Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Church On Ruby Road"

 

After much waiting and speculation, we finally have the first outing for the new Fifteenth Doctor Ncuti Gatwa and his new companion Ruby Sunday. And what a doozy! 

We open with Ruby being left on the doorstep of a church by a mysterious, unnamed woman (who will undoubtedly be revealed before the end of this series) and adopted into a foster family. Twenty some years later, she meets the Doctor who is dancing at a club and seems to know more about her than he lets on- he does have a tendency to snoop into his companion's history. 

Soon, the episodes of bad luck Ruby has been having are revealed to be the work of evil, child-eating goblins (don't ask) who pilot a large wooden airship. The Doctor and Ruby think they have defeated them, but the Doctor soon realizes the goblins have sent them into an alternate timeline when Ruby's foster mother no longer remembers her. With some timey wimey business (and the new sonic screwdriver, which now resembles a large cell phone or small shoe) Ruby is saved and leaves with the Doctor in his TARDIS, watched by a strange neighbor Mrs. Flood who seems to know of the existence of time travelers....somehow.

The new Doctor positively shines in this romp, radiating a joy and unencumbered sense of fun that has been sorely missing from the series for a long time. This is a flirty, active, saucy Doctor who has finally come to terms with his past (it is hard to imagine any of the previous Doctors being as emotionally direct and honest with Ruby as he is in this episode) and his trauma, due to the Fourteenth Doctor's retirement. 

Ruby seems to be a perfect match for Fifteen, a young, fun-loving girl who is looking for excitement and adventure. Paring the companions to one down from three in the Jodie era streamlines the show and quickens the pace.

After the soft reboot given in the David Tennant specials answered many of the questions left unresolved, a whole new set of questions have arisen, like: Who is Ruby's Mother? Who is Mrs. Flood, really? Who is The Boss mentioned in the specials, but who to this point remains unseen? And who are the minions that the Toymaker said were coming? 

The answers are so far unknown, but come spring we'll all have fun finding out, as the trailer for the first full season for Fifteen shows (the episode where they meet the Beatles at Abbey Road looks incredible). This was clearly a transitional episode with some goofy elements (I could have done without the whole musical number) but the energy brought by the new Doctor makes it a very strong episode. Out of 10: 9.3

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special #3 "The Giggle"

SPOILERS AHEAD

At last, here we are at the story everyone has been waiting for, the one that reveals why the 14th Doctor regenerated with the face of the 10th, what the fate of Donna Noble is, and what the Toymakers plan is. And surprisingly, answers to all these questions are provided.

After a prologue in 1925, we see the Toymaker's plan begin at the dawn of television, as he ensures that the first image ever seen on TV (and hidden in every TV and screen since) is of one of his toys, building an army of screens until activated, sending a signal (the wavelength of which is the Toymaker's creepy giggle) that turns humanity mad, or rather, it convinces everyone in the world that they are absolutely right and they all refuse to be challenged. Sounds kind of like Twitter, doesn't it?

We see the return of Kate and the full UNIT forces in this episode, and their huge Avengers like glass office building with huge death ray mounted on top (we'll get back to that ray later.) We find out former companion Mel is now working for UNIT. It was nice to see a companion that initially was 100% screaming and cardboard motivation actually be presented as a fully rounded human being. Donna seemed to like her too.

The Toymaker presents The Doctor and Donna with a puppet show version of everything the Doctor has done in the last fifteen years, a litany of companions who ended up dead, to which the Doctor protests some extenuating circumstances (Amy Pond died of old age, not from the Weeping Angels! Clara wasn't killed, she got to live the last seconds of her life over again in a loop! Bill wasn't killed by the Cybermen, she got saved by an alien force!) to which the Toymaker sarcastically responds each time, "Oh, well, that's OK then!" The Toymaker can clearly see the immense amount of guilt and pain the Doctor is carrying and uses it against him.

Neil Patrick Harris' performance of the Toymaker is stunning. Once you realize the cod German accent is an affectation that drops when he's being threatening, the undertow of his presence is disturbing, a creature that exists beyond concepts of good or evil and is only bound by the rules of gameplay and chance. 

After some games, the Toymaker gets bored and simply shoots the Doctor with the huge death ray gun, forcing his regeneration. But it's not a typical regeneration, it's a bigeneration, with the Doctor splitting in two halves, one the 14th Doctor and the other, a completely new 15th Doctor with no ties to the past. 

This scene was a fairly clear example of Disney staking out its claim to the Doctor and how the series will be viewed in the future: Everything up to the 13th Doctor is now on various other platforms (1 through 8 on Tubi and Pluto, 9-13 on HBO, and everything from Doctor 14 onward on Disney.)

Ncuti Gatwa, in the few minutes we see him on screen, is wonderful. He seems filled with a sense of adventure and joy that had been missing from the show lately, and I can't wait to see his run actually begin with the upcoming Christmas Special.

The Toymaker is defeated by the power of the two Doctors combined, and we come to the tear-inducing part of the show. Doctor 14 admits he's exhausted of continually running for the entire series. When Donna asks him does he realize why he has this face again and he answers he doesn't know, she replies "So you could come home," it's devastating. 

