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.
Weee! Comments are open!
The Ruby-less version of Carla did need more work to justify the change; to rule out the “keeping” implications at least.
It’s interesting to see the Doctor going clubbing. I didn’t get the impression he was there to see Ruby, either. So it’s not like he was on a mission as he usually(?) is when doing normal human things. He just wanted to have a good time. I wonder he’ll keep taking time for himself or if he’ll fall into bad habits of serialized TV and go from one crisis to another.
I liked it, in the sense that it was a nice Christmas adventure that you could watch without having to think too hard about it and feel good. I like the new Doctor, who has a zest for adventure and an appealing personality that gets people fully on his side: It took us a while to get to know him, with the first part of the episode seemingly more focused on Ruby, but when he did take centre stage he owned it.
I did feel rather uncomfortable with the climax. I’ve criticised Russell T Davies’ dogmatic “The Doctor doesn’t kill” attitude in the past but this almost went too far the other way. The Doctor killing the Goblin King from a distance felt rather cold, especially since there didn’t seem to be any way for him to tell that he was doing that and not just killing Baby Ruby. I’m not quite sure what the goblin ship disappearing means: Were they sent back to the future?
The opening narration suggested the mystery of Ruby’s mother would be solved in the episode and then…it wasn’t. I was expecting the Doctor to go after her, maybe even do that before saving Baby Ruby, but he just lets her walk away. Is she Mrs Flood? I suspected that but I’m not sure that she’s the right age. I think wanting to know what happened is part of the reason Ruby ran after the Doctor on realising he’s a time traveller, so we’ll see how that’s followed up on. (That bit was rather awkward. They do make a decent team but the Doctor seems to let her into the TARDIS solely because he hasn’t got a companion at the moment and she’s the first sassy young female he saw.) I’m not bothered by the change in Carla and Cherry without Ruby around: An alternate timeline where being childless makes a woman cold and bitter is a story as old as alternate timeline stories, and the implication I got was that Ruby was what inspired her to help others.
So, yeah, Mrs Flood. She reacts to her first sight of the TARDIS dematerialising with shock, but from then on she gets rather enigmatic and knowing so…was it a shock of recognition? I wondered at first if that final moment was just a cute moment for Christmas but apparently she’s been confirmed as recurring so…To Be Continued.
Former EastEnders and Holby City regular Belinda Owusu is instantly recognisable in a cameo as “Woman With Pram”. Well, at least she can say she’s been in Doctor Who!
@2 I’m not sure that the Doctor intends to kill the Goblin King. He is a genius but it seems more luck or coincidence that the spire happens to get the Goblin King. It doesn’t feel like a Racnoss moment, so much as the writer wanting to tie things off.
It fascinates me that someone as staunchly atheistic as RTD continuously brings religion, faith and churches into his stories!
I like the idea of this Doctor being interested in languages and I’m hoping that might be a defining characteristic, but can see it just being a throw away thing for this episode.
While Carla’s Ruby-less attitude seemed a bit extreme, like @2 I felt it was more about showing how Ruby was important to Carla’s life and the influence she has, that she showed Carla how fulfilling fostering and adopting could be.
The new Doctor and Ruby were a delight, and the story fun and whimsical. The new era is off to a great start!
This was a pretty good start. Gatwa nails it as the Doctor right off the bat. And it’s interesting how Russell T. Davies approached this the same way he approached “Rose” 18 years ago, as an on-ramp for new viewers, introducing them gradually to the Doctor and his world through the companion’s eyes, rather than telling a story immersed in past continuity like the previous three specials. Just as in “Rose,” we start with the companion in present-day London, introduce the Doctor as a mysterious figure who comes into her life along with the weirdness, and then not establish the TARDIS and the time travel angle until the end. Though I like it that Ruby deduced the time travel business from the clues and made her choice based on that, rather than the Doctor just telling her and inviting her to come.
