The Church on Ruby Road (Dr Who Christmas Special)

This is an interesting special for Dr. Who. It’s the Christmas special but it’s also the official introduction for both a new Doctor and a new companion. This particular “everything new” combination in a Christmas Special hasn’t been done before - the 2005 Christmas Special had an existing companion but a new Doctor, it’s fairly common to have The Doctor sans companion, and we’ve had an exiting version of The Doctor plus an incarnation of The Impossible Girl, but not a clean slate like this. I would say it attempted too much to fully succeed and, perhaps inevitably, it was the companion intro, that suffered a bit. She hovered somewhere between plot token and rounded character. As long as she doesn’t become another Impossible Girl, that’s not a disaster though. They had to land the Doctor properly, they had to make the story work and, as we saw with Clara, it’s possible to rescue even a season of the companion being a plot token more than a character, and we can hope the Ruby becomes more rounded in the next episode or two, now that they’ve introduced 15. I think Clara ended up as my favourite NuWho companion, much though I’d like to say Bill or Yaz. Bill only got one season, Yaz had too many seasons playing second fiddle to the male companions and with Chibnall ignoring what the actors were doing with the scripts to quite beat Clara although it’s a close run thing. The introduction of the Doctor worked a treat. It’s hard to say for some of them exactly when they click. For 11 it was walking through the holographic replay of the activities of The Doctor and saying “basically, run.” For 15 it was the chat to the policeman after emerging from the giant snowman head as he went back to the Tardis. It got more fully rounded out after that, but that scene just made me just relax and say “yes” to myself. I’d hoped and believed, but there was the on-screen moment where it just all came together for me. The story was that typical Dr. Who Christmas Special mix of silly and fun. It carries that need to be totally standalone, for people just watching after eating too much food and vegging out watching Christmas TV that never really watch Dr. Who but also be there for the fans. In this case, because it’s another relaunch, after Disney bought the international distribution rights (so we have the third season 1) it also serves as, at least part of, an onboarding process. (There ought to be a clever joke about life mimicking art here, The Doctor keeps regenerating, and the show keeps regenerating with so many season ones, but I can’t quite work it out.) The 60th Anniversary Specials were about the past - essentially wrapping up a bit of 10th Doctor storyline and so on - but this one is about the future. It’s a lot to load into an episode but it held up to that too. To quote Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad, and the one they didn’t quite land wasn’t a failure, it was more of a stumble, a recoverable error. Although not really part of the review, there is a body of haters out there putting out the news that “fans are deserting Dr. Who in droves because of the Gay Doctor.” And citing the “lowest ever audience figures for a new Doctor’s first episode.” I have not watched the relevant hater’s videos, I don’t want to give even the implied support of a view and a thumbs down. I would say that the stated fact is correct - this is the lowest opening audience for a new Doctor ever, at least until the next one. The reason is bollocks. Scheduled TV programmes, linear TV, whatever you want to call it, has been in decline for years in the UK. Way back in 1986 the Eastenders Christmas special where Dirty Den handed Angie the divorce papers drew an audience of over 30Mn people. Over 30 years later (2018) it was still named as the most dramatic Christmas TV moment in a poll. It really did have that kind of impact. This year the most viewed show on Christmas Day was the King’s Message with 5.9Mn, Dr. Who came third with 4.7Mn - comfortably beating out Eastenders 3.6Mn - that’s just 12% of the audience in got in 1986. If we look from last year to this, with the exception of the King’s Message (which was crazily high last year for his first one), shows where we can compare - Strictly, The Wheel and Call the Midwife mostly show falls of about 100,000+ viewers. (Strictly went from 5.44Mn to 5.3Mn, The Wheel from 4.81Mn to 4.2Mn - that’s 600,000+ - and Call the Midwife from 4.5Mn to 4.4Mn. Eastenders bumps that trend, rising from 3.2Mn to 3.6Mn.) Dr. Who slotting in it at 4.7Mn is a perfectly decent showing in the context of 2023 viewing figures. By comparison, Jodie Whittaker, who started her run in the 2018 Christmas Special had 5.7Mn viewers. Yes, that’s higher total numbers. But the viewing figures for shows we can compare back in 2018 to today were all much higher too. The Queen got 7.6Mn, Strictly got 6.5Mn, Call the Midwife and Eastenders both 6.3Mn. They’ve fallen by between 1.2Mn and 2.7Mn, a fall of 1.0Mn for Dr. Who is actually a success, the figures are holding up better than anything else. This is a review about a single TV show, not a platform to discuss changes in viewing habits, but people have moved to watching a lot of shows on iPlayer at times that suit them, in the next week or month, and these numbers don’t capture that, they’re the ones that watch live. That accounts for quite a lot of the fall off in five years, as that’s just become more common. Eastenders also gets an omnibus edition and I don’t know how many people watch that instead, but I imagine it’s quite a large number. But part of the reason that’s become more common is that people now have more and more other options. In 1986 penetration of VCRs into the country was far from complete. In 2018, penetration of DVRs and Netflix into the country was equally from complete. In 2023, It might not be the case that every household has a DVR, Netflix, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+. Disney+, Paramount+, Tubi and Mobi (plus whatever else I’ve missed). But it’s probably the case that all of them that want them have a selection of them. They may also have a few hundred cable (or Sky) channels, or a few dozen Freeview channels rather than the four broadcast channels we had back in 1986. And that landscape has shifted in the last five years, not only due to Covid, but in no small part due to it. There’s just more competition for the viewing public and audience figures are way, way down. The haters gotta hate, but they’re combining real data with stupidity to try and convince the rest of the world they’re not sad little haters. Anyway. This soft reboot probably won’t convince you to watch Dr. Who if you have tried before and don’t like it. But if you haven’t tried it before, it’s a gentle place to try and join. This is on the silly end of what’s going to come, but that’s the joy of Dr. Who. It can range over the whole gamut of time and space, sure. But it can also range over the whole gamut of storytelling. From silly, fun romps like this, to serious bits of history, to heavy drama. Bechdel Test: Pass. We have a plethora of women who talk to each other and while sometimes that’s about the Doctor, who is for mostly it’s about cups of tea, doing the shopping and the like. Ko Test: Pass. Clara and Cherry Sunday are the obvious candidates here and are both delightful. Russo Test: Fail. I thought about this for a while. The Doctor regenerates and changes gender. Does that make them NB or trans? I don’t think so, because they don’t appear to have doubts about their gender binary expression or the expression of the body they’ve regenerated into. All of 1-12 and 14+ were happily male, 13 was happily female. From 11 onwards (I think that’s right, it might be 12) we’ve had comments about Time Lords changing gender on regeneration, but no comments about any particular regeneration feeling like they’re in the wrong body or similar (I may be wrong with this, there’s a lot of hours and I might have missed a line, but it’s not clear if it’s there). Equally, while 14 clearly expressed some bisexual moments, and there are equally moments I looked at 15 and was in no doubt I was looking at a gay bloke dancing (in particular) there was nothing in his acting that made me think the character was presenting as gay. If my mum were still alive and watching she wouldn’t catch the dancing, whereas she would have caught Clara talking about kissing Jane Austen for example. Equally, nobody else presented as any part of the rainbow. It may turn out that Ruby is a lady lover, and I won’t complain at all. I’m pretty sure we’ll see the Doctor confirmed as queer in the season to come, but at the moment, no.