Written by Randy Allain
Russell T. Davies is back for another soft reboot of Doctor Who, and once again, he is shaking up the formula. Back in 2005, Davies relaunched the floundering franchise with a no-frills Doctor and a plot that clearly revolved around a plucky human named Rose Tyler.
In the 2023 holiday special “The Church on Ruby Road,” Davies puts the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa, Sex Education) front and center. We open with a voiceover narration from The Doctor as he provides a fairy tale retelling of the story of a baby named Ruby Sunday who was abandoned outside of a church. Then, our first glimpse of Gatwa’s Doctor is an emotional close-up in which he sheds a single tear; presumably, he has just come from learning something important about Ruby in the future.
Moments later, we get our first glimpse of adult Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, Coronation Street) participating in an interview with real life British television personality Davina McCall (who previously voiced the Davinadroid, a robotic reality television host back in Davies’ first season at the helm of Doctor Who). McCall is offering to look into Ruby’s genetic history to try and find her birth parents (presumably as part of the real life series, Long Lost Family).
Ruby is appreciative, but also a bit flustered, overwhelmed, and unsure of herself. Additionally, she seems eager to please; she is nearly apologetic to McCall when asked how she feels about being called a “foundling,” and we learn that her adoptive family is financially strapped for cash. Despite all of this eagerness to please and lack of confidence, her delivery of the word, “expensive,” in relation to her grandmother’s care seems to indicate that she is an active participant in financing the household.
Meanwhile, some creepy little goblin arms start mixing into Ruby’s life with both mischievous and murderous intent. She is nearly crushed by a studio light, and in the following scene, her keyboard goes dead during a snappy little performance of Winter Wonderland.
Before we go any further, it’s worth noting the fashion sense of our central heroes. Mere moments into “Church on Ruby Road,” we see both Ruby and The Doctor show off more than one incredible fit. Ruby is killing it with some sort of 90’s-rocker-chic vibe. At different points, The Doctor is wearing the hell out of a kilt and a gorgeous, long leather jacket. He even spiffs it up with a matching hat in one shot. It’s looking like it might be time to hang up the fez and the Chucks to make room for a new era of Doctor Who fashion.
Through some quick time jumps, we come to understand that The Doctor has been keeping an eye on Ruby for a bit. When he magically catches her glass in a time-defying movement – he shrugs off her apologetic claims of being “clumsy,” by suggesting that her situation is “much worse than that.” It’s perhaps a bit surprising to see our emotionally expressive new Doctor drop such an ominous statement and walk away….but he’s right. We jump to a scene of Ruby and her very cool friends hopping into a cab as an oversized decorative snowman is slowly untethered by goblins. We aren’t surprised when The Doctor saves the day with some quick adjustments to the traffic lights, but we do get a chance to be wowed by some new sonic screwdriver tricks. The Doctor uses a simple ping on said sonic to deduce that the bumbling officer trying to write a report on the snowman incident is about to propose to his fiancee; what’s more, The Doctor believes she will say yes. This lacks the pizzazz of the physical force fields David Tennant was conjuring up a few weeks ago, but it does remind us that this very emotional Doctor is warm and loving above all else.
After we review The Doctor’s capacity for emotional intelligence, we meet Ruby’s adoptive mother Carla (Michelle Greenidge, It’s a Sin) and her set-in-her-ways mother, Cherry (Angela Wynter, EastEnders). We quickly learn that “we’re having a baby,” is shorthand in this household for taking in a new foster child. It’s charming and beautiful, and we instantly fall for Carla and her seemingly boundless capacity for love and affection. When child services drops off the infant, Lulubelle, we love her because they love her (though not that name). While Cherry is a bit rough around the edges at first, she wins us over later when she is flirting with The Doctor and refers to herself, Cherry Sunday, as a “treat.” As always, Russell T. Davies finds a way to make us care about characters quickly.
Knowing how much love Ruby has in her life makes it easier for us to take the phone call from Davina McCall in the next scene. She has bad news about Ruby’s search for her birth parents – they can’t find any matches whatsoever, not even a trace of her family tree. Once again, Ruby is quickly deferential and apologetic, despite the fact that she is the one getting bad news. We also learn that Ruby’s bad luck might be contagious. McCall has been experiencing a series of dangerous accidents ever since she met Ruby. By the end of the scene, McCall is about to take a Christmas star to the face (rest easy, The Doctor saves her later).
