Doctor Who: The Legend Of Ruby Sunday Review - 6 Ups & 4 Downs

10. DOWN - A Lack of Setup

As fun as this week's cold open was, with the TARDIS sonic booming out of the sky to the UNIT theme tune and skateboard grinding into UNIT tower, I couldn't help but feel that, once again, we jumped into the action a little too quickly.

One of my biggest criticisms of this series (and I know I'm not alone), is that Fifteen and Ruby, whilst having great chemistry, seem to have done most of their character development off screen. The start of this episode would have been the perfect time to drop a scene of the two on the TARDIS, having a little heart-to-heart about Ruby's birth mother, and discussing the reoccurring face which has haunted them throughout their adventures.

We desperately need more time with these two alone, and its scenes like this, bookending episodes, where most of this interaction has tended to happen in the past. This episode could certainly have spared the runtime, given it spends most of it treading water.

We're thrown straight into The Doctor and Ruby arriving at UNIT to solve their two mysteries, and Fifteen seems very overfamiliar. By all accounts, this should be his first meeting with Rose wearing this current face, but this isn't acknowledged. The same could be said for the wider team - we know Fourteen likely spent a lot of time at UNIT during his retirement, but regardless, I feel the episode could have spent a moment discussing this, maybe giving us some snippets on how Fourteen spent his twlight years beyond the smallest reference to him with Fifteen's 'How's your uncle?'

Let's just slow things down a tad!