Wish World

Yes, I chose that title on purpose. But if you blink during this episode you might miss an Easter egg. And this episode was chock full of them! Not to mention a lot of twists and turns, a surprise face or two.

There's a lot going on here and it can be a little difficult to follow. Even at the end I still have a lot of questions that I'm hoping have resolutions next week. If you haven't watched classic Who, a few things might be lost on you. But RTD has been bringing back a lot of the OLD days, and I am loving it. Beautiful visual effects in this episode; I loved the skeletal dinosaurs! I really don't want this season to end, but I'm very excited to see how it all comes together.

Oh boy I really hope next week sticks the landing.

Awesome episode. Really surreal mysterious Wandavision vibes that really pay off at the end. So many plot threads culminated together and so many new ones too!! I have no idea where this is going but this is defo one of the best in the series and if the finale is great then this is gonna be one of the nest two parters!

The Rani is awesome! Still got that complexity and performed masterfully. Meanwhile Ncuti, Varada and Millie give their all in performances that are very different from usual. So much awesome stuff to dissect ib this episode, all so well paced and built up. I can't wait to see where it goes!

This is the first part of what may very well be the last series of 'Doctor Who' for a while, what with low ratings and Disney not exactly rushing to renew their deal.

It mixes 'Wandavision' elements with '1984' and ends up with the sort of grand scope/stakes that we've come to expect from the show in recent times.

Unfortunately it does try to do an awful lot, and ends up being a bit too clever for its own good. I'm not going to say I understood everything that was happening, or why it was happening, and just found myself being carried along with it instead.

This episode is drenched not only in Easter Eggs and call-backs to the whole of this Disney+ era, but also messaging.

It's quite clear that Russell T Davies sees the show as a way of commenting on social issues that get his goat, and that's certainly the case here.

Overall, this first part does what it was intended to do - it makes you want to watch the second. Does it always do this in a clear way though? No.

It's clear that this new iteration of Doctor Who is far far better, complex and actually interesting than whatever was conjured up with the previous Doctor Who but I still feel that we are far to getting what we used to enjoy.

I appreciate the high levels of acting and complexity - it's something we've missed. But I just can't get over how bad the pacing has been in episodes this season. Maybe 45 minutes just isn't enough for these storylines because there's great content and complexity here, it's just not done well at all.

You get intriguing plot points that, given time to manifest, could become something great but we just jump over them before they marinate properly. This leads to plot holes, tacky acting, cheap shots and just underwhelming stuff.

It feels like there's a plot, and without meticulously delivering it, it's just thrown at the viewer in chunks because there are so many pointless scenes.

Big finale up ahead. It could be great.

My most consistent criticism of this season of "Doctor Who" has been that it's been focused on its seasons arc, at the expense of the individual episodes somewhat. So, here we land at the two-part season finale where many of these seeds begin to grow fruit.

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) or rather John Smith, wakes up with his wife Belinda (Varada Sethu) has breakfast and then heads to work at UNIT - an insurance company. The London he inhabits is a peaceful place, provided you don't come to doubt the authenticity of it. Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) is one such doubter and, having met a group of differently abled resistance fighters, led by Shirley (Ruth Madely), plots to interrupt the streaming feed of 'storyteller' Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King).

My "Doctor Who" knowledge doesn't, if I'm honest, go back that far - only really to the 2005 reboot. So, I didn't know who The Rani was when she was revealed last week. Whilst I love both Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson - I'm yet to see much to distinguish this character from The Master - who you might recall in an earlier finale, enslaved much of the planet from a base high above London. The breaking of the fourth wall remains an unanswered question though, as it doesn't seem like she's still capable of doing so. I did like the other call backs in this episode though, with Susan Triad making a reappearance alongside a small, but pivotal, cameo from Jonathan Groff's character Rogue.

Fun and dramatic as though this episode was, I can't say I totally followed exactly what The Rani's plan is. I get the end goal, I just don't understand how this alternative world, or the doubt aspect, fits into it at all.

I've said before that first halves of two-part season finale's often can flatter to deceive a bit, and that fear remains for this one, but until I've seen next weeks episode I won't know for sure.