Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

The Doctor lands in England on Christmas Day shortly after regenerating. Someone is killed by a Christmas Tree. Then, he has to help blond teenage girl and her family when an oddly primitive race in their flying ship that uses a vaguely magic-based form of science to endangers a child.

Watching Ncuti Gatwa’s first full outing as The Doctor, “The Church on Ruby Road,” involved quite a bit of déjà vu. Showrunner Russell T Davies’s script borrows more than a few pieces from David Tennant’s first episode, “The Christmas Invasion.” On top of that, there were numerous patchwork moments that felt like callbacks to the heyday of modern Who, such as Ruby (Millie Gibson) hanging from a ladder after investigating a strange phenomenon, paradoxes causing visible cracks in reality, and classic banter between The Doctor and his new companion’s family that reads like leftover Camille Coduri dialogue.

And yet, the episode wasn’t stale or derivative. Some of that was the sheer goofiness of the villain. Goblins who put on full musical numbers before they feed a baby to Goblin King that looks like he slid out of a bad Magic: The Gathering card can really add spice to an otherwise pretty standard Doctor Who plot. The fact that the show is leaning so hard into fantasy remains refreshing for now, though hopefully a few good historical adventures will pump the brakes before it becomes space Harry Potter.

Over the course of 60 years and thousands of stories across multiple mediums, it’s impossible for Doctor Who to not revisit many of its creative wells. Hell, at least three different Doctors have come across Mary Shelley while she was formulating Frankenstein. Pining for pure originality in this show is a waste of energy.

Like improv, what makes Doctor Who work is taking the toybox and finding new permeations of what to do with it. In this case, The Doctor gets a slightly weird alien race and a kidnapped baby, and then the show tells the new guy to run with it.

Run he does. For my money, no actor in the history of the show has stepped so firmly into the role of The Doctor as Ncuti Gatwa. Even William Hartnell himself was not so self-assured and complete a character as the Fifteenth Doctor. Only Christopher Eccleston has even come close to mastering the swagger and heart required of The Doctor on the first try, and his Doctor still had the baggage of the Time War weighing him down. Fifteen is free of all that, a new slate, and through his eyes the world of Who just feels brighter and more alive.

Gibson is a perfect match for Gatwa. While casting a rather obvious parallel to Rose Tyler was cause for concern that Davies wasn’t bringing many new ideas, Ruby is no shadow. She is vibrant, caring, and driven in her own right. Though she’s got some tragic backstory, there’s no sense of an untended emotional need that propels her into the Tardis out of codependency. Like her Doctor, she is a clean slate ready for new experiences, and it’s so refreshing. You have to go way, way back to someone like Sam Jones in the early Eighth Doctor novels to find someone this perfect for new adventure.

As with the previous three specials, the Disney money is on full display in this new incarnation of Doctor Who. The goblins are certainly better than, say, the recent return of the Sea Devils, and the show weaves in the special effects extremely well.

More than that, the quiet moments are equally impressive. The best acting in the episode comes from Michelle Greenidge, who plays Ruby’s adopted mother Carla. Thanks to time travel shenanigans, she plays two different versions of herself, one a caring foster mother with a heart as big as the Tardis, and the other a cold woman who takes in kids purely for the money. Her scene with Gatwa in the latter scenario, though brief, captures the perfect essence of Doctor Who.

The villain is not really space goblins. They’re the symptom. No, The Doctor sees what non-interference means: a large and loving family that simply no longer exists if he doesn’t save the day. It’s a Superman story finally told right. The bad guy isn’t a monster; it’s failure.

That message is the show distilled down to its foundational molecule, and it’s being done perfectly. This Spring is looking very bright indeed for the show.