Lucky Day

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Is it our lucky day? Let’s hope so cos Ruby Sunday is back. She faces life back on Earth without the Doctor. But when a dangerous new threat emerges, can Ruby and UNIT save her new boyfriend Conrad from the terrifying Shreek?

This is written by Pete McTighe, who previously wrote “Kerblam!” and also co-wrote “Praxeus” with Chris Chibnall, both for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor.

And it’s once again directed by Peter Hoar, who directed this series’ opener, “The Robot Revolution”.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Ruby really needs to stay away from country pubs. Stay in London, Ruby.

An interesting Doctor-lite and Companion-lite episode.

I can only guess why they both needed an episode off when there’s only 8 episodes.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Well another Doctor lite episode much like 72 Yards. I think the most important part came in the last few mins though. Is Conrad going to be responsible for releasing/foreboding the big bad from the finale episodes given his statement that he rejects the Doctors Reality and we know the final episode is titled the Reality War, especially as Mrs Flood releases him from prison. Enjoyed the the episode overall though surely Ruby should have realised Conrad was up to no good sooner.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

Well… I looked at Kerblam and Praexus on McTighe’s CV and I did have my doubts. Then the first half didn’t fill me with confidence. But yes it was a set up. A rather good one. Just goes to show, it was indeed Chris who done ‘it’; ‘it’ being whatever it is we don’t want.

Takeaways:

Conrad (a radical connan?) is the guy who gave The Doctor Belinda’s name before the start of Robot Revolution. What does that mean? Belinda is a plant? But he also knows about other companions. Is someone feeding him information? Hopefully not Victor Kennedy’s brother.

The V’linx turns up Rosie as well as Lang on his scan. What were the search parameters again? As you know I’ve got it in for the unexplained weird tech thing.

UNIT still has those damn recruitment problems.

All everybody thinks everybody else wants is a tax cut. Sovereignty? Tax Cut. Tariffs? Tax Cut. Public services? Tax Cut. Society? Tax Cut. Well observed.

Russ greatest hits volume 2: track 1, Love and Monsters, track 2 The Long Game.

Mrs Flood is apparently the Governor, but she must also be the Guv’nor. Yes, she has the keys but to where?

We still don’t get to meet Alien Life Form Garnett.

 

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Sheesh, first Belinda’s coercively-controlling boyfriend Alan, now Ruby’s deceptive fake-romancing boyfriend Conrad.

Both are young men filled with deep feelings of inadequacy who use AI and social media respectively to try and make themselves look and seem important – RTD is truly savaging the Silicon Valley tech-bros this season. I wonder if UNIT should be relying on the Vlinx quite so much…

I was genuinely upset for Ruby – that’s a real gut punch, finding out someone you thought you were falling for isn’t who they pretended to be at all and they were using you all along. Millie Gibson really shone in the episode – depicting Ruby’s vulnerability and toughness at once.

It still feels weird the way Ruby’s story has been handled. If the Doctor had mentioned her and how he was missing her, just once, in the first episodes of this series it would have helped. The fact Ruby is suffering from PTSD after her adventures with the Doctor is very convincing however, although she rather gave the impression the Doctor had left her, when in fact she chose to leave him. And why would Gatwa-Doc keep enough of an eye on Ruby to zap Conrad out of prison and give him a piece of his mind, but not pop in to give Ruby a hug, especially given this version of the Doctor is much less emotionally constipated than his predecessors?

None of the above helps the rumours about a behind-the-scenes falling out of some kind. We know how the tabloid press are, so that may all be complete b******* but Ruby’s story does feel a bit narratively awkward.

I find Millie Gibson a very charismatic performer, and the fact she’s hanging out with UNIT this episode makes me wonder if RTD’s plan has always been to hive her off into a UNIT spin-off. Of course, that may, sadly, given rumours about the end of the Disney partnership and even a hiatus for Who, not come to pass.

Something is timey-wimily off, as the version of the Doctor who zaps Conrad has not yet met Belinda, and yet Conrad knows who she is.

Just as Lux involved a world of make-believe (a cartoon) bleeding into reality, this episode involves two competing versions of reality; one where aliens are fake and the deep state is manufacturing them in order to control the population (Conrad’s version) and one where aliens are real and UNIT is keeping the public safe (let’s call that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s version). In this episode, given Conrad saw the TARDIS dematerialise when he was younger, and given Kate’s rather scary over-reach in releasing the Shreek onto Conrad on livestream, allowing him to get bitten, perhaps neither version is entirely accurate.

