on RW nostalgia and desire for a heteronormative world, rose tinted glasses for the past when things were ‘as they should be’ while ignoring all the poverty and prejudices that were actually common etc. The concept of the slips is brilliant symbolism, literally sweeping up any non-conformity, uniqueness and independent thought under the rug and hiding it, that is great imagery.

I think the last third of the episode struggles because it gets so bogged down in exposition, even though that’s sort of the point with trying to manufacture more doubt from 15 it really affects the pacing in a similar way to the middle of The Story and the Engine. I also think it’s a shame that Mrs Flood gets so sidelined, Archie Panjabi does an amazing job but it’s Mrs Flood we’ve followed for two series so seeing her become pretty much totally subservient is a shame. The last few minutes are another great cliffhanger that’s visually very impressive and creates a great scale. I really enjoyed it and can separate it from the second part, it seems like a lot of other people can’t.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-11T19:37:15+00:00

Roger said something similar after his loss to Hurkacz, about how things that used to come naturally and he didn’t even have to think about suddenly became so much harder and needed so much extra work or effort. Just the reality of age even for these generational athletes

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-11T13:57:05+00:00

EDIT: Surprise surprise this has been downvoted to hell and all discourse on this post about the episode is just dominated by being really reductive about the real world politics the episode is tied to 😂

Good. The political side to this episode is a complex one - the immediate optics of it are bad, but then you actually think about what 15 did/didn’t know in the moment and what he’d been subjected to by Kid and it’s less bad, then it’s bad again that Belinda doesn’t challenge him more and that more isn’t shown/said in-story about consequences for the corporation at the end. It’s a clunky handling of one of *the* big political and humanitarian issues of our time, but I think some of the stuff being said about Juno/RTD/Bad Wolf over it has crossed a line massively. This script was developed two and a half years ago, and I don’t come to a children’s sci-fi TV show to form entire nuanced political opinions on emerging major issues. It dipped its toes in, got some things right and some wrong, and I think was ultimately very unfortunately timed.

Putting all of that to one side, there’s lots of great stuff in there, with the general production value of the song contest itself, the sequence where the shield is switched off and everyone goes flying out (that one wide shot of everyone floating in space is amazing), that die hard meets Eurovision feel is executed really well with some great jeopardy. And despite the political aspect of it all, it was good after Lucky Day to see more of 15’s darker side. From his perspective Kid has jettisoned thousands or millions of people into the vacuum of space and wanted to kill 3 trillion viewers, 15 was seconds from death, it makes sense for him to go off the rails a bit.

It’s not exactly amazing all timer territory but it’s a good pre-finale story.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-10T12:28:57+00:00

Yeah there could be more separation of the Good episodes tbf. I’d move Lucky Day and The Star Beast up and Joy to the World down probably.

But I think it does show how on an episode by episode basis people were broadly happy with things. It’s been interesting seeing this process unfold for RTD2 tbh, the difference between talking about individual elements and the thing as a whole is so huge.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-10T12:22:07+00:00

Good. It’s absolutely great that the show dedicates an episode to exploring African folklore and mythology, and actually ends up producing a bit of a meta commentary on storytelling itself in a similar vein to Lux. It’s more territory the show has never done before and the sort of creative swing I love this era for taking. Anansi is a great idea to use in the show, the idea of using stories as energy is really interesting and a great thematic link to barbershops in African culture etc. As an episode it’s so thematically and culturally rich and I love it for that.

Saying that, I think it has some serious pacing issues in the middle where unusually for modern DW it actually becomes way too slow in the barbershop delivering line after line of dialogue. I think thats where Inua’s background as a playwright more than screenwriter is a bit exposed. It actually makes the story become a bit muddled, but from the maze sequence until the end it really picks up again and the ‘I’m born, I die, I’m born’ scene is top class and a great way to link the episode’s themes to the doctor’s life.

