Season Two (Series 15); Episode Four - “Lucky Day” by Pete McTighe

Pete McTighe is a name that can strike fear into the heart of many a Doctor Who fan. Apart from those weird teasers for the Collection box sets, McTighe is best known for his work on the episode Kerblam!, which is an… interesting ride to say the least which somehow manages to stumble into the message of capitalism being fine and worker’s revolts being the true evil. He also did Praxeus, but all I remember of that story is that I found it boring and preachy. However, many see these as simple stumbles from Mr. McTighe and anxiously awaited his newest episode. Unfortunately, he tried to do political commentary again.

Since the Doctor left, Ruby’s been living her day to day life in relative mundanity. However, she finds comfort in podcaster Conrad, who actually seems to be willing to listen to her stories of the TARDIS. Unfortunately, Conrad’s link to a violent alien species might just doom their blossoming relationship.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I was in two minds before watching this episode. On one hand, Pete McTighe wrote one of my least favourite episodes of my least favourite era and despite that being up until now his only true claim to fame, I still found his name to leave a bad taste in my mouth. On the other hand, knowing his newest effort was an episode that centred entirely around Ruby was interesting to me. I really dig the idea of a companion becoming a recurring character after their departure, which Russell toyed with with Martha but didn’t really follow through on; it really makes the world of the show feel more alive and interconnected, whilst also making room for some interesting exploration as to what happens when a companion leaves the Doctor. Anyway, whilst I do have some problems with Ruby’s character here, Gibson is still great and slips effortlessly back into the role.

As for our new addition in this episode, we are introduced to Ruby’s new boyfriend: Conrad, who meets our ex-companion through the podcast he runs and immediately alarm bells should be sounding everywhere because in this day and age that’s rarely a good sign. And turns out I’m right: halfway through the episode it's revealed he’s a wannabe revolutionist and is trying to publicly humiliate UNIT into closing itself down. This twist actually did get me the first time I watched it and was a good left turn but after that things pretty much barreled downhill. One positive I can say though is Conrad is suitably detestable and the actor does a really good job at portraying a smug bastard, he’s a very love to hate kind of villain. I also like that the episode didn’t feel the need to try and redeem him and he refuses to change at the end when given the chance because yeah, some people are just irredeemably douchebags and that’s the way of things.

But then we get onto the actual meat of the episode, which concerns fake news and fear mongering on social media. My first takeaway is that this is actually a pretty interesting thing to look into and works as commentary, which might sound like the bare minimum but after Kerblam! is a godsend. However, I always find that when TV shows try to tackle social media and modern misinformation, it always falls into the pit trap of trying to capture internet culture and feeling like somebody who is incredibly out of touch is writing the script. The actual sections of social media reacting to the anti UNIT movement just rubbed me the wrong way but I think that could be entirely personal. It’s just a trope that seems to always annoy me.

But colour me impressed that I didn’t hate the political commentary in Lucky Day, well done Pete, you’re moving up in the world. However, this script is still as dumb as a sack of bricks. The ideas behind this story had some merit but jesus christ the execution was awful. This might be the most ridiculously unintelligent story of the entire revival, it is riddled with so many blatant plot holes and unnuanced moments of sheer stupidity that it left me slack jawed, eyes glued to the screen like I was watching a car crash. First of all, there’s so many gaps in logic here I would be convinced it's a first draft. Why does a massive, clandestine, military organisation do zero background checks on its highest ranking members? Why does Ruby not look into Conrad’s podcast for one second and realise it's a radical conspiracy theory machine? How the f**k is Conrad not in prison for one, wasting government resources by calling the army in on a prank and two, doxxing an entire government organisation publicly? I’m not an expert on law, but I think that maybe it's illegal to do that. Imagine if somebody tried to do this to the CIA or any actual government institution. Also, the climax is egregiously dumb, even outside of the surprisingly poor CG. Why does Conrad have any reputability after nearly fatally shooting a man on live social media? Why does the incredibly violent alien creature spend a millenia slowly crawling towards its prey so that the other characters can monologue and then defeat it? Why does a nationwide public scandal arise up out of nowhere and then literally disappear overnight based on one person being outed as a liar? It’s so utterly stupid and just takes away any enjoyment I might have of it whilst simultaneously diluting its message by being blatantly unrealistic.

But you know what, I’m not actually mad about this at all. I don’t even care. I feel bizarrely apathetic towards Lucky Day and I think I know why. It’s just such a pointless episode. This is a doctor-lite story, leaving behind the Doctor and Belinda for an episode and following Ruby. As I said before, an interesting idea but it fails to really justify itself. Ruby doesn’t grow much as a character except for having a little more trauma, UNIT is completely unphased because the entire scandal has gone full circle by the end and all it does is completely break the pace of the season. I was wondering why it felt so out of place for a while, especially compared to, say, Blink, which does a similar thing but feels a lot less sudden. I think it's because this is placed directly after three episodes that take place in consecutive narrative order one after the other, whilst Blink was in the middle of a bunch of unrelated monster of the week type stories. Also this was written by Pete McTighe and Blink was written by Stephen Moffat, which probably contributed a lot to how well the concept worked. However, the result is the same, I’m left unsatisfied and untouched by a number of underbaked ideas ruined by pacing and a failure to execute.

Lucky Day felt like a speed bump, an annoying intrusion on a straight line that only caused the momentum to drop. McTighe certainly writes a little more competently than his previous efforts, but that bar was in Hell, it was pretty easy to jump over. It had a lot of ideas but none had much meat to them and only a few felt well realised, the rest bogged down by a muddled script. It isn't an egregiously bad piece of TV, but it’s only worthy of a single sigh.

5/10

Pros:

+ Interesting format for an episode

+ Conrad is a wonderfully hateable antagonist

+ Had some decent commentary to make

+ The halfway twist was a genuinely fun left turn

Cons:

- Astoundingly stupid script

- Episode feels like a pointless side step

- The CGI is a little too ambitious