Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: Anita Dobson, bbc, disney, doctor who, doctor who christmas special, Millie Gibson, Ncuti Gatwa, russell t davies

Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Street – The Doctor is Magic Now!

This year's Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Church on Ruby Road," is a new face for the show - gleeful, cheeky & more emotional than ever.

it's time for the Doctor Who Christmas Special, back for the first time since 2017, and with a new Doctor. Every new Doctor's first episode is effectively a pilot for Doctor Who, and "The Church on Ruby Road" is a new show in more ways than the usual, but still called Doctor Who. And being a Christmas Special is a bonus since those always get the most eyeballs. Davies uses this special to reconfigure the show into an even more emotionally open face than ever, a very far cry from the show when it originally started in the 1960s. Gone are the British emotional reserve, hello to the swashbuckling Ncuti Gatwa as a Doctor who wears his heart on his sleeve and lives his best life.

The plot of "The Church on Ruby Road" is kept as simple as possible so that Davies can establish the new Doctor and companion and build the world all over again for new viewers. Teen orphan Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, who has the emotional openness of every lovable anime heroine!) is looking for her birth parents to understand her origins and runs into the mysterious Doctor when her new adopted baby sister is stolen by goblins on Christmas Eve. It's a unique British perversity to have a hit pop song about eating children and a Christmas special that has the heroes rescuing a baby from becoming the goblins' Christmas dinner. It's a fairytale through and through, and proud of it.

There's a vibe that Davies is embracing Doctor Who becoming part of Disney+ by leaning into the crinkly, whimsical sentimentality that always defined Disney shows and cartoons. That was always a part of his personality, and this gives him the chance to fully indulge in it after the last few years of writing darker, more serious adult dramas like Years and Years, A Very British Scandal, and It's a Sin. The musical score sounds even more Disney than before, but it's not a huge leap for Murray Gold since he, like many classic Disney composers, is influenced by classical composers like Wagner and Mahler.

Some hardcore fans who think of Doctor Who as purely Science Fiction might gnash their teeth at Davies pushing the show into realms of fantasy, but the series has always flirted with fantasy through the decades. Many of the stories were set in medieval times feel almost more like fantasy than Science Fiction, and the Virgin novels and comic spinoffs have featured outright fantasy elements. Don't worry; the Doctor is still analysing the goblins and how they work scientifically – and coming across as Magic himself. To new viewers, especially kids, he's the kindly wizard, the mad magician here to whisk them away on adventures. Gatwa steals his own show, flirting with virtually everyone and everything again, making the new sonic screwdriver look really cool, and suddenly becoming melancholy and emotional on the turn of a dime when the Doctor reveals the wound at his heart; his sheer charisma is the magic sauce of the show now.

The show is still full of specific British social detail and commentary that makes it very BBC. Davies uses Ruby and her adoptive mother (Michelle Greenidge) and grandmother (Angela Wynter) to highlight the foster care system. Davina McCall is a real-life TV presenter who previously hosted the original British version of Big Brother and who was killed and turned into a zombie in Charlie Brooker's Dead Set. Anita Dobson is almost an institution from starring in Eastenders in the 1980s and 1990s and plays a specific kind of British elderly lady who likes to sit on a deck chair on the street to watch the street go by and may be more knowing than she lets on with the twinkle in her eye.

Doctor Who is Your New… What Kind of Friend Are They This Time?

Every Doctor has an archetypal role: William Hartnell's First Doctor was your strict but mischievous grandfather, Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor was the goofy uncle, Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor was superdad, Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor was the eccentric uncle, Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor was your responsible university flatmate, Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor was… an angry rodeo clown? Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor was, as Ace (Sophie Aldred) sensed immediately, a mad professor. Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor was the Byronic romantic hero. Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor was a no-nonsense social worker. David Tennant and Matt Smith were the internet's geek boyfriends. Peter Capaldi was Agonised Granddad. Jodie Whittaker's Thirteen's Doctor was your favourite kindergarten teacher who might have a girlfriend. Ncuti Gatwa is everyone's Cool New Best Friend. He'll jump off a roof to save you. He'll travel back in time to keep you alive. Davies and Gatwa have designed and calibrated the Fifteenth Doctor precisely. Nothing is done by accident here. The Doctor is matched by Millie Gibson's Ruby as a companion with more nuance and pathos than ever. The Doctor and companion are now the perfect heroes for a show recalibrated for Disney. It's still a show for kids, after all, and Davies is crafting it without an ounce of cynicism. It's about family, friendship, and love more than ever.

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