Doctor Who season 2, episode 4, “Lucky Day,” goes full-on Doctor-lite. It centers on Ruby Sunday, it opens like a charming rom-com, and then it turns into something way darker. It’s divisive, it’s bold, and it’s definitely got the fans talking. Some are calling it a clever character study. Others are calling it a filler episode dressed in high production value. For me it’s a spiritual sequel to “Love & Monsters” and a beautiful mess, and I don’t think those two things cancel each other out.
I’m not going to bury the lede. The Doctor’s definitely not in this one. He’s barely there, right at the very end. This is Ruby’s story.
And I’m going to spoil this thing wide open, so if you haven’t seen the episode, you definitely don’t want to be here.
The Rom-Com That Turns Into a Thriller
The setup plays as a quirky rom-com when Ruby meets Conrad. Then about midway through it flips into, I don’t want to say horror, but it’s thrillery. It’s crazy.
The twist is that Conrad fakes an alien threat in order to expose and discredit UNIT. UNIT rolls in, chaos ensues, Conrad doxxes UNIT and manipulates the public. Meanwhile there’s a real alien threat, the thing they’re calling a Shreek, and it gets revealed as UNIT’s trump card. Because Kate uses it. She absolutely uses it to take Conrad down, and I kind of didn’t hate it.
Then the Doctor arrives after that fallout and delivers a cold final warning to Conrad. “You want spoilers? You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison, till your heart packs in, age 49. Alone and unloved. Forgotten.”
They definitely pay homage to “Love & Monsters,” at least in format and tone for me. It’s that whole fan gone wrong angle. I don’t want to say it’s a tonal experiment, but it really feels that way. Maybe it’s even a season detour. It really depends on who you ask.
Ruby, Conrad and Kate
Everyone’s saying it’s a character piece, so let’s take a look at who these characters are and what they mean for this particular series of events.
We haven’t seen Ruby Sunday in three episodes, not since last season. She’s here on her own, vulnerable but decisive, and ultimately she gets betrayed again. Her story’s pretty simple: this is a post-Doctor story. What’s funny is we normally get these years later, or even seasons later, and this one we’re getting hot on the heels of her just having been here. So if you missed her, don’t worry, she’s back.
She’s trying her best to move on. The whole relationship with Conrad, the betrayal and everything else that happens, is really setting the stage for what they’re trying to develop Ruby into. At the end of the episode, when she’s telling Kate she has to move on, I was really, really expecting her to end up at that meeting. The group therapy session for former companions of the Doctor that we saw in the specials of a year ago. But no. She has her family encouraging her, saying good for you, because she’s met this guy.
And the guy was this kid at the beginning. The only time you see the Doctor and Belinda is at the very beginning, and then you see the Doctor again at the very end. They arrive in 2007, during New Year’s Eve, and a little boy sees them. His name is Conrad. The Doctor finds a 50p, says it’s his lucky day, then hands it over and tells the kid it’s his lucky day. Kid snatches it and runs off. Very rude, which should set the stage and the tone for everything that comes after.
So the kid grows up and decides to start hunting down aliens, figuring out what’s going on and who the Doctor is. He’s one of the people who crossed paths with the Doctor and suddenly got enamored by him. It’s the story we’ve seen again and again and again in these things. As River says, “Why on Earth do we let you out?”
Conrad grows up to be smug and dangerous. He’s a conspiracy theorist and a podcaster. He’s got the core makings of a really good villain.
Kate Stewart is back, of course, harder than ever. The very first time we see her, Ruby’s calling about something she’s concerned about in this little village she went to with Conrad. Ruby’s surprised she caught her, and Kate says oh no, I’m just here hanging out. She’s hanging out with her boyfriend, the UNIT guy. At least that seems to be the implication.
But Kate has to make some really hard, cold decisions in this thing, and they lead to her unleashing the Shreek in a very divisive way, for a very divisive reason.
“I’m glad he’s not here. Because he would have stopped me.”
“From what?”
“From showing you and your followers what we’re protecting them from. The truth, Conrad. As requested.”
We’ve seen Kate so many times, and she’s been characteristically consistent until now. Even here she’s not out of character. But she makes decisions that are going to have lasting repercussions for her, and I feel like that’s an important distinction to make.
Where’s Belinda?
Belinda’s almost non-existent in this whole thing, which is kind of odd for a new companion. I’m concerned by this.
Yes, it’s Doctor-lite. And for some reason we spend more time with Ruby, a previous companion, than we do finding stuff out about the new one. These episodes have been wonderful to this point in terms of giving us character development and showing us who she is. I’d think, with the limited number of episodes we have, that this really should be the focus. It feels like RTD, as the showrunner, is trying very hard to treat this like he’s got 10 or 12 episodes like he used to. As a result, I think we waste a lot of time in this episode.
