Doctor Who: Wish World: Review
The penultimate episode of the second season of Ncuti Gatwa's reign in the TARDIS picks up after the cliffhanging reveal from The Interstellar Song Contest.
Serving as the first part of a two-part finale, the episode also sees the first major appearance of Archie Panjabi as the Rani, a renegade scientist Time Lord who was pitted against the Doctor back in the 1980s.
Will the Doctor and Belinda survive the menace of the Rani and Mrs Flood? And what is the reason the Earth ended on May 24, 2025?
If you're expecting answers in the first part of this two part Doctor Who finale, then really you've not been following Russell T Davies' writing. By placing the Doctor and Belinda in a kind of WandaWision style world without rhyme nor reason is extremely disconcerting and really does buy into his attitude of proving more questions than answers.
With the Doctor and Belinda seemingly married and with child Poppy, Doctor John Smith's world is challenged when Ruby Sunday shows up on his doorstep placing doubts in his mind as to whether his Utopia is perfect.
As the seeds begin to grow, the Doctor's doubts spring forth - and it's here that it's revealed the Rani is using that doubt to crack open the world to find something that's been hidden forever....
To say more is to spoil the big reveal at the end, but there's a distinctly mixed feeling left by this episode that promises a more terrifying menace next week for its ending but leaves doubts that all of the various arcs will conclude neatly. And certainly the thread of his granddaughter Susan breaking through to him appears to just lay dormant in this episode.
Frustratingly, this also feels like it's an episode that spends an inordinate amount of time in mystery and confusion before ending on a The Beast from The Impossible Planet style reveal. It's in the scale that it appears the latest has lost its way - there's a distinct lack of intimacy here, of character moments that feel like they've built to something.
And yet, again this episode will really truly only come to fruition after its second part - it may offer some surprises, but with just one episode to go, there's a lot riding on what lies ahead: particularly given the show's future and its main star's future with it has yet to be confirmed.
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you just know a franchise is out of ideas when the writers end up returning an old character from the past. my response to it, to steal a quote from the Nostalgia Critic was "How can something sound so right and yet feel so wrong?"
ReplyDeleteI think this episode was the worst of the season and a messy affair, RTD trying to cram in too much. Writing a bombastic season finale set-up is one thing, trying to set-up that episode in just over 40 minutes while still including nice characters having their micro-aggressions pointed out continually (poor Ruby) rather upends things. Having Ncuti's Doctor basically not being the Doctor for most of the episode was also a mistake, especially as, if all the rumours are true, we'll be bidding to him adieu next week. Finally though, there's the biggest problem with this era: leaning too much into the show's past. When RTD first brought back Doctor Who in 2005, he was careful to not exclude those who hadn't watched the old show, with the old enemies brought back carefully. Yes, most new viewers are now aware of the basics but the whole point of RTD returning was meant to be a fresh start after the dreary Chibnall years. In The Writer's Tale, a book of his original tenure, RTD fretted that his Season 4 finale was fan fiction. Since coming back, however, he's positively reveled in it. We've had the Toymaker, Sutekh, Susan, Rani and now Omega. What about creating some new foes? That's the thing, isn't it? Omega or Sutekh mean nothing to new fans but to older fans those characters worked because of the great stories they were in (okay, maybe not Arc of Infinity). Sutekh was great because Pyramids was so great; Omega because finding out about the Time Lords was still a novelty. Bringing back old faces for the sake of it doesn't cut it.
ReplyDeleteI agree completley!
DeleteI thought it was odd RTD has apparently turned the Rani into a version of Missy, having her suddenly obsessed with the Doctor and hinting at a romantic past. I preferred the Kate O'Mara cold distain for Baker and McCoy's Doctors, one more in tune with the then contemporary audience. It was hard not to compare Rani to Missy or the Master, especially as RTD used the same tired musical number routine act that Simm and Dhawan employed in Last of the Time Lords and Power of the Doctor.
ReplyDelete