Doctor Who 2023 Christmas Special review: Ncuti Gatwa is the perfect gift
“The Church On Ruby Road” brings a new Doctor and a new companion for a new era
TV Reviews Doctor Who
Doctor Who is back, in more ways than one. For the first time since 2017 we’re getting a proper Christmas special, plus a brand new Doctor, a new companion, and the return of Russell T. Davies, the showrunner who originally revived the series in 2005. As thrilling and emotional as it was to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate back together in the recent 60th anniversary specials, they were just a warm up act for the newest cast to make themselves at home in the TARDIS. With love and respect to Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor (who never got the storylines or the respect she deserved) Ncuti Gatwa’s abundant charisma is exactly the shot in the arm the series needed to feel fresh and energetic once more.
After a delightful and lengthier than expected introduction in the final anniversary special, “The Giggle,” Gatwa gets his first full adventure as The Doctor in “The Church On Ruby Road.” The episode opens with the backstory of future companion Ruby Sunday, who was left on the doorstep of the church in the title (that’s how she got her name) on Christmas Eve. We see The Doctor emerge from the TARDIS with tears in his eyes, his breath shuddering as the woman who left her walks away in the snow. The next time we see him he’s quietly observing a grown-up Ruby with interest as the latest in a series of unlucky mishaps befalls her. And then we get the scene from the trailer of The Doctor twirling euphorically on the dance floor in a club. In those three scenes alone he sums up everything this Doctor is and establishes the parameters of his emotional range. Let’s just say it’s wide. That won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen Gatwa in Sex Education, but he’s already made The Doctor completely his own. And that’s no small feat as the 14th-ish (it’s complicated) actor to play the role.
Davies wrote the episode as a soft reboot for the series, so new viewers can jump in without knowing the show’s long history, or anything about The Doctor, really. In a way, it’s a companion piece to “Rose,” the episode that kicked the New Who era off with Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor and introduced Billie Piper as his new companion. Like “Rose,” this is strictly an Earth-based adventure, set primarily in the present day. We hardly see the TARDIS at all. Of course, The Doctor comes with his pockets full of toys, old and new—a refurbished sonic screwdriver (which now looks more like a computer mouse or a universal remote, which is basically what it is), psychic paper, intelligent gloves—but “The Church On Ruby Road” is meant to ease you into the world of Doctor Who, or guide you through re-entry if you’ve been away for a while.
It’s not only a showcase for Gatwa, but a solid debut for Millie Gibson as Ruby. She’s the focus of most of the episode, and it seems like the mystery of who she is and where she came from will be an ongoing theme when the series returns in earnest next spring. Davies has always been very good at creating characters, and he makes you sympathize with Ruby from the start. When we meet her she’s actively searching for the mother who gave her up. At the same time, her love for her wonderful adoptive mother (Michelle Greenidge) and grandmother (Angela Wynter) is evident. It’s key that we understand what each companion is leaving behind or giving up in order to travel with The Doctor, and Davies has always gotten that.
There are other things that Davies doesn’t do quite so well, and his worst tendencies are unfortunately present here too. His writing process often starts with a premise or a big idea first, and then he fills in everything else around it. This heart-forward approach makes for emotional storytelling, but it can also result in gaps of logic, plot holes, clumsy exposition, or things that simply don’t make sense if you take even a second to think about it. He also loves to lean into the goofier aspects of Doctor Who. Now that the show has a bigger budget, thanks to an influx of Disney money, it gives Davies more opportunities to indulge in flights of fancy, like a full musical number set inside a goblin airship. Gatwa even joins in at one point. Yes, “The Doctor Dances,” and he sings now too (quite well, in fact). Davies even co-wrote the song, all about how excited these goblins are to eat a baby. Sample lyric: “Baby’s had such very bad luck, now into baby we will tuck!” Fans will either love it or hate it, there’s no in between.
The secret to Doctor Who’s success after an unprecedented 60 years on and off the air is that it’s constantly reinventing itself. When you have a show that can go anywhere in time and space it can withstand radical changes. You can explore different genres like horror, comedy, period drama, spy thriller, or in this case fantasy. You can switch out the creative team, both behind the scenes and on screen, and still be recognizably the same show. It all works, as long as the quality is there. And for now, with the team of Davies, Gatwa, and Gibson on board, it feels like the future of the show is in good hands.
67 Comments
Seriously excited for this
“When you have a show that can go anywhere in time and space…”
Yet chooses to basically spend the vast majority of the time on Earth, in the UK, in the current year.
That’s why the third Doctor is so popular – 4 years of stories set in and around the same tiny UNIT base.
TINY UNIT???
