An Hour of Who a Day

October 11: "Lucky Day"

A year after seeing the Doctor defeat some kind of monster in an abandoned store, Conrad Clark has finally found someone who knows him: a woman named Ruby Sunday...

In some ways this is the dark flip-side of "Love & Monsters". That episode, you may recall, involved an ordinary man whose life got caught up with the Doctor's, and who found friends and happiness because of it. This time around, we're introduced to Conrad Clark, a young boy who first encounters the Doctor in 2007 and then spends a great deal of time trying to find him and to find more information about him. But unlike Elton, Conrad doesn't want to meet the Doctor to learn about him or to tell him the impact he had on him; instead, Conrad appears to be jealous of the Doctor and wants to drag him and his friends through the mud.

That seems to be the overarching theme, at least, but "Lucky Day" lulls the viewer into a false sense of security. It starts as we follow Conrad from that first meeting to him spying on the Doctor and Ruby while they take care of something called the Shreek (in an adventure set right after "The Devil's Chord", it seems) in an abandoned store. It initially seems like Conrad is genuinely interested in the Doctor and his life, and so he invites Ruby onto his podcast, "Lucky Day with Conrad Clark", to talk a bit about the Doctor and about UNIT. (This is actually the one place where things don't quite make sense. Has Conrad been faking this persona to everyone in the world? It doesn't seem like it's a brand-new podcast, given how many followers he has when the twist happens, so that's the best explanation for why Ruby (and the people at UNIT we see listening along) didn't sense anything amiss with Conrad. Which seems like a lot of work and a pretty involved con to pull, but Conrad does seem driven and bitter enough for this to be plausible, just about.) Ruby seems very charmed by this attractive, earnest man, and Conrad seems sweet and charming through the first half of the episode, getting closer to Ruby and eventually entering into a relationship with her. So far so good, and it seems like the episode is going to turn into a standard Doctor Who story by the halfway point, with the seeming return of the Shreek to hunt Conrad (see, he got tagged with their spoor when he saw the Doctor and Ruby) and the Doctor not being around this time to help.

It also serves as an interesting look into the PTSD a companion may experience after leaving the Doctor. We've gotten hints of this before, with Sarah Jane's confrontation of the Doctor back in "School Reunion", or the conversations between Tegan and Ace and their respective holographic Doctors in "The Power of the Doctor", but this is the first time that an episode seems to really tackle this head-on. "Do you think, maybe, with everything you've been through..." Kate Stewart asks Ruby. "That I'm paranoid?" Ruby finishes. "That you're on alert all the time," Kate replies. "Trust me, I know what that's like." And then later, when she's talking to Conrad, Ruby confesses that "I think I'm in shock. Like... PTSD? Because what happened last year was just not normal. I mean, I fought gods. Like, actual gods. And I was eaten by a double bass and kidnapped by goblins. I dangled on a rope ladder above London. And I watched the world turn to dust. And it's just like... every day is, like, fight or flight, and I'm just waiting for something to go wrong." This feels like it's going to be a character study of a companion post-Doctor, and not just how they readjust to ordinary life but also but how travelling with the Doctor may lead to unprocessed traumas.

So it's consequently quite a surprise when the episode performs its rug-pull: Conrad reveals that all the monsters and strange power surges that have been following him and Ruby aren't because of the Shreek, but because he and his friends have been staging an alien attack, in order to draw out UNIT and "expose" them to the public. Jonah Hauer-King does a really good job with this heel turn as Conrad. He's just as believable as an angry, conniving activist as he was as a caring boyfriend, and rather than feel like there's tonal whiplash happening you really hate what Conrad has done to Ruby -- so full credit to Hauer-King for pulling this off. Because yes, Conrad reveals that he's part of an organization called Think Tank (which is the same name as the group of scientists run by fascists in the Tom Baker story Robot -- and don't think that writer and Who fan Pete McTighe (officially credited as a writer again for the first time since 2020's "Praxeus") didn't know that), which argues that there's no such thing as aliens or monsters and that it's all a front for Kate Stewart's secret agenda. So we get lots of moments that feel rather familiar in this day and age, with Conrad and company loudly proclaiming how UNIT is trying to keep people afraid (interesting to see how Trinity Wells apparently went right-wing after leaving AMNN, and that her appearance in "The Giggle" wasn't as far off her normal programming as it may have seemed). It seems Conrad has a grudge against UNIT (Kate turned him down eight years earlier, deeming him untrustworthy), but he's used his charisma to loudly proclaim conspiracies and get people to turn against UNIT along with him. Again, this feels rather familiar these days. McTighe and the rest of the production team are making the point that some will prey on other people's fears to turn it to their own advantage: indeed, at the end of this episode, the Doctor shows up and utters a speech that feels like McTighe talking directly to the audience:

You see, I am fighting a battle on behalf of everyday people, who just want to get through their day, and feel safe, and warm, and fed. And then along comes this... noise. All day long, this relentless noise. Cowards like you, weaponising lies, taking people's insecurity and fear and making it currency. You are exhausting. You stamp on the truth, choke our bandwidth and shred our patience. Because the only strategy you have is to wear us down.
(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Lucky Day)

The other interesting thing about this moment at the end is how angry the Doctor is. We've seen flashes of anger from the 15th Doctor before (perhaps most notably in "Joy to the World", although there it was to break the hold of the briefcase on Joy), but here the Doctor really lays into Conrad. Gatwa does a great job of playing this, making it still seem like part of his Doctor, even as he's being cruel to Conrad: "You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison until your heart packs in at age 49, alone and unloved. Forgotten. The world carries on, the world gets better. You aren't even a footnote, just ashes on the wind." The 15th Doctor, it seems, is a Doctor who feels every emotion strongly, not just sadness and joy.

