you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast
each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or
audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol.
I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight it's a special holiday 2023 episode.
A Fusion Patrol will be looking at the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas special,
The Church on Ruby Road.
Start with an episode synopsis.
Ruby Sunday is just your run-of-the-mill foundling.
left newborn on the steps of the church on Ruby Road on December 24th, 2014.
And now, just weeks before her 19th birthday,
she's working with Davina McCall to find her long-lost family.
But mischievous creatures are causing a series of prank-like accidents that complicate things.
As the weeks pass and her birthday approaches,
Ruby faces an increasingly serious series of accidents, which seem like bad luck.
but are not. All the while, a mysterious stranger who calls himself the Doctor keeps an eye on Ruby.
Carla Sunday fostered and adopted Ruby, with whom Ruby still lives in an attic mansion.
Upon returning home on her birthday, Carla has news. They're getting a newborn foster baby that
very day. What a coincidence! A child born on the same day, albeit a completely different time of
day in a completely different year than Ruby. Luckily, the new baby, Lulabelle, is not a foundling.
Now that would have been a coincidence. When Carla pops out to the shops to buy some supplies,
leaving Ruby in charge of the baby, Ruby gets a call from Davina McCall telling her that they
found no trace of her family history. Distracted, the creatures steal Lulabelle. Chasing them onto
the roof, where a rope ladder climbs high into the sky, Ruby tries to follow them. Along comes
the doctor, who joins her on the rope ladder. He explains that these creatures are goblins,
and they're going to eat the baby. And them, for that matter. They are taken aboard the ship and
trussed up while the baby is prepared to be fed to the goblin king, a monstrous Jabba the Hutt sort
of creature. The doctor and Ruby escape their captivity by, I don't know, talking to the ropes
or something. Anyway, they get out,
sing for the Goblin King, escape
with the baby, and life returns
to normal. Except
it doesn't. Another series
of coincidences and the Goblins have
taken Ruby by going back in time
and stealing her when she was left at the
church. The Doctor goes back
and, using his gloves, drags
the flying ship down onto the
spire of the church of Ruby Road,
killing the Goblin King, rescuing
Baby Ruby, and showing
a distinct lack of curiosity about the woman who left Ruby behind. Back in the present,
all is as it was, and the doctor leaves. Beginning to piece together the pieces of the puzzle,
Ruby chases after the doctor, and with just a bit of help from her neighbor, the sinister Mrs. Flood,
she finds the TARDIS and enters. Hent. I would like to give my wife's review of this episode
to start with so my wife and i watched this uninterrupted we watched it live as it was
going out um we i wasn't taking notes you know she was not my wife was not distracted on the phone
shopping for groceries or whatever i mean just we we sat and watched the episode beginning to end
and i didn't speak i didn't take notes i wasn't the thing i had and when we got to the end of it
The credits ran and my wife just sat there and she said, uh-huh.
And that was her review.
What did you think of Church on Ruby Road?
Uh-huh.
That's not a bad review.
It's not a bad review.
I enjoyed it.
I guess I would separate out the kind of focusing on the performances of Shudy Gatwa, Millie Gibson.
because, you know, first full shooty episode,
haven't seen Millie Gibson before.
So part of me is wanting to kind of assess
whether I'm going to enjoy a series of watching them.
And on that score, no real worries there.
I mean, I just, I thought they were great.
In terms of the episode itself,
I guess I was sort of a bit comparing it to other Russell T Davies.
I mean, the obvious one is the Christmas Invasion, right?
He's introducing a new doctor in a Christmas special.
And I can't remember what my first reaction to the Christmas Invasion was.
I've watched it a number of times and we watched it and discussed it for the podcast.
But that was after some years after it first went out.
And I really like it, The Christmas Invasion.
And so in some ways, comparing this or comparing it to Rose,
again, another one introducing a new Doctor, a new companion,
it didn't feel quite as exciting, I suppose, in some ways.
And like I said, I'm separating out the kind of shooty Gatwa Millie Gibson performances from that
because I did think that they were really good.
And in some ways, it kind of it followed the mold a bit of those other episodes in the sense that it is an episode where the kind of monster of the week is some fairly kind of peripheral disposable nonsense.
it is so minimal in terms of the plot what he's doing is he's shifting aside everything else so
that you can focus on the new characters slash new actor and get to know them a bit i i guess
you know in in in terms of which i yep i quite enjoyed it but yeah i i don't i i'm trying to i'm
trying to put my finger on it I've only had the chance to watch it once but it felt like there
were elements in this story that just weren't committed to I don't want to describe it as
by numbers because I don't think it was really but it's like the the the whole thing of of um
Ruby having been kidnapped and be in the timeline changing that was very it felt to me very it's a
wonderful life and i could imagine that stephen moffat would do an entire episode out of it's a
wonderful life and it would be you know that he would get the absolute full mileage out of it
um the the the goblin stuff there there i had no idea why the ship just kind of exploded on the
spire i don't know complaining and it wasn't i wasn't sufficiently invested in the the goblin
plot to actually want it to carry on longer than it needed to. But I guess, you know, the kind of
adjunct to that and the thing that you may remember, I complained to you over text when
they released the Goblin song as a single the week before. And in the lyrics, it talks about
them feasting on coincidence. And I did say I didn't think I was going to enjoy a plot that
Russell T Davies was writing about goblins that preyed on coincidences. And again, I don't think
that I suspect from your synopsis that you agree with this, but I don't think that he really
committed to the coincidence thing. Again, you think Stephen Moffat does this. He is going to
make sure that everything in the episode dovetails with everything else in the episode, that nothing
is not a coincidence whereas in right in the kind of what was supposed to be the coincidences here
well like you say you know there were various fairly substantial differences between
the two babies and the and a kind of series of accidents and what that was supposed to do
i had no idea i had no idea what that was supposed to mean i i mean i get that you know having the
kind of goblins running around and reaching into frame to trip someone up or to knock a glass off
the table was part of the kind of mischievous nonsense of the episode but I didn't feel like
it was didn't feel like it was quite fully explained so I yeah I mean just to sum up I guess
I enjoyed it I enjoyed it probably more than any of the other RTD episodes that we've had this year
but not as much as RTD episodes we've had in the past.
