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[COLUMN] The Lost and Found Children of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2025-06-02 14:00:13 +0000 UTC
Note: This piece contains spoilers for the recent season of Doctor Who, including its final moments. So consider yourself warned.
At the end of âThe Reality Warâ, the fifteenth season finale of the revival of Doctor Who, the Fifteenth Doctorâs (Ncuti Gatwa) journey concluded how it began, with the character saving a lost child and reconnecting them with their family.
Returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has been preoccupied with the idea of lost and found children. The first episode fully built around the Fifteenth Doctor, âThe Church on Ruby Roadâ, found the character confronting a horde of goblins snatching and devouring abandoned children. These goblins eat the baby version of the Doctorâs companion Ruby (Millie Gibson), leading to a dystopian alternate world where Ruby is never found and fostered by her mother Carla (Michell Greenidge).
This theme carried through into the season that followed. In âSpace Babiesâ, the Doctor and Ruby encounter a bunch of children abandoned by their parents in a âbaby farm.â In âThe Devilâs Chordâ, the Doctor and Ruby face the Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon), the abandoned child of the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), the last foe vanquished by the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant). In âBoomâ, Splice (Caoilinn Springall) wanders a warzone looking for her dead father (Joe Anderson).
This idea of abandoned and neglected children forms a thematic throughline that spans the season. That season builds to a reunion and reconciliation between the abandoned Ruby and her biological mother (Faye McKeever) at the very end of the finale, âEmpire of Deathâ, in which Ruby agrees to meet her father. The next time that Ruby appears, in âLucky Dayâ, she has embraced a big and broad unconventional family unit. She is a child who has been found.
This theme carries over into the season that follows. In âLuxâ, the Doctor and his new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) are drawn into the central mystery by a mother (Lucy Thackeray) who is looking for her son (Cassius Hackforth), who disappeared during a screening at the local cinema. In âThe Story & the Engineâ, the goddess Abena (Michelle Asante) plots to avenge herself on her father Anansi, who tried to sell her off into marriage. âThe Reality Warâ ends with Carla fostering the lost God of Wishes, a baby snatched from their home by the villainous Rani (Archie Panjabi) and pulled across space and time.
The villain of âThe Interstellar Song Contestâ is a young Hellion named Kid (Freddie Fox), an orphan created by a genocide. Belinda is surprised by the name. âAs in... baby goat?â she asks. Cora (Miriam-Teak Lee), another survivor of the genocide, replies, âAs in his mother was shot before anyone asked her his name.â In âThe Wellâ, the pair discover that Aliss Fenly (Rose Ayling-Ellis) is the lone survivor of a horrific massacre. âCan you take me home?â Aliss begs the Doctor. âI have a daughter.â
Throughout the season, Belinda has urgently been telling the Doctor that she needs to get home. There is a clear desperation to her pleas and insistence. In âThe Story & the Engineâ, Belinda finds herself confronted by a vision of a young girl named Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps). The Doctor and Ruby had encountered a version of Poppy in the distant future of âSpace Babiesâ, just as they had encountered a version of Belinda in the distant future of âBoom.â
In the season finale, âThe Reality Warâ, it is revealed that Belinda is a single mother and that the reason that she has been so insistent on getting home is to be reunited with her daughter, Poppy. The reason that Poppy was never mentioned before was because of the aftershocks of the rewriting of reality at the end of âThe Reality Warâ, with Poppy retroactively written out of existence by the same forces that shifted the borders of Norway and Sweden 7km or resurrected Ernest Borgnine.
The Fifteenth Doctor ultimately sacrifices his life to bring Poppy back into existence and to reconnect mother and daughter. In the grand scheme of Doctor Who and even in the bombastic context of âThe Reality Warâ, this is a relatively intimate character beat. It is essentially Davies revisiting the regeneration of the Tenth Doctor (Tennant) in âThe End of Time, Part IIâ, where the character survives a threat to the fabric of reality, only to sacrifice himself to save one man (Bernard Cribbins).
