The mystery of Ruby Rose has not simply been the circumstances of her birth, it has been why it’s she seemed to be only signed up for one season of fun in the TARDIS. Millie Gibson’s character has been the strongest foil for the Doctor since Billie Piper’s Rose, one with charisma and sufficient cool to take on the universe, plus abandonment issues that meant you couldn’t help but root for her. Plus a certain knowability, which is at least one of the above qualities that come straight from Gibson.
“The other day, someone came up to me and said, don’t we know each other?” says Gibson, “I said, ‘Well, do you watch Doctor Who?’ and they said no. I was like, ‘Oh I don’t know then,” like an idiot. People think I'm a familiar face, but in a friend way, like we went to school together.”
This of course could also be related to the shimmering afterimage effect of the kind of old school fame that comes when you’re on Doctor Who. When you’re not simply appearing on memes and Comic Con stages and launch party posts and news sites, but are in people’s homes on Saturday night and post-Christmas dinners. In fact last time we saw Millie – Ruby, sorry – was at Christmas, watching from the window at the Christmas star at the end of Joy to the World, a brief sign that when she left Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor at the end of last season to be with her long lost mum, it wasn’t the end. This is no one season wonder.
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“If you went to the loo you’d have missed it, but it showed that she's waiting for the doctor still,” says Gibson, “Even though she left for her family, she's still waiting for him to come back. And we find her in episode four, Lucky Day, doing just that, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the doctor to come back.”
Yes although Varada Sethu as Belinda is doing great things as the Doctor’s official new companion, Ruby is back in this season for two episodes, Lucky Day and then the finale, The Reality War. She can’t give any spoilers away but says Lucky Day at least will leave viewers, “nostalgic, and in the end, probably heartbroken.”
In the episode is back with UNIT, where she has formed friendships in the Doc’s absence – “Jemma Redgrave [who plays Kate Lethbridge-Stewart] is just incredible, the first person I ever did scenes with” – and has a love interest in the form of Jonah Hauer-King’s Conrad – “I was bugging Russell to tell me who was going to play him and I was buzzing that it was Jonah, he has a special energy” - but the episode is most remarkable for the way it examines PTSD.
“Ruby is happy in her new family life, which she's never really had before, with two mums and her crazy gran,” she says, “But also she is dealing with PTSD from traveling with the Doctor. This is a really good concept because no one's ever one back to what companions are doing after they travel the universe. How did they just get back to their normal lives? She's got a bit of PTSD.”
It stands to reason that she would find readjustment difficult – “she hung from a rope ladder over London… she was swallowed by a bass… she turned gods to dust!” – but to dwell on the loss of that life, is not something a fast-paced sci-fi show would normally do.
But then of course, Doctor Who is no ordinary show and it’s willingness to bring in difficult subject matters is one of the new Who’s calling cards. It deals with depression – see David Tennant’s return as the fourteenth Doctor – and suppression, with Ncuti Gatwa bringing a deeply vulnerable take, his Doc barely able to conceal his hurt, often shedding tears when alone. Trauma and abandonment are at the centre of this show.
But while Gatwa’s Doctor reflects this – he is both father figure and lost child, often led along – it is Ruby who has most effectively embodied these issues.
Most especially in 73 Yards, the stand-out episode of last season and a stand-alone episode for Ruby. Without spoiling it, she loses the Doctor in the presence of an apparent witch, and then lives a complete life without him on another timeline, manages to save the world from fascism and then loops back. It was a startling mash-up of folk horror, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone and Donnie Darko, but only came about because Gatwa was delayed filming Sex Education, so Russell T Davies hastily wrote an episode just for Gibson.
“It was the first one I filmed while Ncuti was still doing Sex Education, and it was a pretty challenging start” she says, “I’d just been doing Coronation Street, a couple of scenes a day and nipping home to my mum’s for tea, but then I moved my whole life to Cardiff at 18 and had to make this incredible Russell T Davies script come to life. But it was a blessing in disguise.”
