Fifteenth Doctor Era
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The Church on Ruby Road
"Once upon a time, late on Christmas Eve, a stranger came to the church on Ruby Road. She carried in her arms the most precious gift of all: a newborn child. A baby girl. Just before midnight, she left her daughter on the steps of the church. The child was taken in, and they named her Ruby, after the place where she was found. As for the mother, she was never seen again. No one ever knew her name. Until that night, a time traveller came to call. A traveller known as... the Doctor."
— The Doctor
The one where Doctor Who meets Labyrinth.
Also the one with singing... waaaaaait haven't we done this before?
The first full-length Fifteenth Doctor era episode, on top of being the prelude of Fifteen's first season (Series 14), and the first Christmas Episode in the revival series since the Twelfth Doctor's Grand Finale, "Twice Upon a Time".
Everyone, meet Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), a foundling who was adopted nineteen years ago. She lives with her mother and grandmother in London, but over the past month, she's had a succession of bizarre freak accidents. Among the more notable examples: three weeks ago on the set of Long Lost Family with Davina McCall (to look for the whereabouts of her biological parents), the light-poles came tumbling down on the set, a few days ago the microphone cut out while she played in a band at a local pub, and the day after that, she dropped and broke her glass at a nightclub and narrowly avoided getting squashed by a blow-up snowman head while leaving!
It's Christmas Eve, 2023. After returning from the grocery and chatting up Mrs. Flood outside her flat, Ruby arrives home, where her mother has some exciting news: they're fostering another baby!
(TBA)
Tropes featured in The Church on Ruby Road include:
- Actually Quite Catchy: On both sides — the Doctor is clearly impressed by the Goblin's song about how they plan to eat babies, and the Goblins happily dance along to Ruby and the Doctor's song about how they're going to stop them eat them babies.
- Abstract Eater: While the goblins feast upon human flesh, they also find coincidence quite tasty, so they seek out and create coincidences around their targets to season the meat, in a way.
- Adipose Rex: The Goblin King, as revealed by "The Goblin Song".
- Admiring the Abomination: The Doctor's as fascinated and excited by "The Goblin Song" as Ruby is horrified.
- Air-Vent Passageway: The Goblin ship may be made of wood and rope, but, as the Doctor points out, it still has air vents big enough for him and Ruby to crawl through.
- All Myths Are True: In-universe example; the Goblin King, as lampshaded in "The Goblin Song", isn't a myth, but an actual thing.
- All There in the Manual:
- The novelisation has the Doctor theorize that the Goblins are part of the Toymaker's legions, considering them his legacy. This explains why they seem to operate outside the normal laws of physics and why they vanished when defeated.
- Tie-in posters name the members of the Goblin band as Janis Goblin, Gob Dylan, Brian Fairy, Ralph McTelf and Pixy Not.
- Ambiguously Human: Mrs. Flood seems like just a normal old woman — but she not only knows what a TARDIS is, and actively used to them, but she is a Fourth-Wall Observer.
- Ambiguous Situation: The mystery of Ruby's birth parents. When we see her mother dropping baby Ruby off at the church, they're only seen completely shrouded in a cloak, no element of their body visible. Davina McCall later calls Ruby and tells her they could find absolutely no traces of her birth parents. After rescuing baby Ruby from the goblins in the past, the Doctor sees the shrouded figure walking off in the distance, and, for one reason or another, decides not to approach or figure out their identitynote , only silently departing in the TARDIS.
- Arc Number: For this episode, the number 3. Lulubelle being the 33rd child that Carla fostered, the Doctor being one of three foundlings in the episode, with Ruby and Lulubelle.
- Arc Word: Coincidence. The goblins run on it.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Even though the sonic screwdriver doesn't work on it, and he's never seen anything of its like before, the Doctor could still analyze the ropework of the Goblin ship to open a few doors and move him and Ruby through it.
