This was clearly the most typical episode of DOCTOR WHO we’ve gotten in a while, one in which the Doctor and Ruby journey to some moment in space and time and then get swept up in an adventure happening within that time period. so on that level, I feel as though I should have enjoyed it more. But similar to most outings this season, I found it unsatisfying and largely empty. It didn’t help that the stakes never felt especially dire, but it definitely annoyed me that, once again, Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor didn’t do anything to show his mettle and to bring about a story resolution. Consequently, this felt a lot to me like a couple of different Russell-helmed episodes from his first run smushed together.
In particular, Jonathan Groff’s bounty hunter Rogue couldn’t help but feel like another version of Captain Jack Harkness–though, as a few other reviewers have pointed out, he was almost the Anti-Jack, with the Doctor being the one who is in aggressive romantic pursuit. Groff and Gatwa certainly had chemistry together, and their relationship was clearly the thing the episode cared the most about. But even that felt rushed and perfunctory. Certainly Rogue and the Doctor were attracted to one another, but this is somebody you knew for maybe five hours, Doctor, so the level of loss felt at the episode’s end felt just a bit unearned.
The Chulder, once we had all of them unmasked, seemed like a less-developed and cut-rate version of the Family of Blood. Their drives and desires and method of operation also appeared to shift and slide all throughout the episode in response to whatever the story needed at that moment. They never quite crystalized into a great DOCTOR WHO monster, and as I said at the beginning, their threat felt pretty perfunctory all the way through.
But most critically, I could look at this episode as being analogous to “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, the episode in which the Doctor and Donna take in a garden party with Agatha Christie and solve the mystery of her week-long disappearance. There are a string of murders in that one, too, but the Doctor is immediately an active participant, working through the clues, figuring thigs out, and driving the story forward. Oh, and he survives an assassination attempt for his troubles. Here, it feels practically like the Doctor almost can’t be bothered about the murders while he’s on the pull, and even once Ruby’s life is in danger or already dispensed with, he never comes to teh fore, never confronts the Chulder about what they’re doing, never puts himself into harm’s way to stop them. This sort of behavior was endemic of the Chris Chibnall-helmed seasons and I’m terribly disappointed to see it carry over into this new iteration. Say it with me, people: Let The Hero Be The Hero!
I couldn’t even buy into Rogue’s sacrifice at the end given how it was all staged. All it takes to break that unbreakable deadlock seal, it seems, is for somebody to push Ruby out of it. Doesn’t really make a whit of sense. But it created the necessary situation in which the Doctor and Rogue were forced to part, and that’s the main thing. It felt shoddy. The whole episode did. I felt as though one more strong pass on the script and it all might have come into proper focus. The problems here were not insurmountable. But it just didn’t.
What stuff did I like? Well, rogue and the Doctor’s interplay was often fun. Ruby fangirling through the entirety of the Ball was very nice. Due to circumstances, we haven’t gotten a really strong sense of Ruby and the Doctor together, but their end scenes hit their marks pretty well. And all of the period sets and costuming looked really great. The show had a strong look, even if the story underneath came across a bit threadbare.
On the earlier episodes of this season, I’ve been finding more reasons to like them in retrospect after a couple of days have gone by, and so I expect that the same will be true here. But we’re already up to the two-part finale and I feel as though I’m still not quite invested in this pair or the larger journey that they’re meant to be on. Maybe, hopefully, being back in the present and surrounded by his UNIT regulars will help restore the Doctor a bit more to his factory settings and we’ll get to see him taking an active role in whatever story is to come.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Rogue resembled Captain Jack the same way Ruby does Clara. It’s like you take the same mold but use inferior material on the second. I paused to check who Groff was because I suspected a British actor concentrating on an American accent was why he was so wooden. Nope, he’s actually wooden by choice or nature. I did love the Doctor pursuing him so maybe River Song got me past disliking the Doctor getting romantic. It was on the list of why I disliked Rose certainly.
I’d also say the Chuldra were more Slitheen than Family of Blood.
There’s also incongruities you don’t mention. How Rogue knew D+D but not cosplay. Plus the Chulder are said to be their cosplaying Bridgerton but they’d have to be time travelers to do so and Rogue one as well but that fact is never hinted at once.
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It’s the era that makes me think, like Tom, of Family of Blood.
I suppose of Rogue came from the late 20th century — I never heard cosplay much back in that era — he could know one but not the other.
Like you, I found him way too uncharismatic to work.
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This episode was all a bit ‘meh’ with, as you say, forced and unearned pathos.
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Yes, I was getting a Young, Happy, In Love With Everything to Live For vibe off Doctor/Rogue very quickly.
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A good analysis of the flaws. My comparison was Black Orchid was I watched that relatively recently — a much stronger sense of period and, again, the Doctor got to act heroically.
I think Rogue went wrong went they had the Doctor flirting so hard that even knowing Rogue thinks he’s a threat he walks into the guy’s spaceship, ends up right under Rogue’s Phantom Zone projector and then suddenly realize Oh No! And has no easy way out.
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This time around I have to agree with you, Tom. The episode was frothy, light entertainment without much substance. Like eating at McDonalds— tastes fine at the time, but you don’t find yourself thinking about it much later.
I don’t know the history of the Doctor like you (and many of your readers) do, so I can’t compare it to other episodes. But I did think the love story was rushed, the Doctor’s broken heart largely unearned at the end, and the Chulder’s threat very unfocused and vague until almost literally the last few moments of the story.
And, yeah— that “unbreakable lock!” It would have been so simple to have the Doctor figure out how to get Ruby out, throw himself in (and her out) then, right on top of that, Rogue do the same to the Doctor. Like you said: another sharp-eyed pass at the script could have taken care of so many of these problems.
KK
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What the heck was Ruby’s plan at the end anyway? Was she going to go along with the sham marriage and … then what? It seemed like the set up was just an excuse to put her in peril and provide The Doctor with an impossible choice rather than show any competence or resourcefulness on her part.
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