Doctor Who's Lucky Day proves why the Doctor can't lose his dark side

The Fifteenth Doctor was introduced as the fun-loving carefree Doctor – he came to us apparently healed from his millennia of emotional trauma. Yet here he went out of his way to make an extraordinary intervention, materialising the TARDIS around Conrad as he sat in his jail cell.

We can only presume that the Doctor had been preparing for this meeting for some time: “You want spoilers?” he asks in a flame of fury. “I’ll tell you your future. You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison until your heart packs in age 49.”

The chilling change in the Doctor's demeanour reminded me of one iconic scene in classic Doctor Who - the Seventh Doctor’s famous speech to one last remaining Dalek outside of Coal Hill School in the iconic 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks, where the Doctor calmly talks the creature into an act of self-extermination: “You’re trapped, a trillion miles and a thousand years from a disintegrated home. I have defeated you; you no longer serve any purpose.”

Remembrance of the Daleks came off the back of a fairly light-hearted series of Doctor Who stories which had been produced following a period of uncertainty over the show’s future, and while Lucky Day doesn’t hit the heights of that iconic serial, it does for Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor what Remembrance of the Daleks did for Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh, in that it gives him, if not his defining moment as the Doctor, then certainly his big turning point.

The Fifteenth Doctor’s final scene in Lucky Day wasn’t your standard Doctor Who speech, it was something much more. It’s one of the moments that could define this Doctor for decades to come. Ncuti Gatwa looks assured and all-powerful, he’s the most commanding that he has ever been in the role as he taunts Conrad, telling him that he is alone and unloved: “The world carries on, the world gets better, you aren’t even a footnote, just ashes on the wind.”

Casual viewers would say that the Doctor is one core character who is routinely played by a different actor. Your space hero fighting aliens with a trusty companion by their side. But look a bit closer and you’ll see something more.

Delve into the show’s history and the deeper you go, the more you find the layers and the many facets to the different incarnations of this Time Lord. Sometimes people call Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor a “clown” or a “cosmic hobo”, but underneath that cheerful, carefree persona, was he actually seeking out injustices, taking bolder actions than future Doctors would?

What about Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor? He was considered the traveller, the nonchalant bohemian – was he merely stumbling into trouble, trying hard not to meddle too much in the affairs of the universe? Or was there something more?

Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor once came face-to-face with the Valeyard, a personification of the evil within the Doctor. And whilst David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor was still nursing scars from the Time War, we were repeatedly privy to a darkness inside of him, highlighted in Donna Noble’s first adventure with the Doctor, The Runaway Bride.

But it is the Seventh Doctor who has repeatedly drawn direct comparisons with Ncuti Gatwa’s current incarnation, and not just because Fifteen is the 'Seventh Doctor' of NuWho. Both are intrinsically linked to Mel Bush (played by Bonnie Langford), they both wage a war with the Gods, they both emotionally destroyed a companion in order to save them. Oh, and they both have a bit of an over-reliance on the power of spoons.

The Fifteenth Doctor’s speech inside the TARDIS was the Doctor at his most confrontational, his most enraged. It was enough to shock you out of your seat and make you wonder if this Doctor had stepped over the line.

The Seventh Doctor once said to Davros: “I am far more than just another Time Lord.” This was because his Doctor was being pushed towards a Godlike status – and it’s an argument that has waged between fans for decades: how should the Doctor be characterised? As the lonely traveller or the burdened God?

As a Godlike entity, the character of the Doctor can divide fans, but in many respects, it was this darker interpretation of the character that paved the way for the future of Doctor Who, creating a level of emotional drama seldom seen in the show’s history.

Classic Doctor Who may have ended during McCoy’s tenure, but what it ultimately inspired was a grittier look at the character when the Doctor finally returned to our screens.

Whatever the future holds for Doctor Who, let’s hope that the Fifteenth Doctor continues to flourish and that his time isn’t cut short, so that we can explore the Doctor’s darker side to its fullest extent.

Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. New episodes release weekly on Saturdays.

Dive into our Doctor Who story guide: reviews of every episode since 1963, plus cast & crew listings, production trivia, and exclusive material from the Radio Times archive.

Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.