‘Doctor Who’ Writer Talks Incorporating ‘Bridgerton,’ Rogue Romance, and More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doctor Who Season 1 Episode 6 “Rogue.”]

“Oh my Bridgerton.” Doctor Who leans into the fun of the Netflix series with its trip to 1813, and while the Duchess (Indira Varma) may start by looking for a match for Ruby (Millie Gibson), it’s the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) who has a fun (but heartbreaking) romance.

The Doctor crosses paths with a bounty hunter Rogue (Jonathan Groff), with both thinking the other is responsible for a dead body; there are Chuldurs (shape-shifters) in their midst, and after the classic misunderstanding comes the bonding (on both their ships), almost kiss (on the TARDIS), sweet moments (a dance), and heartbreaking separation (Rogue takes Ruby’s spot in a trap designed to transport the Chuldur to a random barren dimension). The presence of a character played by Susan Twist continues (this time a portrait), and we can’t help but wonder who Rogue’s new boss is, given the Meep’s mention of a boss in the 60th anniversary special, an ongoing mystery—and showrunner Russell T Davies telling TV Insider at the beginning of the season, “There’s another mention of the boss coming up.” Is this it?

Below, Kate Herron, who wrote the episode with Briony Redman, takes us inside the romance, shape-shifting, and Bridgerton of “Rogue.”

This was a reunion for you with Ncuti after you directed him in Sex Education. Talk about now writing for him as the Doctor.

Kate Herron: It was such a massive honor. I think Ncuti is one of my favorite actors I’ve worked with and seeing what he’s done with the Doctor is so exciting to me. This is a very different Doctor than we’ve had before. Honestly, it was just about doing him justice in terms of giving Ncuti something great. So yeah, I was very excited to write to him.

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The Bridgerton aspects are so fun and incorporated in such a great way with the cosplaying. How’d you figure out how much you’d lean into the Bridgerton of it?

Look, I love Bridgerton, and I love costume drama and romance. I started writing because I used to write fanfiction. I think me and Briony were joking that we basically wrote a fanfic to this episode and we always thought they might tell us to take Bridgerton out, but it’s sustained and somehow has survived and it’s in there still. For us, honestly, it was just about having fun, right? The Chuldurs are meant to be massive fans of the show, so is Ruby. And just the idea of when you are time traveling, we see our way of seeing different historical periods, but often for us anyway it’s in television shows or books, things that we enjoy. And we were like, well, what is it like if you actually travel to this time period and you’re faced with the reality of the situation?

From the start, the Doctor and Rogue’s relationship is flirty, the banter is top-notch. What was your approach to their interactions and the buildup of that relationship? They had that almost kiss, then they do finally kiss and then they have that heartbreaking separation.

For us, Rogue’s core story was always about someone realizing that they can find love and romance and excitement again after feeling maybe that wasn’t something that was going to be for them again. As they talk about loss in that scene in the TARDIS, and I think in terms of their buildup, we were following very classic enemies-to-lovers storyline, and so it was really just enjoying the tension. And look, we’ve got two brilliant actors in Ncuti and Jonathan, so it was just fun, honestly, in just working out, so, at what point are they trusting each other? Maybe deciding that they kind of like this person?

The conversations on first Rogue’s ship and then on the TARDIS were so good because of the shifts in their relationship.

Yeah, I love board games. So it was meant to feel like one massive chess game, [that] was the idea behind how we were plotting out their dynamics. And also it was so important that Rogue felt like an equal to the Doctor. The Doctor is one of the most intelligent beings ever, and that honestly is the challenge in writing the Doctor, but it’s also giving the Doctor an equal match.

And I think that’s especially important because of Rogue’s decision at the end to get on the trap and push Ruby off.

Yeah, because also Rogue is interesting, right? Because he’s a bounty hunter. The Doctor makes jokes about the moral ambiguity of that job, but also we like that Rogue does get this proper full hero moment where he’s like, “No, I’m going to do this thing, but you’ll find me.” And I think there’s something exciting in that.

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You also got to put the Doctor in a different position because Rogue is the one to tell him to run and grab his hand. What did you enjoy about turning that around on the Doctor?

That was the fun thing, right? For me, all good love stories, whether that be in fiction or reality, it’s surprising, right? It’s someone who can meet you where you are and challenge you, but also completely turn your version of reality upside down. And that was the fun thing for us with Rogue was that yes, he is going to say stuff to the Doctor where, “Wait, what did you say?” I think it was fun to see the Doctor a little bit flustered or a little bit on the back foot because he’s never on the back foot. It was fun to do that.

