Doctor Who: The Devil's Chord Review - 8 Ups & 2 Downs
6. UP - London, 1963!
It's fascinating to see how RTD is approaching this new era of Doctor Who. Although branded as "Season 1", it doesn't seem to stop throwing in callbacks to the past 39 seasons.
Case in point – the Doctor and Ruby looking out across the London skyline, and discussing Totter's Lane, Susan Foreman, and Shoreditch. It could have come across as clunky exposition, but Ncuti Gatwa plays the lines with wistful nostalgia.
Gatwa plays the Doctor as a time-traveller returning to a period in which he used to live, feeling nostalgic as if 1963 is an old flatshare or the first bedsit you rented with your partner. It's a nice moment, and also teases out some new information about the Master's genocide.
Apparently it left a cosmic shockwave that may, or may not, have killed Susan. Does this mean we could meet a regenerated Susan at some point later in the series?
It feels unlikely, but given how things are developing in the RTD2 era, anything feels possible.