Okay.
I mean, I have, I'm trying to make a,
I'll start with I'm glad Doctor Who season is over for a few months
because this is kind of, in a way, it's exhausting because...
Emotional rollercoaster.
Uh, yeah.
I'll tell you what, I decided as a thing going forward,
I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to draw forward something positive, positive things.
You know, not just not just me nitpicking.
I'm going to positive.
And I struggled for a couple of hours to come up with anything that I would put in the positive category in this story.
And I ended up but I didn't hate it.
And and I was I was, you know, kind of vaguely diverted and vaguely entertained while watching it.
I hate it.
It was not until I started thinking about it.
Don't think, don't think, don't think that, you know, I realized looking at my notes, they're just unrelentingly negative.
And so I've spent some time and I came up with the best I could do.
It was a pleasantly mediocre diversion.
I could definitely say there are things I love to do.
For example, did you did you like the Goblin song?
Was that not brilliant?
I mean, it's partly spoiled by the fact we had it a week early,
but was that not brilliant?
I would say that it was, yes,
as an in-world song thing that they did,
I thought that was well done until Shooty and,
well, until the Doctor and Ruby started singing.
Because then we have that conceit of musical world
where people can just spin rhyming lyrics out of their butts on the spot and yeah then that kind of
took it down and of course that part was hidden they didn't release that part i could see that
being a ritual song that the goblins sing whenever they eat a baby you know in which case then okay
fine it's it's a it's a baby eating carol but then you carry it one step further and it becomes a
musical and it's like yeah and no i can buy that up to the point where the doctor finishes singing
because he's yes supposed to be this super intelligent alien who thinks six times as fast
as everyone else you can imagine him coming up with the lyrics and he and he and he knows what
he's going to do he's had a moment to do it whereas he puts right ruby on the spot ruby on
and she she's she's got to come up with her own lyrics with a human brain bit tricky yep yeah and
admittedly there is that little bit where she kind of rambles into a nonsense word um can't
remember what it is off the happy to greedy eating or something like that to get it to rhyme
which you kind of go okay well yeah but then she still managed a second verse after that
and like yeah oh that that didn't um but but you know the story at points was dragging for me
and then it at times there was stuff going on and it was kind of interesting uh once in a while the
music would rise above the background level at one point i thought mary gold's doing quite the nice
poor man's james bond there for a moment but but mostly no um and and so i hate it i just
I hate thinking about it, which is why I say I'm pleased with a little bit of a break, because I really do not like thinking.
Well, I'm still curious whether there are other positives.
And one of the things I'm wondering is this is the first episode where it's, you know, fully Shuti Gatwa as the doctor.
How did you find him?
not buying him yet i'm i'm like apparently i'm in the minority it seems like the internet is like
my god he inhabited that rule just in an instant and he's the greatest thing since life written
and i'm like he seems forced and unnatural really so yep i don't i don't buy that at all um so far
no i'm loving it you know so for example david tenet's doctor is confronted by a werewolf
and he goes oh you're beautiful and somehow he sells that as you're a weird dude you're you're
you're an alien weird dude and shooty sees them about to eat a baby wow that's amazing he's like
no you're just no you're wrong you're broken dude it's like and i cannot tell you um i i don't know
and you know i asked my wife because i i really did spend a long time today and i took it to my
wife and i said help me and she said you know i kind of liked i like shooting out most performance
and i'm like okay okay why is that this is because because he's not a downer so you're defining what's
good about his performance by who he's not it's like well i mean i you know i'm tired of it being
all down and dumpy and like okay i'm i'm with you there but that's not that's not his positive
that's well i don't know i i think i think you know it's it's more it's more than defined by a
negative in the sense that there is there's a feeling that i i think you get in this episode
and i think is there in all of the kind of trailers that this is going to be fun that
you're going to see the doctor and ruby having fun in a way that you know back in the the first
David Tennant series it was the Doctor and Rose having fun they were out having a good time and
then all of the angst kind of crept in and I'm absolutely certain that it will creep in again
but that's that's because he likes to draw the light and the dark and this is this is drawing
the light and he likes to bring in the 19 year old blonde girls well yeah although surely Billy
kipa was older than that i think she was supposed to be like 19 now i have no idea yeah no she was
actually there was a there was a reference to her doing doing her a-level but i mean i hadn't i
hadn't seen millie gibson before and i i thought you know i thought she was terrific but i i did
i mean i've got i've got to say it's that there's something about gatua's performance which brings
it's not just not being a downer it is it's a kind of energy that there is there is i i had a
different reaction to that line because i see an enthusiasm in him that that's what it's supposed
to be that's right yeah but it's not it's not just an alien enthusiasm it is this kind of enthusiasm
for everything you you see it in the club when he's dancing you know it's just he's very he he's
very kind of top gear all of the time and i i think for for some in some actors that kind of
top gear performance could get quite wearing none of that with with gatua i just think it was all
really really beautifully judged i i i i'm not i'm not making my final judgment yet so you know i
think and i don't think you are either i think we're in different places now but i and i'm not
i'm not saying i'm not gonna shift on this but right now i'm i'm thinking yeah well for me at
least one of the big positives in this episode was him well so a couple things i mean one of
the things that i was thinking about while i was talking through with my wife about why she liked
his performance or which really was you know he's like yeah he's not a downer paraphrasing
We did a whole, you and I did a whole series where we looked at Doctor's first episodes and then compared them to what we subsequently know about how that Doctor was over the course of their time.
And, you know, a lot of the episodes that we looked at for their first episodes are not particularly indicative of the Doctor as a whole.
