Doctor Who: Lucky Day (15x04)

Hmm. I was honestly less of a fan of this episode than I was hoping I would be. There were a few elements of it that just really bothered me.

Cons:

The big one is... Kate? Like? Girl, what the fuck? I'm really okay with U.N.I.T. being controversial and with Kate making bad choices, that's totally valid and interesting. But her letting the Shreek out to attack Conrad was so wildly out of line that I was waiting for it then to be a much bigger than it was. This should have been a thing where people were horrified and demanding she step down, right? And instead she and Ruby have a sweet little moment and share a hug and there's a quip about Ruby "collecting mothers" and I was just staring at the screen like... what now? What? She just did something absolutely insanely awful, siccing that monster on a human being. I know he's a shitty human being, but still. What kind of responsible leader of a para-military monster-hunting organization would do that?

I also didn't really like the scene with Conrad and the Doctor. That little speech about how the Doctor is fighting a constant battle to protect people who just want to be safe... I don't know. It felt very Moffat-era Who to me, in the sense that in those seasons the Doctor was very much cast as a brave soldier hero type, which is... not who this character is. The Doctor protecting people when he encounters people who need protecting is of course part of who he is, but I don't know how I feel about the characterization that he's fighting a constant battle. Feels strange to me.

Also, I enjoyed the character development element of Ruby realizing she needs some time to herself to process, but at the same time I was bummed that we didn't get the opportunity to see the Doctor and Ruby together again. Do we think that's happening this season at all? I'm not sure if Ruby is slated to return at all this year or not!

Pros:

This was probably a top Ruby episode in terms of her development and the examination of what it really means to be a companion to the Doctor! I wish we'd gotten to see a bit more of this while she'd still been traveling alongside the Doctor, if I'm honest. She's stuck in limbo, she's traumatized. She loves the Doctor but also he was the reason she went through some really insane and scary stuff and it's difficult for her to process it all. When we last left Ruby, she was happy and exhilarated by finding her birth mother, but seeing her a year on, it's so clear that after that initial excitement wore off, she ended up having some really heavy stuff to work on. It was so interesting to see how she dealt with that!

(Also, as a side note, as we continue our "rhyming episodes" from last season to this season trend, this was another Ruby-centric episode and at the end of it she talks about needing to go away and be by herself for a bit... I'm sensing more parallels!)

Another small detail, I loved the bit where Ruby tells Conrad that the Doctor wasn't her boyfriend, and that if he'd been there he'd have been flirting with Conrad instead. I've talked about it before, but I love that this iteration of the Doctor is so so gay.

Conrad was a pitch perfect villain. For the whole first half I was convinced that there was something up with him, but I wasn't necessarily thinking he was just pure evil and only dating Ruby for access to information. No, I more felt like he was an ambitious dickhead who was thoughtless and kind of generically sexist and made a stupid podcast. He was so believable as just some... vaguely shitty dude. And yet it's also not surprising at all that he was using Ruby to get closer to the mysteries of the universe. I assumed we were going there, I just didn't realize what kind of conspiracy-like thinking this man was into! It was a good and organic twist, and a genuine heart-breaker for poor Ruby.

He was able to be such a good shoulder to cry on for her precisely because he was biding his time and getting information out of her, and because he had this Doctor encounter in his youth, there was this tie between them. And Ruby needed something like that so badly that she grasped onto what was in front of her even though it turned out not to be safe!

This is a small detail but I liked the way this episode played with time travel in small ways - we get the Doctor and Belinda briefly meeting young Conrad, and then at the end Conrad asks the Doctor if he's even met Belinda yet, and the Doctor says "who?" I liked that. The Doctor doesn't know that at some point in the future he's going to meet a little boy and hand him a coin, and that that boy is going to be one and the same with this dickhead who hurt Ruby so badly.

We got something of a reveal at the end, as Mrs. Flood shows up and introduces herself to Conrad as "the governor", or, you know, "guv'nah" as she puts it. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but hearing a character on this show introduce themselves by a title immediately makes me think... Time Lord? Is she saying, not that she's the governor of this prison, but that she's "The Governor"? I'm really curious where we're going with this character, because she's been popping up in cameos since Ncuti Gatwa got here, and I hope the reveal can live up to the interesting build-up!

That's all for this one. I really liked seeing Ruby and thought there was a lot of potential here, but I was honestly so annoyed by the behavior of Kate that it really tarnished the episode as a whole for me.

6.5/10