The Fifteenth Doctor dies to save a child that he has never met. Indeed, he only gets to meet the real Belinda and Poppy in the final moments before he regenerates. It is a truly selfless gesture, this version of the character giving up his life to make sure that a parent and a child can be reunited. It also feels like a cohesive encapsulation of the larger themes of this era of the show. Daviesâ return to Doctor Who is very much about the Doctorâs relationship to children, especially abandoned ones.
To a certain extent, Davies inherited this theme from his predecessor, Chris Chibnall. Chibnall radically rewrote the continuity of Doctor Who with âThe Timeless Childrenâ, which revealed that the Doctor was themselves an abandoned child found on the planet Gallifrey and whose genetic code ended up serving as the basis for the entirety of Time Lord society. It was a very strange and clumsy beat, heavy on lore and continuity and effectively transforming the Doctor into a âChosen One.â
Daviesâ return to Doctor Who has largely been a rejection of the idea of lore and continuity, treating attempts to codify mythology as inherently suffocating. Indeed, despite Ncuti Gatwaâs stated desperation to face the iconic foes, the Fifteenth Doctor will notably be the first Doctor to regenerate having never faced the Daleks, the Master or the Cybermen on screen. As such, Davies has shown little interest in the lore of âthe Timeless Childâ, ignoring characters like Tecteun (Barbara Flynn).
While it would have been easy for Davies to ignore the radical reworking of the showâs continuity by Chibnall, the returning showrunner has been extremely gracious to his predecessor, taking pains to fold his contributions into the showâs larger mythology. âThe Story & the Engineâ featured a cameo from Chibnallâs secret iteration of the Doctor, the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin). In âThe Reality Warâ, the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) helps guide her successor through his regeneration.
Instead, Davies has focused on what âthe Timeless Childâ was really about. Chibnall has spoken about how the story was about his own experience as an adopted child, even though that emotional core of the arc was lost in all the mythology about Gallifrey and Time Lords. In âThe Church on Ruby Roadâ, the Fifteenth Doctor immediately recontextualizes that revelation as something personal rather than cosmic, telling Ruby, âI'm adopted.â He explains, âI was abandoned.â
It is interesting that the Fifteenth Doctorâs era has grappled with one of the longstanding continuity muddles in the history of Doctor Who. In the 1960s, the Doctor (William Hartnell) was introduced travelling with his granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford). In âThe Dalek Invasion of Earthâ, the Doctor left Susan on a future version of Earth. âOne day, I shall come back,â he promised. âYes, I shall come back.â Outside of anniversary specials like âThe Five Doctorsâ, he never did.
There is a very obvious reason why the show has avoided directly dealing with the character of Susan, outside of sly references and nods. The idea of the Doctor as a father or a grandfather is hard to reconcile with all the continuity that followed, concepts like Time Lords and regeneration and Gallifrey. Susan was introduced before all those concepts solidified into a mythology, and so it is impossible to make her fit comfortably alongside so much of what followed.
However, Davies has made a point to bring Susan back into consideration. In âThe Devilâs Chordâ, the Doctor looks out over the skyline of 1963 London and tells Ruby, âIn the past, right now, I live in a place called Totter's Lane. 1963, I park the Tardis in a junkyard and live there with my granddaughter, Susan.â He brushes over the question of whether he has children, telling Ruby, âI did have. I will have.â In âThe Interstellar Song Contestâ, the Doctor is haunted by visions of Susan.
This interest in the Doctorâs offspring feels pointed in the context of the first canonically queer iteration of the character. The Fourteenth Doctor alluded to being attracted to men, but the Fifteenth Doctor is openly queer. He has a same-sex romance with Rogue (Jonathan Groff) in âRogue.â He plays with gender norms, wearing a kilt costume designer Pam Downe described as âa skirtâ, embracing a wardrobe of what Gatwa described as âall kinds of gender-pushing, societal-pushing outfits.â
This gets at an important thing about the emphasis on children in Daviesâ second tenure. While the show is about children, it is careful to avoid embracing heteronormative visions of family. Belinda is a mother, but âThe Reality Warâ is populated by companions who are not defined by motherhood. Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford) has no family. Kate Stewart (Jenna Redgrave) is in a relationship, but has no children. Ruby is single and childless. The show is clear that there are varied models of femininity.
