life, huh…

because THAT is who he is. he loves his stars and creations, he loves humanity, he loves the messiness, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, he loves watching them. he showed jesus all the kingdoms of the world to share that love with someone who he knows already felt it.

in the end, they made that choice together. it's a choice they have made before, over and over, saving humanity over themselves. no god, no angels, no demons, no thousands of years of suffering for all the millions of eternal beings.

personally, i choose to believe that god's last gift to them was integrating them into the fabric of the new universe, so they will find each other in every lifetime. but without anyone watching, without any plan behind it, without senseless suffering, without creating stars just to destroy them.

This is a very specific part of Wish World/The Reality world that’s been bothering me. And since I haven’t seen anyone else talking about it, I’m going to assume it’s a “me” problem. Then again—what is this blog for other than my twisted rambles from my weary mind.

It really started to itch at my brain when I watched Doctor Who: Unleashed, and they offered this as a direct quote explaining the set's design choices:

“There’s a lot of bird references in it. A lot of avian references.” “Okay. That’s interesting. Why did you go with birds?” “We just thought they looked cool. We just thought they looked great.” - exact moment here

I... I just... okay.

Listen. My degree is in technical theatre design. I usually live in the world of sound and lighting—that’s my happy place. But I have designed sets professionally, and I cannot stress this enough: “we thought it looked cool” is not a valid primary reason to design anything in a narrative medium. That may be part of the process, but it should never be the foundation.

Set design is an extension of character and story. The environment should reflect something about the world or the people who inhabit it. It’s not just aesthetic; it’s psychology, geography, history, and intention.

We arrange our environments both consciously and subconsciously. Our spaces reveal who we are, what we fear, what we want to control. And this is the Rani we’re talking about—someone whose entire thing is control, science, order, ego. Her spaces should say something about that. They should tell us something new.

But the Bone Palace? It’s big. It’s white. It’s empty. There’s a clock. A big seal of Rassilon. That’s it. No sense of her past, her goals, her emotional landscape—just bird skeletons.

The only other bone-related elements in the episode are the Bone Beasts. Which—fine—cool concept, sort of, except they aren’t even hers. They’re not minions. They’re not tools she created. They’re just a consequence of realities colliding. They graze on atoms. That’s it. Not touching the sci-fi hoblesquabble of that right now, but what I’m saying is: there’s no direct connection between her and the Beasts, so the whole “bone” aesthetic doesn’t anchor to anything.

The best I can come up with is this: the Rani likes dinosaurs. The Bone Beasts vaguely resemble dinosaurs. Dinosaurs had bones (hot take, I know). Birds are descended from dinosaurs. Bird bones. Voilà. A thin, speculative, retroactive logic tree that still doesn’t explain why the Rani lives inside an empty, glowing aviary cathedral made of vertebrae.

Even if that’s the real-world rationale (and honestly, if “they looked cool” is the best we’ve got, I’m screaming into the void), it leaves a glaring absence in the actual story: why is the palace like that in-universe? Did the Rani build it? Did she steal it? Is it the bones of some long-dead dimensional god she killed in the Time War?

Is it meant to be a metaphor for her obsession with structure over life?

But they didn't say they did it for that, they said they did it "because it looked cool" I'M LOOSING MY MIND. ahem anyway............ The dismissal—or worse, the lackadaisical handwave—of the Rani’s environment just highlights how little thought seems to have gone into actually integrating her into the story’s world, plot, or emotional landscape.

Because as it stands, it doesn’t feel like the Rani’s domain. It feels like a Pinterest board titled “spooky vertebrae + cathedral moodboard” got approved by committee and then vacuum-sealed in white light.

“‘The Doctor is more than happy to use weapons of mass destruction when it suits him…’ She corrected herself: ‘Her. She just likes the moral high ground of getting someone else to carry them on her behalf.’

Yaz shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. She despises violence…’

‘Until it’s necessary!’ Ace leaned forward.”

2: screenshot from ‘the power of the doctor’. the doctor says, “give her a gun.”