I’m gonna push back a little on this; even in the second season of the Third Doctor’s run, the showrunners started doing a couple of stories where they’d have the Time Lords send the Doctor and Jo to an alien planet in the TARDIS for some kind of mission precisely because they realised that setting a science fiction show which could go literally anywhere in time and space in the same time and planet was, frankly, a terrible idea.And I’m convinced the only reason they didn’t do this in the first season was because that season only had four stories in it.
Whovians have known this for at least 50 years.
As opposed to American sci-fi shows, where the characters travel back in time to contemporary America instead.also, technically the UNIT years might have been a decade into the future, and most of Davies’ first era as showrunner actually took place one year into the future. so… got ‘em
And no matter how far in the future, characters who are into any sort of pop culture (books, movies, music) tend to really be into 20th century works, with the occasional Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes.
That’s not true. Sometimes they visit Ancient Rome or some new alien empire(that looks exactly like Rome). Basically if the BBC is throwing a ton of money into a new mini series set in Rome you can guarantee the Doctor would be visits it in some form. What’s funny is this was true back in the Old Who days but it happened in NuWho as well. The Rome episode with Tenant was filmed on HBO Rome set(I believe that was a BBC co-production)
The BBC used to fund lots of new series set in quarries.
So, when Moffat created puzzle-box companions, it was bad. But now that Davies is doing, it’s good? And, oh joy, Davies doing cringe inducing musical numbers.I am really looking forward to Gatwa’s Doctor – he had a great start in the final special. But jeez, the Davies worship is just excessive.
Agreed. Even in the three specials, I could see Davies’ best and worst tendencies at play.
BEST: He focuses on human stories in the middle of fantastical settings, first and foremost. He introduces a new character, you get them and sympathize with them almost instantly. And when pressed, he can create great tension in the simplest of ways.
WORST: He also has a love of goofy shit and just making stuff up on the fly, especially during the Christmas specials. I get what he was going for thematically with the bi-generation, but it’s still confusing as hell and the particulars of it are best ignored.
I think much of the excitement is less “RTD is soo dreamy!!1″ than “There’s hope for a watchable show now and holy shit Chibnall is even more dreadful in comparison”
That’s true. For all their flaws, the Anniversary specials were very watchable. I was always entertained, and never bored.
As opposed to Chibnall, who was like “What if Broadchurch had aliens?”
Davies is cheesy, but Doctor Who is cheesy. That’s part of the appeal! Turning it into a serious prestige drama misses the point.
God, if only the Whitaker years had been “Broadchurch but with aliens.” Broadchurch was consistently good. I feel genuinely sorry for Chibnall: the thing he wanted to do most in the world turned out to be something that he was very bad at. I hope he’s got another downbeat police procedural left in him.
The thing everyone forgets about Broadchurch is that it was consistently good for the first season. The second season was terrible because Chibnall is interested in the things nobody else is interested in. In Broadchurch’s case it was “Now that we discovered the murderer we had been searching for all season, what would their trial be like?”
I should have added the disclaimer there: the first season of Broadchurch was consistently good. I’ve never seen the 2nd or 3rd seasons, because at the end of 1 there was nowhere interesting to go. He told the story that he’d set up; the sequels were clearly there because it was enough of a hit to demand a sequel and no other reason.
He wanted Broadchurch S2 to be a deliberately unsatisfying story where the killer gets acquitted at trial. Except the first season had set up such clearly unbeatable evidence against him that the only way to do it was to turn every single person into an idiot.
Broadchurch really should have just been one season. It’s a perfectly fine story with a beginning, middle, and end, but the reception was so good that they continued it and like, well no.
I actually liked Broadchurch season 3, but it was because it was a new case. Some of the existing characters seemed a bit shoehorned in.
I will forever maintain that Broadchurch is massively overrated, and what it did have going for it was in spite of Chibnall, not because of him.The mystery’s resolution was one of the stupidest things I’ve seen from such a prestigious show (at least until season 2’s court case). He basically ripped off the concept and tone of The Killing (the Danish original, which had been a surprise hit in the UK a couple of years earlier), and then got by on some nicely moody work direction and an excellent cast, but the writing was never better than mediocre and often much worse.
It’s definitely true that you can get away with just about anything in your writing if you’ve got Olivia Colman and David Tennant as your leads.
I gotta admit, it was RTD’s mention of the Timeless Child stuff in the 60th anniversary specials that actually made me change my mind about it about.
I’m now of the opinion that the concept of the Timeless Child might not actually be that bad. But the way it was presented by Chibnall was shiiiiit. Hopefully a better writer can do some good with it in future.
