Lucky Day - a review

We've seen a definite improvement in quality this year, especially in the last two episodes, so naturally we're all concerned that this can be maintained as we reach the mid-point of the series. 

Last year at this stage we were offered a Doctor-lite story which leant towards folk horror and concentrated on Ruby Sunday, with some UNIT involvement - 73 Yards - and so it looks like RTD2 has been shaping Year 2 along similar lines. (73 Yards was, for me, ultimately disappointing as it quickly dispensed with the scary rural stuff to go down a political thriller / Dead Zone rip-off route). Something similar does happen here, but it works far better...

Lucky Day also concentrates on Ruby, with little room for the Doctor, and we have UNIT back. We also have part of the story set in a small country village where something nasty lurks. Here, the folk horror element comes later in the story, following an urban romance between Ruby and new podcaster boyfriend Conrad, played by Jonah Hauer-King.

Folk horror followed by urban thriller last year, urban romance followed by folk horror followed by urban thriller this year.

Or so it seems. Just when you think that in Conrad we simply have a misguided fan of the Doctor, putting himself and others at risk through some attempt to emulate him or his companions, the rug is pulled from under our feet and things take a decidedly nasty and unexpected turn.

The opening moments are reminiscent of Love & Monsters - young boy encounters the Doctor, becomes obsessed with him, then meets him again as an adult whilst he and his companion are tracking a savage monster. Things have moved on since 2006, and instead of vlogging like Elton, Conrad podcasts.

Ruby ends up becoming a guest on the cast, and a romance gradually blooms.

This takes a while to get going, and I daresay the attention of some younger viewers might have wandered off during this courtship, but it has a big payoff. The monster this week, the Shreek, tags its victims with a biochemical marker, and a year later it hunts them down and kills them. Ruby gives Conrad the antidote but, on a visit to a small village to meet his friends, it transpires that he never used it - wanting to be like the Doctor and have an adventure with Ruby. She calls in UNIT for help - and this is where everything you thought was happening goes out the window.

Conrad isn't at all like Elton. You might call him the Anti-Pope... It's all a social media stunt, arranged to expose UNIT's lies, according to Conrad. He and his pals are members of an outfit known as Think Tank which thinks all this alien stuff is just fake news. (I half expected him to complain that Kate's dad had locked up his granny, Hilda, back in Robot, but this was not to be...).

His motivation: he's simply an unpleasant character who craves attention and influence, and who was once turned down by Kate Stewart for a job with UNIT. He clearly believes in the conspiracy theories he peddles on-line - even when they try to bite his arm off.

Forget the Master and other rogue Time Lords. Sometimes the biggest monsters really are home grown. He's a really nasty character, with no redeeming features, and when he falls there's no moment of realisation that he might have been misguided. As a viewer, we don't get to see any moment either of redemption or comeuppance.

The Doctor even turns up at the end to have a go at him, and he still shrugs it off. 

And then he gets sprung from jail by Mrs Flood, so is set up as someone of significance for the finale.

(We sort of knew this anyway as there were posters of him seen on location where it looks like he might become some sort of right-wing influencer or politician - part of the alternate reality which they seem to be setting up for later).

Along the way he has launched really cruel emotional attacks on both Ruby and Kate, the latter through belittling her father. I'm afraid I had little sympathy for Ruby. Going on a popular podcast and blabbing about the Doctor and UNIT, you rather bring these things on yourself and you have to wonder why Kate allowed it in the first place.

We've seen how problematic lecturing to the public (or downright hectoring) in the show can be, with some very clumsily executed examples in the Chibnall era (one of which came from this episode's writer). Here the Doctor's lecture to Conrad is, for me, quite unnecessary. If it's intended for the viewers then we're not that stupid that we need to be told any of this, and it doesn't even work in the context of the narrative as Conrad remains unmoved. 

It's one of those occasions where you're aiming a message at a particular audience, but it's pointless as they are the ones who aren't watching. I don't appreciate being told "x" is bad when I already know that "x" is bad, certainly not by a minor TV writer.

A bit of a gripe, but one that fortunately doesn't ruin what went before.

Despite only appearing briefly in the story, Gatwa still manages to squeeze in three different outfits. Belinda only gets a single scene, and has no interaction with her successor. The Doctor doesn't even get a post-Conrad scene with Ruby. 

We learn that the Shreek encounter witnessed by Conrad took place immediately after The Devil's Chord and that the man who prompted the Doctor to seek out Belinda was Conrad, as he'd seen them together as a child and mentions her name to him.

Next week we see the Doctor make a rare visit to the southern hemisphere as he drops in on a Lagos barbershop, and there's a gigantic spider involved.

Looking further forward, there may be an issue with the Song Contest one. It's all set up to fall on the night of Eurovision and Gatwa is even going to be the person to announce the UK votes - but there's a Cup Final that day, and these things have a habit of running to extra time / penalties. Not only might The Interstellar Song Contest get bumped, but that would also have a knock-on effect for the finale which is due to commence on Belinda's key date.