Wish World/The Reality War (2025) Review and why it's Russell T Davies worst script

Will Sanger
Jun 11
12 min read

Updated: Jun 26

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

The journey of getting Belinda home has been a continuous arc across Season 2 leading to a big finale storyline with the Rani and Omega. It also unfortunately brings an end to the Fifteenth Doctor era of Doctor Who, with Ncuti Gatwa departing the role. How well did they draw all the strands together? Let's delve in.

The story begins with Conrad having constructed a wish world of his fantasies aided by the two Rani’s and Desiderium: The God of Wishes. In this world the Doctor is an ordinary man called John Smith who lives with his wife Belinda and daughter Poppy and works an ordinary desk job. It’s a world of conformity where doubt lingers and those who express it are punished. The doubt is designed to bring the end of this reality and allow the re-emergence of the first Time Lord; Omega.

I love the idea of Wish World with a reality which has been created by Conrad. The idea of a right wing grifter being given the room to shape the world as they please would have terrifying results. There is an uncanny and unreal vibe to Wish World which I like. It has 1950s abnormal sensibilities to it which feel wrong. It’s a stifled world of bigotry and outdated values where everyone conforms to society's expectations of them, which is a valid idea to explore and flesh out. The failing is the fact that the political commentary feels bland. It feels incredibly shallow and superficial, with no understanding or depth to how this world actually works and functions. It feels incredibly contradictory in practice with no sense of deliberate world-building which makes the story itself feel far less believable.

There are glaring issues in Wish World which results in the story crumbling to pieces in the Reality War. The story doesn’t have time to breathe because it's having to share so much screen time with exposition and the Rani explaining the plot which becomes boring and tiresome. I understand there is setup that needs to be established but this continues needlessly and annoyingly into the Reality War and drags the story down horribly. There’s an awful lot of the story spent with characters standing around and listening to the Rani chatter away, which feels like a fundamentally poor form of storytelling and getting across vital plot information. What’s frustrating is that the story still ends up feeling very confusing with loose logic.

You’ve simply got too many plates spinning at the same time. Between the God of Wishes, Conrad’s world and the Rani’s plan to rebuild Gallifrey, the story becomes overly convoluted and difficult to keep track of how it all links together. The story would have been better by establishing a simple plot and making it big and dramatic rather than needlessly adding more ingredients to the recipe. The logic isn’t there for the audience to follow, which means the fabric of the episode falls apart.

You’ve also got Omega thrown into the mix who really didn’t need to be there, and his inclusion feels like fan baiting. He is used for recognition and nostalgia, as Russell T Davies doesn’t have anything interesting that he wants to do with Omega. At least with the Season 1 finale there was important foreshadowing, subversions and hints laid for Sutekh’s return which lead into a clever reveal moment which was masterfully put together. There is no buildup or hints towards Omega’s return at all. He is just randomly mentioned and thrown into the mix of the episode for the sake of it and it feels like an utter waste of time.

I don’t like the Rani’s plan of bringing back Omega and trying to create a new Gallifrey. It focuses on lore and backstory, which massively hinders and stifles the show. Gallifrian lore and mythology within a gripping adventure story like the Deadly Assassin or Remembrance of the Daleks can be an aid, but when used like this it drags things down. It feels like a reliance and crutch to give things an importance and makes the story feel confusing and utterly baffling. A focus on lore and backstory often drives the show on a downward path and bores and confuses the audience.

The story is centred around Poppy. A child created by memories and wishes, and the child of the Doctor and Belinda. The whole thing is reliant on your emotional investment in Poppy, and in truth I don’t care at all about Poppy as a character and therefore the story just doesn’t work for me. We haven’t spent the time for me to feel invested and care about the Doctor, Belinda and Poppy relationship. The focus on Poppy adds a sickening and forced sentimentality to the story which contaminates everything. It makes the story incredibly cheesy with forced emotion crammed down your throat.

The main villain of the story is the Rani who bi-generated at the end of the Interstellar Song Contest and is played by both Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson. The Mrs Flood story arc felt needlessly dragged out across the season and the reveal of her as the Rani felt very predictable and poorly done. The Rani was never a very interesting villain anyway, but if you are going to do something interesting with them, then they need significant attention. You need to capture their essence whilst remoulding them. Having the character bi-generate stifles this because you don’t have the time and opportunity to re-establish them. Bi-generation worked marvellously in the Giggle, but it was a mistake to use it more than once. After Mrs Flood being a mystery across two seasons, it feels disappointing for her to assume the role of a secondary villain. She basically acts as a servant to the main Rani. The way Anita Dobson plays the role also doesn’t feel anything at all like the Rani. They are a kindly old lady with villainous intent, which isn’t who the Rani is.