The Moffat hate is always weird. He was consistently well-liked when he was writing one-off episodes, then everyone seemed to turn on him. His weaknesses as a showrunner were the same weaknesses Davies had – they’re both big-idea writers who can’t resolve an overarching plot without technobabble and a reset button, and they both have their pet characters they really try to get you to like, which only makes me dislike them more.Davies was much better by the end of his initial run than he was when he started, so I’m cautiously hopeful for his return. Indulging in goofy shit like fart aliens running the government always kind of made me roll my eyes, so hopefully he leans a little away from that during the actual season. Christmas episodes aren’t exactly the best way to gauge the quality of a show, least of all Doctor Who Christmas episodes.
“But jeez, the Davies worship is just excessive.”This a 1000 times.
I’ll take Davies worship over the opposite, which seems to be Youtubers that decry all three 60th anniversary specials as focusing on a LGBT/political/woke agenda instead of just what they consider to be “good sci-fi”.
They’re apparently watching a different show to me, because I only saw some prominent trans representation in the first episode.
And then there’s their “anti-woke” argument which seems to be “they’re writing stories about being inclusive and loving and having diversity, and that’s how they get you”. … Yeah. And? Sounds great. There’s no problem here you weirdos. Sheesh.
Well, the difference is that presumably Davies’ puzzle-box companions won’t be weirdly fetishized and fundamentally empty. And the Doctor won’t be simultaneously in-love with and paternalistic over them. God, Moffat wears his baggage on his sleeve so openly.
There were problems enough with Moffat’s writing at times, you don’t need to make problems up.
I didn’t. https://youtu.be/-qUmy7XFeUY
You already gave your opinion. I don’t need to watch a Youtube video of someone elses. Moffat didn’t write “weirdly fetishized and fundamentally empty” companions. Both Amy and Clara had lives. And the only companion the Doctor eventually loved was River, and she had a “Time Traveler’s Wife” situation going on so of course his behavior around her was odd at times. Certainly made more sense than RTD’s Doctor/Rose will they won’t they.
With Doctor Who often the simplest answer is the right intention.
Rose wasn’t a thing during Davies run? Huh.
Rose is an incredible character who brings an absolutely necessary slant to Doctor Who’s reinvention. Her tendency to always seek out the underdogs, the lower classes, the workers and maids and laborers while the Doctor rubbed elbows with the wealthy and the diplomats and whatnot was both narratively useful for opening up the stories to be more class-conscious, but also makes her stand apart from basically every companion before or since. Her romance plot is glurg as hell, but ‘fundamentally empty’ she is not. Compared to Amy “my stolen baby is also my best friend and I will display absolutely no real lasting emotion or trauma about that and also I will have literally any job the plot requires me to” Pond.
This is your reminder that Doctor Who is a kids show first and foremost. It’s not a show written with pill-popping constipated depressed Millennitards in mind.
Ruby isn’t really a puzzlebox companion (yet) though. Yes the fandom is assuming there’s going to be some big reveal about her parents, and there probably will be, but the show itself isn’t riding on it yet.
If it was all about ‘who is Ruby’ and ‘oh isn’t she so mysterious and special’ I’d roll my eyes too – but thankfully it hasn’t gone into that (yet).
Now Mrs. Flood is another story. Need to keep an eye on her…
Fans will either love it or hate it, there’s no in between.
I’ve seen the “music video” version on Youtube. It’s fine.
There’s an “in between” for everything.
I am really worried about RTD returning and the specials did nothing make me less worried. The clip with the goblin song has not helped. RTD does a lot of good things but the specials have relied too much on his weaknesses. I started watching Who back in the Tom Baker era so there’s a lot I dislike about new Who: being so Earth centric, having yet another companion who is a woman from the present day, running around so much, a new monster every week (just for once can we just have a mad scientist or something and not some totally new alien invading London once again?), and way too much use of the sonic screwdriver.
We can only guess at Ruby’s actual past at this point. She grew up on modern-day Earth but that doesn’t mean she’s from modern-day Earth.
As a writer and showrunner, Davies rightly remembers that Doctor Who can be fun and light and a bit goofy. But he also often forgets that it doesn’t have to be unwatchable, melodramatic crap. Hopefully, he does learn it this time around.
Honestly I’d be happy if he forgets he invented farting aliens.
I was honestly just elated that he didn’t shoot the specials in 36FPS with neon pink lighting everywhere. Turns out maybe it was a budget thing and not a stylistic choice after all.
The companion in the thumbnail looks like AI mashed up Jenna Louise Coleman and Billie Piper.
That’s the famous British star Jenna Billie Louise Piper Coleman
I think you mean Jillie Pipelman.
I thought the same thing!
She does remind me of Clara a bit, yeah. Not that that’s a bad thing.
Okay, now that I’ve watched the episode, here’s my favorite moment.
The Doctor sadly saying “I’m adopted, too” when talking with Ruby.
YES. THANK YOU. HOLY CRAP.
