This review contains spoilers for season 2, episode 7 of Doctor Who, “Wish World.”
For long-time Doctor Who fans, the return of a villain like The Rani might sound like an event. It certainly felt like one last week, when she turned up with theatrical flair in the mid-credits sting of “The Interstellar Song Contest” – a neat surprise, powered by Archie Panjabi’s steely presence and a dash of proper mystery. But in this week’s “Wish World”? That spark dies on arrival. Her comeback is just another awkward throwback in an episode that doesn’t know how to handle its past, let alone make the present feel like it matters.
“Wish World” represents the worst instincts of Doctor Who’s Disney era dialled up: glossy, confused, and screaming for attention. It’s a limp cocktail of shameless lore dumping, shallow storytelling, and a truly baffling sense of self-satisfaction. It spends a tiresome 45 minutes of build-up to just point at old names like a magician revealing a bent spoon, hoping the gesture alone is enough to amaze.
The Rani’s return should feel seismic. It’s been 38 years since the evil Time Lord made her last onscreen appearance – 32 if you count her face-off against all the then-living Doctors and the cast of EastEnders in a charity special. That’s a long time, and in theory, this ought to carry the same weight as The Master crashing back into things in 2007’s “Utopia”. That twist didn’t just rely on nostalgia; it weaponised it, using it to amplify character and raise the stakes. Instead, now, we get a Rani written like a stock villain with a backstory cribbed from a half-read wiki page. There’s no sense of danger, no theatrical flair, no mystique. Just a few arch lines, a plot that barely scans, and a breadcrumb trail to yet another dusty Time Lord pulled from the show’s attic: Omega. It’s a name that’ll light up a handful of Reddit threads, sure, but it lands with a shrug for the vast majority who haven’t been revisiting “The Three Doctors” on BritBox. Which is, to be clear, mostly everyone.
What’s baffling isn’t just the lack of payoff, it’s how proudly this outing squanders every opportunity to deliver one. “Wish World” relies entirely on prior recognition, but never lifts a finger to earn that investment in the here and now. It’s obsessed with nods, references, and several meandering mystery boxes, but utterly uninterested in what any of it means. This is fan service at its most vacant, a frustrating mess that treats characters like mere collectibles that get pulled from a shelf when you’re having a fancy dinner party. It’s not quite the sludgy CG necromancy of The Flash, but it’s cut from the same cloth: a hollow echo chamber of reveals with no buildup, and a premise that promises tension but fizzles into a joyless trudge through stiff dialogue and characters who feel barely sketched in. Conrad pops up again with all the charisma of a queue at the post office, Ruby is inexplicably present but does almost nothing, and even Belinda, usually a bright spot, is reduced to exposition and reaction shots. The whole plot moves like it’s dragging a piano through quicksand, slowly collapsing under the weight of its pointless name-dropping bore fest of script.
With only one episode left, the finale now has to perform miracles: justify this mess, tie the threads together, and inject meaning where there’s currently none. Doctor Who used to remix its past into something alive, urgent, and new; here, it just gawks at its own reflection, hoping a few barely recognisable names will do all the heavy lifting. Once upon a time, Russell T Davies brought heart and clarity to a show left for dead, reviving it with enough energy and emotional force to make it essential playground currency across Britain. Now, it feels like he’s coasting. This isn’t Doctor Who with something to say, it’s a desperate exposition dump, stitched together from scraps of nostalgia and noise. Worst of all, it expects that to be enough.
