Doctor Who Wish World Review – An Exposition-Filled Setup Episode

The point of a penultimate episode of a season is to go and “set things up properly” for a potentially jaw-dropping finale. Depending on the show, it can be handled lightly, as each episode is its “own story,” or it can be very heavy-handed, like a two-part finale. Regardless, the goal is the same: make the viewer interested in what’s about to happen so they’re eager for the final episode of the season. As my Doctor Who Wish World Review will state, I’m not feeling that at all, and for very familiar reasons.

The general premise of the episode was simple enough. Via her new form, The Rani found a child in the past that had the power to make wishes come true, and Rani uses that to violent effect by wiping out the child’s family before making a wish that The Doctor would be the focus of. Specifically, he woke up in a “better world” that was straight out of a time capsule. Except, he wasn’t The Doctor anymore…he was John Smith.

In this world, he was married to Belinda, they had a child named Poppy, and they were living a “perfect life with no doubts,” even if the world itself was incredibly odd at points, like with skeletal creatures roaming the skies.

As we viewers watched, we all knew that things would unravel; we just didn’t know how. The first “hammer to fall” was the rather random arrival of Ruby Sunday, who put a seed in the Doctor’s mind that something was wrong. Then, as more instances, or “slips,” happened, things continued to build…or…at least…that’s what I hoped.

Except the episode kept spinning its wheels to get us to its finale. It kept us lingering in this fake world with very little progression until the last few sequences when The Rani literally explained everything to The Doctor, and even made a joke about it, because the whole point of this world…was to make him doubt reality. Yes. Really.

In her own words, “A Time Lords Doubt Can Break Reality.” She did this because she apparently wanted to find an ancient Time Lord, “The Lost One,” aka “Omega,” who was buried in the “Underverse” and had been forgotten by most…except her, obviously.

If this all sounds incredibly nonsensical, it totally is.

I would argue that the worst part about this episode isn’t the “new world setting” or the boring elements, but the fact that if you’re not a diehard Doctor Who fan, you’re not going to understand the NUMEROUS callbacks and references. For example, I had to read another review (which I always do before writing my own, in case I missed something from the series past) to remember that The Doctor and Belinda’s “daughter,” Poppy, was from the “Space Babies” episode last season. I didn’t like that episode that much, so I didn’t realize that was her until I read that.

Furthermore, they only do the lightest of jobs explaining who The Rani is and why she’s important. Because it was so rushed, I didn’t get a sense of who she truly was, especially since all we’ve seen was Mrs. Flood up to this point. Sure, what she did to the Bavarian family was terrifying, but they didn’t build on that until the literal very end. In many ways, she’s just The Master, but with a slightly different plot…emphasis on “slightly.”

For as another Whovian pointed out to me, Russell T. Davies once again dipped into his “favorite stories” and just repeated what we had gotten before with tales like “The Sound of Drums.” You know, where The Master took over the world basically and used it to bring back a key Time Lord? Sound familiar…?

Staying on that path of frustration was that we had plenty of questions that could’ve been answered or explored in this episode, but weren’t for one reason or another. Furthermore, we’re fed explanations that don’t make sense in context or in the timeline we’ve seen, and yet it’s supposed to “just make sense, so roll with it.”

A key one is Conrad, whom I still hate. Through the power of the “wish baby,” he’s able to make a “better world,” and Mrs. Flood (who I’ll keep stating as thus to make things simpler to understand) noted that he was “necessary” for their plan because he was “someone who wished for a better world.” Except, he didn’t. He was a con artist who denied reality at such a high level that he didn’t even believe he nearly lost his arm to a literal monster! Yet, he had this “wish of a better world?” Huh?

Furthermore, the use of Ruby in this episode had no true purpose, even on the grand scale of “seeding doubt” within The Doctor. Mrs. Flood herself said that The Doctor was “getting there” on his own, and Ruby’s arrival did little to help add to that if you really think about it Then, when she met Shirley and the other “social outcasts,” they didn’t build to the endgame before “dying” because of reality falling apart, they were just…there. So, what was the point of making her “remember her past life” via the “73 Yards” episode, which I still hate, lol, if it didn’t mean anything?

And if you want an even bigger “Why did this happen?” moment, why did they go from showing Susan on the TV to shifting to Rogue? How many of you actually remembered him from last season? His showing up at all was odd, but somehow knowing what was going on in the “wish world” while still being trapped in the “Hell Dimension” was all kinds of strange and unexplainable.

Oh, you thought I forgot about Belinda? Nope. She was there. …and that’s it. Seriously, she was another “Why did they do that?” moment. For when she realized that she couldn’t remember Poppy’s birth, even though she was “her daughter,” she ran out into the woods and screamed. …and that’s it. No build-up. No payoff. Just…done. Then, she was the “perfect housewife” until her literal “death” at the end of the episode. Why? Who knows at this point?

Arguably, the most confounding thing is that The Rani says at the end that “The Doctor will do everything in his power to stop her, and I can’t risk it,” and yet…he was the focal point of her plan. She’s fought The Doctor before and lost handily. Their being in the equation AT ALL is a risk, but they used The Doctor anyway. The Rani could’ve done this with Mrs. Flood, who is still a Time Lady via Bi-Generation (which…I…still…hate!!!! lol), and it would’ve had the same effect.

Oh, and how did The Doctor and Belinda get trapped in this “wish world” in the first place? They don’t really explain that either. Not to mention, the idea of “doubt shattering reality” shouldn’t have been the cause of Omega’s return because…The Doctor has had all-consuming doubt in the past. He had it after the Time War, when he thought he was alone. He had it last season when Suketh killed the entire universe, and he was crying and screaming because he didn’t think he could restore it all. If those events didn’t bring back Omega, why did this one?

As I wrap up my Doctor Who Wish World Review, I think it should be clear that I’m not exactly thrilled with how this episode went, nor am I eager to see how this all plays out. We will know The Doctor won’t die from that “balcony fall,” and that Belinda will return from the “nothingness” she was sent to, same with The Earth in general.

The question, one among many, is how will this ending feel MEANINGFUL? If you haven’t seen the latest reports, the ratings for Doctor Who aren’t doing great, and many are stating, without BBC confirmation, that the series as a whole will “take a rest” after this season. That means that there’s a LOT of pressure to get this finale right and send things off “into the sunset” on a high note, especially if we don’t know when it’s coming back.

Yet..I don’t have confidence that the show will do that. Davies is bent on rehashing the past to make it “feel new,” and it’s coming at a heavy cost. We’ll find out if that “true cost” is the whole series.