An Hour of Who a Day: October 14: "Wish World"

October 14: "Wish World"

It's another beautiful day in London for John Smith, his wife Belinda, and their child Poppy on the eve of May Day -- so long as they don't have any doubts about the perfect world they live in...

So this is what they've been building up to for all of series 15, and it certainly feels exciting and also (intentionally) a bit askew. It starts with an introduction involving the new Rani kidnapping the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son, where she uses the powers of the newborn to reshape reality. I think it was one of the novelisations (I forget which one for sure but it was probably The Giggle) that mentioned that the Toymaker and the other members of the Pantheon are using their own form of science from their own dimension/universe/whatever you want to call it, and it just looks like magic to us. So this could be me bringing more into it than what's actually there, but thematically it makes sense that the Rani -- in some ways the archetype of the scientist who puts science above everything else, including morality -- would take the time to learn this new science of the Pantheon and turn it to her own ends. And so that sets the stage for everything that follows.

Mind, what we get does occasionally feel a bit overstuffed at times -- it's Ruby! It's Mel! It's Shirley! It's Susan Triad and UNIT! It's Susan Foreman! It's Rogue somehow! -- but, to a fan like me, this isn't a bad thing. It's fun to have all these references back to earlier stories and such, and so long as you're not expecting more then there's quite a bit of fun to be had in spotting old faces -- although one wonders what any casual viewers (if in fact there are any left by this point; although chart placement hasn't been terrible, actual raw numbers of viewers are down pretty far) made of this. (I will admit, the only one I felt cheated by was Rogue, but that's just because I'm very selfish and wanted more than just an appearance on a screen. In other words, bring back Jonathan Groff!) Plus it means they can use a bit of shorthand, where they can just introduce returning characters without needing to spend a lot of time on, say, Shirley Anne Bingham's motivations. Indeed, if there are any criticisms to be had here, it's that some of the groups of characters feel a bit shunted to the side: Belinda is reduced largely to being the wife of John Smith, while Ruby, Shirley, and company get their own plot thread that doesn't seem to go anywhere yet. That said, since this is pretty explicitly part one of two, some of these concerns may be addressed in the follow-up episode. But otherwise this feels like great fun.

Another interesting returning character is Conrad, who's using the power of Desiderium, the god of wishes (aka the baby the Rani kidnapped), to create a perfect world as he sees it. What's interesting about this is that Conrad's world doesn't seem to be particularly racist (in addition to the Doctor and Belinda, we see people like Colonel Ibrahim, and some of the background characters walking to work and such are Black), but it does seem to otherwise be rooted in a rather conservative, '50s/'60s-style vision, with some pretty prominent heteronormativity. Note, for instance, the way John Smith remarks that if Ibrahim and Kate Stewart got together, Kate wouldn't have to work anymore ("It's undignified"), or how John can't even express that Ibrahim is a beautiful man without causing some major shocks. And there's the way all the disabled people can get away with doubt because Conrad doesn't even consider them, meaning they're able to avoid his control and so can see things others can't. (Ruby, it seems, has similar abilities -- the suggestion is that on some level she may remember the events of "73 Yards".) But yes, Conrad is creating his utopia from a weird bone structure high in the sky over London, telling stories about the Doctor to the populace and using Desiderium to maintain his reality. " It's such a lot of hard work," he tells Mrs Flood. "All the thinking. Sometimes I forget about the weather and... and South Africa gets flooded."

And of course, there's the Doctor and Belinda, who've been put together as a married couple complete with child: Poppy, last seen (if you don't count the cameo in "The Song & the Engine") in "Space Babies", where she rather decidedly was not the Doctor's daughter. As I said, Belinda doesn't get a lot to do in this episode, other than be scared of doubt, but it's interesting how much the Doctor is integrated into this reality. You'd think he'd be one of the most resistant to Conrad's reality, but he seems to accept it pretty readily, despite the Ranis' efforts to have him question things. Because apparently that's part of the Rani's plan: to create a fake reality that the Doctor can doubt so intensely that it will rip a hole in the fabric of reality itself. For his part, Gatwa plays John Smith as someone with a great deal of curiosity and doubt that he's trying to keep bottled up -- it's a fascinating performance, one that feels like the Doctor being forcibly suppressed, as opposed to, say, a completely different character. Even when the Rani is explaining the whole plan to him, to get him to doubt, he seems to cling onto the perceived reality, and it's not until we get a flash of every Doctor that he fully recovers, right in time for the cliffhanger.

I also haven't properly discussed the Rani yet. As I noted last time, Archie Punjabi feels very much indeed in the same vein as Kate O'Mara's Rani (who also gets a flashback), with the same sense of style and superiority. She does seem a bit more relaxed at times though, and the moment where she's trying to get the Doctor to remember who he is by describing their old history at the Siege of Persephone is a bit difficult to envision O'Mara playing. (That said, it also feels a bit like it's retreading similar ground as Missy and the 12th Doctor.) But while Punjabi is being sensuously haughty, Anita Dobson also gets the chance to expand her Rani's character (though I'm going to keep calling her Mrs Flood just to try and reduce confusion). When she's not being asked to be mysterious or subservient to her successor, we get some flashes of the Rani we'd expect shining through. Her conversation with Conrad, for instance, feels much more manipulative and calculating than we might otherwise have expected, and it feels like Dobson is relishing the opportunity to expand her character a bit more. Both of them turn in excellent and thoroughly enjoyable performances.

But yes, the Rani's plan is to create a fake reality with inconsistencies and then, at the right time, harness all the doubt, including especially the Doctor's (via some technobabble involving the Vindicator), in order to tear a hole in reality. This will let her see into the Underverse to find the One Who Is Lost: in other words.... ah. Remember last time when I said the only realistic options for returning villains were the Rani, the Black Guardian, and Omega? Well check another one off the list: the Rani is trying to find Omega, for reasons as yet unclear. (But at least we get a vocal cameo from the original Omega, the late Stephen Thorne, taken from a Big Finish audio from 2015, which is pretty neat.) And so we get a great big cliffhanger, with pretty much of all of London falling into the holes in reality while the Doctor falls from the Bone Palace on a balcony the Rani has blown free from the structure (since she doesn't need him anymore)...

So yes, "Wish World" may be a tad overstuffed, and there's a lot of fan service happening, but the whole thing moves at a good clip and everything is just about plausible enough to hold together, at least for now, that the final result is still pretty enjoyable. Of course, as with all multi-part stories, we'll have to see how they wrap things up before we can pass final judgment, but for now things are looking good: "Wish World" continues the trend of stories that are never less than solid and frequently are wonderful indeed.