Why do we need a conventionally attractive Clive? It’s about now that I’d have made myself look stupid, assuming Pete McTighe is also Australian, which is easy to understand given his writing credits. Alongside writing the 6000th episode of Neighbours, McTighe would go on to be the head writer for Prisoner/Prisoner: Cell Block H/Caged Women (calm down Canada) reimagining, Wentworth. As well as EastEnders, and eventually Doctor Who some years ago under Chibnall. McTighe is joined by Australian season opener director Peter Hoar.

Stopping off in 2007, Ncuti’s Doctor meets a kid and gives him 50p, and that’s all we get of The Doctor and Belinda. Love and a different kind of monster indeed. Going back a little in time, we see The Doctor and Ruby during one of their non-TV adventures (cue Big Finish or the books to jump in) as they are hunted by The Shreek. The Shreek is an interdimensional hunter that is basically Kraven in small goblin (different goblin) form. However, that kid is a bit more grown up, and he’s now being a bit of an Elton Pope, just minus the love for ELO.

Conrad (never trust a Conrad/Konrad) has also become a podcaster who is chasing stories of The Doctor, never trust a podcaster either. After taking a creepy picture of Ruby on that day, she and The Doctor were being chased by The Shreek. Conrad is splattered with The Shreek’s hunting juices. Practically, he’s marked for dead as the Shreek will hunt him down and kill him. Trouble is, though, Ruby gets a lady boner for Prince Eric from 2023’s The Little Mermaid, and the two go on a Doctor-lite episode fling for a bit.

With that description, I think it is easy to say, “Well, that’s not very Doctor Who” but the episode is to a degree. Better still, I think it is a better representation of an episode that Peter Hoar directed before. We’ll have to discuss the twist here, but I’ll avoid the twist at the end. For once, outside of The Sarah Jane Adventures, we’re following the story of a former companion on TV as she tries to cope with the weight of everything she’s done. She even fought gods alongside The Beatles.

It all seems rather nice, aside from the idea that Conrad is about to be eaten by a hunter-being from a pocket dimension. You know, normal date nights. So we see Ruby trying to cope with the year she’s had and now working with UNIT before Conrad puts out an image of Ruby online, asking who she is. Eventually, the two talk on Conrad’s podcast, Lucky Day, which is supposed to be about The Doctor, UNIT, and general speculation about aliens, but not in that Alex Jones (yes, that one) sort of way.

You’d be given funny looks if you said there was something strange going on underneath it all, it seems quite calm and less dramatic than the usual episode. That’s the point. He’s nice, she’s happy, and he’s bumbling about like budget Hugh Grant (not a compliment). She’s still happy, Cherry is flicking through Conrad’s Instagram to find the topless picture Carla mentions, and his friends are also conventionally attractive but almost exclusively White and thin, you know, “normal” 20-somethings now. It’s like something is missing.

After a year of being marked by the Shreek, that’s when Ruby meets this lad who just so happened to stumble into seeing the box parked up, she gives him the antidote. Something that’s established as going to knock you out for a while, but you’ll be safe from being eaten by the 2004 film Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness. Yes, I’m impatiently holding back my want to get to the spoilery bit so I can have a rant. Turns out, he didn’t take it. These two have been on three dates between her giving it and his admission that he didn’t take it. Run woman!

Red flag number one was being called Conrad, red flag number two was being a professional podcaster, and red flag number three was saying, “I didn’t take it, I want to be as brave as The Doctor.” Listen son, because I’ll personally dig your grave deep enough to hand you back to Thatcher’s under-secretary, Beelzebub, myself. Less of the charming prince and more the prince from Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, he was already annoying me with his “perfect-ness.”

Before I get into my rant for the week, I will say that Hoar’s direction and McTighe’s writing for that explanation scene with Ruby in the café (the first date) is great. It is exactly what a lot of TV forgets it can do by having the scene done in one without flashbacks or hypothetical scenes. It is just a slow pan from right to left as it follows typical screen direction rules, the lights dim as Ruby explains everything, the beast is in the background, and it does it so simply.

