New Doctor Who Season 2 First Impressions: Episode 7 (Wish World)

Once again, we find ourselves haunted by those two little words: Temporal flux...

It's an easy enough term to reintroduce. Temporal flux is that specific state that extends out, in this case, from May 24th to May 31st of 2025. The week-long gap between part 1 and part 2 of a Doctor Who finale, in which we only have half a story to ruminate on. The gap in which opinions and takes are fully up in the air, uncertainty hailing in this madcap realm where anything could happen in the back half to change your mind on things. It is a hellish place to be in, especially when done poorly. In recent memory, there was Chibnall's Ascension Of The Cybermen and last year's The Legend Of Ruby Sunday, both episodes feeling to me like 45 minutes of wheel spinning, of keeping things Just So until a cliffhanger Big Reveal, of being glorified teaser trailers for the Next Exciting Episode. Wish World threatens to be that again, and has been critiqued as such by some. The Rani's (oh god, I do have to talk about her at some point in this, huh?) scheme of making Doctor Who doubt this false reality so that it cracks like an egg and lets her see down into the void where Omega lurks? Why did she do it at 40 minutes in and not minute 1? Why don't the characters have more agency in setting themselves free from the delusion of this fake world? I am somewhat sympathetic to these concerns and readings of the episode... but I'm not going to bash Wish World on those terms. No, let's take a different approach. Let's unflatten our way of thinking from the mode of narrative contrivance critique, and look at Wish World with a different eye. Yes, Wish World is part 1 of 2 and setting up some dominoes for The Reality War... but it is not sitting in place for all of that time. It's doing some shit I found interesting, so let's talk about that instead.

Alright, fine, as an appetizer before the main course, I'll talk about the goddamn Rani. She's far from my favorite Doctor Who villain, her 80's appearances being pretty fucking mid (though I have a soft spot for Time And The Rani as a last dying gasp of that particular Colin Baker era aesthetic), and here she has... Well, an interesting dynamic. Her interactions with the Mrs. Flood Rani are something, a seething disdain that does call to mind Kate O'Mara, as well as her gloating to the Doctor while she's expositing her evil scheme in the process of enacting it. Then there's that cold open, where she is just straight up a witch casting hexes on people in really fucked up ways. We expected the Rani, the science one, to be against the more magical elements of this era, but here she is using them for her own mad scheme, altering reality itself to suit her twisted design. Archie Panjabi fucking nails it, it must be said, and I am interested to see how things go... but it's hardly the most interesting part of the show for me. Yes, we have a baddie Time Lady. Yes, we're apparently breathlessly bringing back A DOCTOR WHO BADDIE FROM THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES like we did last season with Sutekh. I am kicking that can down into the temporal flux vortex for later. I don't give a shit right now. In fact I hope it's a red herring and she doesn't find dumbass Omega down there. The coolest part of Omega was that booming voice and Stephen Thorne is dead now, so my care levels are low. Let's talk about the baddie who did give me a lot to think about in this episode. Let's talk about that shithead Conrad Clark again.

Wish World's primary focus is on a fucked-up timeline, and it luxuriates in that uncomfy vision of the world in almost lurid detail. This is the world that Conrad Clark, absolute shit that he is, wishes for, and it is a conservative hellworld nightmare. Traditional family values, the white picket fence suburban ideal of the nuclear family, and all subversive elements like queerness or disability either hiding within the cracks of the world, outright erased, or downright frowned upon. It is a fresh hell, simultaneously horrific to look at and a fascinating glimpse into the gearworks of someone like Conrad. It's an antiquated way of looking at the world, one that Conrad's contemporaries in the real world wish media would reflect as they continue to howl about Disney Star Wars having a fucking woman be good at using a lightsaber, all while raking in their grifter bucks. A fossilized view of modern society, literalized by all the fucking dinosaur-like skeletons stomping about. I have to reach a bit here, but that's only because of how Lucky Day approached things. Rather than tie Conrad to any real specific conservative trad movement, that episode decided his biggest sin was not respecting the Brigadier enough. Or something, Look, I'm not here to kick Pete McTighe around again, so let's talk further about the full implications of Conrad's stupid fucking wish for the world.

