Some guy decides to buy his girlfriend what he thinks is something special, like naming a star after her.
Who would have thought it would lead to an intergalactic catastrophe?

Ncuti Gatwa’s second season as the Doctor started just before Palm Sunday with a wild story about robots and time fractures. It also introduced a Companion who’s got no time to look at him in wonder. She’s got to go home, but something or someone doesn’t want that to happen.

SPOILERS BELOW

It begins in 2008 where Belinda Chandra (Verada Sethu) and her boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) look at the stars. He’s also a bit condescending towards her. He says he named a star after her for her birthday, probably at the last minute.
Cut to May 2025, and Belinda is now a nurse at a hospital…and the Doctor lands nearby. He even knocks out power at the hospital to find out where she lives.
He gets there too late, as some big robots kidnap her. Strangely, a neighbor who looks like Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) is there, then insists she wasn’t. Who is she REALLY, if she doesn’t seem to be upset Belinda’s been grabbed?

Belinda tries to tell the robots she’s not the Queen of Missbelindachandraland (or MBC Land), as they keep claiming. She does say they should have grabbed Alan instead. More on that later.
The Doctor tries to follow them, but a time fracture slows him down. It turns out he reaches MBC Land six months before she does. He loses his TARDIS and has to work with the rebels before she gets there. He also reveals he was tipped off about this by someone. We don’t know who…yet.

Belinda meets someone named Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller), who tells her she will wed the master of the planet where everything is named after her. It is the AI Generator, and he’s determined to have her “welded” with him.

Then, the Historian shows up, who’s really the Doctor. He not only tells Belinda how the planet was taken over by the robots, but (in every ninth word to fool the robots) lets her know he’s trying to overthrow the status quo. A battle starts, but people die, including Sasha 55. He’s really upset since she was a good friend of his. He also notices Belinda is a dead ringer for Mundy Flynn from the episode “Boom”.
Meanwhile, some of the rebels blame her for the robot revolt and she doesn’t understand why. Apparently it has something to do with the star certificate she had. There’s two copies, the one she has and the one the AI Generator has in another timeline. The Doctor points out if both versions touch, it causes a big time distortion.

Then Belinda does something that makes no sense: she turns on the Polish Robot that was turned off by the Doctor so the other MBC Robots don’t find them. Well, the robots find them. She hopes since she’s their Queen she’ll surrender if the robots stop killing everyone.
She approaches the AI Generator, and is shocked to learn she may have met it before.

Yeah, it’s Alan. Apparently the robots merged him with the Generator, making him think it’s just like playing Grand Theft Auto. The fact that he proposed to Belinda before that, then gave him a long list of conditions she has to follow, makes things worse. She realizes she in the “planet of the incels”. Let’s hope that doesn’t exist on another sci-fi show.

Then he calls for her star certificate to join his copy. Remember, both exist in different timelines. They touch, and it’s one big time boom where the Doctor sees different timelines, especially Belinda’s. He even claims they go back years, although she doesn’t remember that (not now, anyway). They survive but Alan doesn’t. He’s reduced to sperm that gets cleaned up by the Polish Robot. Even if he was a jerk, his fate was rather harsh.

The planet is rebuilt by the rebels and robots and renamed Sasha 55. The Doctor gets his TARDIS back…and she also calls it a TARDIS. Again, how does she know that?

Anyway, she makes it clear he may be from outer space and such, she’s got to go home. He agrees, but for some reason something is keeping them from doing that. Could it be that where they have to go doesn’t exist?

If that’s the case, how did THAT happen?

That’s the theme for this season: trying to get a nurse back home, but wondering if it exists.
Gatwa, of course, is still charming and quirky as the 15th Doctor. However, his relationship with Belinda has a very different tone than it was with Ruby Sunday. However, this works quite well, He should have someone challenging his motives and methods. She points out his efforts to save the planet led to several deaths. He also took her DNA without her permission to check if she’s related to Flynn. It’s about time he got someone to keep him honest.

How about Mrs. Flood? She’ll pop up occasionally, but this time we’ll get the truth. Maybe she’s related to the Celestial Toymaker. Ruby will also return soon in a new job, and we’ll discover that the Eurovision Song Contest can exist elsewhere in the universe.
As for the show’s future, an article in the Radio Times hints it might be a while before we get new episodes after this summer.
Next week, the Doctor wonders why a movie theater in Miami in 1952 shows films with no customers. Let’s just say it’s because of something that can be called “the Purple Rose of Cairo gone horribly wrong”.

Episodes of Doctor Who will air early Saturday mornings on Disney Plus