- Awesome McCoolname: The Doctor considers Lulubelle to be one, in contrast to everyone else's opinion. He's also fascinated by Ruby's grandmother's name, Cherry Sunday.
- Bamboo Technology: Goblins have no electronics, not even any screws, all they use are knots. Still they have flying ships and time travel capability.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: The Doctor tampers with the goblins' knotwork so it begins coming apart, but he and Ruby drop down in the middle of their gathering while he's doing so. So he has the band continue the music as he and Ruby add a few more verses so there's time enough for his plan to work.
- Be Careful What You Say: After rescuing Lulubelle, the Doctor, Ruby and Carla all discuss the coincidences and similarities surrounding the former three. This draws the goblins' attention and gives them the idea that Ruby is as viable as target as Lulubelle since the Doctor is a fellow foundling, leading them going back in time to snatch her after she was abandoned.
- Bear Hug: When the Doctor returns from fixing the past he's so happy to see that Ruby has been restored to the timeline that he pulls her into one of these.
- Big Eater: The Goblin King unsurprisingly turns out to be one according to "The Goblin Song".
- Bigger on the Inside: Ruby had to walk around the TARDIS to understand its size, similar to Donna Noble and Clara Oswald before her.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: The calamity of getting tangled up with the Goblin King happens on Ruby's birthday, Christmas Eve.
- Bloodless Carnage: The Doctor happens to impale the Goblin King with the church spire, yet not a drop of blood is seen.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the very end of the episode, Ruby's neighbour Mrs. Flood turns to face the camera and asks, "Haven't you ever seen a TARDIS before?", as she winks at the audience.
- Butterfly of Doom: The Goblins taking Ruby as a baby in the past, lead to her mother Carla not fostering children, and having a different view of life.
- Call-Back:
- The Doctor once again gets out of ropes thanks to a trick he learned from Harry Houdini.
- The Fifteenth Doctor improvising a musical number may sound new, but he actually took a page right out of the Sixth Doctor's, back when he had to deal with pirates from the 19th century.
- The fourth-wall break at the end may remind people of a much, much older Christmas episode from the Classic Series, "The Feast of Steven" (which was part of "The Daleks' Master Plan"), which also ended with an old person talking to the fourth wall.
- Once again, a companion gets roasted for grabbing a ladder that was just hanging in mid-air.
- After a person is erased from existence, their loved ones are left to mourn without knowing why.
- A crack appears in the wall before history is erased or changed due to an outside factor.
- The Doctor again uses the psychic paper to pass himself off as "Health and Safety".
- Casting Gag: Mrs. Flood is played by Anita Dobson, who was prominently featured in one of Eastenders' most infamous Christmas Episodes. When this episode first aired, the BBC continuity announcer lampshaded the timing of her appearance by joking about her not being served divorce papers this time.
- Celebrity Casualty: Narrowly subverted with Davina McCall, with the Doctor coming in to save her at the end.
- Chekhov's Gun: The "intelligent gloves" used to get the Doctor and Ruby onboard the Goblins' ship are used in tandem by the Doctor to bring down the ship itself.
- Chekhov's Skill: Ruby is in a band, and later turns out to be a pretty good improvisational singer.
- Christmas Episode: Who's Christmas Special for 2023 (and the show's first one since "Twice Upon a Time" in 2017).
- Clarke's Third Law: While the Goblins are technically creatures of Fantasy and Myth, the Doctor insists their "magic" is really just a different kind of science (not unlike the Carrionites appearing to be witches).
- Cool Old Lady: Aside from briefly bickering with her neighbour Abdul over whether or not he was responsible for the TARDIS blocking her jogging path, Ruby's neighbour Mrs. Flood is friendly to everybody in general, including the Doctor and Ruby herself. She even takes the oddness of the Doctor and Ruby in stride and helps send Ruby off at the end of the episode, although, as revealed at the end, she may be more than she appears.
