*Just what it says on the tin. Contains spoilers for both “The Robot Revolution” and “Lucky Day.”*
Now that I’ve shouted sufficiently about the finale, I’m circling back to take another look at some of the earlier episodes in the season. Between “Wish World” and “The Reality War,” I’ve already gotten into some spoilers on Conrad Clark, but there was plenty I didn’t say about this episode the first time around, so let’s get into it.
After this episode first aired, I wondered if incel boyfriends were going to be the Big Bad of the season, and in a way, I was sort of right. Conrad certainly plays a major role in the two-part finale, even if the Rani is running the show. But it’s still striking to me that one season shows two different companions with toxic boyfriends/exes who wind up being the main villain of the episode.
And in the case of both Alan and Conrad, the men are initially presented as “nice”/decent guys who reveal their true colors later in the episode, although the signs are definitely there from the start. Alan insists that the star certificate he gives to Belinda be labeled “Miss Belinda Chandra” because she’s not married, and there’s an early offhand remark about girls not knowing much about STEM. The groundwork is laid for what he eventually becomes.
Meanwhile, Conrad lays it on thick playing sweet and overeager, but there are a number of moments in his early interactions with Ruby that don’t quite sit right. I straight-up rolled my eyes when Ruby offers him the antidote for the Shreek pheromone and he says, “On one condition: you let me buy your dinner.” I’m sorry, Conrad, you will only take this antidote that will prevent an alien predator from ripping you apart if Ruby goes on a date with you? Why are you setting conditions, dude? And his preoccupation with the Doctor pings in a “something’s off here” way. He wonders if the Doctor was Ruby’s boyfriend and repeatedly compares himself to the Doctor, ultimately setting up a scenario where it appears he’s put others in danger because he wants to manufacture an alien crisis to prove his bravery to Ruby. “Everything [the Doctor] was, I can be,” he insists. “I’m not afraid.” And Ruby, who’s just begun to realize that she’s still dealing with PTSD from her adventures on the TARDIS, tells him, “You should be.”
But as it turns out, it’s no surprise that Conrad doesn’t nail it in the good-boyfriend department, because it’s all an act. Dating Ruby is merely a means to an end for him, and the alien crisis he seemingly manufactures is entirely made up. It’s a con, reeling UNIT in and then “exposing” them as frauds via livestream. Because Conrad is in fact a right-wing conspiracy theorist who’s convinced that everything the public has seen and heard about aliens is really just a cover for UNIT’s strongarm tactics and extrajudicial overreach.
Yeah, there’s a lot going on there. I find it very interesting that Conrad’s “exposure” of UNIT is under blatantly false pretenses. He never actually sets out to catch UNIT in the act of fighting fake aliens that they’ve created for propaganda purposes. Instead, he makes the fake aliens and baits UNIT into showing up, and their reactions made it clear that they think the Shreeks are real when they first engage. So even if Conrad does really believe that UNIT is filled with shadowy puppet masters and disinformation theatrics, he’s less about proving that with evidence and more about simply getting everyone else to believe it too, by any means necessary.
And of course, a big part of the messiness of this episode is that UNIT is a shadowy government military organization with little oversight and a history of less-than-sterling behavior at times. UNIT has employed actual children and put them in dangerous situations where they have to kill or be killed. UNIT has acquired incredibly powerful technology that they don’t always understand how to use. UNIT has been prepared to blow London to hell to keep it from falling into enemy hands. UNIT is in no way some blameless darling here. But because Conrad is the antagonist, and because he’s the stand-in for right-wing conspiracy-mongers (he’s even a podcast bro, for crying out loud!), then UNIT becomes the innocent party. UNIT becomes the analogue for climate science, vaccine science, and other fields that get targeted by people like Conrad. He’s the bad guy, so any legitimate criticisms of UNIT get swept under the rug, never mind that in this very episode, Kate goes way over the line by releasing the captive Shreek in the building, knowing it will hunt Conrad because he’s still marked with its pheromones. Although she’s told afterward that she went too far, the prevailing theme of the episode is unambiguously “UNIT good, Conrad bad."
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