And so I'm not going to go out there and say, nope, this guy's a failure because it just didn't land for me.
But I'll come back to it.
On the page, I can absolutely see what they're doing.
It's the enthusiasm.
It's the whatnot.
But there's also a whimsy there that I'm not as crazy about, but it didn't land as natural.
And I'll pull a couple examples here.
We'll go way back.
Pertwee and Baker are weird people.
I think in real life, they're probably weird people.
to some degree and it comes off that way on on you know when you see them on the screen
i don't know about david tenet he may just be the most brilliant actor in the world but he
manages to pull that off i mean i i just didn't work for me in this one it didn't it didn't wasn't
like oh my god that's terrible it was just that's unnatural that's the most best word i can come up
for is it feels it it runs the hackles up my back somehow as as just not quite believable
and i think the fact that that they've gone heavier towards the whimsy does not help because
i don't know what to make of this new universe we live in in doctor who where physics isn't physics
and gravity isn't mavity.
And what are the lines he's got here?
He says, it's a new world.
It's new physics, new science.
He's learning this new world.
And I think that's key.
I think we're in a kooky theory.
I think this mavity thing has got some legs
and that we're going to have to fix that
by the end of the season
to get back to hopefully a real universe
that isn't full of intelligence
string
I'm going to buy
some of that I think that
unfortunately the Mavity thing
is obviously
not a kind
of wild blue yonder only
throw away which
I do find weird
because I don't see how they're going to
kind of resolve
the Isaac Newton
storyline strand without having donna in it but anyway okay the the the time time has been changed
and that has had some effect i don't think that has changed the physics of the universe no i think
that's the way i think perhaps i think that's changed in earth time well i i don't i don't know
that the physics of the universe has changed the impression i got from that bit of dialogue
was that the goblins technology or physics
or the science of whatever was going on there,
the way, I mean, the ropes are a form of technology, I think,
and it's something that the Doctor hadn't encountered before.
And we've discussed the fact that there are almost like phases
in Doctor Who where you go from the Doctor knows everything,
has been everywhere, and, yeah,
whenever they come across something, it's the companion that's surprised and it's the doctor
that is, oh, this is this, that and the other. Two times when the doctor comes across something,
frequently seems to come across things that he's never come across before. And that,
I think, is what is going on with this. And that is something that it does appeal to me. I mean,
I think there's a balance to be struck.
You need the Doctor to bring a little of the wisdom that he has
from having spent however many hundreds or thousands of years
travelling the universe that he has now.
So you would expect him to have a level of knowledge
that is several degrees of magnitude above those of certainly his human companions.
But at the same time, I quite like it when he turns up on the planet Gerbil.
and he's never been there before and doesn't already know its entire history and it i i
completely agree yeah so i think i think it's a bit like that that was the impression i got so
you know there's this like i i think i don't think it's well thought out once again but i'll i'll
say i think mavity is just a clue for us that things aren't right that that that this is not
the playground we were in before prior to prior to that event and whether or not these are related
whether or not that's i i think they probably are related they're not related to the moment in the
yeah it's not the event it's not the event of changing mavity that did it i don't i don't
believe that is what it is gravity to mavety i don't believe that's what it is i just believe
that this is a reminder to us that we're in a different place the doctor is is coming to grips
with this this different world new physics new science and i don't think that you know we can
make the argument that they have different physics i i of course you know we've got intelligent gloves
that can defile physics.
So I don't know.
I just, that feels to me like Mavity is the shorthand
for something is amiss that needs to be straightened out.
And I, you know, there's plenty of clues in this episode
that there is something amiss that needs to be straightened out.
But really, you know,
Goblin Kings flying in a ship over London.
This is, you know, this is, this is fairy tale stories.
Yeah.
And it's a Christmas special.
And that is also like really hot.
But on the other hand, you know, RTD is like the guy who made Santa Claus turn out to be kind of a robot thing.
And the Christmas star that everyone thinks about is actually an arachnid ship.
And, you know, that there are alien explanations to these things.
And yet this one seems to be like, no, we're actually taking the full on fantasy.
I don't know.
I didn't feel like it feels different.
To me, it felt like the stuff about feeding on coincidences or whatever, it wasn't any more extreme than quite a number of Doctor Who stories.
This is a direct result of salt at the end of the universe.
This is that.
This is part of that.
He's let the things that don't exist, the superstition things in.
That's got to be what it is.
Yes, I was wondering what your conjecture was as to what the event that had precipitated this change.
And yes, it could be the salt.
I'm not convinced.
The only kind of fantastical thing, it seems to me, about the goblins that wasn't kind of explained by the reverse polarity style mumbo jumbo was the fact that when the goblin king got spiked on the church steeple,
the entire ship just popped out of existence.
And that, like I say, was convenient,
but it didn't really have any foundation in anything
that we'd already learnt in the plot.
Yeah.
It was just, well...
And including the new physics.
This is me going back to my complaint about...
I can't think of the episode.
new new new new new new new new new new new new york with a cat people which one was that one
new um oh is itjust new earth well i can't remember the name gridlock yeah i think it's
gridlock no it's not gridlock it's it no it'S New Earth it's it must be New Earth because it's
the one where at the end he just they're all about to die and then suddenly grabs a bucket
of slop and splashes it on him and we've done and i'm like yeah that's RTD writing yeah yeah
that's RTD writing in a nutshell uh drama drama drama tension tension tension oh
oh
oh no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
It's all things.
And that's what happened here.
It's just exactly what happened here.
In fact, he was, he jumped down a thing.
I think on a rope, it was a rope in New Earth.
And it was, it was a ladder on this one.
And brought down and murdered the Goblin King.
Well, let's call it manslaughter.
But a gob slaughter.
That's a good thing.
I like that.
God slaughter.
So, yeah, as you said it, they were just kind of disposable.
And they were fun.
That was, you know, something that was the best part about the episode to me was the realization of the goblins.
