If last week’s Doctor Who episode, a surprise sequel to 2008’s “Midnight,” showed the program’s ability to continue within the world of a beloved installment, “Lucky Day” is a follow-up of a different kind. Instead, this is a clear attempt to emulate the strange, eerie televisual magic of “73 Yards” from Ncuti Gatwa’s first season, yet one that fails to fully live up to its critically lauded predecessor.
While you can understand the desire to recapture the acclaim “73 Yards” was met with, it was always going to be a tough act to follow. With its folk-horror pastiche styling, that episode, written by Russell T Davies, felt like uncharted territory for the show. As a standalone ep, “Lucky Day”, written by Pete McTighe, isn’t bad, even if it does suffer from the consistency issues that have largely been absent from season two so far. It’s only when “73 Yards” is considered alongside it that this new story feels like a lesser recreation.
While it’s not a direct sequel, the parallels between the episodes are clear. Another Doctor-lite episode, this one is a chance for viewers to hear more from former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) after the anticlimactic end to her season-one storyline. But while Ruby is the focus of “Lucky Day”, the story is bookended by the Doctor and current companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) and their continued efforts to get Belinda back to the day she left Earth. They land in what appears to be London to take their vindicator reading, but it’s a case of “right planet, wrong year.” A young boy named Conrad (Benjamin Chivers) sees them and explains that once he’s closed his gaping mouth, it’s New Year’s Day, 2007. For his information, he receives a 50p from the Doctor, along with a promise that this is going to be his “lucky day.”
Fast forward 14 years, and adult Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) crosses paths with the Doctor, who at the time is travelling with Ruby and hunting down a monster dubbed the Shreek with menacing, glowing red eyes. The Shreek marks Conrad as his prey by leaving a layer of Nickelodeon-green slime on his neck, and Conrad snaps a picture of Ruby on his phone just before she jets off in the TARDIS.
That’s how, one year later in early 2025, Ruby is sitting across from Conrad with a microphone close to her face. Conrad hosts a popular podcast about all things aliens, and the Doctor and Ruby, now aged 20 and with a longer, shaggier haircut marking the passing of time, is exceptionally eager to talk about her “best friend,” It becomes clear that she’s not heard from the Doctor in a while and while life with her newly extended family is pleasant enough, she’s lost. Conrad points out that there are some critics who are sceptical about all of this. Ruby doesn’t even entertain it. “Aliens are real; we all know that,” she says, matter-of-factly.
The opportunity to talk about the Doctor is one Ruby clearly relishes. Perhaps that’s why, despite not seeming entirely sure about him, she agrees to go for a post-podcast coffee with Conrad. She tells him about the Shreek, and as she describes how the alien causes its victim to see and hear things, the lights around Ruby dim and the sound of blood pumping threatens to overwhelm the soundtrack. It’s a clear nod to “73 Yards” and one that enraptures the senses only to yank you back out into the light of the café. There, Ruby hands a dazed Conrad the antidote and tells him to take it to prevent the Shreek from tracking him.
More dates–even a chaste kiss—follow. Conrad, with his coffee spillages and accidental innuendos, doesn’t seem too good at the whole dating thing. But he clearly likes Ruby, and his family like her having a boyfriend, and she likes dating someone who is good for her. Yet something feels off. Maybe it’s the curly hair and dimples, maybe it’s the fact that Hauer-King played a literal Disney Prince; either way, it’s hard to shake the sense that Conrad is just too much of a “nice guy.”
Still, their relationship blooms, and the couple head off on their first weekend away to the picturesque British countryside and a quiet country pub within it. The setting is a direct callback to the folk tale scene from “73 Yards,” but this drinking establishment is far warmer, brighter, and busier. Inside, the lights start flickering, and Ruby murmurs that she saw something similar happen at the electronic sign at the bus stop. She gets UNIT on the line, yet when Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) says they could send over a team just as a precaution, the Shreek being locked up on their side, Ruby tells her not to worry.
Back inside, trying to ignore the flickering lights, Ruby attempts to talk to Conrad about her paranoia. She even floats the idea that she may have PTSD to her boyfriend, whose brow is furrowed in concern. The lights waver again, then go out for real this time, just as a woman bursts into the pub saying she’s seen something outside “like the devil itself.” Their faces framed in horror-movie-style slanted shots, the customers panic, just as Conrad admits to Ruby he didn’t take the antidote.
In despair, she calls in UNIT then heads out to face what she now believes to be two more Shreek out in the world. Conrad follows, while UNIT, never ones to do anything by halves, arrive by car, bike, and helicopter. Yet as the creatures crawl forwards, something stirs in Ruby. The two creatures stand on their back legs, then take off their heads, revealing the laughing faces of two of Conrad’s friends.
