What I thought Orphan 55 was gonna be vs what it actually was

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I have no qualms about tonight’s Doctor Who being a big ol’ “you idiots are fucking up the planet” anvil-drop. Honestly, none. Some anvils need to be dropped. But oh, all through the damn episode I was convinced, this whole thing is the Doctor’s hallucination! Because right at the beginning they were dealing with a thing that causes hallucinations, and then suddenly bam, chaos and death and people with weird motivations all over the place.

I was so convinced. And I’m honestly annoyed that they didn’t go down that route, because it would have made so much sense character-wise (of course the Doctor would be hallucinating about a destroyed Earth, did you see what happened last episode?), easily explain away the various plot holes (why doesn’t the TARDIS translate Russian?) and handwave why the little boy played by Roger from His Dark Materials was totally fine at the end. And the exact same message could have been gotten across, the Doctor still could have delivered her “If humans don’t shape up this exact thing will happen” speech.

All the pieces were there! I was positive that would happen! Gah, this episode was such an exercise in wasted potential.