In which the Doctor encounters a young woman named Ruby Sunday, who is oblivious to bad things happening to people around her...
As a baby she had been abandoned at Christmas, 2004, outside the church on Ruby Road, West London - which is how she got her name. She was brought up in Notting Hill in foster care with mum Carla and Grandma Poppy, but has always wanted to know about her real mother. Who was she, and why did she abandon her?
An appearance on a show fronted by Davina McCall, in which family reunions were arranged, failed to locate any information about her mother. Shortly after a follow-up meeting with Davina, the TV presenter was injured when a Christmas tree fell on her - the work of small goblin-like creatures.
The Doctor began following Ruby as he realised that she was being tracked by these creatures - which were indeed malevolent Goblins. One intended to harm her by dropping a huge Christmas inflatable on her after she emerged from a gig with her band but she departed safely, unaware that anything had happened.
Christmas Eve 2023 sees Ruby arrive home to find that Carla has just taken in another foster child - baby Lulubelle. Left alone with a child, she hears noises on the baby monitor and goes to the bedroom to find her crib empty. On the floor is a polaroid photograph which features one of the Goblins.
Rushing to the window she sees the Goblin on a rope ladder, hoisting Lulubelle in a basket towards something floating above the house.
She snatches the ladder and is pulled up. The Doctor suddenly appears and runs along the rooftop and grabs hold of the ladder as well, and both find themselves being pulled up to a massive rickety wooden sailing ship, floating in the clouds.
The Doctor has used intelligent gloves, which counter the effects of gravity.
They manage to get onto the ship where they find a whole army of Goblins, who are planning to feed Lulubelle to their corpulent King.
They are captured. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver fails to work as the ship is made of wood and rope, but he works out how to untangle the latter so that they get free.
However, they fall onto the conveyor belt holding the baby's basket. The damage to the ropes has yet to finish and they suddenly find a means of getting back to the ground. They take the baby back to Ruby's flat.
The Doctor notes how Ruby seems to be surrounded by bad luck and coincidence, which may be what has brought them together - he also having been a foundling.
The house is shaken and the ceiling splits, and the Doctor suddenly discovers that reality has altered.
Ruby has vanished and all the photos of fostered children have disappeared from the kitchen. Carla claims never to have fostered, regretting that decision.
The Doctor realises that the Goblins have altered the timeline in revenge and rushes to the TARDIS. Its dematerialisation is witnessed by the next door neighbour, Mrs Flood.
Employing his intelligent gloves, he grabs the rope ladder and slowly pulls the ship downwards towards him. It crashes onto the spire, which impales and kills the Goblin King.
The vessel is destroyed as the timeline reasserts itself. The Doctor must make sure that the baby is found and so fails to identify her mother who is walking away from the church.
The vicar finds the child and the Doctor returns to 2023 to find things back to normal.
The Doctor is worried that he may have brought the bad luck to Ruby and returns to the TARDIS, but she has worked out that he is a time traveller. She runs out to join him, and is invited to travel with him.
When the TARDIS dematerialises once more, Mrs Flood reveals to another neighbour that she knows exactly what the TARDIS is...
The Church On Ruby Road was written by Russell T Davies and was first broadcast on 25th December 2023, making it the first Christmas Special since the departure of Steven Moffat - Chris Chibnall having elected to do New Year Specials instead.
It is Davies' first festive special since The End of Time Part 1, marks the debut proper of new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa in his first full appearance, and introduces new companion Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson.
The episode also allows RTD (or RTD2 as he is often referred to, since this is his second time in charge) to set out his new vision for the show. This entails more fantasy than science-fiction.
At no point are the Goblins - creatures of terrestrial mythology - ever identified as conventional alien beings. We also have a number of conversations between the Doctor and Ruby about luck and coincidence. This will later be explained as being the result of events in the second of the 60th Anniversary Specials, the Doctor coming to believe that he accidentally allowed magic and superstition to break into this universe from a neighbouring dimension.
