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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Martin Belam

Doctor Who: Rogue – season one episode six recap

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Rogue (Jonathan Groff) meet in episode six.
The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Rogue (Jonathan Groff) meet in episode six. Photograph: James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios

After four decidedly off-the-wall episodes, including two in which Ncuti Gatwa hardly appeared and one where he was immobile on a landmine, it was enjoyable to get a relatively straightforward Doctor Who episode. This was a good old sci-fi costume drama, complete with a murderous, shape-shifting, body-draining alien menace seeking thrills while trying to destroy the world.

The explicit references to fandom, cosplay and a season finale only added to the feeling that much of this series has been incredibly meta, with frequent fourth-wall breaks and callbacks to its own earlier episodes. Indeed, the sparring between Rogue (Jonathan Groff) and the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) felt like a turbo-charged version of when the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) met Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) in 2005’s The Doctor Dances, including having a joke about the sonic screwdriver putting up furniture.

Whereas Capt Jack was always flirting with Rose Tyler and the Doctor (and in fact pretty much anything that moved) Rogue had his heart set on only one, and the show played up how scandalous that match would have been in the early 1800s. Indira Varma as the Duchess of Pemberton, ring-leader of the Chuldur, was a literal scream for everybody attending her party, and didn’t waste a second of her time on screen.

The Doctor’s dilemma in the end over saving Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), and Rogue’s willing self-sacrifice, neatly tied up the episode, but also teed up a potential sequel featuring Rogue at some point. Too much was made of the Doctor and Rogue’s blossoming relationship to leave it as a one-off, surely?

Sum it up in one sentence?

The Doctor gets his heart broken while attending a Bridgerton convention in 1813.

Life aboard the Tardis

Having Rogue invite the Doctor to travel across the stars with him was a novel inversion of the usual “Time Lord and their companion” dynamic. The fact that there was a whole clutch of Chuldur on the rampage seeking to become the Doctor resembled the Family of Blood from Human Nature, as did the Doctor’s desire to see them suffer for a long time after he believed they had killed Ruby. For the second episode in a row, Ruby ended up as the Doctor’s emotional support after he suffered a devastating blow.

Fear factor

The Chuldur might not have been the most menacing of villains in their natural state, but it is always jolly good Doctor Who fun to start the show off with a murder in the gardens of a stately home. The revelation that Camilla Aiko was also a Chuldur was a deft twist after what we saw of the naivety of her earlier interactions with Ruby.

Mysteries and questions

At one point Rogue says bounty hunting has a lot more paperwork “since we got that new boss”. Could that be the same boss referred to by the Meep at the end of The Star Beast?

Russell T Davies side-stepped the question of where he places Jo Martin’s fugitive incarnation in the Doctor’s timeline, by having the Doctor’s previous incarnations appear in a jumbled-up order. But Richard E Grant is canon as the Doctor on television now? It would have been even more wild if Susan Twist had appeared in that past Doctor line-up, but she was the portrait with judgmental eyes this time.

Deeper into the vortex

  • We first saw the Doctor kiss someone when Paul McGann kissed Daphne Ashbrook playing Grace Holloway in the 1996 TV Movie. Fans were furious. Since then the Doctor has kissed – with varying degrees of romantic intensity or consent – Rose Tyler, Capt Jack, Astrid Peth, Amy Pond, River Song, Rory Williams, Tasha Lem, Missy, Jenny Flint and Elizabeth I among others. In The Day of the Doctor, the War Doctor, seeing the 10th Doctor marry Elizabeth I, even asks “Is there a lot of this in the future?”

  • Talking of Astrid Perth, the Doctor making Rogue’s spaceship play Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head isn’t the first time the Voyage of the Damned guest star has been made canon in Doctor Who. In 2006 episode The Idiot’s Lantern, before the Australian pop star had appeared in the show, David Tennant’s 10th Doctor said “It’s never too late, as a wise person once said. Kylie, I think.”

  • The Doctor said: “No thank you, sir,” to being called “Doc”, which Graham (Bradley Walsh) habitually called the 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker).

  • As incredible as it may seem, Rogue is the first episode of Doctor Who not to feature a writing credit for one of Chris Chibnall, Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat since Maxine Alderton wrote The Haunting of Villa Diodati for Whittaker’s Doctor in February 2020, back when the much-missed Dan Martin was doing these recaps.

  • And speaking of much-missed, we said goodbye this week to William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton with such aplomb in the original 1963 Tardis crew. He died aged 99, having set a world record in 2022 when he reprised the character in 2022’s The Power of the Doctor after a gap of 57 years.

Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright arrive back in London in 1965 after their adventures in the Tardis

Next time: The Legend of Ruby Sunday

An eight-part series is simply whizzing by, and we are already hurtling towards a two-part season finale. Bonnie Langford! Lenny Rush! Jemma Redgrave! More Susan Twist! A Satanic-looking horned alien hidden in static! Vworp Vworp!

