And so we come to it, the final of the three 60th anniversary special episodes that must finally break up the dream team of Tennant, Tate and Davies and usher in the era of Ncuti and Disney+. That's a lot of pressure to put on a single episode. In order to bring in the new, Davies has looked to the past. Who could possibly bring back an old Doctor, and who would have reason? The Master is the obvious choice, but since he was the downfall of the last Doctor, he is too recent and diminished and enemy. Enter the Toymaker. The Celestial Toymaker was a storyline way back in the mists of William Hartnell's initial reign as the Doctor. Most of it is lost, wiped when the BBC overtaped programmes to save money on expensive video cartridges. The Celestial Toymaker lived in a realm where play was king, rules were absolute and to cheat was to be destroyed. The Doctor and his companions won the day then and escaped from that realm, but invoking superstition at the edge of the universe has allowed this almost omnipotent being into our reality and his powers are that of a god. How can a single Time Lord defeat such power? Ah, but that would be telling.

It is interesting that the Toymaker, who is considered by some as racially problematic for being appropriating Asian accoutrements whilst being played by the very white Michael Gough, is given a comedy German accent in this storyline, a seeming mis-step in an otherwise powerful narrative. Even when unmasked as a creature of immense power and the ability to speak however he likes, as well as stage impromptu Spice Girls musical numbers, the silly accent comes and goes without apparent rhyme or reason. Perhaps it is a symbol of his need for play, but it doesn't come across very well. Aside from this, Neil Patrick Harris creates a capricious and threatening adversary for the Doctor, one minute attacking him with living dolls and the next with his great failures in terms of fallen companions.

These more thoughtful moments are important. Companion Mel's bemoaning the loss of her family, Donna trying to understand what has happened to the Doctor in the time since he left her and moments spent with a new arrival, about whom we can say no more without major spoilers. We will say more below, but we'll warn you first. Aside from the sentiment that Davies manages to pack into his tale and its outcome, there is lots of running around, lots of information dumps delivered at speed to disguise the fact, an AI that is introduced and ignored with such determination that we can only wonder if there are plans for it later down the line. Oh, and there's Avengers Tower, cunningly not at all disguised as UNIT HQ, London. How Marvel aren't going to sue for copyright infringement, we cannot imagine.

Action, adventure, breakneck speed storytelling, some tinges of horror (they really are scary dolls!) and a suprisingly emotional ending that is as powerful as it is nonsensical. Somehow, Davies has managed to pull off his big finale.

OK, beyond this point there be SPOILERS, so don't read on any further if you don't want to know how all this is resolved.

Russell T Davies brought back the dream team to resolve the issue with Donna's outcome, but in this episode he resolves the issue with the Doctor. Since his return to our screens, the Doctor has been suffering from PTSD and other assorted mental and emotional issues that have been at the core of the character and thus the show. This has made it darker and more adult at times than it has ever been before. This is possibly not what Disney+ had in mind for their kiddie-centric channel when negotiating the deal to bring DOCTOR WHO to the rest of the world. By splitting the old Doctor and new Doctor into two people, rather than the traditional regeneration, Davies is able to slough off this old snakeskin of a weary, careworn Doctor and provide us with a shiny, new energetic and enthusiastic Doctor who will look at the new universe with more awe and wonder than was possible for his predecessors.

Ncuti Gatwa blitzes into the episode's final moments like a flash bomb of fresh air and energy. He is the complete opposite of Tennant's beaten down Doctor and shows just a hint of what he is going to bring to the show going forwards.

It's also a smart business move by Davies to keep Tennant alive and in play. If ever there are problems with falling audiences, he can just whip out the old Doctor to bolster things up. It doesn't show a lot of faith in the new guy and does leave some issues for any future episodes taking place on the current Earth. How could the old Doctor resist turning up to sort things out, but the dream team have been put on ice to be called on whenever the need arises.

What this all means going forward, only time will tell, but it hints at a brighter, more cheerful future and one aimed more squarely at the youthful end of the market. We only have to wait until Christmas to find out.

THE CHURCH ON RUBY ROAD first transmitted December 25th 2023

Ruby Sunday is a foundling, left on the doorstep of the eponymous church on Christmas Eve. She is also absurdly unlucky. This, though, is more down to the intervention of time-travelling goblins who lurk in the shadows and make bad things happen, feeding off the resulting chaos. They also like eating babies and Ruby's adoptive mother has just fostered another infant. Enter the Doctor.

It's the Fifteenth (are we still using this counting tradition following the Timeless Child revelations?) Doctor's first full episode and his Ncuti Gatwa's first chance to show what he can do as the new Doctor. To say it's a bit of curate's egg is an understatement.

We'll start with the good and that means Gatwa. He is the Doctor right from the start; irrepressible, charming, exhausting, able to deliver writer Russell T Davies' info dumps at lightning speed to make them seem less info-dumpy, emotional when required and willing to jump into any situation feet first and consider the consequences later. Gatwa fits the role perfectly, though more when the baby-snatching plotline kicks in than in the earlier sequences when he is stalking Ruby Tuesday almost as much as the goblins are. There is no explanation for how he came to be interested in her, or in the goblins, but since Ruby is a mystery placed in the show to be solved at a later date, that may yet become clear. Millie Gibson is perfectly fine as Ruby, but is hampered by the fact that her character is a cookie cutter copy of Rose Tyler. Get Billie Piper to deliver her dialogue and you wouldn't be able to tell any difference at all. As in the new series' very first episode Rose, we are first introduced to the companion and then the Doctor bursts in on her life to resolve a problem she didn't even realise existed. It's an effective way of drawing the audience in, but one he has used before. We are left to wonder if the transfer to Disney+ has given him a licence to dust off all his old tricks for a (mainly) new audience.

And he's certainly borrowing a few things in this episode. The goblins are straight out of LABYRINTH, though their king owes more to Jabba the Hutt than David Bowie, and they get a whole musical number to prove it. The whole erasing of Ruby from history is straight out of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and the early antics of the goblins owes something to GREMLINS. The stitching together of these elements works better in some cases than others. The goblins and their loathesome king are purely for the kids, as is the half-baked musical number. We have to ask why they eat babies when the Doctor has already said they feed of chance and serendipity. Judging from the size of the goblin king, the baby wouldn't touch the sides going down, so why are all the other goblins so happy and why do they need a cabaret in order for the king to feed? Also, how does a giant floating galleon made of wood and rope avoid radar and being shot down for invading UK airspace. Whilst we're at it, how does the Doctor's violent resolution of the situation cause not only the goblins, but the ship itself as well to fade out of existence whislt leaving the baby intact? This is very much a fantasy story for the younger audience rather than science fiction. This may be an indication of the direction of the show post Disney+ involvement. If so, it may not be an improvement.

And just whilst we're having a whinge, the sonic screwdriver can't even be called a sonic screwdriver any more because it looks more like a game console controller. Who thought that was a good idea? The interior of the Tardis remains glorious, however.

Christmas specials are never the best time to judge DOCTOR WHO, so we wait until May and the renumbered Season 1 (another bow to the Disney+ new audience) to make that final judgement.