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Weekly podcasts that contain a multiverse of opinions on All Things pop culture, exclusive videos and weekly live streams where we laugh, scream, and sometimes have technical difficulties, all created by folks like you, the gamers, the film nerds, the TV, bingers, comic book lovers, bookworms, and pop culture enthusiasts all in one giant bowl of beautiful disgusting soupy goodness at couchsoup.com. Goodness gracious, welcome back to the watching now podcast from Couch Soup, the delirious Doctor and the regal Ruby Sunday are back for the sixth episode of Doctor Who - Rogue. Goodness gracious, don't we have a lot to say about this one? I don't know why I'm turning into a Mrs. Doubtfire, but never mind. Without further ado, let me introduce to you our panel the Countess Charlotte. Help us on the wade here. Hello! Hello Baron Ben, I'm Diane, don't mind me, I'll be replaced with my ship shifter any minute. The Duke draw, I'm just here for the cosplay, don't mind me. And me Ian, the lovely Popper, in it, in it, we got a lot to talk about today and we have very much a Bridgerton episode, I don't know what Bridgerton is, maybe someone else does but I don't know what it is. Bridgerton is Jane Austen fan fiction, so it's taking the regency era of England and kind of flipping down its head a little bit, taking out some of a little bit of the stereotypes of race and things like that, there's a lot of race mingling, which didn't really happen, but it's fun. Let me put it this way, imagine if everyone in Downton Abbey was extremely horny and had way more sex. It's much like Outlander and the fact that it's based on books and there's actually less sex in the TV show than there is in the books. It's the kind of shit that I don't watch, sorry Netflix, it's fair, it's not for everybody. I'll have to talk about today so let's go straight into this non-spoiler review. Brief overview, the Doctor and Ruby travel back in time to 1813 for a Bridgerton, I guess, inspired party. Unfortunately there are shapeshifting aliens being tracked by a handsome rogue bounty hunter. Rogue's name as well, we'll get to that. I think that this show needs to stop giving me so many names to call my ex-husband. He is now Lord Stilton, a very difficult cheese. It was very fun. I'm a Jane Austen freak anyway, so I mean I even have a pop figure of Jane Austen down here so I'm a nerd. I like seeing the costumes, I like seeing some of the Bridgerton-esque kind of things. This episode gets a little weird and gets a little too into old stuff that we've kind of seen before. I like Stilton as a cheese so it's okay. But I can see it is slightly difficult to smell and it's a little pungent. Man I love this episode, I think Shouti goes down for first season. He knows his Doctor who, like who he is as the Doctor, better than I think anyone may be even better than Matt Smith. I thought Matt Smith the first episode knocked it out of the park. He kind of knew who his Doctor was going to be a little bit more defiant. Shouti just, the charisma on this guy is just incredible. He just runs it buddy. It's so good. He makes me laugh. He makes every time he's on screen I smile. He's charming, but when he turns on action mode it's there and there's so much emotion. He's probably the most emotional Doctor I think we've come across in a long time. There's tears of sorrow, there's tears of happiness. It's interesting. I love the commentary on cosplay, I love the Bridgerton of it all. I thought that was fun. It kind of had a little bit of mystery, but also a little bit of like head fake here and there. Then I had some great little sci-fi moments I thought that were fun too with the Rogue. I watched it with my wife and her sister and they really enjoyed it too. I guess that's sort of a litmus test for not only Doctor Who fans, but fans like acquaintances of Doctor Who that aren't really into it, but thought the episode was kind of fun with all the pop culture references. Yeah, I really enjoyed this. I got to say man, this episode really wasn't for me in such a way as I'm like, it's not that the story itself was bad, like having the Doctor I'm a flash in the pan romance is fine. I mean, technically speaking, it's not so long since he lost his wife and others, you know, Rose, River Song, you know, he's outdoors, he has romances all the time now. It's fine. What I actually have a problem with this episode, it just went from like event to event without much like reason or explanation or, you know, it's typical Doctor Who sci-fi bubble to hand with why things are happening. Like it's 1813, but the aliens are here, apparently because of like TV shows from the future, which means they're time travelers, which by retrospect means that Rogue is also a time traveler. It's not a mention of time travel at all, it's like the showing this seems to act like they're just here, but how are they getting the shows that have come to cosplay that are not going to take place release 200 years in the future? It doesn't really make much sense to me. I feel like that nurse never explained and that really jarred on me. So I thought we were in it up, confusion, confusion. Yeah, confusion, lots of confusion. I don't know where I stand with this episode, I kind of like it and I kind of don't like it and I kind of like who the Doctor is and I kind of don't like who the Doctor is and I feel like I'm still getting used to this version of the Doctor. Every Doctor is their own person, right? So Pete Capaldi was the Grumpy old Doctor, Matt Smith is like the comfy, kind of Doctor. Shooty's Doctor is the flirtatious, fun-loving, singing, dancing Doctor and I'm not used to it yet. When I am used to it, I'll probably go back to this and think it was a really good episode, I'm just, I don't know where I am yet. But I'm still getting used to it. The Bridgerton stuff was lost on me because I just asked what the fuck is Bridgerton. So it didn't really do anything for me on that level, but in general, it was an okay episode with like a standalone episode that didn't really contribute anything to the overall law maybe we might get a bit. I found it funny that the two Brits on this podcast didn't enjoy the British take on the aristocracy of all, even though it's a callback to obviously our American show Bridgerton, which is an alternate reality version of the aristocracy and the British culture. So I just find that ironic in some funny, weird way, right, like were there two Americans like me and Charlotte over here, "Yay, Bridgerton, yay, this is cool, I don't get it. What is that?" I don't understand what our lords, I don't understand. I know what lords are, but even if you don't get what's happening on this show, even if you didn't know Bridgerton, you should understand. Yeah, I'm still region C England, like this is just how they behaved in 1813. