'Wish World' (Story Code 2.07) by Russell T Davies

“How did Conrad become god of the Earth?” - Ruby

In Bavaria, 1865, the Rani arrives at a cabin in the woods, where Otto Zufall and his wife Violet have just seen the arrival of a new member of their family. Noting that the baby is the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son, the Rani takes the child as her own, before using his power to turn his mother into violets, his six brothers into ducks and his father into an owl. The Rani has plans for the child, and wishes them a hundred-and-sixty years into the future…

In London, on 23rd May 2025, John Smith and his wife Belinda wake up to another perfect day. As John prepares for work and Belinda feeds their daughter Poppy, the image of criminal conspiracy theorist Conrad Clark appears on the television; he promises nice weather everywhere, then reads aloud the story of ‘Doctor Who and the Deadly Wish’ from a storybook. John and Belinda are excited about tomorrow’s May Day events, but are interrupted when a mug inexplicably breaks. The besuited John dons his bowler hat and opens the front door, only to be stopped by a woman called Ruby, who insists John is not who he thinks he is, someone called ‘the Doctor’. When Belinda calls the police to report this doubt, Ruby runs off, bumping into John’s neighbour, Melanie, on the way. John goes to work, unphased by the giant dinosaur-like bone creatures that stride across the city, and the Bone Palace that hangs ominously in the sky overhead. As Conrad’s story about ‘Doctor Who’ booms out from screens across the capital, Ruby follows John through the streets, obliviously walking past a wheelchair-bound woman begging. Arriving at the skyscraper offices of the United National Insurance Team, John is greeted by his stern boss, Kate, and given a mug of tea by the tea lady, Susan Triad. Sitting at his desk, John gives his colleague Christofer advice on dating Kate, then starts work, just as another mug breaks by itself… At the Smiths’ house, Belinda receives a visit from her mother, Lakshimi, and auntie Devika. Their conversation seems normal, until Belinda struggles to remember Poppy’s birth. Belinda’s doubt coincides with the slipping of her cup and saucer; before her mother can stop her, the confused Belinda runs outside and into the woods, where she screams and screams… At the UNIT tower, work stops when everyone sees a woman flying across the sky; when John wonders who she is, his colleagues look at him in horror: it seems that no wonder or doubt is allowed in this perfect world… The Rani rides her sky-bike to the Bone Palace, where she makes her way to her control room. Here Mrs Flood - the other Rani - is overseeing a team of bio-organic humanoid classiforms that monitor the increasing level of doubt in the city below. Now reduced to lackey status, Mrs Flood grudgingly carries out the Rani’s order to take a sandwich to Conrad, while he sits in a small room reading stories into a video camera. Conrad is tired from running this better world, and terrified of the Zufall baby, which lies in a nearby cot. The baby sustains the entire world, and chuckles a familiar-sounding giggle… In the control room, the Rani plugs the Doctor’s Vindicator into a giant clock mechanism; she is pleased that the device is powering up and almost primed. As Mrs Flood joins her, the Rani prepares to use the Vindicator’s temporal fix to find ‘the one who is lost’… As Conrad’s tale of ‘Doctor Who’ continues its broadcast across the city, Ruby recognises the beggar as someone she once knew, Shirley. The woman recognises her too, and takes Ruby to a shanty-town for the disabled and dispossessed, whose inhabitants share their doubts about the world in which they live. Ruby explains to Shirley and her friends that she recalls another timeline (the alternative future from ’73 Yards’), and was forced to live rough after her foster mother reported her for doubting. However, Ruby is certain of one thing, that Conrad is a monster, and she agrees to help Shirley and her friends bring him down. Having returned home, John watches Conrad’s story on his television; he also glimpses an image of a mysterious woman, unaware that she is his granddaughter, Susan. To John’s surprise the broadcast is interrupted by a handsome man - Rogue - who is contacting him from a hell dimension to give him a warning: “Tables don’t do that.” Belinda is awoken from her sleep by the sound of breaking crockery; investigating, she finds John staring at mugs as his increasing doubt causes them to slip through the kitchen table, smashing on the floor beneath. When John tells his wife about the man on TV, a concerned Belinda calls the police to report him. The authorities quickly arrive en masse and police officers drag the protesting John away. But the police officer in charge, Mrs Flood, also arrests Belinda, who has been reported by her own mother…. Ruby, Shirley and her friend Winnie arrive at the base of the UNIT Tower, where they use a ‘relic’ - a UNIT Pad - to trace Conrad’s broadcast to the Bone Palace. Meanwhile, John and Belinda are escorted into the palace by Drones, where they are forced to step over its threshold and then lead into the Rani’s control room. On seeing her old enemy, the Rani gleefully taunts him over his memory loss, and when Belinda begs to be reunited with Poppy, she spitefully remarks that she has no child. As John starts to recall Ruby, the Rani’s clock ticks to nine minutes to midnight: it is almost 24th May. The Rani locks down the building, then forces John into dancing a waltz while she recounts tales of their time together in previous lives. As John’s memories of being the Doctor begin to return, Mrs Flood explains how she and the Rani are the same Time Lord, and how the planet they are now on is a lie, a ‘Wish World’. The Rani takes John to meet Conrad, who wished the world into existence using the baby. The Rani explains that the child in Conrad’s arms is the most powerful member of the Pantheon: Desiderium, the God of Wishes. The Rani is boosting the god’s power using the Vindicator, which the Doctor used to criss-cross the universe in his efforts to get Belinda home, unaware that he was inadvertently creating a web of power that the Rani has since used to amplify the mightily god’s power and create the Wish World. Although this fake reality is unstable because of its inhabitants’ doubts, this is just another facet of the Rani’s plan to crack open the world. As the clock continues its countdown to midnight, John and the Rani rush out onto a balcony to see chunks of London collapsing into fissures. The city’s skyscrapers crumble, but the Rani assures John that the Bone Palace is safe because it is a fixed point. The Rani wants the Doctor’s doubt to become all-consuming, because his Time Lord power will be enough to rip open the structure of reality to access the ‘Underverse’ beneath, enabling her to release the first Time Lord: Omega. Hearing that name, John’s memories are finally restored - he is the Doctor once more. But this realisation comes too late, as the Rani has locked the balcony door. Back in the control room, the Rani orders her Drones to throw Belinda back across the threshold, where she fades away. The Rani then uses her sonic screwdriver to trigger explosives set around the balcony, sending it and the Doctor plummeting into the disintegrating city far below. Ruby and her friends see him fall, then cower as the crumbling UNIT Tower falls towards them... As reality breaks apart, the Doctor falls to his death, the Rani and Mrs Flood toast champagne, and the Vindicator clock reaches midnight…

Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor), Varada Sethu (Belinda Chandra), Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), Archie Panjabi (The Rani), Atilla Akinci (Otto Zufall), Leni Adams (Violett Zufall), Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps (Poppy), Jonah Hauer-King (Conrad Clark), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Bingham), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Susan Twist (Susan Triad), Alexander Devrient (Colonel Christofer Ibrahim), Nila Aalia (Lakshimi Chandra), Josephine Lloyd-Welcome (Devika Babu), Anita Dobson (Mrs Flood), Hermon Berhane (Val Balham), Sam Lawton (Winnie Petheridge), Joshua J Parker (Brian Dale), Michelle Greenridge (Carla Sunday), Angela Wynter (Cherry Sunday), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Forman), Jonathan Groff (Rogue)

Directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai

Produced by Chris May
Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins and Phil Collinson
A Bad Wolf / BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
24th May 2025 @ 6.50 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Fifteenth Doctor, Belinda, Ruby, Mel, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT

*Part one of a two-part story

*There was no next episode preview at the end of this episode

*It premiered in the UK on the BBC's iPlayer in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) at 08.00 on the morning of 24th May 2025, and was simultaneously streamed on Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland

*The episode was subsequently shown in UK cinemas on the evening of 31st May, followed by a simulcast premiere screening of 'The Reality War'