It’s Christmas and the Doctor is back. And… singing?!
Yes, thank you.
Recap
A child is left on the doorstep of the church on Ruby Road, and is named for it. Years later, that child is Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who is currently being interviewed for Long Lost Family by Davina McCall (playing herself) in hopes of finding out who her parents might be. Following this, she has a string of terrible luck, which she attributes to clumsiness. While playing keyboard in her band at a local club, she spots the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) on the dance floor. He catches a glass that she’s about the drop and tells her that this isn’t just human error, but something much worse. Later, the Doctor saves Ruby from a falling snowman decoration, but it falls on him instead. On Christmas Eve, Ruby arrives home to be told by foster mother Carla (Michelle Greenidge) that they’re getting a new foster infant today. A child is brought to them by the name of Lulubelle, coincidentally having the birthday as Ruby. Carla goes out to get supplies for the baby before the shops close, leaving Ruby in charge. Outside, a neighbor Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) is complaining to another neighbor Abdul (Hemi Yeroham) that he must be responsible for putting the blue police box on the sidewalk.
Ruby gets a call from Davina McCall letting her know that they couldn’t find any trace of her parents. She also wants to know if Ruby’s been having terrible luck, because she’s been having a horrifying string of it since their interview. She’s killed suddenly by a falling Christmas tree while they’re on the phone. There’s noise through the baby monitor, and Ruby heads to the nursery to find the baby missing. The skylight is open, so she climbs through it and find goblins stealing Lulubelle. She jumps onto a hanging ladder into the sky and gets swept away. The Doctor appears, jumping across the rooftops to ask her what she’s doing, and jumps into the ladder with her. He’s got a special pair of gloves he designed himself that focus his weight into the glove, allowing them to stay on without exertion. They both climb up the ladder into a ship in the sky, and are promptly captured and tied up by the goblins. The Doctor tells Ruby that the goblins are creatures of coincidence and luck, that it gives them power, and that their ship is powered by ropes, which he is trying to learn that language of as well. He slips their bonds and they make it into the ventilation system.
As they’re crawling along, they hear a music number for Janis Goblin (Christina Rotondo) as Lulubell is moved along a conveyor belt toward the Goblin King, who will begin the baby feast. The Doctor and Ruby fall onto the conveyor from above before this can happen, and the Doctor asks why they’ve stopped the music, beginning the song anew. He and Ruby grab the baby and the Doctor uses his gloves in reverse, making them heavier so they slide back down to Ruby’s home quickly. They put the baby back in her crib, and the Doctor suggests that they search for anything in the house that could cause bad luck, and in doing so learns about Ruby’s family—Carla has fostered 33 kids but Ruby is the only one who stayed with her permanently, and Carla’s mother Cherry (Angela Winter) lives with them in an attic flat that she won’t leave due to the rent being fixed. Carla returns from shopping and Ruby tells her that they can’t find her parents. She comforts her daughter and tells her that she’s happy to have Ruby all to herself. The Doctor admits that he was adopted too—a coincidence. And that he doesn’t know who his true parents are either—yet another one. They begin to stack up until a crack forms down the ceiling the flat, which the Doctor assumes is the goblins taking their leave.
Suddenly the cracks heal… and Ruby has vanished. What’s more, Carla never fostered all those children, and only takes them in occasionally for money. Cherry is considerably more ill. The Doctor realizes that the goblins followed the coincidences back in time to take Ruby instead of Lulubell, and heads back to stop them. He finds the ship ladder on the roof of the church, grabs it and reverses the gloves again, dragging the ship down until the spire drives up and right through the Goblin King. The ship dissipates and the Doctor catches baby Ruby and leaves her in front of the church. He sees Ruby’s mother walking away, and heads back to 2023, finding everything has been put right, including the awful crack in the ceiling. Then he remembers to go back and stop Davina McCall from being murdered by a tree. He stands outside Ruby’s home and wonders if maybe he’s the bad luck, then heads back to the TARDIS after being wished well by Mrs Flood. Ruby works out that the Doctor must be a time traveler after the comments he’s made, and she heads outside. Mrs Flood nods toward the TARDIS, and Ruby walks in and asks the Doctor who he is.
After the TARDIS dematerializes, Mrs Flood breaks the fourth wall and asks the viewer “Never seen a TARDIS before?” and grins.
Commentary
The Doctor sang a musical number. They. They did that. They didn’t even hesitate, just dropped him into it. He sounded incredible.
And I love that we already know Ruby is in a band, so you buy that she could seamlessly pick that up, too. Is this the first time a companion has been in a band? I think so? I love this.
