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Tag: Nu-Who

Follow the Ruby Church Road

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Review of The Church on Ruby Road
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Welcome to the Ncuti Gatwa era proper! In case you haven’t actually watched The Church on Ruby Road before reading this (admittedly unlikely), let me just start with a Content Warning for child endangerment. If “‘Rule #1: Don’t lose the baby.’ Hijinks ensue” is your jam, you’ll probably enjoy that aspect of the episode. However, if that kind of thing cranks up your anxiety (which, until I was watching, I didn’t realize it did for me), it might be nice to know going in.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

Aside from the unexpected maternal alarm the episode gave me, though, it was great fun to have a proper Christmas special again. We haven’t had one since Capaldi’s regeneration in 2017’s Twice Upon a Time—though we did have four episodes on New Year’s Day, after the twelve Christmas episodes that opened the modern era. (Anyone else feeling old now that I mention that “new” Who launched nearly nineteen years ago?)

Most of the holiday specials we’ve had over the years have been standalones neither tying off loose ends of a story nor launching a new, series-long plot arc, though there are obviously exceptions. But I think we will likely find in the long run that there is more in The Church on Ruby Road to set the stage for the upcoming series than is immediately obvious.

Perhaps highest on the list of statistically likely elements is the question of Ruby’s parentage. On first viewing, we may think that she simply won’t ever know anything about her birth mother (or at least the woman who left her at the eponymous church, who may or may not be related to her, let’s be honest). But if you go back and listen carefully to that pre-credits voiceover, you’ll hear the Doctor say that “No one ever knew her name until that night a time traveller came to call.” In other words, the Doctor knows her name.

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Sheer Glee

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Review of The Giggle
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of a Doctor Who episode feeling simultaneously so shocked and so delighted. I’m not entirely sure how he managed, it but RTD has broken everything we thought we knew about regeneration and made us love it. He has every right to feel smug about doing something unexpected.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

In case it’s not clear, I loved this episode. Probably my biggest point of contention with it is the title (which sounds ridiculous). It makes me feel almost apologetic to my readers, because I don’t think I’m going to be able to be even the slightest bit objective this time.

From the Doctor having a “team” again to the return of a Hartnell-era villain to That Plot Twist, I was an eager rider on this roller coaster. While several things settled into the back of my mind for further inspection, none of it spoiled my enjoyment.

Perhaps foremost in my mind is the presence of the Vlinx, the random alien working with UNIT. Everyone takes the Vlinx in stride—including the Doctor—and doesn’t bother to question the Zeedex that the Vlinx has provided to UNIT to combat the titular threat. Even when Kate Stewart rages against the Doctor’s alienness under the influence of “the spike,” no one bats an eyelash at the presence of the Vlinx. I can’t believe that won’t come back at some point in the upcoming series.

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Divisive Doubles

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Review of Wild Blue Yonder
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Perhaps even more than usual, the second of RTD’s three 60th Anniversary Specials polarized the audience. Fan reactions I’ve seen online seem to be either effusive in their praise or full of vitriol. Little ground appears in between.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

I can certainly see why the detractors didn’t like Wild Blue Yonder—among other things, I suspect it didn’t meet some extremely high expectations in one or another particular way. But I found it to be interesting and entertaining, with no more than the usual flaws that make me grit my teeth and plug my metaphorical ears, singing, “La la la! I can’t heeeeear yooooou!” to drown out the objections my astronomer’s brain raises (which I’ll share later anyway, so you can suffer along with me).

One of the things that I found most intriguing, enjoyable, and downright impressive, really, was the fact that with the exception of an introduction and an epilogue, the entire episode was just Tennant and Tate. Much like Capaldi demonstrated his acting chops in Heaven Sent, when he put in a frankly stunning solo performance, our two leads carry the episode between them with their fantastic chemistry and considerable skill.

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Starting Sweet, But a Bitter Finish

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Review of The Star Beast
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Going into this run of 60th Anniversary Specials, it had been a full thirteen months since the last new episode of Doctor Who aired. Such a gap is enough to whet any fan’s appetite, but add in the return of a hugely popular lead actor to the role of the Doctor, a well-regarded but hard-done-by Companion, and the first modern-era showrunner, and you have a recipe for ratings records.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2023 BBC

But was the episode really that great? As always, it’s a matter of opinion. But for my money (and yes, this time that’s literal, since I had to overcome my four-year resistance to giving The Mouse any of my money for streaming), there was a lot more in the positive column than the negative. I’m calling it a win.

