by John Tillyard, Contributing Writer
The Time Lord, only known as The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), is back for another set of adventures across time and space in his ship, the TARDIS (time and relative dimension in space), along with a new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).
Russell T. Davies returns as showrunner for the first time since 2010 for one of the shortest seasons in the history of Doctor Who. Ever since it began in the early 1960s, the show’s central selling point has always been how versatile it is with the genres it covers. Since the TARDIS can travel to any time and place in the universe, the show can tell stories from any point in history, explore alien worlds, travel to the future, or be contemporary. With so few episodes to work with, Davies does an excellent job at “playing all the hits” with the type of stories we get this season. These consist of, but are not limited to, a space adventure in “Space Babies,” historical fiction in “The Devil’s Chord,” an alien world in “Boom,” a contemporary setting in “73 Yards,” the future in “Dot and Bubble,” and a period piece in “Rogue.”
With that said, I’m not sure this season has enough episodes to make it feel like a whole, satisfying experience for me, a longtime fan of the show. With a new Doctor and companion, there needed to be more time to get to know them as characters, and get a feel for how they worked off of one another. Many fans have commented on the lack of “normal” episodes this season, which, for us, is just a monster-of-the-week story which showcases the main duo working to save the day. The shorter season means the show has little time to stop and breathe. There is a fixation on quality over quantity here, but with this brief of a season, story arcs and ongoing mysteries don’t have nearly the same impact. Not to mention that, in this age of the internet and social media, a shorter season means less time for the fans to debate where certain story arcs and mysteries may be going.
But even with the reduced screen time, Gatwa and Gibson both do a great job drawing the audience into every adventure. Gatwa’s Doctor presents a more easygoing and fun feel than many of the previous actors to portray the Time Lord. Gibson, however, is more like the standard companion, in that she is yet another woman in her 20s. She also looks to the Doctor for a solution to the problem and has the mind to do something for herself when the situation demands it. While there is nothing wrong with Gibson’s performance, I am getting a bit tired of how many of the Doctor’s companions feel like the same person, ironically even more so than different Doctor actors do, despite the fact that the Doctor is always supposed to be the same person. Usually, the unique aspect of each companion is their backstory, and it is no exception with Ruby. The companion is found as a baby outside a church after being abandoned, and a season-long mystery unfolds as to who her biological mother is.
“Space Babies” begins the season right out of the traditional Doctor Who mould — it takes place entirely in space and is about stopping a monster. While there is an excellent emotional drive to this episode’s narrative, numerous moments turned me off the experience. The most prominent is the CGI effect of the babies when they talk, which looks like a vast, uncanny valley. A lot of the time, the eyes of the baby talking do not connect with what the mouth is saying at all, and it took me out of the experience. But other aspects also make the whole thing seem a bit juvenile. I did like getting to know Ruby for the first time in this story. There is one particular moment where she takes proper control of the situation by just coming up with her idea and doing it with a look and line delivery that screams, “I’m loving this!” There is a clever political message here about continuing to produce human life without providing the necessary resources to raise a human. This episode also has a couple of interesting turns in the plot, which makes for a less predictable ending and a possible first-ever episode for a lot of viewers. It does a good job of establishing what the Doctor stands for, as well as doing expositional dump right at the start about his backstory.
“The Devil’s Chord” is the first historical story of the new era, as the duo travels to 1963, where The Beatles are recording their first album, to find the supernatural being, Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon), has taken away all music. This story touches on an exciting idea about how the future will change if the duo doesn’t fix things at the time they are in. It is something that the show has addressed before, by showing the present-day world desolate and devoid of life, but it hasn’t hit quite this hard in a long time. It takes a surprising turn later when the Doctor admits he doesn’t know what to do and seems genuinely fearful. I was also excited to see the Fab Four portrayed here, as I am a massive Beatles fan. But I was disappointed that they have a relatively limited role, showing up for a few scenes at the beginning and then very briefly near the end. It’s also odd that this story takes place in 1963, yet it depicts John Lennon (Chris Mason) wearing the glasses he, in reality, would not wear for another three years. Monsoon also doesn’t work as a villain for me; something about their performance had an air of a parody. But this story does at least end on a high with a compelling musical number.
“Boom” is a refreshingly simple setup of the Doctor stepping on a mine and being unable to move. Oddly enough, that also happened to the fourth Doctor, although it was only a single scene back then, while here it’s the entire episode. With the Doctor only being in a single location, Gatwa gets the opportunity to dig his acting chops into some heavy emotional moments, while also being unable to move much. Boy, does he do a great job! This episode has a good bit of theming about capitalism, which isn’t too heavy-handed, though maybe a tad predictable. There is also a theme about faith shown through a child who somehow doesn’t understand what death is while living in a war zone. It’s far-fetched and a little overly cruel to have the child’s father die, while she doesn’t understand what’s happened to him. But this is fixed by a moment she has near the end, where she claims her father isn’t “gone” simply because he’s dead. The whole episode is worth it, just for that moment at the end.
