Time for a historical romp! But can the Doctor’s romance right a struggling season?
What’s The Episode?Rogue
What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Ruby travel back to Regency England where they say the word “Bridgerton” a lot, in case the audience don’t get it. There they encounter mysterious bounty-hunter Rogue (Jonathan Groff) who is there to… er, stop the Chulder? They’re shape-shifting aliens who enjoy cosplaying but also suddenly decide they want to destroy the world for a bit of added jeopardy. The Doctor and Rogue have a bit of a romance while Ruby largely gets lost in a typical love-plot of the era. Eventually (very eventually) the Chulda are defeated, the world is saved, Rogue sacrifices himself to save Ruby, and that’s pretty much that.
Can the fifth episode of the season manage to land its satire? Is it satire?
What’s the Episode?Dot and Bubble
What’s It All About, JG? Lindy Pepper-Bean, an insufferable rich brat, is a resident of the town (?) of Finetime, a chintzy, dayglo residence where she lives within a literal bubble of social media and friends, projected round her by a floating “dot”. First Ruby, then the Doctor, try to break into her feed because the residents are slowly (very slowly, actually) being eaten by slug-like creatures. Lindy, unable to even walk in a straight line without guidance from her dot, manages to escape her place of work with the Doctor and Ruby’s help and encounters Ricky, a vacuous singer who turns out to actually be fairly smart underneath it all. They’re directed to the basement by the Doctor to try and escape. While trying to open a door to let them out into the Wild Woods beyond, the Doctor realises the dot is responsible for all the deaths and it turns violent and tries to kill Lindy. She sacrifices Ricky so she can escape, then finally meets the Doctor and Ruby in real life, where other members of the Finetime community are waiting. But rather than allow the Doctor to rescue them, they sail off into the Wild Woods, presumably to die terrible deaths, while the Doctor rages against his inability to save them.
Third time was the charm for this season but can the fourth episode keep up the winning streak?
What’s It All About, JG? Good question. The Doctor steps on a fairy circle after exiting the TARDIS and vanishes. Ruby then spends the rest of the episode haunted by a figure she can’t quite focus on that stays the titular 73 yards away. And whenever anyone encounters the out-of-focus figure, they treat Ruby with contempt and turn away from her, whether random figures in a village, family members, or UNIT. This haunts Ruby throughout her life until she figures out how to use this “power” and takes down a fascist UK prime minister who wants to use a nuke just coz. Eventually, on Ruby’s deathbed, the mysterious figure is revealed to be Ruby herself, smeared across her own timeline. She can then go back in time and is able to stop the Doctor from breaking the charm and it’s all over. Erm. Something like that, anyway…
Stephen Moffat returns to the world of Doctor Who. But has he managed a classic or will it blow up in his face?
What’s the Episode?Boom
What’s It All About? The Doctor and Ruby visit a war-torn planet where the Doctor accidentally stands on a land mine then spends the next forty-five minutes trying not to do that. That’s pretty much it. Oh, there’s a war on, and people are reduced to flesh tubes when they die, and ambulances that assess whether it’s worth spending money keeping you alive, and a Dad’s love for his child saves the day, and Ruby is shot (but gets better) and plenty more besides but that’s what it comes down to. The Doctor. On a mine. For an episode.
Can the second episode of the season improve things from the first? Ehh…
What’s The Episode? “The Devil’s Chord”
What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Ruby travel back in time to watch the Beatles record their first album, only to discover that they’re crap. Turns out music has been stolen by one of the Pantheon, Maestro, who is the child of the Toymaker. Maestro manifests as a drag queen / panto dame who jumps out of painos and wants to end all music so that… um… music plays itself or something. It’s a bit vague. Never mind though, because the Doctor and Ruby take on Mastero, which involves a lot of running around and then a music battle which they lose. Just when it looks like they’re done for, Lennon and McCartney play the magic chord that banishes Maestro who, just before departing, ponderously tells us that “The One Who Waits” is, er, waiting and the day is saved in time for a musical number to end the episode with, “There’s Always A Twist At The End”.
Ncuti Gatwa’s first season gets underway. But can this Doctor get a decent launch now Christmas has been and gone?
What’s The Episode? “Space Babies”.
What’s It All About, JG? Babies. In Space. You can’t say the title doesn’t give you the information you need. The Doctor and Ruby land on a space station and are immediately chased by a monster. Escaping in a lift, they discover the entire station is run by babies, having been abandoned by people so pro-life they’d rather let the babies die a horrible death than turn off the machine that makes them (in a baby farm, of all things). The Doctor and Ruby faff about a bit before discovering that the computer looking after the babies, Nan-E, is actually a person called Jocelyn who couldn’t bear the idea of abandoning the babies and stayed behind to protect them. After trying to eject the creature into space, they realise that it’s a) made of snot (a literal bogeyman) and b) the only one of its kind so the Doctor gets to do all that Last of the Time Lords stuff we left a good fifteen years ago. Great. (Not that he is the Last Of The Time Lords. Actually, he’s the first, but let’s not get into that right now.) Anyway, the snot monster is saved, the babies are rescued by letting off a massive fart and all’s well that ends well.
