Doctor Who: Wish World – season two episode seven recap

In a season filled with tales about tales and affected by fourth-wall breaks, this used to be a Doctor Who episode distilled right into a fairytale, with Archie Panjabi delighting in taking part in up the depraved Rani cartoon and Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor diminished to a passive, then persecuted, bystander.

It used to be unusual seeing the Doctor and Belinda (Varada Sethu) as a happy married couple, WandaVision taste, taking part in the type of dull day by day life that Matt Smith’s Doctor confirmed in The Power of Three is not possible for him to reside, with out getting stressed.

Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) seemed to be retaining the sector in combination and taunting our heroes together with his mock CBeebies Bedtime Stories display, however it appeared to be taking it out of him. Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood/“a” Rani used to be excellent price as ever. Was {that a} trace of warfare on her face about the entire plan when she used to be comforting Conrad?

Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday endured to turn out that she is healthier fitted to main this display by way of episodes the place the Doctor isn’t in point of fact being the Doctor than being on board the Tardis itself, even though her creation to the underworld of unnoticed and dispossessed other people with disabilities did sluggish the tempo of the episode.

Then there have been Jonathan Groff, Ruth Madeley and Bonnie Langford within the combine too. And a run-through of earlier Doctor’s faces that sidestepped the place precisely Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor suits in via slotting her in between 13 and 14, the place we all know she undoubtedly doesn’t belong.

The Giggle reared its head, too, this time creepily voiced via the stolen child. It has been a endured presence this yr. Mr Ring-a-Ding did the Stooky Bill chuckle, and its waveform gave the impression in regards to the Harmony area ultimate week. What can all of it imply?

Sum it up in a single sentence?

What if Doctor Who did WandaVision, however with added large bone dinosaurs?

Life aboard the Tardis

This used to be extra about existence aboard the redressed Unit set, which additionally housed a lot of the motion in ultimate yr’s two-part finale. It used to be reassuring to peer that during no matter timeline we’re in Col Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) has the hots for his boss, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave). We will see extra of that pair in impending spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea.

Fear issue

Much as he did in 2008’s Turn Left and in his drama Years and Years, Russell T Davies explored right here a imaginative and prescient of recent Britain that had grew to become extra authoritarian. The script will have serious about “doubt” being the concept crimes dedicated, however it used to be transparent that Davies used to be drawing parallels with regimes the place you’ll be able to be dragged out of your house and disappeared for being homosexual, for being political, for being other, on your circle of relatives being suspicious of you. It used to be extra chilling than any of the science fiction within the episode, and a well timed caution.

Mysteries and questions

It is tricky to understand the place to start. Everything used to be a thriller, in an episode that used to be just about all set-up and no payoff. We don’t know what the bone monsters are. We don’t know the place Belinda has disappeared to. We don’t know why Poppy is there.

More than anything else, we don’t know why they billed this period as a comfortable reboot the place other people may soar on with the purpose of attracting a brand new more youthful target market, after which stuffed it filled with issues that first gave the impression in episodes within the 1970s and 80s and feature slightly been referenced since. Baffling. Fun every now and then, however baffling.

Deeper into the vortex

• We first encountered the Doctor’s alias of John Smith in Patrick Troughton’s 1968 journey The Wheel in Space.

• Omega, a Gallifreyan sun engineer, made his debut within the 10th anniversary romp The Three Doctors, and cropped up once more 10 years later all the way through the Peter Davison generation in 1983’s Arc of Infinity.

• The Gallifreyan Seal, infrequently referred to as the Seal of Rassilon, first gave the impression on Gallifrey all the way through 1976 Tom Baker tale The Deadly Assassin. However, the prop used to be recycled via dressmaker Roger Murray-Leach, having prior to now been noticed in 1975’s Revenge of the Cybermen as a symbol of the Vogans. They aren’t to be at a loss for words with the Vogons and their horrible poetry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

• Turning other people into animals is also a fairytale trope, however the first transformation Frau Rani brought about in Bavaria, turning the mummy into violets, echoed her ways in 1985’s The Mark of the Rani. Kate O’Mara’s incarnation of the Time Lady had landmines that grew to become other people into timber after they stood on them.

• Dugga Doo, from ultimate week’s Interstellar Song Contest, has transform one of these cult hit that the BBC has produced a full-length model of the tune with out the discussion excessive of it, and on Wednesday introduced a 24/7 YouTube livestream with the earworm on a relentless loop.

Next time

It’s the season finale. The BBC has stated there shall be no previews for reporters, and no early morning iPlayer drop, so everyone will get to observe The Reality War at precisely the similar time on BBC One, iPlayer, Disney+ the world over, and in cinemas in the United Kingdom.