Mark Harrison | On 08, Jun 2024

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.
 
Arriving in between instalments of Bridgerton Season 3, this week’s Doctor Who doesn’t just go to Regency England, it very explicitly pastiches Netflix’s smash-hit period drama. It’s one of those episodes that’s more enjoyable the less you know about it going in, which is handier for a spoiler-free review than other recent episodes.
 
However, it’s safe to say that the year is 1813 and the Duchess of Pemberton (guest star Indira Varma) is throwing the ball of the season. The Doctor and “Lady Ruby Sunday” have crashed the party and they’re having a lovely time, until they’re drawn apart by a mysterious stranger called Rogue (Jonathan Groff) and the unusual behaviour of their fellow guests.
 
This Regency-riffing romp is the first Doctor Who episode not written by either a current or previous showrunner since 2020, with a script from Loki director Kate Herron and her writing partner, Briony Redman. But after a cracking run of innovative, genre-bending stories, it gives us no pleasure whatsoever to say that it’s nowhere near “best of the season”, as the Duchess puts it.
 
While much of the promotion for this episode has beamed out that it’s “Doctor Who meets Bridgerton”, it winds up playing like a parody of both. On the one hand, it stylishly spoofs the attendant society gossip, sexual tension and even the postmodern jukebox bangers of the Netflix hit for a Saturday-teatime audience, adding funny characters and a cracking monster of the week. But on the other hand, it deals in New Who shorthand that leaves the story feeling over-stuffed and undercooked.
 
Much of the episode leans on the chemistry between Groff and Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, which alternates between antagonistic and flirty but is at least fun to watch even as the story spins itself out. And, frankly, while Groff’s role is intriguing, it’s Torchwood alum Varma who threatens to carry the entire episode away with her joyfully camp performance. On a similar wavelength, Millie Gibson thrives in a largely comic subplot where Ruby awkwardly interacts with Earth history.
 
Together with Herron and Redman, they lend the proceedings a zippy energy that’s not always present in the work of more experienced writers, but these fun characters and set pieces pinball around in a loose and baggy story structure. The emotional beats are heavy-handed and abrupt while the narrative bits are contrived and telegraphed well in advance.
 
Most bafflingly, the show lays a giant stinky Easter egg right in the middle of the drama. Casual viewers won’t think twice, but it’s less a throwaway nod to the fans and more a sudden headbutt, taking you out of the story for an in-joke, and not an especially good one – we’ll get into that in the spoiler section.
 
While Rogue the character shakes things up for the Doctor, Rogue the episode is the first in a while that feels like it’s just making the noises Doctor Who usually makes rather than saying something. And that’s doubly weird given what the villain of the week is up to. The regulars and the stunning guest cast are the saving grace of this, but it’s unusual for the traditional mid-season romp to underscore what a bold and creative romp the rest of the season has been.
 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers
 
– Now then, Rogue. The episode positions Groff’s rugged time-hopping bounty hunter as an answer to both Captain Jack Harkness and River Song at once, giving the Fifteenth Doctor a full-fledged queer romance plot. Gatwa and Groff essay the kind of easy chemistry we haven’t seen since David Tennant and Sophia Myles in The Girl In The Fireplace, and in warming things over, the episode does at least put some heat on the rigid “no, but we mustn’t” negotiations between the Thirteenth Doctor and her companion Yaz.
 
– The trouble is that the entire second half of the script is reversing into their tragic separation and so never earns the emotional wallop it’s aiming for. It’s here that the New Who-brand handwaving is most clichéd, with the resolution’s convoluted workings laid out but left exposed long before they actually click. There are gorgeous moments here, and a lot of them are marooned by the story.
 
– “We’re going to cosplay this planet to death!” What a cracking monster of the week though – it’s nice to see the BoJack Horseman embargo on aliens with animal faces has been broken by the Chuldur, bodysnatching birdpeople who’ve apparently seen Bridgerton and thrive on drama. Varma gets to deliver that line (along with “Live vivisectionnn!”, another goody) and she’s clearly having a ball playing a properly bonkers Doctor Who monster.
 
– One of the big vibes of this one is 2008’s The Unicorn And The Wasp, in which Agatha Christie is targeted by an alien shapeshifter in a plot that’s a bit like something she would write if she was a much worse writer. This has more interest in the target of its satire, but after a run of episodes going a bit meta, I half-wondered if the twist was going to be that the Chuldur were trying to cosplay Doctor Who instead.
 
– On a lighter note, Ruby’s subplot is even funnier in retrospect because she’s worried about teaching modern terms to historical characters, when it turns out their curiosity is because they’re aliens rather than Regency-era humans. Gibson is off on her own again for a lot of this but she can handle it – she’s an absolute star.
 
– So, that Easter egg – onboard Rogue’s ship, we get a rerun of the old gag where all of the Doctor’s previous faces appear, but with one or two new wrinkles. It’s the first time Jodie Whittaker and Jo Martin have turned up, but also, bizarrely, the first time Richard E. Grant’s Doctor has been acknowledged outside of the BBCi animation Scream Of The Shalka. Indeed, Grant’s only live-action appearance has been as the Series 7 Big Bad, the Great Intelligence. It would be a huge digression to try and explain any of that in this review, so goodness knows why it made it into the episode.
 
– Next week! Who is Susan Twist’s pub punter/tea lady/ambulance avatar/hiker/Penny Pepper-Bean/portrait model? What is the legend of Ruby Sunday? Will the Shalka Doctor actually have anything to do with it? It’s two-part season finale time, baby…

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