Doctor Who: Lucky Day: Review

The latest episode of Doctor Who sees Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday returning to the Whoniverse.

And plunged deep into a new mystery thanks to a boyfriend, in the shape of Conrad Clark, a man whose life was changed when he met the Doctor and Belinda on New Year's Eve in 2007.

Clark (Jonah Hauer King) then spends years trying to find Ruby Sunday after seeing her walk into the TARDIS and disappear (in an adventure set after The Devil's Chord). So when she shows up on his doorstep a year later, as he's become a podcaster, it appears all his horses have come in - especially as the pair strike up a relationship....

But all is not as it seems after Ruby takes a trip to his home village to meet some friends...

One of the plus points of Lucky Day is how it subverts expectations and becomes something else halfway through its episode, a seemingly excoriating take on male belief and disinformation. (In some ways, the parallels to this series' first outing and its villain are clearly marked through).

Yet, it's also a Doctor-missing-in-action story with some mysterious hints about the future. And what it does show is how inherently dangerous and close to the edge Kate Lethbridge-Stewart can go when the Doctor is not around.

However, in among all of this is Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday, a character who's started to realise she's not OK after her time in the TARDIS. While Doctor Who occasionally flirts with the idea of where the companions end up after their sojourns in time and space, this one overtly shows how heartbreakingly hard it can be and how the danger the Doctor brings with them can actually have long-term damage.

Ultimately, Lucky Day has some interesting things to say about denial, acceptance and belief - and by putting that concept out of the Doctor's reach for once, it becomes an intriguing proposition that offers some tantalising new ideas while continuing to skate along modern-day parallels.