Doctor Who (2023) 2-07: Wish World

Episode:

891

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Serial:

319

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Alex Sanjiv Pillai

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Air Date:

24-May-2025

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching an episode called Wish World. I don't know why, but I get the feeling this may stray into fantasy a little bit. That's just the vibe I'm getting.

I'm at episode 7, so this is the halfway point of the season. Actually hang on, Doctor Who seasons are tiny these days, 8 episodes, so I'm already at part 1 of the finale. I suppose you could argue that there are 9 episodes in total, counting last year's Christmas special, though if you include it then something weird happens: it means that 'world' episodes always come in pairs, no exceptions.

Series 1: The End of the World and World War Three.
Series 10: The Pyramid at the End of the World and World Enough and Time.
Season 2: Joy to the World and Wish World.

The classic serial Enemy of the World doesn't have a pair, but it's a six-parter so you've got three pairs of 'world' episodes in that season. The pattern still works!

Here's another coincidence: the episode shares the same director as Joy to the World, Alex Sanjiv Pillai, though it's the big two-part season finale so this time showrunner Russell T Davies was the one who wrote the words. This is what we've been heading for this whole time, May 24th, the beginning of the end. Though hopefully not the end of the series, I don't want it to be cancelled.

There will be SPOILERS below.

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Previously, on Doctor Who:

The TARDIS got to May 24th and blew up. Mrs Flood is the Rani and she bi-generated. I think that pretty much covers it.

And now, the conclusion:

Oh no, instead of resolving last episode's cliffhanger, this is starting off somewhere completely different, and they've put the year and place on screen. Don't tell me they got Chris Chibnall back to write this one.

Hang on, I should probably give you a heads up that I am going to be relentlessly negative basically all the way through this review, so if you enjoyed the episode yourself you might not enjoy reading my thoughts about it.

Actually, forget Wish World for a moment, I want to begin with something positive.

Doctor Who (2023) 1-02 - The Devil's Chord

I found a YouTube video by a guy called DoctorBlue who took the dance scene at the end of The Devil's Chord, exorcised "There's Always a Twist (at the End)" from the soundtrack, and replaced it with "Dugga Doo" from Interstellar Song Contest. There's something about that first song that triggers instant revulsion in me, I can't physically stand it, but with Dugga Doo playing I was able to watch the sequence properly and there was clearly a lot of work put into it.

There's a screen full of dancers, including the lead actors, they dance in four different locations, they're up on tables, they've got balloons, it's raining in a hallway at one point. I just can't believe how much time and money and effort went into a sequence that makes absolutely no sense in the episode (partly because they cut the line that explained it).

Alright Wish World begins in Bavaria 1865, where a wicked witch called the Rani kidnaps a god child and magically turns his family into ducks and stuff while the dad just stands there and watches.

Dude, just grab something and hit her with it, it might not work but it's worth a try. Yes I know she's holding your baby, she's turning your other children into ducks, hit her.

It's really out of character for the Rani to use magic, as she's a scientist. But then it's out of character for anyone to use magic in this series. It's not that kind of universe, or at least it wasn't before the Doctor let gods and myths into the world by dropping a bit of salt on the floor in Wild Blue Yonder.

Doctor Who (1963) 22-06 - The Mark of the Rani, Part 2

To be fair, it isn't out of character for the Rani to transform people into other things, as she had landmines in Mark of the Rani that turned people into trees. She's a big fan of landmines.

Meanwhile, 160 years later, the Doctor and his wife Belinda are woken by their alarm clock just as their kid Poppy runs into the bedroom. And Conrad Clark is on TV wishing everyone a happy morning! They wish him happy morning right back.

I've no idea if we're going to get an explanation for how they survived the TARDIS exploding last episode, but I expect the implication that a magic baby did it is the best we're going to get.

OPENING CREDITS

Conrad interrupts the end of the credits so he can get back to his scheduled broadcast.

It turns out that Conrad's on TV a lot, telling people the weather, reading people kids stories, and so on. I guess he had to pivot from his Think Tank podcasts seeing as the world's just as he wants it now, and also podcasts don't exist anymore.

Instead he's reading out J.K. Rowling's new novel, "Doctor Who and the Deadly Wish". Oh sorry, it's actually by I.M. Foreman, I saw the cover design and got confused. I can't think why RTD would be associating Rowling with this fine gentleman.

