In “Wish World”, traps are sprung and old enemies unite as the Doctor and Belinda finally arrive home to find a very different world. Can the Doctor see the truth before midnight arrives? The story concludes in “The Reality War”… Battle rages across the skies as the Unholy Trinity unleash their deadly ambition. The Doctor, Belinda and Ruby have to risk everything in the quest to save one innocent life…
SPOILERS AHEAD
Review by Tim Robins
The two-part finale to the latest Doctor Who season started well, but concluded in a series of talky reshoots, aimed at beefing up Ncuti Gatwa’s departure in role of The Doctor. There was lots to look at, and Gatwa & Co were in good form but, in the end, it was all a bit glum.
The end of Doctor Who, Season Two (2025) has already attracted a lot of online controversy and recrimination, as news that the show is no longer in production gathers traction. I must admit, a lot of what kept me watching “The Reality War” was waiting to hear the fate of the programme because, autistically, I felt the BBC had promised to announce this after Season Two had been transmitted. Obviously, I now realise that they didn’t mean immediately after. What we got instead was a trailer for “The War Between The Land and the Sea” and newspaper coverage of Gatwa’s regeneration, or rather who he regenerated into.
I must admit, word of the halt in production has cast a shadow over my enthusiasm for the new Doctor Who episodes. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I asked the illustrator Fraser Geesin to spell out ‘axed’ on The Doctor’s fingers for my review of “Lux”. I doubt that the BBC is going to announce the end of Doctor Who production, although a simple “Doctor Who will return” would at least give fans hope.
If you are looking for anger, you’ve come to the wrong review. I’m not interested in accusatory finger-pointing at showrunner Russell T. Davies’ return to the show. Nor will blame Ncuti Gatwa’s portrayal of The Doctor. I am not shilling for the BBC or Disney+, I’m just going to give my penny’s worth on the final episodes.
Also, poring over this or that continuity point is best left to those fans who are concerned about such things. That can be fun, but I’m just not in that place anymore. If pressed on the regeneration, I’d note that The Doctor, notably as played by Colin Baker and Peter Capaldi, has taken on the appearance of characters who have appeared in the show and has even revisited past regenerations, i.e. Tom Baker as The Curator.
I was surprised with the news brought to us by The Rani, that Time Lords are sterile. That’s because The Doctor has a grand-daughter and parents. So, thanks to award-winning author Peter Anghelides for drawing my attention back to the script, which explained that this was a recent event, and that bi-generation was nature’s work-around to continue the Time Lord race. This is just one of the strands that may or may not be continued in Big Finish audio adventures or other fan fiction.
“Wish World” certainly engaged my interest. The episode opened with the familiar trope of our hero living an apparently utopian life in the London suburbs – in reality, a dystopian place at the best of times. The Rani, wonderfully played by Archie Panjabi as a swaggering dominatrix, has harnessed the Pantheon’s wish god and yoked this to the limited imagination of Conrad Clark (previously seen in “Lucky Day”, earlier on the season).
We learn in “The Reality War” that The Rani’s aim is to rerun the same day over and over again, in order to wear away reality, and open it up to an extradimensional underworld where dwells Omega, the Time Lord who invented time travel, went mad, and now wants to become nothing less than the God of Time. Yikes! If you think that’s a massive task for The Rani, it certainly was for the effects team. London falling through reality to the depths of the Underworld, was envisaged unreadably as a swarm of purple pixels.
In “Wish World”, we were immersed in The Rani’s reality bubble – a weird place in which The Doctor and Mel are neighbours and gigantic bone creatures stalk the streets, oblivious to the lives below. Worse, the population is glued to a Jackanory-style TV show in which Conrad reads the Doctor’s adventures to viewers.
Amusingly, Conrad’s collection of Doctor Who stories had self-referential titles that echoed the way Target adaptations would rename stories for example, retitling “The Silurians” as Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters. In this case, the titles included Doctor Who and the Deadly Wish, Doctor Who and the Big Bad Wolf and Doctor Who and the English Rose. It was all so “meta”!
In the alternate reality, The Doctor and Belinda were married, and The Doctor and his companion in bed together was as startling as it was intended to be. On top of that, they have a child! And, yes, it’s Captain Poppy, a welcome return of the adorable child actress, Sienna-Robyn Mavanga Phillips. How and why Captain Poppy came from the future to be in Conrad’s pocket universe and, earlier, make a guest appearance in “The Story and The Engine” is anyone’s guess. But there’s no surprise as to why the talented young actress got to reprise her role. Although, thanks to reshoots, she then went on to be central to The Doctor’s need to regenerate.
