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Say what you will about RTD, but the man knows how to give us an awesome cliffhanger.
Last week, I questioned whether revealing Mrs Flood’s true identity as the Rani so early was the right decision, and it turns out that yes, yes it was. Last season, Sutekh’s reveal served as the penultimate episode’s cliffhanger, and he was a simple enough villain that we didn’t need that much screentime with him to “get it” — once you’ve established a villain as the god of death, you don’t need to cover much more ground.
The Rani is different. Simply being a Time Lord immediately makes her an interesting villain that we want to see as much of as possible, especially after fans have been hoping to see her return to the modern era of the show for 20 years. Archie Panjabi has an incredible screen presence, whether she’s bossing about her other self or weaving a tale around the Doctor’s mind, it’s enthralling to watch her command every scene she’s in.
That said, I do have some quibbles about her characterization, as she’s in danger of feeling like a “Master-lite” Time Lord, which is what I was worried about. When you’ve already got one evil Time Lord that’s very well established in the modern era, you can’t have the Rani feel like the same thing, and while the scene where she’s pulling the Doctor into her trap helped her feel very different, some of the things she does – like bringing a disco ball down from the roof of her palace to dance with the Doctor – strays a little too close to that Master madness for my liking.
I’m also still not sure having her Bigenerate from the Mrs Flood Rani was the right call, though I think that thread will come much more to the forefront in the finale next week. In this episode, Mrs Flood is just sort of there, occasionally commenting on the action but mostly just standing around in the background. From the few lines she has, the episode is clearly trying to endear us to her, so I look forward to her inevitable face-turn next week.
One character who I’m desperately hoping doesn’t get the face-turn treatment is Conrad, especially after this episode continued to go out of its way to establish him as the worst human being to ever live. After making him so easily detestable in Lucky Day, I don’t like how this episode casts him as more of a prisoner, and I’m hoping this is the lead-up to making a point about the nutjobs who scream on Twitter about what would make the world better realizing they don’t actually want that world once they get it.
That said, using Conrad as the central cause behind the warped version of reality that we see in this episode is brilliant. While it was never actually said in Lucky Day, I think we all imposed several horrific beliefs, like extreme homophobia and ableism, onto Conrad, and this episode brought that to the forefront. Showing us this overly sterilized world full of 1950s nuclear families with working husbands and obedient housewives, only to later reveal that it’s the ideal world Conrad wished into existence, was fantastic.
The scene where the Doctor casually describes another man as beautiful – something he does at least three times an episode – only for said man to completely freak out about it both deepens how uncomfortable we feel in this fake world, and gives us a glimpse into Conrad’s psyche. It also makes a thematically satisfying moment when the Doctor’s doomed-by-the-narrative boyfriend from last season is the one to reach out and help break him out of the fake reality.
Rogue’s appearance is a great example of another thing that I loved in this episode: surprises. This episode had a bunch of moments that caught me off guard in the best way. Rogue’s return was one, but most impressive to me was the baby doing the Pantheon of Discord’s laugh. We’ve seen several of those reveals over the past couple of seasons, and this is the first one that actually got me. I did not think the Pantheon would factor into this year’s finale, and I’m excited to see how this baby god of wishes factors into next week’s episode.
The twist behind the purpose of trapping the Doctor in this fake reality was great too, and puts a Doctor Who-branded spin on a classic trope. As soon as we see we’re in a false world, we immediately begin to root for our heroes to break out of it, we see the moments where they doubt the world around them, and want them to push against it. So it makes for a great reveal when the Rani shows that she was using those doubts as energy to fuel her plan and unleash Omega. It helps with the characterization problem I mentioned earlier, as it helps remind us that she is someone who understands the Doctor’s mind and is able to use it against him.
So then we’re left with our final reveal and cliffhanger: Omega is coming. Much like when Sutekh returned last season, this is a classic villain that I’d be willing to bet most modern fans don’t know that much about, and I think that’s a good thing. As we saw with Sutekh, it gives RTD a lot of room to reinvent the villain, keeping a few core tenets but redesigning just about everything else about them, and I’m looking forward to seeing what a modern incarnation of the first Time Lord looks like.
Also – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – but it also opens the door for the best use of the Timeless Child storyline to date, and I hope RTD goes for it. As soon as Chibnall’s era came along and tore this catastrophic hole in the fabric of Doctor Who lore, I could imagine RTD sitting there coming up with ways to sew it back together, and maybe it’s just the agent of chaos inside me, but I want to see him try.
Still, I think it is an undeniably interesting concept in the lore. The Timeless Child storyline told us that the Doctor is the being from which the power of the Time Lords was distilled and created, so how does that interact with the being that was supposedly the very first Time Lord to ever exist?
The fact that it raises all of these questions is exactly what makes this such a fantastic cliffhanger. I’ve ranted about this before, so I’ll keep it short, but I hate it when the show gives us “How will the Doctor get out of this one!” cliffhangers, because we all know that they’ll get out of the immediate danger within thirty seconds of the next episode. What makes a cliffhanger so juicy is how game-changing it is to the stakes of the story, rather than how close our heroes are to imminent death. So, having Omega rise up with the power of the Rani behind him as the Doctor falls into an under-dimension of mystery leaves you with a thousand unanswered questions that make next week’s finale unmissable.
I said I was going to make that short, turns out I lied, but here we are.
Like a lot of Doctor Who Part 1s, this episode will ultimately only be remembered for how well Part 2 delivers on what it sets up, but for what it’s worth, I think Wish World does a fantastic job of putting all the pieces in place for a thrilling finale, hitting us with plenty of surprises on the way to make it an extremely memorable episode in its own right.
The post REVIEW: Doctor Who Wish World has Excitement and Surprises in All the Right Places appeared first on Newsweek.