- Commonality Connection: Why the goblins target Lulubelle; She's a foundling born on Christmas Eve that ended up fostered by Carla Sunday, just like her new foster sister Ruby, who was also found on Christmas Eve. Once they rescue Lulu, the goblins overhear the Doctor mention he was also a foundling like Ruby, so they decide she is a viable target as a baby and travel back in time to snatch her.
- Continuity Nod:
- While extolling the benefits of his super-gloves, the Doctor references mavity, the term coined in "Wild Blue Yonder".
- When puzzling out what happened to Ruby, Fifteen holds his chin with his index finger and thumb extended with the rest of his fingers tucked under his chin; a pose that One was very fond of.
- The Doctor mentions that, like Ruby, he was a foundling who doesn't know where he comes from.
- Contrived Coincidence: Enforced by the goblins, who engineer bad luck streaks in humans they target to build up coincidences around them, apparently as some sort of abstract seasoning on the material flesh of their victims.
- Crash in Through the Ceiling: The Doctor clumsily enters the goblin ship in this manner (just in time for "The Goblin Song" to be over)... and also ends up right in front of the Goblin King. Oops.
- Dead Star Walking: Narrowly subverted, with Davina McCall last seen screaming as a sharp metal ornament plunges into her head. It's only in the last few minutes of the episode that the Doctor goes back and saves her.
- Eats Babies: "The Goblin Song" is an entire Villain Song dedicated to how they're going to prepare and eat a human baby.We've got a baby, we can feast! / We can dine three days at least!
- Edible Theme Naming: Ruby's (adoptive) grandmother is named Cherry Sunday.
- Embarrassing First Name: It's a running gag throughout the first half of the episode that no one thinks Lulubelle is a good name, with Carla even noting that Lulu by itself is a vastly superior name. This gag ends as soon as the Doctor hears the name and thinks it's brilliant, to the point of wishing that his name was Lulubelle.
- Everybody Lives: The Doctor manages to pull through the crisis with zero friendly casualties, even going as far as to go back in time to save Davina from being killed by the goblins.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A variation. During the "Goblin Song" sequence, the Doctor and Ruby are crawling through the Goblin Ship's ducts, trying to find a way to rescue Lulubelle. And then, the Doctor comes to a dead stop as he finally realizes something: If they're on a Goblin ship, then who does it belong to? Cue the Goblin King's entrance, complete with a verse about him.
- The Fair Folk: The goblins are similar to stories of fae in that their ways are esoteric but what's apparent is their malicious mischief and predatory targeting of human infants. Oh, and they have a thing for music, even by mortal singers, which can be a good way to distract them. They also appear to be actual supernatural goblins and not just goblin-like aliens, with no "they're from Planet Such-and-such" explanation given for them.
- Foreshadowing: Carla says she doesn't know who she'd be if she hadn't adopted Ruby. Shortly afterwards, the Doctor finds out.
- For the Evulz: The goblins give Ruby a bad luck streak to invoke specific circumstances in her life that drew them to steal her baby foster sister. They give Davina McCall a much worse bad luck streak that more seriously injures her and would have eventually killed her without the Doctor's intervention, apparently just for fun.
- Genre Shift: With the debut of the Goblins (and continuing from the setup during the 60th Anniversary Specials), Who begins dipping its toe into the realm of fantasy. Although, again, the Doctor still insists it's just a different kind of science, just like the Carrionites appearing to be witches.
- Good Is Not Soft: Fifteen is considerably nicer than some of his previous incarnations, and doesn't get obviously angry, but he still pulls the goblin ship out of the sky when they kidnap baby Ruby, destroying the ship and violently killing the Goblin King.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Davina McCall is sitting in a wheelchair with many injuries, unable to react in time to a Christmas tree and its very pointy star falling right on top of her. Subverted when the Doctor makes a stop to catch the tree and rescue her at the last moment.
- Gonk: Subverted with the Goblins, who border on Ugly Cute. Played completely straight with the Goblin King.
- Happily Adopted: Ruby was adopted into the Sunday family after years of being fostered. Even while she is still looking for her birth parents, she is loved in the Sunday household.
