Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson, as The Doctor and Ruby Sunday, have taken the reins of the sixty-year-old British science fiction war horse, Doctor Who, with the premiere of their first official season this weekend on the BBC and Disney+.
Every Doctor and their traveling partner brings something unique to the role and for Gatwa and Gibson that seems to be an unbridled exuberance that is almost spilling out of the screen. They gush charisma in such a full-throated way that they seem to be power-washing the show’s slate clean and starting with no presumption or baggage.
Which very much seems to be the point.
When showrunner Russell T. Davies returned to the show he had rebooted and turned into such a success in 2005, he was inheriting several Doctors’ worth of convoluted mythology and sagging ratings. While much of the last decade’s work has been terrific, he was going to need to free viewers from needing sixty years of backstory — while not erasing it — and to modernize the show again, as he had so successfully done in 2005.
The first episode of the new season — re-numbered as “Season One” — makes sure that both new and old fans get the message: “Here is everything we’re expecting you to know. That’s it. Let’s go!”
“You can start here, first-time viewer. Don’t worry about all those years of backstory. Truth is, there isn’t one. He’s a man in a time machine and she’s his best mate, that’s all there is to it. If you have questions, don’t worry, Ruby asks them!” — Russell T. Davies
From there the show launches, with viewers swept up into the giddy wake of the delightful two leads.
The first two stories, both by Davies, are an almost textbook example of the good and the not-so-good of his Who writing career. Davies is one of the finest character writers in television, full stop. Watching shows he’s written — Queer as Folk (2000), It’s a Sin (2021), The Second Coming (2003) — reveals a truly gifted ear for dialogue and compassion for every personality he puts down on paper. He seems to love something about everyone, and it makes him one of the more humane writers in the business.
He does not, however, seem to care that much about the structure of science fiction. Davies himself has made it clear that he doesn’t consider Doctor Who to be tied to the SF genre…
“The show is taking a sly step towards fantasy, which will annoy people to whom it’s a hard science-fiction show. Episode two next year is wildly fantasy. Completely making up scenarios on-screen that we’ve never been able to show before.” — Russell T. Davies
And that is not unreasonable given that the show has drifted back and forth between science fiction, fantasy, and historical drama since its inception, but Davies’ idea of fantasy can become unwieldy when it seems to be about packing as many outrageous ideas, and, unfortunately, as much grade school humor, as possible into a 45-minute long episode. It leaves little time for coherent plot resolution.
Both episodes from the premiere run into this at differing degrees.
Space Babies, the first of the two episodes released this week, is an outrageously silly opener with The Doctor and Ruby finding themselves in the far future (after a brief foray into the past where the show touches Ray Bradbury’s famous butterfly dilemma from his classic 1952 short story, A Sound of Thunder) where they encounter a ship of babies (“SPACE babies,” The Doctor continually reminds us) who have been seemingly abandoned by their adults.
The story has, not particularly subtle, messages about reproductive rights and international refugee crises, but serves primarily to introduce us to this particular TARDIS duo. Gatwa is particularly affecting as he shifts seamlessly from the most suave person in the room to a delighted nurturer of the children, to a fearless and passionate protector of even the most disturbing of life forms.
It’s a breathtaking performance to watch.
Davies also begins laying out what may be a sort of manifesto of the kind of stories he intends to tell this round through the Whoniverse. Flights of almost absurdist fancy are a given. Childlike wonderment is the filter through which it will all be told and should be taken. And fright is an integral part of the equation.
However, once the strangeness of the setting mellows and the snot and poop jokes start to wear thin, the compassionate story that’s being told at the episode’s heart begins to falter. We still have terrific performances from the leads and special guest star Golda Rosheuvel — fresh off of Bridgerton — but elements begin to make less and less sense. An inaudibly low tone makes all beings, human or not, uncontrollably afraid? What is served by the kids’ growth being stopped? Um, bogeys? How much methane?
Most of this is easily overlooked through the giddy lens through which the episode is shot, but it could have held together better.
The second story of the night’s premiere tempers its eccentricity with a sense of style — as well as an almost anarchic attack on the form of television itself — that goes a long way towards making this the triumph of the evening.
If Davies’ new mythology of the “bi-regeneration” (used to explain how David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor and Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth can both have survived The Toymaker’s attack in last November’s The Giggle) seemed to have broken the rules… Well, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
The Devil’s Chord may have some similar plot wobbliness as its predecessor, but the sheer boldness of the anarchic conceit, along with the continued giddy glee of the show’s leads, creates too much of a distraction to cling to much of the episode’s flaws. Along with Gatwa and Gibson, a show-stealing Jinkx Monsoon shows up as The Maestro, a child of The Toymaker (The Giggle). With much of their father’s chaotic power, they strike out through the decades to devour all of humanity’s music, at least all of the music that causes our passions to rise.
“I’m going solo!” — The Maestro
A fascinating self-awareness winds through this production. The Doctor points out that he is also living at the same time a few miles away from EMI Studios in 1963 where they’ve landed — in reference to the first ever Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child (currently unavailable to stream anywhere).
Having stolen all the characters’ music from the pre-credits sequence, The Maestro breaks the fourth wall by staring straight into the camera at the audience — which will happen multiple times throughout the story — and playing the opening theme song themselves.
When Ruby mentions the television show Star Trek, The Doctor indicates that it’s real and that they could go visit.
Longtime Doctor Who composer Murray Gold appears as himself playing the score on piano live.
The Doctor recognizes that the background score has become part of the foreground action… AND COMMENTS ON IT!
“I thought that was non-diegetic.” — The Doctor
This kind of self-awareness peppers the episode.
Something strange is happening with reality since The Doctor’s battle with The Toymaker and Russell T. Davies seems poised to use the godlike being’s reality-shaping powers to his advantage. He has given himself a sort of narrative, and logical, carte blanche as long as he keeps reminding us that The Toymaker’s “legions are coming.” The Goblins, who also ripped a seam in reality during Ncuti Gatwa’s first full episode as The Doctor last Christmas, may well be part of those “legions” (according to the story’s novelization). The Maestro is, certainly. The wall between the plot and the production medium is beginning to get fuzzy and that means that the boundaries of what constitutes a Doctor Who story are becoming vague, and this seems to be exactly what Davies wants.
If The Devil’s Chord is any indication of what the remainder of Mr. Gatwa’s run as the fifteenth iteration of the BBC’s famous Time Lord is going to be like, it will be wise to leave our preconceptions at the door.
Ultimately the show is off to a fun start, though not the knockout punch that we expected from the premiere night. Space Babies is too slight of an opener with some awkward missteps and The Devil’s Chord, while much stronger, is going to have to rely on subsequent stories to show that there is some order in the chaos that Davies is setting up around his new TARDIS crew.
Next week’s “Boom” will feature the return of writer Stephan Mofffat, who, when working with Davies, has rarely produced anything less than brilliant. Hopes are running high.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