Episodes that introduce a new Doctor alongside a new companion are tricky: There’s so much to do and so little time to do it in. But this episode balances it well in part due to the sheer force of nature that is Ncuti Gatwa. Fifteen is so vivid in every single scene, so captivating to watch. We’re getting an even better sense of the personality now, and there’s real grace here, with a wonderful heaping of excuse-me-I’m-working-here to keep things sharp. Coming off of Fourteen and Thirteen, who are both champion wafflers, it’s hilarious to see.
It occurs to me that Ruby might be the first companion who works out that the Doctor is a time traveler on her own? I can’t remember anyone doing that before now. That said, we know Ruby a little less than usual after an introduction—we don’t even entirely know her reasons for stepping aboard the TARDIS aside from curiosity. So here’s hoping we get to know her much better as we go along, but the chemistry between her and Fifteen is great so far.
There’s just one thing that niggles at me in a decidedly bad way; while I understand the impetus to suggest that Ruby is incredibly important to Carla and Cherry’s life, I do not like the suggestion that without her, Carla would become this embittered and cold person who only fosters for the money. There’s a way that you could suggest that their lives are significantly altered for the worse without seeming to say that she needed one of those children to be “hers” in order to be this better version of herself. Foster parents are a key part of a very difficult system in the countries that have them, and hopefully understand the importance of providing stability to children who they will likely not get to adopt as their own. I don’t believe that a woman who is this adamant about taking care of kids in need would become the complete opposite sort of person because she never got to “keep” one of them? It’s a hamfisted way of showing the negative impact of Ruby’s absence, even going so far as to suggest that Carla loves her own mother less due to this change. Nah.
Like, I get the impulse to ghost-of-Christmas-future a Christmas episode, but that wasn’t it.
Having said that, the Doctor’s reaction is a beautiful thing because he won’t stand for that version of events. He is invested in this family and how good they are to each other and all the children who cross their threshold, clearly in response to all he’s recently learned about himself. The way he mentions being adopted, as though he’s suddenly remembered it. The way it instantly bonds him to Ruby despite spending very little time with her compared to your usual first companion encounter. It’s going to be an interesting road for the two of them going forward, and I’m hoping we’ll see plenty more of Carla and Cherry too.
Spearing the Goblins King feels a bit harsh for the Doctor, but the episode seems deliberately unclear on exactly how alive the goblins are in any case—especially since they just evaporate on the king’s death and seem to be creatures that feed on coincidence and luck, which are conceptual. Perhaps they are as well, as a people?
We’re getting plenty of seeds for what’s coming—for one, we never see Ruby’s mother. And you knew something was off about Mrs Flood from go. In the first scene, she just seems like a casually racist neighbor, but the shift in her demeanor when she sees the Doctor is marked, suddenly warm and kindly. There’s a long list of potential suspects, of course. She could be the next iteration of the Master; Ruby’s mother; a member of the Toymaker’s legions; “The Boss” that the Meep mentioned. She could also be any combination of those things, or something else entirely. So that’s a fun little mystery to look out for as we go.
Time and Space and Sundry
- Long Lost Family is, of course, a real UK show that Davina McCall has been hosting for over a decade, so that was a fun bit to throw in there.
- He said MAVITY again, I am going to harp on this for all time. There is no gravity, only mavity.
- The Doctor uses very Holmesian logic to figure out that cop is about to propose. It’s cute of him. Also, the irritation at the woman pushing a pram at midnight, he just has no patience for nonsense and I love that about him. (But some kids want walks in the middle of the night, sorry, Doctor. Even if that’s not what she was doing.)
- Everyone hates the name Lulubelle except the Doctor and that is so damn cute.
- The Doctor slips his ropes after mentioning a hot summer with Harry Houdini, but while this may be the first time it’s been suggested that there was a “hot” factor to that prolonged meeting, the Doctor has mentioned Houdini kinda forever? The Third and Fourth Doctor both use tricks that they claimed to have learned from Houdini (in “Planet of the Spiders” and “Revenge of the Cybermen” respectively), Donna asks the Tenth Doctor about meeting him, and both Eleven and Thirteen make mention of tricks they learned from him as well—with Thirteen using one to escape being drowned as a witch.
- It feels like such a fun little nod to how the character has grown that the Doctor used to be very difficult about people’s mothers and now is not only deeply invested in Carla’s life but also flirting with Cherry? I mean, he’s right, but that’s a big step for him.
- Here’s hoping that Fifteen gets this many costume changes all the time. Yes.
Doctor Who returns in Spring 2024… see you then.