Oh, by the way, he keeps calling him 'Doctor Who' instead of 'The Doctor', because he is a villain. I hated Conrad enough in Lucky Day for what he did to Ruby, but this is really crossing a line!

Doctor Who (2005) 10-08: The Lie of the Land

I've noticed that whenever fascists brainwash the UK in Doctor Who they always put one person on TV all the time and they're always in a white room. Sometimes it's even the Doctor!

Man I hated Lie of the Land. The episode's whole concept didn't work, and now here we are again. Except this time instead of going with the Half-Life 2 City 17 blue jumpsuits kind of dystopian Britain, it's the 'idealised version of the '50s' kind. The kind that looks kind of nice on the surface, but gets less idyllic the less you fit into the role society has given you.

The first 10 minutes of the episode are all about setting up this weird reality.

• Everything is psuedo-'50s style, without modern technology.
• People have 'SLIP' bins purely for the yellow mugs that fall onto the floor whenever someone has doubts. Not plates or glasses, only mugs.
• Belinda calls the police on Ruby when she turns up at the door asking for the Doctor and spreading doubts.
• Mel is a single woman with no family so she'll spend the night alone in contemplation.
• The Doctor John Smith works at UNIT, which is now an insurance company.
• Susan Twist is now a tea lady instead of a tech genius CEO.
• It's inappropriate for a man to find another man beautiful.
• John thinks that Ibrahim should marry Kate to spare her from the indignity of having to work.
• Wondering about things is just as bad as doubting things. Accept the world as it is.

I think I covered everything.

Oh right, there are bone beasts walking around and the Rani lives in a bone palace over London. They never get explained in the episode, but I suppose they're there to make it harder for people to fully buy into this reality. Also every Doctor Who episode has to have a monster in it.

By the way, I hope Mel gets a much bigger role in part two, as it'd be a shame to have her and the Rani in the same story again and not have them meet. It'd be like if Sarah Jane never got to talk to Davros in Journey's End.

I have to admit, my reaction to seeing the fossils walking around was "Oh, okay". We're in the weird Wish World where anything can happen, so nothing can shock me. Actually that's not true, there is one thing that genuinely surprised me...

Belinda's mother showed up! She actually exists!

I thought all the mentions of her mum and dad this season had to be leading to something, that's how Doctor Who works. The words 'Bad Wolf' or 'Torchwood' appear 12 episodes in a row and then a thing happens. Also RTD usually introduces a companion's mother in their first episode and then makes them a recurring character, so it's very suspicious that he left it so long this time.

But then Belinda has a bit of a WandaVision moment. She realises she can't answer a simple question about Poppy's birth and we get some dramatic music as she runs off into the fantasy forest and screams!

Seriously, look how picturesque this location is. I don't know if this is supposed to be a park in London, or if Conrad wished for more forests, or what's going on here, but it's very nice.

It's a bit of a shame though that you have to run this far from civilisation just to scream or else your neighbours will call the thought police on you (not the memory police, those were in Lie of the Land).

It's a bit over a third of the way into the episode before we finally see the inside of the Rani's creepy-ass lair, and they really spent some cash on this place. I don't mean the Ranis, they probably just wished for it to exist, I mean the producers. This definitely cost 'epic two-part finale' money to build. It's got sculpted walls, women with elaborate helmets working the oil consoles, and Interstellar Song Contest drones on guard... for some reason.

Oh, I figured out why Mrs Flood was holding up her trousers after bi-generating last episode! It's because the Rani walked off with her shoes and she didn't have heels anymore. I like it when things make sense when you think about them for a bit.

Damn, they even built a creepy kitchen.

So this is what the situation is like for the rulers of the world. Mrs Flood is the one who planned all this, Conrad's the one remaking reality into his own personal utopia, and yet the Rani's the only one who seems to be enjoying her life at the moment. She literally sent Mrs Flood to the kitchen to make Conrad a sandwich!

I took an instant dislike to Mrs Flood from the moment she first talked to the camera and I only hated her more when she wouldn't make Cherry a cup of tea. But now that she's an actual character in the story I'm a lot more interested. With the Doctor and Belinda brainwashed she's the closest thing I've got to a protagonist so far this episode.

