"Lucky Day" - Doctor Who s15e04 Review

So that was wild.

Immediately: the writer. Pete McTighe is back. Having previously written for the Chibnall era, this makes him the only writer who isn’t Moffat to come back for RTD 2.0. That it’s McTighe is also interesting. “Praxeus” is a damp squib, especially coming off “Fugitive of the Judoon”, but “Kerblam!” is one of the standout episodes in Whittaker’s first season. Of course, the politics of it are utterly god awful1 , but it is one of the rare swings in quite an apolitical era2. Based on “Lucky Day”, I wonder what his earlier versions of that script were, and if it was Chibnall who decided to have The Doctor let Kerblam! get away with all its malpractice.

Secondarily, I wasn’t expecting an episode that amounts to a riff on Love & Monsters, only in this case it’s basically, Hate & Humans.

Doctor-lite in an eight episode season

It’s bizarre that even now we’re still doing Doctor-lite episodes. The lead time on this season was so far out that it’s a wonder why Davies felt the need to give Gatwa two weeks off. Might be more obvious in later weeks. Or… maybe Davies really just likes the experimentation that came about during his first run.

Regardless, minimizing Gatwa gives all his moments a nice big spotlight for us to appreciate and ties us back to a present-day Earth we are unable to go to until probably the season finale. The final scene also punches back hard into the season’s overall mysteries, where Conrad gets a leg up on The Doctor simply by seeing a Doctor who’s out of sync with where this timeline is.

The Family UNIT

That said, despite it being Doctor-lite, it’s a wonderful excuse to bring back Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday. I’ve deeply missed since her departure last season, and seeing her as a full-fledged UNIT employee is a great deployment of her.

One of the most exciting things about RTD 2.0 is the building of an earth-based ensemble. Prior to this current season, Davies always built the ensemble out of the companion’s various family members, and checking back in on Earth meant checking back in on parents and grandparents or even siblings. True to form, there’s a visceral thrill when Ruby’s adopted family enters the picture as they get all gossipy about Ruby’s new love interest. It made me long for last season, not in a way that I wish I could go back, mostly because it feels like there’s still so much fruit on that vine.

As far as ensembles, though the Moffat era gave us a gift in Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. She’s been a strong recurring guest star since her introduction back in “The Power of Three” (which, to make everyone feel old, is a teenager now), and has appeared with every New Era Doctor save Eccleston. She’s rapidly filling the void Nicholas Courtney left behind, and every time she shows up it’s truly wonderful. It’s a strong continuity that helps keep us anchored to the pulse of the show.

Now, though, one of the sneaky things RTD has done since his return is expand the role of UNIT in a way it hasn’t really been since the Pertwee era of the early 70s. Sure, the Moffat run had the Osgood’s, but each time Osgood showed up it was to fill a particular storytelling void and she always did something a bit different. Now, though, Ruth Madeley’s Shirley Bingham is a delight every single time she appears, tying me always back to the excitement of her arrival in “The Star Beast”, and the bright promise of a post-Chibnall new Era. UNIT also means the potential return of Melanie, Rose Temple-Noble (always welcome) and also the Vlinx3.

Their recurring nature makes the world feel big, even if the events of “73 Yards” never happened. Their presence here makes me wonder how UNIT is going to play into this season’s endgame. If the destruction of Earth is really coming as they’ve been hinting at, it does build a good amount of intrigue of “what IS going to happen, though?” Without The Doctor arriving back on Earth, we have a ready-made window to show us what’s happening when everything goes to shit.

As a downside, this would probably feel even better if it weren’t so angrily elbowing other episodes out of the way for the sake of space. I love that this episode exists, but, again, this season feels so claustrophobic given the abbreviated run time. We’re now halfway through the season, and while I’ve been liking it very much, it does feel a bit insane to spend an entire week without seeing The Doctor and Belinda. If this were a twelve episode season, sure! But eight is like… such a low ceiling.

The internet twenty years later…

Regardless of how fandom (wrongly) feels about the episode “Love & Monsters”, Davies encouraging McTighe to go back to this particular well and write a dark inverse is a hell of a move. Though where “Love & Monsters” was a celebration of fandom and community utterly corrupted by douchebags like Ian Levine (h/t Sandifer), this is a story about the perils of disinformation, fascism, and internet echo chambers.

And if you need another parallel…? Conrad running across the TARDIS and then The Doctor and his companion while they’re flitting around some abandoned building to fight some random monster? Literally how Elton gets introduced in “Love & Monsters”.