The Shreek prepares to feast on Conrad. ("Lucky Day") ©BBC

I'm getting slightly ahead of myself here though. Conrad is turning the entire country against UNIT, doxxing its employees and causing a culture of fear. This is Doctor Who though, so we know that monsters are real, so all it takes is to convince Conrad of that. He's really taking this far though, breaking into UNIT (and shooting someone on his side, albeit accidentally) so he can demand that UNIT "confess". This is the probably the darkest we've seen Kate get -- particularly when Conrad calls her father (the Brigadier, if you've forgotten) a coward. That's why she's willing to unleash an entity she knows is deadly against Conrad, just to demonstrate how wrong he is. It's interesting how Conrad begs for his life when confronted by the Shreek and then immediately goes back to his old ways after Ruby tases it, as if to try and recover some of his bravado. Must have been a surprise for him when the Shreek suddenly woke up and bit his arm off then. But so UNIT gets back into the public's good graces (since Conrad was live-streaming the whole thing) and Conrad goes to prison, where the aforementioned confrontation with the Doctor happens. (This is also the moment where Conrad name-drops Belinda, presumably leading to the events in "The Robot Revolution".) But it seems Conrad's story isn't quite done yet: Mrs Flood appears to have plans for him...

"Lucky Day", then, is a very well-crafted episode, with an examination of the darker side of humanity and chance encounters with the Doctor. I hesitate to say I like it, just because of how uncomfortable it is to watch, to see Ruby gaslit so completely and to see Conrad trying to drag UNIT down to his own level, in the mud. But it's certainly another strong episode, and I can easily admire the care that's gone into it. If things keep up, series 15 will be one to remember and treasure indeed.

(Oh, and shout out to the YouTube channel Bramble & Stars, who've done some truly wonderful covers of the incidental music for series 15. You should definitely have a listen!)

October 10: "The Well"

Still trying to triangulate 2025 Earth, the Doctor and Belinda arrive on a planet in the far distant future -- a planet that the Doctor has visited before...

So here's my basic question. They've created this tense, suspenseful episode with some kind of thing that kills people when they see it, and people can only see it when they're behind the person the thing is hiding behind, which means we get lots of slow movement and building dread as people slowly circle the possessed (for lack of a better word) person. It's dramatic, it's spooky, and because everyone is playing this deadly straight, it's very compelling. They pretty much have a winner on their hands here with "The Well". So then what's the point of tying this into an episode from 13 years earlier? What purpose does that serve?

Because really, other than a creepy monster and the same planet (we're told, not that it looks anything like it did), this episode doesn't really share that much with "Midnight". And the creepy monster here doesn't even act the same as the one in "Midnight". In that episode, as you'll recall, the entity took over Sky's body and was mimicking everything the Doctor said, keeping him powerless. There was nothing about mirrors, or things behind your back, or whispering in your ear like we get here. Yes, OK, sure, it's been 400,000 years, that's plenty of time for the creature to have evolved. But it still begs the question, why? What do you gain from tying these two together, other than maybe having the Doctor already know the creature is malicious? It almost feels like the production crew weren't confident that this episode would stand on its own, so they wanted to tie it back to a well-regarded 10th Doctor episode, just to be safe. But if that truly was the case (and this wasn't just something like a draft artifact, where an earlier version had the creature be far more similar to the version we saw in "Midnight"), then they should have had more belief in the episode they were making. Because "The Well" is a real winner.

It starts up straight on from "Lux", with the Doctor plotting a new course for the Vindicator and another quick wardrobe change to have them appropriately dressed for the far future. This sequence brims with a sense of fun -- which is good, because after the cold open, there's not going to be any more fun moments in "The Well". Instead we get a pervading sense of tension as the Doctor and Belinda join a platoon investigating a colony that went silent, only to find that almost everyone is dead. They do a great job of building the suspense throughout this first sequence, culminating in the discovery of Aliss, the ship's cook, who's the only one left alive. (Possibly because she's deaf? The Doctor suggests this might be the reason, as she can't hear the whisper of the thing that drove the others mad, but it could just be so that the creature has a host left alive.) There are some great scenes between Aliss and the Doctor, and it's really wonderful how the Doctor just knows British Sign Language; that feels right and proper.

