When Philip, the editor of the DWC, asked me to review this episode, I said I would focus as much as possible on the positives and the things I liked: that would be the first twenty words taken care of, Philip, said I! Ha ha. Jesters do oft prove prophets.
But this review is straight from the heart, and was written immediately after I had watched Wish World, before the dust had time to settle, before I watched it a second time to see if I would revise my opinions.
What was good about the penultimate episode of Doctor Who Series 15? Well, there were excellent special effects and design. I liked the skeletal dinosaur things, the Rani’s bone palace, the Rani’s leather jacket, the 1950s suburban kitchen, The Truman Show suburbia design. I liked the shot of the Doctor – sorry, John Smith – and Belinda in bed together, the wholesome married couple, with the cute little girl. I quite liked UNIT being rethought into a 1940s insurance company. (Haven’t we had the Doctor as human before, with no memory of his previous life, in Human Nature/The Family of Blood? Isn’t a show raiding its back catalogue a sign of a show in trouble? Silence, doubter!) I liked the alternative version of Shirley. Oh, and I liked the clips and the cameo of Susan because they reminded me of a time when Doctor Who used to be good. Whoops. Silence, doubter!
There were some good ideas. If this was Conrad’s wish world, then it was Far Right world: the disabled and disadvantaged ignored, only heterosexual lifestyles allowed, no dissent from the party line permitted. Did I enjoy much else? Um… nope.
The bits I enjoyed in Wish World were mostly those bits which referenced things I liked better than this episode of Doctor Who. (Indeed, was it even an episode of Doctor Who? My wife said she thought she was watching another show entirely, and I agree with her. This was Davies Who, an entirely different show, based on a programme called Doctor Who but far, far superior.) Neighbours and family members shopping their nearest and dearest because they doubted Conrad, Conrad as Big Brother – straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Beaming, conforming citizens doing meaningless tasks – straight out of The Prisoner. The Hell Dimension – Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I like Orwell, Buffy, and The Prisoner very much. Much more than I like Davies Who.
Alas, I found my attention wandering for much of Wish World and thought it was – how shall I put it? Ah yes: boring, loud, incomprehensible drivel. I hate it that magic has now embedded itself so firmly into Doctor Who. Christopher H Bidmead once said he didn’t want to be script editor of Tom Baker’s final season because he hated the way magic had intruded into the programme. Presumably, he was thinking of the Doctor and Romana talking about using their Time Lord Superman powers – huh? – to fly down from the Eiffel Tower in City of Death; John Nathan-Turner assured him that the new season would be science fiction, not magical fantasy, and Bidmead climbed aboard. Now we have magic rooted in Doctor Who with a vengeance. You might say, aha, it’s not really magic because the pantheon of gods from beyond the universe are beings we don’t understand and they have powers that are like magic but it’s not really magic – but it looks awfully like magic to me. The teaser sequence had the Rani blow on people, turning the mother into violets and the children into ducks. Not magic? It was straight out of the Brothers Grimm. I thought Doctor Who was basically a science fiction programme? Silence, doubter! This is Davies Who, not to be confused with Doctor Who, and only his rules – the rules of Davies, god of chaos – apply.
I thought Archie Punjabi underplayed the Rani and I found myself nostalgic for Kate O’Mara’s scene-chewing melodrama. At least Kate O’Mara’s conviction and energy helped to make poor scripts watchable, but Punjabi and Dobson were just… dull. And Conrad, a disturbing and real villain in Lucky Day, was now just holding the baby and looking (like most viewers?) a bit bewildered, wondering what on Earth was going on.
Would the casual or/and new viewer know who the Rani is? You know, the casual or/and new viewer that Disney wants to hook if it is to renew the series? Davies explained in Wish World that the Rani was an evil Time Lady, and she and the Doctor had possibly been lovers (I quite liked that idea), but, as an evil female Time Lady without much characterisation, she might as well have been the Master/Missy.
Oh! And the Rani is going to destroy reality and bring back Omega! Does the casual/new viewer remember who Omega is? Come on, keep up, casual/new viewer, you should remember back to 1973 and 1982, The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity. Oh dear, oh dear. Watch the back catalogue, for heaven’s sake! Gary Gillatt wrote that, every now and then, Doctor Who reverts back to a “low energy” state, which he defines as people in Time Lord collars shouting that the Tachyon Barrier is about to collapse! The ultimate example of this, according to Gillatt and quoting Mark Gatiss, is in fact the end of an episode of Arc of Infinity, when the Doctor shouts that Omega controls the Matrix! And the casual/new viewer says, who is Omega, what it the Matrix, why does it matter that he controls it? And switches off. And so the whirligig of time brings in his revenges, and here we are, with the Rani (who?) shouting that they are going to resurrect Omega (who?).
Wish World did not tell a comprehensible story, with a beginning, middle, and end. I found that that which was supposed to be intriguing – why is the Doctor now married? Why can’t he remember his history? – went on for far too long. Who was the guy reaching out of the hell dimension to tell the Doctor that tables weren’t supposed to do that? Was he Rogue from Rogue? I can’t actually remember what Rogue looked like and didn’t recognise the actor in medium shot; nor, by this point, did I really care what was going on. (I only found out he was indeed Rogue by reading DWC later in the evening.) Ho hum. The roses outside my window distracted me while I was watching. They are very pretty at this time of year. I should tie that clematis back. Hang on, the Ranis are saying something; better tune back in to Davies Who — the Ranis might be giving us more exposition. And they were!
Wish World was all very pretty. It had lots of nice imagery and design, and pounding music to underscore the significance of everything. Bish, bash, bosh, goes Murray Gold and the orchestra! What are the characters saying? I can’t hear them but it doesn’t matter as it’s gobbledegook anyway. Maybe Davies believes spectacle – his love of big imagery and stupendous design – is sufficient to paper over the chasms in his writing and the holes in his plot, so who cares if nothing makes sense? If you don’t like Davies Who, “good luck” to you, says Davies – his code for an Anglo-Saxon salutation. All will be revealed next week and all the loose ends will be tied up, Davies chortles. I don’t believe him.
Watching Wish World this evening, I felt exactly as I did when watching the last season of Sylvester McCoy in 1989. Back in 1989, I thought Doctor Who had some interesting ideas, good designs, and entertaining set pieces – but no coherent stories and precious few engaging characters. Wish World made me feel exactly the same. Immediately after watching an episode of The Curse of Fenric in 1989, I remember turning to a friend and saying, if that’s the best you can do, you might as well cancel the show. I said exactly the same thing this evening.
Sorry. I hated Wish World. I thought it was noisy, incomprehensible rubbish. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
