Who Review: The Church on Ruby Road

One Christmas Eve eighteen years ago, a mysterious woman leaves a baby in front of a church on Ruby Road. That child was eventually adopted and brought up by Carla Sunday and Carla’s mother Cherry Sunday, who named the child Ruby after the place she was found. Though Ruby regards Carla and Cherry as her family, she always wonders about her blood family, even to the point of going on a television program in the hopes of someone being able to research her background. The television interview initiates a string of misfortunes for Ruby culminating in the disappearance of a baby Carla and Cherry had just received to be fostered. The Doctor has been following her along this trail of mishaps and eventually becomes directly involved when the baby is kidnapped, following the kidnappers to a ship in the clouds and a mob of hungry goblins…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

“The Church on Ruby Road” is the first Doctor Who Christmas special since Peter Capaldi’s farewell story, “Twice Upon a Time” in 2017. It is also Ncuti Gatwa’s first full story as the Fifteenth Doctor (we were introduced to him at the end of the previous story, “The Giggle” as the result of bigeneration), and our introduction to his new traveling companion Ruby Sunday.

The Doctor and Ruby are thrown together as they attempt to rescue her new foster sister from the clutches of the goblins who intend to eat her. When they get on board the ship, they encounter a horde of goblins who are slowly conveying the baby toward the wide open mouth of the king goblin while singing a song about eating babies. The Doctor and Ruby manage to rescue the baby by landing on the conveyor belt and distracting the goblins with an impromptu musical number while they make off with the child. When they return to Carla’s flat, the Doctor notes that, like Ruby, he too is an orphan and doesn’t know his birth family. Coincidence and luck seem to trigger the goblins because after recognizing this and other coincidences, the goblins visit again. This time, it’s Ruby who disappears. But the goblins come for babies–so where’s Ruby? The Doctor realizes that the goblins have gone back in time to the church on Ruby Road and captured the infant Ruby. The Doctor travels back to that night on Christmas Eve, sees the ship, destroys the Goblin King (at which point the ship vanishes), and rescues baby Ruby whom he places in front of the church. History is righted, and Ruby reappears in the present.

In the UK, Christmas episodes of any show tend to be lighter than usual (perhaps with the exception of soap operas–the Christmas Day “EastEnders” saw two murders!). The Beatles learned this when the Boxing Day airing of “Magical Mystery Tour” in 1967 went over like a lead balloon, being too trippy and psychedelic for most families. Whether it’s the Doctor in his PJs quoting “The Lion King,” or a wooden Cybermen, or Santa and flying reindeer coming to rescue people, there’s normally some fun element appropriate for the jollity of the season. So the Doctor and Ruby improvising a musical routine as a distraction didn’t bother me so much. I really didn’t care for the baby-eating song, though. That came across as a sinister kind of Fraggle Rock routine. Or like a Disney movie… hmmm…

There was not as much overt woke preaching in this story as we’ve had in the previous three specials, thankfully. That doesn’t mean the BBC and Disney aren’t doing their bit to fulfill their DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) quotas. I think they managed to squeeze just about every socio-ethnic group into this story somewhere, and I will credit them with doing this organically. The UK is multi-ethnic, London especially, so having that range of representation is not stretching credulity. I didn’t feel as if they tried to draw attention to this, which is a positive. Also on the plus side, the visual effects are among the best Who has had. Disney has reportedly injected a lot of money into the show (I’ve seen a figure north of $100 million reported), and it shows.

On the negative side, I thought our introduction to Ruby took too long to set up. The Doctor hardly makes much of an impact on the story until well into the plot. The few times we do see the Doctor, he’s dancing in a kilt in a nightclub, catching Ruby’s drink as it falls off the table, and saving a woman with a pushchair from a falling snowman. Yes, he’s following Ruby, but the lack of the Doctor’s involvement in the main story made it feel less like Doctor Who and more like a family drama.

I’m not a fan of the new “sonic screwdriver”–which I put in quotes because it doesn’t even vaguely resemble a screwdriver. It’s more like a remote control. Why the need for such a radical redesign? Is there a problem with a sonic screwdriver that is long a tubular like… a screwdriver?

I’m not sure yet what I think of the Fifteenth Doctor, and maybe it’s too early to tell. Perhaps that’s saying something because, as far as I recall, up through Peter Capaldi I’ve always been on board with the new Doctor after the first full episode. I remember being uncertain about Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy when they were cast, but they eventually won me over after their initial stories. As good of an actress Jodie Whittaker is, her portrayal of the Doctor never really convinced me. Perhaps it was the way her character was written–she was more Doctor-ish in her better stories. All that to say, Ncuti did a good job, but his Doctor has yet to grow on me.

Which leads me to the question of whether I’ll even give him that chance, given the concerns I’ve expressed over the direction Russell T. Davies plans to take the show. I’ve seen some of the comments floating around the internet about the show trying to appeal more to Gen-Z, and being more “controversial” (whatever they mean by that). Speculation about the Doctor being gay is not helped when in one of the first scenes we see the Doctor, he’s in a nightclub dancing in a kilt with some guys, and then later talks suggestively about his “long hot summer” with Houdini. My objection to this is that the Doctor’s sexuality was never relevant in the classic series and it shouldn’t be in the new series. Any trend toward identity politics or wokiness is not the Doctor Who I watched and loved as a child.

Maybe the sad fact is that RTD, who is a fellow Gen-Xer, is no longer making Doctor Who for long-time fans like me. If the reports are true, he wants to make Doctor Who for the audience in his socio-political bubble, and the rest of us are ignorant bigots (or worse) if we don’t like it. Maybe these reports are exaggerations, or the comments are taking quotes out of context, though there is a consistency to what Gatwa, Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), RTD, and even Bob Iger of Disney are saying about the future direction of Who.

To sum up, this is not a bad episode, but it does look and feel as if Disney has put their mark on the show–which given the current state of Disney IPs that’s not necessarily a good thing. I’m willing to accept some of the goofy, quirky aspects of the story (e.g., the song-and-dance numbers) in light of it being a Christmas episode, and hopefully such will not be standard fare in the regular series. I’m not encouraged by the talk of DEI and “appealing to Gen-Z” that’s floating around the show at the moment, but I may watch at least some episodes of the next series to see if they’re truly going to let the messaging and agendas completely wreck it. Whatever direction they’ve chosen to go, since they’re currently filming Ncuti’s second season, it’s set in stone now for the next few years regardless of audience reaction.

So… yeah… I have mixed feelings about this story and the new Doctor, but I’m going to give him a chance. At least a few more episodes in the new series.

What did you think? Did you watch the episode? Feel free to (respectfully) share your thoughts in the comments!