I'll go out there and say I thought that they suitably fit the Christmas theme, that they were just hokey enough, but just well done enough.
that I thought the movie gremlins all the way through.
And I thought they did really well at that.
I will say that they're not very good at setting their traps because in the,
at the interview at the beginning, they, they set the trap in the wrong order.
They moved the bait first, the coffee, then they,
then they tightened the wire that, that she would trip over.
and then they hooked it up so that it would pull the light thing you should definitely set the trap
first before you move the bait right they should have done all that other stuff first then move
the cup on the woman so that she'd have to step because otherwise it could go really wrong on you
but but you know nonetheless it was an amusing scene and it wasn't until the second time through
that i saw that i go you should have done that the other way but um yeah um don't don't think
and i i can't i can't do that when i'm taking notes so like but i did i liked the i liked the
goblins not so much the goblin king um that was just okay big big blobby thing that that the
church on ruby road which played so little part in this episode uh was named after yeah good title
though it's not a bad title i'll give it that um i am gonna bring up something here speaking of my
I guess we can go into the
is Ruby a plant
I definitely don't think
that Russell T Davies
that took me a while there because I was
I was thinking
you know seeds of doom
crinoid yeah
no no no I mean
so Russell T Davies is
absolutely not going to
make this is the guy that brought
back David Tennant just so he could not kill him off
you know he
he is not going to give he's not going to make ruby evil bad anything like that she's a cog in
some sort of game that i i genuinely believe and they very much you know there's that whole well
we can't find any evidence of your family now i don't know how the show long lost families go
but i do a little know about dna and even if you can't find anybody's family a dna test tells you
a lot of different things like your ethnicity and and a number of other factors that i think
they would have said you know you don't know your parents are but you know we've narrowed it down
that you're but you're 2.5 yeah you know and and stuff like that and they didn't do that and i'm
i'm kind of wondering if that's because you know we're going to turn out ruby's a genetically
engineered human or ruby's an alien or ruby's uh you know whatever something that would not match
human dna except i would think that it would match human dna but i have a point but it could
be that you're reading a little bit too much into that because it could also be that it's just
a yes plot contrivance in order to have that second phone call with davina mccall and lead
into her getting crushed by the christmas tree then let me ask you this question in the uh in
the sequence where they had lulabelle uh up aboard the ship uh what did the goblins what did the
goblins plan to eat what did they what did they say they were going to eat what did they sing they
were going to eat the baby over and over again the baby that's right yeah what did they say they
were going to eat when they were going to eat ruby i they didn't call her a baby they called her
the beast over and over again oh i missed the beast eat the beast eat the beast so
interesting i mean i i i i i i don't i don't i'm not i'm not dismissing entirely the idea that
there is something significant to the fact that they were unable to track down Ruby's relatives.
And obviously the question of who was it who left Ruby at the church on Ruby Road
is something that we're going to come back to.
I mean, it can't be as obvious as being Mrs. Flood, right?
I don't think it's Mrs. Flood.
And a lot of people say that online.
We still need to know who Mrs. Flood is.
that wouldn't even solve the mystery if it's true okay well hold on i want to point one other thing
else about that particular not about miss flood but about the the mother the opening narration
which i hate um but once again the opening narration kind of was by shooty but he was
not in the character of the doctor and there are two things that he said that the narrator said now
I don't know if we can take the narrator's words for facts, but because he is not the doctor in this sequence, I think we can take it.
And the two things were that that was Ruby's mother that left her and that they did not know the identity of that woman until the doctor came that night.
Because it's very clear that the doctor knew the identity of that woman that night.
And yet we saw the whole sequence and he never went near her.
So he somehow identified that woman back somehow.
I don't know.
So yeah, there's no doubt that Ruby is something.
Whether not her herself, she is a piece of, she's the bait or she's something.
But she is, you know, there as a part of a nefarious scheme along the way.
Did you, you said you only watched it once?
did you notice that um mrs flood's personality changed completely mid mid episode yes right
right at the moment where she dropped her groceries and was terrified when she saw the
tardis disappear when we come back she's i'll put nice in quotation marks but she's nice to
everyone including abdul who she clearly hates and she'd set a chair out on her doorstep so she
could sit and watch what was going on you know and now she's all friendly and of course at the
end she gives that bit about you think i'd never seen a tardis before something it was i mean i
know i so i noticed that shift the fact the fact that she's that she has that line you know like
abdul had never seen the tardis before but then earlier in the episode she was claiming that
abdul had put the tardis there because he hates her and he wanted to do it in order to annoy her
which okay um i i my interpretation of that again one viewing so you know i can see this is not
necessarily going to be a very informed or correct view on it but my interpretation of that was that
Mrs. Flood had been dissembling. She had been pretending earlier in the episode not to know what a TARDIS was.
And there was a whole act going on.
And then later on, we were seeing her behaving in different ways with different people because it was about who she was putting up the front for.
Could be. Could be. Or could be she was taken over?
Well, it could be. It hadn't even occurred to me that she was taken over and it absolutely could be. I think I do need to watch it again. And that, you know, that that's a perfectly that that would make sense. And I wonder if it is one of the one of these kind of Time of the Angels type coat situation.
RTD is trying to replicate Stephen Moffat now. Come on, he's not going to accomplish this.
but maybe i mean that was that that that was kind of my reaction it was like with with moffett we
were all looking at those details and the coat changing and i don't i mean i think moffett made
choices that were just a bit random sometime or you know they they may have come about through
making a change making a change late late in the you know near final draft and then not going back
and having time to correct everything else.
So there are difficulties there
when you're trying to be that intricate
and every detail that appears on screen
has this kind of hidden significance.
But he did pull it off there.
He absolutely did pull it off.
He presented that to those people,
and I wasn't among them,
those people who were sharp-eyed enough
to spot this thing,
who then, you know, got the payoff
in the reveal at the end of the season.