The Timeless Child has been all about the “lore” of the show. Chibnall never looked at it from that perspective, despite (ironically) being adopted himself.
How is it that Davies handled the topic so much better??
Ruby is grateful for her foster family and all the good they’ve done, but still wants to know where she came from, and The Doctor can relate to that.
It looks at the topic from a basic human perspective and is so much better for it. Wow, what a difference.
Davies is a better writer than Chibnall.
It’s a low bar to clear, but RTD does.
honestly who can remember this shit; not me; I don’t remember plot points from shows I watched 5 years ago, so I had no clue what he was going on about
That’s not your fault. Chibnall is the king of under-developed ideas and rushed endings.
So…are Ruby’s moms actually just going to freeze to death? They kept setting that up and then the ceiling was never fixed.
This was a wonderful set-up for the Doctor and the new companion. I don’t mind RTD’s goofier tendencies (look, I mostly love the John Nathan-Turner era of the show, who am I to judge?), though the man will always go for big and showy rather than logical when it comes to tying up plots. The whole frame here (hooded figure leaving baby on doorstep while time traveler observes, then time traveler knocks on the door to summon help) is Meet the Robinsons.
Based on the date of birth given, Ruby was 3 months old when the 2005 Doctor Who revival premiered. Feel free to crumble into dust.
I’ll reserve judgement on the new guy for now, as it always takes me a couple of episodes to get used to a new one, but I am amused by the running “mavity” gag, and wondering how they are going to pay it off. Although, if they never pay it off and are still straightfacedly saying “mavity” five years from now I might find it even more amusing.
The mavity thing actively annoyed me. If it’s not somehow resolved by the end of the season I’ll be beyond annoyed to upset.
I believe the new series and the last two specials are in the Mavity universe where the rules are a little different, like bigeneration and the Doctor Emeritus. In the past if there were ghosts they wouldn’t be ghosts but aliens that looked and acted like ghosts, it was the same with any fantasy character. But these were goblins no alien explanation needed.
Do people actually use the term “foundling,” or did RTD watch too many episodes of The Mandalorian?Not fully on-board with the new incarnation (sonic looks too much like a garage door opener for my liking), but it’s not like I’m going to skip watching a new season just because the new Doctor wants to go clubbing in a kilt.
Foundling is a word, and it’s only been the first episode. Takes a few eps for every Doctor to find their feet.
The Burgermesiter Meisterburger uses the word “foundling”
people who like this: who hurt you? what happened?
The person leaving the child at the door of the church looked very much like Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor. Which might help explain the lack of any Ruby Sunday DNA in Earth’s databases.
This series is already set up to be a bit more fantastical, since the Doctor invoked the idea of ‘salt protection’ while at the edge of time and space, making a magic trope into something real, at least in this ‘mavity’ defined universe.If all this isn’t to do with the Flux, then I’m wondering who the entity is that made the Toymaker so alarmed.And according the trailers, we will apparently be meeting The Beatles in Abbey Road. We’ve already seen her on keyboards, are we going to find out that it wasn’t Billy Preston at all? Is this all an elaborate set-up for a Rolling Stones song-naming joke?
ok can we just pause on the fact the villains in this episode are basically magic fucking goblins? sorry but for me it’s a big turn off to completely throw away the sci-fi premise of doctor who for “anything goes”. I know it’s pop sci-fi and often doesn’t make sense but it’s a step too far. The toymaker was already too much. Not sure I’m interested anymore is the show becomes basically a disney fairytale. (Ncuti Gatwa is fantastic as usual though that’s the only redeeming quality). I didn’t care much for the last season (again saved by a great cast); and if this is the writer from the beginning I’m not sure I get it (although in term of story I think I liked the Pond/River Song whole era (is it Moffat?) better. I liked mind bending sci-fi concepts like the whole River Song / doctor love story (not saying it has to be extremely bigbrained but give us something to chew on at least).
Doctor Who’s ‘science’ has always been just fully magic, though. Like, they might make up some nothing technobabble on the spot, but let’s not pretend that “the giant magic wasp” or “the magic guard bird that kills you” are somehow less flagrantly magical than “the magic goblins who surf time using coincidence”.
I’d still like a vague technobabble excuse over straight up magic goblins with a magic ship though. Also going straight for the medieval fantasy repertoire is lazy and very weird tonally. hopefully it doesn’t become the whole show.
The magic is allowed because the Doctor allowed it because when he was at the edge of time and space with his naighty double, he created the myth that entities couldn’t cross a barrier of salt. So that is the reality, but only in the universe where ‘mavity’ is a thing.
“naighty” = “naughty”
What is the name of the track played @ the clu while the Dr is dancing in the u.dershort & kilt in the beginning???