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not sure where any of us are there to critique if it's accurate to a T, but. You're making Jane very sad. Let's go into the recap. Boilers from here on, if you don't want to hear spoilers, then go away, but come back later, please come back later, I don't want to be alone with these two Bridgerton aholics over here. What are you talking about? I challenge you to a duel, sir. How there's a challenge. Ten bases a dawn, sir. I don't know, it's a western thing, I fucking don't know. So we are back in 1813 in Bath, not in a bath, that's weird, there's a place called Bath in the southwest of England, it's Bath, not our bath. There are two gentlemen walking down a pathway, they're dapper gentlemen, and one of them is shagging the other one's sister, and the brother ain't too happy about it. The guy who's the slut, I don't know, the cad, the cad, the guy who's a cad is a bit rude about it, and the brother, he takes a turn on his expence and starts becoming weird and evil, grabs him by the lapels, makes lightning shoot through him, and kills him dead, and then he's the cad, the brother's the cad. I think he lost the deal. Yeah, he's a challenge you to a duel, sir, yeah, yeah, and he did, I guess, when he was just like, you're more exciting, I like your, like he was sort of excited by how Cavalier and, like, he just, it was like he had more fun in his life than this guy, so he was like, I'll become you, and you don't quite know why. He was the brother, and he's turned into the guy who's shagging his sister, that's a bit weird for me, just a little bit weird. Technically, he wasn't the brother because he was a shoulder, right, so. I know. Right. But still, I mean, I feel like you're overthinking this one. Now we're stuck to say that we're all doing it with each other. Exactly. Look at how inbred the royals are. Let's go. We get the credits, and then there's a ballroom dancing scene. Yes, that's right. We're about three minutes into the episode, and the doctor and Ruby are dancing. They know all the moves, and that is explained by some sort of psychic link to the TARDIS. So if they can, if the TARDIS can do this things, which is like, I know Kung Fu moments from Matrix, right, why don't they know Kung Fu? Well, the doctor doesn't know of Anuji and Lex Laps and stuff, mostly, from the Doctor Day times. But Ruby should know, I mean, maybe Ruby does know Kung Fu later in the episode, she sort of does, but like, he could just make all of his companions, like, experts in whatever field that he wants with that psychic link to the TARDIS, right? Yeah, it's a bit odd, isn't it? I mean, how does that explain 11 not being able to dance? Oh, come on, the giraffe dance was great. No, the earrings, they had to have the earrings, right? Like, that was the, the thing, right? Well, yeah, for the, for the movements, but the, the TARDIS, what is it? The TARDIS translation matrix? Like, isn't that what they, they were, it translates language. My question on that is, why is Ruby running run going? Okay. It doesn't translate slang, I imagine. No, it shouldn't. Yeah. They need, they need to fix that, it's an upgrade, they need to download. Well, and that became a plot point, you know, so yeah, it did. Yeah, so they, they know, they know, they know, strictly come dancing to us, dancing with the stars, moves, even translate the title of the show for you guys. And then in Dear Avama, the duck, the duck chess turns up, and we talked about this last week, but in Dear Avama was, is her torchwood alumn, alumnus? And she came, she came a throne once too. Came a phone, she was, what are you saying? Yeah, one of the sand, the mother of the sand sisters, but yeah, she's been in torchwood before in a couple of episodes. She's now back as a brand new character, hoping, so Russell Davis is like, nah, no one will remember Susie Costello, that's fine. With, in such a torchwoody sort of episode as well, this is silly to put her in with the new Jack Hartness. So the duck chess comes up to the doctor and Ruby loves them because the, the new and, and not fancy, but also fancy at the same time. And then she takes Ruby away from, from the doctor. And that's almost the last interaction that Ruby and Doctor have all episode when she's going away, and she gets interference on her psychic linking earrings, like there's another time traveler around. And the doctor pulls out his sonic screwdriver, such a stupid sonic screwdriver still, I still do not like that. I, all I can see is the flick remote from the Adam Sandler movie. Exactly. It's not great. Yeah, the sonic screwdriver needs, needs to blow up in an episode where he has to rebuild a little bit better than the astronaut, more like the old ones. More stick like, no, it's an mp3 player now. Yeah. Things that come out of it, you know, I can look through it. Yeah, it's, it's strange. You know, here, like, so right away, like the tone of this episode is like, I think even Ruby name drops Bridgerton. I'm not sure if it's early. Definitely. She does. Which is kind of funny. So it's like, you know, like putting a pin on the idea. And it's so much like Bridgerton, to the point where they're even using, like right away, you notice they're singing, like they're playing pop culture music in like old, timey orchestra. Yeah. They're actually, yeah, they're using the same tracks that they use in Bridgerton's. Right. So that, that bad guy version is, is also used in Bridgerton. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then there's a one later on to, I think, I forget which one I clocked one later on. I didn't notice the Billie Eilish one. I only clocked poker face later on. Yeah. Yeah, poker face. Yeah. And yeah, the Billie Eilish, because it was playing like bad guy, I think from Billie Eilish. While it was showing the bad guy. The advantage point, keeping an eye out on the exits, that you're expecting trouble, which, you know, we think is the bad guy, which is kind of, it was sort of like an interesting thing. Right. It's a season of Doctor Who that feels inherently self-aware, right, like of its audience in a way, right? Like it, all season, it feels like Davis is just toying with us, right, as an audience. And this, this episode completely just is like poking you be like, Hey, we know you, we know, I know that you know that we know that we're doing Bridgerton. You know what I'm saying? And I'm going to tell you, and, and I'm going to point, I'm going to make all the, yeah, the, the callouts. Very poignant, right? It's very like in your face, which is strange, like it's a very strange thing, but I'm also kind of digging it, because it feels very modern. This episode is written by Kate Herron and somebody else from, I think it was this sex education writers. So it wasn't Russell T. Davies on this one, but, uh, Kate Herron herself did direct the first season of Loki. So there's your Disney influence. Oh, interesting. Well, then I haven't seen sex education, but wasn't a shooty and shooty gap. Yeah. Yeah. Was one of the star worlds in that. Yes. The stupid stomach screwdriver finds the time traveler and it's he's on a balcony and it's Jonathan Groff, who I know from Mindhunter or the people might know from other things. You might know him from Hamilton. He plays King George the third. He's the voice of the bad guy and frozen. The prince. The prince. Yeah. Yeah. Prince. Yeah. Yeah. Child. Yeah. Because of your song. That definitely do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me, let me clarify why. Yeah. But he's, he's also, uh, another, he's from another Broadway show. He was in Bring Awakening as well. He's in the original cast of that and he was on glee with several members from spring away. He's towards the end. Yeah. He plays a teacher. The doctor meets the new time traveler guy, uh, Jonathan Groff and there's, uh, there's a little bit of us. Well, the doctor finds a little bit of a spark within him straight away almost. He's chatting the guy up 100% chatting him up from the, from the get go. They talk a little bit. You find out the guy's name is Rogue like out of the X man. Not that rogue, not that rogue, not that rogue, just, just the guy called Rogue. Um, and the other little bit of bands and then they go walking outside. We had Ray Skywalker now we've got Han Solo. It keeps going. It keeps going. It keeps going. Yeah. Yeah. Why is he Han Solo? He's, he's, um, he's got a V neck and he's got a gun. Yeah. Han Solo wasn't about you, Hunter. He was a smuggler. He was a smuggler. Yeah. He had a ship that looks a lot like Rogue ship. Yeah. Rogue type. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's thin, but I see. Yeah. I like it. Ruby's on a little side project of getting like Bridgerton style. Oh, there's gossip here drama, drama gossip gossip. A lot to be talked about, but Ruby's on the other side of the ballroom. Meanwhile, the duchess dies to a housekeeper in a sim, a remarkably similar way to the, the cad died just earlier. But this time we see a weird bird face coming from the housekeeper as she kills the duchess. And then the duchess is net was the housekeeper and now is the duchess again. Have we seen this research before? Have we seen the shoulder before? Is this new? No, but there is a race that has the exact same deal from the episode family of blood in Debbie's third season. There were aliens who took humans palm and killed the originals and masqueraded humans. Almost the exact same. Were they in the pop culture? No, they were just kind of dicks. So not the same? Different. No. They're the, like, daughter of mine, father of mine, sort of deal. Oh, okay. It's at the private school while the doctor didn't know that he was the doctor. So just before that, when the duchess was still the duchess and the Ruby finds a portrait. You guessed it. It's an old lady. Who's the old lady? It's Susan Twist. Susan Twist is around again. Not in person this time, just on a picture. A lot to say is just another parent, Ruby recognizes her. The teaser for next week seems to suggest that we're going to get some answers next week, which I'm happy about because I'm sick about old woman, just because it's like the mystery that wasn't going anywhere and now it's going somewhere. So I'm happy. What about the Mrs. Fluh Twist though? There's another old woman, she'll just replace it, the old woman mystery next time. That's fine. Well, let's get rid of one of the old women mysteries. I appreciate the thought process of like, okay, we're going to introduce this thing and it's going to follow them throughout every episode, but it's not a mate. It's like the bad wolf thing, kind of all over again, right? Like there's like little instances, but it's, there's so it connects the arc, right? There's a continuation of like some things progressing, so you want to watch every episode so you get all the little nuggets, but it doesn't feel like each other. You could still watch each episode stand alone, like good old Doctor Who should, right? Like, so I'm in, I'm into that. And I appreciate the thought put into here to kind of like know where and, and subtle ways they can add her in and I was going to get a, I don't know, it feels, it's, I like it. That's why I like Doctor Who. I like these kinds of things. I'm anxious to see how they're going to tie up the Susan Twist thing. I do kind of like that they're kind of nudging people so that they're not missing it because I feel like we, we, we saw the bad wolf stuff kind of fly by for what, how many seasons was that? Yeah. And it just kept happening and it was never caught out. Like we didn't know what the heck it was about. And now they're kind of being faster about, Hey, let's make sure they're paying attention. Side content, Ruby's doing some peaking on drama that's unfolding between the cat and the cat and what seems to be a sweet little young girl who wants to marry the cat. And she interrupts them because she's clumsy, not as clumsy as pepper bean last week, but she's clumsy. She knocks some books over, starts inserting herself into the drama. And that says a set up for where we'll go to later. The doctor and Rogue, it's such a silly name to say as, as part of this week, we kept doctor and Rogue. That sounds like a buddy, a buddy caught movie. The doctor and Rogue go outside and find the duck jesses, shriveled old body like it's a mummy from the mummy. Rogue isn't surprised and the doctor is not surprised that Rogue isn't surprised, but it is very surprised when Rogue pulls a gun on him. It's a little hinky. Rogue's taking the doctor prisoner now because there's some confusion about who's actually a shape-shifting alien. Rogue thinks it's the doctor, the doctor sort of thinks it's Rogue, and no one's doing a really good job of convincing the other one that they're not the alien. This is like the doctor's thing, right? He sort of plays a bit, not dumb, but like he's sort of like his job is like, "I want to be captured because I'm going to find out more. You're more likely to give me all the information I need because you don't feel threatened by me." So he's sort of playing the dumb like, "Oh, you know, and he's kind of doing a little flirting while he's doing it, right? So he's working his charm and it's kind of working, right? But it's not, but it's kind of, I don't know, I like the banter here. I thought it was well written. I like the whole like, "I'm walking to my Chippo, that's my Chippo." He's like, "The shed? You didn't even hide it." He's like, "Well, it's fine to tree. It made me chuckle, right? I thought this is pretty, pretty, pretty way, pretty well-written banter, and it made me believe that there's chemistry here, right? It's well-written enough to make me think like, "These guys have something going." Like there's a little, there's some sparks, which is cool. Rogue ship is pretty cool, look it. Yeah. It looks like a bird. A bird. A bird. Yeah. He's watching it. Yeah. I was like, "That's like, I feel like a Star Trek reference here." That's pretty cool. He's a Romulan. Geez, run. Yeah. There's a D&D reference in the middle of all of this. There is. And so the doctor goes into and gets trapped by Rogue and in what is called a tri-form, which is basically just a prison, and that which turns into an incinerator, if someone presses a button. And whilst he's in the incinerator, he starts learning more about Rogue, is a fucking nerd. Just like all of us, he's a fucking nerd. A filthy nerd who needs a companion in order to clean his ship up, apparently. Yeah. He uses the phrase "roll for initiative" unironically, which I don't know if anybody others would say that to indicate to a felon that we know them. I don't know. But maybe. Ask Erika. Erika would definitely say that. I would. I would say. I feel like, yeah. If you're really into it, yeah. I feel like that's a, that's a thing. It's like they know their audience a lot more. It's like there's some data analysts at BBC or Disney, they're like, listen, if you make a D, a D reference, 99.9% of your audience will love it, right? It feels very calculated in a way, right, where a doctor who never quite leaned into the sort of like, today of things, like the fact that they're name-dropping Bridgerton and name-dropping role-playing or, right, or, and it just feels so. Yeah. It just feels so of today. Where a doctor who never quite, I said, I guess, dated itself. So specifically to a period like whether it was filmed in the 60s or filmed in the early aughts, 2000s, right, like you never, you know it by the, the look of it, like, filmically, right? Like you, okay, that was shot in 16 by nine and this is for four by three and now they're, oh, no, now it's in 4K and it looks great, right? Like, cinematically, you can tell when era it's shot in but, and how it's acted or portrayed but like the dialogue never quite felt so of today than it does now. Whittaker's did, right? Like Whittaker's, the, the, the Jodi Whittaker's doctor was written in some instances that felt very today. Like the dialogue. Bam. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. But Peter, Peter could have been like for many, any time. I like it, but if it starts to go like this episode felt really lean in or, and not every episode has done that. And I guess I'm okay with as long as it's sprinkled in every now and then, but it doesn't become like a main part of how the show's written overall. That was a flaw of Whittaker's era where it felt like it was like dial the dialogue felt so of today, like it felt like it was written like if you were writing like a, a bad transformers movie all the time, like it like if, if like you had a Shia LaBeouf always reading the dialogue. You know what I'm saying? Like it was written like he has to be one with us, right? Like, oh, I'm hip. I'm cool. Right. Yeah. You slander the LaBeouf. Hey, we grew up with the real transformers. Thank you very much. They're animated. Yeah. Yeah. And I only love him when he's swinging from vines and Indiana Jones and that. I guess my point is is I thought it was fun in this episode. I just thought I hope it doesn't become something that they lean in on all the time, right? Like because, you know, I kind of, and maybe that's just me as a producer that's sort of like seeing behind the scenes of like there's some, like I said, like the data says like mentioned D&D. Yeah. I don't know, you know. The doctor tries it starts messing with Rogue by putting Kylie on, on the radio. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, in a tune for voice. Which is interesting to me because Kylie then becomes a part of the Doctor Who universe and also starred in the Doctor Who universe because she was the companion on the Titanic 2. Yep. Astrid path. Yep. Forgot about that. I love that episode too. That's great. I forgot about that. She's, she's a singer and it's a companion. Yeah. It may be it's one of those oceans, 13, Julie Roberts pretending to be Julie Roberts pretending not to be Julie Roberts. So the doctor says that he's not a shape shift, he's, he's not a cholder. He's not a cholder. And gets a cholder. You need to scan him because he's not a cholder. The ships, the ships AI scans him determines that he's a shape shifter. Yeah. Which is true. It's true. He is a shape shifter. He, he sort of turns into different people. That's who he is. But he's not a cholder because he's, he can go, it did, he did explain, I think, rogue that shoulders can only do it five times or something. And the doctor has done it many, many more times, which it was apparent when the holograms of his old faces turn up. The fugitive doctor was also in there, which was interesting because it confirms that wasn't fake. There's someone else in there as well. Richard Grant. Mm. Which did he grant? The great intelligence. Mm. Oh, really? I didn't catch that. Yeah. Yeah. He's the third face, that third or fourth face that pops up. He also voiced the doctor in an animated cartoon. So it might be alluding to that. He doesn't make sense because everyone says which number doctor they are and he would, and when we got to the end of Matt Smith's story line, he knew how many faces he's already taken. So it doesn't, or how we, how many thought he'd already taken anyway, because that's been retconned. But if it's in the middle of that, that loop, then he would know that he'd taken an extra face and that wouldn't mean that he wasn't the last uncut incarnation. He already knew that he could reincarnate again. So that didn't make sense to me anyway. In the fourth doctor episode, Matt Amorphous, there is an, a part where it shows him having forms before he actually knew about, like, it doesn't express the show what they look like in that. But it does look like he had others and their teeth that way back then in the fourth doctor era. So there is precedence for that. Yeah, because even the original doctor, like, talked about how he took in forms before, but we, so we don't know how, technically, how many, ever, right, like, yeah, look at the prequel, prequel, prequel, even before Baker, or not Baker. Oh, yeah, Hartnell, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I mean, it's kind of, yeah, I don't know. It always seems to be funny to me because, like, even when they do, like, the anniversary and stuff, like, and they show the faces of all of them and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's always seems to be, like, a new one. Oh, now it's the war doctor, like, ah, yeah, yeah, it's always been part of the mystery. Yeah. Yeah. So the doctor's convinced rogue, finally, he gets, like, out of the tri-form and they go to a ship. I've been to your place. You come see mine, Dr. Singh's, it's musical time with Dr. Who, again, come with me and go see, he's even wearing the comical, it was funny. I think he just always wanted to be Dr. Willy Wonka and Dr Who, she got one, so. Yeah, you're probably going to knock on one really quick thing. I thought it was interesting when he did show the face of Dr. It starts out with Tenet's doctor and it holds on that one for a while and he recognized, it seems like rogue recognizes Tenet and he can lift his finger off the trigger and I'm wondering if there's going to be, like, some, if there was, like, a connection there, like, he'd seen Tenet before as the doctor or something, you know, like, it seemed interesting that they started with Tenet, right? Versus. Yeah, I guess they're out of this place. But I guess maybe not because Tenet, technically, was the last face of young, so. Maybe he's the new boss, because he made a reference to the boss, like, he's a bounty hunter, so obviously he's got a boss. We maybe Tenet's doctor, the one that stayed with Tate, got bored and become a boss of bounty hunters, and that would be against Dr. Cat Ho character, but, you know, I'm still waiting for the Meeps mysterious boss to show up to. Yeah. I kind of wonder if there isn't a connection somewhere between, and I know that's grasping at straws, but I kind of wonder if there isn't a connection somewhere between this guy and Jack, Cat and Jack, just because the similarities and what they do, what they're like, the kind of attitudes they have, and the fact that they like to make jokes about building shelves, because Jack Hartness said the same thing to the doctor the first time we meet him is that he wants the doctor to use his screwdriver to install some shelves. Oh, yeah. Okay. I didn't pick that up. Right, we've spent enough time with Dr. and Rogue right now. They did almost kiss in the tie of this, but then Dr. realizes that he's probably better go check on