And you got to do that also when it came to Ruby because he thought that she was the Chuldur.

And it was very hard to do that because obviously the Doctor is very smart. But it was fun for us to put the Doctor in a position where, yes, it was a sort of unknown territory for him.

Because you got to play with the Doctor being focused on his emotions instead, listening to his hearts versus his head.

One of my favorite Doctor Who episodes is “Father’s Day” by Paul Cornell [in the previous Season 1], and obviously Russell conceived that idea. I love the idea of emotional storytelling within a sci-fi setting, and it was really exciting to me to yes, as you said, explore a more emotional side of the Doctor in doing that.

And then there’s their dance—once they start dancing, there’s no dialogue.

In the script, we said they start to dance and we put emotional beats in there, but I should also say I have to give credit to our brilliant director, Ben Chessell, and our director of photography, Jamie Cairney. They had that beautiful idea of the lights going down and feeling like you’re with them. I think we put in the script, it feels intimate, and it does. Ben is a fantastic director. And then it was like, okay, how visually do I elevate that idea? And yeah, I remember being so emotional when Ben first showed us what they’d done with the dance and I was like, this is amazing. So I would say credit to them and also obviously our brilliant choreographer.

Rogue’s “Find me” sets up a possible return of the character. So were you told this could be a potential returning character? Then you have the Doctor with his ring at the end.

I think me and Briony are just cheeky. We just put in the script, “Find me,” and the Doctor has his ring and we were like, maybe they’ll take it out, but Russell let us keep it in there. So, no. Look, we were excited and we love Rogue, obviously, the character. So if Russell decides to bring Rogue back, that would be extremely flattering.

Was there a reason for the order of the Doctor’s previous faces appearing as holograms? It’s not in chronological or reverse chronological order.

The key thing for us honestly was just—I think we said in the script that it’s all the representations of the Doctor, all the different faces that the Doctor has had, and that was really important for us. But in terms of order, no, there wasn’t a specified order. It was more just in the sense of, I think visually what felt the most exciting and just that we were representing the Doctor in all their different forms.

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Was there anything from working on Loki that you found especially useful when writing this episode?

I think it all came down to very heightened sci-fi circumstances, but heart and emotion and the characters feeling grounded and truthful. That always drove us through every episode and that’s hugely what I’m about as a writer as well as a director. So I think that’s definitely what I brought to this as a writer with Briony as my writing partner for it, was just always grounding it in emotion and truth.

What was the last piece of the episode that you came up with?

Probably what we spoke about earlier, just the cheeky stuff. Kylie [Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”] was something that we were talking about, what could the song be that Rogue would have, and that was a big discussion, but also a discussion in the sense of what could we get, but making sure that it felt like something that would be fun to be playing in Rogue’s ship that you wouldn’t necessarily expect having from what you’ve seen of Rogue so far. That probably was one of the last things that came into play.

Then you also had the Ruby and Emily (Camilla Aiko) scenes, with the juxtaposition of 1813 and modern day and then the twist of, oh, another shapeshifter.

One of my favorite films is The Thing. Briony and I have written together for over 10 years now. We’ve written stuff before with shape-shifting aliens, so it’s [something] we know very well. We wanted it to be interesting that these two women from two completely different time periods were meeting, and how would they be friends? And also just the idea of Ruby being confronted with the reality of, this isn’t Bridgerton entirely. In some ways, yes, it does feel like the show, but in some ways, it isn’t, and how isn’t it that way? That was fun for us to play in. But then also, the double meaning of, obviously Emily is not who she seems, but interestingly has a very similar path and emotional arc to what you would expect a woman from that time to have. So yeah, there was a lot of juggling there. Millie is a dream and it was very fun to write for her.

If you write another Doctor Who script, is there a monster or alien you’d want to write? One of the classics?

Oh gosh, I would be so flattered to return. I would be tempted to come back and do something else with the Chuldur just because I think they’re so much fun and we really enjoyed creating them. But I mean, I couldn’t pick one. There’s just been so many across the whole show.

Talk about coming up with the Chuldurs’ endgame, having it start with cosplaying and then going after the entire world.

I think they’re improvisers. They’re very dramatic. I think the fun with the Chuldur for me was that yes, they are just super fans. They really commit to the bit. And yes, they do love the idea of dressing up as their favorite characters. That is their passion and drive, but also they’re greedy and they’re like, well, why not world domination? We had an amazing cast for that. When Briony and I were growing up, we both loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that is a show where the villains are very funny but also quite scary. So it was important for us to kind of balance that with the Chuldur as well. They are fun, but at the same time, sometimes the most scary things in the world are masquerading as that.

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