Though I'm still trying to figure her out, as after bi-generating she was instantly subservient to her other self, but when she's alone she bitches about having to do her chores.

Poor Conrad has been stuck alone in his room reading books to a camera for ages so he's happy to see Mrs Flood at his door. He seems grateful for the sandwich as well and he's so worn out and stressed from all the constant wishing that he runs over and gives her a hug!

Man, why couldn't we have gotten to this part of the episode 15 minutes ago? I'm weirdly fascinated by Conrad as a character. The guy seems to be 100% genuine in these scenes and happy to get the approval of a mother figure who'll never judge him for being a liar as she's just as bad as he is.

Mrs Flood broke him out of prison because he's the kind of person who really thinks he's making a perfect utopia and that's just what she needs from her babysitter. And I'm sure the magic baby is happy to be causing mischief with them, as he does the Toymaker's giggle, revealing him to be one of the Pantheon.

Hey that's the Tower of London down there, UNIT's former HQ. Which is consistent with the Rani's lair being right above UNIT's current HQ.

The next phase of the plan is to prime their cunning trap with their sonic syringe, and we get a big hint here about how they see their relationship. Mrs Flood considers the Rani to be sort of like her child, and the Rani doesn't like the idea of that one bit. Man, RTD's even given the Rani a mother, the dude can't help himself!

It is interesting how many children are in this story. John Smith and Belinda have Poppy, Conrad's looking after the god baby, Mrs Flood is looking after Conrad. The Rani doesn't give a damn about kids though, she's more interested in making villain speeches. It'll be a shame that the people below have to die, but tonight they will find the One Who Is Lost and then the great work begins!

Meanwhile the episode's finally remembered that Ruby exists and she finds herself chatting to Shirley in the street about the giant fossil creatures. It dawns on her how wrong it is to be talking to a disabled woman in this reality and walks away... but then the two of them remember each other's names.

Shirley introduces Ruby to the others and we get a cameo by Doctor Who YouTuber Tharries (on the right, with the white hat).

Back when I wrote about Lucky Day I wondered what Conrad's truth actually was, what he really believed. And now I guess I know. It turns out that he never thought about disabled people, so they've got no place in his world. In fact they're basically invisible, with their disability acting like a perception filter... so there's some social commentary for you.

It's easy to see the flaws in society when you don't fit in, so they've been able to see glimpses of the real world. A bit like how the Doctor and Belinda could see what was wrong with the reality of 1950s Miami a few episodes back. It turns out that Ruby has the same ability because she experienced an alternate 2025 in 73 Yards, which still hasn't been explained. I'm sure a lot of people hope that it never gets explained.

Unfortunately when Carla and Cherry found out they called the police on her for doubting!

Man, every alternate timeline Carla is like this. She's basically the perfect flawless mother aside from her tendency to instantly shun her child forever in the cruellest way. I know Ruby's thing is her issues with abandonment, but I don't like how this keeps happening!

Anyway, Shirley and the others have plans to tear down god, so there's at least some of her former UNIT agent self in there! She definitely seems more likely to actually do something in this episode than the Doctor does. At this point he's just sitting at home after a long day of feeling anxious every time he said something. Though he does see a familiar figure on TV and for once it's not Conrad.

It's Susan! And then she's replaced by Rogue! All the new viewers that jumped on at the start of the Ncuti Gatwa era finally get a surprise returning character they can be enthusiastic about!

Though personally his appearance got me wondering things. Like, is he talking into a camera? Why can he only give one cryptic message? How has he survived for two centuries in a cloudy empty hell dimension? Do they grow hell poppies there? Who has been cutting his hair? How does he know where the Doctor lives?

Hang on, that's a point, how did Ruby show up at the Doctor's house at the start of the episode? Did she go to UNIT, spot him coming out and then follow him home or something? Actually that answer makes a lot of sense. More than Rogue's message does at least.

"Help Doctor, I've been trapped in a hell dimension for 211 years! I'm almost out of toilet paper and disposable razors. I can only tell you one thing: tables don't do that! Man, I miss tables."

It's something like that anyway.

On my first watch I thought he was the One Who Is Lost and the Rani had put him on the television to give the Doctor a push and make him doubt, but that does not seem to be the case. Though when it comes to WTF dialogue, "Tables don't do that," is this season's equivalent of "Do you dream about being an ambulance?"