The microcosm no doubt hints at the macrocosm, so our collective theories that the Doctor may be in a Pantheon of Discord AU (the “mavity universe” across the salt line etc.) gathers pace. And maybe the fact neither Conrad’s version or Kate’s version of reality are the whole picture, perhaps also hints that the Doctor’s bi-generation is a symptom (or an additional cause) of the bifurcation of reality itself,

Mrs. Flood is definitely a wrong-un if she’s breaking the loathsome Conrad out of gaol.

This is the first episode I’ve felt the need to rewatch to see what clues I might have missed. So i’ll go and do that!

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

It was disappointing that The Doctor and Belinda hardly appeared in this episode. I don’t think there can be any excuse for that. It should be in all Doctors’ contracts that Doctor Who takes priority over any other plans they may have, so they mustn’t  make any such plans! It was great to see the lovely Ruby again, as well as her being featured so heavily in this episode. I had no idea how devious Conrad was or what he was really like until his conspirators unmasked after conning UNIT into arriving on the scene of a fake Shreek invasion, so that was very good writing. I thought it was hard to believe that Conrad complained about getting close to Ruby, including being smothered with lip gloss. It sounds amazing! I think being with Ruby would have made him change his mind about UNIT. I think his character should have been declared as gay after the fake Shreek invasion to make it more believable. As for what Conrad’s future holds, we’ll have to wait and see. Mrs Flood’s appearance at the end seems to indicate that she’ll release him from prison. I still don’t know who Mrs Flood is, though. She could be a Time Lord/Lady, or The Black Guardian in disguise.

[WhoHar @whohar]

Another solid ep.

Jemma Redgrave was immense again.

The monsters are human.

[WhoHar @whohar]

I Reject your Reality

This is significant.

UNIT really need to sort out their recruitment. And their security.

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

Indeed – it’s quite alarming that Ruby’s nan seems to have done more internet sleuthing about Conrad than UNIT did… Not to mention the man on the inside. I was wondering about the podcast that Conrad initially interviews Ruby for. Do we assume this went out live, or that he used the material in one of his exposés?

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

OK. just watched it. first thought: there has been a lot of word play in these shows. Such as:

Susan Triad – Sueteck

AI – Al

If we read Conrad backwards, it spell Darnoc. A quick search revealed that Darnoc is a malevolent spirit in online gaming.

Is it important? Dunno. Maybe…

Will think more, and maybe come back after the second glass of wine.

 

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Second (glass) reflections:

Did I enjoy it? Not really. It highlighted the ugly side of the world we inhabit in 2025. And frankly, I get more than I need of that from the news each day.

Doctor Who was magical when it took you to societies on distant planets, or to Earth’s past, where it then told stories of good and evil. You were exposed to important moral questions, but refracted through the exciting settings of foreign planets or Earth’s past. As we we were discussing it just now, Mrs Blenkinsop used the example of “The Star Beast”, which revealed the ugliness of the remnants of future Earth society’s treatment of the poor creature that provided that society with life and protection. Moffat was brilliant at making moral points, but also at entrancing you with the wonder of a foreign world. But RTD2 wants you, on the hand, to watch DoctorWho, but on the other hand to simply set it in, and tell you about, the world we live in every day.

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Did I enjoy it? Not really. It highlighted the ugly side of the world we inhabit in 2025. And frankly, I get more than I need of that from the news each day.

I stopped watching Years and Years for the same reason. Too bleak. Perhaps this version of Who reflects RTDs latter-years mindset.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@whohar @blenkinsopthebrave

enjoyable? It was a hefty continuation, or prequel as it turns out, of a season that is shaping up very nicely.

Worrying? Well, it seems like we’ve been warned about this for years. We thought, yeah that’s just stuff on computers, it’s not real. Data? Hrrrppp! What can they do with data? Get real.

It is real.

The other take aways… Lethbridge Stewart losing her cool… my god what if she rocked an eyepatch? A real one, not a Kovarian eye drive.

Also, the online world is driven as much by ego and self importance as data. The portrayal of Conrad has been criticised already; was shooting Lang in character? Was it a dramatic problem? A mistep? Or are there a lot of unduly sensitive people out there? Might we decide some of these bad actors are actually just… bad actors?

