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Doctor Who ?.04: Lucky Day
In which I get the (good) intention, but have mixed feelings about the result. I swear this has nothing to do with the fact I only discovered just when googling so I spell his name correctly - the writer of this episode, Pete McTighe, was responsible for the godawful Amazon Apologia episode "Kablam!" in the Chibnall era.
Okay, here's the thing: I am 100% on board with the message. And the anger at the hatefilled grifters dominating not just online discourse and filling people with disinformation. (BTW: when I watched this episode yesterday, I took Konrad to be mainly emblematic for a certain type of political (right wing) grifter, i.e. the Breitbart/Info Wars types, while today I've seen a review seeing him as emblematic for the way toxic fandom works in all too many fandoms - the reviewer named "the moment any woman of colour appears in Star Wars in an important role, or hey, any woman" as an example. To which I say, pourquoi non les deux?) I bet the Doctor's little monologue came straight from the heart of not just McTighe but RTD, and I could underline every sentence.
But. As opposed to, say, last year's Dot and Bubble, which was also intensely political and definitely on message, I'm not sure it worked as its own story, and that's where my mixed feelings come in.
The comparison is irresistable to me because Dot and Bubble is also a relatively Doctor-lite, guest star centric episode, it, too, deals blatantly with the effect the internet has (with the fact it also deals with racism being introduced more subtly at first, becoming more obvious bit by bit as the episode progresses, whereas Lucky Day lays its cards on the table all at once the moment the twist occurs), it, too, offers the twist that the episode guest star seems to be set up as a classic person whose life isn't just saved through the contact with the Doctor and the Companion(s), but changed for the better, only to reveal this person is actually a rotten human being, and taking part on a vicious discourse, and totally unrepentant. But while both Lindy and Konrad are terrible human beings, I felt Lindy was a character, while Konrad was a message.
Now, Lucky Day has its unique plusses not there in earlier Doctor-lite (and current Companion-lite) episodes - mainly that it is focused on the previous Companion. (Which is rather unusual; not the fact previous Companions come back, but that they come back in an episode that offers no contact between them and the current team.) I thought that was a good idea, not least because showing how Ruby deals with the aftereffect of life with the Doctor in an entire episode, not just in a few minutes, was interesting to see, and struck a good balance: of course all that life constantly on the edge would leave her jittery and prone to assume there's danger behind every corner (just not the danger she actually encounters, which is not alien but very human), but the episode also shows how well her relationships with her family go, both with her adopted family and the newly discovered bio mum, and the fact the biological mother and the adopted mother like and support each other is A+. Ruby also isn't cut off completely from people able to talk with her about Whovian goings on; she is in contact with Kate and UNIT. She has a transition period from life with the Doctor to life on Earth that doesn't happen over night, but it happens, it happenes reasonably well... except for her having the bad luck to run into Konrad.
There are some signals about Konrad not being the perfect rom-com hero he first introduces himself as when he tells Ruby he didn't take the antidote, but they seem to set up him as being flawed in the sense of wanting to be A Brave Square-Jawed-Hero and not trusting Ruby enough, not that he's conning her as part of a get rich through hatespeech scheme. (Whereas with Lindy, the early signals that in retrospect are there - the fact she talks to Ruby, not the Doctor, the fact she shows no grief for her dead colleauge gruesomely consumed next to her - do point to the lack of compassion and the racism later on revealed.) And we do get a reason why he is fixated on UNIT as his target - the fact Kate turned down his application years earlier. But again: Konrad never came together for me as a real person, neither before or after the reveal. He was whatever the script needed him to be and did whatever the script needed him to do to get the point across. (I mean, yeas, that's true for every single character, but in well written books and tv you do not see the strings on the puppets but believe them as their own people.)
It was good to see Kate and her team again, and I liked that Kate was very aware the Doctor would disaspprove of her way of getting a (brief) confession out of Konrad, no matter how cathartic that may have been for her and the audience after what he did to Ruby and then how he insulted her father. (Okay, that was a very obvious narrative ploy, but it totally worked on yours truly. He who insults the Brig needs narrative punishment!)
Lastly: because of the relative closeness of watching this episode and the most recent Andor one, I finally, very belatedly, clued on to the fact that Varada Sethu, who plays Belinda Chandra, is of course none other than the actress who plays Cinta on Andor. (I am terrible with faces! I did know we'd seen her in DW earlier in Boom even before that was pointed out, but I had not connected her to Star Wars.) I don't know when this season of Andor was produced relative to this season of Doctor Who, thereby creating certain shooting schedule conflicts, but that, um, might explain some things.
So, in conclusion: still mixed feelings. But definitely better than KABLAM.
Okay, here's the thing: I am 100% on board with the message. And the anger at the hatefilled grifters dominating not just online discourse and filling people with disinformation. (BTW: when I watched this episode yesterday, I took Konrad to be mainly emblematic for a certain type of political (right wing) grifter, i.e. the Breitbart/Info Wars types, while today I've seen a review seeing him as emblematic for the way toxic fandom works in all too many fandoms - the reviewer named "the moment any woman of colour appears in Star Wars in an important role, or hey, any woman" as an example. To which I say, pourquoi non les deux?) I bet the Doctor's little monologue came straight from the heart of not just McTighe but RTD, and I could underline every sentence.
But. As opposed to, say, last year's Dot and Bubble, which was also intensely political and definitely on message, I'm not sure it worked as its own story, and that's where my mixed feelings come in.