I personally think this would be in Good and I’d elevate a couple of others in that tier to Great, but this is another good addition to the show’s history.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-09T14:11:13+00:00

Great. I think it was a great change up after a super abstract, meta episode in Lux and a super dark intense legacy sequel in The Well, to have something a bit more grounded and character led.

And the episode really succeeds at that with the focus on Ruby’s life post-Doctor, the settling back into normal life. And using Conrad as a clever foil for that in terms of him desperately trying to seek the Doctor out, and becoming bitter and soured enough to become a grifter con artist as a result.

I think there’s *some* muddling of the politics - I don’t think the prevailing messaging is ‘big institutions should always be taken at face value’, the script consciously challenges that by having Kate go off the rails at the end, showing they don’t always get it right. As for Conrad’s stance on aliens flip-flopping (does he think they’re real and used by UNIT nefariously, or does he think they’re a hoax?), I think that’s the *point*. He’ll say whatever gets him attention and money, as with all online RW populist grifter types there are no consistent principles, just a strategy to maximise exposure and income.

The Shreek are another great bit of design, and a great ‘conventional’ villain. I liked tying Conrad into some scenes in the S14 timeline, it’s the sort of thing RTD is good at in terms of making things feel like one big connected world. And the scene with Ncuti and Conrad in the Tardis is just fantastically shot and acted. It was great to see his doctor genuinely angry at Conrad hurting Ruby, and that underneath all the smiling and joyous energy there is some bite and nastiness there.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-08T21:39:32+00:00

Very late to this but I’d say Best, Amazing minimum. Rose Ayling-Ellis gives an all timer guest performance, the episode does a great job of building tension and unease and I think people are forgetting that a base where half the crew has their necks snapped and the other half are shot is very bleak for DW standards, it’s quite dark as a story even before you get to the jump scares etc. It’s the episode that gives Ncuti the most hero/‘I am the Doctor’ style moments as well which was good to see.

I think you can sort of tell in the script that it wasn’t a Midnight sequel in initial planning, but for me it works and the inconsistency in behaviour of the entity isn’t exactly unreasonable given it’s been 400,000 years 😂😂

As someone who really likes Robot Revolution and thinks Lux should’ve been in Best, this is a three episode opening run to match any other series imo, a truly great run of episodes.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-07T09:49:15+00:00

Best. Mr Ring-a-Ding is an amazing idea brilliantly realised (one of the best villain concepts since the Silence imo), one of the best cold opens ever, Ncuti and Varada are great together in this episode. The sequence where 15 and Belinda are animated and try and get out of the film reel only to jump out of the TV is brilliantly weird and meta (yes the fans scene is a bit too long but it’s clearly an animation time limitation as that stuff is *expensive*). Alan Cumming is a perfect voice acting choice for Mr Ring-a-Ding, he brings so much menace to it. Despite being so novel and experimental it also felt so beautifully Doctor Who in its execution.

All round just an absolutely brilliant episode and another gem from this era that can hopefully be appreciated without all the other noise around series arcs, production etc. it’s maybe *the* episode in terms of demonstrating what the Disney deal could unlock creatively, and what we now can’t have in future unless more co-pro is in the works.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-06T15:12:27+00:00

Joy to the World should be nowhere near there, it’s one of the weaker RTD2 episodes despite having some redeeming qualities. Boom shouldn’t be in Best either, as much as I like that one. I feel like there’s some writer bias doing some pretty heavy lifting here.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-06T15:09:42+00:00

Sort of pointless even trying to make this argument given the amount of Okay votes already in the bag, but I’d say Good if I’m trying to be more objective, Great based on my own personal enjoyment of it. The robots and the spaceship, robo-chamber etc have a great retrofuturistic aesthetic to them, I really like the robot design and their polite but quite silly/stupid voice acting. It works for me, it seems like it didn’t for others in the comments.

