The Church on Ruby Road

Chapter the 288th, in which some goblins try to eat a baby, and they don't half make a song and dance about it.

Plot:
[It's an up to the minute episode, so beware spoilers ahead.] Ruby Sunday is a foundling, left by a church on her birthday, Christmas Eve 2004. Nineteen years later, all attempts to trace her birth parents, including going on to TV programme Long Lost Family with Davina McCall, have led to nothing. Ruby lives with her adopted mother Carla and grandmother Cherry in a London flat. Lately, she's been having a run of bad luck caused by inter-dimensional Goblins, who are secretly engineering accidents, all part of their scientific language of coincidence and luck. In the run-up to Christmas, she meets a mysterious man called the Doctor. On Christmas Eve, Carla is looking after a newborn. The Goblins snatch this baby from an upper-story bedroom, but Ruby gives chase across the rooftops, following the Goblins onto a rope ladder that leads up to their floating ship. The Doctor is also up there and joins her on the ladder. They climb up to the Goblin ship. The Goblins sing a song as they present the baby to their enormous Goblin King to eat, but the Doctor and Ruby (also joining in with the singing) escape with the baby. Back in the Sundays' flat, the Doctor realises lots of coincidences (like Ruby and himself both being foundlings) and this powers the Goblins to go back in time nineteen years and snatch Ruby as a baby, changing the present. The Doctor follows them, and manages to put things back to how they were. The Goblin ship falls onto the church, with the steeple skewering the Goblin King, killing him. The ship disappears back into the either, and the Doctor returns to the present day. Ruby joins the Doctor in his TARDIS travels.

Context:

I viewed this for the second time on my own during the Chrimbo Limbo between Christmas and New Year's, the Merrineum. I watched on the BBC iplayer: we discovered something was wrong with our aerial just before Christmas, too late to get it fixed, so this was my first Yuletide ever without traditional, multi-channel terrestrial TV, and my first since 1984 where I didn't have a method of recording the programmes to watch later (the trusty PVR is still functioning perfectly, but was not connected to any signal). Of course, I didn't need such a method, as everything I was interested in seeing I could either watch live or catch up with later using an online streaming service. I was seeing a theme emerging of the ascendence of streaming compared to programmed TV channels like BBC1, or purchased media. None of the trailers I saw for The Church on Ruby Road - before or after it was shown - mentioned that it was being broadcast on BBC1 or when, they all just told me to head to iplayer. More on this theme is in the Deeper Thoughts section below.

First Time Round:

We sat down to watch this as a family from the iplayer, a little after its broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day 2023. The In-laws didn't visit until Boxing Day this year, so it was just the five of us (Me, the Better Half, and three kids, two boys of 17 and 14, girl of 11) and everyone was in the living room to watch. Alas, I was the only one of five who enjoyed it on this first watch; I thought it was a little slight but fun (and I always give something of a pass for a slight story at Christmas if it also manages to be fun); the others though presented a range of reactions from slightly to greatly negative. The Better Half thought it was too cheesy, and announced that she was going back to her boycott of new episodes of Doctor Who (which started two-thirds of the way through Jodie Whittaker's era, and only ceased for the three David Tennant specials, which she liked). Eldest child liked the Doctor but thought the Ruby character was a "blank... just like Yaz" and as for the story, he couldn't believe that Russell T Davies had written it, "If Chris Chibnall had written it, it wouldn't be so surprising". Middle child thought the Doctor was "too cheerful for a Doctor travelling on his own"; youngest said that "the companion's too modern" and really hated the new sonic screwdriver "It's not a screwdriver anymore, it's a disc". Looking online afterwards, and checking in with other fan friends via Whatsapp, I found a similarly diverse range of reactions. Some hated the song but liked everything else, some vice versa.

Reaction:

I'll admit that for my first watch of The Church on Ruby Road I'd had a few festive glasses of wine; so, I was interested on this second watch whether without that buoyancy aid the story would fall flat. I watched and waited, and made it to the end of the hour feeling exactly as positive about the story as I did on first watch, but this time I was stone-cold sober. It starts well with a sequence that instantly establishes atmosphere: a silent, snowy, night, and a mysterious cowled figure carrying the baby Ruby to the doors of a church, all accompanied by Ncuti's voiceover narration and a sinister-sounding Carol of the Bells. This sets up the mystery of Ruby's parentage that I'm sure will run through the next season. I'd only be a little surprised if that cowled figure turned out to be Millie Gibson's older Ruby herself, and that scintilla of surprise would only be because I would doubt that they'd go there as Red Dwarf has famously done such a plotline already. There was also a mystery at the end that one assumes will be paid off at some point too, where Ruby's neighbour Mrs. Flood played by Anita Dobson knows what a TARDIS is; again, time will tell as to whether this is part of next year's Bad Wolf style arc plot. Another presumably recurring element is Ruby's family, Michelle Greenidge as Carla and Angela Wynter as Cherry. Both characters were well performed and - as one would expect from the story's writer Russell T Davies - well drawn (both Cherry grumbling as she waits and nobody makes her a cup of tea, and Ruby sarcastically noting that at Christmas the shops are closed for all of one whole day, resonated with me based on similar exchanges that happen in our family).

