Last week, Doctor Who hit us with the surprise return of The Rani (Archie Penjabi, The Good Wife) and blew the doors off of the TARDIS when The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa, Sex Education) and Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu, Andor) attempted to return to Belinda’s original 2025 timeline. This week, we found team TARDIS locked into a fantasy trap straight out of WandaVision, heteronormative nuclear-family fantasy. While they’ve lost their memories, and believe they are a married human couple with a child, they are still serving in another set of mid-century-inspired costumes. This has been a polarizing season at times, but whether or not Doctor Who continues its Disney+ era, the costume team will be walking away with some stunning new looks for their portfolios.
If The Rani’s domestic fantasy isn’t strange enough on its own, we find ourselves looking at a London cityscape dominated by massive, roaming inter-dimensional fossils and a downright demented bone palace floating overhead. If these set pieces can’t communicate the suspended reality of this wish world, we quickly discover a gimmick in which glasses fall and shatter whenever residents of the dream world start to formulate doubts about their dreamy existence. At one point, we encounter legacy companion Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford, EastEnders) filling a curbside trash disposal bin lined with nothing but these broken glasses.
Ultimately, we discover that this weirdly regressive fantasy has sprung from the mind of hateful toxic “disruptor” Conrad Clark (Jonathan Hauer-King, The Little Mermaid) who was last seen manipulating former companion Ruby Sundy (Millie Gibson, Coronation Street) in Lucky Day. On the bright side, we learn that he hasn’t really taken over the world on the strength of his ideology, but as a conduit for the powers of the most powerful Pantheon God of them all: Desiderium, the god of wishes. We learn (once again) that it was The Doctor who awakened these vengeful gods by invoking superstition at the edge of the universe. We also learn that his rival, The Rani, saw this awakening as an opportunity to channel unthinkable power toward her vision of rebuilding the Time Lords. In fact, it turns out that she has been tracking The Doctor and Belinda throughout season two in order to swipe the “Vindicator” device they have been charging, to further fuel the powers of her captive god of wishes.
After hanging with fourth-wall-breaking cameos from Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson, EastEnders) for the last two years, Whovians figured her reveal as The Rani last week was the main trick the show had up its sleeve. This week, we find out that there are even more players on the board. In a moment of pure joy for showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies, we hear The Rani deliver five solid minutes of exposition which is justified as a strategy to amp up The Doctor’s doubts about the wish world into a wave of Time-Lord-level doubt that will shatter the very fabric of reality to reveal an even bigger threat: Omega, the original Time Lord. Classic Whovians will remember this villain as a disembodied destructive force that lost its original physical form while expanding its mental powers within the context of an alternate dimension. Last time, it took the first three incarnations of The Doctor to defeat this fallen Time Lord — so our current Doctor has his work cut out for him (especially when you consider that we last saw him tumbling off the edge of the bone palace into a quickly dematerializing void).
Of course, it’s not all about the big new threat. The Rani gets to have some fun before she throws The Doctor overboard. In fact, she kicks off the episode by kidnapping an infant Desiderium from nineteenth century Bavaria and transforming his family into flowers, ducks, and an owl using the fairy tale power of wishing. It’s a bold and heartless vibe for this loose cannon, mad scientist of a Time Lord. Later, she gets to fly through the sky on an air scooter with all the majesty of the Wicked Witch of the West and inspire wonder in the minds of the wish world populace.
Even with this wild fun from The Rani, the biggest threats in the episode aren’t the ones with names, they are threats from the unknown. In addition to the season two storyline, the episode poked and prodded at a whole lot of intrigue from season one of Doctor Who on Disney+ as well. It seems clear at this point that the finale is promising to be an absolute minefield of lore.
First and foremost, Ruby Sunday is officially back at the center of the action. While most of the populace is under the spell of Conrad and the God of Wishes, Ruby seems to have a healthy resistance to this magic. Not only does she seem to have memories of The Doctor, but she even flashes back to the alternate timeline she lived out back in Season 1’s 73 Yards, a plotline shrouded in mystery that could be poised to play a huge role in disarming the current threat. We aren’t quite sure why Ruby’s resistance is so intense, but we do get some clever insight into why UNIT agent Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley, The Rook) is able to rise above the fantasy. It turns out that fueling your wish machine with the dreams of an alpha-male wannabe has some built-in holes. Conrad’s world view does not take any interest in certain folks, like people with disabilities, so they have more space and freedom to question the fantasy.