It's just that, you know, again, there were two explanations then.
One was that this was a continuity error,
that the costume department or whoever had just, you know,
picked the wrong coat.
And the other explanation was it was Moffat writing
something incredibly clever.
And there are two explanations going on here.
Like one is that somewhere in the performance or the direction
or just the way that Davies has written it, you know,
in terms of this character hiding her true nature,
there is this inconsistency on screen.
And the other is that he is being very clever
in presenting a kind of mid-episode possession
or alien takeover of the character
in such a subtle way that someone like me could watch it
and not spot that happening.
It's possible.
I'm not ruling it out.
I'm surprised.
Well, you know, the other thing is I feel like you can kind of feel a certain antagonism that Mrs. Flood has to Abdul.
And yet, at the end, it's like she's talking to a completely different person, or she is a different person.
And Abdul is just, you know, a guy standing there that I'm going to, not like somebody I have a history of disliking.
And, you know, hating, as I think Ruby said, you two hate each other, something to that effect.
Now, I'll throw this one out there.
And this one is a genuine, I don't know, after the show sort of ends.
And then we cut back to Mrs. Flood and she says, well, I haven't seen it TARDIS before.
And winks at the camera.
She is breaking the fourth wall there.
And it could just be a jolly old Christmas nothing.
Feast of Stephen.
Yeah.
Could be.
I'm sure it's a nod to that.
So I genuinely don't know.
But when I watched it the second time,
because I'd noticed she seemed an awful lot nicer to Abdul
than she had given indication of before.
I noticed that she really was shocked
when she saw the TARDIS disappear.
You know, she was walking down the street
and she did do the whole, ah, and drop the,
but then it pops in and out over and over again
and she doesn't care.
In fact, she's sitting there watching it
Like it's like she's if she had a sure box of popcorn, it would have been perfect.
I need to I need to watch it again.
Obviously, when the TARDIS disappears and she's shocked by it, that's when the doctor goes back to 2004 or whatever it is.
And might change.
time is it possible that he changes her timeline and that when we come back even though he's fixed
the ruby thing there's something about her that has been changed by his the whole it's going back
to life it's possible and i did it did cross my mind but here's the other thing she seems a whole
lot more sinister in the second half of the episode you know she's got that jolly but her eyes look
so much more calculating and evil you know the smile on the face but the the basically the missy
look when she's not mad sure like not saying that's the master but but you know well this is
this is one of the things like this is one of the things i've got to ask because obviously i've seen
the various the usual suggestions that come out about this it's the ronnie is it missy the ronnie
is the first one that I saw
because that always comes up.
That's always for women.
Now that's been thrown.
I mean, if Russell T Davies
wanted to do this, they should have a man
come back and then no one
will guess it's the
Ronnie. And then
it's the Ronnie.
But there are
more left field possibilities,
I think. I mean, I
honestly haven't managed
to keep in my head enough of what happened
in the flux to remember what happened to tech to earn at the end but um there's also what i remember
and again don't remember the details from the end of time but all of that speculation about claire
bloom's character in that which i don't think we got properly resolved and in particular with with
that i i'm sure that russell t davies good because that that was basically the end of his run yeah
But I'm sure that if he had something in mind for what he thought she was, he won't have like chucked it away.
And now he's back running the show again.
He will be looking through his file of old ideas.
And if he still thinks that's a good one, then maybe he's going to weave it in.
So that for me, that's that's the most likely one.
But I kind of hope that it's not any of those things, that it is some new mysterious adversary who happens to know what TARDISes are.
Because one of the things I did enjoy about this episode was that it was completely fresh.
New Doctor, new companion, no returning monsters.
It's, you know, a bit like going back to that wonderful beginning of the Jodie Whittaker season where it was all just completely new stuff.
And it would be wonderful if, you know, we could have another season of that.
Yeah, I think you hit on something as he, Rokiti, going back to his file of old ideas.
I kind of think I could be wrong, but my impression so far is that all he's got is his file of old ideas.
but there you go well that well that was what i wasn't going to say because i am i am really
really trying to i just well i've gone over it over the last three episodes enough i'm i'm just
i'm just really wanting the the new rtd to be as exciting as having a new showrunner because i'm i
feel i'm missing out on having a new showrunner take it on so but you know this this was a genuinely
an episode without any of those kind of returning things it certainly had the rtd hallmarks on it
but it also had us and you know one of those was bringing davina mccall back obviously but uh you
know that's a minor thing as these things go and it did have a kind of different style and a different
feel from it it may be partly to do with the new leads and everything but from 13 years ago
um let's see in the in the assumption that that woman is left over from the rtd era which i did
cross my mind and all the speculation there was mostly either the ronnie or the doctor's mother
and now we know the doctor doesn't have a mother or does the doctor have a mother would this be
would this be the doctor's adopted mother not dead or would this be the doctor's real mother
who abandoned him as a foundling on another universe uh-huh uh-huh just i just throw that
out there i do i do think the i do think the way in which would be a coincidence well the way in
which he's leaning into i mean because he's writing a foundling story why is he chosen to
do a foundling story i'm sure it's because he is leaning into the timeless child stuff
And I don't think he would be doing that if he hadn't decided that he wasn't going to develop it. He's going to take it further in some way. Because obviously there must have been more to that story. And I assume he will have talked to Chris Chibnall about it, that Chibnall would have developed if he hadn't had the kind of COVID-19 curtailing of his final season.
And so, you know, I mean, that obviously leaves Davis with a choice of I just ditch this and do something completely different or I get what Chibnall's ideas were.
And I, you know, pick the ones I like and I run with it to develop something that takes it further.
And I don't think he would be I don't think he would be making as much of a fuss about it if he wasn't planning to do something with it himself.
Yeah, I was very disappointed in that. Yeah, I just found out I'm adopted. Like, you could have just forgotten that. We could have just forgotten that in the whole half human thing. You know, just never say it again. And let's just go. But yes, by bringing it up. Yeah.
