I wasn't expecting much going into this one, but it was a solid piece of television.

The Doctor and Ruby are immediately perfect, I'd seen complaints that they felt a bit cookie cutter from previews, but I don't get that at all, their interactions feel so genuine and so full of joy, yet there is absolutely still some tension between them early on.

That being said, a lot of it felt very "we need to do XYZ with  Ruby so she can be a full companion, so let's get it all over with ASAP", seeing space, the phone upgrade, the TARDIS key at the end, RTD doesn't seem too interested in a slow start for them, he wants to get right into the action and regular Doctor Who episodes, with a less likeable and talented cast, this might not work, but I think he might have just about pulled it off here.

The Space Babies themselves were... something. The CGI on their mouths never quite felt right, but even as someone who despises children, I couldn't help but find them a bit cute, primarily through the way the Doctor and Ruby interact with them.

The way this episode looks at the Timeless Child revelations through the lens of how it would affect a real person is such a breath of fresh air, finally seeing the Doctor actually talk about it, rather than just brooding, it's incredible. The links to Gatwa's real experience escaping the Rwandan genocide are also appreciated, Gatwa really does feel like the perfect person to be playing 15.

The Bogeyman was amazing visually, and the idea of him being made of the babies' snot was perfectly gross, but I feel they could have done a little more with him, as well as the overall allegory for the fight surrounding reproductive rights. Going too overt with it might have taken away from the episode a bit, but I feel like RTD was playing it a little too safe with this one. Maybe with an extended runtime they could have delved a little deeper into the questions it seems to be tepidly trying to raise, but at the same time this was a perfectly paced 45 minutes, and loading overt political commentary onto the new audience within the first episode would have probably been a mistake. (Although, that never stopped them from making an allegory for socialism in An Unearthly Child!)

We'll have to see the rest of the season to tell how good of an introduction this is to the concept of RTD2 when compared to past era-openers (although it's unclear if this or Ruby Road is intended as the jumping on point for new viewers, neither feels like it's truly without baggage) but I've got high hopes going forward.

7.5/10