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Doctor Who: Lucky Day (Review)

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Darren

“At least your special effects are improving.”

To be fair, a pretty solid run had to end at some point, and a Pete McTighe script is as good a place as any.

Lucky Day is an interesting episode. It solidifies the sense of this second Davies era as its own distinct object with its own distinct rhythms and structures. Just as one might pair Space Babies and The Robot Revolution, The Devil’s Chord and Lux, or Boom and The Well, Lucky Day is very obviously designed for the same slot as 73 Yards. This is another Doctor-lite episode built around Ruby Sunday, featuring U.N.I.T., set on contemporary Earth. It even brushes against rural folk horror, invoking The Wicker Man in its discussion of English villages.

Food for thought.

However, the episode takes a sharp and ambitious turn in its second half. As with a lot of recent Doctor Who, Lucky Day is an episode engaged with the larger context of the show and its place in the popular discourse. It is obviously structured around things that matter to both Davies and McTighe. It is commendably self-aware and playful. There is, on paper, a lot to appreciate about Lucky Day.

The problem is the execution, as the episode’s themes break like waves against the actual narrative itself. Lucky Day only really makes sense as metatext, but cannot support the weight of its big ideas whether inside or outside the fictional universe. It’s an unlucky break.

Absolutely floored.

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: alt-right, conspiracy theories, doctor who, fandom, media, metaphor, Online, paranoia, peter mctighe, ruby sunday, russell t. davies, skepticism, u.n.i.t., youtube | 4 Comments »

The X-Files – Trevor (Review)

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Darren

This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.

Trevor is a perfectly solid monster of the week episode of The X-Files.

In many respects, it feels like the episode that Alpha desperately wanted to be. It is very much a traditional story in a season that has been relatively untraditional in its structure and format. Mulder and Scully are assigned to a case that is explicitly paranormal and set about investigating it to the best of their ability. Along the way, Mulder and Scully become passengers in a story that involves the guest cast. Trevor is not as sly or self-aware as something like Monday, Arcadia or Milagro. It is a straightforward case of the week.

“I wanna take his face… off…”

There are other similarities between Trevor and Alpha. Alpha was an episode that really wanted to tackle a very traditional monster in a very traditional way – it was a very disappointing attempt at a werewolf episode, following on from Shapes in the first season. In a way, Trevor alludes to a more classical monster story than most X-files. Wilson “Pinker” Rawls is effectively a wraith avenging himself upon those who did him wrong, the embodiment of past mistakes returned to haunt the living. He is a ghost, even beyond his ability to walk through walls.

Of course, Trevor provides a suitably pseudo-scientific explanation for what Rawls does, and the climax builds to an intimate family tragedy. However, Trevor feels very much like a classic ghost story about a man returned from the dead to visit retribution upon the living.