Conrad Clark is one of the most squandered characters in all of doctor who. I don;t think any aspect of his character works, and here's why.

In the finale, Conrad infiltrates the UNIT tower, shooting an employee and holding a gun to Kate Stewart, demanding she tell everyone that UNIT is a hoax. Aside from committing several crimes that would land him in prison for a good few decades, he's streaming direct proof of UNIT orking as they say they are. The enitre control deack is visible from his body camera, with all of its high tech machinery. Convieniently, all the main deck is showing right now are articles of him and his actions, and the Vlinx is nowhere to be seen. On top of this, He really can't win here. Either they show him something alien or they stun him; far less people are likely to be sympathetic to hmi when he admits on camera to shooting someone.

But that's just the plot. Clearly, Conrad's here becuase he genuinely belives that UNIT is a front of some kind taking advantage of british taxpayers. However, he's also heavily characterised as a grifter, and that's not how grifters operate. Belive it from someone who was in the trenches 2-3 years ago, all grifters care about are themselves, and sometimes their political affiliations. They use strawmen like immigrants, minorites and members of the LGBTQ+ community to construct false narratives and get people angry and afraid becuase fear and outrage sell well. Many of the most prominent grifters in this country and across the pond in the USA are funded by wealthy donors in damging industries like fossil fuels or even sometimes autocratic governments like the russian regime. The aim of a grifter is not to seek change, but to maintain the status quo so they can keep getting paid.

Conrad is meant to be a grifter, but the writers fail to reailse what grifters actually are. They most likely just saw how blatantly racist, misogynistic and homophobic a lot of griter content is and made a cartoonishly evil villain to match that instead of analysing why they made it and making a more realistic, rounded character. The alternative is a more interesting and narratively rich option, in my opinion. I think they got a couple of things right, like how he claims to be fighting for the truth, but his actions indicate he genuinely thought he was fighting for the truth rather than just claming to. They paint him as a grifter, with a lot of paid subscribers, dodging tax and whatnot, but his actions in the ending threaten his grift, as even if he was right an did get a confession he now has nothing to complain about. He never even states what he thonks UNIT are doing with all of the money, just that they're spending it.

He doesn't seem to have a motivation for any of this either. All of his interactions ith the doctor, Ruby and UNIT should indicate he belives aliens are real, having actually seen one, and seeing the TARDIS dematerialise. Literally the only interpretation of this I have is that he thought it was all special effects, both times, which puts him on a general charcater path of 'schizophrenic idiot'. His actions and beliefs mirror those of someone under the thrall of a grifter rather than the grifter themselves. He's so convinced of this one reality that everything he sees to the contrary is special effects or actors pretending to believe in aliens. Hoever, e have a clear example of hat people like Conrad ould actually look like online: flat earthers. People who yell and point with no real evidence and then get laughed at by the rest of the population. UNIT has so much proof of what they do, we literally see a school tour of their tower in one of the shots in the episode.

This all comes to a head in the twist reveal scene, which is probably the messiest scenes of series 2 minus the finale. Firstly: what is Conrad hoping to prove by tricking UNIT? They launched a mass mobilisation halfway across the country becuase Ruby thought there was a dangerous alien after Conrad. No one even mentions after Conrad's reveal that they were there to help him, probably because it would undermine his entire argument. Instead Kate and Shirley just spout generic 'this threat is real' dialogue. They say it was easy to fake aliens as they just 'fooled' UNIT, but surely if the aliens were fake Ruby wouldn't have a reaction and UNIT wouldn't turn up at all since they know the alien can't be real. On top of this, he has a livestream with thousands of viewers, of which he is the host, ready to go at a moment's notice. He also has non-radical podacst large enough for Ruby to want to be on it. He hosts both of these as Conrad Clark, yet UNIT and Ruby never connect these dots. Presumably he or one of his friends was hosting it proior to this reveal but they're never recoginsed until this reveal. His original podcast Ruby was on is just forgotten about the second after Ruby's interview.

Conrad doxxes a bunch of UNIT workers inbetween the reveal and the ending which should have got him and his entire orgnaisation shut down and arrested immediately.

The ending is almost as messy. Firstly all the stuff I mentioned about Conrad basically outing himself in front of his viewers, but then also Kate releasing the Shiek would also likely be illegal. To the viewers of his livestream, it might look like she set a rabid dog on him. Either way letting him blunder his way into their tower and showing him a less agressive form of alien life like the Vlinx to put his grift down would have been more effective. This somehow turns public opinion away from Conrad?

Why people even belive him in the first place is beyond me. The episode doesn't even attempt to address why people belive right wing grifters. Its usually a mix of impressionablility and poor economic status, but this episode just acts like enitre movements can be created or shut down with a single livestream from one guy, who doesn;t even have any evidence of wrongdoing.

Then we get to the ending, where the doctor appears and give a Chibnall era style speech to Conrad about how he's stupid and dumb and should die which looks a whole lot like the writers doing wish fulfillment, with Conrad being a stand in for the real world grifters who arrack the show. I would be all for it if it contained anything of substance, but it doesn't . The doctor just insults Conrad for a bit and leaves him. He doesn't show him how small and pathetic he is compared to the grandeur of the universe, or force him to come to terms with the people he's hurt or the things he's done.

On top of this Conrad has absolute proof time travel exists now, with him knowing of Belinda before the doctor. He even uses this to his advantage during the confrontation, yet still refuses to belive aliens exist? Of course I have to mention the finale, which displays him more as a facist who likes the molecular family and doesn't consider or want to consider disabled people or memebers of the LGBTQ+ community, which are traits this episode doesn't really show, apart from maybe his interaction with Shirley.

I think there are two main issues with Conrad, one which undermines him being a grifter in the the narrative and one which undermines him being a grifter thematically.

The narrative issue I've stated, all the buisness ith UNIT tower and finding proof and whatnot, and the thematic issue is that him being a grifter is never explained. He isn't a disgruntled failed employee, as Kate says she didn't hire him as she didn't trust him, which indicates he only applied to get dirt on UNIT if he was accepted in. He could be an attention seeker by theres no basis for that. Why is he an attention seeker? The episode never goes over why grifters become grifters or why people fall for grifters, it only says grifters are bad and wrong and stuff. There's no deconstruction or poigniant message that might actually show someone they're being fooled by a grifter, or to generally inform people on grifters and how they operate.

There isn't even time to do so, as they centre the first half of the on the fake romance between Ruby and Conrad, and Conrad's backstory, which on rewatch just confuses and frustrates me as it shows Conrad seeing alien things, yet still coming to the conclusion that they're all a hoax?

If they had just explained how he had come to that conlusion, or maybe instead showed how he was a greedy person who only wanted to capitalise on the existence of aliens for his own personal gain. Just give me ny motivation and my rating would probably go up a bit, assuming it made sense of course.

This review is way too long. TL;DR: Conrad is a message in a bottle with no character, UNIT do the worst possible things to disprove him,  his plans are poorly thought out and don't acompliash anything and one of the scenes has a weird distortion efect around the edges which annoys me. Its only not a half star becuase I like the little new stuff they do with Kate and Ruby.