The Doctor and company prepare to save Aliss. ("The Well") ©BBC

But it's really after the Doctor leaves, and Belinda (and the audience, if they're paying very close attention) sees a flash of something peeking behind Aliss, that things really start to ramp up. We get lots of paranoia and tension as Belinda and the remaining troopers start questioning whether they can actually see anything behind her. (Oh, and look, it's Doctor Who monster actor Paul Kasey as the creature (officially credited as "It Has No Name"), back on the show for the first time since 2020.) Then we get all sorts of scared and nervous acting, along with the one soldier who's trigger-happy and basically declares a mutiny. (And it seems like kind of a bad idea to have a procedure for replacing the senior officer if only two people decide to go along with it -- that seems like a disaster just waiting to happen.) The deaths themselves, frankly, aren't anything spectacular -- it's just people flying around, apparently dead -- but because the episode has done such a great job building up the atmosphere, the deaths feel more meaningful and scary. Plus I do like the way Cassio (the aforementioned hothead) starts panicking and moving back and forth, thus inadvertently getting other people killed as Aliss keeps turning to face him.

I also like how the Doctor's clever plan for getting out of the base (create a reflection so that the creature ends up seeing itself and turning its power against it) only works for a moment, before they're stuck with the creature once again -- and making Belinda the host in this case feels dangerous, rather than "oh well of course she'll get out of it". This whole sequence ends with Belinda actually getting shot, while the leader of the platoon, Shaya, gets to sacrifice herself to save the others by jumping down the well that the creature came up out of. It's all just really well done. (And then there's the suggestion at the very end that Shaya's sacrifice may have been in vain, and that the creature may have escaped the planet after all... Bleak and entirely in keeping with the tone of the episode.)

So really, if "The Well" suffers at all, it's because it goes out of its way to invite comparison with "Midnight", a story that it simply can't match -- but then few other episodes of Doctor Who can. "The Well" is a very strong episode in a run of strong episodes.

(Mrs. Flood sighting: here she's the superior officer at the end asking if the Doctor had the Vindicator with him, complete with a photo of it from the last episode. So it does indeed look like there are time travel shenanigans at work...)

October 9: "Lux"

Trying to find a way back to 24 May 2025, the Doctor and Belinda stop in 1952 Miami -- where they encounter a closed-down cinema harbouring a dangerous secret...

The second episode of last series involved the Doctor and Ruby encountering one of the Pantheon, Maestro. This time around, we get another member: the titular Lux, god of light. What is it with second episodes and the Pantheon?

It must be said though, that, from a visual standpoint, this episode is a real tour de force. The sets look fabulous, with a bit of a heightened realism effect happening in the main Miami set, all clean and neon and glistening with wet, while the diner and the theater both look just as a great. But the real star of the show is Lux himself: Mr Ring-a-Ding the cartoon looks absolutely gorgeous, and they do a great job of integrating him into the picture, with eyelines generally lined up properly and nice use of shadows and such. I also love how there's some subtle film noise flickering through him even when he's left the silver screen. They've also really nailed that "bouncy" elastic feel of early cartoons. It's really well done, and that's before we even get to the mad middle third of the episode, with the Doctor and Belinda converted into Scooby-Doo-esque cartoons themselves.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. The episode starts with the TARDIS traveling to Miami so that the Doctor can use his newly-created Vortex Indicator (or Vindicator for short) to triangulate 2025 Earth and basically force the TARDIS to land there. The fact that they've landed in 1952 means the Doctor and Belinda get an excuse to dress up ("this is the fun bit, honey," the Doctor tells Belinda), with both of them looking absolutely stunning their clothes: the Doctor in a nice blue suit and Belinda in a fun yellow poodle skirt. Of course, being the first completely non-white TARDIS team means that, since we're in 1952 Miami, the Doctor and Belinda do have to deal with racism, as segregation is the still the law of the land in the United States. It's a bit odd; the script brings it up and devotes a couple lines to it, but they don't make a big deal of it, as if they wanted to have an adventure in 1950s America but not deal with the consequences. Granted, they'd already tackled this more directly in "Rosa", but it still seems slightly insincere; the Doctor and Belinda are lucky to have encountered people who were so open-minded, with the only person making a fuss being the false reality they get put into by Lux. But since this isn't the focus of this story, and, as I said, they'd covered similar ground before, we can perhaps forgive them this.

The Doctor and Belinda meet Mr Ring-a-Ding. ("Lux") ©BBC

Because the focus of this episode really is Lux Imperator, taking the form of Mr. Ring-a-Ding, who's voiced to perfection by Alan Cumming. Cumming really nails the cadence and accent, both when he's just a cartoon and when he's revealed himself as one of the Pantheon and thus can be more "evil", for lack of a better word. He comes across as properly sinister but with a madcap undertone. In this way he's quite similar to his "brother" the Toymaker as seen in "The Giggle". There's also a similar vibe with that episode, in that Lux appears to really enjoy toying with the Doctor, turning him into the aforementioned Scooby-Doo cartoon (nice touch with the animation on that, by the way, with it being like those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, instead of similar in style to Mr Ring-a-Ding) and then trapping him in various fictional worlds. The part with the racism is handled reasonably well, and you do get a sense, through Belinda's eyes, of how unjust segregation could be, but it's the part after that that gets a little too meta. I'm not completely sure what point Russell T Davies is trying to make with the Doctor Who fans, Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn. Like, I understand the meta-ness of the Doctor appearing to be fictional to these three (complete with tons of DVD and Blu-rays in the background), but I'm not sure why he has them go out of their way to say others find them annoying. Despite a bit of effort at some depth (and a rather wonderful send-up of "Blink"), it feels like Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn are generally designed to be the outdated conception of Doctor Who fans -- Hassan is literally wearing a UNIT anorak -- rather than a broader, more expansive idea that anyone can be a fan of the show. I dunno; it just feels weird for the person who brought the show back in 2005 and demonstrated that it could be for anyone would now have a more insular view. I'm sure I'm reading too much into this, and it's not a huge part of the episode. It just feels slightly off, that's all.