Ruby's search for the identity of her real mother, and the reasons for her abandonment, will form the main story arc this coming year - described as "Season 1" due to the new partnership with Disney+. (Though no self-respecting fan ever calls it this).
As well as introducing the new companion, we naturally get to meet her family network who will become semi-regulars. This comprises foster mum Carla, played by Michelle Greenidge, and grandmother Poppy, played by Angela Wynter. The latter was best known for playing a regular role in EastEnders, opposite Rudolph Walker, who had featured in The War Games.
Greenidge had featured in Davies' It's A Sin.
Another person who will become a semi-regular but was initially just a guest artist at this point is Anita Dobson - another EastEnder and someone used to making an impact at Christmas - who plays the enigmatic Mrs Flood. Dobson is also Mrs Brian May.
It was inevitable that this character would be revisited as the episode ends with her looking directly to camera, asking "Never seen a TARDIS before...?".
In a cameo role is TV presenter Davina McCall, who had previously voiced the DavinaDroid in Bad Wolf. She co-hosts a real family reunion show called Long Lost Family.
Someone else to watch out for is a woman in the audience enjoying Ruby's band. She's played by Susan Twist, who had earlier featured as Isaac Newton's housekeeper in Wild Blue Yonder...
In terms of action, the episode has little - with only the two sequences involving the Goblin ship having much excitement or spectacle, the first of which doesn't take place until half way through the episode. When the script was initially given to Disney for comment this lack of incident was noted by them (and the Doctor's relative absence), and so the sequence with the falling Christmas inflatable decoration was added near the beginning.
Davies had often called upon Murray Gold to provide a special song for the festive specials - such as Song For Ten or The Stowaway - and here we get The Goblin Song, sung by the creatures and containing the sort of gruesome lyrics which small children might relish. Proceeds from the song's release went to Children In Need.
At another point the Doctor and Ruby sing to distract the Goblins. Davies had always wanted to do a musical Doctor Who story - inspired by the Buffy one. This will come in the following full series.
Overall, it's the sort of thing we've come to expect from Christmas Specials - nothing too heavy or too canon-heavy, to please the casual viewer. If it has a problem it's that lack of incident. It's a little dull, and the Goblins fail to make much of an impact. A bit of fluff and little more. When a single line by a guest artist gets the most attention following broadcast, you know that the rest couldn't have been up to much.
Things you might like to know:
- The fan speculation following Mrs Flood's closing line was mainly about her being someone from the show's history. One theory was that she was Susan, and the other big one was that she was the Rani...
- Ruby's address is given as Minto Road, Notting Hill, which is in West London. The location filming was mainly around Bristol, though the church was filmed in Newport.
- Mickey Smith had previously mentioned Minto Road in The Parting of the Ways, the location of a new pizza take-away (and a leaflet for it can be seen on Carla's fridge).
- As Ruby speaks to Mrs Flood before entering the TARDIS, the real street name - Frederick Place - can be seen.
- In DWM RTD2 teased that the front doors on Minto Road would be significant - and Mrs Flood's is "TARDIS blue" - another clue that she might be a Time Lord.
- The main singing Goblin was named Janis Goblin - a play on Janis Joplin, the singer-songwriter who died in 1970 aged only 27. The Tenth Doctor had previously claimed that she had given him his distinctive long brown coat.
- Other Goblin singers were named after musicians Pixie Lott (Pixie Not), Bob Dylan (Gob Dylan), Ralph McTell (Ralph McTelf) and Bryan Ferry (Bryan Fairy).
- The Goblin King is all too obviously based on Jabba The Hut, as he appears in The Return of the Jedi.
- Angela Wynter was born in March 1954, whilst Michelle Greenidge was born in June 1969.
- At the time, The Church On Ruby Road was the least watched Christmas Special since 2005, and the second least watched Special of any kind (after Legend of the Sea Devils).
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