CHRISTMAS LEFTOVERS - DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL - THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD (2023)

DIRECTED by Mark Tonderai

SCREENPLAY by Russel T Davies 

STARRING  - Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor, Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday,  Michelle Greenidge as Carla Sunday,  Angela Wynter as Cherry Sunday,  Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood,  Davina McCall as Herself,  Bobby Bradley as Denzel,  Mary Malone as Trudy,  Hemi Yeroham as Abdul.

PLOT - Nineteen years ago on Christmas Eve a baby girl was abandoned in the snow outside the church on Ruby Road. Nineteen years later - it is Christmas 2023 and the baby girl - Ruby Sunday - has grown up. Ruby is living happily with her adopted Mum - Carla and adopted Gran - Cherry but is trying to track down her real mother via a TV show.

Ruby has been having a string of bad luck - small accidents and near misses - she also appears to be being followed by a mysterious man known as The Doctor...

Carla fosters a new baby- Lulubelle over the Christmas period but on Christmas Eve the baby is stolen by a pair of Goblins. Ruby pursues them and is soon joined by the Doctor. Can The Doctor and Ruby infiltrate the Goblin's flying ship, rescue the baby and survive thier meeting with the hideous, bloated and incredibly hungry Goblin King ?...

DIALOUGE  - The Doctor (to a policeman) - "Okay then...Name - The Doctor. Profession - NOT being a Doctor. Abode - that blue box over there. Now if you'll excuse me, I've just been snowmanned."

Ruby (to a Goblin) - "Did you just hiss at me ???"

PERFORMANCES  - After his promising (and surprising) first appearance in the final 60th anniversary special - The Giggle, we now get the first full appearance of Ncuti Gatwa as the fifteenth Doctor and he's every bit as good as we all hoped he'd be.

In this new incarnation the Doctor has thrown off some of the trauma and angst that has plagued recent versions of the character. Here is a man that has truly been given a new start in life and he appears to be loving and living his new life to the full. One of the first times we see the Doctor he's wearing a kilt and bustin' some moves on the dance floor of a nightclub (I'd love to see William Hartnell doing that, although seeing as how he's been dead for nearly 50 years it'd probably be a bit traumatising if he did). This type of thing would seem massively out of character for previous Doctors but for Gatwa it works somehow. He brings so much energy and confidence to the part that it's hard not to get swept up along with him.

Gatwa's Doctor also seems much more of a swashbuckling action hero type. We see him leaping over rooftops, dangling off airborne rope ladders and nearly getting squished by a giant fibreglass snowman's head. Many of the recent Doctors have been more physically active than the Doctors of old but none have looked so at home doing these types of scenes than Gatwa does here. I love the scene where he's running along a rooftop jumping over chimney stacks without even looking where he's going. It's like the Doctor just does these kinds of things on auto-pilot without even having to concentrate. Thats how confident this version of the Doctor is.

Gatwa's Doctor also seems to be something of a clothes horse. In this episode the Doctor changes his outfit at least three times (and there's more to come in the new series), some incarnations of the Doctor didn't even change thier clothes ONCE in their entire run. I must admit I do find it kind of funny that the Doctor's main costume resembles something that John Shaft would wear, but it's fitting I suppose with Gatwa being the first black leading man of the show that they should model his look upon one of the most iconic heroes of Blaxploitation cinema. The fifteenth Doctor is a black action hero so it makes sense that he looks the part.

Of course theres more to the Doctor than singing and dancing and clothes and stunts and Gatwa gets to show more of his range as the story progresses. He goes through the emotional wringer a bit when Ruby temporarily ceases to exist due to a time-line change and he also gets to show that steely resolve that lies at the heart of all of the Doctor's incarnations. 

Speaking of Ruby - Gatwa's Doctor and Millie Gibson's Ruby have a great chemistry together. The two characters just seem to work together brilliantly. I think we may just have the makings of a TARDIS team that will be fondly remembered for years to come.

Ruby is shown to be a smart and intelligent young woman, she has the sassiness that has come to typify the Doctor's female companions in the modern series but also seems a bit more grounded and down to earth as well.