Lastly, who remembers The Last Battle? Narnia inside a barn. The nasty plebby dwarves (sorry can I put those next to each other in relation to CS Lewis?) anyway, they get chucked inside the barn and… they think they’re in a barn! Sorry if I’ve lost people.

I think it’s looking good. But will it make sense of the nonsense of… some of last year?

 

 

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

I do remember The Last Battle! The dwarves were so determined not to be taken in that they couldn’t be taken out of their barn/prison into the eternal version of Narnia which was actually all around them. A good call.

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

This is @dwnerdfrommars

I took a break from this website just because I was busy with life.

But then I saw this episode and a thought popped up: “Hey, is Mrs. Flood a version of the Rani?” She gives her vibe of the rani at the end when says “lucky day” to conrad.

Could Conrad be a strange version of the master?

Is Mrs. Flood the hand we saw at the end of the giggle?

Now I know, people have speculated she was the Rani for a while, and Clara, and Romana 1, and who knows who she could be.

You know she could literally be The Master at this point. We honestly need to wait and see what happens in The Reality War…

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

@ps1l0v3y0u

The Last Battle was one book that I respect. But it did make me think a lot, and the Narnia book series still holds up to this day. I enjoy the character development especially, and that reveal that Susan was going to a certain firey place shocked me a lot.

Can’t wait to see how Netflix adapts it. I sure am curious.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@dwnerdfrommars

Could Conrad be a strange version of the master?

Yes, he might well be. Given his behaviour, he has all the personaliy traits. And he knew about the Tardis, having seen it de-materialize when he was spying on Ruby.

In a way, I would like him to be a strange version of the Master, just so I could see him defeated by the Doctor, given how appalling he was to Ruby.

 

 

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I agree. The Master seems to  betray a lot, and the way Conrad betrays Ruby is pretty similar…

But here’s why I think Mrs. Flood has to be the Rani.

Remember how last season, they had the S. Triad anagram for Tardis? That’s when they tricked us into thinking Susan Foreman was coming back. But Flood…Rani….

Flip letters around in Rani, its Rain…. hmm

 

What is RTD cooking now…

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dwnerdfrommars

Rani = Rain = Flood? Hmmm.

I always thought the Rani had the same job description as Tecteun. Goons in The Division must have had day jobs right? Good cover. Shouldn’t really comment because I try to say away from Chris’s oevre.

People think Mrs F letting Conrad out must be a good thing but we don’t where he’s going or why. Look what happened to AL.
Is Conrad The Master…? A well known phrase or saying: ‘he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.’

I have a confession about The Last Battle. I’ll post it on The Winchester… probably.

[Whisht @whisht]

Another bang on the nose from RTD about the horrors of today’s world.
He’s not wrong, but he’s also not subtle.
I still kinda enjoyed it, inasmuch as it looked good.

The Shreek like playing (with their prey).
Monsters enjoying playing with their victims seems a theme…

And yes. ‘I deny this reality’.
Iconic moment.
Naturally RTD wants to play with it, just as the monsters enjoy… oh hold on.

;¬D

[WhoHar @whohar]

I found this an interesting read, from a number of perspectives:

https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/2nd-opinion-1-doctor-who-lucky-day-104524.htm

It contains some things we have touched on here, but also a critique of the writing.

One of the things the author points out is that the stories in this season bear a lot of similarities to stories in RTDs first Who run. Based on this, he then postulates that Mrs. Flood will be revealed as the Rani in the penultimate ep.  (cf. the Master reveal in Utopia) assuming that the licensing issue with the Bakers would be resolved. I’d not heard anything about this latter point, so I did some digging around. It seems that this licensing issue is maybe not as easy to resolve as he thinks and, if so, we could potentially discount the Rani from our hypotheses.

[winston @winston]

I watched it and I guess I liked it. It did keep me watching and I was totally surprised by Conrad’s betrayal and really peeved. I did think that he was using Ruby to get to the Doctor but I thought he was a fan, not a creep. Conrad has seen it all , the Tardis , the Doctor and even the Shreek and he knows they are real yet he has no problem peddling lies and hate to rile people up. I see so many politicians , pod-casters and various talking heads do the same thing everyday.   It is so frustrating to see someone standing in the rain ,soaking wet ,yet telling me it is a lovely sunny day. Conrad was very frustrating and like his real life counterparts ,very dangerous.