- Haven't You Seen X Before?: During the coda, Mrs. Flood breaks the fourth wall and says, "What? Haven't you ever seen a TARDIS before?"
- Hero vs. Villain Duet: After they land in front of the Goblin King and swipe baby Lulubelle, ending the song, the Doctor takes Refuge in Audacity by asking why they've stopped singing, telling the Goblin band to hit it, and improvising a couple of verses with Ruby that distract the Goblins long enough to screw around with the ship and make an escape.
- Homage:
- Die Hard - The Doctor is crawling around in ventilation shafts at Christmas.
- It and Harry Potter are both mentioned by elements of their lore in the Goblin Song.
- Singing goblins that kidnap babies? Sound like Labyrinth, does it not?
- The Goblin King appears to be a CGI replication of the character in the 2D version of The Hobbit.
- It's a Wonderful Life - The Doctor discovers how the absence of someone in the lives of people who care for them changes them for the worse.
- Hungry Menace: Downplayed. The Goblins eat people, and most of their acts are dedicated to feeding — but they also show genuine cruelty and malice outside of this, most notably tormenting and nearly killing Davina McCall in a way that doesn't benefit their plans at all.
- Hypocritical Humor: The Doctor sasses out Ruby for jumping aboard the Goblin Ship's Sky Ladder without any thought or plan of action...while simultaneously chasing the same ladder across the rooftops and also jumping aboard it moments later.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Goblin King and his ship is defeated by the Doctor dragging it down with his gloves, impaling it on the church's spire — which goes right through the King's chest.
- Incredibly Long Note: "The Goblin Song" ends with a typical high-pitched one, which fits for such a big-band/Broadway-esque inspired number.
- In Medias Res: The story starts with the Doctor arriving on Christmas Eve 2004 to witness the infant Ruby be delivered to the church on Ruby Road. The story then flashes forward to December 2023 and shows how he came to be there.
- In Spite of a Nail: Even though Carla in the Rubyless timeline has only fostered a tiny minority of the children her counterpart has, and resents doing so, especially at Christmas, she still fostered Lulubelle. Possibly justified in a story based around coincidence.
- Irony: Meta example with "The Goblin Song". Sales of the Single are intended to be donated
to Children in Need. And yet, the song itself is about Goblins eating human children. Naturally, the Doctor Who social media accounts wasted no time lampshading the irony. - Jumped at the Call: Ruby immediately springs into action to retrieve Lulubelle from the kidnapping goblins, and hangs onto their ship's rope ladder as it travels through the sky. In the end, Ruby pieces together that the Doctor must be a time traveller himself and immediately runs out to find him after he leaves.
- Keystone Army: The Goblin King's death causes all of the goblins, and even the ship itself, to disintegrate.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Goblins "seasoning" their victims with bad luck and coincidence sounds very similar to how It seasons the children he feeds on with fear. He's later alluded to in the Goblin King's Villain Song.
- Leitmotif: Murray Gold's Themes for Fifteen and Ruby Sunday debut and are expanded upon in this episode, irrespectively. The main melody in "The Goblin Song" also crops up in the horns as Ruby encounters the goblins for the first time.
- Lighter and Softer: The episode sets a lighter tone for the Fifteenth Doctor's tenure with fantastical enemies, a goofy musical number, and everybody living (well, except for the Goblin King).
- Load-Bearing Boss: The death of the Goblin King leads to the entire Goblin ship disintegrating.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "The Goblin Song" is as tonally catchy as it is lyrically macabre.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Having been prevented from eating Lulubelle, the Goblins opt to travel back in time and abduct Ruby as a baby instead.
- Man in a Kilt: When Ruby first sees the Doctor at the club he's wearing a kilt that twirls out as he dances.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A slightly more pedantic version of the trope with the Goblins. The Doctor is adamant that they're not magic, they're just using a different set of physics to humanity. Ruby doesn't see the distinction, and keeps referring to them as magical.