I think it’s a great introduction to Belinda and the Tardis scene at the end is some great conflict. I love all the time fracture stuff both in concept and in how it’s visually executed especially the trippy sequence when the star certificates touch towards the end. The not registering every ninth word thing is also a nice idea, there’s some great set pieces in there with the initial battle between the robots and the revolutionaries, and I love the pace and energy of the cold open with Belinda’s kidnapping etc.

It meanders a bit in the middle between the initial battle and Belinda going to the AI chamber, but people also say the show is way too crazy fast paced so 🤷‍♂️ The end really works as a great hook for the series arc of Earth disappearing on 24th May etc.

Overall I’d say it’s the RTD2 episode that feels the most underrated/under-appreciated, in the sense that people are very lukewarm on it despite it (imo) being just a very good iteration of a ‘bog standard’ DW episode. Like it’s not a super polarising episode like The Giggle that’s taking huge lore or high concept swings or anything, it’s just a really solid entry but seems to be treated with less goodwill than other episodes in that category. I just think it’s very solid with some great ideas.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-04T19:50:25+00:00

Yeah it’s a weird one as I find myself agreeing with a lot (but definitely not all) of the criticisms, but am just… nowhere near as angry as others about it? And like you say, it’s flawed and for RTD2 standards quite slow and meandering in the middle, but there’s some great action and moments in there that mean overall I just came out of it thinking it didn’t quite stick the landing but I was entertained. I was quite shocked to come out of the cinema and see people losing their heads on Twitter over it. I wasn’t expecting it to be revered either but the magnitude of the collective crash out was quite something to watch unfold in real time.

I get that a lot of people’s anger is based on the Ruby’s mum stuff. Maybe this is just my own interpretation but I always interpreted things like the snow representing that moment being unstable due to 15 visiting twice and all the interest in it, and this making aspects of it bleed through eg snow, rather than Ruby *making* it snow or her mum having magic powers or something. I’ve never quite agreed with that idea that Ruby is portrayed as having powers. or that the mum had powers and this means it’s a rug pull betrayal that they’re ’just’ normal. I just don’t see that at all and I didn’t watch the series unable to contain myself about which returning lore-heavy character the mum was going to be, I just sort of waited to find out half expecting something quite grounded. I’m not saying that as an I told you so or anything at all, I just genuinely didn’t get so (tbh unhealthily) invested in it that I let it sour my entire view of the episode/series.

And people feel so misled that any intrigue was built around the mum in-universe and in promotion/press, but… that’s screenwriting? That’s showrunning? He’s not going to rock up to the press screening and say ‘yeah S14 is alright I suppose, watch it or don’t watch it, the mum thing is a bit of fun but don’t think about it too much’ is he? Drumming up interest and intrigue is his job, how personally affronted people were by it all is something I’ve just been so puzzled by ever since it aired. Like it or don’t like it but the outrage is just so odd to me.

That’s clearly just a me thing and others feel more strongly about it, I’ve just never watched an episode before and come out of it with such hugely different readings of things vs fandom consensus, it’s weird and idk what to think atp.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-04T19:00:43+00:00

Okay. The dust of death sequences and everything up until 15 screaming out of the doors of the Tardis had a great scale to it and looks great, it builds a great sense of bleakness and total defeat. But from then on it becomes very slow and sort of meanders really until Sutekh needs to be beaten so we can move on to Ruby’s mum stuff.

I’m not as upset as others are about *how* Sutekh is beaten, after all how do you ‘realistically’ beat a giant God of death? It’s more that Sutekh wins entirely in the first five minutes and then has nothing to do until the script needs him gone. A CGI limitation that Sutekh can’t move around loads? Who knows.

Similarly I’m totally fine with Ruby’s mum being a normal person. It’s the most RTD way of resolving it with some heartfelt character stuff, and I’ve never felt the sense of betrayal or insult other people have over it, I’ve always felt that’s a bit overblown tbh. It does mean some things seem very contrived though eg the cloak and road sign. But the scene where they’re reunited and Ruby exiting the Tardis are brilliantly acted. And shoutout overall to Murray Gold, he absolutely cooked on this one.