Following on from that performance by Gatwa is an episode where he barely appears. “73 Yards” is Gibson’s time to carry an entire episode, as Ruby finds herself alone on the Welsh coast, locked out of the TARDIS, with a strange woman following her. This story is about atmosphere and an eerie feeling as Ruby sees everyone she knows and cares about disappear from her life. I also enjoyed a fake-out moment that seems to be making fun of this kind of story where random passersby seem to know what is going on and tell the main character they are doomed, but they are just messing with Ruby on this occasion. Later in the story, we see Ruby in her 40s, and there is a disappointing lack of prosthetics done to Gibson to make her look older; she just has different hair and a pair of glasses. But I like how this older Ruby uses her unusual situation to her advantage, despite not fully understanding it. What knowledge she does have is the key to how she saves the world. Many questions are still left unanswered at the end, but perhaps that’s the idea; the continuing mystery adds to the experience of the whole story and may have sparked a lot of debate among the fans.
“Dot and Bubble” is another “Doctor Lite” episode, as the fans have come to call them, where an entirely new character assumes the leading character role. Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke) lives in the city of Finetime and spends her entire day on social media, only talking to people through video calls and having her view of the world obscured by a literal bubble of social media feeds. There is a noticeable Black Mirror inspiration here, as this society now exists entirely on social media. I found certain things about this setup disturbingly relatable; for example, Lilly can only walk if she has arrows telling her where to go, which is a lot like me in a city I don’t know. Cooke does a brilliant job carrying the main body of the episode, and enabling her character to come across as an innocent bystander at first, but more unlikeable as the story progresses. The twist is one I genuinely didn’t see coming, and it made rewatching the episode a fascinating experience; I also love the Doctor’s reaction, not caring in the slightest about the contempt on display, but solely frustrated he is unable to save their lives.
“Rogue” is a historical episode which, unusually for that type of Doctor Who story, does not feature real-life historical figures or events. The Doctor and Ruby attend a party in 1813 where a group of shapeshifting beings called Chuldurs are killing people to take their form. The Chuldurs have an interesting take on being bad, because they don’t have any motive or purpose for what they are doing; they even seem to be aware they are doing wrong. They find it entertaining, and the fact that it is wrong seems to add to their experience. The episode’s title role, Rogue (Jonathan Groff), is a bounty hunter from the future who at first has a bit of a rivalry with the Doctor, but gradually bonds with him as the two work together. Groff’s performance has a nice bit of magnetism that makes the character feel genuine, but it also seems like a little like acting. Many people will be turned off by where they go with Rogue’s relationship with The Doctor, especially with how it ends, but I enjoyed it on the surface, because it gives him some time away from Ruby to be with a character that was a lot like him. One moment in the final act that annoyed me a little is when the episode leads us to believe a character might have died, similar to the cliffhangers from the show’s classic era. Still, how it reveals what happens left me wondering, “Wait a minute, that wasn’t what you showed earlier.” It felt a bit cheap to me.
The season ends with a two-part story in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and “Empire of Death.” The Doctor shows up at UNIT to see if they can work out why a particular woman (Susan Twist) keeps showing up wherever and whenever he goes. The opening has a lot of charming moments as the show reunites us with a few familiar faces, and there is a subtle dig at the prime minister, who isn’t even named because they have changed so frequently in the last few years. We get a reasonably decent explanation of who the woman is, which probably isn’t anything the fans would have theorized. Meanwhile, they begin to work out who Ruby’s birth mother is. It’s odd that they do both things simultaneously, but I enjoyed their method of studying the footage using a Time Window machine to create a life-size hologram of the scene. It’s an unsatisfying sequence, as they still don’t work out who the mother is.
There is also some excellent use of Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford), a companion from the classic series who wasn’t a popular companion when she was initially on. But she takes up more of an undercover and motivational role that makes her a much more robust and more competent character. The first part ends with the reveal of a villain who had not appeared in the series since 1975. While I can get behind the idea of bringing back villains from the classic series, how it’s done here seems to play up the idea that everyone watching will already know who they are; therefore, very little information is given about them. When the villain first shows up, I almost heard Thanos saying, “I don’t even know who you are.”
The second part begins with a lot of heavy stuff, as the Doctor faces up to the idea that he has failed on a massive scale in a moment of raw emotion. However, it’s a rare time where I’m not sure Gatwa completely sells it with his performance, but that may have had to do with the moment being a little unexpected. How he saves the day is an impressive visual — it’s another bit of clever thinking from the Doctor that always makes for the most satisfying moments in the series, especially in a finale. There is also a nice sentimental scene between Ruby and her mother once she finds out who she is. The actual reveal of who she is will leave a lot of fans feeling dissatisfied; there is even a bit of dialogue from the Doctor where he admits there isn’t an apparent reason why who she is was played up as being important. Even though I enjoyed the setup, it’s one of the weaker finales of the revived series.
Overall, even when you consider the reduced number of episodes this season of Doctor Who had to work with, it still feels like one of the weaker the show has had, certainly the lowest with Russell T. Davies as showrunner. I didn’t mind the ongoing mysteries during the season. I was intrigued to know the deal with those things, but the answers were highly underwhelming. One mystery remains unresolved involving a character called Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), so I’m at least hopeful they might do something interesting with her. The shorter season length also probably didn’t help the mystery element, as it meant there was less time to develop things or form a season-long arc. There are some solid episodes, and while the show continues to produce stories like “Dot and Bubble” and “Boom,” there is no doubt I will continue to love it. I wouldn’t consider any of the individual episodes among the worst the show has ever had. So it is still good entertainment compared to TV seasons in general, but it’s not what I want from this show, and I know Davies can do so much better.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
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