Hogan Reviews

The first solo Fifteenth Doctor story has aired and… hmmm. It’s an odd one, to say the least! It has a lot of that classic Russell T. Davies focus on a companion’s family life which is fine but it also has that early RTD issue where he’s aimed the tone perhaps a bit too young, like when he had the good idea of alien body snatchers and then ruined it by having them fart all the time, and Ncut Gatwa isn’t at the same level he was in his debut in the role. It’s a mixed bag of an episode, so I guess the best thing to do is take a deeper look at it!

The start of the story focuses on our new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who grew up in foster care / was adopted by her foster mother and although she is happy with her unusual family unit she wants to find out about her biological parents and so starts the episode on a TV show with Davina McCall (as herself, obviously…) looking into her past but things start to go wrong, people trip up, things fall over, that sort of thing. A few brief glimpses into her every day life show that these things have been happening to her frequently recently and that has attracted the attention of The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), who meets her at the club she and her band play at, but doesn’t act on it right away. Ruby gets home and hears that her mum Carla (Michelle Greenidge) is taking in another foster child, this time a baby, and sure enough a few scenes later Carla heads out to get some supplies and leaves Ruby with the newborn.

The young blonde in a flat with just a mother figure and no father is maybe a little too Rose-like, but whatever, the household was acted out nice enough that I’m willing to ignore it…

Sadly for her though not only does she find out that Davina’s TV show couldn’t find any history for her but the baby gets kidnapped by… Goblins. Like straight up fantasy Goblins in a flying wooden ship held together by magical rope, and they’re taking the baby to eat it, naturally. Ruby instinctively jumps on the ship’s ladder to try and save the child and there meets The Doctor again, who similarly clasps the ladder and reveals he has a pair of gloves that can take all of the weight of someone and place it in the glove alone, allowing the wearer to freely move the rest of the body while having an unbreakable grip. I guess RTD is done with the magic wand Sonic Screwdriver and has moved on to Legend of Zelda magical items now! The Doctor and Ruby get captured but escape just in time to save the baby in the middle of a truly terrible music number, and that’s not me disliking the idea of a musical piece in the middle of a Doctor Who episode (hell, I love the audio story “Doctor Who and the Pirates” which is a straight up musical!) it’s just a really bad song with lyrics that are meant to be funny because they’re talking about doing something horrible in a cheery way but… it just didn’t work for me.

The Doctor and Ruby rescue the baby from the King Goblin (who at least looks like a Doctor Who alien rather than something out of Final Fantasy) and head back to Ruby’s flat, but shortly after The Doctor, Ruby and Carla have a talk about adopted people and how he also doesn’t know who his parents are (yep, Timeless Child story is here to stay!) a massive crack appears in the ceiling and Ruby disappears, not just from the flat but from history itself…

Like I said, it’s a strange story. I really enjoyed Millie Gibson as Ruby and her unusual household was endearing, but the Goblins were just embarrassing even for a Doctor Who Christmas Special and sadly after blowing me away in his debut appearance I have to say Ncuti Gatwa didn’t do much for me here, with a few more reflective moments as an exception he was just too smiley and excited to the point where it kind of got under my skin at times. Still, early days and again a Christmas special, so I won’t use it as a judge for what the next full series will be like.

The Continuity:

The Goblin King, his Goblins and the baby he wishes to eat. There, that’s all of that done in one picture, now let’s never mention them again. What’s that Big Finish in five or six years? No! Stop!!

Not a lot to say, beyond the obvious connections to both the Fifteenth Doctor’s debut in “The Giggle” and the fact that the Goblins and their magic existing is apparently tied to The Fourteenth Doctor’s acting out a superstition at the edge of the universe in “The Wild Blue Yonder”. As excuses for more fantasy elements go it’s a bit odd… I’d prefer the old “certain advanced technology happens to look like Earth ideas of magic” trope, but whatever!

The Doctor also mentions Harry Houdini teaching him how to escape being tied up, something he has mentioned in many episodes across the whole series dating back to the Second Doctor TV story “The Highlanders”. The Doctor and Houdini actually meet in the audio stories “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Harry Houdini’s War”, in his Fifth and Sixth selves, respectively.

Overall Thoughts:

That’s quite some location to have a first proper chat between Doctor and companion!

“The Church on Ruby Road” was a mixed bag, I really enjoyed Ruby Sunday and her family set up, but the magic sky Goblins and the bad attempt at an amusing song fell flat and sadly Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor was a bit too one-note in this episode, unlike the great performance in his debut story. Still though, I’m happy to see what happens in the Fifteenth Doctor’s first series next year!

The Doctor realises that the reason Ruby vanished is because the Goblins went back in time to when Ruby was left at the door of the titular Church on Ruby Road as a baby and ate her instead, so he heads back in time, sees the mysterious cloaked woman who left her at a distance (there’s a plot thread for later!) and then manages to use his magic Goron power gloves to pull the entire Goblin ship down onto the church spire and impale the Goblin King with it, before catching the baby Ruby and putting her back at the Church door to keep time on track (for the record the Goblins and their ship magically vanished after the King’s death, so that’s handy!)

The Fifteenth Doctor shows he’s capable of not smiling, but only when no-one else is around!

Time back on track The Doctor meets Ruby and her family again before contemplating leaving, having a conversation with the mysterious next-door neighbour Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) but soon Ruby puts two-and-two together and figures out The Doctor must be a time traveller so runs out to the street and is pushed to go into the TARDIS by, once again, Mrs. Flood, and after a quick chat in the TARDIS console room our new duo heads off to their first adventure as Mrs. Flood amuses herself by commenting on her neighbour’s reaction to never having seen a TARDIS before. So yeah, Mrs. Flood is definitely another plot device to carry on to the next series, I assume not the same one as the mysterious cloaked woman who left baby Ruby at the church as that seems too obvious, but we’ll see!