Although on the other hand, RTD is going for more of a Moffat-ish kind of companion who has a (presumably) season-arc mystery attached to her origins and nature. I mean, there was a slight mystery with Donna, why she and the Doctor kept meeting and why she was so important, but it’s something I associate more with Moffat given the mystery arcs surrounding the Ponds and River and then Clara.
But it is interesting that Davies gave the Doctor a companion who was a “foundling” and used that to parallel with the Doctor’s own situation. I’m glad he’s actually following up on the Timeless Child business and the Flux rather than ignoring them. I mean, I wasn’t crazy about those story arcs, but they happened, and it would make them worse if their impact just disappeared overnight. (Heck, I’m still frustrated that they never followed up on the Valeyard.)
RTD’s also playing with the mutability of the timeline much more than he did in his first run, what with “mavity” and Ruby disappearing. I mean, this is a guy who had a giant Cyberman rampage through Victorian London and just shrugged off the question of the impact on the timeline. Now, even the slightest misstep in the past can rewrite the present.
The goblin business was silly and not really given much exploration as a concept, but it was a novel touch to include a musical sequence in an episode. I can totally buy the Doctor joining in the song even as he counters the bad guys, and it speaks well of Ruby that she’s quick-thinking enough to improvise verses too (although she is a musician, so that probably helps).
Reportedly, the sequence with the giant snowman decoration and the policeman was added late at the suggestion of Disney, when tests showed that audiences wanted to see the Doctor sooner in the story. Just goes to show that studio notes can be good sometimes, since it was a good scene. The Doctor giving the policeman advice about his future was reminiscent of the Eighth Doctor in the ’96 movie, but it was better here, since the Doctor explained his Holmesian deductions about the cop. The movie just kind of assumed that the Doctor had direct granular knowledge of the future of every individual on Earth, which didn’t make much sense even by Whovian standards.
@1/noblehunter: “It’s interesting to see the Doctor going clubbing. I didn’t get the impression he was there to see Ruby, either.”
Funny, that’s exactly the impression I got. IIRC, we saw him standing in the background watching Ruby before we saw him dancing in the club. I gathered that he was drawn to the web of accidents and coincidences improbably surrounding her, giving the goblins a way in. She was having those accidents since well before he intervened.
@2/cap: “I’m not quite sure what the goblin ship disappearing means: Were they sent back to the future?”
To their own realm, rather. They were intruders into our reality. Perhaps an aftereffect of the Toymaker breaking into it?
“I was expecting the Doctor to go after her, maybe even do that before saving Baby Ruby, but he just lets her walk away.”
I figure he just decided it’s not his place. She had her reasons for giving the child up anonymously, and he doesn’t have the right to invade her privacy. And maybe it symbolized him deciding not to worry too much about the mystery of his own origin.
“(That bit was rather awkward. They do make a decent team but the Doctor seems to let her into the TARDIS solely because he hasn’t got a companion at the moment and she’s the first sassy young female he saw.)”
Are you kidding? She passed the audition with flying colors. She’s fearless and resourceful in protecting the innocent, she adjusts well to the strange and unknown, and she’s quick-witted enough to keep up with the Doctor in an improv musical act. She’s perfect companion material. Plus there’s the affinity they share from both being foundlings who don’t know who their parents are.
“So, yeah, Mrs Flood. She reacts to her first sight of the TARDIS dematerialising with shock, but from then on she gets rather enigmatic and knowing so…was it a shock of recognition?”
A lot of people are guessing she’s the Rani or Romana or Susan or somebody. But another suggested interpretation I’ve seen is that something the Doctor or the goblins did in the past changed Mrs. Flood’s history so that she knew more about him than she had in the original timeline. It could be that she isn’t connected to the Doctor’s past or future but has some connection to Ruby’s mystery origin.
