So if “73 Yards” was vague, I think “Wish World” was written by George RR Martin and edited by the corpse of JRR Tolkien as puppeteered by Hideo Kojima. This episode was directed by the Christmas Special episode, “Joy to the World” director Alex Pillai. He’s best known for Bridgerton, the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Michael Weatherly-led Bull. While I’m about to have a lot of choice words for Russell T Davies, as he helms the last two episodes of the series before it disappears for a while, and hopefully he can pull his head out of himself. Spoiler, he doesn’t.

A long time ago, The Rani stole a magic baby that is explained about as well as a Chris Chibnall plot, and we just jump straight to May 23, 2025. Oh, by the way, the same John Smith who has been noted in this series alone (still not season) as being quite gay, wakes up in bed with Belinda. They also have a kid, Captain Poppy, as last seen in “The Story & The Engine.” If I just had to explain “Wish World” to my editor and not review it, I think I’d either be sent to rehab or sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

The world is a 1950s “paradise” in the modern day, though mixed-race couples are allowed, and they can even have kids too. I know, it would make certain groups we have now quite upset. Nonetheless, Ruby shows up and asks John Smith if he was ever someone called The Doctor, to which he thinks she’s gone crazy. Worse still, when Belinda and John sit in the kitchen with Poppy, the coffee cups are falling through the table. Oh, and Mel is John’s next-door neighbor, while Conrad is on CBeebies, telling a story of this mysterious character called “Doctor Who.”

Ok, now I’ve done my 300-ish words of setup, I can finally get to the opinion. This is possibly one of the worst-written episodes in Doctor Who by Russell T Davies. The dialogue in particular is terrible. Not only that, every beat feels like it is an “And then,” setting up for a typical, terribly convoluted Russell T Davies part 2 that I’ll get to shouting about next week. However, unlike that time with the Daleks, or that time with the Daleks and Cybermen, or The Master, or The Daleks again, or that other time in the specials with The Master, again, there is nothing greatly important.

That’s unless you are free-basing nostalgia straight into your heart, and you are the uncritical plods as depicted in “Lux.” Then, you probably love it, and I won’t say you shouldn’t, but I will say you should expect something better. At least something a bit more competently told.

So angry, ranty bit aside, let’s get to the episode and the ideas. “Wish World” is a construct of Conrad’s mind. The same incel-ish, far-right allegory, conspiracy theorist that (almost) the entire fandom collectively decided should have been stabbed to death in jail. He should have been. Part of The Rani and A Rani, the two Ranis if you will (I always liked the taller one), plan to do something we’ll speak about here in a minute. Yes, spoilers ahead, you can’t review this one without them, but we’ll highlight when that’s important to dip out.

With the magic Bavarian baby, The Rani wishes for X, Y, and Z, setting up for a world/universe that’s in the timeline just to the left of us. The one where UNIT now looks like the TVA’s designer got extra work, where active Western terrorist organizations get to be open and free, and saying a man looks beautiful gets you dirty looks and questions, such as “you better not be one of them homos!?” Ahh, the 2000s where it was fine to say “no homo” to anything, I don’t miss you.

The world we’re in, a world of wishes, is literally a heteronormative, far-right ideologue fantasy: Women don’t work if they are married, there must be a child or you’re considered weird, if women are single they can work but they aren’t the norm, and disabled people are…? Part of me wants to say it is rather US-centric. Almost a reference to what was termed “Ugly Laws,” which made it illegal for “any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated[,] or deformed in any way” to be in public. Laws literally referring to people as an “unsightly and disgusting object.”

You see, in Conrad’s made-up world of straight-White, able-bodied, heteronormative ideas, it has no place for people like Shirley, to the point where she has no place in this world. Trans people don’t exist, being gay causes other people to have concern for you, and being disabled means you simply aren’t seen. To quote Ted Lasso, “It’s kinda like America these days.” The world is terribly dull, boring, and nothing about it is conventionally threatening. To break free from Conrad’s lies (he’s so self-satisfied), you simply have to think. To have free thought is seen as an issue.

Despite that being a clear theme that’s right there, the 1984 of “Wish World” feels superficial. Yes, there are police who will come and take you in the night, taking you to the dinosaur palace over London, but only if you are part of the script. Otherwise, you get lynched or something. To put it simply, before we get into spoilers, “Wish World” overcomplicates things heading into the finale. It is written with dialog that I believe the kids call “cringe,” and what it does set up as the big bad is about as interesting as sniffing my own farts.

What I keep returning to every time I step back and look at the plot is that this was the big, scary plan of The Rani. The same Rani that fans have wanted to see a return of for a while, and it came not with a bang but that USB disconnect sound. I have nothing against Archie Panjabi (or Anita Dobson for that matter), aside from the fact that San Andreas is utterly terrible and we need to stop giving The Rock money. Nonetheless, Panjabi is fine in the role, but the problem with being just fine is that it is a beloved role.

Neither actor is going to live up to the nostalgia of Kate O’Mara – unlike The Master, The Rani is established as one thing, and we don’t really know much else as seen on TV. Having this version of The Rani be about as effective or interesting as dull dishwater doesn’t help the case of a new actor in the role. Nonetheless, what probably annoys me more is the fact that we had Mrs Flood constantly posing questions, and even after the reveal, we didn’t get answers as to why. Though we still have an episode to go.

