Lucky Day

Chapter the 332nd, which features UNIT and dating.

Plot:

[A recent story of the streaming era, so beware of spoilers ahead.] Conrad Clark met the Doctor and Belinda Chandra when he was eight years old, and saw their magic blue box disappear into thin air. He then spotted the box again, years later, spying the Doctor and Ruby Sunday as they dealt with the Shreek, an alien hunting animal. Conrad is accidentally marked as its prey. A year later he has tracked Ruby down and interviews her for his blog on aliens and unexplained phenomena. After the recording, he asks her out for coffee. She explains about the Shreek, which returned to Earth the previous day but was captured by UNIT. She gives him an antidote, so he is no longer at risk of being hunted. Ruby and Conrad go out on a few dates, much to the keen interest of Carla, Cherry and Louise. Ruby has been finding it hard to adjust to life after travelling with the Doctor, and dating Conrad is just what they think she needs. Conrad invites Ruby to visit some of his friends in a village in England. It appears that the Shreek has come there to kill Conrad, who admits to Ruby that he never took the antidote. Ruby calls UNIT in, but it turns out to be a hoax: Conrad and his friends have deliberately - and elaborately - staged an alien attack so they could film UNIT and make them look stupid (or something). This creates a negative reaction against UNIT on new and old media. Conrad's organisation Think Tank publishes the details of all UNIT's employees, and - with the help of an inside contact within the organisation - infiltrates the UNIT tower. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart releases the real Shreek, which hunts a terrified Conrad until Ruby tasers it. Conrad is imprisoned. He is briefly transported from his cell to the TARDIS where the Doctor gives him a ticking off, before returning him. Mrs. Flood turns out to be the governor of the prison, and releases Conrad for her own mysterious purposes...

Context:

The random number generator has picked another story from the most recent run at time of writing, Ncuti Gatwa's second season from 2025. It was nearly two months on from when I first watched Lucky Day, and a good month on from the end of the season; nonetheless, it felt like I'd only just been watching that set of stories (probably because, in the interim, online 'news' hasn't ceased covering it - see Deeper Thoughts from the previous blog post for more details). As such, I chose to watch on my own, from the BBC iplayer, on an evening towards the end of June 2025. The eldest child (young man of 19) popped in to the living room and watched for a few minutes, but didn't stick around.

 

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up: with this post, the tally stands at 11 Doctors' televisual eras completed (Doctors 1-4, 7-9 and 11-14), and 37 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, and 4-14). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, 15 now remain to be blogged.

First Time Round:

I first watched this story on the day it landed on the BBC iplayer, 3rd May 2025. As the season had progressed, I was watching the episodes earlier and earlier on each Saturday, but I never watched one as early as 8am (the time that episodes first became available this season). Lucky Day was watched just after lunch, around 1pm. As with most of the season, I was accompanied by middle child (boy of 15). A week or two later, the eldest caught up when back home from university. Finally, on the 1st of June 2025, the youngest (girl of 13) binged this amongst other selected episodes she hadn't yet watched from Joy to the World through to The Reality War. This was because we'd advised her to catch up before she got spoilered about the various revelations in the season finale, which were all over the internet a day after its broadcast).

Reaction:

I've never thought about the phrase 'more than the sum of its parts' quite as deeply as I have after this rewatch of Lucky Day. There's many a Doctor Who where things take a turn at the half-way point or thereabouts, sometimes for the worse, sometimes the better, sometimes just the different. Lucky Day certainly does that. These two halves, though are completely incompatible in terms of plot believability and character motivation. It's like the sum of Lucky Day's parts is adding b squared to c to a fridge freezer. And yet... The resulting story works as the sad but ultimately fierce tale of Ruby, who thinks she's found a way to move on after her travels with the Doctor, but is betrayed by a person she thought she could trust. She then finds her inner strength at the side of UNIT, fighting against the negative forces that want to destroy it. Through that, she inches a little closer to a way of living beyond the Doctor. A lot of why it works is Millie Gibson; the episode is presented as her nightmare, and she makes you feel every moment of that. Nightmares don't need to completely add up, of course, which also might explain why the story gets away with it. Or maybe Lucky Day is just having a lucky day. The twist when it comes is satisfying on first watch, but the slightest thought highlights that a massive, rickety scaffold of contrivance is required to hold it up. In the first part of the story, Ruby starts going out with the clumsy, lovable doe-eyed version of Conrad (an invention, we later find out). This version - very like the characters in Redacted, and others like the members of LINDA in Love & Monsters - is desperately seeking the Doctor and his blue box. He has this yearning because he had an encounter with the Doctor when a child that left him pondering mysteries (again exactly like the characters in those earlier stories).

