Yahoo News Doctor Who’s ‘The Goblin Song’: Ncuti Gatwa Spills Secrets About Christmas Special’s Delicious Bop
The following contains spoilers from the Christmas special Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road, now streaming on Disney+.
If you find yourself suddenly craving baby butter spread on baby scones, you have the latest Doctor Who Christmas special to thank.
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The Church on Ruby Road, now streaming on Disney+, saw the new, bi-generated Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) cross paths with Ruby Sunday (Coronation Street‘s Millie Gibson), a young woman who as a newborn had been abandoned on the steps of a church one wintry Christmas Eve.
Ruby when we meet her is a bit of a magnet for bad luck, and as such has drawn the interest of a band of goblins. The Doctor catches wind of this, and when a newborn girl left in the care of Ruby’s foster mom gets kidnapped by said goblins, he joins Ruby for an incursion into the sharp-toothed critters’ high-flying ship.
Fifteen and Ruby are promptly caught and tied up, but the Doctor uses, no, not his sonic screwdriver (since no screws are to be had), but his mastery of rope language to free him and Ruby — just in time for them to drop in on a raucous musical number led by a goblin band singing gleefully about salting up baby Lulu to be fed to the Goblin King whose hungry maw awaits the wee one at the end of a conveyor belt.
As the Doctor buys time to calculate his, Ruby and Lulu’s way out of this predicament, he joins the goblin band for an improvised verse or two. After Ruby winningly does same, Fifteen locates the “master knot” in the ropes above them and tugs at it, affording him, her and the baby swift egress from the ship.
In the video Q&A above, new franchise front man Ncuti Gatwa reveals what surprised him about the “Goblin Song”-and-dance number — primarily, that he assumed it would be filmed/the music recorded in a very different manner. The Rwandan-Scottish actor then shares insight into which visual effects were practical (meaning, actually there on set) and which were added in later with CGI.
As for the Goblin King himself, Gatwa closes things out by offering his and leading lady Gibson’s perhaps surprising POV on the big galoot, having had the chance to work with him.
“The Goblin King,” as Gatwa notes, is available on BBC Sounds and will also be available via Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, with all proceeds going to BBC Children in Need.
“I don’t like these goblins and you won’t either,” composer Murray Gold, who worked on the catchy tune with Doctor Who showrunner/writer Russell T Davies, said in a statement, “but they have agreed to donate everything from their song to BBC Children in Need, so let’s not give up on them”.
Watch the “Goblin Song” lyric video below, then grade the Christmas special as a whole:
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