The Doctor was eloquent in his anger but Conrad denies his reality , believing in alternate facts I guess.

Well on to the next episode and I hope we see a bit more of the Doctor.

stay strong

Mrs. Flood you naughty lady, leave that creep in jail. By the way ,who are you?

[WhoHar @whohar]

we could potentially discount the Rani from our hypotheses

Counterpoint to this (obviously there’s a counterpoint): As I was searching for the licensing issue, I found out that Rani is Hindi for Queen. Belinda was called a queen in the first ep.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

Knowing in advance that the writer was responsible for Kerblam and Praxis, I wasn’t particularly optimistic about this episode. And what about alien predators named Shreek … who shriek?  But the Shreek were of course just the mcguffin in this story and in the event I enjoyed it, if enjoyed is the right word. In fact the more I have reflected on it the more I find to read into it, beyond the obvious subject of conspiracy theories and on-line influencers, and the more intriguing I find the character of Conrad.

@juniperfish

Something is timey-wimily off, as the version of the Doctor who zaps Conrad has not yet met Belinda, and yet Conrad knows who she is.

@ps1l0v3y0u

Conrad (a radical connan?) is the guy who gave The Doctor Belinda’s name before the start of Robot Revolution. What does that mean? Belinda is a plant?

Probably nothing so complicated. He was introduced to Belinda when he encountered her and the Doctor on New Years Eve 2007, when he was a child.  The fact that he teases the Doctor with this question all these years later is, though, one of the ‘tells’ which reveal that he knows perfectly well that the Doctor is a time traveller and that the original encounter made a big impression on him. He even kept the 50p coin the Doctor gave him, or else remembered it clearly enough to pretend that he had kept it when he met Ruby.

He is undoubtedly a very nasty piece of work, but it is interesting to speculate what turned him that way. As a child he ran back to his mother bursting to tell her about the blue box and the people he had just met, only to be slapped down for telling ‘another of your lies’, and spoiling her enjoyment of an evening out with what we may presume was her latest boyfriend. Was he a child with a rich and active imagination who kept being squashed, or was he always a deceitful liar?  And what was his motivation in applying to join UNIT?  Did he want to find out more about the mysterious Doctor, or was it always with the intention of undermining it so he could make a name for himself in the cybersphere?

Ultimately his behaviour seems to be rooted in denial and revenge.  As he says in their encounter at the end, ‘…. I don’t accept your reality, Doctor, I reject it’.  And that brings up a theme which seems to run through both last season and this. What exactly is the Doctor’s reality when we have seen it repeatedly questioned, beginning with The Wide Blue Yonder, when the Doctor invoked a superstition beyond the limit of the universe, where anything might be possible and all bets are off.  In what reality do the gods of the pantheon exist? Are goblins real? Did Ruby really live an alternative life in 73 Yards. What was reality for the inhabitants of Fine Time in Dot and Bubble?

In Lux, the Doctor and Ruby cross and re-cross the boundary between the real world of 1952 and the creative world of 2D animated film, and when they encounter a group of fans of the show, it is the fans who are fictional …. or perhaps not. Perhaps everything will disappear down a meta rabbit hole, or perhaps everything is, after all, a long term game of the gods. As the Doctor tells Mr Pye, when trying to explain Lux, ‘… when these vast creatures deign to look down on us our entire reality is in danger’.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@dwnerdfrommars  @blenkinsopthebrave

Is Conrad the Master ?  If he is he must have regenerated as a child and been adopted by a human mother. His encounter with the Doctor and Belinda on New Years Eve 2007 suggests otherwise, though.  This doesn’t mean that he isn’t being co-opted by who or whatever Mrs Flood represents. As I said in a previous post, my money at the moment is on her being a harbinger of the Very Big Bad to come. Or perhaps she is just another tease to test our acceptance of what is real in the Whoniverse.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@mudlark

Yes you’re right. I got confused about the 2007 new year; I thought THAT was Ruby and The Doctor too. But Conrad (I meant ‘radical conman’ btw – typo) still seems to have put the events of Robot Revolution in motion with a dig at The Doctor which he decides to make BEFORE Anita Dobson peers in, jangling her keys. Bit weird. Boot strap paradox or flawed VR design?

