Doctor Who: Rogue (14x06)

Mr. Groff! Sir! Excuse you!

Cons:

Honestly, I don't know if I can think of anything I'd change! Just that I wish Groff was coming on the show to stay, no matter how unrealistic that is.

Also - this isn't really a "con" so much as it is a "concern" or even just a question: last week's episode ending on such a stark scene of the Doctor forced to confront racism, it felt strange to set the next episode in the 19th century and have the Doctor's race entirely unremarked upon. Not bad, honestly, I kind of prefer just hand-waving that kind of thing for the sake of the story here, but it had the phantom bad taste of a show like Bridgerton that decided to do racial diversity by painting on a historical reason that racism isn't a thing anymore in Regency England and then just trotting along with a story entrenched in the restrictive systems that allowed for racism to exist in the first place. I'm being too serious here, but I just wanted to mention it.

Pros:

This was a proper monster-of-the-week episode of Doctor Who that felt very nostalgic to me. A fairly simple setup with lots of campy silliness and then a surprisingly emotional centerpiece to anchor it. I really liked having a Doctor-focused episode after two episodes in a row where someone else got to make up the bulk of the runtime, that was refreshing.

Ruby got plenty to do as well, and it was fun to see her exhibit her own creativity and bond with a character off on her own side plot before the twist at the end that leads to such a tragedy. Before I talk about the bulk of the episode with Rogue, I just want to say I was so, so moved by the Doctor's reaction of grief when he believed Ruby to be dead. The flashback to speaking with her mother, promising to keep her safe... and when he finds out that the bad guys have long lifespans and thus when trapped will have a long time to live out their suffering, he's viciously pleased at the vengeance this will provide. That was a good mixture of the Doctor's endless emotional generosity and the streak of vengeful cruelty that exists alongside it.

And Ruby, of course, is a good person and a good companion for the Doctor - she does her own innovative acting moment, using the "battle mode" on her psychic earrings to escape danger, but when it proves that she and the Doctor have worked at cross-purposes, she's totally willing to sacrifice her life for the greater good. She also has that excellent insightful moment at the end where she cuts through the Doctor's near-manic cheerfulness and gives him a big hug, allowing him a moment to feel the grief he wants to push through and ignore.

This episode was really well-paced and economically told. We get our setting and our threat and the backstory of Rogue told to us very efficiently. There's great setup and payoff with the glowy triangle thing that sends you to the incinerator, or, as the Doctor later programs it, to a random empty dimension, to be trapped there forever.

Okay - enough with these other compliments to a truly wonderful episode of this show - let's talk about Rogue!!! Holy shit. Look, I was prepared to have fun with this episode because I knew it was Jonathan Groff and I knew it was going to be regency shenanigans, and I knew it was gonna be pretty gay. But holy hell, I was not expecting the frankly electric chemistry between the Doctor and Rogue? It was a real shock to me, and it actually made me fully realize what a handsome man Ncuti Gatwa is. Like, I already thought he was a good looking guy, duh, but I guess his mustache didn't really do it for me and I was mostly just having fun with him as a good performer. But when this man stares soulfully into someone's eyes for romance reasons? Wow, he really turned the charisma up to eleven in a way I was not expecting and thoroughly enjoyed.

Gatwa is the flirtiest Doctor we've had in a minute. He feels, appropriately, like a different spin on the 10th Doctor, given that we're back in our RTD era of Who. He's always laying on the charm, and honestly when we first met him and saw him with Ruby, I was wondering if they were going to go a more romance-y vibe with the two of them. I would have been on board for that! But now unfortunately my heart has been totally stolen by Groff's sexy bounty hunter time travel man named Rogue, who makes D&D jokes, listens to Kylie Minogue in his spaceship, and who remains serious and grumpy until the Doctor can coax some gentle smiles out of him over the course of their initially hostile back-and-forth.

Everything about the two of them on screen together was honestly electrifying in a way I never expected. They stand too close together and make intense eye-contact. The psychic paper is an ally and tells Rogue that the Doctor thinks he's hot. He says "I'm in love" when he sees the TARDIS for the first time. They share the tragedy of losing travel companions, continuing on through space and time, leaving people behind. When the two of them danced together and they did the full-on Austen movie thing of everyone else fading away and leaving the two of them in the center of the room, I was legitimately giggling with happiness.

And all of this was good fun, I was smiling about it all, I was prepared for Rogue to depart this episode with a... well, with a roguish wink and a potential promise to see the Doctor again sometime. But no, instead we get the setup of Rogue dropping to one knee and offering the Doctor a ring as part of their "cosplay" moment to lure out the shapeshifters, and then we get the moment when the Doctor cannot bear to sacrifice Ruby to save the world, and Jonathan Groff kisses the Doctor, with all the tenderness and feeling in the world (Ruby gasps and sighs when she see this and honestly girl SAME), and then he steals the remote for the trap, selflessly saves Ruby, and sacrifices himself to get rid of the threat to Earth. And just before he does so, he says "find me" to the Doctor???

And then the episode ends with the Doctor putting his spaceship in orbit for him for when he comes back, and putting the ring on, and giving a little salute to the sky??? How dare! I was not prepared to feel real emotions on this day about these two! Yowza!

So yeah, that last part was more just an emotional ramble about the things I did witness with mine own two eyes on this television program, but you get the point. I would have probably smiled and enjoyed the gay Jonathan Groff shenanigans no matter what, but I was not expecting the truly intense level of connection I felt between these two characters. I really hope we see him again someday. Preferably while the Doctor is still wearing Ncuti Gatwa's face.

I can't wait for more of this show, this is the first time in years I've been properly enthusiastic about new Doctor Who content!

9/10