More to the point, the season finale pits the Doctor and Belinda against the Rani, a mad scientist and eugenicist who is obsessed with genetic purity and the resurrection of Time Lord Society. In the first part of the finale, âWish Worldâ, the Doctor and Belinda are trapped in an oppressive fantasy constructed by the reactionary Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King), in which they are forced to be a married couple to raise Poppy.
âWish Worldâ rightly presents this as grotesque. Belinda was established in âThe Robot Revolutionâ as the survivor of an abusive relationship who objected to patriarchal terms like âMiss.â The Doctor is a man who loves men. The show understands that forcing these characters into a heteronormative nuclear family to satisfy some conservative fantasy of domestic bliss is an act of violence. However, the show is not rejecting the idea of family itself, just such a narrow understanding of it.
Indeed, for an extended portion of âThe Reality Warâ, Davies misleads the audience by setting up the idea that Poppy might be the Doctorâs daughter, his biological child. This sets up the idea that Poppy matters because of her centrality to the showâs lore. The implication is that she is the Doctorâs biological daughter and Susanâs biological mother and so therefore âimportant.â However, the show cleverly rejects this. She is Belindaâs biological child, not the Doctorâs, but she still matters.
âThe Reality Warâ recontextualizes the Time Lord process of âbigenerationâ â the form of regeneration that spawned the Fifteenth Doctor from the Fourteenth Doctor in âThe Giggleâ â as a new means of procreation for the Time Lords, a species that the Rani describes as âsterileâ and âbarren.â There is a conscious queering of the Time Lords in âThe Reality Warâ, with the revelation that it is impossible for the Time Lords to reproduce conventionally or sexually.
When Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) bigenerates, splitting the Rani off from herself, she suggests that the Rani is â[her] child, in a manner of speakingâ, who âsprang from [her] loins.â The Rani, obsessed with purity and heteronormativity, rejects this idea of single-gender progenation as âthe most disgusting thing [she] ever heardâ while arming a set of bombs that look decidedly phallic in âthe bone palace.â If the Rani is the child of Mrs. Flood, then perhaps the Fifteenth Doctor is the child of the Fourteenth Doctor. Maybe, in the end, the Fifteenth Doctor found his father.
At the climax of âThe Reality Warâ, having acknowledged that he is biologically incapable of having a child, various characters comfort the Fifteenth Doctor by arguing that he is their family. Family need not be based on blood or genetics. Family need not conform to heteronormative ideal of the nuclear model. Belinda does not need a husband to be a mother. The Doctor does not need to be fertile to be a father. Susan can be the Doctorâs granddaughter unburdened by having to fit with the continuity of the Time Lords or Gallifrey.
There is something surprisingly elegant in the way that Davies ties this central theme into the eraâs larger rejection of canon and continuity through the idea of Susan. Davies suggests that attempts to explain or delineate or account for the Doctorâs relationship to Susan by insisting on a biological connection and to fit it within larger continuity is to police the idea of family. Susan is the Doctorâs granddaughter. It is no more or less complicated than that.
There are broader debates to be had about the showâs preoccupation with children. Davies is an openly queer man, and there are debates about the relationship that queer communities have to what is termed âreproductive futurism.â However, Doctor Who is a time travel show for children, and so it makes sense for the show to explore the main charactersâ relationship to children, particularly in the context of what might be termed âunconventionalâ family units.
Throughout his second tenure as showrunner, Davies argues that families might easily get lost, but they can also be found again.
