So far, Season 2 of the Disney+ era of Doctor Who has echoed the formula from season one. Last season started with a silly one (“Space Babies” featured a booger monster), a mid-century battle with a Pantheon god (“The Devil’s Chord” offered a 1960s battle with Maestro), and a high-tension thriller (“Boom” stranded our favorite Time Lord on a futuristic landmine). This season started with a silly one (“The Robot Revolution” featured an ex-boyfriend monster), a mid-century battle with a Pantheon god (“Lux” offered a 1950s battle with Lux), and a high-tension thriller (“The Well” pitted Team TARDIS against a paranoia-inducing ancient entity).
In the latest episode of season two, “Lucky Day,” the trend continues with the Return of Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, Coronation Street) in a Ruby-centric adventure. Last year, “73 Yards” saw Ruby stranded without The Doctor and cursed to live out a full lifetime hounded by a mysterious figure that spooked away her entire support system. This year, Ruby finds herself once again isolated and bogged down by the residual trauma of the horrors she faced at The Doctor’s side before rallying to recover her inner strength.
While it’s not uncommon for multiple seasons of a television show to fall into familiar beats and rhythms, these echoes feel particularly blatant. The Pop Break review of “The Robot Revolution” mentioned a barrage of familiar repetitions, and last week’s review of “The Well” expressed frustration with the season’s ongoing appearances from Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson, EastEnders) that also mirror a recurring device from last season. When we combine this repetition with all of Mrs. Flood’s fourth-wall-breaking winks across both seasons, it feels like there is some sort of reality-bending twist on the horizon.
This week, Doctor Who continues to project the feeling that the rug is about to be pulled out from underneath us. In fact, “Lucky Day,” calls society’s sense of truth and reality into question. After a quick check-in with The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa, Sex Education) and Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu, Andor) on New Year’s Day in 2007, as they take another reading with the Vindicator and hand a “lucky” coin to a young boy, we flash forward to Ruby Sunday’s time with The Doctor. Well, technically, we flash forward in Earth-time, but backwards in The Doctor’s timeline. If you are reading this review, you probably already understand how to navigate the wibbly-wobbliness of the Whoniverse.
In the more contemporary timeline, we learn that the young boy from 2007 is now a full-grown man named Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King, The Little Mermaid). He is a podcaster devoted to exploring reports of alien activity and desperate to find the mysterious blue box he once spotted as a child. After catching glimpses of some spiky predators (the Shreek) with glowing eyes and being marked with green goop, he snaps a photo of Ruby entering The TARDIS. Eventually, this photo brings Ruby to his recording studio. He shares his innocent curiosity about The TARDIS, and further wins her over during an impromptu coffee date, but it turns out that Ruby wasn’t just there to chat. Apparently, that green goop marked Conrad as prey for the Shreek and Ruby has arrived on behalf of UNIT (Unified Intelligence Taskforce) to offer up an anecdote.
For a few fleeting moments, all is right with the world. We get to revisit Ruby’s lovely mother Carla Sunday (Michelle Greenidge, Mandy) and her feisty grandmother Cherry Sunday (Angela Wynter, EastEnders). In fact, Cherry is so energized by shirtless photos of Ruby’s dashing new boyfriend, that we finally get to see her move from the bed to the kitchen table for some juicy gossip with the family. Ruby gets to bask in the innocence of young love and slowly open her heart to her nerdy new beau with the winning smile and (based on Cherry’s excitement) presumably great abs.
Unfortunately, a chill hang at Conrad’s hometown pub with his besties turns from relationship milestone to full-blown gaslighting. Yup, Conrad and his buddies have procured pretty damned convincing monster costumes in order to scare Ruby into calling in her buddies from UNIT. When the head of UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave, Silent Witness), shows up with a full detachment of soldiers, the troublemakers remove their masks and start live-streaming UNIT’s embarrassing snafu. If that weren’t bad enough, Conrad reveals that his sweet and innocent “Lucky Day” podcast was actually just a cover for his bullshit truther activist group, “Think Tank.” Their mission is to disprove the existence of aliens and monsters; this stunt is meant to forward their agenda and push the narrative that UNIT and the government have been making up these alien stories and reports of The Doctor for years.
We are already pretty mad at Conrad at this point, but just in case any Whovians enjoyed watching a government agency get caught with their pants down, the episode goes out of its way to burn any and all bridges to Conrad’s humanity. Not only has he used Ruby to get to this point, but he proceeds to openly and joyfully mock her for falling into his trap; he says it was a “chore” to get to know her. This reviewer damn-near popped through the television to punch him in the face; however you feel about Ruby Sunday, she is a well-meaning and selfless person who does not deserve to be trashed on for her kindness and vulnerability.
It’s a pretty unique twist for an episode of Doctor Who, even if it does inflict a sense of dread as we watch the all-too-familiar story of Conrad being rewarded as an overnight media darling for being such an asshole. Not only does Conrad get the attention he’s after, but his accusations quickly make it up the chain of command, leaving UNIT on the verge of total collapse; we are left to wonder what will happen if all of UNIT’s technology leaks out into the broader world and into the wrong hands.
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for Conrad, the kid doesn’t know how to take a W. Instead, he uses an inside man to infiltrate UNIT HQ and hold them at gunpoint in a new livestream to demand a confession. Kate welcomes this intrusion as an opportunity to put the shortcomings of Conrad’s philosophy on blast. We learn that all of Conrad’s posturing is selfishly-motivated. It’s not about his disbelief in monsters or his frustration with government mismanagement. Nope, he is a man scorned. It turns out that UNIT rejected his job application several years earlier and the only way he could deal with this rejection was to reject the validity of the organization in return. Kate ultimately releases The Shreek that marked him as prey a year earlier to see how long he is willing to play chicken with reality and his own impending doom. He eventually breaks down in desperation, and goodhearted Ruby steps in to save him with a taser (we later learn that #hottaserlady is trending on social media). He doesn’t have time for a thank you. He immediately tries to save face, only to get his arm chomped on air by the beast.
We are saddened to learn that Conrad only sustained a single bite, and UNIT is saddened to learn that the recklessness of their handling of Conrad didn’t EXACTLY instill their governing body with confidence. It’s looking like UNIT may be forced to escape into the shadows.
Luckily, The Doctor pops in to kidnap Conrad from his prison cell and give him a talking to. He calls out Conrad’s desperate need for attention, the emptiness of his philosophy and the selfish way he is trying to wear down the wills of much better people in the world. Despite Ncuti Gatwa’s flawless performance, Conrad remains unswayed. He decides to “reject” The Doctor’s version of reality…there’s just no saving some people. To make matters worse, the enigmatic Mrs. Flood appears in the closing moments to free this insufferable asshole from his cell.
While the episode is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose at times, Conrad offers the potential to put a new sort of villain into the crosshairs: humanity. We know that The Doctor can do battle with expansionist races, mysterious entities, and even gods — but he can’t always save humanity from their own cruelty.
Humans often make the best monsters.
We’ll see you again next week for “The Story & the Engine,” to see if the latest threat comes from the stars or from our own backyards.
