Doctor Who’s latest series hits a bit of a roadblock with “Lucky Day”. With only eight episodes this year taking an entire episode and using it to impart a good message but really badly and with The Doctor barely featuring in it is a choice, that’s for sure. Anyone looking for fun escapism in their Doctor Who will be sorely disappointed, I know I was, so let’s take a look so I can start to forget about it.
The episode actually opens up like the previous two, The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive with their time anchor thingy and take a reading, only this time it’s London in 2007 and they just take the reading and then leave again, The Doctor giving 50p to a boy who sees this all go down. Many years later the boy grows up to be Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King) who happens to see The Doctor and Ruby (Millie Gibson) take on an alien threat in a warehouse, so one year later in the present day he invites her to be on his podcast “Lucky Day” which talks about aliens and conspiracy theories in a positive light, acknowledging they must be real because by this point Earth has been invaded a few hundred times and UNIT has a massive skyscraper with their logo on it, so it’s kind of hard to hide. The two hit it off and a few months later in a small village while the two are out with his mates the aliens come back and come in for the attack, leaving Ruby having to call in UNIT, led by Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), but it turns out it’s all a hoax! Conrad is the leader of a big online movement claiming UNIT is lying about all the aliens and just stealing tax payer’s money and they proved it by … pretending there was an alien threat and watching as UNIT mobilised to deal with it in order to save people…? Doesn’t the fact that they arrive en masse well armed to deal with something they couldn’t have scammed themselves prove they’re real?
Ruby and the new UNIT, including people whose roles were so small I didn’t even mention them in the review. Oh well.
Well, massive plothole aside it works and Conrad’s movement goes viral, leading to a massive anti-UNIT backlash, not to mention Ruby feeling heartbroken. It’s eventually revealed that there’s a mole in UNIT who lets Conrad into the building with a camera on his chest but the mole gets shot by Conrad in a scuffle, so… damn. Conrad then arrives on the UNIT floor pointing a gun at everyone and essentially confessing to murder and yet the “people at home” watching on his camera are apparently still on his side? Well, anyway, I’ll leave the resolution to the Spoiler section, but it’s as nonsensical as the rest of the story.
So yeah, it’s pretty bad. It’s a shame, the whole “someone lying about something they know is actually true and willingly causes harm just to get rich and famous” thing is a real issue in today’s world, just look at all the diseases that were nearly wiped out before some knobs starting talking about anti-vax bollocks, but this… hoo boy, this was not the way to tackle it. The whole plot was full of holes, not just the ones I already mentioned, like how about someone having a popular podcast saying aliens were true while also apparently having a major following online saying the opposite? How about UNIT, a top secret government organisation not being aware of a large online movement calling them liars and/or not doing any kind of background check on Conrad when he started dating Ruby and asking lots of questions about them? Conrad got into UNIT and up to the top floor because one office worker opened a door for him? That’s the level of security they have?
It really felt like a waste of one of the few new Who slots we have nowadays. A shame as I’ve enjoyed the previous two stories greatly, and most of the second Russell T. Davies era in general, but this was just a mistake from top to bottom.
The Continuity:
Awww, such a sweet couple… Wait, this is after the review portion, bit late for the foreshadowing…
Not really any continuity to speak of, apart from Ruby and the new UNIT all being from the previous series/specials, but you know… that’s not really what this section is about! There are some mentions of Cybermen and a good old “Yeti in the underground” (referencing Second Doctor TV classic “The Web of Fear”) but that’s it.
Overall Thoughts:
Hey, it’s The Doctor and Belinda! Hope you weren’t enjoying their storyline or anything…
“Lucky Day” has a good message at heart but its delivered is such a clumsy and unsatisfying way that it gets lost in colossal plotholes, nonsensical scenes and a depressing final few minutes that rob the viewer of any kind of enjoyable ending. The acting was still good and as I said I approve of the message, so I can’t give this a 1, but boy it’s tempting as I do normally like some sci-fi fantasy escapism when I sit down to watch Doctor Who, and this was the exact opposite and done poorly to boot.
Kate Stewart, held at gunpoint and told her father was a hack, releases the actual alien creature that marked Conrad a year ago and watches as it stalks him and eventually pins him to the floor, getting him to confess that he was lying about the whole thing to his followers just before Ruby tazes the beast unconscious. Conrad then steps up and tries to claim that it was all a hoax again only to get his arm chomped on. The anti-UNIT sentiment online goes away immediately and everyone is happy… apart from Ruby who claims she might be suffering from PTSD after all her travels with The Doctor and needs a break from it all, which is a rather bleak idea for what happens to a companion when they exit the show.
Conrad… walks around in a warehouse. Okay, I used the most exciting picture for the thumbnail, but as a reminder I created the pictures and everything before I watched the episode…
Conrad is in a prison cell (no doubt for attempted manslaughter, breaking into a government building, threating more people with a deadly weapon, etc. etc. rather than just being a knob on the internet) and suddenly the TARDIS materialises around him and The Doctor gives him a smiley talk about how what he’s doing is wrong and when that, unsurprisingly, doesn’t work he tells Conrad that he dies in his prison cell in his 40s as someone nobody remembers, which Conrad doesn’t believe, and then he goes back in his cell, not having changed his ways at all. Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) then arrives as a prison warden and seemingly lets him out.
So despite everything Conrad hasn’t changed at all, which is probably on point for the kinds of people he represents but made for an even flatter finale. I was expecting a good old fashioned angry Doctor speech but I guess that’s just not Gatwa’s style, which is a shame. Tennant, Smith or especially Capaldi would’ve roasted him, and that’s just the recent Doctors. So we end with Ruby having PTSD because travelling with the Doctor was so horrifying and Conrad hasn’t learnt a thing and will no doubt continue to lie and manipulate for his own personal gain. What a depressing end to what is normally my fun escapism show. Cheers.
Hogan Reviews 