“Doctor Who” Series 14 ends not with a bang, but a whimper
Echoing the wise words of Iman Vellani — “These stars are not for Millie Gibson, I will sacrifice my own life…for Millie Gibson.”
Series 14 brought many ‘firsts’ for Doctor Who, with Ncuti Gatwa becoming the first Black and openly queer actor to play the Doctor and the series being the first one co-funded by Disney — two statements that bring about very different emotions. It’s a pretty good metaphor for how I felt this whole season.
Warning! Major spoilers for “Doctor Who” Series 14 ahead!
Series 14 was plagued by plot holes, contradictory writing, underdeveloped characters, and a shorter episode count.
My largest criticism of Series 14 is how Russell T. Davies handled the so-called “Legend of Ruby Sunday”. Ruby is the Doctor’s companion, a bubbly 19-year-old from modern-day Britain. The Doctor’s companions are typically a stand-in for the audience, a normal person who gets the chance to explore the universe with an enigmatic, centuries-old alien — which can sometimes get awkward if you think too much about the fact that the majority of the main New Who companions are young women.
From her introduction, Ruby’s origins have been shrouded in mystery. Abandoned by a cloaked figure on Christmas Eve, RTD intentionally sets up intrigue about her family. From the Christmas Special to the series finale, the script highlights just how strange and unknowable her history is, for example:
Ruby goes on a television show attempting to reunite “foundlings” with their families and learns from the host that they could not find a single trace of her birth family,
The Maestro, a god-like cosmic manifestation of music, calls Ruby a “creature” and says she is “very wrong”,
The Villengard ambulance can’t locate any sign of her next of kin,
Ruby magically conjures snow multiples times throughout the series when discussing the night she was born and abandoned,
And many, many more examples that I got too lazy to list.
Furthermore, in flashbacks and, of course, travels through time, the moment of abandonment changes. The Doctor sees the mysterious figure pointing at him — or apparently, a lamp post — a lamp post that doesn’t exist in the original scene. The technical explanation is reshoots, but it feels disingenuous for RTD to have explicitly told fans to “watch [that scene] with a protractor and a ruler” because it was “so important it’s ridiculous” when it would’ve been impossible to figure out the so-called “twist”!
In the end, the answer just feels like a “gotcha!” moment. Ruby’s parents are — surprise! — normal people. Her biological mother, a teenager protecting her baby from an abusive stepfather, and her biological father, some guy who doesn’t know Ruby existed. RTD’s “explanation” for the plotline has some interesting reasoning that comes off as rather preachy.
RTD explains that he wrote this story in response to the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s handling of Rey’s parentage. Initially labeled as an ordinary nobody in The Last Jedi, the following film, The Rise of Skywalker retcons her into the granddaughter of the Emperor, an evil Sith Lord that’s extremely powerful in the Force — a metaphysical spiritual field in the Star Wars universe that can give people extraordinary abilities.
By making Ruby’s origins entirely normal, RTD is, in a way, mocking all the fans that came up with countless theories and explanations for her existence. At the same time, there’s literally hundreds of news articles and interviews calling on the audience to “investigate” the story of Ruby Sunday and claiming it’ll be an exciting twist that no one saw coming.
I’m quite sure no one saw this ending coming, because it’s not a good explanation. For one, RTD admits that many of the hints and twists he added in the series were engagement bait. He claims that this form of content is the new way of making shows in the “internet age”, so I’ll blame this on the fact that Doctor Who is now, essentially, a Disney+ streaming show. Second, RTD is known for littering recurring clues for a mystery throughout a season — Bad Wolf, the reality bomb, and Harold Saxon are all examples of this. He even goes on to encourage fans to come up with theories about Mrs. Flood, a strangely all-knowing character within Series 14, right after scolding fans for getting too caught up in the “magic” with Ruby’s story.
Finally, and most importantly for me — an embarrassingly obsessive Star Wars fan — RTD completely fails to understand why Rey’s story could have worked as an ordinary one, but Ruby’s doesn’t.
In the Star Wars universe, the Force is an energy. It’s based on qi, a concept in Chinese martial arts.
“It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope
Canonized in Star Wars: Rebels and the Ahsoka show, Force-sensitivity — being able to sense and manipulate the Force, and gain “magical powers” — is supposed to be attainable by anyone through training.
“The Force resides in all living things. But you have to be open to it.” — Kanan Jarrus, Trials of the Darksaber, Star Wars: Rebels
Doctor Who, on the other hand, is not “set” in an alternate universe. The premise of the show is obviously science-fiction, but it brings aliens, time travel, and now, magic and gods, into our “real world”. So, there needs to be some sort of satisfactory explanation for why Ruby can make it snow and her mother wore a medieval-like cloak to drop off her baby. Ruby and her family being perfectly ordinary people doesn’t offer a satisfactory ending to wrap up her story.
Despite this wave of negativity, I did enjoy parts of Ruby’s story. Her and the Doctor’s shared identity of being adoptees was interesting, and in my opinion, well done. Gatwa and Millie Gibson were phenomenal, and there were plenty of stand-out guest actors like Jinx Monsoon, Varada Sethu, Callie Cooke and Jonathan Groff.
Overall, this season was easy to watch. Despite interesting explorations of themes like faith, racism, and abandonment, the season failed to bring a level of authenticity that RTD used to have. Series 1, the initial revival of Doctor Who, introduces conflicts between friends and family that would occur when a person runs off with an alien and gets into danger. Characters are annoying and flawed and react poorly and have different moral codes, especially when it comes to the human companion and the alien Doctor. These aspects of the show made Doctor Who compelling. Now, it seems like more of the focus is on how much of Disney’s massive budget they can spend in their limited eight episodes.
Still, Series 14 was fun. Despite missing a lot of the character conflicts from earlier seasons that really grounded the show in reality, Series 14 brought in a lot of whimsy and magic. At the same time, there were still plenty of emotional, hard-hitting moments that were incredibly well-acted by Gatwa and Gibson. With Gatwa’s schedule freed up from Sex Education, Season 15 should be a fast-paced and exciting run.