This being Doctor Who, “Wish World” had some smart social commentary, such as when Ruby (Millie Gibson), also part of this new reality, encounters UNIT’s scientific advisor, Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley), a wheelchair user who now lives in a makeshift camp with other disabled citizens, displaced because people with disabilities are beyond Conrad’s limited imagination. A timely reminder that you can write people out of reality, but they still exist.
The other downside of the reality bubble is that people are expected to inform on anyone doubting its reality. This led to Orwellian scenes of friends, family and loved ones informing on each other and security guards turning up to cart everyone away in the backs of vans. This has a new, chilling resonance since America has started “disappearing people” from its streets. From the comparative safety of Britain, I can only imagine the fear and justifiable paranoia this must create, and only hope it doesn’t happen here.
Events come together at the towering Bone Palace, a new addition to London’s skyline and “Wish World” ends with reality finally collapsing under its own weight, Omega announcing his return and an over-the-cliff-edge moment as a balcony breaks away from the Tower and The Doctor falls to certain death…
… Until he is rescued by Anita Benn (Steph de Whalley), a receptionist of The Time Hotel in the preceding Christmas Special, the woeful Steven Moffat penned “Joy to the World”. Benn has been opening the hotel’s time doors to find The Doctor, who she has a crush on. “The Reality War” had an amusing, running gag as Anita became caught up in more and more cosmic goings-on and had to remind people that she was only a member of staff in a hotel! Clearly, the hospitality industry has become a lot more challenging over time.
According to Davies, the Time Hotel was suggested by Steven Moffat as a way out for The Doctor should he ever fall from a balcony at some point – a scenario proposed by Davies. It should be noted that as far as Doctor Who goes, the concept of the Time Hotel, which allows guests to enjoy temporal vacations, was first introduced in a comic strip, “Hotel Historia”, written by Dan McDaid for Doctor Who Magazine, first published in 2008 and collected in The Crimson Hand, which includes an introduction by Russell T. Davies.
Things gather pace as Ruby gets to chat with Conrad. We learn that he became a fascist due to poor parenting (!?), to continue the show’s abysmal explanation for mysogynistic online trolling. At this point, Davies threw caution to the wind. Omega, or perhaps ‘The Beast of Omega’ (as an eagle-eyed fan noted was how the creature was referred to in the BBC’s subtitles) pops up out of the underverse, only to swallow Archie Panjabi’s Rani whole. (The Rani’s fate got a laugh from me. Sudden juxtapositions lend themselves to comedy. Mrs Flood snuck off to bi-generate again, one presumes).
I was also pleasantly surprised by an unexpected guest appearance by the Thirteenth Doctor. It is said that Gatwa himself did not know Jodie Whittaker would be returning to her role. Their exchange was poignant and a great call back to the unfairly-maligned Chibnall era. Jodie’s energetic reappearance must surely have been engineered by Davies to provide maximum fury and discomfort for “fans” who spent five years screaming “#notmydoctor” into cyberspace.
Davies loves Doctor Who. He seems to effortlessly recall the show’s past and reimagine old characters as new. He also gleefully plays with fans’ expectations. This playfulness can be confusing. I still don’t understand the character of Susan Triad (Susan Twist) who, together with the actress’s name, remained nothing more than a red herring. The only “twist” was that she had nothing to do with Susan (the Doctor’s granddaughter) nor the ‘Triad’ i.e. the Unholy Trinity of Conrad, Mrs Rani Flood or The Rani – the definitive article as it were.
I honestly thought that the past appearances of Susan (Carol Anne Ford, looking nothing like her 80-plus years) was setting up Season Three, so I was not at all surprised that her thread was not tied up in this episode. For continuity buffs, Belinda keeps Poppy safe from changes in reality by entering a “Zero Room”. This safety device was last seen in Peter Davison’s “Castrovalva”, back in 1982. The mention here did seem a bit throw-away, although Castrovalva also featured an invented reality, albeit one shaped from the mathematical mind of Adric.
In many ways, “Wish World/The Reality War” was a wish list for fans, with the proviso that you need to be careful what you wish for. Fans have long requested the return of The Rani, and this story gave us two for the price of one. There has also been a hankering for old foes. So we had Sutekh at the end of Season One, then Omega at the end of this season.