Ruby, who is left in the hole in the mansion or alone with a bunch of aliens. Luckily, Ruby and Emily, who is the young girl that was doing all the drama with the cat, have also found the body of the housekeeper, and they sort of meet halfway Ruby, Emily, and the doctor, and Rogue, they sort of explain what the shoulder are. They're comic-con fanboys. They just want to play role play and cosplay with people and the better the character, the better the cosplay, so these guys just want the most drama and, you know, all that jazz. The doctor and Rogue come up with this lovely idea to make more drama, and they go in and start to dance with each other. Oh, what are to do? A homosexual couple? In the 1813, oh, this is going to cause a stir at the garden parties. Yeah, I have something to say about this, that I'm not sure if it's going to be 1813, and the doctor's skin colour isn't exactly white, shouldn't there already be a scandal? Go ahead, Charlotte. I think you- Well, I mean, if you look around the room, they very much set this up like Bridgerton. There are multiple races in that room that would have never been in the same room at that time, so we have to take his race and kind of chuck it out the window because they're not applying it to anybody else in the room. Is this the Bridgerton universe? Yes. Yeah, it is. It appears to be. Yeah, it appears to be because there's a black queen in Bridgerton, and the race isn't quite a thing anymore, right, in Bridgerton, but almost sexuality still is, right? That's the whole- Okay. Yeah. That's a scandal. That's not a scandal. That's not a scandal. That's not a scandal. Right. It was last week. Race is not a scandal this week. It's homosexuality this week. It's a 1313. Yeah. I know. This is the human world. Not Bridgerton. Ben, living in a world where the duck ass is like- It's like a bird. Well, a bird, and also of like Asian descent, like- Right. Asian descent. What are the rules? There are no rules. This is Bridgerton. Except homosexual bud in Bridgerton. Race? Fine. I'm so confused. I feel you mate, like I'm right there with the words, sort of like at what point? Yeah. Like, it's almost like it- it almost would have been funnier if they like transported and they realized like, oh my god, we're actually on the set of Bridgerton, like not- or like in the show, like proper, like we're in like a TV show, not an actual real world or something. Well, later on they mentioned there are actual humans there who are participating in what I assume to be regular roles, aristocracy, the footballs. Yeah, but in Bridgerton universe, just handle it, Ben, it's just them, just the rules, just handle it. Now, think about it. That does not make sense. Damn it. Well, he's using the Chewbacca defense. Like, they're only worried about one social construct at a time. Like, right now it's just sexuality. We can only beach over the head with one socially aware moment, right? Like, you can't have gay and racism, like that would just be people's minds. That's too much. That's too much. At the end of the dance, Rogue proposes to the doctor, the doctor's already married and I mean, he's a widow, I guess, at this point, but he's a doctor. She's an NFT right now, it's fine, part of the song, she's an NFT. Oh my God, that's terrible, she's uploaded in the freakin' heart. Some has been saved, oh God, that's amazing, Ben, I love it. So he's technically still married then, if you know it's too like some sort of matrix NFT. So he storms out and the shoulders, who the Duchess and the cad that we know about, follow them, but there's two more that follow them as well and then it's Scooby-Doo time chase all around the building and they don't find them because they're villains from Scooby-Doo. They take off their masks and reveal themselves and then can't chase after people. Really, that almost all of them. Yeah, almost all of them, one, as reveals themselves to Ruby in the library and we think that Ruby's a goner, oh poor Ruby, she's almost dead. Again, this is what happens, like Ruby's just left on her own for most of this episode and you know, who cares about Ruby at this point, that's what it's like. It's the time part of the tractor field, she's not supposed to exist so the universe tries to kill her multiple times. There you go, I like this too. I like that. So then it's wedding time because every good Bridgerton season ends on a wedding apparently. Pretty much. Yeah. And wear the scandal. So they turn a vicar into a shoulder, they take their appearance so that they can have their wedding and they're about to have a wedding, one with Ruby, who everyone thinks is a shoulder. And the doctor comes in, "I object." One moment where we get to see the David Tennant doctor from Family of Blood again where he goes flipping psycho, because at the moment where he thinks Ruby's dead and he looks on and he's just like, "I'm gonna make them suffer." It's like, "Whoa, where did this come from?" Yeah, but it was weird because I expected them to turn the corner and him to see a body but it never reveals that, he just assumes. Which was the moment where I was sort of like, "Okay, something's, there's a head figure." I thought it was interesting they didn't show it, but I do like how he did turn and he's like, "How long do the children live for?" And when he say like 800 years or something, like 400 years or something, like a really long time, he's like, "Good, they'll suffer." Because he changed, because I guess we skipped over it, but he ended up changing the, what is it, the triforce, the triforce? The triforce? Yeah, he changed it to contain six people. Yeah, he did the same thing in Family of Blood, tenants, doctor sealed them all in time-frozen prisons that he said they'll rest in forever. Which is, whoa. Yeah, some callbacks in this one, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot. A phantom zone. A phantom zone? A phantom zone? Jesus. A flip around out in space and a big try and go forever. Forever. It is a triangle. It is a triangle. No, that's what I was looking for. Exactly. The doctor puts them in the new triforce, which holds six people. There's only five. Yeah. Maybe five. They trap them in the triforce and there's some people who in there, all of the children that we know and Ruby, who reveals herself to not be a child, are just actually quite a good actress. Well, she says, pause playing. Oops. I'm a silly belly. Look at me getting myself in danger again. Oops. Right. And at this point, I'm just thinking if she survives this, he needs to take her to see a chiropractor. Because what the hell? Well, how does she get her neck to crack like that? Yeah. Some good cosplay. Those earrings are pretty good. The earrings, as it was revealed, turned into battle mode and had her knock out the shoulder from nowhere but with dancing. It was like Karen Gillen from Jumanji, who's dance fighting, dance fighting expert. Ruby is now stuck. Doctors crying. I think it's the second or third time this episode that he started to cry, but he's crying because he's going to lose his best mate. His best mate, he's probably out of the six episodes that we've been in. He's been together with her, but for about half an hour in all of those six episodes. But he's the best mate. Yeah. He calls her his best friend. Yep. Do you guys want DNA tests on your best friends, guys? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, when you grew up or I grew up, it's a mate show, they're not you brother. Exactly. I'm talking about Kentucky backwoods. My parents are from Eastern Kentucky. I got you there. Yeah. Yeah. We're all. Are you a cousin? Are you a third cousin? I'll be. Second cousin. That's a little. No. Anyway, here's the deal. I don't mind. They always imply that they're off doing adventures even in between episodes. You know what I'm saying? Who knows how long they've been running about, right? It time travels weird, right? So I don't I don't mind like yeah, they have a bond. It's cool. And you know, he feels cool and he has like there's like a moment of flashbacks where you kind of like remembers that he promised her mom that. And this is we've seen this before, right? Like as fans, we all know it's very hard to keep that promise. Most most companions don't don't make it right or at least don't come out. The same and the same fashion that they started. So yeah. Donut did. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I thought this was pretty powerful. I thought I thought this was a nice moment and I'll always love when the doctors put in a position of like, choose, but you can't choose. You can't choose to get rid of Ruby. He can't do what is necessary and rogue knows this. And it makes him like the doctor even more, let's say love the doctor at this point. Because rogue fans, a big fat one on his lips. I mean, the doctor's been wanting it for the whole episode. So it's like a mutual thing. Jack Hart was some River Sun buff crying the rise out in the background. No kidding. And like, for me, the doctor has always been unsexual anyway. He just, he's everything and everything. He goes, he's definitely trans because he goes through sex changes multiple times. And like whoever he likes, he just likes because they're the good people slash things. So none of this actually surprised me. And you know, after last week's Ricky's really hot type stuff. We all knew that this sort of thing was coming. What I didn't expect was like I said earlier on how flirty and forward this version of the doctor is. This doctor just feels jovial, feels full of life, feels very like, let's experience it all, which is kind of interesting. And in a way, and I think this episode showed a little bit almost too cavalier because here he is kind of like on this flirtatious run with this rogue while Ruby is kind of like trying to like, fending off monsters on her own. And like in early on doctor, we wouldn't like the reason they get separated is because something separates them and they're always trying to get back together. He's like, I got to get back to root like, got to get back to Rose or I got to get back to Clara. Right? Like it's always seems like I got to go safer. Here he's like, ah, you're having a good time, even though he knows there's something bad out there, which is interesting. So he feels he feels a little bit more cavalier in the sense, which is kind of interesting, I guess. I don't know. I don't know how to put it. One more thing I want to point out and the one flaw I thought of this episode is when the rogue here is talking to the doctor and saying like, you know, you know, the if you let them go, the child will kill Ruby, then you kill the rest of humanity and like, you know, I'm like, how are these like five bird things going to kill you man? Like they were running around like chasing you and the doctor, like it's in the garden for like 10 minutes and they're going to kill humanity. Like I guess I was sort of like the leap there. I was like, yeah, let them go and then like trap them with something else in a day later. I don't know. They were mouth and off going, oh, we're going to take over being royalty and make everyone go to war until the great laughs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I was sort of like, this seemed like they kind of felt like not quite as threatening as like some of the other doctors, villain, you know, in a sense of like, I mean, you could maybe turn that thing off and still probably save the day. It didn't feel like a no win scenario kind of. Yeah, the great villainess line was, we're going to cosplay the earth to death. Somebody really has something against San Diego Comic Con. Yeah. Totally. That's great. Rogue puts the last shoulder in there, and then also don't understand how this worked, but he saw a shoulder charges movie out of the trifornia, even though it was impossible to get out and then put himself in the trifornia in her stead, don't, don't quite get how that worked. But let's move forward, it's sci-fi, you know, and the rules, rules out the window. Is it because the max was six and when he and he put the other child are in there, right? And then when he went in there, like it allowed like someone else to leave because there was a nice weight limit or a threshold or something, I don't know. I was trying to understand that too, that seemed a little like, if you could just gut check somebody, like, you know, like knock them out of there, like, let's just do that all day. I'll throw a chair at somebody to get them out of it. Here take this couch. Ah, same for you. Um, let's just start throwing random shit at people in the room. Like, here, grab this rope and I'll yank you out. Right? Come on. And then with the last words, rogue says, find me. And then Gandalf's down, like fly you full style. He's the one who waits. Oh my God. No. No. Whoa. Whoa. Holy shit. Super villain over eight, six hundred years later, he waited and hated the doctor. You never care for me. I give you a smooch and you abandon me theory number 48. So he's going to turn into Amy. Oh, yeah, the old Amy. And then Rory's just being like, I love both of you kind of just have both of you. Like, Rory, please. He's like, no, quit. Oh, please guys. No. Like this guy had known the doctor for at least at the most, like an hour and a half. And he becomes a super villain because he gets trapped in there because of after one smooch, the guy never comes to just a bit clingy then. And he just seemed pretty lonely with all the dice on the table. Yeah. You can only roll dice to yourself so many times before you go to the second. This is a Disney production. You can fall in love with an hour with anybody. You showed the doctor, the TARDIS. That's basically like first date status. Right. That's true. Like, that's like going to, you know, he basically got the second base. And the episode ends with the doctor and Ruby talking about how the TARDIS won't can't find the rogue wherever because he could be in any sort of dimension or anywhere. If Rogue was, was like smart, he would have put a tracking device in himself that the TARDIS could like track, but let's improve past that. And then Ruby hugs the doctor after the doctor tries to wave it away like, yeah, it happens, you know, but it's actually got to him. He puts a little ring on the finger. He does. A little rogue ring. He puts on his finger, his little finger. I think that's not the last we've seen of a Jonathan Groff in the Rogue. I don't want to, I want his real name though because I can't keep calling him Rogue. All I can hear is... His real name is Jack Hartbus. I mean, probably his. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Hilarious. If like in one of the crossovers, he meets Whitaker's doctor and he just has no interest at all. He's like, what's his problem? What's wrong with him? In one of the crossovers, you just hear, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. And then he'll turn up and then just walk straight back off screen. So that's the spoiler section done. Let's go on to our episode rankings and overall flocks. Well this didn't make me as angry as Space Baby's did and it wasn't as weird as 63 yard thingy. 73, but carry on. Yeah. That. And so, honestly, I think this was just an episode that I think I could just like pass by and just be an episode and be all right, so I'm going to give this one a six. So slightly higher than Space Baby's higher than 73 yards? Yeah. I think it was just an episode. It didn't make me angry. So, it's okay. It's a low bar or a high bar, I guess now I did. I think I'm going to give this one probably about an eight. The Jane Austen, Bridgerton kind of things got me hooked. I'm interested in seeing where the rogue thing goes if he comes back. I'm so glad that this was not a full musical episode because I was scared to death that it was going to be when I saw that Jonathan Groff was going to be in it. Don't get me wrong. Love Jonathan Groff's voice, love his performances on stage, but I don't need it in my doctor who. Ruby irritated the crap out of me in this episode, so I would have been too angry if she'd have gone through that thing. But overall, I thought it was quite enjoyable. I really liked this episode. Like I said in the beginning, I thought this was a lot of fun. I laughed and chuckled a lot of times in this show, in this episode. This felt like just a good old time. I think I've talked about my qualms. Even though I'm chuckling at the pop culture references, him dancing to Kylie and Minogue and the talking about role playing and mentioning Bridgerton. If they start doing this every episode, I'm going to get annoyed, but I think this episode just was self-aware just enough for me to have fun. It was just self-contained enough as a one-off where I can almost like you've been. I can separate it away from the rest of the season in a way and combine it in this little bubble where I can just have a good time. So yeah, I don't know. I'm going to give this an 8.5. I had a lot of good time with it. I don't know. I'm excited to see how they're going to wrap up the season in two more episodes next week. I think it had a lot of things, and I think it showed a lot of emotion of the Doctor, which I'm really enjoying. I'm really enjoying this Doctor. This Doctor. I'm really enjoying shooting, and I'm really liking Millie. The more I like Millie Gibson, the more I see her on-screen, the more I'm liking her too. So I'm kind of all in. I'm really liking this season overall. So Charlotte and Ben, you were really annoyed with Ruby in this episode. Yeah, I'd like to just add in that Ruby has gotten far too insufferable recently, and I'm enjoying watching her die over and over again, actually. It's really satisfying. How so? Like, just walk me through what's the insufferableness of- Ruby seems to think that she's like the absolute best thing going and pops up pop culture references all over the place, like she knows everything about what's going on, but really, all she does is just wander about places and get absolutely destroyed by her environment. And there's not really any consequences for her actions. She just gets to run around. Something bad happens to her. Then she gets saved by Deus Ex Machina's. It's like, the character should have been shot in Boom and died right there, and that was the end of it, but she keeps getting saved time and time again, and she doesn't learn a lesson at all. I think my big issue with her, especially in this episode, and it's not, it's not Millie, and it's not necessarily the character. It's the things that the character is written to do and say. She who's time traveling is going to go to 1813 and speak like they would in 2024. If they had any sort of sense of self-preservation, then you just wouldn't do it. I mean, it's hard to get out of like speech habits though at the same time, so I sort of get it. I'm a filthy Nordner as, and I talk like this. It's quite hard to not talk like this in it. Well, I mean, you have your regional dialects and things like that, but you, I have a feeling that you would make an effort if you went to an extremely different kind of time to try to monitor what you say. Like, you would not be calling people "Bruv." I don't think you'd walk up to a Duchess and like, you know, talk like you would talk to one of your mates. That's just true. Yeah. How duchy. Hang any peasants lately. I hear you on the consequences bit though, mate. Like, it doesn't seem like she's been putting in enough situations where she could die and or die, and she doesn't seem to kind of, she does, she would have, you think she would have a little bit more cautiousness towards towards the situation. Again, I keep going back to Donna Noble. She was like sort of like, to me, the quintessential of the Doctor Who companion, where like anything bad happened, she's like, let's get the fuck out of here. Like, she'd just, she'd say what everyone in the audience is thinking like, we don't like, let's just get in the tardis at go. Like, you know, like not just running around, let's solve the mystery Clara style, you know, like I'm invincible. Yeah. So Millie's kind of in the middle there for me. She's sort of like, I don't have a problem with using that sort of language because Donna Noble would have used that sort of language. Right. Worse. But Donna Noble, Karen Gillan, Amy Pond, is Scottish and she's always Scottish, she says Scottish things. Donna Noble would have put the dress on and been all happy trying to act it up like an aristocrat for a few minutes, having a laugh. Yeah. I think it's, it almost feels like that they're like punching the gas on getting her to the point where Clara was at the end of Clara's run, where she's hanging out of the tardis flying across London, like she's kind of got that mentality of nothing's going to touch me. I'm with him. Yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe there's a consequence because after today she obviously saw like the consequence and she was ready to kind of like, she said, it's like, she was kind of giving the doctor the nod of like, it's okay, you can do it, you know, like, she understood that she fucked up right, like in a way, right, like she, she took it too far, I guess. I don't know. So maybe there will be in the next episode, the next couple episodes. I don't know. We'll see. Cause I hear you. There is, there is a weird, there is a weirdness where like she's been put in a lot of situations where you think there'd be more self-awareness on her part of understanding like what, what life traveling with the doctors like and, and or make better, make better decisions. Scared the shit out of my offer to the point she left. Here stuff is too dangerous for me, pal. I'm going back to being a doctor. See ya. She goes on another TV show. Yeah. And last thing I'm going to say about, about Millie here is that she is very close to having some sort of damsel, damsel and distressing syndrome here, where she can't, she's just the Daphne. I'm going back to Scooboo. She's just the Daphne, where she's in trouble all the time and the doctor have to save her. We'll see how