Season One (Series 14); Episode Six - “Rogue” by Kate Herron and Briony Redman

Rogue was an… interesting episode. Was it a good episode? That remains to be seen but it was definitely fun. I mean, it was barely an episode of Doctor Who, more of a sci-fi infused Bridgerton, which, I know that they were going for, but they’re pretty different shows from each other. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Rogue but it really isn’t that great of an episode, not by a long shot. The best parts were fun but nothing that really stuck out at me or impressed me. However, it is probably the gayest episode of Doctor Who ever written, which certainly is fun.

The Doctor has taken Ruby to a 19th century ball to relive the likes of Bridgerton in style, but an enigmatic bounty hunter and aliens with their own kind of party in mind threaten to spoil the night.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I hesitate to say I like Rogue. I enjoyed it, I was laughing out loud for most of it (I don’t know whether that was the intended effect) but mostly for the antics of the episode rather than any actual things it did critically. Most of my positives towards the story land in tone and character which is very fun. Ruby gets to shine here and I should probably mention how she’s probably my favourite thing this season. I genuinely love her as a companion, she feels like Series One Rose in a way combined with the wit and dynamics of Donna and I really can’t get behind people saying she’s underdeveloped (did they not see 73 Yards)? Also, we literally just came out of the Chibnall era, you should know what an underdeveloped companion looks like, we had four. Other than that, Rogue himself was… fine. He was fun and Groff plays him well; he’s not Jack, like he’s obviously trying to be but he’s a pretty enjoyable character even if I really don’t buy into the stuff between him and the Doctor but, then again, I don’t gel with any Doctor centric romance plot because I feel it directly contradicts with his character but we’ve already established 15 is barely like any of the other incarnations so I guess the writers can do whatever they want. Plus, it meant the episode was ridiculously gay, which was very fun (it’s June, baby!). Seriously, in every scene with Rogue and the Doctor, you could cut the sexual tension with a f**king knife. I found it funnier than anything but as the episode went on I realised I was actually meant to take it seriously which I just didn’t, because we’ve known these characters for all of two minutes and the episode never slows down.

It seems I’ve already started talking about the negatives so I’ll just move onto them, and I have a lot. Objectively, I’d say Rogue probably rates around a 5 but because I had so much fun I bumped up the score a little, that being said, the script was kind of a hot mess in an oddly loveable way. It was way too fast, dropping us headfirst in media res, not allowing us to acclimatise to the setting or characters and continuing this season’s weird aversion to setting any scene in the new, flashy and very expensive TARDIS set. This also causes me to have very little interest in the relationships between the characters and makes me generally apathetic to the whole episode. The bird people were fine, I guess. They were too pantomime to threaten me and too unnecessarily over the top to make me enjoy the performances so it just lands in this cringy middle ground. Also, the logic in the episode rarely works out, it suffers from the trap of having useful miscellaneous space technology solve every problem, never outlining how it works so you can just shape it to fix any conundrum the characters find themselves in. 

Also, in regards to the climax, I really have to address how ridiculously stupid it is. Firstly, we get a glimpse of an emotional moment when the Doctor thinks Ruby is dead and that old friend Time Lord rage comes boiling to the surface, but within a scene it’s dropped for a different cliche problem, this time the Doctor finds out he’s accidently trapped Ruby (who turned mute for a whole two minutes) and has to kill her if he wants to stop the bird people. Another thing is the whole Ruby pretends to be a bird person bit; so Emily - also known as Aggressive Fan Lady - is one of the bird people and traps Ruby. Emily can’t’ve been a bird lady earlier in the episode, because her actions wouldn’t make sense, so she had to be taken over in a space of time when she ran off. In that case, why didn’t the bird lady who took her over join the hunt for the Doctor and Rogue, and instead steal a random woman’s body? Next, we see the electricity effect present when a bird person takes someone over, but Ruby got away and nobody got taken over, so why was it there? Third, Ruby’s earring saves the day, huzzah, promptly followed by her choosing, not to go find the Doctor, but instead join in on the bird wedding for no reason, acting so perfectly like one of the bird people (complete with weird head movements and feather sound effect) that not one of the family notice. Then, this magical stasis portal built to hold one person can suddenly hold six people, including Ruby, who decided not to let the Doctor know it was her before the trap got set off in the ample time she had to do so, before Rogue comes in, finishes his whole subplot with the Doctor whilst Ruby accepts death in the background and just pushes Ruby off and takes her place, something I guess you can do because if you don’t outline how a mechanic in your universe works, you can do whatever you want with it I guess. Sorry for the rant but that all really annoyed me and the logic here is present throughout the whole episode.

Rogue was a very fun episode and, if that’s what you look for in Doctor Who, then great, I could not think of a better episode for you. However, I enjoy something deeper in my episodes whether it’s from a narrative perspective, or the characters, or even just a really original idea, I want something special. Rogue is not that, it doesn’t even feel like the same show in a season of TV already massively tonally separated from its other series. I enjoyed it, but “like” would be a stretch - as you could probably tell from my needlessly long review (I’m really not living up to my username, am I?)

6/10

Pros:

+ Ridiculously camp fun that doesn’t get too grinding

+ Fun interactions between characters that makes them quickly likeable

+ Ruby really gets to shine here, her character’s in full force

+ Rogue was an enjoyable (albeit rather shallow) character akin to Jack or River

+ Very gay, which makes this a good episode for pride month

Cons:

- Paced horribly, never letting anything develop properly

- The bird people were so boring as antagonists I genuinely can’t remember what they were called (and I’m writing this review almost immediately after finishing the episode)

- Leaps through holes in logic almost constantly

- The climax is unbelievably stupid

- The romantic subplot between the Doctor and Rogue just did not land for me at all