Doctor Who: “Lucky Day” is “Love and Monsters” Redux – 2nd Opinion, Take 1

Gustaff Behr reviews the fourth episode of Series 15.

I’ll be honest: I’m torn on this episode. On one hand, it delivers some genuinely surprising twists and deep-cut callbacks. On the other, if you’ve been paying even the slightest attention to the last decade of Doctor Who, it’s painfully predictable.

Let’s start with something that immediately jumped out at me from the very first Doctor scene: Series 15 is just a redux of Russell T Davies’ first go at Doctor Who. I mean, “Lux” was essentially “The Idiot’s Lantern”, “The Well” is “Midnight” and “Lucky Day” is just an updated version of “Love and Monsters”:

A male character meets the Doctor and his companion as a kid, grows up to become obsessed, assembles a team of likeminded individuals, has a side-plot where they seduce a female character close to the Doctor in order to use them for their own personal agenda.

Given this course so far, I’m going to throw out this prediction, “Wish World” will mirror “Utopia” and end with Mrs. Flood being revealed as the Rani (the licensing dispute finally resolved with the Bakers).

The episode’s biggest flaw? It constantly teases it’s about to subvert your expectations, only to NOT do that and play out exactly the way you’d expect. For a while, I thought the show might turn Conrad into a decent person (even though he fits the expected demographic for TV villain these days), then when I started liking him the more he and Ruby spent time together and realised this show might accidentally feature a healthy heterosexual relationship where someone isn’t killed or turns traitor—which we haven’t seen (even in supporting roles) since Amy and Rory, nearly 15 years ago.

Then it seemed like the show would kill him off as penance for being a thinly veiled Andrew Tate proxy. That would’ve at least been cathartic after watching what he put Ruby, Kate, and UNIT through. But no—the episode loses its nerve AGAIN and lets him live. When the Doctor finally arrived, Dutch angle and all, I was bracing for a “Family of Blood”-style righteous fury.

LET’S EFFING GO!

Instead, we got a speech on bigotry. A great speech—one of the most “Doctor” moments in a while—but it’s not what would have made me happy. That sentence probably sums up my overall feeling about Doctor Who right now: You can’t have “happy.”

Still, this was easily the best episode of the season so far. Millie Gibson is phenomenal as Ruby, both before and after the Conrad reveal. You feel her betrayal, and it fuels your desire to see Conrad taken down. The episode also explores a rarely touched theme in Doctor Who: the personal psychological aftermath of time travel. With more runtime, I would’ve loved to see how Ruby’s been coping up to this point.

Much like “73 Yards,” the Doctor barely features in this story—which isn’t a great sign for this incarnation if his best episodes barely include him. Still:

• Times the 15th Doctor has cried: 15 (across 14 episodes)
• Times he’s actually saved the day: 2 / 14

Shirley returns… for reasons. Conrad’s jab about her living off benefits and contributing nothing is obviously ableist/misogynistic, but frustratingly, the episode doesn’t do much to challenge the latter from a character or story perspective. On rewatch, aside from delivering some exposition, Shirley doesn’t actually contribute to the plot or grow in any meaningful way.

Kate, by contrast, finally gets her “blow up the Silurian” moment—what we in writing circles call character development. Jemma Redgrave is an exceptional actress, but her recent appearances haven’t given her the depth or gravitas she’s used to with Big Finish. This time, though, she’s given something to sink her teeth into. She delivers a powerful speech to Conrad, condemning him for jeopardizing lives and dismantling everything she and her father built. Then she stands firm as the Shreek moves in for the kill, watching with icy composure—even mocking Conrad as he pleads for mercy. And when it’s over, she brushes off concern that Geneva might take action against her. That’s the kind of dramatic weight and moral complexity that makes Doctor Who compelling.

Jonah Hauer-King delivers a standout performance as Conrad, skillfully walking the line between charm and repulsion. He manipulates both the characters and the audience, drawing us in just enough before pulling the rug out.

Where the episode stumbles, however, is in its approach to social commentary, or more accurately, its lack thereof. Instead of offering thoughtful critique, it leans into what feels more like another blunt opinion dressed up as narrative. As previously mentioned, Conrad and his followers clearly draw inspiration from the likes of Andrew Tate, portraying them as delusional, vile, and out of touch. But that’s not commentary, that’s a widely accepted viewpoint at this point.

True commentary engages with opposing perspectives. I’m not saying it should validate them, but it should at least explore them deeper. Think Captain America: Civil War. The film presents a genuine ideological conflict: personal freedom versus institutional oversight. Under Captain America’s unchecked autonomy, a global summit is bombed and countless lives are lost—suggesting the need for accountability. Under Iron Man’s state-sanctioned control, the Avengers tear up an international airport, endangering civilians and creating chaos—suggesting government control isn’t always the answer either. Social commentary works best when it presents opposing viewpoints with enough depth to let viewers wrestle with the ethical and emotional complexity.

No easy answers, just a layered moral dilemma.

This episode had the framework for that kind of nuance. The anti-vax metaphor is framed through people like Conrad denying the existence of aliens, suspecting UNIT of cover-ups etc. But it never follows through. Imagine if Conrad had been a victim of such a cover-up—say, his mother was killed in an alien attack that UNIT buried to protect public calm. Suddenly, his motives becomes grounded in genuine trauma, rather than mustache twirling Tate-figure. His distrust of institutions like UNIT and hatred of people like Ruby becomes understandable, even sympathetic. He’s not just a foil or a meme; he’s a man broken by loss and driven by a need for justice—however misdirected.

That would’ve been real commentary and more entertaining: exploring how institutions failing the public can radicalize them, how truth withheld in the name of order breeds dangerous mistrust. Instead, the episode flattens its themes into broad strokes and easy villains.

I’ll close out this review with a reminder about the dangers of turning fictional narratives into rigid ideological preaching. Picking a side and then using it as a moral megaphone might feel righteous in the moment, but social norms evolve—and what sounds progressive today might age like milk tomorrow.

Take “The Idiot’s Lantern” from 2006. At the time, the episode seemed to push the idea that “no matter how toxic or abusive a relationship is, you should give it another chance.”

Back then, it was framed as forgiveness.

These days, we call that enabling.

What once passed for a redemptive arc now reads as a troubling dismissal of abuse. That’s the risk when storytelling trades in moral absolutism instead of nuance. Fiction doesn’t exist to validate our current worldview—it exists to question, provoke, and challenge it. If a show like Doctor Who wants to keep resonating, it needs to trust its audience to navigate moral ambiguity, not just spoon-feed them easy ‘answers’.