There are things here that seed stuff for the future, I’m assuming. I know there’s talk of a UNIT spin-off series, or at the very least a spin-off miniseries, and some of that’s seeded in this. But at the end of the day, we’re here for the Doctor and Belinda, and we don’t get doctoring or Belinda-ing.
A Soft UNIT Episode
You get the whole UNIT team, by the way. This is the production value part. They bring everybody. Not only do we get Kate. Not only do we get Lieutenant Major Colonel Guy. We get Shirley, who’s amazing by the way, and we get the entire UNIT set. The whole thing looks very expensive. They’re going on locations. I definitely see the Disney money in this episode, and I think you will too. UNIT feels larger and more lived in than it has in recent years.
I remember back in RTD one, there’d been talk that right on the heels of Torchwood, he’d wanted to do a UNIT series. The talk was that they were thinking about a Martha spin-off, a UNIT series where she was going to be sort of the lead. Then she got a job on Law & Order: UK or something, and it looked like she was possibly going to do Torchwood, or at least a guest spot on Torchwood. He’s wanted to do something with UNIT for a while. That much is obvious.
I feel like this was probably his opportunity to really see that through, and that’s what most of this feels like. Everyone’s calling it a Ruby character piece. It feels less like a Ruby Sunday episode than a soft UNIT episode. Okay, that probably was a bad turn of phrase. Whatever.
Replaying the Hits
A lot of callbacks, for sure. Tonally and structure-wise, this felt like “Love & Monsters” to me. That was David Tennant’s era, the 2005 reboot, season 2, episode I think 10. If you remember, there was the ordinary fan twist: he witnesses the Doctor do a thing, and everything spins out from there.
I’m noticing a lot of replaying the hits, or revisiting the hits, in how this season is structured, and maybe that’s why I’m loving this season so much. I feel very much that all this has happened before and all this is going to happen again. I’m hoping there’s a redeeming point where they actually reference that in the series. Man, it feels like there are so many things I’ve done before.
There are also things in the episode that match up with what’s currently going on. At one point Kate’s talking about how the British government is considering downgrading UNIT’s classification from top secret, so they can share the technology UNIT develops with other departments or divisions. She says, can you imagine if they got their hands on this, there’s enough technology here to destroy the planet. And when she said destroy the planet, or rip the planet apart, I immediately thought of that scene from the first episode. The one where everything is floating through space. I’m like, huh, I wonder if that’s going to play a part in all this.
We get a callback to the Brigadier, too. Specifically, Conrad McDirtbag insults him.
“Or are you a coward like your father was?”
“You should be very careful what you say about my father.”
“His only legacy was a pack of lies.”
“A hundred times the man you are.”
Before I could even say “what?”, they cut to Kate, and her reaction was visceral. It anchored that particular emotional callback, and I thought that was really interesting.
There’s a whole lot of UNIT lore at work here: HQ, containment, returning faces. We get to see Shirley Bingham again. It’s building up the spin-off world for UNIT, and I hope they get a spin-off. If nothing else, I hope they get a miniseries.
My issue is that UNIT has spent so much time in the Doctor’s shadow. Russell’s tried really hard to push it to the front as something worthy of its own praise, and I don’t know that I believe that. At least Torchwood had the opportunity to say, we’re not UNIT, we’re Torchwood. Then they moved forward and you went, oh wow, I’m impressed. I get it.
Mrs. Flood, and a Wasted Week
Mrs. Flood returns, of course, and they’re really ramping her up, let’s just say. She shows up and frees Conrad at the very end. I’d say she’s possibly tied to the season’s villain arc, if she isn’t the villain herself. At least a part of it, I believe. The idea of Mrs. Flood and Conrad together needs to be explored, and it’s going to have to come into play soon. They’re hammering it home so hard.
I believe we wasted this episode, in terms of not having the Doctor and his companion, specifically Belinda. We went off the rails everywhere else. They did give us things, just not necessarily the things we wanted.
It’s not a bad episode. I need to make that perfectly clear. This doesn’t rate with last season for me. Last season, I felt, was terrible. Okay, I liked parts of it, but overall I wasn’t a big fan. You’re allowed a misstep in every season, and I’m not sweating this season that much about it.
Trust, Betrayal, and Life Without the Doctor
The episode has a lot going for it, in that it really swung for the fences. It’s dealing with misinformation and online extremism, and Conrad as a character weaponizes conspiracy culture.
There’s a group out there who argue that the real world parallels are blunt or ham-fisted. My argument is I don’t know any real extremists or conspiracy theorists who are that hardcore. I know there are people who believe certain extreme ideas on both sides of everything. I’m American, sorry, North American rather, and we have two parties, so it’s always right and left type nonsense.