And really, I’d prefer that. My biggest annoyance of the Moffat era was that he turned it from a show about the Doctor exploring the universe into a show about the universe reacting to the Doctor, with almost every major story arc being centered around the Doctor, villains trying to destroy the Doctor, etc. Then Chibnall doubled down on it, making the Doctor literally the most important person in Gallifreyan history and having a villain nearly destroy the entire universe specifically to destroy the Doctor. It’s just too narcissistic to make everything that happens be about the title character. So I’d really like to get past having the Doctor be the center and catalyst of everything and just let them go back to being a traveler wandering the universe and helping people with their problems.
@3/Stuboystu: “I’m not sure that the Doctor intends to kill the Goblin King.”
Agreed. What we saw was not the result of careful planning — it was a desperation move when the Doctor’s other options ran out. Using the intelligent gloves to pull down the ship was the only thing left to try, and he got lucky that it worked out.
“It fascinates me that someone as staunchly atheistic as RTD continuously brings religion, faith and churches into his stories!”
Why? I doubt he believes Gallifreyans or Daleks or TARDISes exist, but he writes about them. And churches are an integral part of English life as a social and historical institution, aside from anything to do with religious belief.
@5 I think it’s amusement on my part regarding the church/religion/faith front. He’s often quite damning of organised religion from what I’ve seen and read, and despite how often we base dramas around them, the UK is actually pretty secular nowadays, the majority don’t engage with churches of any denomination regularly (usually only weddings and funerals or as tourists), so he could get away with not including them at all, but they do quite often end up playing a part in his scripts. And apart from that bit in The End of the World (“all religion is strictly prohibited” or something like that), he usually is quite even-handed when he does portray them. So it’s just a light observation that makes me smile. As you say, they occupy an interesting space socially and historically.
Also @5, I agree totally on the Dr as celebrity in the universe from the Moffat era and every other plot being based on people wanting to do something to the Doctor. One of the things I hope is carried over from this episode is the new Doctor saying “I’m no one” and keeping to the background. I really hope we can forget about the “President of Earth” thing as well, though it was subtly referenced in the Giggle.
I feel like there’s something more to Mrs. Flood too. She’s just sitting out there like she’s waiting for the TARDIS to return to that corner, after having railed about it appearing on the sidewalk earlier to Abdul. Perhaps something happened in the interim that we’ll see unfold at a later date.
I’m also with you, Emmett, on Carla’s embitterment, even if her statement that she just fosters occasionally for the money kinda reads as an excuse that she’s giving to mask her real feelings. Otherwise, Carla and Cherry are great.
I didn’t get to comment on the previous special in a timely fashion but I was upset that it didn’t end with the Doctor’s newly manifested jukebox playing, like, “Mavity” by John Mayer or “Defying Mavity” from Wicked.
BTW, I know we’ve only had one episode with Ruby so far but I hope we eventually get a fun time- and/or dimension-hopping anniversary special featuring Ruby, Rose, and a mysterious guest played by… hmm… Wallis Day, maybe. ;^)
@5/CLB: “She passed the audition with flying colors.”
I realise there’s precedent going back to the original series, and the new series has hammered home the point that he’s no good on his own, but I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of the Doctor treating the role of his companion/best friend as a role that needs to be filled. It all felt rather staged, especially with the way the Doctor just hung around inside the TARDIS when the adventure was over waiting for her to wander in and do the “bigger on the inside” bit. And I’m not entirely sure what’s in it for Ruby, who seems to have a happy home life despite her questions about her past.
“But another suggested interpretation I’ve seen is that something the Doctor or the goblins did in the past changed Mrs. Flood’s history so that she knew more about him than she had in the original timeline.”
I’m not sure I really want that. It feels equally small universe for her to somehow have been changed by the Doctor’s actions than for her to be someone he knows, and I’m not sure it entirely fits with what we see. I think I prefer the idea that she knows what a TARDIS is without being familiar with the Doctor’s model, hence her seeing a police box in the middle of her road as a nuisance until she sees it vworping away and joins the dots.
I’m getting a bit of a resonance between the 14th Doctor’s invocation of a superstition and the Goblin King who’s “not a myth, he’s an actual thing.” RTD may be planting clews.
