A Disappointing Doctor on Disney: Doctor Who “Season One”

I was pleased with the run of 60th anniversary specials bringing back David Tenant’s Doctor and Donna Noble and introducing the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Though I said at the time that I found the goblins in the final special silly and Ruby “feels like another iteration of Rose, a pretty blonde who’s more than she seems.” Those reactions are a big part of why I’m dissatisfied with the Doctor’s Season One (yes, they’ve rebooted to that) on Disney +. Caution: spoilers ahead so feel free to bookmark this and come back after you’ve watched the season.

The first episode has the Doctor and Ruby arrive on a station crewed by talking Space Babies and threatened by a mysterious monster. It’s cutesy but it worked for me, though not for others. “Once I landed in 1963, when they actually had police boxes.”

The Devil’s Chord didn’t work at all. The Doctor and Ruby arrive in 1963 to meet the Beatles but the Maestro (Jinx Monsoon), another of the Toymaker’s cosmic clan, has wiped out music — and without it, humanity is headed to the apocalypse. I found the Maestro insufferably over-the-top and the Doctor’s completely ineffective against such a demigod; the ending is very deus ex (the Doctor inspires John Lennon to give music one more try, he taps out four notes which is somehow enough to banish the Maestro). “Doctor I know you’re clever but I’ve got news for you — the world did not end in 1963.”

Boom has the Doctor arrive on an alien world, step out and discover he’s on a landmine. It’ll blow up if he steps off but it’s counting down to an explosion if he doesn’t get off. It’s a nail-biter and gives Ruby a chance to be brave (risking her own neck to help him). Coupled with the references to granddaughter Susan in the previous episodes, the Doctor’s rambling about “dad energy” in this episode made me think she was going to appear this season, though that turns out to be a red herring. “I’m getting my Zen on — my landmine zen.”

The next episode is frustrating because it starts so well. In Wales, the Doctor and Ruby disturb what might be a fairy ring, the Doctor disappears, then a strange woman starts standing 73 Yards away from Ruby. Anyone who goes near her — Ruby’s Mum, the Brig — panics and flees, leaving her increasingly isolated. What’s going on?

We never learn. The whole thing is resolved in a vaguely hand-wavy way that doesn’t explain anything — and things were too strange not to explain. Gibson gives her best performance this season; it doesn’t fix the problems (one of which was Gatwa finishing up his obligations on another show so he wasn’t available). “There’s no home to go to, you idiot, not any more.”

The viewpoint character of Dot and Bubble is a young woman in a society where nobody interacts with reality directly — everything’s through the Dot (friendly AI assistant) and the bubble of media it throws around you. Now, though, something’s killing people and two strangers breaking into her feed are telling her they know how to get her and her friends to safety. This one’s okay but comes off too “kids and their cellphones,” though it turns out the point of the episode (which it makes effectively) is something else entirely. “Don’t be silly — not even I would say something like that.”

ROGUE (Jonathan Groff) is a time-traveling bounty hunter who encounters the Doctor and Ruby during a visit to Regency England (or as Ruby puts it, to Bridgerton!). Sparks fly between him and the Doctor but at first he thinks the Doctor’s one of the shapeshifting aliens he’s hunting, then they have to run from the alien Chulder to stay alive. Which is part of my problem with this; as Marvel editor Tom Brevoort says, the Doctor is awfully ineffective this season — he’s running from these B-lister aliens and can’t even save Ruby at the climax (that falls to Rogue). And earlier walks right under Rogue’s Phantom Zone projector (so to speak) before realizing he’s in trouble. It doesn’t help that Groff comes off very stiff here and that there’s little period feel compared with, say, Black Orchid (shown below). “My name is Bond — Molecular Bond!”

Then comes the big finish, the two-part Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death. In Part One, the Doctor reunites with UNIT to find the secret behind Ruby’s mysterious mother and also the mysterious woman who keeps showing up throughout time, They bring him in on the case of Sue Triad (Susan Twist), a techtrepreneur who’s about to launch a Mysterious Exciting Software (UNIT knows better than to ignore such things) and whom the Doctor recognizes from multiple cameos in other worlds and times this season. Hmm, S. Triad is a TARDIS anagram — is it possible she’s Susan, his granddaughter?

Nope, wrong cover name. The key is not “S. Triad” but “Sue Tech” — Sutekh, the genocidal Osirian of Pyramids of Mars. He’s back, he’s got the TARDIS, and now everyone’s going to die! “Why can’t I see that woman’s face?”

In Empire of Death Sutekh wipes out UNIT and much of the rest of the world but the Doctor’s on it. He can rebuild a new TARDIS out of memories because memories are pieces of time, then he ropes Sutekh behind the TARDIS and drags him through time because Sutekh is death so his touch will obviously destroy himself, right? Then all that’s left is the mystery of Ruby’s mum. It turns out she’s quite ordinary, it’s just everyone obsessing over her that warped reality and made things go strange around her. UNIT finds her, she and Ruby get to know each other and the Doctor prepares to head off alone, all mysteries resolved. Somehow he forgets about Ruby making it snow or was the gibberish about her mum meant to explain that away?

I could accept one hand-wave of logic but that’s way too many in one episode. And Sutekh doesn’t work here as well as in his first appearance (I’ll be blogging about that next week). “I’m an extinction event — why didn’t he kill me?”

Overall, I was disappointed. As Brevoort says, the Doctor’s ineffective in most of the episodes — showrunner Russell Davies isn’t letting him be heroic enough. And Gibson is very much a generic companion in the vein of Rose (or Clara, or Bill) — fun-loving, eager to go with the Doctor, possessing a Mysterious Secret (assuming the ending didn’t wrap that up) and not much personality beyond that. She doesn’t snark at the Doctor like Tegan or Donna, doesn’t have Romana’s brains or Leela’s fighting skills or the presence that Elisabeth Sladen gave to Sarah Jane. Adequate, but no more than that.

I’m not sure I’d rate the season as even adequate.

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