TrIpwire’s Man In Los Angeles Reviews The Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Church On Ruby Road

It’s Time For A New Era

Tripwire’s man in Los Angeles, Robert Cave, takes a look at the Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Church On Ruby Road, which was on last night on BBC1…

The Church on Ruby Road

Written by Russell T. Davies
Directed by Mark Tonderai

Well, on first viewing, that was a lovely Christmas treat. The first full episode of Ncuti Gatwa’s run as the Doctor and introducing Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday. I still love the titles sequence adopted for this batch of specials, and it was great to see Gatwa and Gibson’s names hurtling through the vortex just as David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s had before them. It was not necessarily the gateway episode some might have been expecting. Certainly, it wasn’t being presented as such on Disney+, where it is simply mastheaded as Doctor Who Special 4. It is on the top of the content carousel but doesn’t have its own button or section yet.

Christmas Who episodes can be hard to get right. They typically play out to audiences that are larger, and possibly less attentive, than the regular Who fandom. Indeed, the audience is possibly even more diverse this year, when the episode is available literally everywhere Disney+ is. General British cultural knowledge, like knowing who Davina McCall is, needed a little more signposting for international audiences.

It’s all just a big balancing act, one on a larger scale than the show has operated upon previously. To his credit, Russell T more than pulls it off. The central plot of the baby-eating goblins and multiple layers of coincidence worked well, drawing from the wellspring of fantasy myth and movies. So too did the musical numbers and the midway switch to a vaguely It’s a Wonderful Life/Back to the Future theme. But the coincidences are not coincidences at all. They are conscious narrative and thematic choices made by Russell T. The consequences of these choices, aside from their appeal to baby-munching time-surfing goblins, will hopefully be explored more in the forthcoming new season. Certainly, the language of coincidence sits uneasily with Who fans accustomed to weaving the most complex fan theories/continuity fixes.

It all ends all neatly enough for a casual viewer. The doctor goes back in time and uses his intelligent gloves to pull the Goblins’ skyship onto the spire of the Church on Ruby Road, killing the Goblin King and prompting them all to dissolve like sugar in a cup like the ones Cherry Sunday (Angela Wynter.) so enjoys.

Incidentally, my Dad loved the gloves so much he insisted on wearing his own woollen ones for our subsequent Christmas Facetime. I’ve got to say I love them too, for much the same reason; it’s a Doctor Who gadget that does not require a purchase to emulate. I know tie-in merchandise sales are only going to be increasingly important to the BBC as the corporation is forced to find other sources of income outside the licence fee that has sustained it for over a century now, and that no-one is forcing fans to buy every last sonic screwdriver, particularly when the last one featured in only three episodes before being replaced, and on Christmas Day! I pity the poor child who found their favourite gift had become obsolete on the day they received it.

For a story that introduces a new companion, Ruby avoided most of the incredulity such a role is usually expected to display. She deduces the Doctor is a time traveller after trying to make sense of her experiences, which include a brief period being eaten out of reality. She is spared the same obvious observations about the TARDIS, in the direction of which she is pointed by her nosy neighbour Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson). The Doctor and Ruby are reunited for their upcoming adventures, as heralded by the intrusive titles. Spring 2024.

But then comes the surprise. Mrs Flood chats to her neighbour Abdul in a friendlier fashion than we had seen her adopt up to this point. Then she looks directly at the camera and asks the audience “Never seen a TARDIS before?” and winks.  That there is the mystery that will compel the more committed Doctor Who fans into their first re-watch of the episode. I watched it three times on Christmas day alone.

However, I must confess that I am a little torn on TV that demands a re-watch. Don’t get me wrong, I love re-watching stuff, and not just Doctor Who. It is an incredibly rewarding experience to spot things you missed at first blush. But I’m less at ease with stories that require re-watching. It feels manipulative, like the writers are trying to play a trick on the audience, similar to the one previous showrunner Steven Moffat attempted in his first series as show runner.

Is that what is happening here? Mrs Flood went from being someone conspicuously ignorant of the TARDIS, someone who emoted surprise as she watched it vanish in front of her eyes, to someone winking at the audience as she names this Gallifreyan technology, something no-one else in the episode does. This change in Mrs Flood manifests just as the Doctor changes the timeline to prevent the goblins eating Ruby. Is there a connection? Ruby’s presence made her mother Carla (Michelle Greenidge) a better person. Maybe that something similar happened to Mrs Flood. Or maybe it is something else completely. Perhaps even a return of the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan? Whatever the answer, it is clear that this quartet of specials have set up a lot of things that will hopefully be paid off in the seasons to come.

What else is there worth mentioning? Well, I loved the Sundays’ apartment with its long central corridor linking the bedrooms to the living room and gorgeous highly stylised kitchen. It looked a little too well-designed for a place with fixed rent, but I don’t begrudge the Sundays a lovely living space. Maybe, the fractured ceilings and windows portend to something similar to crack in time from Matt Smith’s era. Maybe not. Only time will tell. That and the return of Doctor Who in the Spring.

I’m excited to see more of this new Doctor. I’ll see you back here then.