"You took your name from Dungeons & Dragons?" "Roll for Insight!"
IN THIS ONE... Doctor Who does Bridgerton.
REVIEW: And man, does it feel the need to namecheck Brdigerton often. Four times, plus the notion that the aliens in this have seen that show and enjoyed it enough to go back through time to enact it. I've personally never seen even a frame of it, but from what I've been told, it sounds like The Favourite/The Great meets Outlander - Restoration drama with a lot of sex and pop songs played by classical quartets. Doctor Who has always poached from what's popular - most prominently in the 70s, James Bond, Hammer Horror and Star Wars - and I've been known to say the TARDIS can travel through genre as well as space and time. This much sourcing probably goes too far - we get it, Russell, you love Bridgerton (I can't entirely lay this at the feet of newcomer writing team Kate Herron and Briony Redman since RTD's Christmas guest-star is right out of this show, and no way is this Doctor Who accepting scripts on spec) - but I accept that Doctor Who can do this.
The show dipping into trashy historical romance isn't a problem, then. I came up through Classic Who, so my ideal Doctor isn't a sexual/amorous being, but NuWho has been pushing it since 2005 (give or take Chibnall denying the 13th Doctor this). Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor has been more outwardly gay than other iterations (which, at best, had been ambivalent on this topic before) and it's the setting's tropes that make him so readily fall in love/lust, invite a handsome man to his place, the kiss, etc. That's the hold of GENRE rather than character logic. But this Doctor is more in touch with his feelings (some have started to call him the Crying Doctor) and while it's a bit of whirlwind relationship he has with Rogue, it's not unbelievable in the playing of it. The audience might have raised a collective eyebrow, but I have no real trouble with this. What I have actual trouble with is how the show continues to leave its science fiction roots behind in favor of... well, I wish I could name a different paradigm (like fantasy), but there's really a bit of a void there. I'll explain.
This story takes place in Bath, 1813. We have two "alien" factions here, no counting the TARDIS crew. One is Rogue, a handsome bounty hunter there to capture the other, shape-shifting bird-like aliens called the Chuldur who "cosplay" people after having killed them. It's an interesting notion, and one that might have been explored further had they examined Ruby's own voyeuristic impulse to treat the situation as her favorite TV show - the Chuldur are just a step away with their lethal role-playing. The episode very much implies that they've seen Bridgerton and thus have chosen this particular time and place to play and feast. But AT NO POINT is it indicated that they have time travel capacity, or even a ship of any kind. Similarly, Rogue is not identified as a time traveller, nor even an Earther, but even so, all these people have pop culture knowledge beyond this era. Some of the audience will identify Rogue as some kind of (former) time agent, because he's very much a Captain Jack figure. Jonathan Groff even SOUNDS like Barrowman. And imagine if he had been a surgically-altered Jack from those "missing years", though this wouldn't have connected with his final fate as a sacrificial lamb. Rogue mostly feels like Doc10 after he lost Rose, and his Doctorishness is evoked often (which may be why 15 is so taken with him). But there's no such intent, so in both cases, we're left with distracting questions about the premise, and the feeling that we don't get answers because the production just doesn't care. Annoying.
If we let all of that go, "Rogue" is entertaining enough, if not exactly airtight. Are the aliens really just leaving desiccated bodies around and no one notices until now? Why don't they cosplay all the way for the wedding "season finale" and keep their bird make-up on? And there's the whole business of the psychic earrings giving Ruby combat ability (she needs her ability to follow dance choreography explained, but knows to call for "combat mode"?). It at least explains how she can do weird bird noises when she's faking at being a Chuldur. I could also do with the "greatest hits" (a flashback to Carla being told the same thing Jackie was, for example). I might also point out that the episode creates false stakes at the end, with Ruby caught in the trap that sends everyone to hell and Rogue replacing her (with a simple push, seems too easy) when the Doctor has a time machine. I mean, it's not true that there's only one shot. He could leave, bring back another tri-form trap, etc. More complicated, but he's fought more dangerous races. But to give it its due, the episode still features strong guest stars (including Indira Varga, who was Suzie Costello in Torchwood), beautiful locations (that fog is almost worth the price of admission), cool make-up effects, and great acting from Gatwa when he believes he's lost Ruby for good, and then so quickly - desperately! - moving on from the actual loss of Rogue. Ruby reacting to the era's sexism is fun too and props to "Emily", the best Chuldur "actress" of the lot. She had us all fooled.
THEORIES: The big WTF of the episode for Doctor Who nerds is the inclusion of the Shalka Doctor in the faces detected by Rogue's scanner. All the known Doctors are present, including the War and Fugitive Doctors AND Tennant's face twice. So the appearance of Richard E. Grant's is a surprise. Further evidence of the Broken Universe Theory (the TARDIS is again heard to groan, but this could just be indigestion from Sutekh's piggyback ride), now allowing for an extra incarnation, or at least detecting a parallel universe's incarnation? After all, there's no room for Grant's portrayal in the established timeline, nor is Grant styled like he was in The Scream of the Shalka (which was flash animation at any rate). Here's a different theory that is NOT RTD's intent, but fits the facts better. Grant has appeared as the vessel for the Great Intelligence, and the Great Intelligence once entered the Doctor's time stream (in The Name of the Doctor). Could the sensor be detecting this entity which was once IN the Doctor (doing something similar to what Sutekh is doing now with the TARDIS)?
VERSIONS: The BBC version includes a dedication to William Russell (Ian Chesterton), who died in the week of initial broadcast. It was apparently too late in the day to clear this small change for the Disney+ version. Fans are still disappointed on this side of the Pond because D+ still hasn't made the change.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Even if it goes for dramatic beats, it's still a piece of fluff. I picked it apart above, but I'm not that mad at it.
Comments
The episode itself was all pomp but little actual circumstance, vamping is fun, but you eventually need something to actually bite into.
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It's curious to see that when Jonathan Groff was first cast in an unnamed guest role back in 2023 speculation ran rampant that he was replacing John Barrowman as Jack Harkness. Whether that was the true intent at the time or not, the two characters obviously share a lot of character traits and backstory elements. In any event, I wonder if the underlying intent was merely that of a corrective?
Its sort of interesting that after the Doctor calls out Time Lord naming conventions that we see a long parade of similarly named entities that are all not Time Lords.