The biggest element of this special is having a Tennant Doctor and Donna Noble back together. On one hand, that’s great—I adore Donna and was really crossing my fingers they’d finally do right by her after the terrible, awful, no good, very bad way they ended her time on the TARDIS. (More on that later.) On the other hand…

Okay. Time for an unscheduled (though not new) Confession: I’m one of those fans who doesn’t care for the idea of Tennant returning as the Doctor outside of a multi-Doctor scenario. To me it smacks of pandering in a way that bringing back former Companions or creatures or what-have-you does not. I suppose my reaction stems in part from the sense that fans from one of those No One Will Ever Be As Good As My Doctor camps are being appeased, such that future objections to some new “not right” Doctor will be all the louder. “They brought Tennant back; why not My Doctor?”

We don’t know yet why the Doctor’s old face has returned—that’s the story-arc mystery that will presumably be revealed before Ncuti Gatwa finally makes his entrance—so I guess we can’t answer that hypothetical future Entitled Fan’s question. And I continue to reserve judgement on Tennant’s lead actor status until I learn the in-universe reason. (I recently learned that the production reason was that Gatwa’s shooting schedule didn’t allow him to begin in time for the 60th, and so this was the stop-gap. Somehow I’m more willing to accept it all, knowing that.)

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Confession #169: I Wonder What It’s Like to Be the Doctor

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Regular readers will know that I’m something of a spoilerphobe. Try as I may, though, a few things always slip through the cracks and make their way to me. Usually these things are along the lines of casting news I’ve had preferred to have been surprised by or similar items, though occasionally a bigger spoiler leaks through.

More often than not, the details that filter down to me are not really a big deal; most people would likely consider them fair game, as they almost invariably originate from official Doctor Who publicity channels. I sigh quietly to myself that I’ve not avoided whatever little fact it is, and go on with my day. But sometimes what I stumble across actively delights me.

Case in point: this recent brief article from SFX Magazine in which once-and-future Doctor David Tennant praises the upcoming performance of Ncuti Gatwa. Reading that both gave me warm fuzzy feelings about the apparent camaraderie in the exclusive club of those cast as the Doctor and increased my own anticipation of Ncuti’s turn in the role even more (something I hadn’t realized was possible).

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The Most Important Woman in the Universe

Review of Turn Left / The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End

With this set of three episodes, we have reached the end of our Series Four journey (see what I did there?). While, if I’m being honest, I didn’t remember as many details from them as I thought I might, they are definitely, as a collective whole, the episodes that made the most lasting impression on me from this series.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

In particular, Turn Left, the nominal single episode that leads directly into two-part series finale, stands out to me as one of the best episodes of the entire RTD1 era. Although it still has some flaws, like some regrettable Asian stereotyping (and at least one Chinese character that I’m pretty sure was only half a character, but I had to stop myself from further research to confirm my suspicion after the first fifteen minutes), it is overall a brilliant piece of television.

The whole premise is another take on the butterfly effect, this time focusing on how extremely important Donna is to the universe—or, in fact, the multiverse—as a whole. By changing one tiny decision, Donna alters the fate of all reality.

Before I talk about that cascade of events, I want to mention that one of the things I’d forgotten was how much the fortuneteller got Donna to spill. Without Donna verbally guiding her to the specific inflection point that could prevent her from ever meeting the Doctor, the fortuneteller never could have implemented her plan. (And here we find another flaw: what was the fortuneteller’s motivation? Was she hired by someone? Who?)

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On Silence and Silencing

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Review of Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead / Midnight

I feel I should reiterate right off the top that I have never been a big River Song fan. From this first time we met her, when I found her foreknowledge of the Doctor off-putting rather than intriguing, through the entirety of her on-screen adventures with the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, she just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That is not least due to the fact that I have always hated the idea of the Doctor having a spouse, someone who is just so extra special to them, even more so than any of the dear friends they take along on their travels.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

But I have to say, I can see why the Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead two-parter rates so highly with so many fans—especially once the audience can share some of River’s perspective. Everything hits just a little bit differently than it did the first time.

Obviously, when these episodes first aired, it was all a clever conceit, leaning heavily on the idea of “nostalgia for the future.” What if the Good Old Days weren’t really the best ever? What if the Doctor was even more awesome in a future incarnation?

