Ncuti Gatwa – Page 2 – JG Judgementally Comments…

Doctor Who Season 14, Episode 7 – “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” / Episode 8 “Empire of Death”

After a wobbly season, can Russell T Davies manage to at least stick the landing?

What’s The Episode? The two-part season finale The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death.

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor returns to UNIT and meets up with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jenna Redgrave), Mel (Our Bonnie), and assorted other UNIT bods. Kate wants help finding out who the mysterious Susan Triad, head of S Triad Technology, is – someone the Doctor and Ruby have been encountering in various different forms on their travels together. Mel’s undercover and investigating and while she does that, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) pops into take over caring for Cherry while Ruby’s Mum Carla (Michelle Greenidge) joins the shenanigans at UNIT. Turns out they have a Time Window, a device that lets them look back in time and they use a VHS of the night of Ruby’s abandonment to try and figure out who her biological Mum is. This overloads the Time Window, taking a UNIT Colonel with it. Susan (Not That One, despite the play) prepares to give a speech to the UN but before she can, a UNIT employee – the perfetctly-dreadfully named Harriet Arbinger – announces that The One Who Waits has in fact stop waiting and it’s Sutekh, who turns up for a nice end-of-episode reveal. Which is nice.

Season 14, Episode 3 – Boom

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.

Doctor Who – The Church on Ruby Road

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.

Doctor Who – The Giggle

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.