The climax of this episode works reasonably well, though -- better, I would argue, than the defeat of Maestro in "The Devil's Chord". I like the idea of Lux using the Doctor's bigenerative energy to turn himself into a (quite horrifying-looking) real three-dimensional being, and the idea of Lux receiving so much light from the sun, and subsequently all the stars in the universe, that he expands into nothingness is well done. (Although what's up with the weird bit about the Doctor using some leftover bigenerative energy to heal himself? That sounds like either they didn't want to deal with putting make-up on his hand for later scenes or they felt they needed to remind people that the Doctor can change into someone else before Lux started pulling that energy out of him. Either way, it feels tacked-on.) It's more satisfying than "The Devil's Chord" in that regard, and the smaller stakes (a roomful of people in a cinema, rather than the entire world) make this feel a bit more believable.

So in the end, "Lux" is another strong episode for this series, with some truly outstanding effects and performances. It's more experimental than "The Robot Revolution", but it still hits the mark. If things continue in this vein then we're in for a strong series indeed.

(Oh, and look: there's Mrs Flood again at the end, in 1950s America. Now there really is a mystery going on: can she travel in time? Or is she just very long-lived? We'll have to keep watching to find out...)

October 8: "The Robot Revolution"

A nurse is kidnapped by robots from another planet who want her to be their queen, only to discover that there's a rebellion going on when she arrives, and that this may all be her fault...

So here we are, four months after "Joy to the World", with the official start of series 15 (or season two, as they keep insisting on calling it), and it has to be said: this is a much stronger series opener than last year's "Space Babies" was. That episode spent a lot of time awkwardly explaining the basic conceits of the series and involved a rather lightweight plot. This one, by contrast, effectively sets up who the Doctor is and how he can be wonderful and dangerous, and it does it in the midst of a much higher-stakes conflict.

Although the Doctor shows up a little bit at the start, apparently looking for someone, the main focus of the beginning is Belinda Chandra, a nurse who once got a star named after her by one of those star-naming companies thanks to an old boyfriend. We see that she's competent but overworked, and so just about the last thing she needs is a spaceship landing in the back garden of the house she shares with roommates (and which is very clearly a redress of the Noble house from the 60th specials), with giant robots coming along to take her back to a planet named after her. See, somehow the robots have gotten their hands on a future version of the star certificate with Belinda's name on it and have come to make her their queen (for some never-clearly-explained reason). The design of the robots is great, looking all shiny and clunky, and I like the way their "faces" change to display emotions. There's a nice retrofuturism look to them that translates to the rest of what we see of Missbelindachandra One.

Belinda arrives on Missbelindachandra One. ("The Robot Revolution")
©BBC

But yes, it's off to the planet named after her, despite her protests (and despite the presence of Mrs. Flood again, who's next door to Belinda now for some reason), and despite a time fracture causing things to go all wonky. And this is where the Doctor really enters the story. It's something of an interesting conceit, having the Doctor following Belinda but arriving six months earlier due to the time fracture -- and the fact that his hair is longer than it was when we first saw him in his fetching kilt outfit is a nice touch. This means he's already ensconced among the rebels, who've been fighting the robots for the last ten years, and is ready to rescue Belinda when she arrives (since, as he says at one point, "he told me your name, like you were important", so the Doctor was looking for her -- we'll pick this piece of foreshadowing up again in "Lucky Day"). But in many ways, it's Varada Sethu, playing Belinda, who steals the show here. She portrays Belinda as strong and fierce, but with a side of compassion to keep us from finding her too abrasive. Plus, she has some great line readings: "I'm saying no," after she learns she's going to be turned into some form of cyborg and married to the AI Generator, is delivered in a wonderfully matter-of-fact way, for example. Or the absolutely glorious send-up of one of the modern show's catchphrases:

DOCTOR: It's not a copy. It is the exact same diploma. Look. It's older, obviously, because it's been here longer, but it's got the same exact tear, do you see?
BELINDA: Just like mine.
DOCTOR: Ah ha. It's the same object twice.
BELINDA: Do you mean it's literally the same diploma, like in a time-travel way?
DOCTOR: Timey-wimey.
BELINDA: Timey-wimey?
DOCTOR: Yup.
BELINDA: Am I six?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Robot Revolution)

Sethu shines as Belinda, and the way she keeps insisting on fighting her own battles -- even to the point of summoning the robots back to capture her and stop the fighting, in order to end the bloodshed -- makes her a good match for the Doctor, in a way we haven't really seen from a companion in quite a while. Plus I really like the way she's not particularly interested in traveling with the Doctor. She would much rather go home, thank you very much, then deal with this sort of madness on a regular basis. That's something we haven't seen since Tegan back in the 1980s, really (unless you want to count Donna's first appearance in "The Runaway Bride"), and it's a rather refreshing change.

