Doctor Who Companion Ruby Sunday Is Another Mystery For The Doctor To Solve
There are always a lot of expectations going into a "Doctor Who" Christmas special, and that goes double for "The Church of Ruby Road." Whereas some Christmas specials have had the task of introducing a new Doctor, and other specials have had to introduce a new companion, this is the first in the show's history to introduce both Doctor and companion at the same time. And how does it do? Well, it mostly does fine. So far, Millie Gibson's been delightful as the clumsy Ruby Sunday, and Ncuti Gatwa is a lot of fun as the energetic, optimistic new Doctor.
If there is a downside to this episode, it's once again the villain. The bad luck goblins that Ruby and the Doctor face off against this episode are insanely silly, even by "Doctor Who" standards. It's not a dealbreaker since they're clearly not the episode's main focus, but for fans of season 5's "The Eleventh Hour" it's certainly disappointing. That episode also had to introduce a whole new Doctor and a whole new companion, and it still found time to give us a genuinely creepy, unique villain to center its story around.
But if you're one of the fans who preferred the era of the show run by Steven Moffat (seasons 5 through 10), there's still plenty to be excited about here. Although this episode's villains are very much the type you'd see in showrunner Russell T. Davies' era (seasons 1 through 4), the episode still borrows a trick from the Moffat years: This new companion, Ruby Sunday, is involved in some sort of mystery.
Ruby's backstory
The main thing we learn about Ruby in this episode is that she was abandoned by her birth mother, who left her at the door of a church. Throughout the special, we learn that Ruby wants to reconnect with her biological family, and is disappointed when she learns that there is no trace of them. Whoever Ruby's parents are, they've never left any records of their DNA, which the episode establishes as being somewhat rare. It shouldn't be this difficult to track down Ruby's mother, but it somehow is.
What makes this more interesting is that a large part of the special's climax involves the Doctor returning to the night Ruby was abandoned, to make sure those pesky goblins don't go back in time and eat baby Ruby while she's waiting at the church's doorstep. The Doctor successfully saves her, and we end the sequence with a long, lingering shot at Ruby's apparent mother, hidden under an ominous cloak, as she walks away in the dark. To anyone who knows anything about planting and payoff, the implications are clear: Whoever Ruby's mom is, she's definitely important, and she'll probably end up being a huge dramatic reveal in the upcoming season's finale.
It's a slight departure from Russell T. Davies' usual approach to his companions. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, and Donna Noble were all regular women in London with fairly straightforward living situations. They may have lost loved ones before we've met them, but there was never any doubt over who those loved ones were. This is the first time Davies has given us a companion where a major part of her backstory is hidden from us.
Meanwhile, in the Moffat era...
Throughout his first four seasons running the show, Steven Moffat loved throwing mysteries into the companion's backstory. Amy grew up with a magical crack in her wall, and major aspects of her life (like her nonexistent parents) were a source of intrigue for the Eleventh Doctor. Although Eleven didn't start travelling around with Amy solely because of her mysterious situation, it was a definitely a major factor.
The next main companion, Clara Oswald, was also introduced like she was more puzzle than person. Eleven was baffled by how he kept coming across different versions of this one woman throughout space and time, and spent the whole second half of season 7 trying to figure out why this was. Even River Song, who was technically never a full-time companion, was introduced in a similar fashion. She was a woman whose backstory was clouded in mystery, a mystery that was gradually unpeeled throughout two and a half seasons.
It's an interesting approach to the Doctor/companion format, but it's one with plenty of downsides. The big issue is that it inherently favors the Doctor's perspective. A lot of fans think the show is best when the companion is our point-of-view character, and we're primarily seeing the Doctor through the companion's human, 21st-century lens. Instead, Moffat's era tended to look at the companion through the Doctor's POV, which led to a colder, less relatable version of the show. There's a reason why the Sherlock Holmes stories were primarily told through the everyman John Watson's perspective; sometimes you need a grounded character to make the eccentric genius character work.
Showrunners learning from one another
Of course, it's not entirely fair to characterize Moffat's era this way, as season 10 switched things up. Pearl Mackie's Bill Potts was the Twelfth Doctor's final full-time companion, and this time she was just a normal person. She caught Twelve's interest because he noticed that, during the lectures he gave at the university, she tended to smile when she didn't understand something, whereas the other students tended to frown. It's a surprisingly wholesome explanation, one that came as fresh subversion to the past four seasons of Moffat's convoluted companion writing. It was a particularly nice surprise for RTD fans, as the approach seemed like a much-needed return to RTD's style.
This time around, however, it seems like it's RTD returning to Moffat's style. It makes for an interesting twist in the Moffat vs. RTD debate that Whovians have been having for nearly thirteen years now; just as Moffat's introduction of Bill Potts might've felt like a concession that RTD's approach was best, RTD's introduction of Ruby seems to concede that Moffat might've had the right idea. As much as fans try to pin the two against each other, it seems like each showrunner has plenty of respect for the other. Maybe neither have any issue with learning from the other's successes over the years.
The best of both worlds?
Davies' use of a Moffat-y element is notable because one of his 60th Anniversary Specials, "Wild Blue Yonder," also borrowed some elements from Moffat. Although that special was commonly compared to the RTD-penned "Midnight," I'd argue it actually had more in common with season 8's Moffat-penned "Listen." That episode found the Doctor at the very end of the universe (basically the same as the "edge" of the universe in "Wild Blue Yonder") and it continued the gimmick Moffat popularized in "Blink," in which a monster can only be defeated by not doing a basic bodily task. First it was "don't blink," then it was "don't look," and now with RTD it's "don't think."
More importantly, "Listen" and "Wild Blue Yonder" were claustrophobic stories that unexpectedly ended up addressing the Doctor's backstory in a major way. Both episodes start off feeling uninterested in the larger picture of the show, except for a brief segment that gives us a rare, important glimpse into the Doctor's psyche.
The Moffat-y elements are a promising sign of things to come, because fans have always pointed to those four Moffat stories in the RTD era as an ideal for the show. A Moffat-style episode is strongest when wrapped into an RTD-structured season, fans have long reasoned, so maybe a RTD-style episode is best when it embraces more of Moffat's sensibilities. What would it look like to have a RTD-style companion — someone with a strong working class background, whose point-of-view is prioritized over the Doctor's — but wrapped up in a Moffat-style story arc? It looks like we're about to find out.