I'm pretty amazed that the episode's half an hour in and John Smith is only now starting to figure out his world is fake, something the audience knew right from the start. It wouldn't have been so bad if there had been a bit of story in the meantime, something that tells us a bit about who this brainwashed version of the Doctor is. I'm not saying I was expecting something on Human Nature's level, but it's barely even trying to put us in John Smith's shoes as his reality starts to fall apart.

It turns out that when people doubt things their cups phase through the table and smash on the floor, like there's a glitch in the Matrix (the movie version, not the Doctor Who version... actually either works). But this demonstration makes Belinda freak out and call the doubt police on him! Well this, and the fact that he may like a guy on TV. She justifies it by saying she's doing to protect their child from doubts, which is the same excuse Carla used.

So the Doctor goes on the run and makes his way up to the bone palace to discover the truth! Actually he's just taken away by the police. Then Mrs Flood shows up in a police uniform to arrest Belinda too! The woman is always being dragged away from her home in the middle of the night and snitching on people.

I just realised that the crown on Mrs Flood's hat looks like it's made from 7s. Is this because the god baby is the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son? Or is it just a real life symbol I'm not familiar with.

Anyway, it's nice to see that Mrs Flood's still out and about, doing things and being evil. She hasn't been entirely replaced by the Rani. Wait, what am I talking about? Mrs Flood never used to do anything! This is the most we've ever seen of her.

Yes, finally, some protagonists! And it looks like they could do something at any moment. Though they don't.

Shirley does has a tablet PC from the real world, which could be useful in the next episode maybe. And Ruby mentions that if she sees Conrad again then she's sure it'll jog her memory. She can almost remember things that happened last season, it's right there at the edge of her mind. I can absolutely relate.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure this isn't a deliberate parallel, probably, but Ruby is also making social 'slips' like the other characters. Except her slips are when she says things that may inadvertently offend Shirley and her friends. It happens at least twice, though they're normal about it so it's fine.

A disco ball, seriously? They're not trying all that hard to make the Rani stand out from the Master right now, especially with her holding the Doctor (or John Smith) captive in her lair and doing some dancing.

Alright, it's 30 minutes into the episode and the clock shows that it's 10 minutes to midnight. The episode doesn't actually progress from here in real time, minutes tend to last longer than they should, but we're basically 10 minutes from the end. The wheel-spinning is over and now it is time for the exposition!

She and Mrs Flood are the Rani, they used the vindicator's web to power up Desidirum, god of wishes, Conrad's fascist world was intentionally implausible, they plan to use people's doubts to crack reality and release Omega from the underverse.

Oh, plus they need the Doctor's doubts in particular, which is why they contrived such a clever plan to make him question reality. Step 1: They brought him here and told him his reality wasn't real, step 2: Omega is released!

Doctor Who (1963) 10-03: The Three Doctors, Episode Three

"I don't know how the average fan of the current series reacted to the reveal, but I expect it was a lot like when the Master appeared in Utopia... except that had some actual set up with the message from the Face of Boe, the Chameleon Arch and Harold Saxon.

The episode gives you enough context to know that this guy's a major threat that the Doctor has faced before, but on its own the name Sutekh Omega is more likely to make people scratch their heads than it is to blow their minds. In fact, it's downright weird to end Doctor Who's new season 1 2 with the shocking reveal of any classic villain. This was supposed to be a jumping on point for new viewers!"

People have pointed out that RTD has done the same twist two seasons in a row, but that actually makes my job easier as I can just copy and paste whole blocks of text from my Legend of Ruby Sunday review. Basically, RTD's has gone and alienated new viewers again, and by 'new viewers' I mean people who started at any point after 2005.

Okay, I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I could've easily solved the problem of Omega's obscurity myself with just one move. But I do have an idea:

In the classic series Omega was an engineer who had built a bunch of interesting stuff, like the Hand of Omega, which was used for empowering baseball bats and destroying stars. So my one change would be to rename the vindicator to something like the Beacon of Omega.

Belinda: "What's that?"
Doctor: "This is a little gadget I've had stashed away called the Beacon of Omega."
Belinda: "Is Omega a person?"
Doctor: "One of the smartest Time Lords who ever lived, he invented time travel."
Belinda: "Well maybe we should take your time machine to this Omega guy so he can fix it."
Doctor: "Uh... I don't think he's someone you'd want to meet."

