I love how people go all in on analyzing every little detail of Doctor Who episodes and how everything is suspected of being an Easter Egg. One of the interesting things about this is that the www very seldom hits on the original Doctors, and acts as if the series began with Christopher Eccleston in the role.
This weeks big point of interest is Who is Mrs. Flood? in the end of the episode, she seems to break the 4th wall and asks "Never seen a TARDIS before?" Of course, now everyone wonders how Mrs. Flood knows what a TARDIS is, and if she's The Master, or Romana,Susan, or some other Time Lord -- or something more sinister. They conveniently overlook that the Doctor is outside talking to her for some time after arriving back at Ruby's home. He could have very well told her about the TARDIS while he was discussing his other sadness. As for breaking the 4th wall, I have two thoughts on that. Abdul (to whom she was speaking at the time) runs out toward the spot where the TARDIS disappeared, which is where the camera is shooting from in that scene. She could well have been speaking to him. My son-in-law, who is a real dyed-in-the-wool Whovian, mentioned that in the very first Christmas special, The Dalek's Master Plan (episode 7), William Hartnell breaks the 4th wall in order to wish "Happy Christmas to all of you at home!" Is this a callback to that?
And now there is also the theory that Ruby is the child of the 13th Doctor, because both had hoods when we first saw them.
But for some reason, I see nothing online about the fact that all of the doors on Ruby's block are painted TARDIS blue... in the various blues that the TARDIS has had since the series reboot. I'd have to say that while many people picked up on that with Mrs. Flood's door (a reason some people thought that her home was a TARDIS) it kinda kills that theory unless we want to think that we're being lead to believe that all the homes were TARDIS.
The other thing that I noticed was re-occurring red nail polish on long (presumedly women's) nails. They occurred in The Giggle when picking up the gold tooth that The Toymaker made from The Master, and they occurred on some of the goblin hands when sabotaging Ruby, and on Janice Goblin's hands. Do we have a shape shifter with fondness for red nail polish working through these episodes?
Ncuti's Doctor is also breaking an old Dr Who tradition of one costume which identifies the Doctor. Let's face it, we've had looks inside the Tardis wardrobe rooms after various regenerations, and know how many clothes the Doctor has, both male and female. Why would he choose to wear the same clothes day after day, year after year, and in some cases, century after century? That always seemed a little crazy to me. I'm thrilled to see a Time Lord who changes his clothes.
After reading online for a while, I wonder if this isn't the most loved/hated episode of Dr Who ever. The hate seems focused on two things:
1. That it's got a weird (but catchy) musical number.
Right now TV series seem to be taking that step more. Even Star Trek has had a musical episode (Subspace Rhapsody), Grey's Anatomy (Song Beneath the Song), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Once More, With Feeling), and includes shows that are all musicals like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Smigadoon (which pokes fun at musicals in general). Christmas specials have become more and more outrageous on Dr Who, and I don't find this out of line with that progression at all. I wasn't fond of the music, but it lightened the heaviness of the issues in the story line, and we all can use some "feel good" at Christmas.
2. That it's got a queer Black Doctor.
Of course, this is racist and homophobic and prejudicial in every way.
We know nothing about Timelord sex, or if it even exists. What happens to a pregnant female who regenerates? Do Timelords get pregnant? We know from our episodes on Gallifrey that a Time Lord isn't born a Time Lord, but members of the species have to go to an Academy, and we also know that regeneration for Gallifreyans only occurs in Time Lords, and is limited in Time Lords, so it's likely that reproduction of the Gallifreyan populace is what supplies the number of Time Lords. So what does all that have to do with The Doctor, who is an unknown species whose ability to regenerate has been the inspiration for the existence of Time Lords as created by Gallifreyan scientists? If we nothing about Time Lord sex and gender, we know even less about whatever the Doctor is.
But let's go beyond that, because there is not only zero reason that the Doctor should be a straight white cis-male, there is zero reason that he should regenerate in human form at all.
There is only one reason the Doctor will likely never regenerate as Catkind, or Judoon, or Silurian or Menoptra or any other alien species: and that has to do, not with the story line, but with budgeting constraints for Bad Wolf. Let's face it: extensive prosthetics are expensive and time consuming, and it's much easier and more convenient during filming to keep the main characters pretty much human. The same goes for the companions: the more human they are, the less the expense and inconvenience in production. And of course we can all relate more to human main characters, most of us being human ourselves.
And if we are to say that this "relatability" should be a driving factor in deciding the form of the Doctor, than we have to admit also that the audience is not solely made up of straight white cis-males who can't possibly relate to other humans with which they share this planet, and which makes up a substantial portion (all females, all non-white, all LGBTQ+ added together is the majority, not the minority of the species population) and, to be honest, if the Doctor were to regenerate into a human form at random, the odds are that he would seldom regenerate into a straight white cis-male.
The Church On Ruby Road is never going to be one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, but that's a matter of taste, because I found the heaviness of the theme and the gremlin-like goblins who bordered on comic cartoon jarring, but can appreciate how both played into the feel of a Christmas episode with a new Doctor which also signaled a change in the over all mood of story (the Doctor had gotten way too sad and moody, and I'm glad he's not so depressed and angsty) but also tied the "new era" back to the "old era" so that Paul McGann (the "American Doctor", #8) wasn't some sort of chasm in the middle of the long running series. I know a lot of younger fans have no idea what came before Christopher Eccleston, and the rich, long standing history of the Doctor (even though the Toymaker did make it into somewhat of a jigsaw puzzle)
And a parting thought: what if all of this is part of a timeline which will soon cease to exist? Donna Noble clearly said "gravity" to Sir Isaac Newton. That he mistakenly heard "mavity" and now ever since every character is using the word "mavity" when we in the "real world" know the word is "gravity" seems to me to be some sort of marker, some sort of tease. I doubt that from here on out, incarnation after incarnation, the all characters, both major and minor, will know this force as "mavity".
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