‘Doctor Who’ review: Brilliant Ncuti Gatwa looks set to be one of the great Doctors

Pick the right Doctor and ideally everything else should fall into place. It hasn’t always worked out like that, though.

Sixth Doctor Colin Baker, who succeeded Peter Davison in 1984, was divisive, considered by some to be too abrasive and disliked by then BBC1 controller Michael Grade, who made the actor’s removal a condition of continuing to make the series.

In 2013 Peter Capaldi was the dream Doctor fans had been clamouring for, but he was let down by scripts that painted the character as grumpy and gloomy.

Capaldi’s successor Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor, was an inspired choice and a golden opportunity to re-energise the series. She too, however, was ill-served by often dreadful writing.

Can the combination of returning showrunner Russell T Davies, the man responsible for the successful relaunch of Doctor Who in 2005, and latest Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, the breakout star of Netflix’s Sex Education, restore the series to its former glory?

On the evidence of the double bill that kicked off the Sottish-Rwandan actor’s first full season as the Time Lord – which is bolstered by investment from Disney – the future hasn’t looked this bright since the David Tennant era.

To be honest, neither episode will be remembered as a classic. After a brief stop-off in the age of the dinosaurs, the opener, Space Babies, sees the Doctor and companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, whose chemistry with Gatwa is sparkling) land on a space station populated by talking babies.

The only adult on board is Nanny Jocelyn (Bridgerton’s Golda Rosheuvel), who hides out in a room and feeds and changes the babies remotely, using mechanical arms.

She stayed behind to care for the kids after the rest of the crew fled the space station, which is slowly running out of oxygen. But there’s another creature on the station: the Bogeyman, a terrifying monster that lives on the lower deck. When we say Bogeyman, we mean it literally: the Doctor discovers that the creature is made of the accumulated snot from the babies’ tissues. Yuck!

If this all sounds silly, its because it’s intended to be. Space Babies, which is inconsequential stuff with a happy ending (even for the misunderstood Bogeyman) that takes a light swipe at the anti-abortion zealots, is Davies at his most playfully daft.

The second episode, The Devil’s Chord, is better. The Doctor and Millie, got up in clothes straight out of Carnaby Street, visit London in 1963 to see The Beatles recording their first album, Please Please Me, at EMI Studios, later renamed Abbey Road Studios.

But something is amiss. The Fab Four, played by actors who look nothing like the real thing, are churning out flat, tuneless drivel with nursery rhyme lyrics. So, in the studio next door, is Cilla Black.

This is the handiwork of a nasty interstellar villain called Maestro (a wonderfully demented performance by Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon), whose first step in destroying the world is to drain it of music. The Devil’s Chord ends with a full-on musical number, which will annoy as many people as it delights.

Thanks to the Disney dollars, Doctor Who has never looked more spectacular. There’s some clunky exposition about the Doctor’s background, obviously for the benefit of new US viewers who’ll be watching on Disney+, but also some lovely little nods to the past, as when the Doctor tells Millie that he lived in Shoreditch in 1963 with his granddaughter – a reference to the very first episode with William Hartnell.

If the episodes are mostly forgettable, Gatwa, the first black Doctor and the first openly queer actor to take on the role, something that’s enraged the pathetic anti-woke brigade, is the opposite.

You can understand why Davies wanted to cast him the moment he walked into the audition. He explodes off the screen. He’s funny, energetic, athletic and effortlessly charismatic, with a hint of steeliness behind the eyes. He feels like an amalgam of all the best qualities of past Doctors, yet immediately makes the character his own.

With the promise of darker stories to come in the weeks ahead, this is just what the Doctor ordered.