When we first meet her Ruby is searching for her natural mother. She truly and deeply loves her adopted mother Carla (Michelle Greenidge) but there's still that curiosity there, that hole in her life that needs filling. A childhood friend of mine found out that he was adopted and he went through a similar set of feelings - loving the people who raised him but also having that niggling curiosity as to where he really came from eating away at him. Gibson plays up this aspect of the character really well which helps the audience to get on her side and accept her. It's this aspect of Ruby's character that also causes the Doctor to bond with her (he too recently discovered that he was a foundling as a child and has questions about his own past that are perplexing him).

As I said earlier Gibson and Gatwa really bounce off each other well. This is particularly evident in the scenes set aboard the Goblin's flying ship. At one point the Doctor's enthusiasm gets the better of him when he gets his first glimpse of the Goblins and Ruby has to give him a bit of a telling off to get him to concentrate on the matter at hand (saving baby Lulubelle from being eaten alive by the Goblin King). Later in the same scene the Doctor has to start singing (literally for his life) and Ruby joins in too. The two characters work together like a well oiled machine even though they've literally just met moments before. As I said - it's a great pairing and bodes well for the show's future.

A quick mention of the supporting characters is needed here. Michelle Greenidge and Angela Wynter are both good as Ruby's adopted Mum and Grandma - Carla and Cherry - especially in the scenes where history is changed and Ruby ceases to exist. They flip from being these lovely warm friendly characters and become colder and darker reflections of themselves. The implication being that in a world where adult Ruby never existed thier lives are emptier and sadder. It's a great bit of scripting and acting.

Then we get Anita Dobson as the mysterious Mrs Flood. At first she seems to just be a slightly crotchety interfering busy-body next door neighbour to the Sunday family. As the story progresses she becomes more enigmatic and by the end of the episode she clearly knows exactly what a TARDIS is. Is she a previously unknown past companion of the Doctor ? Is she another Time Lord ? Is she friend ? Is she foe ? At this stage we don't know... but Russell T Davies has indicated that over the forthcoming series this mystery will be addressed. I've got a feeling its going to be a lot of fun finding out the answers.

SFX - That extra Disney money really flys off the screen at you in this episode. The Goblins themselves are great creations. Full of character in a very Gremlins-esque way. At first I thought they where entirely CGI creations but it turns out they're not. It's a mixture of practical effects and CG. I've often bemoaned the fact that practical effects seem to be a dying art so it's encouraging that a mainstream popular show like Doctor Who is embracing it's usage. Okay so the Goblins have been touched up with computer effects but it's a decent compromise and mixes new effects technology with an old school approach nicely.

At this point I have to mention the Goblin's houseband who perform "The Goblin Song" at the episode's midpoint. Just look at those names, somebody on the Doctor Who production team (I suspect RTD himself) is obviously a huge fan of appaling puns. I heartily approve...

GOB DYLAN !!!!! That's just beautiful...

We also get the baby eating Goblin King himself (another practical/CGI effect) - basically he's Jabba The Hutt on steroids. He works really well I think.

We also get a really nice flying sailing ship which looks like something out of a Terry Gillingham film...

VIOLENCE  - Although we never see it, we are told that the Goblins like to eat new born babies. Seeing as the Goblins go back in time and Ruby is temporarily erased from history I think it's safe to assume that baby Ruby became the Goblin King's Christmas dinner in this altered timeline - which is actually pretty horrific when you think about it.

At the end of the story the Goblin King is impaled to death on a church spire and the rest of the Goblins seem to phase out from our plane of existence as a result. Will they return ? Who knows...

RATING  - The Church On Ruby Road is a great opener for this new era of Doctor Who. Its a solid introduction to both the new Doctor and his new companion and leaves the audience wanting more. 

Its also chock full of nice twisted dark humour and has several exciting set pieces. All in all I'm giving this 5 baby eating Goblins out of 5. Its silly, fun and (in slightly dubious taste) Christmas entertainment and a promising start to the next era of Doctor Who - heres to many more.

ART - Here we have the cover to the forthcoming novelisation from Target/BBC books...