Greenidge's moment where history has been changed and she's become harder and more mercenary in an alternate life without her daughter was the best and most emotional moment of the story ("Why are you crying?" "I don't know; why are you?"). The climax of the story being the Doctor going back nineteen years to fix Clara and Ruby's personal history might seem a bit timey-wimey for a Christmas special, but it worked for me because it was reminiscent of Yuletide perennials like A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful life. It means that the second half of the narrative is quite different from the first (conflict on an internal emotional level after the more knock-about, almost slapstick action of the scenes of Goblins causing mayhem in the first half). The transition between the two styles is smoothed by the intriguing concept of the Goblin's science of chance. There's an effective sequence where the sky darkens as the Doctor realises more and more coincidences between Ruby's backstory and his own (building on the Timeless Child plotline from Jodie Whittaker's stories) that then powers the Goblins to travel back and snatch Ruby. The only issue, and it's probably the only significant flaw in the story structure for me, is it takes a bit too long to get from the song and dance battle and rescue of the baby to the cracks appearing and time being changed, and a lot of that is spent on exposition to feed into the moment of realisation of the coincidences. The conflict gets less and less taut, and is in danger of becoming flaccid for a while there; if that section was half as long it would work better, That could be achieved by having the Doctor find out a bit more about Ruby when he is tailing her in the earlier sections.

Those earlier sections are fun, giving lots of opportunities to show the Doctor in different contexts as an introduction to this new version of the character: dancing in a club, observing moodily from doorways, joking about being a gin and tonic inspector, being brave and saving people from a collapsing giant snowman, encouraging someone to go ahead with proposing to their fiancee. All of these moments are pitched perfectly by Ncuti Gatwa who is instantly perfect as the Doctor, an engaging and charismatic presence. His look is striking throughout too, with a few costume changes but still within a coherent visual theme for the character. Millie Gibson is good as Ruby, though she doesn't get quite such a range of material to get her teeth into: we've seen she can do plucky and funny, and I've no doubt she'll run the gamut of other emotional states in stories to come. The running gag in the early sections of Davina McCall continually being injured is nice too, and McCall is very natural performing these for a non-actor. It's interesting to see Davies sample real world media not for global scope as he has tended to do in the past, but here for character depth in establishing Ruby's search for her birth parents. There's some fun jokes, nice set pieces, and good character design - the Goblin King's a bit static, but he looks great. The song and dance number is something a bit different or the show; musically it's strong, but the lyrics were a little less good. I like that they're keeping going the gag from the 60th anniversary specials that gravity is called mavity in the current Who universe. Will this turn into a plot point later on, with the divergence between the old and new universes righted in a finale? We'll see. Overall, this story set up such intriguing ongoing questions in my mind while also delivering a silly, funny Goblin story with a little bit of seriousness in there too. What more could one want at Christmastime?

Connectivity:

Both The Church on Ruby Road and The Snowmen are Christmas specials set in London that feature the Doctor meeting a new female companion whom he invites to join him in his TARDIS travels, following a sequence where that companion has climbed up a ladder to an unseen craft high above in the sky. For the third blogged story in a row the new companion is seen working in a pub or club, and in two out of those last three that work has been as a musician.

Deeper Thoughts:

Will Wham be Christmas number one every year now? In the words of Homer Simson, I'm just a big kid and I love Christmas so much. I like the rituals, and the return of the ritual of watching a Doctor Who special on the big day was very much appreciated. Another ritual coming back after a few years away was wondering what the UK Christmas number one would be. I've been interested in the UK Christmas number one since 1987 when my favourite band of the time, Pet Shop Boys, landed the festive top spot with Always on my Mind. In those days, and for most of the history of the UK chart, the honour would be earned by a good pop record (and Always on my Mind is a good pop record), or a Christmas-themed hit, or a novelty song of the moment. Sometimes, the winning song could be a mixture of the three. For the previous five Yuletides before 2023, though, it wasn't any source of mystery and certainly not wonder. Youtuber Ladbaby cornered the market between 2018 and 2022, exactly the period that Doctor Who's specials were missing from Christmas Day coincidentally, with versions of songs with the lyrics changed to talk about sausage rolls (yes, really) released for charity in the immediate run up to Christmas. It was very successful, and the top spot was achieved each of the five times attempted. As well as being successful, it was also tiresome - variety is the spice of life and all that. There was no fun in guessing as the answer was always the same.

