“Wish World” doesn’t deviate from this sample. There is a lot happening on this episode – we’ve to familiarize yourself with a completely new alternate actuality, and our acquainted characters’ new roles inside it. We have the 2 Ranis, one other new member of the Pantheon (a “terrifying” mystical child with the ability to grant needs), Shirley’s ragtag crew of dispossessed freedom fighters, pictures at reactionary conservatism, ableism, homophobia and tradwife aesthetics. The Seal of Rassilon is there. And then the climactic revelation that each one that is merely a way to an finish, because the Rani’s (Ranis’?) true goal turns into clear – to burrow beneath the floor of actuality and discover Omega, an omnipotent determine from historic Time Lord historical past.
It could be overstating it to say that the episode falls aside spherical concerning the time that Rani Prime (Archie Panjabi, having nice enjoyable chewing the suitable amount of surroundings) begins monologuing to a confused Doctor about her dastardly scheme, nevertheless it’s the place the cracks actually begin to present. It’s not essentially the most elegant exposition that Davies has ever written, even when he does dangle a cheeky lampshade on it by having the Rani explicitly discuss with it as such, and making it a part of her scheme. Steven Moffat tended to excel at these kinds of whirling expository scenes the place every part falls into place, whereas right here it very a lot looks like a rushed information dump connecting a bunch of disparate components that haven’t all been adequately arrange.
It’s additionally right here that the construction of ‘lots of ideas carried along with manic energy and high production values’ actually creaks. Spending time within the want world is nice enjoyable, with all the fun of mirror universe model tales, seeing everyone pressured into perversely inappropriate roles and making an attempt to work out precisely how this world works – or doesn’t work, because the case could also be. There are a number of little grace notes, like Colonel Ibrahim’s horrified response when the Doctor unthinkingly reassures him that he’s “a beautiful man”, or the fascinating scene between Conrad and Mrs Flood, exhibiting us the pressure that holding the want alive is having on Conrad, and his uneasy relationship with the creepily chuckling god child.
But then the Rani begins monologuing, and it’s revealed that each one of this – two years of Mrs Flood hints, the Pantheon, Conrad, the vindicators, the destruction of Earth, the want world – is in service of reaching again into the dim and distant previous of Gallifrey and discovering an historic Time Lord. A personality who, if reminiscence serves, hasn’t appeared on TV because the Nineteen Eighties, other than a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in 2020’s “The Timeless Children”.
It’s unimaginable to correctly decide this reveal till we’ve seen subsequent week’s “The Reality War”, however based mostly on first impressions, it’s exhausting to really feel terribly excited concerning the return of Omega. For an episode that’s usually so bizarre and spiky, and stuffed with splendidly unsettling imagery (just like the child’s mom gently collapsing right into a pile of flowers), discovering out that it’s all constructing in the direction of the reveal of a determine who actually belongs within the Wilderness Years does really feel a tad anticlimactic. More than that, it feels basically backwards-looking, which is a weird factor to be saying in a assessment of an episode that includes a laughing god child who grants needs. Terrifying god infants that grant needs will not be one thing we’ve explored a lot in Doctor Who, whereas historic Time Lord historical past actually feels prefer it’s been achieved to demise.
Of course, it might all be a feint. Perhaps the twist will probably be that it was concerning the terrifying god child all alongside, and Omega will stay within the dustbin of historical past. But, as with final season’s reveal of Sutekh, it nearly feels as if Russell T Davies – who was so cautious with how he rationed out traditional sequence characters and references throughout his first run – is making up for misplaced time by enjoying with as a lot Doctor Who lore as he can get his fingers on whereas he has the finances to visualise it, whether or not it’s essentially the most dramatically compelling selection or not. And it contributes to the uneasy feeling that, whereas there are many new concepts being launched on this period, the inexorable gravity of Doctor Who’s mythos is all the time going to overpower them, so even one thing as bananas as a wish-granting god child in the end performs second fiddle.
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