And, perhaps Conrad’s extensive research may have made him curious about companions, but this might also be an aspect of The Doctor that has particular charge for him? Could this explain Conrad’s overall and over the top gittishness?

Now, thinking of 2006 becoming 2007, did you see what looked like an unfeasibly vast arthropod in the teaser at the end? Do you remember the 2006 Christmas Special?

[WhoHar @whohar]

@mudlark

He was introduced to Belinda when he encountered her and the Doctor on New Years Eve 2007, when he was a child

I am still trying to figure the timelines out here, so bear with me.

The Doc and Belinda meet a young Conrad in 2007, the Doc gives him the 50 pence piece.

Conrad then sees the Doc (with Ruby) in 2024

Conrad last sees the Doc in 2025 (when the Tardis materialises around him in the prison cell). At this point in time, the Doc doesn’t know who Belinda is but knows what Conrad did to Ruby. This suggests to me that this is therefore pre-TRR (and may be the trigger for why the Doc went looking for Belinda).

Two thoughts – why did Conrad mention Belinda at all? Was it just mischief making, or did he take the (unexpected, presumably) final meeting to plant a seed? If so, why? It seems he will re-appear, given The Governor released him, so he therefore is of importance.

And, given the 2007 meeting was – from the Doctor’s perspective – later in his timeline than when he’d met Ruby, does this mean the Doctor knew who Conrad was when he gave him the 50 pence and therefore what he was about to do (or had done from the Doc’s perspective)? If so, it seems incredibly cold or calculating, and out of character.  That said, there are a lot of instances in this run where the Doc behaves differently to previous iterations. This could be as a result of in-story reasons e.g. the bi-generation, or maybe RTD2 wants to take the character in a new direction / it is a deliberate tonal shift / it is a consequence of the morality of the stories being told.

@ps1l0v3y0u

did you see what looked like an unfeasibly vast arthropod in the teaser at the end? Do you remember the 2006 Christmas Special?

Given that this episode is set in Nigeria, my immediate thought was that maybe it is connected (or borrows from) Anansi – the trickster god of West African (Akan) folklore.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@whohar @mudlark

Hadn’t thought about the 50p aspect of the bootstrap. That is very odd. Surely The Doctor wasn’t compelled to do it because he thought it was a fixed point?

Similar or related to the briefcase star seed code in Joy to the World perhaps? Is The Doctor beginning to suspect what is happening? Cos let’s face it we only think we have a clue.

Also, didn’t The Toymaker also have an almost prurient interest in The Doctor’s companions? Unless you think that was just a recap?

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@whohar  @ps1l0v3y0u

Yes, I think we have got the Doctor’s timeline sorted. Everything in the episode apart from the opening scene happens before the events in The Robot Revolution.  Seventeen years after the first encounter Conrad sees the Tardis and the Doctor for the second time, now accompanied by Ruby, and gets the idea of using her as a means of getting at the Doctor and/or UNIT, though by the time he has tracked her down she is back leading a relatively ordinary life. When he finally gets to see the Doctor again and teases him with the name of Belinda Chandra it is, I suspect, just as a way of saying, ‘I know something about you that you don’t know, tee hee’, but it results in him looking for and finding her – a compact little mini-loop.

I doubt whether we should invest too much significance in the 50p coin. I got the impression from the dialogue that the Doctor gave it to Conrad as a New Year good luck token and after that it served as a physical reminder of the encounter.

I’m still pondering the question of what could have turned the child Conrad into the thoroughly unpleasant and exploitative adult he became. If the brief glimpse we saw of the exchange with his mother is meant to be typical, I can well imagine that she would have no patience with any enthusiastic interest he took in the mysterious man in the blue box, and that when he told Ruby that she had never been there for him he was touching on the truth, even if he lied about her being dead. If an obsessive interest in the Doctor had also led to him being teased and bullied at school the narcissistic injury might well have been severe enough for him to start blaming the Doctor for everything wrong with his life. Denial and revenge, as I speculated in the post above.

Presumably we haven’t seen the last of Conrad, and if Mrs Flood has released him in order to recruit him it casts a sinister light on her activities.. And come to think of it,  what did she mean at the end of Lux when she said the show was for a limited run only, ending on May 25th?