The 15th Doctor gets his first full episode and his first Christmas special but how does it go for the new Doctor?
What’s the Show? The first Gatwa-starring Doctor Who, the first Christmas special in quite a few years, and the last of the 60th anniversary specials.
What’s It All About, JG? A baby is left at a church door on Christmas Eve, who turns out to be Our Companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who’s fostered to a loving mum and associated family but has been having a string of bad luck. The bad luck is because some goblins – no further explanation given – have been picking on her. They feed on coincidence and accident – no further explanation given – and abduct a newly-fostered baby, Lulubelle. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) turns up and is taken on board the goblin ship with Ruby to try and rescue Lulubelle with the help of some overly-explained intelligent gloves. There is then a song-and-dance number while the Doctor rescues Lulubelle from being eaten by the Goblin King. Meanwhile, David Bowie turns in his grave. The goblins go back in time and snatch Ruby as a baby, turning her foster mum from a loving parent into a cold, hard woman. The Doctor realises the goblins have gone back in time so follows them in the TARDIS and pulls their ship down on to the church spire, defeating them and fixing the flow of time. Returning to the present, the Doctor sees that everything is back the way it should and Ruby, having worked out the Doctor is a time-traveller, joins him in the TARDIS. And then the neighbour, Mrs Flood, interrupts the credits to ask directly to camera if we’ve never seen a TARDIS before.
The third and final Doctor Who Tennant special sees the Doctor face the Toymaker. Are we game for that?
What’s the Show? The final 2023 Doctor Who special.
What’s It All About, JG? In the prelude, John Logie Baird’s assistant buys a dummy from the mysterious Toymaker, who’s a bit of a racist prick. The dummy is used by Baird in a test transmission… what could go wrong?
The Doctor and Donna are back on Earth where everything has fallen apart because some mysterious force – you know, the one in the pre-credits sequence – has made everyone believe that they are right all the time. The Doctor and Donna hook up with UNIT who are trying to contain the situation, with limited effect. Mel (Mel!) is also at UNIT for… reasons, helping out. The Doctor and Donna travel back to 1925 to find the Toymaker, who first taunts the Doctor about the fate of his previous companions and then leads him on a merry chase around an ever-shifting series of corridors. The Doctor loses a game of cards to him but survives using the “best of three” rule. Ahem.
Once they escape, they high-tail it back to UNIT HQ where – following a dance sequence – the Toymaker eventually shoots the Doctor. This triggers a so-called “bi-generation” whereby David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa can share some screen time. The Doctor(s) defeat the Toymaker in a game of catch, then the David Tennant 14th Doctor heads off to have a nice life (it says here) with Donna and her extended family while the 15th Doctor heads off to have adventures of his own.
The Doctor and Donna vs The Doctor and Donna! There’s also probably a “long arm of the law” gag in there somewhere…
What’s The Show? The second of RTD’s Fourteenth Doctor specials, “Wild Blue Yonder”.
What’s It All About, JG? After a brief stop-off to visit Issac Newton for a limp joke, the coffee-defeated TARDIS crashes on an alien spaceship. While repairing itself, it vanishes (thanks to the always-rubbish HADS) and leave the Doctor and Donna stranded in a very long corridor that sometimes reconfigures itself randomly and with an ancient robot slowly making its way down. While exploring the ship, they discover they are on the very edge of existence and that they are sharing the ship with the no-things. They are creatures who slowly take the form of those around them until they can mimic them perfectly. Once the process is complete, they plan to swarm into the universe and plunder. The captain of the ship worked out how to stop them and set the ship on a very slow self-desctruct – hence the robot – while the no-things copy the Doctor and Donna in a bid to escape their captivity in the creepiest way imaginage. The Doctor speeds up the self-destruct to stop them, the TARDIS reappears at a convenient moment to save the day and Donna almost dies after the Doctor takes the fake one on board but then is rescued. And on returning to London safely, Wilf is waiting for them but the world has gone to pot.
David Tennant is back! Catherine Tate is back! RTD is back! But can the old magic be recaptured?
What’s the Show?Doctor Who returns with RTD back at the helm for three specials prior to the launch of the Fifteenth Doctor. You probably know that.
What’s it All About? The Doctor has regenerated from Jodie Whittaker back into David Tennant for reasons not yet explained. He bumps into Donna (Catherine Tate), whose daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney) has discovered an alien, Beep The Meep (Myriam Margolyes), and hides it – in true E.T. style – in her shed. Donna’s still got the whole mind block from Journey’s End in place whereby she’ll die if she remembers the Doctor (or there’s a big End Of Doctor special in the offing) so keeps missing things like a crashing spaceship. The ship carries soldiers bent on bringing the Meep to justice since, though looking cute and cuddly, it is, in fact, a vicious, evil thing. The Meep is stopped from destroying London by the Doctor and Donna, who eventually deals with the whole I’ll-die thing by having had a daughter and diluting the metacrisis then just letting it go. Hmm. Anyway, Donna pops off for “one last journey in the TARDIS”, it all goes wrong, and then onto the next episode.
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