Wish World - a review

The Interstellar Song Contest concluded with a double cliffhanger, with the reveal that Mrs Flood was the Rani, and the Doctor and Belinda finally managing to get to 24th May 2025 - only for the TARDIS to apparently explode...

Quite a few things about this instalment could be deduced from photographs and trailers. There's an alternative Earth, with big dinosaur-like skeletons walking about, and the Doctor and Belinda are married with a child - that Poppy yet again - with him seemingly living as a bowler-hatted businessman. The members of UNIT are all doing different things, and Susan Triad is a tea lady. Conrad Clark has some position of influence, and he and the Two Ranis oversee things from a Bone Palace that towers over London. Another image showed Conrad reading a book about "Doctor Who".

We also knew that there was another member of the Unholy Trinity whom we were yet to see.

Rumours were that this was going to be Omega, and that Susan would make another appearance.

A Radio Times interview with Millie Gibson stated that Ruby was the only person who knew that "Wish World" wasn't the real one.

Apart from some big reveal at the end of the episode, how much of this came to pass, and what more was there to this episode? Well, there was a big reveal - but it wasn't the one we expected...

Last year, RTD2 delivered an excellent episode in The Legend of Ruby Sunday (which also concluded with a big reveal of an old foe from the past). It was an episode which, though the first half of a larger story, could hold its own. Wish World really can't say the same. It is all set up, and really nothing but set up, and it takes an awfully long time to get where it's going. This proves to be a massive info-dump as the Rani tells the Doctor - and us - what's been happening for the last 40 minutes.

In a nutshell, the Rani abducts a baby who is the incarnation of another god. This one is the god of wishes. Conrad was sprung from prison so that said baby could make his ideal world come into being. The Earth is so ideal that some people harbour doubts, but the Rani wants this as these doubts will grow to shatter this reality.

The Doctor has been trapped in this world, peopled by all his old UNIT friends, specifically so that he too can begin to doubt - as the doubts of a Time Lord will finally break this world and enable the Underverse to rise in its place. Why? Because Omega is trapped there, and the Rani wants to bring him back.

Unlike the final cliffhanger of the last series, we don't actually get the big reveal. We are simply told that it is Omega whom the Rani seeks to find, and we catch a snatch of Stephen Thorne dialogue from an audio story, but we don't get to see him. Rumour has it - and they've all been correct - that it's another CGI creation like the pitiful Sutekh.

The main problem with Wish World is that we discover this is a fake, idealised domain straight away, and the episode then takes an awfully long time to show it off to us. We've got the picture, so please move the story on... However, we get stuck there - meaning that all the action is condensed into the last few minutes once the Doctor gets taken to the Bone Palace and the Rani delivers her exposition.

The domain sees UNIT turned into the Unified Insurance Team, with Kate as manager and Triad, as mentioned, the tea-lady.

People who express doubts are reported on to the authorities by their neighbours, which reminded one of the final part of the Monk trilogy in Series 10. The Rani is some powerful presence up in the clouds who is barely glimpsed - just like the Master in The Last of the Time Lords. Yet again, RTD2 is raiding the recent past.

Gibson wasn't entirely accurate in that RT interview, as a group of disabled people also sense things ain't what they used to be. The reason for this is that Conrad simply doesn't see them, so his influence can't impact on them. Presumably his contempt for Ruby is why she also falls beneath his radar.

The Bone Creatures seem to be pretty pointless (I'm assuming they are a visual reference to the Ergon), whilst Mrs Flood's subservience is obviously a nod to the Tetraps (Urak being named for Uriah Heep - the obsequious Dickens character rather than the rock group). 

I'm still waiting to see what makes the Rani any different to Missy.

The visual imagery of London collapsing was pretty stunning, and the Doctor is trapped on a balcony overlooking the city which the Rani has rigged to collapse. As he plummets to the ground, he reveals that not everything in this domain is fake. The daughter he has with Belinda isn't some artificial construct, but his real daughter - which would make her Susan's mother I assume, hence the glimpses we've been getting of her.

Quite how RTD2 will square this with the execrable Space Babies, in which there wasn't the slightest hint that Poppy was in any way known to him, remains to be seen. One bit of speculation is that those babies were actually part of an experiment by the Rani, who is out to create a new race of Time Lords.

I managed to catch Wish World before heading off to the airport on Saturday morning, and so decided not to rewatch when I got home, as I'm going to see The Reality War on the big screen and Wish World will be shown immediately before it. It is only the first half after all, and ought to sit much better when seen back to back with the finale.

We've also been informed that there will be a teaser trailer for The War Between Land And Sea shown on Saturday evening. There were suspicions that this spin-off might be postponed to 2026 since there certainly won't be a new series of Doctor Who until 2027 at the earliest, but it looks like it will be shown later this year.