I’ve always had a soft spot for Who episodes that aren’t Doctor-centric. Just think of Steven Moffat’s horror classic Blink, which starred a young Carey Mulligan and introduced the spectacularly creepy Weeping Angels. Or indeed 73 Yards, last year’s entry, which featured a lot of Millie Gibson, not a lot of Ncuti Gatwa, and was hailed as one of the best entries of the season.
Lucky Day joins the pantheon of those episodes, and goes one better – tapping into the current climate of unease and fake news and asking, what if people thought aliens weren’t real? (Imagine!)
We rejoin Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday, whom we last saw at the end of season one discovering who her real mother was. That particular reveal was disappointing, to be honest, but it’s okay, because she’s back in London, and trying to rebuild her life. It’s hard: at one point, she discusses having PTSD. “Every day is like fight or flight and I'm just waiting for something to go wrong,” she says. It’s honestly astounding a companion hasn’t said this before, but it makes absolute sense.
At some point, Ruby crosses paths with the hunky Conrad Ward (Jonah Hauer King), a podcaster (potentially? Though this is never brought up again) and Who-enthusiast, who ran into the Doctor and Belinda as a child and has spent his life since trying to find them.
Conrad and Ruby soon hit it off, and she joins him on a trip to the countryside to meet his family. But it’s here that the show swerves into truly jaw-dropping twist territory – turns out, Conrad is actually a fake news, Joe Rogan-type, who is on a mission to prove that UNIT is lying about all the monsters it says it has locked in its basement. And about aliens in general.
His job, he explains, is “exposing the lies perpetuated by UNIT” – and the show then turns left into deep conspiracy territory, using social media to spread the word. Soon enough, Ruby finds herself having to go into hiding, and UNIT itself being threatened with having its funding pulled by the government.
It’s obviously a clear parallel to what’s going on in the world today. After all, some people believe that climate change doesn’t exist; the same can probably be said for all the zillion alien invasions that have happened in the Who-niverse.
Remember the Sycorax? Turns out, Conrad doesn’t, and neither does the internet. Soon enough, he’s storming UNIT’s Avenger-esque skyscraper headquarters in London in a bid to prove that the monsters are indeed fake.
The episode could probably have leant a little harder on the consequences of Conrad’s actions: for instance, what about all the social media hatred he’s stirred up? Is that going away any time soon? Or the British government’s seeming eagerness to abandon its morals and follow the crowd (can’t think of a time that’s happened recently)?
However, it’s ultimately a kid’s show, so Lucky Day ends up with him getting his comeuppance and swiftly being imprisoned in jail, where the Doctor decides to pay a visit.
It’s here that the show gets a bit preachy. The Doctor accuses Conrad and his ilk of being cowards, “weaponising lies.” “You are exhausting,” he proclaims, as Conrad sneers back. “You stamp on the truth.”
But if the script does let Gatwa linger a moment too long in the sun, why not? We are living in a post-truth era, and it’s nice to think that – just for a moment, in a parallel universe – one of those people spreading lies and deceit gets their comeuppance.
Oh wait, he’s just been freed by Mrs Flood. Never mind then.
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