I'm holding judgment off. I did not like the Timeless Child thing, but it's done now. The question for me is whether Davis can come up with an interesting story using that, because in a way, whether it fixes it or not.
I mean, I don't think it will fix it for me. I don't like it. But this is this is in a way something new. And he can either do something new that's, you know, genuinely based. Well, either based on something else or based on something he's just created for the purpose of this story.
or he can pick up on what's there and create something new based on that.
And I'm not going to, if he comes up with something good,
I'm not going to feel that that's any less good
because it's connected with the timeless child story.
You know, I don't like it.
I'll never like it.
But if it leaves something good.
It has to do something to make the timeless child less offensive.
Well, I mean, I guess it will make it less offensive in my mind.
I mean, it's partly the passage of time.
It's got to make it make sense.
It just doesn't.
I think what it does is it motivates it.
It makes you feel like if it leads into a story that's good, it feels like there is some purpose to it.
Even if in the lead-in, it is still a mess.
I mean, I don't think you'll fix that.
I don't think you'll fix that ever.
But then I think for all of the things that have been, air quotes, fixed, they're not.
You go back and watch those episodes, you know, you know, at the time they were just a horrible mess.
And all that you have is the context to know that, well, at least, you know, when you get to the nadir of that stuff, you know,
well, at least this is as bad as it gets,
or at least, you know, there's a good episode
in a couple of stories time or whatever it may be.
The thing that I don't like,
and the thing that I was particularly worrying about
in the giggle, I guess,
was that I felt like I don't like this,
and I'm worried it's going to get worse,
you know, with the by-generation stuff.
Well, it hasn't got worse, at least so far.
The by-generation stuff, that was a couple of weeks ago.
I'm starting to forget about it because we've had, you know, the Churchill Ruby Road without any by generation nonsense.
You know, the doctor hasn't turned up.
Donna, the other doctor hasn't turned up.
Donna hasn't turned up.
As long as they don't, I'll be allowed to just quietly forget that it happened.
A couple of things.
This was just in the category of, you know, we've complained about the sonic screwdriver being able to do, you know, whatever the magic wand needs to do.
But in a single episode, we have the sonic screwdriver needs screws to work so that it can't work on a door.
Or work a rope.
Or then we go to, and when it dings, it's found a two carat diamond on somebody else in the area.
Well, it is definitely a new passion.
Yeah, it is definitely a new Sonic.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm not going to say I liked it, but I had this feeling in that moment of the Paul McGann 1996 movie where he goes around telling everyone what's in their future,
even though there's no possible way he could have memorized what everyone on earth who he doesn't
know he's going to bump into is going to it is going to kind of grow up didn't yeah become and
and so i i was worried that he somehow knew what this policeman would do rather than that he was
just using a little bit of knowledge like he's got the diamond and extrapolating from that which
i preferred and that made me forget and forgive the screwdriver nonsense well i mean it extrapolates
only up to the point where the only thing that he was able to extrapolate there was that his partner
was a female that she will say yes no that's just that you bought it early that means she'll say yes
because you didn't wait around and so that's you're that kind of person how does he know that
she isn't a tightwad and go wait you didn't wait till the sales oh we're gonna be bankrupt if i
marry you never mind i know well i think the thing about is we don't we don't know that we don't know
that the doctor actually he you know i know you're not married so i i can't answer i can't ask you
from your own personal opinion to answer this question um he says something to the effect of
i'm assuming that your partner's a woman because it's a diamond and 81 of men wouldn't pick it
something like that men wouldn't pick a diamond it's like okay the person you're going to ask to
marry you does not pick the ring the man in this case the pc is a man he's gonna pick something he
picked a diamond if his partner was a man he'd still pick a diamond because he's a man picking
it it didn't make it didn't make a whole lot of sense unless there's been some recent article
about customs of same-sex couples
choosing their stones or something.
You'd assume that he would have
at least tried to surreptitiously find out
what kind of stone she would like in the rake
before he goes and finds his own price.
Okay, I've never met anybody that did that.
Again, that could be a same-sex thing.
You just, you know, it's an engagement, right?
You buy a diamond.
No, it could be, you know,
he asks her friends or he you know gives her a hypothetical about what if you know someone else
were i i don't know i mean i'm sure i'm or just he knows that she loves diamonds i mean i i don't
know and in a way i think the ambiguity of it saved it a little bit because it could just be
the doctor you know not knowing what she's going to say at all but just saying what he thinks
is going to be the most encouraging so that he'll go away you know he will he'll go he'll go away or
you know that he will go ahead and go ahead with the proposal you know because he wants to encourage
him to give it a try I don't know um yeah I did I didn't I didn't particularly like I didn't I
didn't like that but i prefer i preferred the nonsense with the screwdriver to the doctor
knowing what is going to happen yeah it's just odd that you put it at the opposite ends of the
spectrum in this particular episode about what it can and cannot do it's gotta have screws but
unless it's a diamond i know i know the sonic it's just odd that they would call that out
especially when it's been well established that what the sonic doesn't work on is wood
and it was a wooden door yes that's the that's the other but okay yeah he should have he should
have maybe it's because it's a different universe difference yeah you should have paid attention
he should watch the day of the doctor again yeah but you know watch the day of the doctor again
many times learn something from it we all should we all should but what i wanted to ask you about
was the gloves because the sonic i'm used to but the gloves that's like an extra egregious piece
of magic technology yes it was i i not you know it not only was it an egregious piece of magic
technology at least the way he explained it whatever you want to call that as an explanation
but to then turn around and say and if you reverse it you you weigh more i just didn't it didn't make
any sense that the gloves increase it just didn't make any sense it did it you're right it didn't
make any sense and the annoying thing about it is that you know that the reason for having the gloves
in the first place was so that they could be reversed because you could have solved the
let's climb up the ladder bit by just climbing up the ladder i mean up the ladder yes yes yes it was
yeah um speaking of the ladder i thought you know in a generally well done technically episode i
think the scene where the doctor leaps onto the ladder looks terrible yeah it just it looks wrong
and unfortunately they showed that like a million times in all the trailers and whatnot but it just
it does not look like the doctor leaped over and grabbed onto that ladder no it's a tough one to
say yeah i suspected i suspect it is a tough one to do but it just it didn't it didn't work um
one thing i want to mention about the character of the doctor is there were a couple times in
this episode where he made i don't know it felt like questionable decisions to me when ruby
disappeared did carla still know who he was why would he even be in the room sherry neither carla
nor cherry seem to be worried about a strange man standing in their house no but in a way in a way i
don't think that's necessarily an effect of the situation so much as an effect of the way in which
the timelines resolved because in in one sense kind of proper properly deterministic approach
to that change should result in the doctor not being in the house anyway because the reason he's
in the house is because of ruby and if ruby but he's immune hadn't been there well it well exactly
but then as the timelines write themselves then how how is that experienced from carla's point of
you uh i don't i don't quite know i don't know what point he appears and yeah and well he's he's
in the house with him and he's he's running up and down talking about stuff and they're like
is that the first they see of him because because wouldn't he know would would he not already have
come into that isn't there isn't there a bit of an alternate timeline that we haven't seen
And if there isn't, if there is a sudden kind of mashing of the two timelines, then maybe there's something about the way those timelines merge that, you know, the people involved in it just can't conceive of what's going on.