@9/cap-mjb: ” I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of the Doctor treating the role of his companion/best friend as a role that needs to be filled.”
Wow, you’re taking my metaphor way too literally. I didn’t mean he was actually auditioning her, just that she proved through her actions that she was much more than just “the first sassy young female he saw,” which is really a grossly unfair and diminishing thing to say about Ruby. I wasn’t talking about the Doctor and his intentions, I was speaking up for Ruby and her worth. Since she’s a musician, I chose my metaphor based on her perspective.
“And I’m not entirely sure what’s in it for Ruby, who seems to have a happy home life despite her questions about her past.”
Is that really an issue anymore? It used to be that you had to give up your home life to travel in the TARDIS, because the Doctor’s control of it ranged from nonexistent in the ’60s to erratic later in the classic series to good but occasionally imperfect in the new series. But since Moffat’s tenure we’ve been in the era of what I call “commuter companions,” who basically still live at home and do their jobs and just pop off for day trips in the TARDIS every now and then — or at least who travel with the Doctor continuously for a while but then get dropped off back home immediately after they left so they don’t miss anything.
@11/CLB: “I didn’t mean he was actually auditioning her, just that she proved through her actions that she was much more than just “the first sassy young female he saw,” which is really a grossly unfair and diminishing thing to say about Ruby.”
However you want to put it, there’s something more artificial than usual about the way the Doctor just hangs around waiting for her to come to him, when there’s no reason for him to assume she would other than that it’s what the script says.
“Is that really an issue anymore?”
Yes. We’ve seen on quite a few occasions how pretty much every companion of the modern era sooner or later finds themselves losing track of their “normal” lives because they’re spending months off with the Doctor, from Amy and Rory being unable to make plans to Ryan losing touch with his friends.
@12/cap-mjb: “However you want to put it, there’s something more artificial than usual about the way the Doctor just hangs around waiting for her to come to him, when there’s no reason for him to assume she would other than that it’s what the script says.”
There’s nothing artificial about it. He’s just shared an adventure with her where she proved herself to be prime companion material, and they bonded through their shared identity as foundlings. It would be artificial if he didn’t want her to come with him. And no, that’s not “assuming” she would come — it’s called hoping. It’s giving her a chance to decide for herself, one way or the other. After all, what’s his rush to leave? He’s got a time machine. He’s not on a deadline.
“We’ve seen on quite a few occasions how pretty much every companion of the modern era sooner or later finds themselves losing track of their “normal” lives because they’re spending months off with the Doctor, from Amy and Rory being unable to make plans to Ryan losing touch with his friends.”
Not Clara. She managed to have a steady job and a steady relationship in between her visits with the Doctor. He basically planned his travels around her schedule, not the other way around.
Besides, since when were people with unhappy home lives the only people with an interest in travel and adventure?
@13/CLB: “After all, what’s his rush to leave? He’s got a time machine. He’s not on a deadline.”
In that case, why did he leave but…not? He did his usual thing of slipping away once the problem was solved and then just stood around in the TARDIS on the off chance that Ruby (who doesn’t even know about the TARDIS and needed to have it pointed out to her) might come in. Do you really not see anything strange about that?
I’m almost tempted to wonder if he was going to leave but then Mrs Flood said something that made him wait. If that gets explained later, then I guess that makes sense, but it really didn’t feel natural to me in context.
@14/cap-mjb: “In that case, why did he leave but…not? He did his usual thing of slipping away once the problem was solved and then just stood around in the TARDIS on the off chance that Ruby (who doesn’t even know about the TARDIS and needed to have it pointed out to her) might come in. Do you really not see anything strange about that?”
Nope. Honestly, it makes more sense to me than the usual thing where he closes the door and the TARDIS instantly dematerializes, often before he even would’ve had time to reach the console. That’s obviously a narrative shortcut for pacing purposes. But when I go on a trip, there’s often a lot of preparation first. There are a lot of things that could delay an instant departure.