Mind you, Belinda's desire to just go home doesn't come out of nowhere. She witnesses the death of Sasha 55 at the hands of the robots, and it's made very clear that the Doctor was planning on taking her along in the TARDIS before she died. It's a good moment that highlights how dangerous the Doctor's lifestyle can be, and that, combined with the way the hunky rebel, Manny, blames everything on her, goes a long way in justifying Belinda's decision to turn herself over. It's not fun to be kidnapped, told you're going to be forcibly converted and married, watch people die for you, and then having people blame you for all the deaths while you still have no idea what's going on or why this is happening. So even though we, as Doctor Who viewers, may think Belinda's making a big mistake in summoning the robots, it's not hard to see her point of view on this. Plus it shows that she's willing to take responsibility for things.

This decision leads to the big reveal: the AI Generator isn't actually an AI, but a person named Alan Budd (so it's actually the AL Generator, even though no one calls him Al) who once dated Belinda and who bought her the star certificate in the first place. She had demanded that the robots go get him instead of her while she was being kidnapped, and it seemed they obliged: only, due to the time fracture, they arrived ten years earlier and brought Alan back to Missbelindachandra One a decade before they left. Alan isn't a particularly nice guy: the scene we see with him at the beginning has him state, "The thing is, Belinda, I look up at the night sky, and it is so beautiful, and I think, 'How can I capture this?'" (in addition to a crack about women being mad at maths), demonstrating that his worldview is much more self-centered and avaricious than Belinda's. Reinforcing this is the way we learn that Belinda ended the relationship because Alan was being emotionally abusive, always putting her down and trying to control her. And so when the robots come to capture him, he treats everything as a game, ordering the robots to kill someone because it's fun without considering the effect this has on actual people's lives. "Planet of the incels," Belinda breathes, upon learning everything Alan has done on Missbelindachandra One. (It's around this point where the plot threatens to collapse on itself, since it seems like the robots only captured Alan because Belinda told them too, but she was being transported because Alan ordered her capture. Yes, it's the second bootstrap paradox in as many episodes, although "The Robot Revolution" doesn't lampshade it in the way "Joy to the World" did.) It's only due to some technobabble that things are resolved, as the Doctor absorbs a time explosion caused by two versions of the star certificate making contact. Alan is thrown back into time to before he was made part of the machine and so the world is saved without any major subsequent damage. (Incidentally, is this explosion what caused the time fracture in the first place? Things really are getting bootstrappy around here...) Then it's just time for some clean-up, with a quick half-explanation of why Belinda looks like Munday Flynn, the character Sethu played last series in "Boom" -- apparently she's a distant descendant of Belinda, and time for new adventures. Except, as Belinda firmly states, "I am not one of your adventures." So it's time to take Belinda home; only, something is preventing the Doctor from heading back to 24 May 2025 (no points for guessing when the first part of the series 15 finale airs), so they're going to have to take Belinda home the long way round...

Overall, then, "The Robot Revolution" is a strong episode. It drops us into a dangerous situation without needing to hold our hands and carefully explain how the show works, trusting that we'll pick things up. Other than a couple tonal issues (such as the way the death of the cat is treated as a joke, or the rather out-of-character way the Doctor seems happy that Alan's zygote gets cleaned up by the Polish Polish robot, rather than regretful at the loss of a life) and the slightly confusing plotline, this is an episode that demonstrates clearly what Doctor Who can do.

October 7, 2025: "Joy to the World"

It's been six months since "Empire of Death" (and a year since my last entry; hello again!), and now it's once again time for a Christmas special. So let's welcome back Steven Moffat, writing his first Christmas special since 2017's "Twice Upon a Time". Fortunately, this episode is an improvement on that one.

There's a fun vibe running through the first part of the story, with the Doctor popping up at various times and places, apparently looking for someone who wants a sandwich and a pumpkin latte. This is because he's at the Time Hotel, which offers package holidays to all sorts of places in Earth's history, letting people stay in hotel rooms which are accessed via that locked door that you always see in the rooms. Then we take a step back to see how he came to be looking around the hotel in the first place; namely, that he noticed something amiss with a man holding a briefcase chained to his wrist, checking into the hotel without gazing at the spectacle. It doesn't seem to be that long since the Doctor left Ruby behind, as he's still holding two tea mugs when he stops to get some milk. ("Habit," he notes with slight bemusement after Trev questions him on it.) Watching Gatwa smoothly manuever through these scenes is a delight. It's interesting; both here and in "Boom", Moffat tends to write the Doctor more like he wrote the twelfth Doctor than how others have been writing the fifteenth Doctor, being a bit more abrupt and brusque. But it's a characterisation that Gatwa seems to relish playing, tossing off lines like "I hate following people, you've got to stay at the back" like he was born to it. It also means things stay interesting as the plot runs along, dealing with a briefcase that's controlling people for some reason. We get a good sense of speed and fun, and since we're dealing with time shenanigans we get lots of crowd-pleasing elements, including a past Doctor yelling at a future Doctor after the future Doctor refuses to tell the past one how to get the code to disarm the briefcase. "Do you see? This is why nobody likes you! You have to be mysterious all the time," the past version yells to his departing future self.

