Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road 2023 Christmas special recap

Ncuti Gatwa makes a delightful full appearance as the Doctor in a fun-packed extravaganza. He oozes charisma, flits from charming to serious in the blink of an eye – and saves Davina McCall’s life

Not many people will have had “Jabba the Hutt Goblin King gets impaled on a church spire and Doctor Who generates a Christmas single about eating a baby” on their bingo cards for 2023, but that is exactly where we find ourselves after this joyful introduction to the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).

From the preview clips of him dancing in a kilt in a club, you might have thought Gatwa’s Doctor was going to be a very different proposition to what has gone before. But across this special, he showed he has everything he needs to be a charismatic and defining Doctor for the second Russell T Davies (RTD) era. Whether representing the gin-and-tonic division of health and safety, bounding across roofs, showing off his mavity gloves, or telling a policeman his fiancee would say yes, Gatwa oozed charm. But when needed, he turned on the seriousness like a tap, looked mortally wounded at time travel being taken lightly, and totally owned the episode.

Gibson’s Ruby came across as charmingly optimistic about life, despite having been dealt a rough hand, though it remains to be seen whether RTD has delivered a “girl-next-door” companion, or whether her mysterious origins will come to bear greater significance later.

A Christmas Day episode needs to please everyone likely to be slumped in front of the television, and keep casual viewers, hardcore fans and complete newbies entertained. Having the Doctor pop back to save Davina McCall from being killed by a falling Christmas tree was the kind of funny aside that can entertain a casual festive crowd – see also Cherry Sunday (Angela Wynter) and her constant demands for tea. However, that quick McCall fix raises a lot of timey-wimey questions about all the times the Doctor doesn’t just quickly pop back to sort things out.

Sum it up in one sentence?

Ncuti Gatwa takes on the mantle of the Doctor at full speed, while saving his new young companion from gremlins … twice.

Life aboard the Tardis

It was always unlikely that he was going to retcon it away, but Russell T Davies has seemingly doubled down on Chris Chibnall’s Timeless Child and Flux storylines, with them getting a mention in three consecutive episodes now. Maybe it is because the Fourteenth Doctor is now working through his trauma in retirement, but Gatwa’s Doctor opened up to Ruby about being an adopted foundling in a candid way that neither David Tennant nor Jodie Whittaker ever managed to do.

Fear factor

The Goblins were more of a nuisance than an existential threat – unless you happened to be a baby or Davina McCall. The scariest it got for adults was the scene where we got a glimpse of Carla Sunday (Michelle Greenidge) living a lonely alternate version of her own life – where she had never experienced the love of her daughter.

Mysteries and questions

What a sensational fourth-wall break at the end from Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson), who had already enjoyed her fair share of acerbic one-liners and knowing looks. She knows what a Tardis is! We can look forward to months of speculation that she must be a regenerated Susan/Rani/Missy/fugitive Doctor, although maybe the answer is staring us in the face. Who did originally leave that baby at the church?

Deeper into the vortex

• The giant snowman that fell on Ncuti Gatwa was attached to Henrik’s – the department store Rose Tyler worked in back in 2005 in Rose. The building is actually Howell’s in Cardiff, and it also appeared as Henrik’s in The Runaway Bride and Planet of the Dead.

• The Third, Fourth and Thirteenth Doctors have all alluded to having met Harry Houdini and learning a trick or two. None of them mentioned it being a “long hot summer” before, though.

• Having saved baby Ruby, the Doctor is making a habit of turning up when companions are children. Young Amelia Pond waited a long time for Matt Smith’s Doctor in The Eleventh Hour, and he went snooping around Clara’s early years in The Rings of Akhaten. Clara and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor in turn went and had a peek at Danny Pink’s orphanage childhood in Listen.

• Dobson joins a fine tradition of Doctor Who breaking the fourth wall. Tom Baker once addressed the audience to say, “Even the sonic screwdriver won’t get me out of this one”, Capaldi treated viewers to a lengthy exposition of the bootstrap paradox at the start of Before the Flood, and in 1965 William Hartnell turned round and finished an episode by saying, “Incidentally … a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!” That is a fact always worth having in your pocket for when someone complains Doctor Who isn’t believably realistic these days.

Next time

More Ncuti Gatwa! More Millie Gibson! Jinkx Monsoon! Lenny Rush as Morris! Jonathan Groff! An episode set in the 60s which (probably) features the Beatles! Plus Mel (Bonnie Langford) back again and driving a moped with Gatwa hanging off the end of it! See you then …

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