Besides, this is a new Doctor, one that’s evidently more laid back and less driven than his predecessors. He’s learned to slow down and take time for himself rather than always rushing from crisis to crisis. This was literally a story point in the immediately preceding special. So maybe he just wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. Maybe he wanted to stick around town for a while, maybe go see Ruby perform in her club again, and she just saved him the trouble by coming to him first.
I love Gatwa as the Doctor. He is so joyous, dancing when we first meet him. He also played Black Ken in the Barbie movie.
I was also uncomfortable with the portrayal of Carla without Ruby in her life. It seems to play into the stereotype of Black women who only care about kids for the money they can get from the government. Do better, BBC.
I’m not that fond if Ruby as the companion, but I like that she’s in a band. (My all-time favorite companion is mouthy, manic Donna Noble.)
It’s wonderful to have a Doctor that dances, sings, hugs and cries. Regarding the person who dropped Ruby off at the church, my first thought was that it was #13 which explains why he doesn’t follow her. He remembers. Perhaps he’s there to check on Ruby who he dropped off at the church as #13?
I do want to call out that this Doc fixes things by going back to mess with the timeline. No rules for Gatwa and Davies?
@17/River: “I do want to call out that this Doc fixes things by going back to mess with the timeline.”
No, he goes back to undo the result of the goblins messing with the timeline.
Personally I didn’t take that as a general statement about Carla “needing one of her own”, but a statement about how important Ruby in particular had been. Throughout the episode we see that she is a positive person who brings joy to those around her, as well as contributing to taking care of Cherry and the house.
I took it as, without Sunday’s uplifiting presence, Carla became ground down by life.
I also didn’t take it as Carla caring for her mother any less. In the original timeline, Cherry had both Sunday and Carla caring for her. In the new one there’s only Carla and she’s stretched thin without Ruby’s support so she can’t give Cherry as much time and care as she got when there were two of them.
Kind of heavy-handed but not unreasonable, IMO. Sunday did seem to contribute a lot to that household, both physically and emotionally.
@19 Yes that’s how I see it too. The point isn’t necessarily that Carla is a colder person without Ruby in her life, it’s that Ruby had an important impact on her. I didn’t think of the bit with helping with Cherry but that’s obviously part of it too! And I think this also goes to the point of why the Doctor sees someone he wants to be friends with (he calls her his friend when they meet the Goblin King). His initial interest is because Ruby is being targeted by the Goblins, something he notices but no one else does.
I also find the idea that Ruby, after working out that the Doctor is a time traveller, shouldn’t want to see more of the Doctor’s world a bit odd. If I met a time traveller and they were really interesting and cool of course I’d want to have an adventure or two. Ruby’s clearly adventurous and if you really really feel there has to be a deep motivation in her character for getting in the TARDIS beyond curiosity, well isn’t it the idea that she could visit her past (much like Rose wanting to see her dad when he was alive)? Not that I think that needs to be a part of it, but I imagine it will be played with at some point in the series.
@19/irrevenant: Just a clarification — all three of them are Sunday. The infant Ruby was adopted by Carla Sunday, daughter of Cherry Sunday, and was given their surname. So in this context it doesn’t work to use “Sunday” to refer specifically to Ruby.
@20/stuboystu: “(he calls her his friend when they meet the Goblin King)”
Although it’s worth pointing out that the Doctor has a long habit of referring to people they’ve just recently met as “my friend,” at least since the Fourth Doctor onward.
As for the mystery of who left Ruby at the church, I think there’s a strong chance that it’ll turn out to be Ruby herself — not that she’s her own mother, of course, since that would be nonsense, but maybe her parents died and she was there to see it, and she brought her infant self to the church. Maybe the Doctor saw her face at the church and that’s why he didn’t interfere. (Of course, that shouldn’t be possible due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect established in “Mawdryn Undead,” but the franchise has always been inconsistent about whether that exists.)