The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)

The Church on Ruby Road

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The Church on Ruby Road was the 2023 Christmas Special and opening episode of season one of Doctor Who broadcast on 25 December 2023.

	The Church on Ruby Road
	Fifteenth Doctor
	Ruby
	Goblins
	Manchester 2004, Notting Hill Christmas Day
	Russell T Davies
	Mark Tonderai
	Science fiction
	304
	1
	25 December 2023
	BBC One, Disney+
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Doctor Who television stories
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Next →	The Devil's Chord
Christmas Specials
← Previous	Twice Upon a Time
Festive Specials
← Previous	Eve of the Daleks

It was the first full episode to feature the Fifteenth Doctor, as played by Ncuti Gatwa, and introduce audiences to Ruby Sunday, the new companion, played by Millie Gibson, concluding the sixtieth anniversary year with the start of a brand new era, officialising the reboot of the series number.

This is the second time since the 2005 relaunch of Doctor Who that a Doctor's first full post-regeneration story was a Christmas Special, following the Tenth Doctor in that year's The Christmas Invasion ^[+]Loading...["The Christmas Invasion (TV story)"].

The story marked the return of the Christmas Specials to televised Doctor Who, having been absent since 2017's Twice Upon a Time ^[+]Loading...["Twice Upon a Time (TV story)"].

Synopsis

Long ago on Christmas Eve, a baby was abandoned in the snow. Today, Ruby Sunday meets the Doctor, stolen babies, goblins and perhaps the secret of her birth...

Plot

On the 1st of December 2023, a light nearly falls on someone, of two people who are in an interview about the origin of babies and names.

On the 23rd of December, the Doctor dances groovily to a theme in a nightclub. A woman called Ruby Sunday sees him and smiles. Then she accidentally knocks her glass of water off a table but the Doctor catches it just in time. Sunday considers this an impossibility - how did he travel so fast in time to catch the glass? The Doctor regrets not doing the same for Vicki in The Space Museum.

Some goblins capture a baby. Ruby climbs out of a window and stands on the roof of her house. She grabs a ladder floating in midair, as it drifts away from the house. The Doctor bounds over rooftops and chats to her. Then, he leaps and grabs the ladder, joining her. He reveals some black gloves that light up yellow, which enable one to convert all their mass and weight (mavitational field strength multiplied by mass) into the gloves. The pair ride the ladder up to its point of origin - a huge flying airship.

Inside, they crawl through some wooden vents and discover a horde of goblins. The baby is on a wooden conveyor belt, being carried towards a goblin king with a humongous tongue. The goblins sing about eating the baby. The Doctor uses his newly-determined dexterity with ropes to cut the ground beneath him and Ruby, making them plunge onto the conveyor belt, which ceases to move henceforth. There, the Doctor and his new companion have a song, which the goblins find interesting, and the Doctor explains his plan via his lyrics, referring to a master knot.

Escaping from the goblin horde, the Doctor and Ruby return to the flat, baby safely recovered. Then, Ruby disappears. The Doctor returns to the fridge, seeing that the entire history of Sunday has vanished. Many of the Christmas lights have been removed from the flat and there is a generally unhappy atmosphere to the place.

The Doctor travels in time and arrives at a church. He climbs to the roof and grabs a ladder, dangling off an airship. Using his powerful magnetic gloves, he hoists the airship down, causing the spire to slice through the goblin king (State of Decay reference) (also church roof, The Curse of Fenric, The Awakening). Having saved the baby, that is thus the origin of Ruby Sunday's name, being of the church on Ruby Road.

The Doctor takes off in the TARDIS. Ruby ascertains that the Doctor can travel through time via his reference to the often-mentioned Houdini, and rushes downstairs and out of the house. She finds the TARDIS and enters. She then leaves, walks around it and returns, to find the Doctor, leaning on a rail a little higher than the console. He claims his title true.

In a post-credits scene (link here to post credits scenes, e.g. Last Christmas bit from Series 8), the old woman says in surprise, Don't you know what a TARDIS is?

Cast

• The Doctor - Ncuti Gatwa
• Ruby Sunday - Millie Gibson
• Davina McCall - Herself
• Denzel - Bobby Bradley
• Trudy - Mary Malone
• Woman with Pram - Belinda Owusu
• Policeman - Barney Wilkinson
• Mrs Flood - Anita Dobson
• Abdul - Hemi Yeroham
• Carla Sunday - Michelle Greenidge
• Cherry Sunday - Angela Wynter
• Ruth Lyons - Gemma Arrowsmith
• Goblin 1 - Rachelle Beinart
• Goblin 2 - Jess Judge
• Goblin 3 - Dilu Miah
• Goblin 4 - Giuseppe Lentini
• Goblin 5 - Andrew Francis
• Goblin 6 - Lukas DiSparrow

Uncredited cast

• Baby Ruby Sunday - TBA
• Ruby Sunday's mother - TBA
• Lulubelle - TBA

Crew

• Writer - Russell T Davies
• Executive Producers - Jane Tranter, Julie Gardner, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Russell T Davies
• Director - Mark Tonderai

Worldbuilding

Ruby Sunday

• Ruby plays a GO:PIANO88 musical keyboard.

Notes

"Season's Streamings" promo image providing the story's title.

