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“LUCKY DAY – WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A COMPANION STOPS RUNNING”

Lucky Day is that rare Doctor Who episode that turns its gaze backwards – not to Gallifrey or ancient myths, but to what happens after a companion leaves the TARDIS. This time, it’s Ruby Sunday in the spotlight, with a grounded, unsettling story about life after the Doctor and the scars left behind. What begins as a quiet slice-of-life with a new boyfriend becomes a sharp, socially aware thriller that explores PTSD, conspiracy culture, and the limits of UNIT's morality.

Ruby, now out of the Doctor's orbit, is trying to live a normal life – but flickering lights, strange shadows, and the eerie sense of being followed send her to UNIT for help. Is it paranoia? Or is something really out there? The story teases both possibilities smartly, raising the uncomfortable question: what does surviving the Doctor’s world do to a person? Doctor Who has rarely dwelled on this – Sarah Jane Smith and Rose Tyler got spin-offs or closures, but Lucky Day takes a darker approach, portraying Ruby as someone both brave and traumatised.

ENTER CONRAD: THE CHARMING NIGHTMARE

At the centre of this narrative is Conrad, Ruby’s sweet but slightly-too-eager boyfriend. Played with subtle menace by Jonah Hauer-King (best known as the disarmingly handsome Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid remake), Conrad initially seems like a lovely romantic interest – kind, respectful, and curious. But that curiosity becomes obsession. And then obsession becomes conspiracy.

We learn that Conrad runs Think Thank – not the previously familiar think tank from Robot, but a modern-day conspiracy podcast group determined to expose UNIT. In a clever and chilling twist, the Shreek – a transdimensional creature that stalks and kills once a year – is revealed to be a hoax, orchestrated by Conrad and his cronies to lure UNIT into a trap and discredit them. Even the monster costumes are handmade, in a cheeky nod to Doctor Who’s own rubber-suited history.

UNIT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

The brilliance of Pete McTighe’s script lies in its dual focus. On one hand, it exposes the fragility of those touched by the Doctor’s world – Ruby’s paranoia, Conrad’s delusions of grandeur. On the other hand, it scrutinises UNIT itself. In a post-truth age where conspiracy theorists have powerful platforms, the existence of a gun-wielding paramilitary group with little oversight is deeply problematic – and Lucky Day doesn’t shy away from asking how the public might see UNIT when the Doctor isn’t around to justify their actions.

And in Kate Stewart, we get one of the show’s most fascinating moral pivots. Jemma Redgrave delivers her best performance yet, going from calm authority to righteous fury. Her breakdown in the UNIT tower – defending her father’s legacy, threatening Conrad, and nearly letting the real Shreek consume him – is electrifying. It’s a moment where Kate steps into dangerous territory, showing what she’s capable of when unchecked by the Doctor. It’s as dark a turn as we’ve ever seen for the character, and it works because Redgrave plays it with blistering conviction.

RUBY, RELATIONSHIPS, AND RECKONING

Millie Gibson continues to shine, showing Ruby’s resilience and growing maturity. She’s no longer the girl blindly chasing adventures – here she’s taking charge, making decisions, and navigating emotional landmines with increasing wisdom. Her chemistry with Hauer-King’s Conrad is believable, and their relationship is written with enough nuance that his eventual betrayal stings deeply.

We also get a brief but joyful return for Carla and Cherry, who instantly peg something off about Conrad, being wonderfully overprotective in their brief scene. Less successful is the continuing tease of a Kate/Ibrahim romance, which remains underdeveloped and awkward. More troubling is how little Ibrahim and Shirley actually get to do this episode – Ruth Madeley is especially underserved here.

And then there’s Belinda – sadly marking the beginning of her decline. Only featured in the New Year’s Eve 2007 flashback that sets up Conrad’s troubled past, she’s barely present in the plot. The scene itself is important for character setup, but Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor feels strangely off-kilter in it – his performance oddly forced, missing the bounce and warmth that usually defines him.

A VILLAIN WHO COULD BE REAL

The transformation of Conrad from boyfriend to villain is chillingly believable. His motives – shaped by loneliness, a yearning for purpose, and a misguided sense of truth – make him a scarily realistic antagonist. His scenes with Ruby and UNIT are disturbingly plausible, and when he briefly has the upper hand, mocking them and revealing their secrets, it's genuinely tense. Even when his plan falls apart and the real Shreek nearly devours him, he reverts to a smug, defensive shell – perfectly capturing the performative victimhood of many real-world conspiracy theorists.

THE DOCTOR’S FINAL WORD

The climax is taut and terrifying, and the confrontation in the tower carrying Siege of Trenzalore-levels of tension. But the emotional peak comes in the quiet coda – the Doctor visiting Conrad in prison. Gatwa’s performance here is superb: cold, direct, and visibly shaken. He delivers a powerful rebuke, not with rage, but with disappointment. It’s a reminder of the toll that travelling with him takes – and how much Ruby’s pain weighs on him.

MRS FLOOD LURKS AGAIN

And then there’s that final twist. Mrs Flood, once again in the shadows, appears as a prison warden and lets Conrad go. The implications are massive and spill directly into the season finale. It’s a classic Doctor Who breadcrumb, delivered with chilling casualness.

📝VERDICT: 87/100

Lucky Day is a standout episode – bold, timely, and unsettling. It asks difficult questions about trust, trauma, and truth, delivering one of Doctor Who’s most compelling political thrillers in years. Pete McTighe smartly blends horror, emotional drama, and social commentary, with excellent performances from Millie Gibson, Jonah Hauer-King, and a career-best turn from Jemma Redgrave. The episode falters slightly with side characters and a wobbly flashback, but overall, it’s one of the most thoughtful, provocative entries in the Gatwa era. And with that ominous Mrs Flood moment, it leaves us nervously eyeing what’s coming next.

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.

Pete McTighe should have been kept in the DVD fan service promo vault, not looking forward to the spinoff.

I feel this would have been better placed last season, as we actually get some more insight into Ruby as a character which I’d been hoping for. I thought looking at the companion experience from a PTSD angle was very interesting. I could tell Conrad was a bit pathetic and weird from the beginning but the twist still got me. Pete McTighe once again fails to stick the landing though by muddling the clearly political message he’s trying to make. It starts solid as a criticism of toxic masculinity and podcast culture but loses its steam by the end.

Pete Mctighe I'm glad those writing lessons worked out mate. We'll call the other 2 a first draft.