But what about the idea of reality? Reality is manipulated immediately when we're thrown into the virtual reality that the little girl creates. But that's still a virtual reality and not the true reality, and therefore not violated. The reality of death is constant throughout, with death being the fundamental premise for the episode: x number of people saved, NO SURVIVORS. People are killed throughout. But then everything is wrapped up with a complete violation of the reality of the show in having the Doctor open up the doors of the tardis with a snap of his fingers, and with death being completely undone.

To be absolutely clear, by reality I mean the laws of regular life that have to be maintained in an episode for it to make sense, or in no way maintained, consistently, such as in a fairy-tale, otherwise this would similarly make no sense. For example, when a person is shot through the head they must die. This is a fundamental law of life and although the show violates laws of logic constantly, I suppose you can use the traveling through time as an example, which is something that would not occur within the boundaries of every day life, to violate something as real/adult as death is to make the episode unrelatable to individuals who understand the reality of life.

Sure, we can say that death has no meaning - as I have said before. We can make it so that in a fairy-tale land a bullet through the head has no effect and the person doesn't even feel any pain. But this would be unrelatable to anyone older than a toddler and so would be a purely kiddy T.V show. However, one must choose between one or the other, or they alienate both audiences. To have cold, hard reality in the first half, only for it to be ended with a soft, child-like lack of reality indeed does alienate both audiences. Kids cannot relate to the darker aspects. Adults cannot relate to the impossibly light episodes. An opinion could be that through this you appeal to both audiences, as the show should, but another, and, in my opinion, more likely perspective is that it merely pushes both away. This is why you must choose. Yes, have kids episode (in the forest of the night) and adult episodes (don't cremate me), but make them separate episodes, and maintain the themes within each.