The Doctor and Anita enjoy Chair Night. ("Joy to the World") ©BBC

It's at this point, though, that the episode suddenly slows down, with the Doctor forced to take the long way round in order to close the loop. The hotel manager, Anita, who up to this point had been a slightly two-dimensional character reacting to strange events such as a Silurian in her 2024 hotel room with an unflappable demeanor ("Look, I'm just going to put these towels in the bathroom"), suddenly gets to develop a bit, as the Doctor realizes he needs to stay at the hotel for a year in order to make it back to the Time Hotel. Steph de Whalley plays Anita with a quiet charm, as she clearly enjoys running this little London hotel, and the friendship that develops between her and the Doctor (who stays on to complete odd jobs and such in order to pay for his room) is lovely indeed. (And it's nice that we don't really get the sense that her affection for him is romantic in any way -- sometimes it feels like all the people the Doctor encounters fall in love with him, so when that doesn't happen it's a breath of fresh air.) We get the sense that the reason the Doctor made sure he took the long way round wasn't because of maintaining causality or anything like that, but because he wanted to ensure that he took the time to get to know Anita better. It's a sweet little interlude in an episode that's generally rushing along.

The rest of the episode, in some ways, feels like typical Doctor Who. We get a race against the clock, both with the briefcase controlling people and then killing them, and with it preparing for some sort of super-destructive action. We have a rather bemused guest star (Nicola Coughlan, playing the titular Joy) who falls under the control of the briefcase. We have a callback once again to Villengard, the weapons manufacturer last seen in "Boom", who want to create a new star that they can harness the energy of, and so they choose Earth as the location of this new star (probably because of the presence of the Time Hotel). It's fun and entertaining, and the Time Hotel gives them the opportunity to play with different times and places, including an inaccurate-but-still-impressive-looking dinosaur. Really, if there's any issue with this sequence, it's that the moment where the Doctor is harsh to Joy in order to break the hold the briefcase has on her feels a bit out of place: not so much because of what he does, but because Joy's speech afterwards, about needing to travel with a friend, suggests a harsher portrayal of the Doctor than Gatwa gives us outside of that speech. (But we do get confirmation in the main show that COVID did indeed happen in the Doctor Who universe, with Joy's mother dying in the hospital while Joy couldn't be there in person. This is important in part because it felt like the show wasn't interested in dealing with COVID during Chibnall's tenure (somewhat understandably), so it hadn't come up before outside of the Lockdown mini-episodes.)

It's not all perfect, of course. Villengard's basic scheme is straightforward enough in principle, but it's not quite clear how they intend to actually pull off the "harnessing energy" part in a way that is a) safe for them, and b) less complicated than just finding a star somewhere and harnessing its energy. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the actual logic of how Joy becomes a star doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. OK, she joins with the starseed, sure, but how does she travel away so quickly to both avoid destroying the planet and also be seen right away? Finally, the Bethlehem gag is really a bit too obvious, so it doesn't land the way they presumably wanted it to.

But overall, "Joy to the World" is an episode with more hits than misses. At the very least, it fulfills the Christmas function of being accessible and entertaining, without being too demanding. It may not be the most impressive episode ever, and it's not one that lingers long in the memory afterwards, but it's fun enough while it lasts.

October 6: "Tales of the TARDIS: Pyramids of Mars" / "Empire of Death"

So if you were confused by who Sutekh actually is (which might not be surprising, given he only appeared in a single story almost 50 years earlier), Tales of the TARDIS has you covered, airing a special edition of Pyramids of Mars shortly before "Empire of Death" aired. This time the fifteenth Doctor and Ruby provide the background, with the Doctor talking about the previous time he defeated Sutekh. The framing material is short and sweet, and hopefully now the general audience is all caught up. (And it also explains why the fourth Doctor wasn't featured in the original Tales of the TARDIS.)

And now it's time for "Empire of Death" (so sorry, David Bishop, your fifth Doctor book is no longer the main "Empire of Death"³⁰⁴), which demonstrates that even after 14 years away from the show, Russell T Davies still has trouble sticking the landing.

Part of the issue is just how big the initial "death wave" event is; when it kills Kate, it feels shocking, as the audience wonders if they're really killing off her character. But when everyone dies shortly thereafter, including Carla, it feels like, "Oh, so clearly this is going to be undone by the end of the episode." This has the unintentional effect of robbing the episode of some of its drama, since it just turns into a waiting game at that point. How exactly Sutekh will be defeated becomes a bit less interesting, because the stakes have gotten so high that, perversely, they've been lowered for the audience. There's no longer a worry that some people might not make it out alive.

It's also mildly annoying, as a long-time fan, how the events of Pyramids of Mars get changed to fit the narrative, with Sutekh now expelled into the vortex instead of just travelling down a space-time tunnel to his eventual death. There was also something terrifying about the power of Sutekh in the original story, how he could compel the Doctor to obey him simply with the force of his will, that is missing here. Instead we get a sandstorm of death, which is still scary (and perhaps more cinematic), but it doesn't quite have the same effect. The fourth Doctor became a helpless pawn of Sutekh, released only when Sutekh believed him dead; the fifteenth Doctor yells at Sutekh for a while: "I damn you, Sutekh. I damn you in the name of life itself! And I swear to you, with both the hearts of the last of the Time Lords, I will stop you. I will defeat you. And I will turn back death." And Sutekh lets him! Without even a "rant all you want, little man, it will do you no good"-style line. And then he lets the Doctor escape into the remembered TARDIS down in the time window room. (Which, it seems, is also the memory TARDIS from Tales of the TARDIS.) If this is part of Sutekh's master plan, he's doing an excellent job of keeping his cards close to his chest, since it never seems like letting the Doctor escape is deliberate. (Mind you, we learn that naming his death avatar "Susan" was apparently an intentional reference to the Doctor's granddaughter, instead of a coincidence, so maybe Sutekh's plan is more convoluted than we thought.)

