Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday

"For what it’s worth, I think you bring joy."

Doctor Who reaches part one of its big two-part season finale. The first of the Ncuti Gatwa era.

Where to even start with unpacking this...

It's difficult to review part one of a two part finale in a vacuum. There's just so much left to happen that can affect how we feel about the overall story and retroactively change how well any of this works. I suppose, in the end, the only real metrics that can be fairly applied to part one of two in these situations are: Did it feel like the episode was just treading water up until the cliffhanger reveal? and was the cliffhanger reveal satisfying enough to justify the previous forty odd minutes of story?

For better or worse, this one never feels like it's treading water. There's an awful lot going on. The issue is that a lot of the time all the things going on don't entirely feel like they all beling to the same storyline. That's not neccesary a bad thing, but it runs the risk of making everything feel disjointed if you don't put a hell of a lot of effort into reassuring the audience that all of this is sauntering toward one coherent whole picture. And I'm not 100% convinced that I felt that all the way through this episode.

There are a lot of seemingly unrelated threads dancing around in this one, so it might be helpful to break them down a little. We've been presented this season with what we might loosely term 'The Three Woman Problem.' (Apologies to Netflix.)

1: Who is Ruby's Mother?

2: Who is Susan Twist? Or should that be who are Susan Twist?

3: Who is Mrs. Flood?

They've been alternatively juggling or dangling those three questions for us all season. Although it bears mentioning at this point that the season being shortened to eight episodes didn't do them any favors for at least two of them. I like that the Doctor's presentation of all of the Susan Twists that he'd met recently included some that we as the audience hadn't been around for. That helped to provide a bit of scale for events. But it would have been nicer if they'd had more opportunities to insert Susan into other random events so that we got a more gradual sense of the Doctor and Ruby slowly realizing that she was a thing that was happening. As it is, the Doctor and Ruby kind of turn up in the opening of this episode already having pieced that together mostly off screen, which feels like a lost opportunity. It would have been cool structurally if we'd gotten an episode right before this one in which either the Doctor or Ruby realizing the ubiquity of Susan Twist provided the resolution for a completely unrelated issue. 'Wait... We've seen that woman repeatedly lately... which means that the REAL princess of Antipedurian is... the other one!'

Feel free, at this juncture, to begin writing your own 'Princess of Antipedurian' fan fiction.

Similarly, Mrs. Flood (who we'll circle back to in a bit) got so little screen time this season that we're barely reminded that she's supposed to be a mystery box. In one of her very few appearences she literally shows up half way through, says 'Oh, this episode isn't about me.' and sods off again. A couple more episodes – maybe one set in Ruby's home street in which Mrs. Flood could have played an important role – would have gone a long way towards building up to her moment with Cherry in this episode. Again, we'll get to that in a second.

Really, it's the question of Ruby's mother's identity that gets the proper amount of focus this season. It's snowed when they mention Ruby's birth just the right number of times for the explanation here to be satisfying. That moment in time is so damaged and torn up that even thinking about it too hard caused some bleed through. It's a poetic visual as well as underscoring why the Doctor can't just go back and see what actually happened.

Of those three women, we get the explanation for precisely one of them. It turns out that Susan Twist is a normal human who, for some reason, gets projected in her dreams into whatever adventure the Doctor and Ruby happen to be in the middle of at the time. I like that reveal a lot more than 'she's been Susan all along,' to be honest. It's all down to her being somehow tied to the classic big bad who's been waiting in the wings all this time in a way that hasn't been entirely explained yet, but I like how they're playing this thread.

It is worth taking a moment to think about what Harriet Arbinger was muttering about that Big Bad pouring energy into a vessel and seducing that vessel while the Lord of Time didn't notice. (It's a little too low to pick out in the mix when watching, but they spell it out clearly in the subtitles.) So who does that mean the vessel is? Is the Vessel Susan? Or is the Vessel Ruby, and Susan was just the vehicle for pouring? The Cruet of Evil, if you will. My money is currently on the latter.

As for the other two women involved, we're given precisely nothing to guess at the identity of Ruby's mother. Assuming of course that the woman who dropped her off was Ruby's mother. She might have just been a friend of her mum's that was going out on errands anyway that night. 'Excuse me love, while you're out getting milk, would you mind just popping this newborn baby at the church next to the store?'

I'm not going to lie, I would totally love it if that turns out to be the answer.

