Doctor Who - Wish World review

 

Arriving amidst a barrage of negative news stories which have now spread from online griping to traditional media `Wish World` could be the penultimate episode of this iteration of Doctor Who. In various order the show will be cancelled, Disney will not fund any more, Ncuti Gatwa has left / been sacked/ is too woke and the show could be on hiatus for a year / three years/ indefinitely. Some or none of this may be true. Which is kind of an appropriate backdrop for this episode.

 

It feels as if some people commenting on the series are actually not even watching it but going from received opinion that has roped it in with so many other aspects of life deemed as wrong because they are “woke. I think this season has been very good so far, like I said last week, the best for about eight years since Peter Capaldi’s last season. Each episode has had much to recommend it, not always perfect but enough to cross the line and `Wish World` easily makes it seven hits out of seven so far.

 One of the more outright sci-fi episodes the series has ever done it conjures up the same sort of atmosphere as the likes of The Truman Show or Pleasantville in which an apparently normal suburbia is not as it seems. The closest antecedent is WandaVision and I’m guessing that may have inspired some of this material. Throwing the audience straight into the concoction without a compass is a clever way to frame this story though the clue is in the title. The whole production is presented like a fairytale from the opening sequence with the Rani in the woods, through the stories Conrad is telling and the `palace` that the `evil Queen` inhabits.

I’ve mentioned before that some of this season’s stories would benefit from a longer running time and this is proof of that. The tale unfolds at a leisurely pace with several key things becoming apparent. We are in some alternative world, a sort of pastel hued retro version of London, an aesthetic that has fed into several episodes this season. It’s a world where Conrad Clark reads tales of Doctor Who (how the purists will hate it every time he refers to him in that name) and doubt is not allowed. When someone has doubts a mug breaks- early on we see that the average house has a cupboard full of identical mugs. The Doctor is John Smith living with his wife Belinda and their child Poppy, the same child from last year’s `Space Babies` though somewhat less talkative than before.  John works for UNIT though it’s now an insurance company- The Unified National Insurance Team! He sports  a pinstripe suit and bowler hat, another strong visual image from another time. I did wonder why someone like either the Rani or Conrad would hark back to that decade for imagery though I suppose they did throw bone dinosaurs in as well. What was their purpose btw?

Storywise we’re roughly in the same ballpark as `The Sound of Drums` with the evil Time Lord- in this case the two Ranis – looking down on the world from above and unleashing something deadly. The difference this time is that the Rani is deliberately using the Doctor’s doubt to help fuel her quest, whereas The Master was unwittingly defeated by the Doctor’s power building through mental power over a year. Both ideas are bonkers in a way but I think this one holds together somewhat better. 

It’s a plot that unfurls at a pace which allows us to understand it and when the exposition comes, as it always does, at least it’s not muffled under orchestral incidental music. Someone has taken real care with this episode’s sound mix, pushing the choral anthems back just enough to allow dialogue to be distinct. Doctor Who is not the only offender these days, a lot of shows like to reach a crescendo of incidental music but here everything is layered just right. 

Visually, this episode’s bone palace is much more interesting than that massive UNIT aircraft carrier. It reminds me of something from a Tim Burton movie. It’s a really different look to so many enemy’s lairs over the years and seems to be constructed solely of bones. The repurposed UNIT control room, now an old-fashioned office with wooden furniture and lots of paper is fun.  Below dinosaur skeletons trample about though it seems they are projections. And helping the Rani are very weird looking creatures which seem to be attached by ink to their desks- Seekers I think they were called-  this was like something from the cover of a old pulp science fiction book.

 Holding this world together is a God baby that gurgles and giggles (apparently the same giggle as the Toymaker people are saying ) and looks like any other baby. Its conduit is Conrad and it’s here we get to witness Jonah Hauer King’s versatility. This Conrad is somewhat different to both versions we met in `Lucky Day`; he seems almost like a child as he reads his stories and spreads optimism and sunny vibes to all the citizens. The scene he has with Mrs Flood is excellent as the strain Conrad is in shows though just a little. It’s good to see Anita Dobson getting more substantial lines than previously too even if the antagonist’s lair does seem a little over generously populated.

The Rani’s history is not too overdone – there are brief flashes of Kate O’Mara- but its largely left to Archie Panjabi to establish a little less camp though still flamboyant version with less manic behaviour than The Master.  The cold open which sees her casually despatching a whole family just to nick a baby is very her by the way and also very fairytale in aspect.  If we imagine mad ideas are only the province of the modern series, this is a character who once planted landmines that turned people into trees. Yet she is a tad more sophisticated than The Master; when she puts music on, it’s a waltz not techno pop. Her on screen banter with Mrs Flood is amusing too; I wanted there to be a scene where they went for a coffee of something! Perhaps the only issue with the Rani’s exposition sequence is that most of it comes before the Doctor remembers who he really is so the shock value is kind of undermined a little. Plus it did make you wonder why she didn’t just use the Vindicator herself but then villains never take the easiest route.

Ruby’s presence in the story is similar to what the Doctor’s would usually be, sewing seeds of doubt, meeting the city’s forgotten people who live on the streets. The latter element of the script is somewhat heavy handed in that they are all disabled in some way but I see the point. If the script sometimes has characters remember each other somewhat randomly, it does play into the Rani’s overall plan. Ruth Madeley finally gets some more substantial material here.

For Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu there is an opportunity to do something different to their regular portrayals and they do so immaculately. Playing husband and wife, starting to have doubts and then totally confused when the Rani has them whisked up to the bone palace, they are both excellent. Ncuti Gatwa shows the Doctor’s occasional memories with wild eyed fervour  especially when he realises what is happening with the breaking mugs. Varada Sethu gets to act what might be the most unchained moment any companion has had as Belinda runs into the woods and screams in pure frustration. The script waits till the last opportunity to have the Doctor remember by which time he’s in a perilous situation stuck on a balcony as the city collapses. You have to keep reminding yourself, this isn’t really London.

It's not entirely clear how the Doctor’s story as read out to everyone by Conrad has any effect – is it there to sew doubt or prevent it? The Rani’s ultimate goal is to resurrect Omega, another character from the past like Sutekh that only diehard fans are liable to remember. I’d have preferred this to have been a new character, the God of Chaos or something, but the build-up bodes well and so far, there is no ridiculous giant animal to represent the first Time Lord engineer.  Theoretically Omega has no real physical form so I suppose he could look like anything. We know RTD’s style enough by now to realise next week’s episode will be wholly different in tone and it certainly has a lot of unanswered questions. Whether people like the answers or not is another matter.