‘Doctor Who’ Season 2 Episode 4 Review – “Lucky Day” Sends Ruby Into the Heart of a Tense, Political Thriller

Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King), Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) | Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf

This week’s episode of Doctor Who takes a break from the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda’s (Varada Sethu) journey home to shine a light on what life is like for the Doctor’s friends after they leave the TARDIS. Written by Pete McTighe (2018’s “Kerblam!”) and directed by Peter Hoar, “Lucky Day” checks in on the Doctor’s old friend, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), in a story that’s part romantic comedy and part tense, sci-fi-tinged political thriller. McTighe’s script delivers a down-to-Earth glimpse at life after the Doctor, coupled with a very prescient takedown of conspiracy-laden internet culture. It’s a very unusual Doctor Who adventure, but it’s all the better for that uniqueness.

Life After the Doctor

“Lucky Day” finds Ruby Sunday struggling to adjust after leaving the TARDIS. Life merely passes her by as she feels trapped in the Doctor’s shadow. Until she meets Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King), an internet celebrity who’s been investigating the strange and unusual since a brief childhood run-in with the Doctor and Belinda. After a “meet-cute” of sorts at a recording of Conrad’s podcast, the two strike up a bit of a relationship. And, at first, Conrad’s grounded normalcy proves good for Ruby, offering a sense of safety in a world plagued by PTSD from her adventures with the Doctor. Until things take a turn for the dark and supernatural, of course. But what else is new for Ruby Sunday? What’s so captivating about “Lucky Day” is the way McTighe’s script and Gibson’s performance so deeply explore the realities of life after the Doctor.

How does a companion go back to living a normal life after traveling with the Doctor? Sure, Ruby and the Doctor were the best of friends, and she adored every minute spent with him. But now that she’s living a normal life, away from the constant terror of those travels, all of that trauma begins to seep in, and she finds herself stuck in this no man’s land between expecting either the Doctor to return or the world to end. Ruby can’t force herself to move on, instead throwing herself into her work with UNIT—until Connor offers her a reprieve from all of that. Or so she thinks. Gibson’s performance here is truly breathtaking; all at once remarkably strong and heartbreakingly vulnerable. It’s the kind of character study we hardly get to see in Doctor Who anymore, and McTighe and Gibson pull it off brilliantly.

Down With UNIT

Ruby’s paradise of love turns sour, however, when Conrad reveals his true intentions. For it’s not the heart of Ruby Sunday that interests Conrad Clark. No, what interests this self-centered internet mouthpiece is the chance to expose UNIT—its secrets, technology, and (in Conrad’s view) lies. Though Connor previously encountered the Doctor twice (once as a child and once, a year earlier, during an adventure with Ruby that left Connor marked for death by an alien known only as the Shreek), he believes UNIT and the Doctor are faking all of their alien encounters. Even as Ruby and UNIT desperately try to save him from the Shreek. And so, he wants to expose them. But really, as Ruby notes later in the episode, he’s nothing more than an egocentric, power-hungry loudmouth who hates feeling unimportant.

But McTighe’s script argues that those people are the most dangerous, as Connor proves by nearly destroying the public’s perception of UNIT and by forcibly breaking into UNIT’s headquarters and holding Ruby and the UNIT team at gunpoint until they “confess their lies”. That combination of character work and biting social satire makes McTighe’s script leap off the page. Connor’s danger feels extremely relevant nowadays. He’s so over the top that he would’ve read as a mere caricature a few years ago, but now he feels all too familiar. Hauer-King pulls off that mixture of initial charm followed by total smarminess so perfectly that your skin crawls in the latter half of the episode. It’s an absolute barnstormer of a performance coupled with a script that balances meaty character drama with its tense, biting social commentary.

A Stand-Alone Story with Great Implications

Though McTighe’s script initially seems to stand alone in the same way that last year’s “73 Yards” appeared to, the further the episode gets, the more you feel like there are greater implications to come. Sure, Ruby, Kate (Jemma Redgrave), and the rest of the UNIT team stop Connor from revealing UNIT’s secrets and ending the organization, but at what cost? And is it too late to stop the metaphorical bleeding? After all, it only takes one loudmouth with a vision and a platform to alter the reality of the world itself these days—an idea that may, perhaps, come back into play as the season concludes with “The Reality War” in a few weeks. Especially as the mysterious Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) shows up, as she has every episode this season, to free Connor from his prison cell with the promise of plans yet to come.

Final Thoughts

But for now, “Lucky Day” offers a stark look at life after traveling in the TARDIS. All at once a romantic comedy mixed with a tense, sci-fi-tinged political thriller, “Lucky Day” offers a reprieve from the breakneck adventures of the previous three episodes and, instead, takes a more slice-of-life approach to its storytelling. McTighe’s strong character work mixed with Gibson’s heart-achingly vulnerable return as Ruby Sunday and Hauer-King’s deliciously smarmy turn as Conrad make this episode a real standout experience. If this is the kind of quality we can expect from McTighe’s upcoming Doctor Who spinoff, The War Between the Land and the Sea, then we’re in for quite a treat. As is, “Lucky Day” adds yet another strong episode to Doctor Who’s second season and eagerly propels us into the final four to come.

New episodes of Doctor Who premiere Saturdays at 3 am on Disney+.