Poor old Ruby Sunday is one again made an outcast, her family ready to turn her over to the Doubt Police (which, do they even really exist in this world, or are they just a means to bring Doctor Who up to the Rani when she's ready to do her plan? You decide.) and placed back into that same lonely abandoned role she was in during 73 Yards. Her life probably should have been worse than this, and I don't mean that as a slam against Ruby: I mean it as one against Conrad. He should have been a petty little shit enough to want to hurt Ruby more, and if you give a piece of shit like that the power to reshape the world, I fully believe he would have wished for worse things to happen to Ruby. He's just that fucking mean, and I bet that "Go to hell" at the end of Lucky Day made him seethe. I'll show her. I'll fucking show her what hell is. Nobody tells off Conrad Clark, protagonist of reality, especially not a fucking woman. Go full tilt with things! Show how absolutely fucking nasty this world is for anyone who doesn't fit Conrad's definition of The Way Things Should Be. Yes, you have Ibrahim reacting with revulsion to the Doctor calling him beautiful, you have both Carla Sunday and Belinda calling the fucking Doubt Police on their loved ones without hesitation,  you have (and credit due to my podcast pal Rain for this) Shirley on the streets begging for money, exactly like the benefit scammer Conrad accuses her of being in Lucky Day, and it's all very fucking sicknasty. It could go further. You can arguably read that it does go further.

There are no trans people in Wish World. Down in those slums where Ruby and Shirley talk, there are no trans people. They missed a trick by not having someone like Rose Noble be among the forgotten and downtrodden, but there are several ways to explain this. Yasmin Finney may not have been available. Fair. The focus in the slums is more on the physically disabled; the blind, the deaf, those who require wheelchairs. Also fair! Not every episode of Doctor Who has a trans person in it. True! All of these are sensible answers to why a trans person does not appear in this portion of the episode. There is one other horrible possibility, however. Conrad has merely forgotten the physically disabled. 

He could have been thinking of trans people when he made his wish.

Think about it. Really ponder on the sickening fucking implications of it. Conrad's perfect world, a world designed to shatter from its contradictions, is already so heteronormative that even calling a man beautiful is met with scorn. Now he has the chance to make things Just The Way He Likes It... and there are no trans people to be seen. Not just forgotten. Erased. Yes, this is all conjecture and headcanon on my part... but am I really that far off with my logic here? Look at the world Conrad has made, the type of man Conrad is, and you tell me he wouldn't think like that. For fuck's sakes, his magic Doctor Who storybook is deliberately modeled after the Harry Potter book covers, and we know goddamn well what the author of those thinks of trans people. Sicknasty. There's no other word for it but that portmanteau. Absolutely fucking sicknasty. 

And it was made to be broken. The Rani's whole scheme hinges on this so-called conservative utopia being so hollow to the core that doubt will destroy it. This is not a strong vision for the world. It's a fragile little boy reading children's stories on TV and pretending to be a big strong man who's going to save us from all the queers and the wheelchair ladies stealing your tax dollars (WHICH HE DOESN'T EVEN PAY THE GODDAMN FUCKING TAX EVADER). So it shatters into pieces with the doubt of Doctor Who. In doing so, it shatters reality in half and threatens to subsume us all, the shitty grifter going down with the ship. There has been critique over the Doctor and Belinda not being more proactive in breaking free of the lie, and if you really want to be unfair? "The Doctor is reactive and just sits there while the baddie Time Lord exposits to them" is The Timeless Children again. But, Gatwa has been far more active than Whittaker's Doctor was, so once is less of a sin. The point is thus: Believing in this grifter horseshit will not save you. One shred of doubt, and it all comes crumbling down. Conservative values will not save you. The Doubt Police will not save you. The Rani will not save you.

Believe in those disenfranchised people who remain unseen between the cracks of society. I fully believe Ruby and Shirley will be instrumental next time. I hope they are the ones to stop Conrad, the marginalized he so fears revealing the weakness at the heart of him and taking him down, for good this time. No matter what cosmic lore shit happens with the Rani and Omega, that is what I believe in. I reject and doubt the world of Conrad's wish. I choose to focus on those he does not focus on.

I choose to open my eyes, and see. Next time: The finale.