They have to rationalize why suddenly there is a man in the house because he's not just appeared in the normal sense.
He's come from a different timeline.
So he leaves the house and then he comes back in.
what does he do he has to break in all the way with the sonic that was weird i mean that's a
choice yes that's a choice he just ran into somebody's house who may not recognize him two
old women who and he's a strange man barging into breaking into their house and running up and down
and ranting i that was an odd choice and here's another one that i thought was a really odd choice
he saves the woman with the pram from the snowman falling on her which apparently wouldn't have been
fatal anyway but okay she saves the woman he saves the woman with a pram and then he gets bonked on
the head but he's fine and he pops out and what is the first thing he does he complains at her
walking a baby at midnight it's like how about are you all right uh or and and the woman well
she's obviously all right but yeah and confronted by a man who just saved her life but then pops
out and complains about her she's she's you know are you all right and there's no thank you for
saving my life there's no gratitude there there's just look i'm buying my groceries out my shopping
it's an odd scene the doctor doesn't come off well the woman doesn't come off well nobody comes off
well in that scene and i asked myself the question if she hadn't been pushing a pram does that mean
the doctor wouldn't have saved her because he seems he seems genuinely upset that she was not
pushing a baby you know i mean i wasted this effort you it doesn't come off right the odd
the oddest thing about that is that he's surprised at her pushing a cram at that time of night and i
you know i say that as someone who's not a parent but i know you do i know with kids that
if if they don't sleep and what they need is to be pushed around then that's what you do you know
yes my kids had to be put in a car and driven around and that's what you do even if it's one
in the morning but exactly drop them in the car seat you drive them around the town you just do
so it's just odd that that was just the first thought out of his out of his mind was you know
it's like i did this because you had a baby and it's like no the doctor would have done that for
anybody the doctor would have done that if it was a you know if it was a stray cat on the street he
had done it if it was one of the goblins you know but yeah i don't know it's just it's just odd um
it's just it's just odd um part of the reason why this character doesn't quite i don't know
it's still not quite he doesn't come off as it comes off as forced but also wrong there and not
wrong in an explainable way yeah just from a set design kind of thing uh wow that is a hell of a
big apartment that those people have it's like it's about a mile long yeah it does not it also
does not fit spatially with what we saw so you know the doctor came up comes up the stairs the
stairs are on one side and then her apartment is off on one side of it and so that means it's only
half the width of the building that they're in but okay so let's say it's running the entire length
maybe it's running over all the other people underneath them kind of like in the star beast
where the doctor was breaking through the walls.
Maybe they've taken that apartment
and they've knocked out the attic
and they've stretched it the entire length,
which is why it's an odd shape,
but it's very large.
But it's still only half of the building left to right,
or see what I'm saying?
Not lengthwise, widthwise.
It's only because of the way the steps work
and the way the doctor entered the building.
And then we see Ruby go up through the window
on the ceiling,
and we know how big that room,
houses because they were standing on it.
It just doesn't look like it fits.
So, you know, it's a TARDIS.
But other than that,
I don't know that I have anything else.
I already mentioned Doctor hanging out with teenage girls,
and I have just one note,
intelligent gloves at the last here at the end,
which we've already touched on.
It's like, please stop with that.
Please, please stop with that RTD.
make the doctor solve his problems with his brain not i i i don't i i don't have anything about the
episode um either i do i do have a question um because i think you watched this on disney plus
did you get a doctor who will return in 2024 message on the screen doesn't sound like after
the credits after the credits after after the it was after it was after it was wasn't at the end of
the credits it was after the credit started you presumably got the credit started after the doctor
says new home new new new new place new home new something or other like that and then it fell back
to mrs flood talking to the camera yeah but but then you roll the credits and there was nothing
there was nothing else no i i just i just want it it's that thing we had the big writing last time
that I disliked and now it's Doctor Who Will Return in 2024.
It's something about the way in which Russell T. Davis
wants the show to feel very current.
It's, you know, last time he had,
I mean, it's part of having Davina McCall in it, I think.
Last time he had Davina McCall in it
was because he was doing the send-up
of the Big Brother and everything.
And it was very much in the television of the moment.
But one of the things that seems odd about doing this now is that, I mean, I mean, already they they've had to kind of change the version of the episodes that get released onto the home media for some of these things compared to the version that gets transmitted.
But now it's actually going straight on to streaming.
It's, you know, they're mindful of the fact it's going on to iPlayer.
