TL;DR – What if you took vibes, like the most vibes that have ever vibed, and then smashed it into the densest exposition known to human and alien kind?

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

Well, here we are, with the beginning of the end in sight. Today, we are exploring the penultimate episode of Season Two, or if you believe the rumours, a penultimate episode of a series finale, or the penultimate episode until it shifts away from a global broadcast. Whatever the case may be, can this episode set up the ending that they need to land next week? Only time can tell, or you read my TLDR above and already know.

So, to set the scene, The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Miss Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) finally make it back to Earth on the day Belinda leaves, only to find that everything is not well. Indeed, they have fallen into a deadly trap of one of The Doctor’s great foes, The Rani (Archie Panjabi). But the thing about Earth is it is a place that The Doctor holds dear, but also where many of his allies call home. Like all Timelords and Timeladies, time travel is always on the cards. But wait! Didn’t the TARDIS explode at the end of The Interstellar Song Contest? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

Well, as a good friend of mine said to me, this is the most Part 1 episode that ever Part 1ed, and I could not agree with him more. In one respect, it is wild that they essentially pulled off an episode that had both 100% vibes and just 100% exposition. That is a narrative feat that should be explored as it worked in any sense. However, from a narrative perspective, nothing from the episode bar the final five minutes (maybe) was of any use to the story for both the season and for what is coming next week. It is the kind of disconnect that fills me with both fascination and also profound frustration.

What worked this week was the production teams at every level. Their ‘what if the modern world was also the 1950s’ aesthetic that they put together was an interesting one, but it also worked. I think part of that was just how much they committed, down to the colour design of the tea mugs that kept breaking. But this also leads to some very uncomfortable moments when that façade starts to break down throughout the episode. A lot of this episode is just creepy vibes, and in that space Murry Gold is having a field day with the musical score. Also, there are several discussions around ableism in the episode, and unlike a lot of the work RTD does when he gets preachy, this felt a little less on the nose and more an interesting use of how humanity treats people like that. Because they are blind to Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King), as they are to many people, his wishes don’t impact them as much. It is both social commentary and an interesting story nugget.    

One of the more interesting aspects of the episode is that they decided that now was the time for them to go on a huge Doctor Who lore dump. Those who have watched the show for a while are probably familiar with the history of the Timelords, and we have gotten snippets of it before in the newest run. This is the week that they double down hard. While I do admit they acknowledge it was just exposition, likely for the sake of exposition, I am sure it was probably overloading for those who had no backing. It also felt more like padding than anything else. Though I will say, the villains trying to keep people docile while reading out of a book that very much resembles Harry Potter was an obvious and very pointed jab at a person who got very famous for writing ‘Star Wars but with dull sporting mechanics added’.    

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: Wish World? Well, it was kind of interesting to watch. However, it suffers from only being a set-up for what is to come. This means it will likely get skipped on any future watch-throughs, even with a Jonathan Groff added for good measure. Have you watched Doctor Who yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Alex Sanjiv Pillai
Written by – Russell T Davies
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu & Millie Gibson with Archie Panjabi, Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, Jonah Hauer-King, Bonnie Langford, Ruth Madeley, Jemma Redgrave, Susan Twist, Alexander Devrient, Nila Aalia, Anita Dobson, Michelle Greenidge, Angela Wynter, Carole Ann Ford & Jonathan Groff and Atilla Akinci, Leni Adams, Josephine Lloyd-Welcome, Hermon Berhane, Sam Lawton & Joshua J Parker