Doctor Who 'The Church on Ruby Road' spoilers follow.
Despite the amplified-budget production values we're still getting used to in Doctor Who – as well as the wider cinematic Whoniverse that Russell T Davies is pushing – 'The Church on Ruby Road' opted for an intimate, tender Christmas tale of the families we make for ourselves.
As the Christmas special got underway, we were finally introduced to Millie Gibson's new companion Ruby Sunday. She sits down with a beaming Davina McCall for an apparent episode of Long Lost Family. Like a Brothers Grimm fable, we learn how Ruby was left as a newborn baby on the steps of the titular Ruby Road church and is now trying to find her birth mother.
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After a gorgeous dancing scene which is as good an advert for clubbing as any you might see, Ruby finally crosses paths with Ncuti Gatwa's new, charm-personified Doctor.
But it's only when the two are torn apart that we get to the crux of the episode and see something fundamental that is set to bind the Doctor and Ruby: how both have come to cherish found families.
Once nicely seasoned newborn Lulubelle has been saved from the maw of the Goblin King and Ruby herself has vanished, suddenly the bright and bustling top-floor flat is stripped of its Christmas cheer.
A crack down the centre of the ceiling points like an arrow to the now bare fridge door, where the heartfelt photo collage of the 33 children Ruby's warm adopted mother Carla (Michelle Greenidge) had fostered no longer hangs.
It's the most emotional we've seen this Fifteenth Doctor yet, as he realises the dastardly tactics of the goblins in festive Santa hats: nicking baby Ruby from those church steps (even though he had quite specifically said the goblins weren't time travellers, but okay).
As the Doctor tries to remind Carla of Ruby, both of them tear up. "Why would I want a daughter when I'm happy as I am?" Carla asks. "Then why are you crying?" says the Doctor. "I don't know," she replies. "Why are you?"
In classic, emotionally avoidant Time Lord fashion, he quickly moves on, springing into a plan of action. But this moment and the close kinship he feels with Ruby harks back to that final scene from the third 60th-anniversary special 'The Giggle'.
David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor has been able to retire to a wisteria-bestrewn gazebo with Donna (Catherine Tate) and the Temple-Noble family, something which seems to have taken even him by surprise. "Who'd have thought?" he asks as they tuck into what we can only assume is tuna madras. "I ended up with a family."
The Doctor here freely admits how important found family has become to him. "The funny thing is, I fought all those battles for all those years and now I know what for," he says looking all around him. "This."
Just as in this Christmas special, in the final moments of the third-anniversary special, it is something that deeply affects him.
The Fifteenth Doctor springing around a club dancefloor in a kilt or the unveiling of a truly unrecognisable new sonic screwdriver heighten the contrast between this Doctor and those that have gone before. But sensitive moments like that with Carla show how certain elements of the Doctor's arc still carry through, whether it be after a bigeneration or a regeneration.
When you start to look for them, the blueprints of a Doctor Who Marvelisation are all over the place, seemingly the effect of Disney's involvement. Did the Doctor pulling the goblin ship down from the sky not remind you of Captain America doing the same with a chopper in Captain America: Civil War?
But as ever with Davies, who is known and loved for leaning into the cheese, he's so far keeping the emotional gravity (or mavity) at the heart of this new era of Who. Which is why he was never going to let Davina McCall meet that Final Destination-style Christmas tree end.
Doctor Who 'The Church of Ruby Road' is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Doctor Who returns in 2024.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