Season 1

Episodes 1 & 2: Space Babies / The Devil's Chord

Episode 3: Boom

Episode 4: 73 Yards

Episode 5: Dot and Bubble

Episode 6: Rogue

Episode 7: The Legend of Ruby Sunday

Episode 8: Empire of Death

Christmas special: Joy to the World

60th anniversary specials

Special 1: The Star Beast
Special 2: Wild Blue Yonder
Special 3: The Giggle
Christmas special: The Church on Ruby Road

Flux / Series 13

Chapter one: The Halloween Apocalypse
Chapter two: War of the Sontarans
Chapter three: Once, Upon Time
Chapter four: Village of the Angels
Chapter five: Survivors of the Flux
Chapter six: The Vanquishers
New Year's Special: Eve of the Daleks
Spring special: Legend of the Sea Devils
BBC centenary special: The Power of the Doctor


Series 12

Episode 1: Spyfall part one
Episode 2: Spyfall part two
Episode 3: Orphan 55
Episode 4: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror
Episode 5: Fugitive of the Judoon
Episode 6: Praxeus
Episode 7: Can You Hear Me?
Episode 8: The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Episode 9: Ascension of the Cybermen
Episode 10: The Timeless Children
New Year's special: Revolution of the Daleks

Series 11

Episode 1: The Woman Who Fell to Earth
Episode 2: The Ghost Monument
Episode 3: Rosa
Episode 4: Arachnids in the UK
Episode 5: The Tsuangra Condundrum
Episode 6: Demons of the Punjab
Episode 7: Kerblam!
Episode 8: The Witchfinders
Episode 9: It Takes You Away
Episode 10: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
New Year's special: Resolution

Series 10

Episode 1: The Pilot
Episode 2: Smile
Episode 3: Thin Ice
Episode 4: Knock Knock
Episode 5: Oxygen
Episode 6: Extremis
Episode 7: The Pyramid at the End of the World
Episode 8: The Lie of the Land
Episode 9: Empress of Mars
Episode 10: The Eaters of Light
Episode 11: World Enough and Time
Episode 12: The Doctor Falls
2017 Christmas special: Twice Upon A Time

Series 9

Episode 1: The Magician's Apprentice
Episode 2: The Witch's Familiar
Episode 3: Under The Lake
Episode 4: Before The Flood
Episode 5: The Girl Who Died
Episode 6: The Woman Who Lived
Episode 7: The Zygon Invasion
Episode 8: The Zygon Inversion
Episode 9: Sleep No More
Episode 10: Face The Raven
Episode 11: Heaven Sent
Episode 12: Hell Bent
2015 Christmas special: The Husbands of River Song
2016 Christmas special: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Series 8

Episode 1: Deep Breath
Episode 2: Into The Dalek
Episode 3: Robot of Sherwood
Episode 4: Listen
Episode 5: Time Heist
Episode 6: The Caretaker
Episode 7: Kill The Moon
Episode 8: Mummy on the Orient Express
Episode 9: Flatline
Episode 10: In the Forest of the Night
Episode 11: Dark Water
Episode 12: Death In Heaven
2014 Christmas special: Last Christmas

Series 7

Episode 1: Asylum of the Daleks
Episode 2: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
Episode 3: A Town Called Mercy
Episode 4: The Power of Three
Episode 5: The Angels Take Manhatten
2012 Christmas special: The Snowmen
Episode 6: The Bells of Saint John
Episode 7: The Rings of Akhaten
Episode 8: Cold War
Episode 9: Hide
Episode 10: Journey to the Centre of the Tardis
Episode 11: The Crimson Horror
Episode 12: Nightmare in Silver
Episode 13: The Name of the Doctor
50th Anniversary special: The Day of the Doctor
2013 Christmas special: The Time of the Doctor

Series 6

Episode 1: The Impossible Astronaut
Episode 2: Day of the Moon
Episode 3: The Curse of the Black Spot
Episode 4: The Doctor's Wife
Episode 5: The Rebel Flesh
Episode 6: The Almost People
Episode 7: A Good Man Goes To War
Episode 8: Let's Kill Hitler
Episode 9: Night Terrors
Episode 10: The Girl Who Waited
Episode 11: The God Complex
Episode 12: Closing Time
Episode 13: The Wedding of River Song
2011 Christmas special: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

Series 5

Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour
Episode 2: The Beast Below
Episode 3: Victory of the Daleks
Episode 4: The Time of Angels
Episode 5: Flesh and Stone
Episode 6: The Vampires of Venice
Episode 7: Amy's Choice
Episode 8: The Hungry Earth
Episode 9: Cold Blood
Episode 10: Vincent and the Doctor
Episode 11: The Lodger
Episode 12: The Pandorica Opens
Episode 13: The Big Bang
2010 Christmas special: A Christmas Carol

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