There had been periods of ubiquity before; the Beatles in the 1960s, the Spice Girls in the 1990s, but they are hardly comparable as they were at least offering original songs. The only similar period of frustration was probably just over a decade earlier than Ladbaby, when each year's winner of the UK TV programme X Factor, a singing competition televised in the autumn, would tend to grab the festive top spot. This pissed off some people that weren't watching that programme, or who didn't appreciate the - very samey - style of record created each year, so much that an online campaign was successful in getting Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name (with its forceful refrain about not doing what one's told to do) to Christmas number one in 2009. Like Ladbaby, X Factor had been using its built-in audience to put power behind a song climbing the charts, which some felt was gaming the system. The online campaign of 2009 showed though that something more grassroots could be effective, but nothing like that has really been successful at Christmas since despite a few attempts over the years. This year there was something of an online push for Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl to get to number one, as a tribute to Pogues singer and cowriter of the song Shane MacGowan who had died at the end of November 2023. It is a well-loved song, and many people feel it was unfairly robbed of the festive top spot when first released in 1987 by being kept at number two by the hi-NRG frippery of a couple of arch Northerners with synthesisers (see above). But it only made it to number six in 2023.

For Christmas 2023, another TV show was pushing its own song, with proceeds going to charity too, and that was Doctor Who. The Goblin Song from The Church on Ruby Road was available to stream and download in December 2023. It got to a reasonably high position in the top 40 sales chart in the UK, but didn't break the UK top 40. What's that you're saying? You weren't aware that the UK sales chart and the UK top 40 are different things? Me neither until I found out, like I would guess many a Doctor Who fan did, when there was a brief social media kerfuffle about it. A Doctor Who Magazine journalist replied to the singer of the Goblin Song Christina Rotondo, without knowing it was her or he might have been more polite, pissing on her parade in an 'Actually, I think you'll find' manner, She'd been celebrating the song reaching number 12 in the UK top 40 for the week before Christmas. He pointed out that it was at that position in a UK top 40, but not the UK top 40 (the definitive article you might say). So much for Christmas cheer and goodwill. It begs the question, though, that if the official chart is not charting sales, then what's the use of it? What dominates it is streaming. Television, as noted above in the Context section above, is more and more about streaming, and that journey happened for music even earlier. Unfortunately, this means the chart it is no longer fit for purpose as a test of what current song people are excited by in the Christmas period. The majority of the songs in the official UK top 40 in Christmas week of 2023 were all the songs - from any era - that tend to get streamed at Christmas every year, from Slade to Bing Crosby to Mariah Carey to Ariana Grande to Wham, who made it to the Christmas 2023 number one spot with their 1984 record, Last Christmas.

Ladbaby had opted out of the race in 2023, but he may not have managed to get a sixth consecutive number one anyway. The sales chart (where The Goblin Song was hanging in there at 52 in its second week) was very different to the UK top 40, and had more new recordings. This makes sense: if someone is going to pay to download something it's more likely to be something new (and it's more likely that if a song is for charity that it will be paid for rather than streamed); if a song's an old one that someone wants to have on in the background as they make mince pies, it's more likely to be streamed. As honourable as is the charitable aim, and as catchy a ditty as is the Goblin King song, it is not - like Ladbaby's efforts - going to form part of anyone's festive playlists in years to come. This cannot be said for Wham's Last Christmas, a song played so much at Yuletide that people have made a challenge out of avoiding it before the big day. It's charted every December since 2007, reached the top ten every year since 2016, and has made the top spot twice before, but not quite for Christmas week, in 2020 and 2022. With no Ladbaby in its way, it finally did it, but what will now stop it doing the same every year from now on? I can't foresee a new Ladbaby phenomenon arising that would dent its dominance. Even with the boost of people wanting to pay tribute to MacGowan, Fairytale of New York (a song that gets streamed lots anyway) couldn't make the top five. Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You could challenge it, I suppose. But whether it's Wham every year, or Wham alternating with Mariah, either way it's not going to be very interesting. If the worst happens and the Christmas number one becomes a one or two horse race, finally ending that ritual of wonder, at least we will have a Doctor Who special annually to make up for it. Happy New Year!

In Summary:

The Church on Ruby Road seems to have split audiences as much as the church on Ruby Road split the Goblin King; I liked it a lot.