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There are few issues on TV that really feel pretty much as good as assembly a brand new Physician and simply understanding they’ll be terrific. Physician Who’s Twenty first-century run has had a lot of ups and downs up to now, however casting the titular position has by no means been one in all them. Ncuti Gatwa, the Fifteenth Physician, is not any completely different: instantly charming, charismatic, and odd. In his first full journey, “The Church on Ruby Highway,” Gatwa shows shades of Medical doctors who’ve come earlier than whereas placing his personal robust stamp on the position; concurrently welcoming and enigmatic, he’s the form of individual you’d fortunately observe wherever however is clearly not telling you all the things.
And in “The Church on Ruby Highway” we lastly meet Fifteen’s companion for the forthcoming season: Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), an orphan who finds herself in a stretch of very unhealthy luck. The following episode is a wonderfully good vacation romp, the sort that may promote you on each this new Physician and Ruby Sunday very quickly in any respect, a feat so tough you may overlook how simple it’s to mess up. Physician Who is sweet at choosing Medical doctors. The exhausting half is choosing the companion.
Trendy Physician Who has put a number of weight on the Physician’s sidekick, usually to the present’s detriment. The position is arguably extra necessary for Physician Who to get proper than the lead — companion (or in some circumstances, companions) has to each be the viewers surrogate and the grounding pressure for the Physician. Earlier than showrunner Russell T. Davies left Who for the primary time in 2009, his then-final stretch of specials emphasised that unhealthy issues occur when the Physician is alone, stewing in his centuries-old thoughts as he travels all of time and house and confronts the horrors therein.
Picture: Disney Plus
The place Physician Who has gotten into bother prior to now is when its writers resolve to make its companion much more than this. Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) turned a love curiosity for the Tenth Physician (David Tennant), which you will take difficulty with or not (I personally consider the Physician-companion relationship ought to at all times be platonic, however flirting is ok). Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) almost had her tenure as companion ruined due to the choice to make her smitten with the Physician, endlessly unrequited as a result of she wasn’t Rose.
The worst mistake Physician Who’s writers could make with a companion, nonetheless, is once they make them a puzzle for the Physician to resolve. This was the spotlight of the Steven Moffat period of Who, the place long-running plots about “The Lady Who Waited” (Karen Gillan as Amy Pond) or “The Not possible Lady” (Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald). Once more: It’s exhausting sufficient being the companion. Additionally making them a plot machine? That’s quite a bit!
“The Church on Ruby Highway” appears prefer it’s going to go on this route, as Ruby Sunday seems to be the nexus of a number of unnatural coincidences that pile one on high of one another because the particular goes on. Fortunately, Davies side-steps that notion, merely utilizing it because the means to introduce the monster of this episode: little baby-eating goblins that navigate the universe based mostly on coincidence and in addition like to sing.
Picture: Disney Plus
It’s in that kind of predicament that the viewers will get to know what sort of companion Ruby Sunday might be: a younger girl who’s Recreation to match the Physician beat for beat in no matter it takes to get out of an outlandish state of affairs, even when it means singing and dancing in entrance of some baby-eating goblins. Ruby Sunday is an orphan who needs she knew extra about her previous, however isn’t scared to run towards the long run — one that features a time-traveling alien who loves an journey and desperately wants the corporate. It feels like the beginning of a fairy story.
Which, put merely, is what Physician Who looks like at its perfect.
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