it goes. There's a couple of episodes left of this season and I feel like her character is going to get a lot of development in those two episodes. I have, I still have no idea where to score this episode. I'm probably going to take a, a punt at a 7.5, the same as last week. It is a standalone episode, it's good content, like the, there's, there's a decent monster of the week. The Doctor and Ruby are back in physical form in an episode, guys, for the first time in three episodes. I'm still getting used to the doctor and maybe it, when I come back to this, once I'm used to the doctor in season two, I'll score it a bit more because I'll know what he's like. It's just like a bit of a, like most of the other doctors incarnations have been fairly asexual. Like, they don't give a shit about romance. It's, it, this one does, he's very in touch with all of his emotions. He cries every episode. I have said it every time. He's flirty and he wants love at this, at this point, apparently. And you know, it's going to take me a little bit of time to get used to it, but I actually know nothing, I can't mark it down for anything. It does really in that sort of area because that's just his new character. It's just going to take me a little time. Do you guys have any thoughts on like two episodes left? You know, we, we saw a little glimmer of where it seems, what we're going to get with. Twisty? Twisty. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, do you think, do you think, do you think based on what we've sort of seen in this doctor in this movie, do you think this is going to end, and satisfying, or do you guys kind of feel like we're probably not going to be, that we're not going to get all the answers where it's probably going to be. I think it's going to be a lead into the second season. I think it's going to be like a multi-season story with three different parts, and I think it's going to go through all of them. And I think that the Legend of Ruby Sunday should probably hopefully set up Ruby as like the antagonist of the entire series for the next few seasons. Oh, really? If I'm right. Yeah. That's what I believe. It's going to be some sort of a level of force, the tidying within it that comes out, and it's like, hey, I'm evil now. Prepare yourself, doctor. I think they've got, they have a whole lot of balls at play, and they didn't, the way that it's lining up with only so few episodes left. I don't think they've left enough time to finish everything up and get us all the answers in those couple episodes. So it's, I'm with Ben, it's going to spread over, or, you know, some things are just going to get dropped and become part of that mysterious lore that people will go and pick out and go, well, what's that, you know? My out there, Tim Foilhat Theory, is that Russell T. Davis is going to steal from another show, and make Ruby an impossibility in time, and that's why she's just wrong. And it's going to turn out that she's her own mother, and we stole that from the Red Dwarf Show. Okay. Oh! Devlister. Yeah. The Aroboros. Yeah. Aroboros. And because she's in possibilities, she'll neither be good nor evil, just someone who may fuck things up or may help the doctor in time, over the next season. I don't know how you could be your own mother, but that's interesting. I also don't know that, but they did that in Red Dwarf, and so I'm sticking with it. Yeah. Yeah. Things were weird in the 70s. 70s. 70s. Wait, wait, 90s. 90s. Really? Red Dwarf is 90s. Yeah. They're still making new episodes now. Shut up. On Dave. Yeah. They're like old, like 50 and still making episodes. No way. Yeah. It's coming back. It won't be good. But it's coming back. Oh, well. At least we know that. Yeah. 90s. It was. So you think Susan Twist is her in the future? Like old? No. No. I don't know what Susan Twist is at the moment, but I feel like that. If Mrs. Flood is her just living next to her mum in the past, I'm going to cry laughing. Twist. It's too obvious. We're being fast focused on something we're not meant to, because something else is there that we're supposed to focus on, but we haven't. I am sure. A byproduct of the anomaly, let's say, for now. That's how it's going to tie you up. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have any good theories. I'm coming in hopeful that it's going to be interesting. But tempered expectations that it's probably going to be something kind of lame. It's really hard to land mysteries like this, right? Because of this, right, because we can theorize really interesting things and come up with things that actually are probably maybe even more interesting in a way, but in narratively, they're hard to execute, right? Like so, but we don't think that way, like when we're thinking about narrative. So, yeah, I don't know, we'll see how we'll see how it lands. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us here on the Doctor Who Watching Now podcast on couch soup. If you like this, then please like and subscribe and do all those fun stuff like bait us on Apple podcasts and Spotify. That would be good. Five stars, though. Please not one. Five. Or you could become a member of couchsuite.com, which will help support independent creators like us coming soon on watching now in just two weeks time. We have decoding dragons back. The House of the Dragon companion series is coming back with Liz and Michelle. And boy, are they excited and really mad at me for choosing Team Green. Thank you very much, everybody. We'll see you next week for another episode of Doctor Who Watching Now. Salutations! Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. [Music] No, carry on, I'm telling you to move on. Tell me to shut the fuck up. I tried. I fucking tried to. Oh, God. Is this getting in the episode? Okay, this is fucking the outtake. Show of truth. Fucking show of. Man, and my final thought is, I do that, I do that weird pause, and then I interrupt you after that pause. That's kind of what I do, that's my, that's my, that's my super power. I did that to him last week too. Okay. I do a long, I do a long pause. When you think I'm done, then I'm not. Yeah, that works, I'm like William Shatner, oh God. Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? The All Things Alice podcast will explore the cultural phenomena of Alice in Wonderland. Frank Bador, the author of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy, is your host through a wonder verse of interviews from all types of creators as they chronicle the dark yet empowering reality of Lewis Carroll's fantasies, and answer the question, what is it about Alice that captivates us still today? The All Things Alice podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. (bell chimes)
Join the Watching Now Doctor Who Podcast as we break down the latest episode of the series, Rogue. It’s Bridgerton fan-fiction in this week’s episode of Doctor Who! The Doctor and Ruby take a trip to the 1800s for an aristocratic romp. Unfortunately, there are shapeshifting aliens being tracked by a handsome Rogue bounty hunter spoiling all of the fun. Or maybe having too much fun? Join Couch Soup contributors Iain McParland, Ben Hazell, Charlotte Merritt, and Drew Lewis as they discuss the episodes’ ups and downs. We discuss everything from the new Jack Harkness-a-like, theories about Ruby’s origins, and who this Doctor is as a person.