It is, therefore, really churlish to find the very same fans pulling the rug from under this by claiming such continuity references aren’t meaningful to the general public. To which I say, make your flipping minds up – do you want old enemies or not? Also, you’ve discovered the internet. iPlayer’s Whoniverse is a bridge to the past. And what’s a bridge for? Crossing! OK… the CGI Omega beast was a bit shonky on the effects front, but that’s totally in line with the climaxes of much of Disney’s superhero output.
I am sorry to see Gatwa go. The BBC’s silence on his departure has led to speculation that he was sacked or, as one commentator had it “asked to leave”. I really don’t think he was. There has been ludicrous speculation that Gatwa was dismissed because he pulled out of a guest appearance at The Eurovision Song Contest. This has to be malicious gossip, or plain ignorance of Doctor Who’s production. Seasons One and Two were filmed almost back-to-back. I understand that Gatwa’s regeneration, although added later, was recorded while Season One was being transmitted. And The Eurovision Song Contest is transmitted live, for goodness sake.
Gatwa is, at time of writing, one of only two other Doctors who I wish had stayed for more seasons. One was Jon Pertwee, the other was Matt Smith. I think Gatwa brought tremendous energy to the role and, despite the bi-generation schtick, decisively stepped out of David Tennant’s shadow.
It’s sad that some people are hiding behind the word “woke”. What they really mean, but don’t say, is that they don’t like having to watch a gay black man in the role of The Doctor. There’s a whole lack of acceptance of human rights, right now – foremost of which is the right to exist and be included and to be heard.
What I want to see is more Doctor Who, but, for the moment, production of new episodes has been stopped. I’m not going to quibble over whether this is a “hiatus hernia”, “bed rest” or cancellation. Production has stopped. A key difference between the 1980s and now is that, back then, there wasn’t much enthusiasm within the BBC for Doctor Who’s immediate return. The BBC do want the programme back on air but, I understand, they are aware of Doctor Who’s sharp decline since Moffat cast Peter Capaldi, and thereby lost the show’s young audience.
I think that the BBC see themselves as acting in Doctor Who’s interest, notably to protect the ‘brand’. The only questions that remain are when will Doctor Whoreturn, and how will it be paid for. The answers are unknown to me at this time.
I will say that Bad Wolf and Davies gave it their best shot. It missed its mark, but no one can say that they didn’t bring something new, creative and bold to the table, even if it did fall through the cracks in reality and end up looking rather broken by the fall.
But fear not, true believers! One day Doctor Who will come back. Yes it will come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no anxieties, just fact check all your beliefs, because I know I am not mistaken in mine.
Ooh, I almost forgot, drum roll, stop the presses, the new Doctor is Billie Piper! Ta da! LMAO. Well, maybe. I saw her appearance simply as RTD calling in a favour and having a bit of fun. It certainly caught the press’s attention, and I see Big Finish are already promoting their adventures of Rose and at a 25 per cent discount.
For now, I’m off, but I’ll be back, certainly before production on a new series of Doctor Who begins again.
Tim Robins
Dear reader, a review is an opinion. Other opinions are available, including yours
Doctor Who in all its many iterations is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Doctor Who – Wish World/ The Reality War and other recent stories stream on Disney+ internationally
Web Links
• The Nerdist: Easter Eggs and Doctor Who Callbacks in ‘Wish World’ by Tai Gooden
• The Guardian: ‘An audible gasp’: Doctor Who fans shocked by Billie Piper return
Actor who played Rose Tyler pops up at a pivotal time for the series as Ncuti Gatwa bows out, creating a vacancy
Influences?
• Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand
by Dan McDaid and Various Artists
The third volume of comic strips collecting the Tenth Doctor’s adventures in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, introduced by showrunner Russell T. Davies, see the famous Time Lord joins forces with his newest companion, Majenta Pryce, and embarks on his most remarkable series of adventures yet! Collecting her first appearance in “Hotel Historia”, featuring a time hotel, her return in “Thinktwice,” and then the adventures that she and the Doctor share that bring them into a terrifying encounter with the Crimson Hand, this volume concludes the Tenth Doctor’s comic strip era.
That “The Two Ranis” Gag
The first sighting of “The Two Ranis” gag came in Doctor Who Magazine Issue 175, in a strip by Steve Noble and Kev F. Sutherland… Enjoy!
- About the Author
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Doctor Who, downthetubes News, Features, Other Worlds, Reviews, Television
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