The Fourteenth Doctor decides to enter semi-retirement, putting aside all the guilt and regret of his various dead companions, the trauma of the Time War, the Master, and all the battles fought in the last sixty years. He stays with Donna and her family (and Mel!) and says that he's the happiest he's ever been. (He still has his version of the Tardis though, so future adventures are not impossible.)

Meanwhile, in the Fifteenth Doctor's updated TARDIS (I love, love, LOVE the bubble jukebox in the control room), he sets the controls for an unknown destination and takes off, headed for further adventures.

The finest of the three episodes by far, I loved pretty much everything about this: the surprise appearance of Mel, the bigeneration, The Toymaker himself, the resolution of the Fourteenth Doctor to stay with Donna (after we had been led to believe that Donna was going to die in this episode, her actual purpose was to tell the Doctor he could stop running), and everything Ncuti Gatwa did as Doctor Fifteen. Serving as a soft reboot for the entire series, this is everything we love about Doctor Who in an hour-long package. Out of 10: 9.8 

 

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special # 2 "Wild Blue Yonder"

 Features some spoilers.

The second installment of the specials celebrating Doctor Who's 60th anniversary has been released, and in contrast to the stuffed-full and frenetic "The Star Beast", this is a quieter, far weirder episode. And as you should know, Doctor Who is at it's best when it's flat out weird.

Following the console explosion at the end of the previous episode, The Doctor and Donna find themselves on a massive, empty spaceship. It looks quite impressive in the long shots, too bad in the tighter shots they are clearly walking on a treadmill with CGI background behind them. 

They wander and banter for a bit (evidently the Fourteenth Doctor fancies Isaac Newton) and find a decrepit, slowly moving robot but no other evidence of life. Then mysterious forces notice them, and try to replicate their bodies into physical reality. (Lots of references here to various things, such as the movie The Thing and the previous Who episode Midnight, which was also about mysterious forces invading a ship on the edge of the Universe.) 

It is wonderful to see Tennant and Tate playing evil versions of their characters, whose worst instincts and fears are brought to the fore by the aliens. Then of course there's lots of running up and down a hallway shots (a Russel Davies tradition) and timey wimey dialogue, until the Doctor pieces together what the aliens want and why the previous captain of the ship is floating outside. 

Following that, we get a brief scene back on Earth where Bernard Cribbins puts in his final appearance as Wilf, a heartbreaking bit all the way around. Things don't stay nostalgic for long as things start exploding and people go mad around them, manipulated by the as-yet unseen Toymaker, making his first appearance in the series since 1966.

A solid episode that played on the actors strengths with a straightforward SF plot (once you understand what's actually happening on the ship. I give it a 9 out of 10. Next week we see Neil Patrick Harris as the big bad of the season, the Toymaker, the final fate of Donna Noble, and the regeneration of Doctor Fourteen into Fifteen...maybe? See you then! 

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special #1: "The Star Beast"

 

After more than a year of waiting, we finally have a new Doctor Who episode, under a new (well, semi-new) showrunner, Russell Davies, who wastes no time in this remarkably fun romp in correcting all the loose ends left at the end of his run. Other questions though (such as why the regenerated Doctor looks like David Tennant, previously Doctor Ten) will have to be answered later.

Years after the Doctor wiped her memory of the time they spent together, Donna has moved on and is raising her daughter Rose (hmmm) with her mother. Granpa Wilf is offscreen, in an old age home guarded by UNIT. A massive spaceship lands in their town and of course, Donna misses the whole thing. Rose is more observant and finds the driver of the ship hiding in a garden shed (nice reference to E.T) and decides to protect the cute, fuzzy alien from the bug-eyed green monsters hunting him down.

The Doctor appears on this scene, still presumably confused from his recent regeneration, and although I won't detail it here, the whole Donna/Doctor metacrisis plot is waved away through Rose and Donna simply giving up their powers through a bunch of timey wimey stuff. The Meep, the cute fuzzy alien, is revealed to be evil and swears revenge on the Doctor after his inevitable defeat, ominously referring to his "boss", probably the Toymaker who we already know will feature in the third special. 

There's a lot to love here. Every minute Tennant and Tate are together is pure joy. I loved how Tennant plays the Fourteenth Doctor as a more mature version of the Tenth, less battle-scarred by the events of the Time War and more eager to listen to people rather than taking them for granted. The new Tardis interior is wonderful, all flash and little round things. There's even a coffee/tea dispenser in the console! 

The upcoming second special looks to be much darker, a kind of bottle episode with the Doctor and Donna trapped in a "corrupted Tardis". There are rumored appearances by the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors as well, which if true would make my inner fanboy very, very happy. 

I'll give this episode an 8 out of 10, there's some clumsy exposition and the episode could have been longer, to give Rose's character a little fleshing out, but those are minor points. The series looks like it will thrive under the return of Davies after the fan backlash with Chris Chibnall, the previous showrunner.