‘Doctor Who’ Recap: Please Hold for an Ungodly Amount of Exposition

Previously, on Doctor Who: Fifteen and Belinda went to Space Eurovision, and Mrs Flood bigenerated into The Rani and her sidekick ‘Mrs Flood The Also Rani’. All of this paled in comparison to the greatest evil to befall the world: ‘Dugga Doo’. Good luck getting that out of your head.

This week: Those pesky Ranis are up to something involving more Classic Who lore, some more familiar faces pop up, and the world is ending but only after a shed-load of exposition. Dugga dugga doo. Spoilers are ahead!

Fifteen and Belinda made it back to May 24th, but when we saw them arrive last week, the TARDIS door blew up. This week, they are fully in Rani Dystopia land, which looks like London but with giant ghost dinosaur skeletons everywhere. They are married, and have a daughter: Poppy the Space Baby who also paid Belinda a visit a few episodes ago. They don’t remember anything about who they really are. They live next door to Melanie who doesn’t remember anything either.

Rani Dystopia has been made possible by The Rani stealing a magic baby from the 19th century, the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. All those sevens make Magic Baby the god of wishes. The dystopia of ‘Wish World’ is Conrad’s wish, and he holds it together (poorly) with his Big Brother-style broadcasts. (Big Bag of Dicks, more like.) Magic Baby’s wish mojo has been amplified by Fifteen’s sat nav, and ah, that’s what The Ranis wanted that for. Magic Baby has the pantheon’s arpeggio laugh, which is especially creepy out of the mouth of a baby. Because Wish World came from the mind of a Bag of Dicks, it’s ableist and homophobic, and Belinda seems to be a 1950s housewife. But Conrad is at least miserable and exhausted, and perpetually babysitting a creepy Magic Baby. So that’s something.

Throughout the episode, Conrad tells a story about a guy called ‘Doctor Who’ and the legends of the Time Lords, which must be making Whovians twitch. (That’s not his name, Conrad!) But all of this is the point. When The Rani explains her plan to Fifteen later, she talks about how doubt is essential, that Wish World crumbles if people stop believing, and she wants the world to crumble because that’s how to find the One Who Was Lost.

Doubt is in good supply; Ruby is not buying any of this, presumably because there aren’t enough magic babies in the universe to make her forget how much she hates Conrad. She buddies up with Shirley from Normal World UNIT, while the rest of Normal World UNIT work for Wish World UNIT, which is an insurance company, with Susan Twist as the tea lady like she was in ‘The Devil’s Chord’. Aw, takes you back. Also making a surprise appearance is Rogue (Jonathan Groff) beaming in a cryptic warning and a message of love from the hell dimension he’s still stuck in. And Susan can be glimpsed for a moment on the TV as well. It’s another episode where everything is timey-wimey, and that is the point.

But the callbacks to last season don’t stop there; once again, the Big Bad is revealed to be a deep cut from Classic Who. The Two Ranis are trying to bring back Omega, one of the OG Bigwig Time Lords, who, like most of the Time Lords, was a jerk. Mrs Flood isn’t having the best time as Mrs Also Rani, having to wait on The Rani and Conrad. She refers to her boss as ‘the mistress’; contextually this seems to just be her way of talking about The Rani, but ooh, could there be another Time Lady lurking about the Bone Palace?

After enough Mugs of Doubt have been smashed, the world is ripe for crumbling, and The Ranis have Fifteen and Belinda brought to the Bone Palace, where The Rani talks about how she is The Rani and what her plan is for an ungodly amount of time before sending Belinda away again and shoving Fifteen out on an exploding balcony.

‘Wish World’ is exposition-heavy, which is going to happen if you are making references to foes from decades ago and want that to mean anything to New Who viewers. It also leaves a lot of work to do next week to pull everything together, and honestly, not everything can be explained by Magic Baby wishes, because the Glitch is still going strong. The Ranis may have Wibbly-Wobbly Wish World as one tier of an experiment, but there’s a bigger one in the background too, and therein lies the possible salvation. Conrad can’t have magicked up Poppy, or cast Techy Sue as the tea lady again. Susan isn’t part of Conrad’s story either; she’s trying to break in to it.

Next week: It’s time for ‘The Reality War’. Will Omega make his return? Will Susan break through and come to help? As Fifteen plummets to the ground at the end, he shouts up to The Rani, “Poppy is real; don’t you know what that means?” If Space Baby doesn’t smack Conrad in the face with a Mug of Doubt while singing Dugga Doo, I’m going to be disappointed… La la la-la-la la la laaa