Mark Harrison | On 03, May 2025

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations. For more on Doctor Who, see our Whoniverse channel.

“This is your lucky day.” The TARDIS has been bouncing off Earth in 2025 all season, but in Lucky Day we get to see what the Doctor and Belinda Chandra have been missing. We also catch up with Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), last seen staying home with her two mums in the previous season finale and now trying to rebuild her life.
 
When she agrees to appear on the Lucky Day podcast, she doesn’t expect romance to blossom with nice hunky host, Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King). After a few dates, they go on a weekend away to the sleepy English village of Colson but soon find themselves on the run from the Shreek, an alien predator that Ruby has encountered in the past.
 
What follows is a story all about what happens after the Doctor leaves you behind. One thing that’s bugged us about this second Russell T Davies era is the utility of pressing former companions into working for the new Marvel-a-like UNIT, its traditionally secret operations rather overshadowed by the big, stupid Avengers Tower skyscraper in central London. While UNIT head honcho Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) inevitably has a part to play in this story, 20-year-old Ruby hasn’t yet been relegated to admin duties like other returning companions and supporting characters we could name.
 
In any case, it’s only fair to the wonderful Millie Gibson that she remains the lead in this sideways step from the season at large. Last season, Netflix failed to finish Sex Education on time for Ncuti Gatwa to start filming when intended, which meant Gibson started work on Doctor Who as the lead of 73 Yards.
 
We did miss Gatwa and Varada Sethu this week, but Gibson has shown she can do this before and carries this episode on her shoulders too. Regulars like Redgrave, Michelle Greenidge, and Angela Wynter provide reliable back-up and Hauer-King puts in a great turn as an overzealous boyfriend.
 
Behind the scenes, writer Pete McTighe’s first Doctor Who episodes came during the Chris Chibnall era but he’s also written on Tales of the TARDIS and various extended trailers for Classic Doctor Who box sets that catch up with old companion characters, so he’s in his element with this particular story. As with the season opener, Peter Hoar proves a livelier director than we’re used to on Doctor Who – there’s a cracking visual set-piece during Ruby and Conrad’s first date, and Hoar truly makes the most of the rubber monster suits of the week whenever the Shreek appears.
 
Heck, Lucky Day could easily have been called Love & Monsters, but it’s taken. Filmed while David Tennant and Billie Piper were largely preoccupied elsewhere in the 14-episode production block, that 2006 outing minted New Who’s “Doctor-lite” format with the story of Marc Warren’s Elton encountering LINDA, essentially a Doctor Who fan club.
 
The opening of this episode, in which young Conrad (Benjamin Chivers) meets the Doctor and Belinda on New Year’s Day 2007, seems to echo that, but this winds up quite unlike any other episode. And for all this talk of continuity, even long-time fans will be unprepared for the kind of UNIT dating controversy posed by Ruby and Conrad’s relationship.
 
Cleverly written and directed, Lucky Day builds to a big pivot in both the story and the season so far, but more than earns this detour with the economy and invention of its setup. As it hares off in an unexpected direction, it stumbles upon a slightly shaky allegory, but it’s a Doctor-lite story with the courage of its convictions. Even if it doesn’t entirely hang together, it hits close to home.
 

 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– “Aliens are real. We all know that.” Don’t you hate when you think your man is Tom Hanks and he turns out to be Tommy Robinson? Right when we think the episode has gone down the village pub for a familiar base-under-siege story, Conrad turns out to be the sociopathic leader of an anti-UNIT group called Think Tank, who has honey-trapped Ruby to get Kate and company out in the open and expose their activities.
 
– We couldn’t talk much about Jonah Hauer-King’s performance in the spoiler-lite section, but he’s great in this. He plays on his heartthrob status nicely before the heel turn,and then his smirking certainty and stray bigotry through the second half of the episode makes him one of the show’s more punchable recent antagonists. So, of course, we end on Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) at her most mischievous, letting him out of prison…
 
– Think Tank (not the one from 1974’s Robot) is a RTD-ish broad shot across the bow of “alternative facts” grifters of all stripes – we know that Conrad knows the Doctor and aliens exist because he’s seen them, but he refuses to take a vaccine that Ruby tells him will counteract the deadly Shreekpheromones and he’ll merrily go on a media tour telling Alex Jones (not THAT one!) to rile up his followers and stoke public fear and paranoia. The Doctor’s final tirade against him could as easily be addressed to any number of real-life figures who deal in similar tactics, and would bounce off them as easily.
 
– Big stupid tower aside, the Marvelisation of UNIT extends to their power and authority here – Redgrave gets more to do than ever before, but the idea that Kate’s gone too far by angrily setting the Shreek on Conrad gets the merest lip service. Maybe UNIT’s absurd largesse will come back around later in the season or in RTD and McTighe’s upcoming spin-off The War Between The Land And The Sea, but for now, the episode comes off a little coy on that matter.
 
– “At least your special effects are improving.” Again, hats off to Peter Hoar for distinguishing between the Shreek and Think Tank’s rubber costumes. This week’s Unleashed tie-in episode has a lovely section about making a rubber monster and then a worse rubber version of that monster, and it plays beautifully in the action here, whether it’s Ruby’s explanation of how they work or in the up-close confrontations.
 
– Starting with The Robot Revolution, there’s an escalatingtrend of the Doctor being paralleled with the bad boyfriends of Belinda and now Ruby. And in the meta-ness of it all, of course a villain is gonna point out that Doctor Who is just being done with actors and special effects… is this just some TV show we’re watching?

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