The effects are simple, the idea is clear, the message is loud, and most importantly, it allows the actors to be actors. Yes, it is a little telling more than showing, but it is a blend of the two. Think of it like a good horror or monster film, like Cloverfield to a degree. In the distance, it shows the horrible events of the monster, but up close, you are allowing the actors to sell that you don’t want to be near it anyway. That’s probably the best small-scale bit of the episode.

The perfect little White boy podcaster is just trying to be oh-so brave before the veneer slips. On the fifth date, to some random small English village probably called Bubbleton-on-Breast, the two are in a pub with all his friends and the extras from The Wicker Man – not the American one. All the while, Ruby is in contact with Kate and UNIT, making sure that The Shreek that they know about is in fact in UNIT’s storage facility. However, everything she described on that first date happens in the pub.

Yes, it is obvious, but it works. That isn’t my problem with the episode or this idea, it is more the broad strokes that maybe just don’t work. So as UNIT arrives in Bubbleton-on-Breast, two Shreeks are appearing out of the fog of headlights, but UNIT can’t see non-terrestrial lifeforms on its tech. Only for the two to stand upright, take off their masks, and Conrad reveals he’s the leader/face of a conspiracy theory group called Think Tank. An anti-UNIT, skeptical of reports of The Doctor, and generally “they’re turning the frogs gay!” type.

Lovely (sarcasm implied), simply lovely. So let’s run through a couple of things here, he’s shown as quite receptive early on as a kid to The Doctor, gets hit by his mother because in 2007 Jo Frost didn’t get to this alcoholic single mother, and is the face of the less “the government are Raxacoricofallapatorians!” kind of podcast. Yet suddenly has enough of a following to take down UNIT? I’m not saying it is impossible to pull this off, but step-mum and gran are going through his social media, and Ruby herself works for/with UNIT.

I’ve worked at community center-based after-school clubs where the management was willing to be more stalker-ish of me than the literal embodiment of “We’ll find out if your boyfriend is an alien.” Kate isn’t nosey? Shirley? Donna is somewhere in that building, and anyone who wants to argue she won’t snoop on a fellow former companion’s new boyfriend is just a bit dim. They even do the background check later on, proving they could have done that sooner.

Ok, let’s say a line or two was cut that may have saved that in the broader sense. How about when Ruby and Conrad arrive in the village and the electronic small departures board thing for a bus stop (what village has that budget?) and it goes a bit flickery? Ruby’s description on that first date is that the Shreek will draw on the energy surrounding the target to make said target afraid, hence the lights in the café going out, and it being nighttime. However, we know later on it isn’t the Shreek in that moment drawing on the power, so who was it?

Is he that well-connected with the village’s council and larger county transport board? If he’s that well-connected, then you’d think the conspiracy to drag UNIT to this village (or vice-versa) kind of doesn’t work. At least in this heavily “digital age” that we’re supposedly in, someone is breaking silence, something about this plan is getting out, and generally it all feels like something that would have worked better in, well 2007. That’s why your Alex Jones (yes, still that one) grew, social media was on the verge of a 24/7 worldwide connection, and stupidity could still be believable.

Now? This sort of broad “they are injecting us with 5G gender fluid micro machines to turn us all into autistic transformers with pronouns” isn’t hitting as hard with the typical Doctor Who audience as it should. I kind of get the layperson (for lack of a better term) idea that I come to Doctor Who to get away from this, not to again have it so plainly reflected back at me as a viewer. As I said about “The Robot Revolution,” these stories can work, and they could do a lot of good, but they need a greater amount of nuance than TV producers trust audiences to have.

In fact, with points later on that are heavy spoilers that I won’t touch too much, “Lucky Day” works more against that toxic masculinity, incel nature that “The Robot Revolution” tried to tackle. It faces the problem and highlights that more directly through the lens of the Alex Jones type (still that one), more than anything else. There is some line in there later on that is very much “he’s just a hurt-scared little boy,” effectively, and that’s practically everything that this conspiracy, toxic masculinity, incel thing is. Broken, hurt men who are scared that their power over everyone is slipping.