• The title of the story was officially announced by the official Disney+ Twitter account in a "Season's Streamings" promotional image on 6 November 2023, ahead of any BBC announcements.
  • This marks the return of the Christmas Specials; in the installment of Russell T Davies's column Letter from the Showrunner printed in DWM 585, Davies had stated that a "Christmas Special" would be returning as the format of the first full episode of the Fifteenth Doctor's tenure, although clarifying that he considered the term to be synonymous with the Festive Specials. The Disney+ announcement clarified that The Church on Ruby Road will be a traditional Christmas Special.
  • The first BBC acknowledgement of the title came in a press release on doctorwho.tv on 30 November 2023, revealing minor plot and casting details.
• The preview of this episode released in DWM 598 revealed a teaser of the plot and a snippet of dialogue between the Doctor and Ruby.
  • This preview also revealed Ruby would be part of a band.
  • Davies's A Letter from the Showrunner column printed in DWM 598, styled as a Doctor Who-themed "The Twelve Days of Christmas", revealed that scene eleven's stage directions began inside the TARDIS control room.
  • The interview with Michelle Greenidge and Angela Wynter in that issue contained further details about Ruby: she is a keyboardist; she is homesick for Manchester, having recently moved into Cherry's flat in Notting Hill with her mother Carla; and that she was a day old when she was abandoned on Christmas Eve.
• Parts of the script of this episode were used in auditions for Ruby Sunday; the script for self-tapes from potential actors were truncated from the scripts of this episode and the next, and the longer script for in-person auditions in London was adapted solely from this episode.
• The non-fiction feature The Next Doctor ^[+]Loading...["The Next Doctor (feature)"] — published in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 on 7 September 2023 — teased the casting of Dobson and Greenidge; the feature also hinted that the doors in the promotional images may have significance.
• The Church on Ruby Road will be the first time in the revived series that a Doctor's first Christmas special does not include "Christmas" in the title, following The Christmas Invasion ^[+]Loading...["The Christmas Invasion (TV story)"], A Christmas Carol ^[+]Loading...["A Christmas Carol (TV story)"], and Last Christmas ^[+]Loading...["Last Christmas (TV story)"].
• At sixteen days, The Church on Ruby Road will mark the third shortest gap between a regeneration story and its followup, behind The Power of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["The Power of the Daleks (TV story)"] at seven days and The Twin Dilemma ^[+]Loading...["The Twin Dilemma (TV story)"] at six days.
• "The Goblin Song" is an original song for this episode. It was released ahead of the episode on 11 December 2023 with proceeds going to Children in Need.
  • The short story A Message from Janis Goblin ^[+]Loading...["A Message from Janis Goblin (short story)"] was released by BBC Studios on 14 December 2023 to celebrate success of the song in the charts, also revealing the name of the singing goblin as Janis Goblin, a play on Janis Joplin.
  • The episode will also contain a rendition of "Carol of the Bells".
    • Davies clarified on Instagram that the goblin would be named "Janice" by the Doctor, as she resembles Janice from The Muppet Show.
  • Pixie Not is a pun on pop singer Pixie Lott, Ralph McTelf is a pun on folk singer-songwriter Ralph McTell, Bryan Fairy is a pun on pop-rock singer Bryan Ferry, and Gob Dylan is a pun on singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
  • While other original songs have been released with actors in character as the Doctor (MUSIC: Who is the Doctor?), this episode marks the first time both an incarnation of the Doctor and a companion have performed a musical number onscreen.
• Davies felt inspired by the door opened by the inclusion of the Toymaker in the preceding episode The Giggle ^[+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"] — as he deemed the Toymaker to be a fantasy character — so decided to include goblins, a traditional element of fantasy stories. He also sent the script to former showrunner Steven Moffat, who had a surprised realisation about the unused potential of the species within Doctor Who.
• This is the first episode that does not credit a white male performer as a regular cast member. Although William Hartnell was absent from Mission to the Unknown, he still received credit for contractual reasons.

Myths

to be added

Filming locations

• Notting Hill - Clifton, Bristol
  • Minto Road - Frederick Place, Bristol
  • Forbridge Street - Wetherell Place

Ratings

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

to be added

Continuity

• Ruby Sunday was first mentioned in the short story First Day of the Doctor ^[+]Loading...["First Day of the Doctor (short story)"], a story which contained a tantalisingly obscured snippet of the Fifteenth Doctor's diary.
• This is not the first story to depict a companion written by Russell T Davies being part of a band; Mickey Smith was part of the band No Hot Ashes, as revealed in his novelisation ^[+]Loading...{"noital":"1","1":"Rose (novelisation)","2":"novelisation"} of Rose ^[+]Loading...["Rose (TV story)"], although this connection was not present in the original episode.
• The Doctor is shown using psychic paper, which debuted in The End of the World ^[+]Loading...["The End of the World (TV story)"], and a new sonic screwdriver, which debuted in The World Tree ^[+]Loading...["The World Tree (audio story)"].
• This story marks the first time the Doctor is seen wearing his new clothes, as he only wore part of the Fourteenth Doctor's clothing earlier (The Giggle (TV story)).
• The Doctor mentions recently learning he was abandoned and adopted, as shown in TV:The Timeless Children ^[+]Loading...["The Timeless Children (TV story)"].
• Minto Road isn't original to this episode, as it was first mentioned by Mickey Smith in 2005's The Parting of the Ways ^[+]Loading...["The Parting of the Ways (TV story)"]. The pizza place mentioned by Mickey in that episode is even indirectly seen, as Cherry has a flyer for it on her fridge.
• The Doctor once again mentions meeting Harry Houdini. (TV: Planet of the Spiders ^[+]Loading...["Planet of the Spiders (TV story)"], etc.)

Home media releases

to be added

Gallery

Main article: The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)/Gallery

External links

• Official The Church on Ruby Road page on doctorwho.tv