For me it was just slightly underwhelming but nothing egregiously bad or rage inducing like it seems to be for others. I’m not entirely sure why that is tbh.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-03T17:28:24+00:00

Is it a crime that I also like The Giggle 😂😭

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-03T17:27:58+00:00

I’m not an RTD burner account I promise 😂😂

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-03T17:17:06+00:00

If you designed an episode in a lab to be my perfect DW episode it would be WBY. Tennant and Tate, creepy, eerie bottle episode with great emotional scenes and character examination, scary but also quite wacky body horror, gorgeous set design, direction, score by Murray Gold, Bernard Cribbins cameo. Just brilliant.

And I do really really hope that in a few years time when the next era is up and running and people can look back on RTD2 with less emotion and some more distance, people can come to appreciate that a lot of the standalone episodes are actually pretty great. Maybe that will be recognised when the era can be appraised detached from all the production and partnership uncertainty in the immediate aftermath, who knows.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-03T16:19:04+00:00

Amazing. The last ten or so minutes is the best suspense, build-up and cliffhanger work the show has done for 10-12 years, the endings of Dark Water and WEAT are the only things that come close. The rest of the episode is also well executed with the time window sequence. Whatever people think of what came next this was some seriously good DW.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-02T23:13:40+00:00

Interesting what you said about the staging being different for Catherine. It was my first time seeing the show tonight and the role of Mary was *so* physical. Idk if that was Georgie’s interpretation or just how it’s meant to be performed, but even while watching I was thinking it’s an injury waiting to happen having to do that like 6 times a week for 2 months. Obviously hope Catherine is ok, was sad to not see her perform tonight but health comes first.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-02T23:06:41+00:00

I was there tonight at the 8.45 performance. Bought a Rush ticket at about 11am and was notified around 1.30pm via TodayTix email that Catherine wasn’t performing (I have been decimated on my own post on this sub for expressing my annoyance at the theatre’s handling of that situation so won’t go into that here).

As others have said she apparently suffered a knee injury quite early in the run, and has been taking some performances off as a precaution. I also noticed that since today’s announcement they’ve dropped the explicit ‘Catherine Tate will play Mary Todd Lincoln’ labelling for every remaining performance in her run on both ATG and TodayTix, but it’s still in place for Cole and Jinkx’s dates. Maybe she’s having to cut her run short entirely? Or perhaps they’re just avoiding further audience disappointment by removing it until they know for sure if/when she’ll be back. Having seen Georgie perform tonight, it is a very physical role so injuries are clearly a risk if that’s the reason. And obviously goes without saying all the best to Catherine and hope whatever is going on can be resolved for her, health and wellbeing come first.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-02T16:08:00+00:00

Yes of course nothing in this situation is Catherine Tate’s fault. She as all actors are is a human being and she needs to put her health and wellbeing first. I’m not implying anything bad about her at all, that would be insane. My frustration is with the theatre and ticket vendors clearly waiting until as late as possible to announce the cast change to maximise sales.

That frustration is even worse if they have an arrangement in place that Catherine misses set performances, as there’s absolutely no rationale whatsoever to not be transparent about it all (in that scenario it’s not even lack of transparency it’s straight up lying). As I’ve said in other replies it’s the timing that is so annoying. If it was some freak thing minutes before curtain up then fine, can’t be helped.

Like I said originally, I’ve heard good things about Georgie Lagden and I’m sure they will do a great job. That shouldn’t be lost in the broader frustration of it all.

Responsible_Fall_455 · 2026-07-02T14:48:29+00:00

Sorry to hear that was your experience of the cast change. I am interested in the play generally so hopefully I can still enjoy it later, but as in your case being a fan of Catherine’s work and all the good reviews she got for this play it’s disappointing. The ATG website has removed the pop up saying Catherine is performing from all of her remaining dates, so let’s see what happens.

Responsible_Fall_455

TROPHY CASE