Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Bridgerton meets Doctor Who in a story packed with inconsistency

Spoiler Warning

A gift to shippers the world over, this episode of Doctor Who serves up a slice of regency romance for the Doctor in an enjoyable romp, even if I’m still missing that emotional punch whenever Ruby is in danger or appears to be dead.

Given the popularity of period romantic-dramas Bridgerton (2020-present) and Downton Abbey (2010-2015), it is little surprise that Doctor Who decided to capitalise on the cultural fascination and deliver its own slice of period romance.  They even acknowledge the inspiration with Ruby’s excited chatter that everything is “so Bridgerton!” and lovingly mimic some of the features such as pop music rearranged in an orchestral fashion, fantastic fashions and the dancing.

The setting is wonderfully done with lots of historic period touches in the costumes, hairstyles and sets of the house.  There are carriages outside, beautifully landscaped gardens and it all feels regency.  Kudos to the crew for pulling that off.

Bigger kudos for enabling the futuristic parts to sit alongside that comfortably instead of awkwardly.  Rogue’s ship feels like topiary it’s so sculpted on the outside, and on the inside, it’s lived in, messy and dirty in a way which hides the fact that this is a spaceship.  Yet Rogue remains a fairly unexplored character for all he’s introduced here as the Doctor’s romantic interest.

It is always interesting when the Doctor gets a romantic storyline.  Much more prevalent in the modern Who era than Classic, the Doctor has had several romantic interests in the past.  Primarily, these relationships have been presented as heterosexual – the Doctor and Rose, or the Doctor and River as the two main examples.  But there have been hints of other dynamics – most notably the Fourteenth Doctor and Yaz; the Doctor’s seemingly fun but meaningless flirtations with Captain Jack Harkness; and, the relationship between the Doctor and the Master which has always been a maelstrom of mixed emotions regardless of their varying genders (although personally I thought the chemistry was most outstanding between Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor and Michelle Gomez’s Missy). While there have been remarks through this season of the Doctor’s interest in men, here for the first time we get an openly gay romance front and centre.  There’s probably a whole fan meta bubbling away somewhere about whether the Doctor is always bi, or whether their sexuality changes with each regeneration in the same way they get a new body.

What I very much liked about the romance was that it felt like a natural progression of the two characters’ initial and deepening fascination with each other.  They notice each other as out-of-place, they realise they are each not what they seem, and they connect over past losses.  They’re attracted and the Doctor is openly flirty. Their scandalous dance and faked awkward confrontation (wonderfully acted by both Ncuti Gatwa and Jonathan Groff) deepens their connection and the seeming tragedy of Ruby (both in their assumption she’s dead and then their realisation that she’s not but trapped) deepens it again.  The kiss is both a culmination of the beats that have come before it as much as it is Rogue as a character making a move to ensure the Doctor doesn’t lose Ruby (a type of loss Rogue knows only too well).  As a short romance it works well.

For me, there is also enough chemistry between Gatwa and Groff to make it work although I might wish for more.  Gatwa does play ‘very interested and very attracted’ right from the first interaction which helps set the scene for the later romance once Rogue’s character realises that the Doctor is not a Chuldur and therefore allows himself to be as interested and attracted.  But even after that Rogue remains much quieter in expressing his attraction than the Doctor and that slightly lessens the chemistry for me.  Chemistry is always better between the Doctor and a romantic interest when they are challenging him, creating sparks and banter in contrast to the softer moments.  Here the Doctor is bantering and challenging Rogue, but Groff plays Rogue as simply not rising to the bait, as a serious being focused on his job, as very much contained (the inability for Rogue to ad lib in the fake confrontation is well done) – until the kiss itself.    

I’m not familiar with Jonathan Groff (beyond his voice work in Disney’s Frozen (2013)), but he does do a solid job here, especially given the limitation of how much we know about the character from the scripted and shown story.  As said before we’re really not given a lot of information about Rogue beyond he’s a bounty hunter, has an old and messy ship, and that he travelled with someone until one day he lost them.  It leaves a lot open for the character to be further explored in the future, but I am left with a sense of dissatisfaction as I think giving Rogue more backstory would have helped to sell the romance further. 

