Ncuti Gatwa Shines in Doctor Who’s Delightfully Weird Christmas Special

It’s been six years since the last Doctor Who Christmas special. We’ve still had “festive” episodes in the form of New Years specials, but at the risk of sounding like a cranky “There’s a war on Christmas” grouch, it just hasn’t been the same. Many of the New Year’s specials have been good, for sure, but there’s something magical about Christmas and Doctor Who that has become as synonymous with the holiday as unwrapping presents.

Of course, “The Church on Ruby Road” being the first Doctor Who Christmas special in a while will be one of the least important things about it to most people. It’s the first episode fully starring Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor, as well as his regeneration’s first companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson)! The 60th anniversary specials brought back faces we already knew and loved, but can we fall in love with these new faces just as much?

Yes. Oh my God, yes.

We had gotten a taste of Gatwa’s Doctor in the last quarter of the final 60th anniversary special, but now that David Tennant’s Fourteen is away sipping tea with the Nobles, he has his chance to fully shine.

Many Doctors’ first episodes feature them acting exceedingly erratic and chaotic as a symptom of recently regenerating, but recent regenerations have disappointingly done away with that. Gatwa’s Doctor continues this sad trend, but his baseline level of energy and enthusiasm is high enough that it’s hard to complain too much about it. 

One of his first scenes in this episode is just him dancing in a nightclub, something difficult (but fun!) to imagine many other Doctors doing, but it fully encapsulates the younger, perhaps slightly more down to Earth attitude of the Time Lord so well. At least at first, this Doctor doesn’t always need to be saving the planet, but can also mingle and even blend in with its inhabitants.

Of course, he eventually runs into trouble, which leads him to Ruby. Left on the doorstep of a church as a baby and raised by her adoptive family, Ruby is torn between loving her found family but yearning to know her biological one. While the Doctor is spontaneous and adventurous, Ruby is a little more reserved and still in the phase of disbelief any good companion has to go through. The mandatory “It’s bigger on the inside” scene in particular is a reminder of how magical Doctor Who is when seen through the eyes of a newcomer. 

That vicarious sense of going on an adventure with the Doctor was diluted when Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor traveled with a full crew of three at most times. Despite having infinite space, the TARDIS starts to feel crowded when it has more than one full-time companion at a time, and it’s a relief to see the show scaling back its capacity to focus more on the core cast before expanding it.

The 15th Doctor’s first threat he faces without help from, well, himself isn’t Daleks, Cybermen, or even the Slitheen, but fucking goblins, which look to be actual puppets or costumes instead of CGI. They’re not exactly the most threatening foes, but they temporarily make the show feel more like a goofy fantasy than a goofy science fiction show. It’s adorable seeing the Doctor have to shift his vocabulary from reversing the polarity of the neutron flow to determining what rope in a floating goblin ship to pull and how coincidences make a baby tastier to these creatures.