Doctor Who season 2, episode 7 spoiler review: 'Wish World' is "an exciting and ambitious" start to the season finale, with hints of WandaVision

These are interesting times for Doctor Who. We're a week away from the season finale and, for the first time since the show came back in 2005, we have no idea what the future might bring. At the time of writing, there's been no word on if the show will continue to be made in association with Disney Plus, or when the show will return, though despite what angry YouTubers might suggest, Who remains one of the BBC's most popular shows and one of its biggest exports. One way or another, it will be back on our screens sooner rather than later.

Likewise, rumors abound that Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor may regenerate at the end of next week's 'The Reality War.' There's been no word from the BBC about that and, given that regenerations are the biggest publicity driver this show has, I remain somewhat sceptical.

Still, 'Wish World' is arriving with more than the usual amount of season finale expectation, something that's only been enhanced by the big reveals in last week's 'The Interstellar Song Contest.'

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Spoilers for 'Wish World'

That episode saw the return of both the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, and the Rani, now split in two thanks to an unexpected bi-generation.

Slightly surprisingly, 'Wish World' largely sidelines some of these elements. Susan is glimpsed only briefly here, and while we spend a lot of time with the Rani, she's not really the main focus of the episode, which instead feels like it owes a considerable debt to WandaVision.

After a brief prologue in Bavaria, 1865, we cut to London, 2025 and find the Doctor and Belinda unexpectedly waking up in bed together. The world, we soon discover, has been changed and our heroes are living out perfectly mundane lives with no sense of their true identities. It's all thanks to the combined powers of the Rani, a kidnapped god, and the wishes of Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King), Ruby Sunday's awful ex from 'Lucky Day.'

Freed from prison by the Rani at the end of that episode, Conrad is now the figurehead for a '50s-tinged, retro-futurist – and repressively heteronormative – nightmare Britain. Ruby is also here, though she's starting to clock that things are wrong with this reality even before she meets UNIT's Shirley Anne Bingham (Ruth Madeley) and becomes part of a growing resistance movement.

This is simultaneously new and familiar territory for Davies. Certainly, he has written dystopias for the show before, notably in 'Turn Left' and 'The Sound of Drums'/'The Last of the Time Lords' two-parter, which 'Wish World' bears some similarities to.

What's different here is the specificity: this is very much a "trad" timeline, one that's actively hostile to minorities, and where women have strictly regimented roles – "good little girl, good little wife, then good little mother," as Belinda's auntie puts it. It's no coincidence that the storybook that Conrad reads to the world is styled like one of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.

Davies' satirical ire is barely disguised here, but it's woven into the action of the show well enough that 'Wish World' doesn't feel like a lecture. The reinvention of UNIT as an insurance firm with a wildly over-compensating office space is genuinely amusing. And Conrad, a character I was intrigued but not wholly convinced by in 'Lucky Day,' makes much more sense here. Of course, this is the sort of grimly patriarchal world a loser like him would fantasize about.

Sturm und Drang

The other notable aspect of the episode is the two Ranis. We open the episode with Archie Panjabi's new version, who – while not exactly giving a subtle performance here – seems to have toned things down a little since last week's mid-credits sequence. She commands much of the episode, whether stealing a baby in Bavaria (a very Doctor Who scene that neatly straddles the line between deeply silly and genuinely unsettling) or soaring up to her bone palace on some sort of sci-fi moped. Panjabi adds little grace notes to her performance that nod to the character's original actor, Kate O'Mara, but feels like her own unique incarnation.

That said, on the basis of this episode, the Rani is not a million miles away from Davies' take on the Master. She dances under a disco ball while taunting the Doctor and her scheme (steal a baby, create a fake world that collapses because of doubt, somehow release an old Time Lord) is complex and slightly nonsensical. Hopefully, we'll get more of the fabled "amoral scientist" aspect of the character next week.

Mrs Flood, meanwhile, very much continues to be Mrs Flood. The two incarnations clearly do not see eye-to-eye, and the chances of the latter betraying the former seem pretty strong right now.

Where I have slight concerns about 'Wish World' is the sheer number of characters and plot threads now in play. As well as saving the Earth and defeating the two Ranis, the Doctor also has to reckon with the reintroduction of another old enemy, the "first Time Lord" Omega. Then there's the matter of Susan – surely we'll see more of her than just those few brief flashes in 'The Interstellar Song Contest'? – and the conclusions, at least for now, of both Ruby and Belinda's story arcs. All that and maybe a regeneration? It's a lot to cram into one episode, even if it is 66 minutes long.

Still, those are problems for next week. 'Wish World' is a pacey, exciting, and ambitious first half of what may turn out to be Doctor Who's biggest – and perhaps most consequential – series finale yet. Who could wish for more?

Doctor Who: 'Wish World' is out now on Disney Plus and BBC iPlayer.

Check out our exhaustive guide to Doctor Who season 2 Easter eggs here. And For more great new TV, check out our guide to the best new shows coming your way in 2025.