It does make for some interesting character dynamics. While the Doctor still gets to be the cleverest person in the room, he doesn’t have a monopoly on knowing best how to take charge of a dangerous situation or to problem solve, because River is there. And, of course, the fact that River recognizes Donna—but only by name—hints at a departure the effects of which we are still feeling to this day.

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Mixed Memories

Review of The Doctor’s Daughter / The Unicorn and the Wasp

There are only two episodes in this month’s segment of my Series Four re-watch, and they make for an interesting contrast. While my pre-viewing memories of one were fairly clear and complete, the other episode was much muddier in my mind than I’d realized.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

If you had asked me a few months ago, before I started thinking about Series Four again for this review series, I would have told you that The Doctor’s Daughter included the Tenth Doctor, Jenny—someone grown nearly instantly from a genetic sample from the Doctor—and Martha. I don’t think I would even have remembered that Donna is in the episode.

I can’t pinpoint exactly why Donna’s role had so thoroughly slipped my mind. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, really, because her contribution is huge. But somehow my mind fixated on Martha’s relationship with the Hath soldier instead. [Spoiler alert] The death of Peg obviously struck me hard on first viewing, because along with all the images of Jenny tumbling through a laser field and of human and Hath soldiers fighting each other for “generations,” that is probably the single biggest detail that sticks in my mind from The Doctor’s Daughter.

It’s unfortunate that a quick moment of pathos overshadowed everything else, because Donna is—as usual—f’ing brilliant here. Her big human heart helps thaw the Doctor’s, showing him some of his own prejudices and getting him to open up a little bit about the pain of his various losses. Thanks to Donna, he eventually comes to accept Jenny, just in time to lose her.

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Confession #166: I Wonder How We’re Falling Short

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Doctor Who is all about looking at things from a different perspective, about how the universe—how we—might be different if we just stood in a different place or time. As the audience, though, we’re used to being the voyeurs into someone else’s situation. What might things look like, though, if we were to step back and view our own little pocket of spacetime from the outside?

We like to think about Doctor Who as a relatively progressive show, expanding the circle of inclusivity both in front of and behind the camera. Even if there is always more to be done, it makes us proud as fans to know that Doctor Who is doing its best to push the current boundaries. It’s great to see an ever broader cross-section of humanity represented on-screen.

But how well are we really doing?

This show has always pushed boundaries, from its very first episode. Yet all of us can look back on its history and find moments that make us cringe. Sometimes it has fallen short in terms of race, sometimes in terms of gender, sometimes in terms of sexuality—or any number of other marginalizations that could really have used better treatment from the Doctor (and the production staff). Even so, and to the show’s (and the fandom’s) credit, it keeps working to improve.

Yet in how many ways that we can’t even see yet is it falling short right now? That’s the thing that really bakes my noodle (so to speak). Even assuming this is the most enlightened show on English-language television (a questionable claim), there are things that our current society thinks nothing of that will almost certainly horrify our cultural descendants.

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Friends and Families

Review of Planet of the Ood / The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

As I continue my re-watch of Series Four, I’ve reached our first two-parter. First, though, we revisit what at the time was still a quite new alien species, seen only once before (in Series Two) and glossed over as a “slave race” (so much side-eye): the Ood. At least it only took the production team two years to think better of that characterization and revisit the background of the species.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

Somehow, despite my overall poor recollections of Series Four, I seem to have retained Planet of the Ood pretty well; my pre-viewing notes seem to hit all the major points. Among the farthest-reaching of those details was “the Doctor Donna,” which, as we’ll see, comes back at the end of the series.

Although there are certainly parts of this episode that are difficult to watch, not only from a creepiness (or poorly-aged CGI) point of view, but from a humanitarian one, the fact that our heroes start off from the very beginning siding with the clearly mistreated Ood makes it bearable. And as someone who holds a lot of societal privilege myself, I have always really identified with Donna as she listens to the Ood song. It’s haunting and horrifying and she wants to do right by the Ood by listening, but she doesn’t have the fortitude to continue.

Donna (like me, like many of us) has the option to step away from the pain instead of to live it every moment like the Ood do. She can stop listening to the song, but to her credit, she doesn’t ignore what the Ood are going through. Maybe she’s not doing everything right, or taking every step she possibly can, but as she and the Doctor uncover new atrocities, she makes a concerted effort to help.

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