The comparison is irresistable to me because Dot and Bubble is also a relatively Doctor-lite, guest star centric episode, it, too, deals blatantly with the effect the internet has (with the fact it also deals with racism being introduced more subtly at first, becoming more obvious bit by bit as the episode progresses, whereas Lucky Day lays its cards on the table all at once the moment the twist occurs), it, too, offers the twist that the episode guest star seems to be set up as a classic person whose life isn't just saved through the contact with the Doctor and the Companion(s), but changed for the better, only to reveal this person is actually a rotten human being, and taking part on a vicious discourse, and totally unrepentant. But while both Lindy and Konrad are terrible human beings, I felt Lindy was a character, while Konrad was a message.
Now, Lucky Day has its unique plusses not there in earlier Doctor-lite (and current Companion-lite) episodes - mainly that it is focused on the previous Companion. (Which is rather unusual; not the fact previous Companions come back, but that they come back in an episode that offers no contact between them and the current team.) I thought that was a good idea, not least because showing how Ruby deals with the aftereffect of life with the Doctor in an entire episode, not just in a few minutes, was interesting to see, and struck a good balance: of course all that life constantly on the edge would leave her jittery and prone to assume there's danger behind every corner (just not the danger she actually encounters, which is not alien but very human), but the episode also shows how well her relationships with her family go, both with her adopted family and the newly discovered bio mum, and the fact the biological mother and the adopted mother like and support each other is A+. Ruby also isn't cut off completely from people able to talk with her about Whovian goings on; she is in contact with Kate and UNIT. She has a transition period from life with the Doctor to life on Earth that doesn't happen over night, but it happens, it happenes reasonably well... except for her having the bad luck to run into Konrad.
There are some signals about Konrad not being the perfect rom-com hero he first introduces himself as when he tells Ruby he didn't take the antidote, but they seem to set up him as being flawed in the sense of wanting to be A Brave Square-Jawed-Hero and not trusting Ruby enough, not that he's conning her as part of a get rich through hatespeech scheme. (Whereas with Lindy, the early signals that in retrospect are there - the fact she talks to Ruby, not the Doctor, the fact she shows no grief for her dead colleauge gruesomely consumed next to her - do point to the lack of compassion and the racism later on revealed.) And we do get a reason why he is fixated on UNIT as his target - the fact Kate turned down his application years earlier. But again: Konrad never came together for me as a real person, neither before or after the reveal. He was whatever the script needed him to be and did whatever the script needed him to do to get the point across. (I mean, yeas, that's true for every single character, but in well written books and tv you do not see the strings on the puppets but believe them as their own people.)
It was good to see Kate and her team again, and I liked that Kate was very aware the Doctor would disaspprove of her way of getting a (brief) confession out of Konrad, no matter how cathartic that may have been for her and the audience after what he did to Ruby and then how he insulted her father. (Okay, that was a very obvious narrative ploy, but it totally worked on yours truly. He who insults the Brig needs narrative punishment!)
Lastly: because of the relative closeness of watching this episode and the most recent Andor one, I finally, very belatedly, clued on to the fact that Varada Sethu, who plays Belinda Chandra, is of course none other than the actress who plays Cinta on Andor. (I am terrible with faces! I did know we'd seen her in DW earlier in Boom even before that was pointed out, but I had not connected her to Star Wars.) I don't know when this season of Andor was produced relative to this season of Doctor Who, thereby creating certain shooting schedule conflicts, but that, um, might explain some things.
So, in conclusion: still mixed feelings. But definitely better than KABLAM.
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And he wrote the opposition as being so hugely and utterly awful that no one could possibly sympathise with them.
At the same time, how much everyday people in Whoniverse UK know about what goes on isn't something I've kept track of. After decades of the earth being invaded, from an audience perspective Conrad's group look like flat-earthers. But if a Moffat or Chibnall reset got rid of people's collective memory of strange men in boxes and angry pepper pots and other cataclysms, then the movement begins to seem less crazy. I think the episode could have done more to establish the status quo there. (For any viewers like me who haven't been following developments carefully).
I think Conrad worked a bit better as a character for me than for you. It's interesting to have someone so empty, manipulative and egotistic as an antagonist. The Master seems oddly fluffy in comparison. Unfortunately, Conrad reminds me rather strongly of some of today's autocrats.
Hmm. It does seem to me as if McTighe was writing from an old school conservative perspective, with UNIT representing the traditional authority of a state institution, even having a form of hereditary governance in the form of Kate Vs Conrad as the incoming disruptive tech bro who isn't really as much of a radical outsider as he claims (see, the villa in the south of France)
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Re: Conrad - again, I totally see the point. Yes, there are any number of people like that running around today. But reality is badly written that way. I do want a bit more in my fiction.
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When I saw his name in the credits, I was thinking, "That sounds familiar. Pretty sure he wrote something else, but I can't remember what." I'm very glad I didn't learn until after I watched the episode that he also did "Kerblam!" or I would never have been able to just judge it on its own merits instead of being primed to see it go off the rails in terms of its message. Which I personally don't think it did, even if there are some aspects of it I'm more comfortable with than others.
But while both Lindy and Konrad are terrible human beings, I felt Lindy was a character, while Konrad was a message.
I hadn't thought about it in quite those terms, even though I had certainly made comparisons between these two episodes. That's a good point, and very true.
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I loved seeing Varada Seth display her range as both Cinta and Bel -- really different parts!
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He was way way too reminiscent of JD Vance and that whole bunch of awful white male Trumpists and I see news about that all day! I think that's why I was just too revolted by him.
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Alas, yes.
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Because as a child he encountered her and the Doctor in the opening scene in the episode. The Doctor addressed Belinda bei name and introduced her as "'Miss Belinda Chandra" to child!Konrad. Asking whether the Doctor had met her already in the last but one scene comes after he'd learned a lot about the Doctor from Ruby and thus knows the Doctor can travel in time.