Doctor Who Season 2 Introduces The Most Chilling (And Realistic) Monster Of The Disney+ Era

This article contains spoilers for "Doctor Who" season 2, episode 4 — "Lucky Day."

Even during the cheesy and heartfelt Disney+ era of "Doctor Who," the show often highlights humanity's worst traits. It has introduced multiple toxic masculinity-themed villains like the power-hungry politician Roger ap Gwilliam (Aneurin Barnard) — who's not-so-subtly coded as a domestic abuser among his other awful traits — and Belinda Chandra's (Varada Sethu) possessive ex-boyfriend Alan Budd (Jonny Green). After "Doctor Who" season 2 brought back the show's most terrifying one-off monster, "Lucky Day" returns to the toxic masculinity well with a particularly malevolent and all-too-realistic example: Tiktok influencer Conrad Clark (played excellently by Jonah Hauer-King), an opportunistic content creator who'll sacrifice anyone on the altar of fame and fortune.

Ostensibly the head of citizen's journalism group Think Tank but really acting toward his own ends, Conrad gaslights Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) into a fraudulent alien attack scenario to lure UNIT troops into a live-streamed trap that "reveals" the organization fakes alien attacks in order to leech taxpayer money. This turns the public opinion against UNIT in general and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) in particular, with Ruby ending up as the hated face of the "conspiracy."

Conrad is charismatic, untrustworthy, and so convinced of his own superiority that he's able to stare down the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) with the kind of condescending sneer very few villains are able to pull off when the time lord is truly angry. This is all the more impressive because he's an ordinary human with no access to sci-fi technology and uses simple deceitfulness and Tiktok streamer tactics for his villainy. Chillingly, he may be on a track to become a recurring threat, as the mysterious Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) frees him from prison at the end of the episode.

The key to making Conrad's vile villainy so effective is the way the episode weaponizes the show's usual storytelling tendencies to make him seem like a nice guy. He's introduced as one of the many characters who've caught a glimpse of the Doctor and his TARDIS over the years and remain haunted by the experience. This is a common trope for the revival-era "Doctor Who," which has built the Doctor as something of a cryptid with references to online forums devoted to sightings and other barely-informed whispers of his existence.

By showing Conrad's two separate TARDIS sightings and a subsequent career as a conspiracy-infatuated podcaster, the show deliberately puts him in the box of harmless in-universe Whovians — such as the ones the 10th Doctor-era episode "Love & Monsters" focuses on. His budding romance with Ruby further plays up his traits as a positive character and even a potential supporting protagonist.

After the episode's first half focuses on Ruby's struggle to adapt to normal life following her adventures with the Doctor and offers a ray of light when she bonds with Conrad, the revelation that he's a smug villain who only used her to get at UNIT is a heartbreaking moment that immediately establishes him as an absolute hate sink. The episode continues this work by eventually revealing that the sole reason for Conrad's actions is bitterness after his UNIT work application was rejected. Hell hath no fury like an emotionally stunted man-boy scorned; "Lucky Day" weaponizes this hate with Conrad, who's so deep inside the rabbit hole he dug himself that he rejects all aspects of reality that don't fit his own skewed worldview ... and will no doubt be back to spew more hate before long.

New episodes of "Doctor Who" premiere Saturdays on Disney+.