Comments
Darren Mooney
Sure, this is Davies' "plot twist brain", which has always been a thing. Poppy is foreshadowed in the same way that "Bad Wolf" or "Torchwood" or "Mister Saxon" are "foreshadowed", by including a couple of vague references and leaving absences. "Poppy Honey", the vision in Lagos, the mothers separated from children. That said, as much as I agree that Susan would likely have gotten more traction in a third season - a risky gambit even without the Disney ambiguity, given Ford's advanced age - I suspect the Fifteenth Doctor's regeneration was always going to involve reuniting Belinda and her daughter Poppy. And she was living in shared accommodation, because that was the reality where Poppy had been erased. In much the same way that, say, it's the reality where people say "mavity." Or Ernest Borgnine was still alive - not resurrected, mind you, still alive.
Jack
Belindaâs story might have gone down better if theyâd been up front about her being a single mother from the beginning. Iâd have to rewatch the first episode, but I donât think there was even a hint of her having a baby, and she seemed to be living in shared accommodation. It also seems like a lot of this was added in reshoots after Ncuti decided to leave. Everything after Ruby noticing the baby disappearing felt awkward and out of step with the first half of the episode. It seems like Susan was supposed to play more of a role beyond the weird visions in Interstellar Song Contest.
Darren Mooney
Thank you!
Darren Mooney
I think it's hard to argue that Poppy was Conrad's wish, though, based on what we see in the episode. Conrad cannot imagine anything that did not already exist. He wished for everybody to have families, but Mel is still alone - no parents, no husband, no child. What we do see is that he can rearrange what already exists and that elements that were in place before he started can carry over - like Shirley's medication and wheelchair. Similarly, Ruby's ability is to see what is real. She doesn't see alternate realities - she has no memories of "73 Yards", even though it gave her that ability. Ruby can see what is real. So Ruby remembering Poppy would suggest that Poppy is real. Indeed, that's what the Doctor shouts at the end of "Wish World." He explicitly states, "Poppy is real!" Her erasure is treated as reality being "one degree off", akin to Ernest Borgnine "still alive" or the colour teal or the redrawn border in Norway or Sweden. I'd also push back on the idea that just because a woman doesn't enjoy being trapped in an abusive relationship and bristles at the term "miss" means that she can't be a mother. It's very clear in hindsight that Belinda's insistence on getting home at 7:30am for "her shift" is some echo of Poppy's erasure, just like seeing Poppy in Lagos in "The Engine and the Story" and just like her first two adventures being started by meeting two mothers separated from their children - Renée in "Lux" and Aliss in "The Well." Indeed, Aliss' first two lines are, "Take me home. I have a daughter." And that daughter is being babysat by their grandparent. Which is... well, mercury and mirrors and all that. The obvious implication of all of this is that Belinda was always a single mother and that Poppy was simply erased from reality. Certain traces remained - Belinda's need to get home for 7:30am, her visions of Poppy in Lagos, the TARDIS drawing her to similar stories - but reality had just been "editted." That's why the flashbacks that play make much more sense in what's happening. (It is also, in this context, worth noting that we see how a Belinda who is not a mother reacts to the Doctor's invitation as Poppy disappears. Belinda is all "let's go! let's go!", which is very different from how she is in the first stretch of the season. The version of Belinda who was never a mother is very different from the version who was a mother, but whose reality was edited to obscure that.)
Lil' Cass
Great column Darren, well done! Good job!â€
Alexander Davey
This is an interesting take on Belinda's ending, although it still feels a bit weird that, ultimately, Poppy was Conrad's wish, not hers. If we got any idea that she wanted to have kids (especially as her first episode was a rejection of traditional female roles), maybe it would be less jarring, or if she was more conflicted about Poppy once she was at UNIT as the memories start to overlap - she clearly can't let this child die, whoever it is, but that doesn't mean she sees Poppy as hers Also, I can't think of a worse audience to hope they stop caring about continuity and mythology than the fans of a long-running science fiction franchise. I know Doctor Who has always been honest about its fast and loose relationship with the established fiction (timey-wimey and all that), but people still care regardless. And it's a bit disingenuous considering RTD's brought back some pretty deep cuts (Sutekh, Omega, the Rani, Susan) that means these seasons haven't had the jumping-on capability season 1 or 5 had
