After a couple of experimental episodes, Rogue feels like more of a meat-and-potatoes Doctor Who adventure: a historical yarn complete with romance, intrigue and bird people. It’s slightly ironic that this is the first episode this season to be penned by new writers, with Kate Herron and Briony Redman feeling right at home in the Whoniverse, delivering an adventure that shifts from comedy to tragedy as swiftly as Indira Varma‘s Duchess shifts from human to her birdlike Chuldur form.

Naturally, the highlight of Rogue is the dynamic between Ncuti Gatwa‘s Doctor and Jonathan Groff‘s titular bounty hunter, running the full rom-com gamut of enemies to allies to potential love interests (although the latter is left hanging for a potential sequel). Gatwa and Groff have great on-screen chemistry and are a lot of fun to watch together, as this more extroverted Doctor engages in a back-and-forth with the more introverted Rogue (the character taking his name from Dungeons & Dragons is a nice character beat).

Doctor romances are a difficult thing to get right in the series, but Rogue manages it so well that fans are already clamouring to see the two characters reunite. There are a few interesting inclusions in their spaceship scene, with the appearance of Richard E Grant (the could-have-been Ninth Doctor in animated pilot Scream of the Shalka) amongst the pantheon of Doctors, as well as pointed line about Rogue’s new boss (is this the Boss teased by the Meep back in The Star Beast?) Nevertheless, the emphasis of the episode is on the Doctor and Rogue, which is great to see after Gatwa’s limited screentime in the last couple of episodes.

Meanwhile, despite some nice character moments here and there, Millie Gibson‘s Ruby feels somewhat side-lined, and her constant Bridgerton comparisons a bit repetitive. As it turns out, the comparisons are a deliberate part of the antagonists’ plot (even if the writers choosing Bridgerton of all series seems a little odd given Who‘s younger audience), with the fowl Chuldur ‘cosplaying’ as Regency characters in a very postmodern take on the familiar possession and body-swap formulas. The prosthetics work is incredibly impressive on the flamboyant family of feathered foes, with each character given a totally unique design, while Indira Varma (potentially playing an ancestor of Suzie Costello from Torchwood) relishes the opportunity to chew the scenery in the lead baddie role.

Rogue does somewhat suffer from 45-minute syndrome, losing the usual fun of the TARDIS arrival and instead launching head-first into the plot. The first act in particular leans into the Regency melodrama before the sci-fi elements take over, which on a rewatch highlights the incredibly fast pacing. Ruby’s apparent ‘death’ being highlighted with an out-of-the-blue flashback to a sequence we probably should have seen properly on-screen does reinforce the curious narrative gaps of this season (the show usually employs a ‘return home’ episode for these dramatic moments, like Aliens of London or Arachnids in the UK). That all being said, Rogue is a lot of fun to watch, and a welcome dose of daft Doctor Who before the high-stakes two-part finale next week.

Doctor Who returns to BBC One next Saturday at 18:30

Join us for our series blog review next week