Archie Panjabi does a much stronger job of assuming the Rani role. She captures the essence and the feel of the performance from Kate O’Mara and has a dominating energy about her. There is a hint of the Rani’s scientific nature, but this is ultimately left as a missed opportunity. The grandness of the Rani’s scheme makes her much more villainous than she should be. The Rani is meant to be an amoral character but debatably villainous and the shades of grey are missing in this interpretation. This also becomes an issue in the plot of the Time and the Rani. The higher the stakes, the more the Rani becomes indistinguishable from the Master, which is why the character seems to be better suited to low stakes and more simplistic stories. Ultimately the overt campiness and evil of Archie Panjabi’s performance undermines the main idea of the Rani as a villain. It's not out of character from the Kate O’Mara incarnation but it comes up against the same issues. The story isn’t able to challenge the villain in a refreshing way because of the amount of stuff the Rani is sharing the story with.

You have the return of Conrad Clark played by Jonah Hauer-King who was a very engaging villain in Lucky Day. Here the character feels very bland and generic. You don’t get the same sense of motivation that you had in Lucky Day. The conspiracy theories angle of the character seems to have disappeared entirely. As soon as his reality disappears and Omega crops up, he feels totally pointless to the story and is sidelined to one room for the whole story. He never feels like he has a place in the two-parter.

The God of Wishes is an odd component of the story. They feel like a contrivance which is shoved in for the sake of theming and to allow the story to happen. They are what allows Conrad’s reality to manifest, but there is a superfluous and questionable logic to their existence. The use of gods was a different direction at the start of this era, and I loved what Russell T Davies did with the Toymaker and Maestro who put the Doctor on the back-foot. As things have gone on, the gods have become more contaminated with predictable tropes and more driven into the ground. The God of Wishes is the personification of this with a character that feels stale, pointless, and derivative.

I’ve been waiting for Omega to return since I was 11 years old. He is a villain and Time Lord rival with incredible potential. The Shakespearian performance from Steven Thorne, the tragedy of the character, relatability and unhinged insanity made them an incredible villain worthy of a finale storyline. The Time Lord that harnessed the power of time travel is one worthy of revisiting, but they are just here for nostalgia here. Their backstory feels very at odds and contradictory from the Omega we get in the Three Doctors. Omega is treated here as an insane Time Lord who was cast out. In the Three Doctors, they were instrumental in establishing the Time Lords in who they were but were sacrificed to an antimatter universe and became insane and vengeful as a result. The two versions don’t line up and this version of Omega feels far less sympathetic and gripping. You’ve also got the fact that Omega is turned into a massive CGI monster. He isn’t handled as badly as Sutekh was, but it feels baffling why they went in this direction given how legendary the original design of Omega is. Omega wanting to feed on Time Lords feels out of character and doesn’t fit with the Shakespearian and tragic villain who had been wronged. The fact that he is shunned and defeated in minutes is also an incredible waste of him as a menace.

Let's move onto Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor. In Wish World, Ncuti Gatwa plays the role of John Smith. There is a heightened performance but vulnerability to Ncuti Gatwa as John Smith, which is different to the Doctor. The issue is that his performance doesn’t get the chance to develop . You don’t get the chance to flesh out John Smith as a character, and Ncuti Gatwa isn’t given the opportunity to show the variety of him as an actor. David Tennant as John Smith in Human Nature/The Family of Blood and Patrick Troughton as Salamander in the Enemy of the World show the brilliance of their craft and talent. David Tennant and Patrick Troughton approached John Smith and Salamander as different characters altogether in their characteristics, motivations and physicality. You don’t see that with Ncuti Gatwa as John Smith because he isn’t given the time to manifest himself in the role or given the meat of a character to play, which is disappointing.

When Ncuti Gatwa steps back into the role of the Doctor, you see his charisma and energy in full force. His showmanship, playfulness, and lively energy are eye-catching; he can easily and intelligently take control of any situation, always prepared. Ncuti Gatwa’s emotional range is shown prominently in his last performance as the character. The Doctor sacrificing themselves to save a single life is very in character, but my lack of care for Poppy hinders the emotion. Ncuti Gatwa was totally squandered in this episode and got a very anticlimactic and rushed ending. It's disappointing to see him leave the role so soon when he had much more to give to it. You could see they were just delving into exploring the darkness and danger of the character and to see an ending forced at the end of this season feels bitterly frustrating. A lot of it is a product of circumstances. You’ve got a clunky and forced ending which is just shoved towards the end of an already very poor episode. His Doctor feels shortchanged and the story incomplete. The fact that the Doctor never even got a proper goodbye with Ruby is poor form. The story tries to use forced emotion to send Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor out, but it can’t disguise the unfortunate circumstances. Ncuti Gatwa brings a lovely performance but when he hasn’t even faced a Dalek, his Doctor feels incomplete and wasted.