It's going on to Disney Plus.
So to have a message saying Doctor Who will return in 2024 in an episode that pretty soon people are going to be watching in 2024.
I mean, lots of people are going to be watching.
And in years to come, they will be watching it.
You know, they're going to have to change the version of the episode that they put on there.
And I mean, I think they'll just drop that.
I think they'll just drop that.
I think they'll just cut it out.
I'm sure they will, but I wondered why it was such an important thing to include that within the kind of on-screen presentation, rather than, as you say, it could be after the end of the credits, or it could be a, you know, for the BBC One broadcast, it could be a continuity announcer or whatever.
I never liked the way they did the next time trailers on during the RTD era, particularly.
I always hated the trailer before the credits.
Yes.
No, no, no.
I hated that.
But now, of course, we're in this slightly weird thing.
If they don't have a next time trailer at all.
If you want to see what's up on YouTube.
Yeah.
Yeah, indeed.
You've got to go and you've got to go and look for it.
So I wondered if we should just spend a moment discussing that, the kind of 55 seconds of what's going to be in so-called season one or actual season 40.
Yeah, we could.
I watched it once.
I thought, oh, God, that was my response.
Oh, God.
I mean, I want to watch it sooner rather than later.
And I suspect it will be earlier in the year.
It's May.
I think it's been announced.
Do we know?
Oh, that's much later than I expected.
Maybe that's because it's only going to be eight episodes or so.
Because they wouldn't run it over the summer.
But I guess May, June then.
I mean, one of the things I wondered was, is it going back to the old template where you have, you know, an episode in the future, an episode in the past?
We've obviously got a period episode there, although the Beatles episodes obviously in the past and I didn't really see.
There was some spaceshipy corridor thing, but there was also a fair bit of present day stuff.
I want an explanation how shooty's hair grows in and out.
Well, I think that's all part of the radical costume changing.
One thing, and actually this does come back to the episode,
it is one thing I just wanted to mention about it,
and I forgot to make a note,
was that this episode felt very much,
and you mentioned the fact we talked about the various Doctor's first episodes,
and I think when we talked about the Giggle,
I questioned whether this would count as Gatwa's first episode,
because he gets 20 minutes in the giggle.
It's a substantial piece of performance.
But almost always the first episode for a doctor involves some,
even Rose, the doctor is looking in a mirror and inspecting his new ears.
It involves some kind of allusion to the fact that he is new in his body.
There is no allusion to the fact that he's new in his body in this episode.
Now, it feels like he's had, you know, I don't know if this is just leaving a big gap for big finish, but it feels like he's had a bunch of adventures.
He certainly had time to completely redesign his sonic screwdriver yet again.
Yeah, but the TARDIS just pops those out like tic-tacs, you know.
Well, I mean, it could be that it could.
And I don't suppose they're going to nail it down.
It's just, to me, it had the feel of he's already had time to kind of get used to his new self, that he's maybe made a few trips already.
And so what's new about this is more, it's new Ruby rather than new incarnation of the Doctor.
That's the feel.
I mean, obviously for us, it is a new incarnation of the Doctor.
But I don't know.
I just, I kind of felt that I quite liked that.
So for all the things that I hated about the giggle, the fact that it sort of got that new doctor bit out of the way so that we can pick up the story, maybe for him, a few adventures down the line.
It was quite an interesting feel and I liked it.
As we said, you know, when we're discussing the change in costume from Whitaker to Tennant and that RTD just said, you know, I just didn't want to waste any time on up on a costume change scene.
It's like I as we rightly pointed out and I'll still stand by this.
He could have just been in her clothes.
And then the next time we see him, he arrives and he's wearing a new outfit because he's changed clothes.
We don't need to see the doctor change clothes every time.
And I can understand when you have a limited amount of screen time and we have, you know, gone, we have gone down an awful lot of screen time for a season of Doctor Who since its heyday.
And you don't have maybe time to waste on a musical number while they futz around picking their tie.
Got that.
He's already done that.
And I don't I don't disagree with that.
It's it's not necessary.
It's a fun bit of Doctor Who history and a nod to it here and there maybe, but you don't need to make a big production out of it.
The one that I can truly understand is not making a big production out of regeneration trauma.
It doesn't need to be an entire story of the Doctor fighting, you know, with his falling apart.
These things, they're different from one regeneration to the next.
This could be just like, yeah, I had a headache for a few hours and then I was fine.
And it serves a certain purpose because, I mean, I imagine you're thinking of Castrovalva.
And that was the point of the story, part of it.
It was part of the point of the story.
And it was also partly because Tom Baker had been the doctor for seven years.
And I think there was a greater need to mark that in some way.
I also think if you look at the Christmas invasion, the kind of trauma basically knocks the doctor out of it for half and half the episode or whatever it is, possibly even more.
But that's because we've got Rose, who we are familiar with, who is the viewer's proxy.
And so it's her coming to terms with the change of the doctor.
And I think, right, again, I think I quite like that.
But what I think works well in this instance, and, you know, as you say, no particular reason why you have to have the regeneration trauma and dispensing with it here allows you to kind of slick that switch over to we're actually getting most of the initial part of the story from Ruby's perspective.
And the doctor is kind of flitting in and out of the story.
You know, it's not focused on him.
Exactly like Rose.
Yeah.
It is, in many ways, a retread of Rose.
Except in Rose, Rose spent more time pursuing the mystery of the Doctor.
Yes.
That does not happen in this episode.
No.
It is part of that odd structure that just kind of, we waste more time watching Ruby hang out in clubs and play in a band and whatnot.
So, I don't know.
It's uneven.
it's uneven um i don't have anything else to you no that's it that's it for dr who twins 23
i can and i think i can say what in a very rare circumstance and next time it's bugs nuclear
family so anyway simon thank you for joining me it's a pleasure as always and listers i do hope
you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol. You've been listening to Fusion Patrol.
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