[Mudlark @mudlark]

One tiny little nit pick:  are there really any prisons or police lock-ups in the UK where the cells still have those barred, cage type doors? But I suppose it is a conveniently universal way of indicating that it is a prison cell, which is fair enough.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@mudlark

Re: your question of what made the small child Conrad into the exremely unpleasant and exploitative adult, a different question popped into my head.  Why is no one on Earth (except the employees of UNIT) aware of the existence  of the Doctor? We have been watching this fictional show for 60 years about a population that never seems to remember the Doctor, or the carnage caused by the Daleks, the Cybermen, and upteen others. Now, 60 years later, there is a gigantic headquarters of UNIT in the center of London and yet there still seems to be a collective ignorance of  the existence of the Doctor.

Contemplating  that question makes me wonder if Conrad is not a human at all.

And also, that it is directly related to the the upcoming question of fiction v. reality.

So when Conrad says to the Doctor “I refuse to accept your reality”, that might not be an unpleasant human speaking.

Mind you, on the question of memory, I have reached that stage of life where I have trouble remembering what I had for dinner last night…

 

 

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

SPOILERS

[dwnerdfrommars @dwnerdfrommars]

SPOILERS

[WhoHar @whohar]

@mudlark

I’m still pondering the question of what could have turned the child Conrad into the thoroughly unpleasant and exploitative adult he became.

Yes, this aspect was a little underwritten, with just hints of abuse, and means we have to fill in the gaps. This is probably down to the episode run time. If Who was only on streaming, then it could alter the episode lengths to suit. As it is, the only option would be a two-parter, and a two part, Doctor lite, episode probably wouldn’t fly. Personally I’d make all the stories two parts, as it allows more depth of storytelling, but YMMV as the kids say.

@blenkinsopthebrave

So when Conrad says to the Doctor “I refuse to accept your reality”, that might not be an unpleasant human speaking.

Another member of the Pantheon perhaps? God of Untruth. It’s also interesting that he didn’t take the vaccine Ruby gave him. If he wasn’t human maybe he didn’t need it. Or it was a commentary on the Venn Diagram crossover of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.

@dwnerdfrommars

There’s a spoiler thread where this sort of thing is usually put. @craig can perhaps move it?

 

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@whohar

Actually, I would be a little disappointed if Conrad turns out to be a boring anti-vaxxer.  God of Untruth sounds much more cool.

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Yes, I hope he turns out to be something significant. I thought the actor playing him was great – he gave me Paul McGann vibes a bit – so it will be good to see him again.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@blenkinsopthebrave

We have been watching this fictional show for 60 years about a population that never seems to remember the Doctor, or the carnage caused by the Daleks, the Cybermen, and umpteen others.

Yes indeed. It was just about plausible in the BG days when stories set on earth generally affected relatively small numbers of people or were set in an imagined future earth.  Since RTD revived the show it has become an increasing challenge to ones ability to suspend disbelief. Are we to suppose that the Doctor and/or the Tardis have the ability to induce collective amnesia on the whole population, who presumably then invent more mundane reasons to explain the carnage? Conrad has evidently heard of cybermen, the Sycorax and even the Yetis in the underground who were well before his time – perhaps from Ruby who could have heard the stories from the Doctor, but he denies their existence even after his up close and personal encounter with the Shreek.

On the other hand there have been the hints that in last year’s season and this we are now dealing with alternate or altered realities, and if Conrad is more than just a twisted young man with a grudge, maybe it is a specific version of reality he is rejecting. He does say  ‘your reality, Doctor’. Either way I doubt we have seen the last of him, which is good, because I agree with @whohar that the actor playing him is very much worth watching.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@mudlark

Conrad:

As someone is going to say soon, ‘hurt people hurt people.’

As Morrissey might have had Anthony say to Cleopatra, ‘some b******ds are bigger than others.’

Who has always revelled in died-in-the-wool, invidious nasties. Some get a chance to save their reputation. Some are punished. Some apparently get away with it. And some, as Stephen Donaldson would have it, believe unswervingly in their own rectitude.

Who is also its own AU where few people recognise The Tardis. Maybe it’s because a different guy (or gal) keeps jumping out of it. But Elton Pope knew where his towel was. And his concrete slab.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@ps1l0v3y0u

All of that; and villains are usually more fascinating than heroes unless the hero has a sufficiently enigmatic or tortured back story.

[Author]

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