Let's start with the man himself. Ncuti Gatwa, the new Doctor Who. Holy fuck I love him. There's a Doctorish confidence and swagger to him, but all of it is fueled by this infectious joy and love that just radiates from the man. Everything about him radiates a charm that endears me to the man, from catching Ruby's glass to his light flirting with Cherry Sunday to his sheer joy and wonder at the magic of the goblin pirate airship. This is the kinda fella you let take you by the hand and run off into infinity with in a big blue box. Beyond that, there's a microcosmic relatability he has as well, and he's not afraid to be vulnerable. When he relates to Ruby and Lulubelle because of his own experience in discovering he was adopted, that's the kind of shit I wanted from the Timeless Child. As good as Tennant was as 14, that one simple thing kind of knocks his Wild Blue Yonder angst on its ass. The bit with the cop where he deduces about the proposal feels like something the 8th Doctor would do in his movie, but it's all the more human regardless. When sad things happen, like Ruby vanishing from time and the world being slightly worse because of it, you feel him lament that loss. He weeps openly at Ruby's mystery mother in the distant past of [checks notes] Christmas 2005?
Sorry, where was I? I kind of had a moment there. Actually, it makes a perfect segue in some sense as to what spoke to me in this episode. I have spent no small part of 2023 waxing nostalgic about 2005 in my own way, be it mystery VHS tapes or watching an entire anime from that time again. I felt a certain connection to that time this year, a synchronicity which reached across time. Here's Doctor Who, in the here and now, reaching back to make a connection with that year. 2005 was now a lifetime ago, long enough that a baby from that time is now an all grown-up girl with hopes and dreams and wants of her very own. I'll speak on Ruby Sunday in a moment, but this episode is very much fueled by that synchronicity. Right here and now, Doctor Who is about to reinvent and reboot itself. It's not Series 14, it's Series 1 of The New Doctor Who. To reach back and link itself to 2005, back when RTD created the last iteration of The New Doctor Who, offers a certain power to it. It's a power which the episode knows all too well.
Synchronicity gives way to coincidence, and coincidence is a kind of magic in this show. It's what the goblins use to influence and shape the material world to suit their needs, creating symbol and meaning from random acts of mischief and bad luck set upon Ruby Sunday and poor Davina McCall (I have no idea who this woman is, being on the other side of the pond, but Rain will tell me whenever we sit down to do a podcast on this one) as well as the synchronicity between Ruby and Lulubelle both being foundlings. The Giggle threatened to break the very rules of the universe and let magic and mystery back in, and this is much more interesting to me than "a godlike being likes to play games and be a racist caricature of Earth human ethnicities, because the 1960s". This is a kind of alchemy, and the Doctor's sheer joy at realizing the rules of ropes in the magical system of goblinkind is something that really sparks my imagination.
There's a darkness to all of this, behind the power of coincidence and the magic alchemical ability of rope as conduit, and even the goblin song and dance which the Doctor and Ruby get in on. All of this is in service of eating a fucking baby. Indeed, my first thought when all this thought of coincidence and synchronicity was that this was some sort of alchemical seasoning the goblins were using to make the baby taste better. That's fucked up, I know, but I'm not the one who put baby-eating goblins on TV on fucking Christmas. I'm just the dork who sits here and talks about it as their hobby. If that weren't enough, then the climax of the show is them going back to 2005 and eating the abandoned Ruby Sunday. There's a certain cheekiness to this. A big crack forms in the house, and then time changes around us such that one of our main characters never existed. WHY HELLO MR. MOFFAT ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR CHRISTMAS CRACKERS?
It's in the absence of Ruby Sunday that we see how the world was better with her around. You know, like It's A Wonderful Life, without anything quite so Old Fashioned Values as "George, if you were never born, everyone you know would have a worse life! Your friends are drunk, unemployed, or dead, and worst of all, your wife NEVER MARRIED A MAN!!!". Without Ruby, so many foundlings would never have been adopted, and the world is a worse place without her. It's early impressions, but so far I kind of like her. She reminds me of a more self-adjusted Clara. She will take charge and ask the right questions, but she also isn't a self-destructive mess of a bossy control freak. So somewhat of a net positive! (This is coming from someone who adores Clara, mess and all, so take with however much salt you wish.) And she answers the call and runs around that bigger on the inside machine, and here we fucking go see you in May.
Except that's not how it ends. God, do I really have to talk about this shit? Okay, Mrs. Flood. Hot take, but like... I don't give a shit? I reserve my right to give a shit whenever this mysterious mystery is paid off, if at all, but for right now you know this kind of shit no longer sparks joy in me. We just had the Toymaker, so running around like a headless chicken yelling OH MY GOD SHE KNOWS WHAT A TARDIS IS, WHICH NAMED DOCTOR WHOMST CHARACTER IS SHE? SUSAN? THE RANI? CHANCELLOR FLAVIA??? is something I have next to no interest in. By all means, have fun theorizing and speculating, but I don't give a singular fuck unless it results in a good and original story. I suspect a lot of those are in the future, though. Until then... Here we are. A new joyful Doctor Who. A companion with a good head on her shoulders. All of time and space at their fingertips.
Welcome to The New Doctor Who. Let's fucking go.
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