For me it’s about trust and betrayal. Ruby’s trust ultimately gets used against her, along with what she’s going through mentally. UNIT’s public image gets shattered. There’s a grey morality Kate has to face, and in light of everything that’s happening, you want to sit here and ask whether that was the right response. Because it almost leaned into what Conrad was saying, kind of. She essentially weaponizes the truth, and it has an ugly cost. Would you call that a win?
Then there’s life without the Doctor. Ruby’s trying to be heroic without him, and she struggles with it. I don’t know that she’s any different from every single companion after they’ve left. Look at Elizabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane. She was investigating and doing things. We saw several of the other companions during the specials who are all part of UNIT now, doing their own stuff. Why? Because they all want to explore and do things.
Kate without the Doctor loses restraint, to the point that she even says she’s glad he’s not there, because he would’ve stopped her.
These are dangerous contrasts. I find myself remembering when David Tennant’s Doctor is facing Davros, and Davros is telling him, you turn them into your weapons. This is what you make them. That’s kind of becoming the legacy of the Doctor overall. I don’t know if that’s just an RTD idea or a Steven Moffat idea. With Moffat, it was the idea of the Doctor becoming too big, so he had to get quiet.
The theme of how things have gotten more dangerous without the Doctor could be a pretty big fit for the upcoming UNIT spin-off. That being said, we already got that story with Torchwood. The story I’d tell is UNIT re-finding itself. Remember, science leads. You have them go to the brink, then ultimately come back to their senses, and you have Kate re-establish what UNIT is supposed to be. Because she’s shifted. She’s lost her way, and that’s very clear in this episode.
The Logic Gaps
It’s been less than 24 hours and the reception’s been fast. The fan base is really split. It’s bold and political for some, muddled and preachy for others.
There are some logic gaps I find myself wanting to get through. How did Conrad’s plan actually work? Why wasn’t the fallout bigger?
You start really, really slow with the whole rom-com thing. It slams into thriller mode, and then we just warp speed to the very end. We go from Ruby being evacuated to her family, and then we’re back at UNIT, and they’re evacuating and moving stuff because of the classification and all this political stuff. Machinations upon machinations. And then it’s all because Conrad shows up with a webcam strapped to his chest and a gun? And some kid he barely wants to acknowledge, who he fools and cons into letting him in?
I don’t know how much fallout there really is. The end felt wrapped up really cleanly, like they didn’t know how to get out of the situation. It felt worse than when people accused the Doctor of just going, oh, my regeneration’s over, I’m gone.
The production value’s high. You have big action, solid VFX, polished UNIT visuals. The acting standouts, of course, are Millie Gibson, who’s emotionally strong through the whole thing. Jonah Hauer-King is perfectly detestable as Conrad. Jemma Redgrave, love her, back again and quietly menacing. And then there’s that brief Doctor cameo, where Ncuti appears for all of a hot second, hits it hard, is cold and severe, and leaves.
Have You Met Belinda Chandra Yet?
The issue for me with that cameo is the timey-wimeyness of it.
We start in 2007 with our current, present Doctor and Belinda. We then shift to a point just after Ruby has left the Doctor’s company. Then we get to see the Doctor again, but it isn’t our Doctor. It’s the Doctor from that point in time.
And now we’re at the real crux of the thing. Conrad spits out, have you met Belinda Chandra yet? And the Doctor’s like, who?
So wait. Was this the way he found out in “The Robot Revolution”? Is that where this Doctor is from? Is he in “The Robot Revolution” time, and he met her because of the minute this dude said that?
Remember the Master, how he was quietly the Prime Minister in the background the whole time? Are we in that same kind of scenario, where this has quietly been happening in the background the whole time? I don’t know.
He comes in out of sequence, which is nothing new for the Doctor. It’s non-linear storytelling, for sure. But it’s messy, and that’s the biggest issue for me.
The Backdoor Pilot
There’s a lot happening, and we get backdoor pilot vibes, for sure. Clearly they’re testing the upcoming UNIT spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea.
We see Kate’s moral dilemma, which is setting up her potential arc for that show: how far is she willing to go to protect the Earth? You have the foreshadowing between Colonel Ibrahim and Kate. He’s telling her she went too far, and she’s kind of like, well, whatever, I had to do what I had to do. So there’s going to be tension in the spin-off that I don’t know is necessary.
Conrad escapes via Mrs. Flood, and apparently he may return in the future. They definitely tease the possibility. And then there’s the season arc tie: Conrad tipping the Doctor off about Belinda, which links us all the way back to episode one.
The Verdict
Doctor Who “Lucky Day” lands at a 6.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
It’s experimental. It’s a little messy. But it’s undeniably bold, and it might be the sleeper setup for what I hope are going to be big moves down the line.
Unfortunately, you scratch the surface and it’s a mess. It’s a pretty mess. But it’s still messy.
What did you think of the episode? Is there enough there for UNIT to support its own series, and would you believe them in the lead? And who do you think Mrs. Flood is, or could possibly be? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