- Meaningful Background Event: When Ruby is gone, the photos from the fridge disappear well before the Doctor notices their absence.
- Meaningful Name: The Doctor tells Ruby that goblins get their name from the fact that they'll gobble you up.
- Mickey Mousing: The Goblins chant "On with the feast, baby we shall feast!" in time with "The Carol of the Bells" being sung at the church during the climax, as they prepare to eat an infant Ruby.
- Morality Pet: Ruby was apparently this to Carla — when she's erased from time, Carla's a much colder, more selfish woman then the warm-hearted mother she is in the real timeline.
- No Body Left Behind: The Goblins all dissipate with their ship after the King dies.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: A self-aware Janis Goblin does this during "The Goblin Song" when the Goblin King makes his grand entrance."He's the Goblin King! Yes, the Goblin King! He's not a myth, he's an actual thing!"
- Our Goblins Are Different: According to the Doctor, the Goblins live on the fringes of Earth's dimension up in the sky, dipping in to orchestrate bad luck surrounding select humans as a prelude to kidnapping victims to eat. Like the Carrionites, their science of manipulating and exploiting coincidences can look like magic to humans. Their technology is based entirely around knotwork on wooden parts, not even having screws for the Sonic to work on.
- Outside-Context Problem: The Goblins, as the Doctor is normally used to dealing with more traditional sci-fi threats than creatures of myth and legend.
- Parent Service:
- Ruby Sunday's outfit gets a lot of ... upward shots showing her legs and her skirt when she's chasing down the Goblins and Lulubelle, and her outfit is quite complimenting.
- Fifteen in a tank top isn't exactly rough on the eyes, either.
- Peeve Goblins: The goblins start off the episode by moving certain objects in a way to cause various slapstick pranks, such as causing people to trip or objects to crash. They steadily get more lethal as the episode goes on. Ruby brings up the question of whether all accidents are actually caused by goblins, with the Doctor genuinely considering the possibility.
- Plot-Irrelevant Villain: While the Goblin King is nominally the Big Bad, he does essentially nothing during the show, with the Goblins themselves providing all of the conflict of the episode. Had the Goblins staged a revolution and guillotined the guy, it seems the plot would have gone identically.
- Popularity Polynomial: Carla discusses this trope in-universe about her Polaroid camera, to the lady who dropped the baby off with her:"You wait long enough, they get fashionable again."
- Pretender Diss: The Doctor takes offense to Ruby referring to the goblins as time travellers:"Oh, pssht! They are not time travellers! Excuse me? Time travellers are great. Like, the best. Like, wow. This lot just bimble."
- Refuge in Audacity: The Goblin Song is a song about goblins eating babies. Which was made into a single whose proceeds would go to Children in Need, a charity that benefits children. And then the Doctor himself takes refuge in that same audacity when he and Ruby land in front of the Goblin King by performing his own version with improvised lyrics!
- Ret-Gone: After the Goblins go back in time and abduct Ruby as a baby, the Doctor briefly finds himself in an alternate timeline where Ruby died as an infant and her family has never heard of her.
- Reverse Polarity: The Doctor reverses the polarity of his super gloves so that, instead of making the wearer weightless, it makes them heavier. He uses this for leverage to drag down the goblin ship by its rope ladder, before jumping off the roof to impale it on the church spire.
- Ripple Effect Indicator: When the Goblins take Ruby before she ever gets adopted, it erases her impact on Carla's life, which in turn erases all the photos of the 33 kids she was inspired to foster, changes the colours of the flat walls and the kitchen cabinets, and erases the giant crack running through their flat's roof caused by the goblins' departure to do so. Just before this is focused on, the goblin in a picture it took of itself that got left in Ruby's flat disappeared.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: As a time traveller, the Doctor remembers Ruby even after the Goblins go back and snatch her as a baby.