Poor Ruby never gets a chance to process this information before creepy little time-surfing goblins swing by to kidnap Lulubelle (a brilliant name, according to The Doctor). We see that Ruby is not only caring, but selfless. She climbs to the roof and grabs hold of a mysterious ladder in service of a baby she has only just met. This further endears her to The Doctor a moment later when he Daredevils his way across the rooftops and dives on to the flying ladder at Ruby’s side. A new toy called “intelligent gloves” enters the scene so that our heroes can focus on a get-to-know-you session instead of holding on for dear life. Perhaps most importantly, “mavity” makes another appearance. It seems inevitable that this jokey device from the second 60th anniversary special will play into the endgame of the upcoming season. Frankly, the joke is funny, but not funny enough to warrant this much screen time unless it is trying to point the way toward a big threat or revelation. These goblins definitely feel like something new that might have slipped into reality through the thin veil at the edge of the universe.
In short order, we find ourselves on a goblin airship. Plotwise, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of cohesion or logic, but we do finally get some fun Doc-splaining from Ncuti Gatwa. He has a great time being confronted with time-surfing goblins and their chaotic rope technology: “It’s a brand new science for me, and I love it – the language of luck.” It’s a lot of fun to see Gatwa go into know-it-all mode for the first time. It’s also thematically rich; it’s exciting to see The Doctor confront science he doesn’t understand rather than being the one who can feel time in his bones and make final judgment calls about what is and is not a fixed point in time. Despite Gatwa nailing the delivery, even he can’t convince me that “ventilation shafts” make sense on a hobbled-together goblin airship. Nevertheless, Fifteen is so charming, we forgive him. He is a time traveler after all: “Time travelers are great. Like, the best. Like, wow.”
As if Gatwa weren’t charming enough, he manages to save baby Lulubelle and pull off a fearless musical number in the process. Ruby gets in on the act as well, and together, they drive home the fun of that silly goblin pop song that’s been circulating the internet for a couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, the goblins aren’t quite done with Ruby and The Doctor. After a few small signs of trouble, the goblins crack the Sunday flat’s ceiling along with the entire timeline. Ruby is missing. Suddenly, Carla is cold and indifferent to Lulubelle and the children she has fostered. It feels a bit upsetting to see her ruined like this, but it does clumsily capture the holiday trope of a sad alternate reality without a key person there to brighten it. We let it pass so that The Doctor can go back in time and save Ruby.
He does!
….somehow. Those intelligent gloves from earlier, which were prominently depleted to a 3% charge mere moments ago, suddenly manage to amplify The Doctor’s weight so intensely that he brings an entire magical airship crashing down to earth and impales the goblin king on a church steeple. I don’t get it. Can someone please explain the laws of “mavity” again?
From here until the end, things feel a bit clumsy and overstated. We are happy to see the delightful Sundays reunited, but it’s a bit tedious to watch Ruby work out the fact that The Doctor is a time traveler in real time. Meanwhile, we cut back to the Sunday’s neighbor, Mrs. Flood, about a dozen different times for a dozen different winks that she will be an important force moving forward – we even get a mid-credit sequence for her to pop in again and explain even more directly that she is very familiar with the TARDIS. Message received.
Ultimately, Ncuti Gatwa is an absolute delight, and his spunky new companion feels sufficiently lovable. Despite some clumsy plotting in this special, the doors are open to a lot of timey-wimey possibilities and mysteries. Yes, Mrs. Flood is most prominent in the closing moments, but there is also the question of Ruby’s mother and that mysterious cloaked woman looking a bit like Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor in those boots.
This also begs an important question: did The Doctor spend a “hot summer” with Houdini as Gatwa’s doctor suggests, or was it in fact, a “wet weekend,” as Whittaker’s Doctor described during her run? Is this merely a fun Easter egg, or is it evidence that this timeline, with all of its mavity and mystery, is still quite cracked?
In any case, Doctor Who: ‘The Church on Ruby Road’ offers a ton of fun and the possibility of great things to come when the new season launches on Disney+ this spring.