As with much of her Doctor Who Experience it actually tied into her real life very neatly.
She continues, “It was a lonely episode for Ruby, and for me. I felt quite lonely coming into this experience and not really knowing anyone. But it really helped with the episode and with the character. She didn't have the Doctor, she didn't have anyone, she was just really cold on a Tenby cliff in Wales. It was quite horrific, but worth it. I was so emotional when everyone loved that episode. It was a pretty special one.”
It was special, exploring philosophical questions about fate, will and death, while giving a genuine melancholic strain to Ruby. Trauma again. How do you live when you lived through something like that?
Of course these kind of issues – along with its diverse casting - has led people into saying the show is too woke. Which is a bit like saying Strictly has too much dancing in it. The whole purpose of Doctor Who has always been to look at society, fight fascistic thinking and empathise with other lives.
Gibson can’t be drawn on the woke issue too much given the frenzy around it but you can see from her expression that it’s an exasperating thing for those on the show.
“I’d just watch the show for what it is,” she says, “I remember watching an episode where David Tennant goes back, I think it's with Martha, and they meet Shakespeare. And he's like, ‘Oh yeah, Shakespeare's quite hot.’ [This is] literally what Who does.
I think because the way the world is, they're making jabs at anything that's relating to this. It's not really necessary. The show is so pure and beautiful and is literally about two best friends traveling the universe, so just watch it and get over it somewhat!
It didn’t cross my mind at all… Having people like Jinkx Monsoon in it [as Maestro in Devil’s Chord]. I’m her biggest fan. I don’t think it’s a problem at all.”
More important to her was having a nice reunion with Gatwa for these new episodes, saying the pair are “bonded for life... working with him is a barrel of laughs, I’m in stitches all day. You’ve gotta love him.”
Despite the fun of being back together, it seems there’s no room for improv on Doctor Who – “why would you change Russell’s writing? I’m not going to add my own twisted take!” – and you stick to the script.
“Ruby in season two is a bit more mature, and it was like finding that new dynamic for old friends,” she says, “You know when you've not seen a friend in a while and you're like, ‘oh, you're a bit different.’ But they slot into the same rhythm, personalities and obviously you get to see Ruby and Belinda together, and it's how they work as a three.”
Gibson is also maturing as person, she says. You forget, given how strong she is on screen, just how young she is and particularly how young she was when she started on the show,: “I first started playing Ruby when I was 18. I’m now 20. It’s only two years but you change a lot in that time as you stop being a teenager. I added some of my own things [in playing her].”
The underlying thing here is of course that Gibson will also be dealing with the loss of the Doctor from her life. Whether or not this is the end for her and Ruby is not up for discussion in case of any spoilers for the forthcoming episodes, but it is likely that she’s reaching the end of that short arc Davies has always had for her.
But hey, if the rumours are true Gatwa, might be leaving too. He’s certainly building up his work outside the show, appearing in the forthcoming Born With Teeth on the West End. Gibson says, “Seeing the beautiful work he's doing outside Doctor Who already is just incredible, with the plays that he's in. I'm so proud of him.”
As for Gibson beyond Who, she’s quite hush-hush but says she’s shooting The Forsyte Saga season two in June: “I've got a really long red wig, so if you're watching it and you're like, she's not in this, I actually am. I'm under that red wig.”
If she does leave Doctor Who, it’ll be a loss. A job well done, but with a lingering sense of what else she could have done in the show. What classic characters does she wish Ruby had faced? Her answer suggests she’s not over with Ruby yet:
“Weeping angels for sure. I'm still betting that I'll fight them. I don't know if it's gonna be in the show or in real life. We'll have to see.”
You could always write your own fan fiction?
“That’s what I’m doing. That’s what’s coming up. You guessed it.”
Lucky Day is on BBC One on 3 May, Doctor Who is on the iPlayer
