How did UNIT fare against the baying mob in Pete McTighe’s ‘Lucky Day’?
There’s a lot of noise on social media. The world of 2025 is one that Doctor Who never saw coming in its classic run – a world where everyone would be armed with an exceptionally powerful pocket computer with access to all the information in the known universe ever, and a portable television studio to boot.
However, we now live in a world of science fiction and Pete McTighe used the ‘spirit of the air’ of the modern age as the basis for his 2025 episode ‘Lucky Day.’ The story focused on a raging group of smartphone users who have become obsessed with UNIT – the Whoniverse’s famous alien-fighting organisation formerly led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and now overseen by his daughter Kate.
Naturally, these conspiracy theorists are out in full force, pitchforks at the ready, and they’ve made up their minds: UNIT is a smokescreen, nothing but a waste of tax payers’ money, and there’s “no such things as aliens.” And it has fallen to the social media-savvy crowd to kickstart their livestreams and expose ‘the truth’ behind the corruption.
Does this sound familiar? Certainly, one wonders if Pete McTighe had the US Capitol attack on his mind when he penned ‘Lucky Day.’ The chilling event from 2021 saw an angry mob storming the US Congress building with their smartphones, hell bent on ‘exposing the truth’ behind the purported rigged election that saw Joe Biden come to power. The event was livestreamed by a number of criminals as they marched through the Capitol’s hallways and ransacked offices.
Much of this suspicion and discontent was sown on social media, either by people hosting their own livestreams or posting their own online theories, or even sharing news articles which supported their views regarding the ‘truth’ behind the recent election. And this sentiment is what Pete McTighe was tapping into with ‘Lucky Day’ – the so-called ‘echo chamber’ effect when people shout loudly into the online void and hear their own voices being reflected back at them, and then use this information to reach a conclusion about what is really happening.
In ‘Lucky Day,’ the smartphone-wielding extremists are led by a man called Conrad Clark, who has formed a group called Think Tank to combat the ‘lies’ being spread by UNIT. And if this name sounds familiar to you, then it should; Think Tank was the name of the villainous gang who previously fought UNIT, and Pete McTighe revealed in an interview that the reference was a conscious one.
“Yes, ‘Think Tank’ is a deliberate call-back to the story ‘Robot’ from 1975,” he explained. “I figured Conrad did his research, and stole the name of a previous organisation that opposed and clashed with UNIT.”
And the Think Tank in ‘Robot’ was a far-right, fascist group with their sights set on world domination, so it’s interesting that Pete McTighe chose them as point of comparison for the disgruntled masses in ‘Lucky Day.’ Undoubtedly, Clark’s goons – the ones who are suspicious of the organisations that govern them, and go to great lengths to try and expose them – are the villains of the piece. The heroes of the piece are the ones who oppose them.
This is a simplification, of course; in Conrad Clark, Pete McTighe created a thoroughly unlikable character, who manipulated the Doctor’s former companion Ruby Sunday into appearing on his podcast, and even went so far as to pretend to be her boyfriend, all so that he could lure her and UNIT into a trap, where his keyboard warriors would be waiting. Make no mistake, this probably isn’t the kind of man you want ‘sliding into your DMs.’
On the other hand, we have the heroes. First there is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart who, after capturing Clark, takes him back to UNIT headquarters. After a failed armed assault on the UNIT staff, Conrad Clark finds himself at Kate’s mercy, and to teach him a lesson Kate unleashes a vicious monster called the Shreek, and leaves it free to taunt and potentially kill the man. “You told us it’s not real,” says Kate, as the people around her beg her to stop. “What’s behind your mask, Conrad? An angry little man who put the safety of this country at risk…”
And then we have Ruby, who ultimately comes to Clark’s aid and tasers the monster. Clark thanks her, and Ruby tells him to “go to hell.”
Pete McTighe rounds off the episode by presenting the ultimate hero – the Doctor himself. Clark finds himself on board the TARDIS, and the Time Lord offers his own view on the events that have gone down. “You’re special for all the wrong reasons,” he says. “You see, I am fighting a battle on behalf of everyday people who just want to get through their day, and feel safe, and warm, and fed.
“And then along comes this noise: all day long, this relentless noise. Cowards like you, weaponising lies, taking people’s insecurity and fear, and making it currency. You are exhausting. You stamp on the truth, choke our bandwidth, and shred our patience, because the only strategy you have is to wear us down.
“But the thing is, Conrad, I have energy to burn and all the time in the universe… I’ll tell you your future. You die in a prison cell, boiling in anger and poison until your heart packs in at age 49. Alone and unloved. Forgotten. The world carries on. The world gets better. You aren’t even a footnote. Just ashes on the wind.”
Certainly, Pete McTighe gave his viewers a thought-provoking episode in ‘Lucky Day.’ On the one hand, there is the raging mob, obsessed with “weaponising lies” and “wearing people down” by riffing on their “insecurity and fear.”
And then Pete McTighe gives us the other side of the coin – UNIT, Ruby and the Doctor – who deal with these people by tormenting them with monsters, telling them to go to hell, and then telling them that they will die alone and unloved and forgotten, in a prison cell, after a curtailed life – “not even a footnote.”
Was Pete McTighe telling his viewers that this was the moral standard they should hold themselves to? This is what he said in his interview to the BBC: “That speech I wrote for the Doctor, at the end of the episode – he says everything I wanted to say. I refer you to the Doctor.”
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