Writer Pete McTighe is cleverly using these previously adopted tropes of Doctor Who as misdirection, so we don't see coming the twist that Conrad is a much nastier and more calculating character than his doe-eyed persona would indicate. But he's not an unreliable narrator: he did meet the Doctor in his childhood and then spot him again in 2024; he did see the TARDIS appear and disappear, and he did see evidence of an extra-terrestrial predator as an adult. Does he believe all of that was faked by UNIT (the theory he consistently espouses once he's shrugged off the doe-eyed persona)? UNIT weren't present at any of these events. Indeed, nobody else was; so, if it was faked, does he think it was faked just for him? Does he genuinely believe that theory or is he pretending just to incriminate UNIT? It doesn't seem like the latter. The events we see happen to Conrad in the first part don't align with his attitudes in the second. Perhaps the intervening rejection from UNIT is what caused the change. Let's play that out so I can get my head round it: Conrad becomes obsessed with the Doctor after a chance encounter; he starts a podcast to try to find out more, and at some point finds out about UNIT. He applies to UNIT and is rejected and this starts him thinking negatively about the organisation. Despite the evidence of his own experience, he starts to believe UNIT are faking aliens just to waste taxpayer money. Okay, that's plausible so far just about. He forms a group of like-minded conspiracy theorists, Think Tank, to bring UNIT down. Again, a little bit OTT, but still plausible. During all this time, he continues his more idealistic podcast because, erm ... I'm struggling. Perhaps he does it deliberately as a way of snagging someone like Ruby who can help him get closer to UNIT? It seems like a lot of effort, though (particularly as it's revealed later than he already has another insider in his pocket).

If Conrad's public media persona is the doe-eyed one, how is he covertly interacting with followers of Think Tank? Just on Whatsapp? Think Tank seem to have ready-made channels with many viewers when they are filming their UNIT gotcha, but perhaps other members of Think Tank maintained those and Conrad kept himself secret until his Shreek stunt had played out. A much more truthful narrative, of course, would be Conrad continuing with just one online media presence (without the second secret one) but gradually getting more and more radicalised. That, though, wouldn't give him any opportunity to fool Ruby. And he needs to fool Ruby, doesn't he? Doesn't he? For the emotional arc, yes, but for the logical plot arc it's again an excessive amount of effort. Why create this weird tableau in a rural village when he already has the means to doxx everyone in UNIT's employ and infiltrate their building? Why the theatrics? Also, isn't there an inherent flaw in his plan to show that UNIT are a waste of money by getting them to respond to what looks like a credible threat? Isn't them showing up in the village to capture the Shreek them behaving exactly as their remit dictates? Therefore, hasn't Conrad proved that the only one faking events and wasting taxpayers' money is he himself? Maybe the script is trying to say something about the credulity of online audiences, their stubborn belief over facts meaning they see UNIT as bad even though that's the opposite of what's being presented. Maybe. Giving Gemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart something a little different to do, all simmering anger and crossing the line, is at least a plus (and according to comments from McTighe will be something picked up again in this year's UNIT spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea).

I know I'm probably expected to just see Conrad's weird, disconnected and contradictory social media exploits as a high-level metaphor, and therefore not worry about the detail; there ought to be some internal logic, though. I'm not convinced that an online youth movement would come together over the taxpayer cost (a preoccupation of an older demographic) of an organisation that fights aliens (a nerdy niche interest); but, if it did, I can't see how the public mood would be suddenly changed just by footage of Conrad being mauled. The likely reality would be that people would grimly stick to their belief that it was all faked. This doesn't, though, stop the climactic scenes of the UNIT Conrad confrontation, and the released Shreek stalking its prey, being exciting. Jonah Hauer-King is great as Conrad despite the contradictions on the page. There's also a nice couple of quieter scenes of Redgrave and Gibson together. The sequence where Conrad is brought into the TARDIS control room is a bit odd; the thought that instantly popped into my head was that being allowed inside the TARDIS should be the privilege of a special few, and shouldn't be bestowed on the unrepentant Conrad. The Doctor then says as much, almost word for word; so, why is he indulging him? The Doctor's subsequent speech is a little too preachy, but is saved a little by the continuity link: Conrad mentions Belinda Chandra's name, meaning this scene is the lead in to the Doctor's initial appearance at the beginning of the season, tracking Belinda in The Robot Revolution. The final curve ball moment is Mrs. Flood turning up and releasing Conrad so he can feature in the series again. That later appearance doesn't really answer any of the questions raised above, but again it doesn't seem to matter.

Connectivity:

Both Lucky Day and Redacted prominently feature characters who have their own podcast show. Both stories include moments where UNIT are a bit heavy handed. Towards the end, both include a bit of preachy editorialising about online misinformation.