But the reason Sutekh is letting the Doctor, Ruby, and Mel live is, in retrospect, more absurd. Apparently he's also interested in who Ruby's birth mother is, and that's the only reason they're still alive. He just wants his curiosity satisfied, even though everyone's gonna end up dead anyway. Maybe get your priorities straight, Sutekh. But to that end, our three heroes escape in the memory TARDIS, observing Sutekh's destruction throughout the universe and kind of just tooling around before they realise they could head to 2046 to find info on Ruby's mother, because Roger ap Gwilliam (from "73 Yards") created a mandatory DNA database of the entire population. Sure, it's a bit convenient, but I guess they need to wrap this up somehow. Plus it gives Bonnie Langford a chance to act possessed by Sutekh, which is kind of fun. But then that leads far too quickly to the resolution of the story, where Sutekh brings the three of them back to 2024 (somehow) to find out who Ruby's mother was. There's some stuff with bringing the answer close enough to Sutekh to attach an intelligent rope to his collar so that the Doctor can drag him out into the vortex with the TARDIS, although when the Doctor and Ruby ever discussed this plan (and not in earshot of Mel) and prepared the rope and gloves (also without Mel knowing) is never explained. One quick fakeout later and Sutekh, this super-powerful, terrifying being, is then tumbling through the vortex, somehow bringing everything back to life because Sutekh is bringing death to death, which is a completely absurd explanation that doesn't remotely stand up to scrutiny. Does Sutekh resurrect everyone? Do the people buried in the ground come back to life? If not, then how does Sutekh's energy (or whatever is happening) know how to discriminate? Even by the standards of Davies' previous season finales, which often stretched believability, this is pushing it. We end up with a difficult-to-swallow ending exacerbated by the sense that we're rushing through it.

And we're rushing because we also need to tie up the mystery of Ruby's mother. After all that, we learn that her mother is in fact... just some random human. Which would be fine if they hadn't kept making such a big deal out of it. I understand that making her a regular person is a subversion of the "chosen one" storyline (and is apparently a reaction to the Rey "actually you're a Palpatine" reveal from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but now is not the place to get bogged down in the problems with that choice), but it would be perhaps a bit more believable if it hadn't been built into such a mystery. As it is, it's just another shaggy dog story, only stretched out over a season. And why does it snow around Ruby at key moments? No idea, just go with it, I guess. It's also darkly funny how they spend all this time screwing around with a 20-year-old VHS tape and a time window trying to learn something about Ruby's mum, and then at the end UNIT apparently runs a DNA test and finds her, no problem. As an independent thematic event, the reveal of who Ruby's mother is works -- it's only in the context of the whole of series 14 that it really becomes an issue. Still, it does give closure to Ruby's storyline and actually provides a compelling reason for her to stay behind, so that's something at least. (That said, she's apparently going to be showing up at some point in series 15, so we haven't seen the last of her yet.)

And we're left with one unresolved question for (presumably) next series: what's the deal with Mrs. Flood? What were the plans she had that she references here? And why is she dressed in white furs on the rooftop at the end? Something for the future, it seems...

In theory bringing back Sutekh is a nice idea (although, again, this relies on people remembering who he is, which may be a bit risky), and it's a move that I don't know the Davies of series 1-4 would have chosen. In practice, though, what we get is rather messy, with things happening because Davies thinks they would be fun or cool-looking, rather than because they make logical sense, and with too much rushing through important moments in order to fit everything in. As such, this is probably the weakest story of series 14.

Overall, where series 14 really shined was its characterisation of the Doctor. Ncuti Gatwa hits the ground running, being full of joy and energy and willing to be much more emotionally open than we've come to expect from the Doctor. It's a fabulous performance, and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future of this Doctor. In the face of that, it's honestly impressive just how well Millie Gibson manages to hold her own, being adventurous and spunky without being overbearing or, conversely, fading into the background. Ruby is a fun companion who complements this Doctor well, and hopefully she comes back for more than just an episode or two.

But in general, series 14 is a bit difficult to really get a grasp on. In some ways this is the most experimental series of the 21st-century run, with a number of episodes seemingly designed to push against the limits of the show, to expand what Doctor Who can be -- and in fact, it tends to be the more "typical" episodes that let things down. I'm not convinced that Davies's desire to push the show into more fantasy realms really needs to be addressed with plot points about the fabric of reality and the Doctor invoking superstitions at the boundaries (as seen in "Wild Blue Yonder") -- Doctor Who has dabbled with fantasy elements before without needing to justify how, say, the Kinda shared dreaming works, where the Land of Fiction is, or even how the Toymaker's realm was possible back in 1966. In some ways it's a bit of an intrusion, a sign that Davies doesn't quite trust the audience to roll with it. Where series 14 has really succeeded (beyond, again, the performances of its two leads) is those moments where the show gets out of its own way and just lets the episodes get on with pushing the format. Time will probably be the greatest judge of how well this series ultimately holds up, if it ends up being considered as a transition period or a peculiar path not ultimately taken. But setting aside concerns of how history will judge series 14, what we ultimately got was a set of stories with more successes than failures, and that's ultimately the goal. Everything else is just a matter of degree.