When Ruby and Shirely team up, it feels like a little piece of reality, UNIT, is back in business. Hopefully they can reclaim their buddies next week, because Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave, The Beekeeper) spent the episode running an insurance agency like she was the head of a 1984 ministry, and her hunky agent, Colonel Cristofer Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient, Ted Lasso), spent the episode fawning over her like a schoolboy…and of course, playing out Conrad’s homophobia when The Doctor calls him a “beautiful” man. While it’s rough to see Kate’s boy-toy playing out a backward fantasy, it does set the stage for a surprise message from The Doctor’s time-hopping flame Rogue (Jonathan Groff, Frozen 2); he is broadcasting from the hell dimension he was banished to last season, and uses that message to to tease out The Doctor’s doubt from underneath the weight of the fantasy and overpower the ignorant homophobia that Conrad built into the wish world.
Ruby and Rogue aren’t the only hints that next week’s finale is likely to lean on two (or more) seasons of lore. Not only do The Doctor and Belinda’s alternate identities within the wish world believe that they are a married couple, but they also believe they have a daughter named Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) who is a character we’ve seen before. Back in Space Babies, Poppy was named Captain Poppy; a lab-generated baby with a highly-advanced brain. Poppy also appeared briefly in Belinda’s vision in The Story and the Engine; The Doctor explained this away as a story leaking out The Barber’s machine, but it’s starting to look like something much larger is at work.
One popular theory pushes us all the way back to the Chibnall era and the Thirteenth Doctor’s Timeless Child storyline. In this plot from the pre-Disney+ era, we learn that The Doctor was the progenitor of the entire Time Lord race. According to the story, a Shobogan scientist named Tecteun harnessed the power of regeneration from a mysterious child who dropped from a wormhole, and that child became The Doctor. How does that tie back to this week’s episode? Well, not only would Tecteun have been a contemporary of our new big bad, Omega, but as The Doctor tumbles from the bone palace, he insists that his wish world daughter, Poppy, is real and that she is his child.
This claim is broad and cryptic, but it is possible that the ship of babies we encountered back in Season 1 was an attempt at crafting Time Lord babies. The Rani does have a track record of genetic experimentation and research, so it’s possible that the genetics of The Doctor could have been baked into that batch of space babies. Some folks have gone so far as to wonder whether or not Poppy could prove to be the Timeless Child herself. Whether or not the finale pays off the Timeless Child lore, we shouldn’t forget that we saw The Doctor experience flashes of his granddaughter Susan Foreman last week, or that Susan was also a hot topic of conversation back during his adventures with Ruby in season one, so perhaps he is simply on a collision course with the history of his origins from the original series.
It’s also entirely possible that Doctor Who is just being cheeky and the “daughter” claim will turn out to be a misdirect — a simple reference to the fact that he took responsibility for Poppy back at the start of season one when she was desperate for a parent. Honestly, last season explained away the recurring image of a mysterious cloaked figure pointing with eerie and dramatic flair as a desperate young mother choosing a name for her abandoned child by pointing at a street sign, so Whovians should never forget to temper their expectations and hold their theories loosely.
In any case, we approach the finale amidst question marks about the future of the series. Rumors that Doctor Who’s time on Disney+ is coming to end abound, and while it’s not likely that the BBC will can the entire series, a shift from Disney+ would likely leave us with a bit of a lull before the next iteration of The Doctor comes to light.
Whether we close the loop on a massive, 60-year mystery or simply confirm that The Doctor’s heart is more powerful than his rage, hopefully Whovians will be able to gather together for an exciting finale. There are plenty of reasons to believe we could see a regeneration (or another bigeneration) before the end of the season, but as long as humanity sits front and center, ahead of spectacle and lore, Ncuti Gatwa will have a perfect runway to do his thing and give us a finale to remember as the Fifteenth Doctor.
We’ll see you next week for ‘The Reality War!’
