Doctor Who evaluation: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

He scales church towers and leaps throughout rooftops like Spider-Man. A pair of anti-gravity gloves allow him to swing by means of the air like Batman. 

His leather-based overcoat is virtually Superman’s cape. And his particular results funds should be the envy of the X Men.

Impossibly elegant, athletic and balletic, actor Ncuti Gatwa has reinvented the Time Lord as a superhero.

As Doctor Who (BBC1) returned for a Christmas particular with an all-new forged and author Russell T Davies again operating the present, the message was clear: Auntie has massive ambitions.

This Who lays down a problem to the streaming video giants comparable to Amazon and Netflix. 

Impossibly elegant, athletic and balletic, actor Ncuti Gatwa has reinvented the Time Lord as a superhero (he’s pictured with Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday) 

Thanks to a reputed £100million money injection from Disney, the Doctor is ready to journey the universe in model.

And due to Davies’s gentle and witty contact, the present has left behind the weary, wokey preaching that made the Jodie Whittaker period nearly unwatchable.

For a begin, this Doctor can dance. We already had a touch of that, in David Tennant’s closing episode, however Gatwa left us in little question with a nightclub scene the place he whirled on the ground in a vest and kilt, doing one thing between the Cossack sword dance and a Highland fling.

If we have been impressed, so was Ruby Sunday, performed by former Coronation Street actress Millie Gibson, simply 19 and the Doctor’s youngest co-star since Matthew Waterhouse as Adric greater than 40 years in the past.

Gatwa and Gibson carried out a song-and-dance routine on a flying pirate ship crewed by a whole bunch of stomping, snarling goblins. West End numbers seem like an indicator of the New Who: The earlier episode noticed an absolute spectacular staged by Neil Patrick Harris as The Toymaker.

This time, the lyrics served the double objective of giving Gatwa a chance to show he can sing, and explaining the subsequent plot twist. Pointing to the ship’s rigging, he warbled: ‘The grasp knot has been undone, That’s after we begin… having enjoyable!’

Cue an escape from sure dying, swinging from the ropes like Douglas Fairbanks at his silent film zenith.

Another of the Hollywood references – and little question Whovians might be ferreting them out for weeks – was to the basic Christmas film It’s A Wonderful Life. In a quick detour to another timeline, the Doctor found how a lot sadder the world of Ruby’s household would have been with out her.

As Doctor Who (BBC1) returned for a Christmas particular with an all-new forged and author Russell T Davies again operating the present, the message was clear: Auntie has massive ambitions

Anita Dobson made an look, as a nosy neighbour who appeared suspiciously unalarmed by the best way a blue police field saved materialising and vanishing from the pavement exterior her house.

She inspired Ruby to look inside, with the air of a girl who is aware of greater than she’s saying. It would not be like Davies to create such an intriguing character and do nothing along with her, so maybe the previous East-Enders star will reappear in subsequent yr’s collection.

We weren’t allowed to look contained in the Tardis door ourselves till the ultimate seconds of the hour, regardless of a couple of tantalising glimpses.

It transpires there’s now a curving staircase across the central console. We can anticipate Gatwa to make full use of this, to make sweeping entrances like Bette Davis. There’s one other basic Hollywood echo…

But this episode was mainly about Ruby and her mysterious origins – left on the doorstep of a church as a child on Christmas Eve by a cloaked stranger, and stolen by the goblins who deliberate to gobble her up.

The Doctor hopped again in time to rescue her along with his super-strength gloves, dragging the King Goblin’s getaway ship out of the sky and impaling him on the church spire.

Who the determine was in hood and boots, materialising out of a snowstorm to desert the infant she carried in her arms, we did not uncover. No doubt Ruby must save the galaxy a couple of instances earlier than she has a solution.

Davina McCall could not assist her, in a glowing cameo as a TV presenter that despatched up her position on ITV’s Long Lost Family, which reunites shut family after years of separation. She met Ruby for a studio interview bedevilled by mischievous goblins who pulled out the plugs and overturned the lights.

When we subsequent noticed Ruby, she was sitting in a wheelchair along with her arm in a sling and one leg in plaster. The goblins have been tormenting her for enjoyable: ‘I’ve been hit, I’ve been thrown, I’ve been bumped,’ she complained. ‘I fell off a ship… on dry land. I’ve been trampled by a moose.’

Then a colossal Christmas tree toppled on to her. But for the well timed intervention of the Doctor, she would have been skewered by the Star of Bethlehem.

Davina McCall made a glowing cameo as a TV presenter that despatched up her position on ITV’s Long Lost Family, which reunites shut family after years of separation

We weren’t allowed to look contained in the Tardis door ourselves till the ultimate seconds of the hour, regardless of a couple of tantalising glimpses

Davina’s DNA group did not discover any hint of Ruby’s dad and mom, which delighted her adoptive mom Carla (Michelle Greenidge) and gran Cherry Sunday (Angela Wynter).

The undeniable fact that Ruby, who’s white, occurred to develop up with a black household was not laboured or analysed – it was simply a part of life’s wealthy tapestry. So was the truth that, on the nightclub, the Doctor was dancing with a person. You’d solely spot that in the event you have been watching fastidiously: It merely wasn’t an enormous deal.

If this is a sign that Doctor Who is lastly over its tiresome obsession with sexual id, race and Britain’s empire previous, hallelujah – that basically is a Christmas miracle.