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Doctor Who S02E07: "Wish World" kicks off the season finale by answering some questions and paying off some hints, while raising even more for next week.
Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: doctor who
Doctor Who S02E07: "Wish World" Answers Questions; Goes Political
Doctor Who S02E07: "Wish World" kicks off the season finale by answering some questions and paying off some hints, while raising even more for next week.
We're at the beginning of the end of this season of Doctor Who, so yes, questions are answered, but new ones pop up. "Wish World" starts and ends with the new Rani (Archie Punjabi) setting a trap for The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) for her latest project that he couldn't see coming. The writing for the two-part finale is back in the hands of showrunner Russell T Davies, and once again, he's not afraid of marrying cautionary political satire with plot. But then Doctor Who has always done that, and this is just the latest version.
Reality has been rewritten into a 1950s-style totalitarian world of trad wives and men in pinstripe suits who work in offices. The Doctor and Belinda are living as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith and their adorable baby Poppy, the same Captain Poppy from "Space Babies". Everyone is expected to be happy and accepting of the status quo as they speak in clipped Received Pronunciation English accents. Anyone who shows any doubt about the world, anything at all, or questions authority, is seized by the police and disappears. Sound familiar? It's a combination of 2000AD -style dystopian satire, Terry Gilliams' equally dystopian Science Fiction satire Brazil, and the British dystopian video game We Happy Few.
Who created this new world of toxic masculinity and female submission? Why, Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King), the right-wing grifter who used to have a podcast, of course. who wished his perfect world into existence with the help of the Two Ranis. Conrad presides over the world on TV screens, a benevolent-looking daddy figure reading a fairytale to the world about "Doctor Who" and his former friendship with a powerful lady Time Lord who bested him. Anyone who questions him is disappeared. Only Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), one of society's outcasts, feels something's wrong, jumbled memories of her bad time with Conrad swirling in her brain, but she's part of the underclass: the poor, the physically handicapped and the imperfect people who are forgotten and invisible to Conrad and everyone else. It's a society where people live in fear and anxiety without knowing why they feel that way, including The Doctor and Belinda.
This is part one of a common Science Fiction plot where the hero is trapped in a world of the villains' making, so they dominate the story. Conrad, who was toxic, too real, and the most despicable monster to ever appear on Doctor Who back in "Lucky Day", becomes the diminished patsy he was always destined to be when he doesn't even realise it's really The Rani(s) in charge. Mrs. Flood plays second fiddle to the new Rani, whose original campy villainy is extended by Archie Punjabi, who plays up the hint of pathos introduced by Davies in the script. There are still surprises that Davies loves dropping, which means more to longtime fans than new viewers, and as the final reveals emerge, next week is the hero's fightback.
Doctor Who is streaming on Disney+ outside the UK.
Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 7: "Wish World"
8/10
Part one of the season two finale of BBC and Disney+'s Doctor Who, S02E07: "Wish World," answers many questions but raises a few more that will be answered in the finale pay-off. Still unabashedly political in its satirical commentary with a world remade into a dystopian version of an idealised 1950s world of trad wives, repressed men in suits and totalitarian disdain for anyone who questions the status quo, which is a SciFi staple. Surprises and rug-pulls continue before the final big reveals next week.
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