This means that every time the device came out and they mentioned it by name, they'd say the word 'Omega'. This would've made it really easy to guess that Omega was eventually coming back, but it would've also established him as part of this universe and given people a reason to care when he does come back.

The funny thing is, Omega's not actually that bad of a guy if I recall correctly. The dude mostly just wanted to get back to our universe.

Anyway there's another flash of all the Doctors as the hero gets his memory back, which is either leading to something in part 2 or really overdone. Then the Rani springs her trap: setting off bombs which drop the balcony down onto London, which itself is collapsing. Everything's all collapsing onto everyone everywhere, and I'd care a lot more if it wasn't a fantasy world created by magic where the rules don't matter.

The Doctor yells that Poppy is real and this means something really important! If I had to guess I'd say that it means that they're about to tie a really important part of Doctor Who lore to this world of absolute bullshit.

The clock hits midnight... and it's May 24th! So hang on, this episode was all set during May 23rd? Was the finale originally planned to air today and they had to delay the whole season by a week? No, that wouldn't have worked, as Interstellar Song Contest wouldn't have synced up with Eurovision. Well now I'm just confused.


CONCLUSION

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Wish World is an episode all about how breaking a person's suspension of disbelief can cause a fictional reality to come crashing down and I don't even know if RTD was being deliberately meta there or not.

Personally I've had real issues with the series' reality ever since RTD brought gods and myths and magic into the world. Since people started breaking the fourth wall and fans invited the Doctor into their living room. I've got so many doubts right now that I'm struggling to care about any of this. Ruby's just going to kiss a magic baby or something and everything will get fixed.

Though John Smith doesn't really question things as much as you might expect. The first 30 minutes of the episode show him slipping up a few times, but it's not a tense horror story about a man's sense of reality crashing down. It's a few scenes of a dude who goes to work, comes home, gets told that cups fall through tables and tries it out himself. There's no story there, and it takes 10 straight minutes of exposition afterwards to actually do the job of breaking him out of the brainwashing.

The world itself is the focus of this one, as we get the novelty of seeing familiar characters in new roles, in a bizarre pseudo '50s setting. Conrad wanted to make reality great again, to bring back a past that never existed, and it seems like he's actually trying to do a good job. But this is what you get when one person has the power to push their vision of an ideal life onto everyone else. The episode wants to show how uncomfortable it is to live in a world where everyone has to conform or get reported by their family and neighbours. Especially if you're physically incapable of fitting in.

I had two problems with this however.

First, even though Conrad brainwashed the Doctor and Belinda into thinking they were a couple and that's all kinds of messed up, they've got the cutest kid so their family scenes came off as weirdly adorable. To me anyway.

My second problem with it is that after all the TV I've seen and the games I've played, the setting was very familiar to me. '50s aesthetic, conformity, traditional lifestyles, women expected to marry and have kids, no place for the disabled, people reporting on their neighbours. Okay, what's next? Oh, we're just doing this for 30 minutes? It's not even establishing the setting for the season finale because the point of the episode is that this nostalgic fantasy is so unnatural that it collapses when people think too hard about it.

Funny thing is, even though I whine about magic in Doctor Who, I'm actually a big fan of WandaVision and Legends of Tomorrow and other series that have done stories like this. It's internal consistency I care about... plus character moments and plot and wit and other things that I was missing while watching this episode.

But I'm not surprised a lot of people enjoyed Wish World. For me it was all set design over substance, for other people it was a wild ride through a visually stunning world where everything is turned on its head and fossils walk across London. Maybe it's like that dance sequence I hated from The Devil's Chord; if I could just take out the thing I hated I'd be able to appreciate what it does right. But as it is I was mostly just bored and waiting for it to get to the point.

RATING

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I'm giving Wish World 3/10, the same rating I gave Time and the Rani. Though if baby Poppy turns out to be Susan's mother because of a wish the Doctor made in Space Babies I'm knocking it down to a 2.

3/10

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the dramatic conclusion to a Doctor Who two-parter, just not this one, as I'm headed back to World War II for The Doctor Dances.

But what did you think about Wish World? Did they handle the return of Omega better than they did Sutekh? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!