For the benefit of my editor and some of you reading, there is a reason I’m defining between which Alex Jones. One is from Texas and is constantly in legal battles that make him bankrupt, and the other is a Welsh presenter of a terribly dull BBC magazine chat show, The One Show. In fact, (this is the very reason I keep defining it), she even appears in the episode.

Maybe I’m old and I shouldn’t be complaining, but alongside the J Jonah Jameson of Trinity Wells, we’ve got cameos of BBC News presenter Reeta Chakrabarti, the aforementioned Alex Jones, and even Joel Dommett. The latter being so Z-list and unfunny, he’s best known for being part of the short-lived BBC Three show, Impractical Jokers UK. It is just an attempt to get someone still wet behind the ears as a cameo, because I guess Stephen Mulhern was busy doing shiny ITV game shows. For an American reference, that’s like Pat Bullard versus Ryan Seacrest.

I could go on another rant about modern ITV and BBC gameshows, but that’s a topic for another time. Basically in the plot, Conrad “outs” UNIT for “faking” the alien attacks on London, he’s heralded by the press and larger media. That makes sense because BBC’s news division will fact-check nothing and applaud people who dox private members of the population without legal repercussions, and ultimately cause chaos. This is true even to the point that UNIT is being defunded, like it was part of the American government right now.

Shows like Doctor Who are supposed to somewhat reflect our lives now, but there isn’t even that Blind Date baffle board between fiction and reality to claim the episode is using an analogy. The writing is solid, and the direction is practically faultless, but maybe this is just the problem I have with the newer series of Doctor Who overall: We’re not getting those “The Idiot’s Lantern” and “The Girl in the Fireplace” episodes. An episode like “Gridlock” or “New Earth” where the series plot (not season Russell) still goes on, but we get a moment away from building to Saxon to have fun.

As an episode on its own, I like “Lucky Day” for what it is. As part of the series thus far, it is pretty good. Where I think I have a problem with “Lucky Day” is having to be critical of it and quickly spotting the gap in the plot. Look at the most obvious examples; celebrities who have terrible views or have done questionable things are often called out now pretty quickly, while quiet/private figures in the public eye are the ones you’re surprised about championing the flag of saying/doing stupid stuff. Conrad wasn’t a quiet, private person.

“Lucky Day” has a few interesting ideas. The disenfranchised youth, toxic relationships (which apparently most people didn’t pick up on), podcast grifter, and the breeding ground of this festering conspiratorial mindset – all work. However, this isn’t “We are Legion,” it is Twitter and Instagram once they’ve finished spoon-feeding tripe like Love Island into their brains. If you cut off the credits, you’re looking at 44 minutes to tell this story. There is no way to balance that nuance. If it was a series arc or a couple of episodes over a series like Lower Decks would do, sure, but it is one episode.

Ultimately, Pete McTighe’s broad strokes are entertaining and hard-hitting enough, but when you sit down to think about “Lucky Day” a bit longer, certain elements falter. While Peter Hoar proves that when given something visually interesting, it can have direction that is “subtle” but still flashy if you know what you’re looking for. Jonah Hauer-King’s Conrad is a great villain, as proven by my want to boot the living Christ out of him and everyone who enables him. The main “problem” is, do we need such a direct, 1-for-1 reflection of what we’re living in a show that is supposed to be science-fiction based?

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Doctor Who "Lucky Day"

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Can I personally dig Conrad's grave?
• Peter Hoar's direction of that café scene.
• Kate's balance between Torchwood and Harriet Jones, MP, Flydale North.

Cons

• Do we need a 1-for-1 reflection of our lives?
• "#IStandWithUnit" Stop using social media if you don't understand it.
• "This one's collecting benefits, stealing our taxes."
• Still don't care about The R-- Flood.