A REAL PUNCH IN THE GUT - 'CAUSE SAYING: "A MIDDLE FINGER" SOUND BAD.
Allow me a little rambling in regard to - mostly - "The Reality War".
♦♦♦♦ Spoilers under the cut ♦♦♦♦
Well… Well, well, well…
I am not going to spend any words on Belinda and her supposed (although in my country it would be more correct to call it literally "supposta"- AKA "suppository") "happy ending" - simply because I feel that others have covered this topic far better than I could.
No, instead, I want to dwell on the absolute BESTIALITY of which the Doctor was the victim in the last episode of the season (and hopefully also the last of RTD, because - honestly - that guy MUST GO. He has clearly “lost his touch,” if he ever had one).
Let's take a step back and talk about something that has been repeatedly said/implied throughout the ENTIRE series: the Doctor has been a father - and more than that, he has been a father who has lost his children.
This has been said over and over again (especially when RTD was in charge), and always in such a way that even the most inattentive viewer can realize how this loss causes the Doctor to PHYSICALLY suffer. His is a wound that NEVER really goes away, going through regenerations (even the most cheerful/disinterested ones) and “popping back up” in certain attitudes or in particular situations.
Having clarified this, we come to these last two seasons…
I think I'm not talking nonsense, when I say that I have always seen Fifteenth as the one in which this wound is more visible/recognizable. For both last seasons (this Doctor DEFINITELY deserved better, but that's another story…) I almost physically perceived his desire to have his family again (especially his niece Susan), and when Poppy was re-introduced - as his ACTUAL daughter no less! - I could (again) PHYSICALLY perceive his relief, his joy, his desire for a shared future with her… A bit like what - many years ago, always during an "RTD Era" - had happened with Jenny (yes, even if apparently only fans remember, the Doctor STILL have a daughter who knows where).
Because, yes: RTD has shown us this game before; it has ALREADY shown us the Doctor having a daughter, only to have her brutally ripped away from him in the space of an episode.
So why do I say/feel that this second time is worse? Simple (at least from my point of view):
The Doctor doesn't immediatly accept Jenny as his daughter. He thinks of her as someone who was created from his genetic code and that's it (Cit. "You're an echo, that's all. A Time Lord is so much more. A sum of knowledge, a code, shared history, shared suffering"). In fact, for a good part of that episode, he adamantly refuses to bond with Jenny.
WHILE INSTEAD
The Doctor loves Poppy, you can tell from the first moment we see them together in "Wish World" that's true. And it only gets stronger as the episode goes on - until it "explodes" in "The Reality War", where the Doctor starts acting like the most attentive, concerned and loving of fathers (he does everything to protect her, he is genuinely torn between letting the world stay as it is so as not to risk losing her and having to do the right thing for the Earth and its inhabitants, he instantly decides to modify the entire TARDIS to make it "child-friendly"… damn, HE DECIDES TO COMMIT SUICIDE in the hope of getting her back!)
Jenny survives (thanks, Moffat!). The Doctor has no way of knowing, true, but that doesn't change the fact that TECHNICALLY Jenny is still out there in the universe, she's still the Doctor's daughter, and she can still pop up again (even though we all know by now that she never will; that, like Rogue and Susan, she will always be a: "Could, could, but won't!").
WHILE INSTEAD
Poppy too survives, but for some absurd reason she remain EXCLUSIVELY Belinda's daughter. In this way the Doctor (who just committed suicide, let's remember, to get his daughter back) sees her torn away from him in the worst possible way: she's there, she's alive, but she's not his.
RTD preferred to give a daughter to a character - Belinda - who has never shown the slightest desire to have one (just as not to have one, it's good to make that clear), rather than to a character - the Doctor - who has wanted her FOR CENTURIES, sadistically playing with both of his hearts for the pure pleasure of laughing at the indignant reactions of the fans.
And this is absolutely the most disgusting thing a showrunner can do to one of his characters.
(Gif Credits: Mine, @notyoujamie, @isagrimoire, @expelliarmus, @dwgif, @mcavoy-who-is-locked)
