TL;DR – It’s a fascinating episode, but I think we will need to see it in context with the rest of the season to see if it has the impact they clearly are hoping it has.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

Today, we are looking at what has come to be known as a ‘Doctor-Lite’ episode, where to help with production, they have an episode where Ncuti Gatwa does not have to have a significant presence so they can film the season over a shorter period by having dual productions running at once. As a production cost-saving measure, it can reach the heights of a bottle episode or the lows of a clip show, and it is time to see where we land today.   

So, to set the scene, it is New Year’s Day, and The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Miss Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) have arrived back in 2007, but still London, Earth, is better than before. Before they leave, they bump into a little boy who makes it his mission to find out more about the big blue box and the man who travels in it. But now Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) has something he has never had before: an interview with someone who has actually been inside it, one Miss Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

Today’s episode is interesting in that it is a tale of two halves. I don’t always like narratives that exist on a pivot point because invariably, they must set you up believing one thing before pulling the rug out from underneath you. Think Get Out, okay, it’s not as good as Get Out, but that is the comparison that they were making. For us, the story is all about Ruby and Conrad falling in love, Ruby starts to move on from her time and danger with The Doctor, only to find out that The Shreek (Gethin Alderman) is still hunting Conrad. This could have been a full episode, them hiding out in a small English village, trying to hide from The Shreek, hoping that UNIT gets there before it strikes all because Conrad had built up a hero complex from his brief encounter with The Doctor as a child and didn’t take the antidote. That was such a plausible scenario that I completely bought into it before the rug was pulled out from underneath us.

That needle scratch was such a fascinating moment because I, the audience, felt the same way that UNIT, the fictional organisation, felt when it all fell apart. Sure, Conrad was giving off bad vibes, but you thought it was for one reason. It was actually another. Now that it turns into a story of him being the Doctor Who version of an alt-right antagonist provocateur who trades in anguish and resentment was an interesting point. I did think the actor was better playing the idiot than the douchebag, but calling out the ugly and often duplicitous rhetoric and tactics of men in that space that play on conspiracy theories to unsettle people who don’t know better was a solid choice. It was played a touch too on the nose, but there are many things Doctor Who is, and generally, subtle is not one of them.

One of the reasons that I think the back half of the show was not quite as strong as the first, besides the slightly wasted idea of an idiot thinking because of one meeting with The Doctor that somehow he is now special, which could be an interesting story to explore fully. Was the focus on UNIT was a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it was interesting watching UNIT be on the back foot as it comes across something that it has never had to deal with before: bad publicity. And I am sorry about that ending, but there is not a hashtag in the world that would get you out of that mess politically. It also was fun watching The Vlinx (Aidan Cook/Nicholas Briggs) noping out like they were the only sensible person in the room. Oh, and was that Trinity Wells (Lachele Carl)? Look at you, girl. You got yourself on your own show. Congratulations. [I have been reliably informed that she was also in The Giggle, and my apologies, Ms Wells, for not spotting it then].  

But for all the fun it was seeing Kate Lethbridge-Stewart take the renegade option for a change, I couldn’t help but think: ‘Why are we here?’ The more that I think about it, the more it feels like this was just here as a narrative device to remind us that all these characters exist before the season finale and the inevitable UNIT spinoff. Once you start seeing the gears begin to grind in the background, you will have some issues. Chronologically, this takes place before The Robot Revolution, which might be the more interesting part of the episode. We also got to see Ncuti play his version of The Angry Doctor, and it was good. But because it was a Doctor-lite episode, we only got to see him for a moment. This makes you wonder how good it would have been to see him play that emotion out for a whole episode. Also, I might just be sick of the Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) teasing at this point because I am not sure that whatever reveal they have for her will be worth this much build-up. Look, I hope to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.       

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: Lucky Day? While there were some frustrations. It was still a quite watchable episode, with a solid twist halfway through that caught me off-guard. Have you watched Doctor Who yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Peter Hoar
Written by – Pete McTighe
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu & Millie Gibson with Jonah Hauer-King, Michelle Greenidge, Angela Wynter, Faye McKeever, Jemma Redgrave, Alexander Devrient, Ruth Madeley, Lachele Carl, Gethin Alderman, Aidan Cook, Nicholas Briggs & Anita Dobson  and Benjamin Chivers, Kirsty Hoiles, Kareem Alexander, Madison Stock, Paddy Stafford, Blake Anderson, Aoife Gaston, Paul Jerricho, Michael Woodford, Tina Gray, Reeta Chakrabarti, Joel Dommett & Alex Jones