Doctor Who: Wish World Review - 4 Ups & 6 Downs
8. DOWN - You Get A God! And You Get A God!
Please, please, please leave The Pantheon alone.
This week, we added another god to the Pantheon of Discord – a magic giggling baby. A magic giggling baby which, as I’ll discuss more later, I would argue was not necessary for the narrative at all.
We’ve had around twenty stories in RTD2 so far, and already we’ve had five members of the Pantheon show up (Toymaker, Maestro, Sutekh, Lux and now Desidirium). That’s not even counting the Midnight Entity, who was vaguely alluded to being one, and the barber from The Story & the Engine, who had a strong connection to the gods – the way things are going, I also fully expect Omega to be the God of Time next week, too.
This is way, way too frequent. They’re treated as the ultimate power in the universe for this era, and yet the Doctor is bumping into them every other week, and each time this happens, their appearance becomes less and less notable.
The other big issue with this overuse of the Pantheon is how limiting it is from a narrative standpoint. Sure, you can change up the setting, but the bones of these stories and the beats they hit are ultimately very similar.
The Whoniverse is starting to feel like a very small place.