- Roofhopping: The Doctor has to chase after Ruby (who's clinging to the Goblin Ship's sky ladder for dear life) across rooftops.
- Running Gag: Cherry frequently grouses about delays in getting her cup of tea. She finally gets it near the end of the episode.
- Science Fantasy: Thanks to the Genre Shift and pitting the Doctor and his science-fiction setting against creatures of myth and legend like goblins.
- Sequel Hook:
- The identity of Ruby's mother is still unrevealed, and something odd seems to be going on with her, given that- as Ruby herself points out- it's a little strange that literally no trace of her or a father exists in any system.
- Before going inside the TARDIS, the Doctor thinks about Ruby's situation and starts wondering if it's actually him who's the cause of her bad luck... but shrugs that worry off for now.
- More overtly, the episode ends with The Reveal that Mrs. Flood, the seemingly inconspicuous old woman who lives next door to Ruby and her family, knows what a TARDIS is.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: After the goblins eat her as a child, the Doctor has to go back in time and save Ruby. He also takes the time to rescue Davina McCall from being murdered by the goblins.
- Sherlock Scan: When the Doctor is interviewed by a bobby after a snowman inflatable crashes on the former's head, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver detects a diamond ring in the bobby's pocket. The Doctor correctly deduces that the bobby intents to propose to his girlfriend on Christmas and makes an educated guess that he's probably going to succeed, since he couldn't wait for the post-Christmas sales to purchase the ring.
- Sky Pirate: The goblins fly around on a flying ship, some in pirate attire. According to the Doctor they come from another dimension that intersects with Earth in its skies.
- Special Guest: Davina McCall plays herself, with her role as presenter of Long Lost Family (which isn't named within the episode) facilitating Ruby's introduction.
- Time Skip: The story jumps from Ruby's meeting with Davina McCall in early December to Christmas Eve.
- Time-Traveling Jerkass: Goblins have access to time travel technology and use it to set up coincidences of bad luck to make their victims tastier. They also set up much worse bad luck just for fun, culminating in lethal accidents when the victim is too injured to survive any more.
- To Serve Man: The Goblins and their desire to eat the abducted infant during "The Goblin Song".
- Tricked-Out Gloves: The Doctor presents new super-gloves that let the wearer hang onto anything without getting fatigued by concentrating their body's mass and weight into them, demonstrating it to Ruby by swinging from the Goblin ship's rope ladder one-handed, hundreds of feet in the air, as if his body were weightless. They can also be reversed to make the person super-heavy, which the Doctor and Ruby use to escape, and the Doctor later uses to pull down the airship. The only downside to the gloves is that they run on some sort of battery.
- The Unreveal: After rescuing baby Ruby from the goblins, the Doctor notices the person who delivered Ruby to the church walking away. He visibly considers approaching them to get some answers about Ruby's origins, but ends up deciding against it.
- Villain Song: "The Goblin Song".
- What Were You Thinking?:
- The Doctor sasses out Ruby for jumping onto the Goblin Ship's sky ladder without having any kind of a plan (let alone not even batting an eye at such an impossibility).The Doctor: What the hell are you doing?!
Ruby: I'm...just...there's—!
The Doctor: But what did you do that for?! Who sees a ladder and just pops on?! A ladder in the sky, and you thought, 'Yeah, I'll give that a go babes!'
Ruby: THEY'VE GOT THE BABY! - After saving a woman with a pram from the falling snowman, the Doctor chews her out for seemingly having her infant child out at midnight. Turns out, the pram merely contained Christmas shopping.The Doctor: A pram? At midnight?!
- The Doctor sasses out Ruby for jumping onto the Goblin Ship's sky ladder without having any kind of a plan (let alone not even batting an eye at such an impossibility).
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Ruby and Carla find the name "Lulubelle" ridiculous. The Doctor loves it though.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Goblins kidnap babies to eat them. It's kind of their thing, though the Doctor makes it clear that they won't be too bothered about eating adults.
NEW WHO
SPRING 2024
