Spoilers for Doctor Who: “Wish World”
This latest season of Doctor Who (and the last we’ll get until 2027 if rumors are true) has been a fascinating new direction for the show. Looking at the penultimate episode “Wish World” is going to involve some significant spoilers. As always, here’s a bit of Doctor Who trivia for those who want to avoid them but still gave Houston Press the click.
This is, I believe the first episode ever where another character uses a sonic screwdriver but The Doctor himself never does. The screwdriver made its television debut in the 1968 serial “Fury From the Deep,” where it was portrayed by a simple penlight and was much less powerful than it currently is. In fact, its first use was actually as a screwdriver. Think of it as Texas’s Railroad Commision: a thing of incredible impact that is kept misnamed because so most people don’t know what to expect from it.
Onto the review.
Maybe the headline of this article is unfair, but I was seriously heading into this second season finale two-parter of the Disney Era with rock bottom expectations. While I would rank Season 1 (14, 41, whatever) as one of the best since 2005, it fumbled the end quite badly.
“Wish World” looked ready to make the same exact mistakes. Over-reliance of Classic Who villain that most fans will need a wiki to get up to speed on? Check. Trying to shoehorn in every single thing that happened in the preceding season for a cameo? Check. Yet another apocalypse that starts in London? Checkity-check.
This time, though, the formula largely works. One reason is The Rani, played by both Anita Dobson and Archie Panjabi. While Panjabi’s over-acting is sometimes a bit obnoxious, she’s clearly having a fantastic time of it. It’s a bit late in the game to start getting picky about hammy arch nemeses in this show, anyway.
What I do love is how carefully writer and showrunner Russell T Davies has crafted this new version. There are so many little hints that link her to her classic appearance. Her outfit is exactly like something you could see Kate O’Mara wearing. She did used to turn victims into other things, and even Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) ceaseless vigil as the god of Wish World hearkens back to an old experiment of hers that tried to create sleepless workers.
Also, her plan is actually character consistent. When they dragged Sutekh back into the mix last season, he seemed like a confused force of nature instead of a mastermind. The Rani has always been looking for dark science. Cracking open reality to find Omega, the creator of the foundational aspects of Time Lord technology, is exactly what she would do.
The downside is how many people probably paused their streams to ask who the heck Omega is. Briefly, Gallifreyans became Time Lords through the actions of two men: Rassilon, who developed regeneration, and Omega, who harnessed a collapsing star in permanent suspension to generate enough energy to allow time travel. Rassilon then did away with Rassilon in some manner, becoming the head of Time Lord society. There’s a lot more I could say (and did a long time ago), but that’s enough to get you through.
I like that Doctor Who mines its rich past for content, but I do wonder that it’s making the show a bit too autocannibalistic. While it’s nice that the Daleks and the Cybermen have gotten a long break, the show has been increasingly focused on the past since 2018. Multi-doctor appearances are now fairly common, as are surprise cameos. None of this is bad, per se, but sometimes I think the show is getting by on borrowed emotional moments. Yes, it is brilliant to finally see Carol Ann Ford return to the show and fire one of Doctor Who’s biggest Chekhov’s Guns, but she’s also just sandwiched in among all the other callback offerings on the buffet.
Remember when Elizabeth Sladen returned as Sarah Jane Smith in 2006? Part of the reason it was so good is that the story was about her (and gargoyles, but mostly her). Fantastic as it is to have Mel (Bonnie Langford) back, and as good as she has been in every second, she’s also just kind of there. What does all the history actually mean for The Doctor and the show in general?
The other thing that makes “Wish World” work is that it’s kept small and weird. Very weird. Watching it reminded me of some deep cuts from the audio and novel lines where Doctor Who was willing to take big risks. Radically re-imaging The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) as a tradcouple headship was a stroke of genius and jarring because of how out of character it is. Wish World feels greasy and wrong from the moment we step into it, clearly the product of some right-wing authoritarian who is more interested in bending the world to suit him than facing the fact LGBT and disabled people exist.
And here, again, Davies keeps the themes in harmony. Conrad’s entire character was built around conspiracism and an inability to face the truth. He was willing to kill the world in order to be right. As the God-king of Wish World, he still can’t accept reality. All he knows is petty vengeance and the comfort of eliminating the different.
That his cracked psyche is actually part of The Rani’s larger plan is so on the nose it borders on farce. Davies is clearly saying that our modern addiction to disinformation is making us destroy the world for the benefit of a small number of terrible people. It’s an actual message, and way better than the tepid Infinity War ripoff last season. Handing out homework for the audience is still annoying, but wedding the show’s mythology to one of our most pressing issues in 2025 is excellent.
There’s one last chance for the show to drop the ball, but so far, so good.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
