Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road ★★★★

“Health and safety – gin and tonic division” – the Doctor

Storyline
Davina McCall is hoping to help teenage orphan Ruby Sunday trace her parents via DNA records, but in the run-up to Christmas 2023 both women are beset by a spate of increasingly dangerous accidents – caused by mischievous Goblins. Ruby befriends the new Doctor at a London nightclub, while at home her adoptive mother Carla is preparing to foster a baby over Christmas. When this newborn is abducted by the Goblins and taken to their ship in the clouds to be eaten by a Goblin King, the Doctor and Ruby race to the rescue.

First UK broadcast
Monday 25 December 2023

Cast
The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa
Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson
Davina McCall as herself
Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson
Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge
Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter
Denzel – Bobby Bradley
Trudy – Mary Malone
Abdul – Hemi Yeroham
Ruth Lyons – Gemma Arrowsmith
Goblins – Rachelle Beinart, Jess Judge, Dilu Miah, Giuseppe Lentini, Andrew Francis, Lukas Disparrow

Crew
Writer – Russell T Davies
Director – Mark Tonderai
Series producer – Vicki Delow
Producer – Chris May
Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter

RT review by Patrick Mulkern

I’ve never seen Doctor Who as an inherently Christmassy commodity, but others do and I’m delighted that, after a six-year lull, the show has regained its linchpin status in the BBC1 Christmas Day schedule and has the chance of a bigger audience. In The Church on Ruby Road the yuletide trappings are fairly minimal: a countdown to Christmas, a smattering of snow, a new companion born on Christmas Eve, and street decorations and a tree made deadly. Instead of elves toiling for Santa, a band of mischievous Goblins steal babies to feed their monstrous king.

More importantly, this episode offers a soft reset, introducing the new pairing who’ll be fronting the series for the foreseeable future. We’ve already had a decent dose of Ncuti Gatwa (in The Giggle), and he is a bright new star – his own cosmos of charisma – while Millie Gibson displays confidence and innocence, a natural talent remarkable for an actor in her late teens. And she is tested in her first scene, a one-to-one with Davina McCall. Scripted interviews always have a whiff of artifice, no matter how off-the-cuff the participants aim to appear, and this is no exception.

Filmed many months into the production schedule, The Church on Ruby Road finds Gatwa and Gibson having already established some chemistry, and future episodes should provide a few more sparks. Their initial encounter in a nightclub is certainly novel as Ruby spies the Doctor in a state of euphoria on the dancefloor, gyrating in a kilt to the sound of Touch by Hybrid Minds. You wouldn’t have caught William Hartnell doing that. Matt Smith, yes. It’s a distant echo of a clubbing scene early on in Russell T Davies’s brilliant Queer as Folk (1999).

The series of accidents that befall Ruby and Davina provide amusement and a tinge of peril; they don’t add up to a whole lot of sense, and the Doctor’s explanation about a “tapestry” of coincidence somehow benefiting the Goblins is threadbare. The naughty Goblins are brilliantly realised, their baby-feasting antics lending a dark edge, and their much-vaunted song veering towards The Muppet Show. I have no idea what’s real, what’s puppetry and what’s CGI, which is as it should be, and the steer towards fantasy doesn’t bother me.

The grounding of Doctor Who in humdrum reality is Russell T Davies’s forte and when Ruby’s foster-home set-up with mum Carla and gran Cherry starts to feel too perfect, too pleased-with-itself cosy, Davies opens a fridge door on their domestic bliss so that time is distorted, Ruby never came into their lives 18 years earlier, and Carla and Cherry’s outlook is much colder and harsher.

Ruby joins a very long line of companions unencumbered by parents. Orphans in time and space, from Susan, Vicki, Dodo and Victoria in the 1960s, through to Amy and Clara of more recent times. So Ruby is no exception, although she is on a mission to find her mum and dad, who appear untraceable. It’s a mystery that will play out in weeks to come.

Another, it seems, is the sudden uncanny wisdom of Ruby’s neighbour Mrs Flood, who interrupts the credits roll with “Never seen a TARDIS before?” Anita Dobson is a wonderful presence. I’ve adored her ever since her EastEnders heyday. I’ll never forget a moment at Elstree in 1986 when I held the canteen door open for Anita and, in full Walford drag (her not me), she flashed me a devastating smile and thanked me. I’d met Angie Watts! More Mrs Flood soon, please.

Catch up on past episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide