Last time we saw the Doctor and Belinda, they'd left the Interstellar Song Contest and set coordinates for Earth on May 24, 2025. The TARDIS groaned about the destination before its doors were blown off in a massive explosion.
New episode "Wish World" confirms that Belinda (Varada Sethu) has finally made it back to Earth, but it's not the home we were expecting. Instead, she wakes up next to the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), who is now her husband — and they're the proud parents of Poppy, a toddler the Doctor first met in "Space Babies".
SPOILER WARNING! Stop reading now if you're yet to watch "Doctor Who" season 2 episode 7, "Wish World".
That's not the end of the weirdness. In this '50s throwback world, the Doctor and Belinda have no memory of their previous lives, women are expected to stay home with the kids, and all doubts about the new normal must be reported to the authorities. Also, giant monster skeletons stride across the city.
This "Wish World" is the creation of the two Ranis and Conrad Clark, the podcaster/conspiracy theorist who tormented Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) in this season's fourth episode, "Lucky Day". But it turns out this strange new world is just a stepping stone in the Ranis' plan to liberate an iconic figure from ancient "Doctor Who" lore.
What is the "Unholy Trinity"?
Showrunner Russell T Davies mentioned the so-called "Unholy Trinity" in an Instagram post after last week's episode, "The Interstellar Song Contest", confirmed that Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) is, in fact, evil Gallifreyan scientist the Rani.
She subsequently bigenerated — as the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) did when the Fifteenth Doctor arrived in "The Giggle" — and introduced a new Rani (played by Archie Panjabi) just in time for this two-part finale.
The Trinity consists of the two Ranis, Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) and one other, and before you shout, "But that makes four!", Davies has taken that into consideration:
"The two Ranis count as one, cos I say so 😑" he teased. "The third is lying in wait, exactly 160 years away 🤔 The Pantheon is stirring. Old friends are helpless. And the whole of reality is in danger as we hurtle towards May 24, in the Ranis' most terrifying experiment yet."
Who is this third (or fourth) member of the Unholy Trinity?
The "160 years away" is a big clue, seeing as "Wish World"'s cold open is set in 1865 Bavaria. The new Rani takes a trip into the past to kidnap a baby, before turning his mother, father, and brothers into a pile of violets, an owl, and a flock of ducks, respectively.
The kid is important because he's the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. He also happens to be Desidirium, the god of wishes and — supposedly — the most powerful god of them all, brought into existence after the Doctor woke the Pantheon of gods.
The whole of Wish World is built on Conrad's toxic ideals, made real by Desidirium's powers and subsequently amplified by the Ranis' ingenious/devious use of Voystet-bladen technology.
Why have the Ranis gone to so much effort?
The Ranis reveal that the whole endeavour is based on their hunt for "the one who is lost". The newer Rani confirms that this enigmatic figure is Omega, a pivotal figure in the origin story of Time Lord culture.
This is sure to be a big deal in "Doctor Who" fandom, as Omega hasn't had much to do on screen in well over 40 years.
Who is Omega?
Conrad's summary explains Omega's background pretty well: "The first Time Lord. The Creator of the Time Lords. The greatest and most terrifying Time Lord of all." (Though whether Omega is actually the first Time Lord may be up for debate, seeing as Tecteun — the scientist who first incorporated the Timeless Child's ability to regenerate into Gallifreyan physiology — could surely also lay claim to the title.)
Omega was credited as the inventor of time travel, and was regarded as a hero by other Time Lords, including the Doctor. But, after being lost in a supernova explosion, he found himself trapped alone in an antimatter universe where he became increasingly bitter as the millennia passed by.
He eventually hatched a plan for another Time Lord to take his place in the void, and headhunted the Doctor(s) for this very role in the 10th anniversary multi-Doctor story "The Three Doctors" (1973). It turned out, however, that all that time living in an antimatter reality had left him without a physical form, and he only existed as a consequence of his own anger-fuelled will. He was seemingly vanquished by the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) in a matter/antimatter explosion.
But, like all good villains, Omega lived to fight another day, showing up a decade later in Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) serial "Arc of Infinity" (1983). In that story, he used the Doctor's biodata to build himself a new body, but his flesh gradually disintegrated into an unpleasant green rash. He was seemingly destroyed when the Doctor zapped him with a matter converter, but as the Doctor pointed out at the time: "Well, he seemed to die before, yet he returned to confound us all."
Since then, he's been referenced by the Hand of Omega, a powerful McGuffin in Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) serial "Remembrance of the Daleks" (1988), and had a silent, blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo alongside Tecteun and Time Lord president Rassilon in Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) episode "The Timeless Children" (2020).
Is Omega a member of the Pantheon of gods?
It remains to be seen whether Omega belongs in the same company as Maestro, Sutekh, Lux, and the rest, but he certainly has the ego for it. When he met the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) in "The Three Doctors", it didn't take him long to note that, "I should have been a god".
We do know that he's hidden in the Underverse, which could be a reference to some kind of hell or maybe even the antimatter universe. In "The Giggle", the Fourteenth Doctor said that the domain of the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) — another member of the Pantheon — can be found in a "hollow beneath the Under-Universe".
What is the importance of May 24, 2025, and Belinda?
Aside from being today? Something very, very bad is clearly going to happen to the Earth when the clock strikes midnight, but it's not entirely clear what form that will take.
Belinda's connection to the whole enterprise — and why Conrad mentioned her to the Doctor at the end of "Lucky Day" — also remains a mystery.
The "Doctor Who" season finale, "The Reality War", streams on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the US on Saturday, May 31. If you want to catch up on your Omega lore, "The Three Doctors" and "Arc of Infinity" are also available on iPlayer in the UK.
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