“How did we do, boss?” they ask, the camera slowly pulling backwards towards Conrad. Surely not? He speaks: “Nailed it.” Unzipping his sweater to reveal a shirt emblazoned with the words “Think Tank” as phones are pointed at Ruby, Conrad reveals that he works for a group “exposing the lies perpetuated by UNIT.” Yes, you guessed right: The podcast bro with the little earring was bad all along!
A smirk audible in his voice as the whole thing is live streamed, Conrad takes aim at Ruby and even accuses UNIT staffer Shirley (Ruth Madeley), who uses a wheelchair, of “stealing benefits.” Ruby’s lip wobbles, and you can’t blame her confusion: Conrad’s emotional 180 and total disregard for her feelings feels beyond belief. It’s more on the writing than Hauer-King’s performance—I don’t blame him for taking so much enjoyment in playing against type—but the sudden gleeful switch up is hard to buy in such extremes.
Conrad laughs all the way to the police station, where he’s quickly released on bail and hailed by traditional and online media alike as a martyr for the “disaffected youth.” While he doxxes UNIT employees from his live-stream soapbox, the government bows to pressure and downgrades the organization’s security clearance. Kate, Ruby, and the team are in utter despair and worry about the consequences just as Conrad is snuck into the building by his man on the inside, who Conrad then attacks and steals his gun from. Entering the elevator and rising the floors up to UNIT HQ, Kate orders them to “let him come.” “We need to finish this,” she says, steely.
The Conrad who enters is far more subdued. In fact, with his grey hoodie, black baseball cap, camera strapped to his chest, and weapon in hand, Hauer-King makes for an incredibly convincing shooter (and strangely here, I mean it as a compliment). He babbles about actors and fake aliens and demands an on-camera confession of “the truth” that everything UNIT does is lie. As he shouts at Ruby in a sing-song voice that “the grown-ups are talking,” it’s made obvious that the man is deeply unstable and all the more dangerous for it.
Conrad wants the truth? “As requested,” Kate says, and with a push of a button, the light on the room securing the Shreek turns from red to green. A claw emerges around the side of the door as the red-eyed beast (the real one this time) is let out to hunt. True terror is glimpsed in Conrad’s eyes for the first time, but there’s no escape for him. Tension continues to build in the glimpses and shadows that he and the viewer see of the Shreek. Initially, the first full look at the monster is a little underwhelming, but then its face gets right up in Conrad’s and you can almost feel the drool and smell the breath through the screen as the man shakes.
It’s Ruby, in the end, who clobbers the Shreek to save Conrad, although not before telling her sort-of ex to “go to hell.” He’s about to make a sarcastic comment of his own, when the monster attacks him and the scene cuts out, marking a strangely abrupt and tonally disjointed ending.
Ruby doesn’t know what to make of it either. At her wits’ end, she tells Kate that she needs to spend some time on her own to get away from living in post-Doctor limbo. “It’s like everything I’ve seen, the good and the bad…I just need some time to get my head around it,” she says. While it’s a shame that we didn’t see Ruby come into her own without the Doctor, maybe it’s realistic. After a major life-changing experience, whether good and bad or even both, sometimes getting by is all there is.
Someone who’s also going to have to learn to get by is Conrad. His arm now fused with metal where the Shreek bit him, the man is imprisoned yet leaves his cell briefly as he’s summoned to the TARDIS in a vision-like sequence. There, the Doctor rages at him for “weaponizing lies” and preventing him from keeping people safe. “But the thing is, Conrad, I have energy to burn and all the time in the universe,” the Doctor tells him, a dark grin on his face. Conrad says nothing. He just glowers, then asks the Doctor if he’s met Belinda yet, presumably making him the man who the Doctor said told him that Belinda would be important back in episode one.
So, the Doctor gives Conrad a spoiler of his own and maliciously informs him that he will die aged 49 in that very prison cell. Conrad barely flinches: “I don’t accept your reality, Doctor. I reject it,” he replies and is returned to his cell in a flash. But he’s not caged for long, as a grey-haired woman approaches with the keys in her hand. She might call herself the governor, but we know this to be the foreboding Mrs. Flood from voice alone. “It’s your lucky day,” she tells Conrad, as she jangles the keys. It’s his lucky day, but with him out in the world, it’s a bad one for the Doctor.
Stray observations
- • Allusions to NuWho galore in this episode: the “Love And Monsters”-esque fan podcast, the mannequins reminiscent of Christopher Eccleston’s first instalment “Rose,” the Sarah-Jane Smith-style companion-return episode.
- • Ruby’s brief allusion to a “new dad” being on the scene feels significant—same with Mel being stuck in Sydney.
- • Look, the Disney-era CGI is still really impressing me, but did the Shreek remind anyone else of the monsters from the first live-action Scooby Doo movie? Just me?
