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.
