Oh Me Gawd
Doctor Who - Wish World
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 24th May 2025
Warning: full disclosure, full spoilers.
Ncuti Gatwa’s The Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda awake as husband and wife, living in a world where they have a daughter and the inhabitants of a much changed Earth are discouraged to doubt this version of reality. A version of reality created by Conrad from Lucky Day (reviewed here) and both the new versions of The Rani, played by Anita Dobson and Archie Panjabi. This episode also stars a fair few regulars such as Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday and Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush.
Now, Wish World isn’t a fantastic episode of Doctor Who by a long shot but it is quite a good one and some of the ideas, such as mugs slipping through tables and smashing to signify the emergence of doubt are really quite nicely done. So I find it very irritating and somewhat alarming that the writing on the show (this time by Russel T. Davies himself) is actually beginning to find its form again. Because, quite frankly, after the damage done by the over wokeness and lack of any real wow factor of last year’s series, they might even be producing some of the greatest televisual art the world has ever seen if they wanted to (they're not) but the damage has already been done and those low, low ratings aren’t likely to recover anytime soon.
We had another brief glimpse of Susan Foreman, The Doctor’s granddaughter once more, not to mention last season’s awful character Rogue but, the first of those appearances is something I hope the writing will take into account for the conclusion of this story arc next week. As far as Rogue goes... please don’t bring him back or maybe they could just kill him off. And if you do bring him back, well... since he has the same number of letters in his name, at least make him be one and the same as the promised ‘big bad’ of next week’s final episode... renegade time lord Omega, perhaps in an incarnation before he first encountered the first three Doctors in the 1973 serial The Three Doctors (reviewed by me here) and his later 1983 appearance in the fifth Doctor story Arc Of Infinity.
Either way, after such a good set up to the story I was, to say the least, very disappointed that this was all going to be about Omega... again. I could really have done without encountering him again, for sure. But, yeah, the episode was mostly a pretty good and intriguing one with a nice series of scenes where various characters are either just playing along or trying to break free of what they suspect is the real version of reality. It does, however, seem to be a bit of a stretch to find The Rani is just trying to locate Omega and that she’s using the supposedly all powerful pantheon of Gods to get him. Presumably to work with him for an even bigger project, one scientist to another (or two to another in this case, I suspect). It's possible Mrs. Flood may bring her down herself though, I reckon.
Hmm... as I write these words I’m actually beginning to talk myself out of whether I thought it was a good episode now, to be honest but... no, I was mostly entertained and I especially liked The Doctor and Belinda waking up in bed together (more of that please). And, hooray, the Doctor didn’t cry again for, I think, the second week running... which must be some kind of Gatwa era record, to be fair.
And there you go... a short review once again (as I said going into the reviews for this last series) but, other than to briefly make mention that The Rani has a much better and more traditional sonic screwdriver than the current incarnation of The Doctor, that’s really all I have to say about Wish World. I suspect next week’s season finale might well be the very last episode ever or, if we’re slightly luckier, just a long resting point for the show (until a company with larger purse strings wants to team up with the BBC when, I suspect, Disney will soon drop out of the equation... leaving behind some nasty worldwide rights issues, no doubt). I reckon Susan Foreman’s history might well be rewritten... or rather, retrofitted and expanded... at some point next week. We shall see what we shall see... again.
I think this episode was the worst of the season and a messy affair, RTD trying to cram in too much. Writing a bombastic season finale set-up is one thing, trying to set-up that episode in just over 40 minutes while still including nice characters having their micro-aggressions pointed out continually (poor Ruby) rather upends things. Having Ncuti's Doctor basically not being the Doctor for most of the episode was also a mistake, especially as, if all the rumours are true, we'll be bidding to him adieu next week. Finally though, there's the biggest problem with this era: leaning too much into the show's past. When RTD first brought back Doctor Who in 2005, he was careful to not exclude those who hadn't watched the old show, with the old enemies brought back carefully. Yes, most new viewers are now aware of the basics but the whole point of RTD returning was meant to be a fresh start after the dreary Chibnall years. In The Writer's Tale, a book of his original tenure, RTD fretted that his Season 4 finale was fan fiction. Since coming back, however, he's positively reveled in it. We've had the Toymaker, Sutekh, Susan, Rani and now Omega. What about creating some new foes? That's the thing, isn't it? Omega or Sutekh mean nothing to new fans but to older fans those characters worked because of the great stories they were in (okay, maybe not Arc of Infinity). Sutekh was great because Pyramids was so great; Omega because finding out about the Time Lords was still a novelty. Bringing back old faces for the sake of it doesn't cut it.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was odd RTD has apparently turned the Rani into a version of Missy, having her suddenly obsessed with the Doctor and hinting at a romantic past. I preferred the Kate O'Mara cold distain for Baker and McCoy's Doctors, one more in tune with the then contemporary audience. It was hard not to compare Rani to Missy or the Master, especially as RTD used the same tired musical number routine act that Simm and Dhawan employed in Last of the Time Lords and Power of the Doctor. I
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