Surprisingly Jodie Whittaker returns as the Doctor in a short scene leading into Ncuti Gatwa’s regeneration and I was kind of flummoxed at the point of her being there. I think Jodie Whittaker slid back into the character like she had never been away, and it was a nice scene. However, it feels like she is there for recognition, and I would rather Ncuti Gatwa have been able to go out on his own without another Doctor undermining him.

Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu, has been a key highlight of this season with her relatable character and engaging journey back home. Unfortunately she ends up being turned into a completely different character and ruined at the very end of her journey.

Obviously, Wish World was going to offer a different kind of character for Varada Sethu to play, which I don’t have a problem with. However, even when reality is restored, she becomes utterly defined by her nature as a mother and protectiveness over Poppy. She spends a good chunk of the last episode sidelined and stuck inside a box which is a pathetic use of her. Seeing her character have a child forced on her and become tied to her character feels wrong. Belinda has been a very independent force across the season, and this feels contradictory to her. It feels wrong in the same way Leela’s romance with Andred felt wrong for her in the Invasion of Time.

You have the return of Ruby Sunday played by Millie Gibson, who is probably the highlight of the story. Seeing her difficulty with the reality around her and knowing something is wrong and her sense of emotional struggle felt right for her character and very believable considering what happened in 73 Yards. I just wish this had been further developed, as it never gets proper attention. Her conflict with Conrad shows her compassion and care as a character. She uses her understanding as a way to challenge him, which shows her strong qualities. Millie Gibson’s acting when Poppy disappears also has a wonderful sense of tragedy and emotion, with motivation and gumption.

It was lovely to see the return of Anita played by Steph de Whalley who was my favourite part of Joy to the World. Seeing her play a key part in rescuing the Doctor through the Time Hotel was a surprising and rewarding resolution to the cliff-hanger. After that point, the episode failed to utilise her effectively, mostly relegating her to holding a door open, a wasted opportunity.

You do have a UNIT team lead by Kate Stewart played by Jemma Redgrave, who is a forceful authority figure. That being said, at the end of this era, I can’t help reflect on how little has come of this UNIT team. A lot of them feel purely functional. Considering how Rose was established in the 60th Anniversary Specials her role since has been expository and I’m not sure why Susan Triad is even there? I was very excited to see what role Melanie Bush would have coming back to Doctor Who considering what Russell T Davies did for Sarah Jane as a companion. Bonnie Langford has been wonderful, but the writing really hasn’t made use of Mel. This story in some ways functions as a summation and culmination of the past two seasons. It just can’t have the same impact that the Stolen Earth/Journey’s End did because the characters that came together in that story were given room to grow and evolve individually and it was rewarding to see the whole universe that had been built drawn together. This finale doesn’t give you that same feeling because the characters feel underdeveloped and shallow.

The story is directed by Alex Pillai who previously directed Joy to the World. The strong point of the episode is the immersive and dramatic visuals. There is a large scale and epic feel to the story which Alex Pillai immerses you within. The shots of the Rani riding through the forest, and the swift feeling of UNIT’s battle against the Bone Beasts, create a sense of action and high stakes. However, I think the directing of the story is overall very poor. There is a blandness to the shape of the story. The simplicity and predictable way the story is shot makes the story far less interesting to watch than it should be and not very engaging. The way the characters are staged is incredibly poor. The way they just stand around as characters exposit dialogue is made to feel very unnatural with not a lot of urgency in things. The laid back and detached direction is partly to blame for the lack of stakes.

So, overall, how do I feel about Wish World/The Reality War? I think it’s a terrible story and the worst of the Fifteenth Doctor era. It has some solid ideas with the Wish World created by Conrad, but it doesn’t invest in those ideas, and you have so many plates spinning that everything collapses. There is a lack of foreshadowing and buildup with endless exposition and dull and boring lore, which drags the story down badly. It all hinges on your care for Poppy, which is an aspect which does not work at all and in the end you just have sickening and forced emotion and sentimentality. Tacking a regeneration onto the end of an already bad story just results in a poor end to an era.