Before I start nitpicking with spoilers, I will say that if all you want in part 1 of a finale is more questions, then “Wish World” will feed you for days. However, if you want explanations leading up to that finale to sort of tie up messy bits before we add more questions, may I introduce you to Russell T Davies? A man who does nothing but add questions that can often be resolved in 5 minutes into part 2. I also hate the dated, stilted dialog and the plot of adding more questions to a series of many questions; it isn’t fun to watch.

Warning: The rest of this article will contain spoilers for the episode “Wish World.” Reader’s discretion is advised.

So, where do we start? The Rani is toothless here, and I won’t hear anything else about it. Her whole plan thus far has been: Be Ruby’s neighbor to get close to the Doctor but do nothing, be Belinda’s neighbor and do nothing for a while, release Conrad from jail after discharging a weapon and causing bodily harm in “Lucky Day,” and now with the magic baby he’s wishing this whole world of Andrew Tate into existence. Why? Because she wants to break down reality and bring back the banished Time Lord, Omega, to bring back Gallifrey.

As I say, I’m not going to go into the details learned in “The Reality War,” but again, I’m left wondering who this Doctor Who is really for. The Rani was Kate O’Mara, 1985-86. Omega appeared in two stories before. His first appearance was the first multi-Doctor story, “The Three Doctors” between 1972 and ‘73, and again in 1983 for “Arc of Infinity.” I’m trying not to swear here when I ask, Who is this for? The 50+ year old viewers either don’t remember too much of those episodes unless they are hyper-fans, and the 20-somethings don’t know unless they are hyper-fans.

Realistically, it is a very-small venn diagram of people who care about both characters. In fact, I’d be willing to bet it is a damn near perfect circle. I won’t even try to go for the masturbation joke, as I think Russell has already done enough damage to himself here. Nevertheless, The Rani needed Conrad to do what he does in 2024 so The Doctor could meet Belinda in 2025, but The Rani had already spent that time in 2024-ish with Ruby to break the 4th wall for no reason. To say the timeline aspect is messy would be an understatement.

Timeline issues aside, why does The Rani need Conrad in this story? Why not wish Gallifrey into existence with the baby in the first place? What purpose other than nostalgia does bringing Omega have? None of this is answered here. Again, it is the typical Russell big Part 2 setup, but unlike series 1-4, a lot is already going on before you add in Captain Poppy, Rogue telling The Doctor that coffee cups don’t just fall through tables when you doubt things, and the fact we’ve got two versions of The Rani just standing about waiting for plot to happen.

With a heavy sigh, that’s my problem here. We’re standing around waiting for a plot to happen by having people realize they are in a world of wishes. It doesn’t make The Rani look big, bad, and threatening. It makes her look like the minion before we get to the proper big boss fighting. Very much the playground “nah-uh, my dad can beat your dad” nonsense. However, in this case, it is more so, “Nah-uh, the thing I’m building up as the big bad is so much worse than me, and he’ll totally beat you!” Rani, love, you’ve done nothing threatening.

Better still, the ending of “The Interstellar Song Contest” was The Doctor and Belinda about to head to May 24th, 2025, as they’d powered up the Vindicator fully. Then the doors of The TARDIS imploded. Do we get an explanation? Will we ever get an explanation? Who shot JR? In order, no, no, and don’t know, that was a different soap opera of the 80s. The point here is that Russell was in over his head, mostly by bending over so much to sniff himself, thinking somehow he could add more mystery to this goulash, and it will eventually be solved in part 2.

Unless it was a five-hour special finale episode, the mystery, the lore, and the whole thing at this point could never wrap up nicely. I’m not saying it needs to be wrapped up neatly, but we could do with having a story wrapped up in a way that is nice and well told. The trouble is that this series and all of Ncuti’s run have been rather slap-dash with building a pointless mystery of Mrs Flood, of bringing back old oddities for hardcore fans, and all while trying to bring in new fans who need something a bit cleaner to follow.

We’ll talk about the rumors (and that’s what they are, rumors) of why next time, but so much of this episode feels like a trailer for a very long series of Doctor Who that was extended into the length of a full episode. The idea of The Rani returning, and I mean properly as herself, not Mrs Flood, could have been a series itself. Yet at this point, the returning to May 24th thing is tied up in a messy timeline story, which just so happens to bog down Conrad, The Rani, and Belinda without feeling properly connected. Now we’re adding Omega and the return of Time Lords.

I said it before, and like a slideshow of bears – it bears repeating that this series and episode feel not like a series of events that happen because of the prior events. I’ve mentioned this video before, but Matt and Trey of South Park did a writing thing at a college, explaining that good storytelling is “there for,” “but,” or “because,” not “And then.” The last time I mentioned this was during Chris Chibnall’s run, and that’s because his writing is famous for it. Prior to Ncuti’s run as The Doctor, Russell wasn’t as famous for it, but I also won’t say he never did it.

Ultimately, “Wish World” is a case study of how not to write a single episode or how to build to the end of a series. Mitigating circumstances aside, I don’t know how anyone on the creative (at least writing/script-editing) team behind Doctor Who could be proud of this one. If I need to praise something, then it has to be how conceptualized the entire Conrad bit is done, not that the far-right ideologue fantasy is good, but the way it is committed to. However, in the same breath, I’d happily ask whose crack-pot idea was it to get Carole Ann Ford back to play Susan?

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4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• The commitment to Conrad's far-right dreams.
• Nice dig at Joanne's crappy books.

Cons

• Did a child write the dialogue?
• What is connecting these beats?
• Could we stop adding questions and maybe answer some?
• Rogue! Will we ever see you again?
• Susan? Now?