It’s no accident that Conrad calls his little uprising “<think tank>”, complete with shitty, uninspired merch. Everything about Conrad is major “hey fuck this guy” energy, and with good reason. His use of fandom is far different from LI’nDA and their plucky little band. It’s all live-streaming, likes, and attention. It’s reckless, dangerous, and far beyond the scope of what he self-righteously beleives he comprehends.

And like, good on Davies (and McTighe) to take this issue head on. Twenty years ago, the internet was a very different place. Back then, it was totally fitting for the lead to be a lonely kid who sat in his room making vlogs and dancing to ELO. It’s hard to argue that the internet at this point is any good. We can cultivate our own walled off gardens, but just beyond is a hellscape of found families who bond over their frustrations and anger at the world and what it’s become.

Is it punching down? Sure. But Conrad is hardly some over-the-top pastiche. Everything he does, everything he says is wholly believable within the context of the world as we know it today. Every time he screamed about the government lying, of some sort of coverup, of the way the world doesn’t need protecting felt absolutely real (heightened “we’re in an adventure show and have to let him break into the UNIT war room on the top floor of a highly secured building” notwithstanding).

Not only that, but the additional wrinkle that <think tank> had a man on the inside is even more frightening. We live in a world where diversity of opinion is a good thing, but that also means that sometimes employees are not believers. That’s fine, as long as they’re doing their jobs and not interfering with the mission. This dude had top floor access and could see everything UNIT was doing. He was still a disbeliever. In a world where the current American government is violently ripping out its very organs because the people in charge are know-nothings who don’t understand what is necessary within a sprawling bureaucracy that’s spent a century building itself up… of course these people exist.

And also? Like… fuck Conrad. Fuck these people who think they know better. Fuck the media environment that preys upon sensationalist lies for the sake of a few clicks on videos and emojis flying up the screen during a livestream. While I’m pro-democracy, putting a mass-media tool in the hands of everyone is a recipe for disaster. Anyone who you know not from real life is going to give you a visceral thrill when your real worlds intersect. Conrad might be an idiot, but literally anyone on any stream watching him will get that shiver when they see him in public and want to take a picture. That gives him a power over his subscribers.

It’s dangerous because, well, Conrad is a malicious idiot who thinks he knows things when it’s clear to all of us that his brain is pickled past the point of him being able to function within society. But see him on a stream? That’s immediate empathy. Trust builds from that. I know a friend who is inclined to trust things on the internet simply because they’re said on the internet and they only confirm existing beliefs. Nevermind an information’s source or the viewpoints of the people who synthesize ideas and put them out in public… And I’ll be the first to admit I’m wont to trust anyone with an opinion about something simply because their being able to form one (however ill-informed) puts them on a different level than me.

We glom onto that. And this conversation needed to start like… ten years ago. Not now when the world is on fire and things are horrible. For me, I’ve tried to be extremely careful when reading things on the internet, constantly questioning myself and what I’m reading so it isn’t just the sort of blind faiths the Conrads of the digital space so freely exploit.

Africa next…

Still, we’re in a very strong season, one that’s really impressing every week. And next week we’re going to Africa? I truly do not remember if/when Doctor Who has gone to Africa at all. Certainly not in the classic series. I know that the Whittaker run filmed a bit in South Africa, but that was for “Rosa” I think (and maybe others; I’m not sure off the top of my head).

Far as I can remember, the new series has not done a full-on take on African cultures. It’s not clear if this is a historical or what, but seeing Davies making a conscious effort to get away from the well-traveled western history pool is terrific.

Random Thoughts

• Still worried about the future of the show, obviously, but there’s very little we can do about it at this point. Just treasure what we have while we have it.
• Bro just take Conrad’s arm it’ll be fiiiiiiine.
• Kate going full “hey fuck this guy” was absolutely delightful. At a certain point, she can only protect him as much as she can. By the end, she really leaned into the “find out” aspect of his fucking around. Good.
• I want to rewatch “The Star Beast”. And “The Giggle”.
• Seriously thought the pub Ruby & Conrad went to at the episode’s middle, before the twist was the pub from “73 Yards”. Not that it needed to be. Guess we’ll just leave that all in the past (which… rad).
• Mrs. Flood has been really fun but I hope she’s letting Conrad out to serve him to the wolves. If nothing else, her letting him out firmly places her in the “villain” column. Because fuck that guy.
• Gatwa is so good in his last scene. And this TARDIS set really is remarkable. I’m still not tired of it, even though I think it needs a bit more personality than the jukebox.
• And based on rankings, it looks like the season’s only getting better. Let’s see how long that keeps up for…

Season Ranking

1. Lucky Day
2. The Well
3. Lux
4. The Robot Revolution