³⁰⁴ And then they wrote a novelisation of this story called Empire of Death, so Bishop's novel doesn't even get to be the only Doctor Who book called that.

October 5: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"

And somehow it's time for the big two-part season finale already; time flies when you've only got 8 episodes, I guess. So we return to UNIT to investigate the Mystery of Susan Twist. Why does she appear everywhere the Doctor shows up? Oh, and I guess as long we're here, what's up with Ruby's biological mother?

It's a bit odd; it's like there are two more or less unrelated plot threads happening here, and the less exciting one is the one the episode is named after. It feels like the stuff with Susan Triad should be the more urgent plot point, with her about to release free software to the entire world and being the same face following the Doctor everywhere, but it often feels like it gets pushed to the back burner in favor of Ruby's storyline. Certainly the Doctor spends more of his time in UNIT's time window room -- although the moment where he first beholds the fancy room with a large glass partition and shiny surfaces and lots of controls and displays and starts to bend over laughing, declaring "this is rough! Wow! You have lashed this together. Woo!", is a pure delight -- trying to work out some of the puzzles around Ruby. Well, I say "some of the puzzles", but it's really just "who is her birth mother?" and "why does it snow around her a bunch?" But they have a time window and an old VHS copy of the CCTV footage near the church at the relevant time, so they can construct a window into the evening of 24 December 2004 by the church on Ruby Road. There's a lot of stuff about not moving (because I guess they've kind of traveled back in time?) to avoid disturbing things and wondering why Ruby's mother is now pointing and what's going on with a weird swirling cloud that wasn't there before on the tape. It's all delivered with a lot of intensity and urgency, but it ends up being more a curiosity (albeit one that ends with a dead soldier, turned to something like sand) than anything else.

But hooray! Kate is back, and so is Rose Noble, plus the Vlinx and Mel! It's really quite wonderful to see Mel back and this time being more active than she was in "The Giggle"; here she's infiltrated Susan Triad's operation to find out more about what she's up to (because UNIT are also concerned about a tech CEO whose name is an anagram of "TARDIS"). It feels like she has more to do now than she did when she traveled with the Doctor, now that she's no longer being called upon to scream on pitch, but the same sense of feistiness still persists in her present-day actions. It's kind of like the best possible Mel, and it's great. We also get the wrinkle that Susan Triad is apparently quite likeable and pleasant to be around, unlike, say, Daniel Barton from Spyfall -- so if she is an alien intent on taking over the planet, she's doing an excellent job of hiding it. But then we also get the possibility, raised by Ruby, that Susan Triad may actually be Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, so we get the suggestion floating around that maybe this is actually a regenerated Susan. That wouldn't really explain why she's been showing up everywhere, but nevertheless the Doctor seems willing to at least entertain the possibility. But that turns out to be something of a red herring (which, honestly, given that Carole Ann Ford is still alive and kicking, seems like a good thing -- I'd be rather unhappy if they had recast Susan) for something else.

And of course, because this is the start of the series 14 finale, we learn that the two seemingly disparate plotlines are in fact closely related. Well, no, that's not fair. It's more that the use of the time window reveals that the swirling cloud that appeared is related to the TARDIS somehow, and that that swirling cloud is also related to Susan Triad. The fact that "S. Triad" is an anagram of TARDIS turns out to be a red herring. Don't worry, there's still a clue in the name (for some reason -- maybe he just likes showing off); it's just that the clue is in the name of the company: Susan Triad Technology, which can be (awkwardly) shortened to Sue Tech. In other words, Sutekh, returning to the show for the first time since 1975's Pyramids of Mars.

We'll have to wait for next episode to answer such questions as "how?", "why?", and "no but seriously, how?", but nevertheless we get a nice big cliffhanger here, with Susan Triad turning into a servant of Sutekh (looking, it must be said, a lot more skull-like than Marcus Scarman did when he was a servant in Pyramids) and bringing death to humanity. And as if that weren't enough, Sutekh himself has manifested himself around the TARDIS, looking a lot bigger and a lot more like an alien dog than he did in Pyramids of Mars. Gloriously, however, he's still voiced by Gabriel Woolf, who voiced him back in 1975, and so those silky smooth tones go a long way in making this reveal work. But yes, it seems Sutekh was the One Who Waits, mentioned by the Toymaker and Maestro, and is apparently now a leader of a whole set of gods, including not just the Toymaker and Maestro, but also the Trickster (from various Sarah Jane Adventures stories), the Mara (Kinda/Snakedance), and some other beings we haven't met yet, like Reprobate and Incensor. And now he's once more ready to bestow the gift of death upon everyone...

(Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention: what's the deal with Mrs. Flood (the woman who knew what a TARDIS was)? Why is she being so rude to Ruby's grandmother, and how does she know Sutekh is about to return? More questions for next time, it seems.)