The almost secondary storyline of the cosplaying Chuldur who want to live out their own Bridgerton drama, creating havoc and destruction in their wake is also painted in broad strokes, but here it really doesn’t need anything further because they are not the real focus of the episode.  The design of them as birdlike, their strange lightning which signals their killing and transforming into their prey, and their greedy avarice to ‘play’ the best characters is Doctor Who doing its usual silliness to perfection.  Shout-out to Indira Varma who plays both the Duchess and her Chuldur version with glee and deft competence.  I’d give her the best performance of the episode award if I had one to give.  If there is a deeper message here of toxic fans loving something to death, well, I won’t comment on that…

The tertiary storyline of Ruby getting into danger to provide the dramatic climax…it just doesn’t work for me at all.

In some ways, it’s great to see Ruby enjoying her travels with the Doctor at the start of the episode.  Yes, I caught the very obvious foreshadow of the psychic jewellery (battle mode being far too reminiscent of Spiderman’s instant kill mode beat in Marvel).  But there are inconsistencies here – Ruby acts as much like a fan cosplaying as the Chuldur – not bothering to stay in synch with the time period at all which doesn’t seem right for someone who was keen to make sure they fitted in back in Maestro.  Not only that but she needs to have ‘being ruined’ explained to her whereas a Bridgerton fan would know – the exposition was needed for the TV audience not Ruby and so it didn’t work.

Additional inconsistencies are also evident – the lightning process which changes the Chuldur’s entire appearance in one case, but only the clothes with the vicar, and then there’s the trap and how it works which isn’t well explained but still incomprehensible in that last moment where apparently if Rogue holds the control, he can enter and de-stick someone taking their place??  (And presumably Richard E Grant’s sudden acknowledgement as a Doctor is seeding something rather than being an inconsistency in itself…)

Finally, let’s talk about that whole the Doctor thinks Ruby is dead, but she isn’t really moment…   

Again, similarly to Boom, I just didn’t feel the depth of the Doctor’s angst that Gatwa was displaying in his performance because I just don’t get that their relationship is that close.  Of the last three episodes, Ruby spent most of one unconscious, the Doctor was mostly absent in the next, and they were separate windows in the bubble for the most part in Dot and Bubble.  Even that flashback to Carla with the Doctor promising to take care of Ruby (which given his complete disregard of her since he laid eyes on Rogue could be seen as a hypocritical lack of care in comparison to his promise) didn’t quite sell the emotional punch.  What I did enjoy was that latter scene of them where Ruby hugged him and wouldn’t let him pretend that he was just OK.  More of that type of emotional intimacy between them seeded in every episode and one of these days, Ruby almost dying will pack the emotional punch the show wants it to have.   

Part of the problem for me too is that Gatwa’s Doctor being in tears is now becoming too common to have weight and so common it’ll end up in a drinking game.  It feels like a weird thing.  Yes, this Doctor feels things more openly; yes, he’s still struggling with the idea of being an orphan and his identity – but isn’t he supposed to have healed more emotionally?  Wasn’t that part of the whole moving on schtick from Fifteenth’s more obvious fatigue and angst?  Tears provoke an audience reaction in me when they are used sparingly and at this point if Gatwa’s Doctor cries again before the end of the season I’m more likely to roll my eyes than cry alongside him.

Also what is with putting the Companion in jeopardy in a really old school way all of the time now?  It would have been more interesting for me if things had been constructed not to do that.  While Rogue swapping himself out to give the Doctor Ruby back and would not feel her loss made sense given his earlier backstory, it might have been better to have constructed the story to have made Emily innocent rather than another Chuldur, a swap openly acknowledged as the solution with Rogue doing it while the Doctor and Ruby argued about it…

In conclusion    

There is a lot to enjoy in this episode.  The introduction of Rogue and the tease of a new romantic interest for the Doctor who could return takes centre stage.  There’s enough chemistry and connection that I’d welcome Rogue as an occasional visitor to the TARDIS in the same way River was. 

I also really enjoyed the Chuldurs as the alien invaders and the whole regency set-up, but I didn’t enjoy Ruby in peril/the Doctor thinking she’s dead/trapped, and the story inconsistencies for the sake of exposition and plot miracle! 

Still, this was a decent enough episode – on a par with Boom and I’m looking forward to seeing how they finish out the rest of the season.