Alex Jones in The One Show in Doctor Who

Deeper Thoughts:

As Themselves. Lucky Day features quite a few cameos from people playing themselves. As part of the satirical montage of various news sources entertaining Conrad Clark's wild theories, newsreader Reeta Chakrabarti, presenter Alex Jones, and comedian Joel Dommett appear for short set-ups in amongst fictional media / social media stars. This emulation of a media round covering a topic within the Doctor Who universe is long-established. Showrunner of Lucky Day Russell T Davies particularly likes it. The first example from the new series era is in the fourth 2005 episode Aliens of London. During that episode, the Doctor - stuck outside the area where the action is happening - is reduced to following events on the television like everyone else. He channel hops between various news programmes where anchors and reporters (played by actors) cover the story of a spaceship that's seemingly crash landed in London. At one point, Matt Baker - then a children's TV presenter - is shown in the Blue Peter studio making a cake shaped like the spaceship. Baker was the first person to appear as himself in the new series, but he most certainly wasn't the last: indeed, later in the same episode political journalist Andrew Marr is seen reporting on the UK government reaction to the crisis. It's easy to see why such a thing would be done: it adds real world verisimilitude to the action, it provides fun moments for people who like celebrity spotting, and it gives lots of no doubt lovely non-actors (and Ann Widdecombe) the opportunity to brag to their sons, daughters, nieces or nephews that they've been in Doctor Who.

Andrew Marr in Aliens of London

Like most innovations in Doctor Who, this was first trialled in the laboratory conditions of the William Hartnell era. In 1966 story The War Machines, newsreader Kenneth Kendall is shown on a TV in a bar commenting on the sci-fi action in the capital. The scene and the person provide verisimilitude in exactly the same way as the scenes in Aliens of London would many years later. The 1972 story Day of The Daleks had reporter Alex MacIntosh reporting about the peace conference in Auderly House; it's probable that those making the 1970s story didn't remember The War Machines playing the same trick years before, and were experimenting anew. The approach didn't take hold: contemporary alien invasion stories fell out of favour, so the opportunities for such cameos were limited. There were only a couple more real life cameos, not connected with news broadcasting, in the remainder of the classic series. Near the start of the 1980s, Concorde - a slightly faded but nonetheless still pretty big star at the time - played itself in Time Flight. Later in the decade, Courtney Pine and his band appeared as themselves in Silver Nemesis. That was it until the show returned in 2005, when the approach took hold big time. After Aliens of London, memorable appearances were made by news presenter Jason Mohammad, who made a record-breaking six appearances in the Whoniverse (four in the main show, two in The Sarah Jane Adventures), TV medium Derek Acorah bemoaning his redundant status now that ghosts have become real in Army of Ghosts, daytime TV mainstay Trisha Goddard interviewing someone in a relationship with a ghost in the same story, and the aforementioned Ann Widdecombe endorsing politician Harold Saxon in The Sound of Drums. She certainly knows how to pick 'em (did the programme makers maybe not tell her that Saxon was evil personified?).

(L to R) Widdecombe, Saxon

In the remainder of Russell T Davies's first period as showrunner there were further appearances by people such as Richard Dawkins, Paul O'Grady, and Nicholas Witchell. Usually included in any montage was fictional US news anchor Trinity Wells. She proved so popular it was almost as if she became a real person. Up to 2010, the character appeared in two episodes apiece of spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and nine times in the main show. After Davies, the other two new series showrunners also used the real life cameo approach, but less frequently, with scientist Brian Cox, game show host Alan Sugar and journalist Emily Maitlis making appearances. When Davies returned as showrunner, Trinity Wells came back too, first making an appearance in The Giggle, then Lucky Day. Alas, she is now an alt-right conspiracy theorist, but that must be more interesting for Lachele Carl to play (Carl, by the way, played an investigative journalist in 1987 BBC sci-fi series Star Cops, set in the futuristic year 2027, and I like to think her character there is a relative of Ms. Wells). It's only with Lucky Day that the cameo montage returned in full. It sounds like these segments are an odd thing to shoot, disjointed from the narrative. Alex Jones - the one from Wales, not the far-right American broadcaster who would probably have been a much more plausible interviewer of Conrad -  talked in an interview about a scene where she had to "interview a guy", which is all the context she would likely get. Mind you, even Jonah Hauer-King playing Conrad, who would have had a whole script, found it difficult to explain exactly what was going on (as mentioned in this video). Will this be the last instance of real world cameos appearing in Doctor Who? Well, first off Doctor Who itself has to endure in the real world, and nobody knows when - or if - any media round will confirm that.

In Summary:

Lucky Day is very lucky (blessed as it is with Millie Gibson's performance bringing it all together) and - like Conrad -  gets away with it in the end.