As for Mrs. Flood, all we're given to go on here is that she's kind of a bitch to Cherry Sunday when asked for a cup of tea. And while I personally agree that being rude to Cherry Sunday should earn you a righteous ass kicking, that doesn't necessarily mean that she's evil. It just means that she understands what exactly is going on and isn't particularly concerned with manners. I kind of come down on the side that Mrs. Flood will turn out to be, if not good, at least part of the solution to defeating the big bad next week. Who knows. Maybe Morris Gibbons will turn out to be partially correct and Mrs. Flood will turn out to be Ruby's mother. That could get interesting, particularly in light of some persuasive online theories about who Mrs. Flood could be.

I do, however, reserve the right to call for her painful death if it turns out she hurt Cherry. I'm just saying.

Okay, we've danced around it long enough to give it its own section.

Sutekh

I'd seen this theory floated online as far as who 'The One who Waits' is, and I really was hoping it wouldn't turn out to be.

Don't get me wrong. I love Sutekh. You love Sutekh. Everybody loves Sutekh. He was one of the all-time great villains of the classic series. As a reveal here, judged solely by the modern series, he reads as a perfectly logical extension of The Beast from 'The Impossible Planet' and 'The Satan Pit.' Indeed, it was expressly the intention of those two episodes that the Beast we see there is an extension of Sutekh from the classic series. He gets name checked in the episodes and everything. They even brough back Gabriel Woolf to be the voice both for 'Satan Pit' and this episode. The connection between The Beast and Sutekh is iron clad intentional.

At the time of 'Satan Pit' it really wasn't important if you weren't a fan of the old series, it was just a cute little easter egg. Here, it's... more than that.

Yeah, we're going to have to talk about the legitimacy of caring whether new stories fit into canon. I know, I'm not happy about it, either.

To be perfectly clear and up front, as a reveal in this episode at this time, Sutekh the Egyptian God of Death being revealed as 'The One who Waits' works just fine. It totally tracks, we can believe why The Toymaker was afraid of him, it all works in isolation here. The problem runs... I don't know... not deeper exactly. Let's say 'interwoven' with that.

The thing is, the only reason to bring back Sutekh by name is to get a big rush for the old school fans who have seen and love 'Pyramids of Mars.' And that's all well and good. That's the exact same reasoning that brought the Daleks back. And the Master. And so many more examples from the modern series. But the problem is that the Sutekh we see here isn't even remotely the same as the one we got in 'Pyramids.' The Sutekh in 'Pyramids' was only called a god because the alien race he came from was so much more powerful that the human beings that he encountered. And literally the entire point of that story is that Sutekh was a petty little bitch from an alien race that just happened to be really powerful and who hated everything and wanted to kill everyone.

He wasn't part of a pantheon of capital 'G' Gods, he was a rogue member of a super powerful alien race who turned out to be a really shitty person, no better than the humans he wanted to kill. That was the entire point of that story.

Which means that the exact people who are intended to be excited by the return of Sutekh are the exact same people for whom this redical change in the character is going to be a problem. Is that a legitimate complaint for an episode of television made in 2024 which is making a callback to an episode of television made in 1975? I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't think that there even is an objectively 'correct' answer to that one. It bothered me, that's all I can tell you.

Bits and Pieces:

-- It's worth making the distinction: The Toymaker is a beloved villain from the classic series entirely because of the concept of what the Toymaker is. Indeed, almost all of the people who love the character never had a chance to see the story he featured in. Sutekh, on the other hand, is a beloved villain from the classic series because he was the baddie in 'Pyramids of Mars,' which was written by Robert Holmes, who was freaking brilliant and it's just a really great story, really well told. In concept Sutekh's not really that interesting beyond the 'Oh, but he was actually an alien' part. It was always going to be difficult to splice those two into one coherent pantheon.

-- Yeah, yeah, I know Robert Holmes isn't the only credited writer on 'Pyramids,' but let's be honest with ourselves. He wrote it.

-- Were we supposed to recognize all of the other gods Harriet listed? I know the Trickster was a thing on The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the Mara got a name drop just in time to push the season 20 blu-ray release in the US (I'm sure that's a total coincidence) but there were several gods on that list that rang no bells for me whatsoever.

-- I loved the way that they repeatedly showed the Doctor figuring out something dramatically only to have everyone else in the room say 'Yeah, we all already got that.' I was just patting myself on the back for catching the TARDIS anagram right before the Doctor pointed it out and got shot down right with me.

-- Steven Moffat taught us all back in 'Deep Breath' what a vanity trap was. We all just fell into one. The episode went out of its way to put the name 'Sue' over the word 'Tech' in the graphics and I never noticed it for a moment.

-- The CGI for Sutekh in their final form felt a little weak to me. I didn't hate it, but I was very aware that it was CGI.

-- I was wondering why they've decided that 'bonkers' is Mel's primary character trait, but then I remembered that she took off with Sabalom Glitz on a whim, so maybe it's valid.

-- That's two episodes in a row in which someone refuses to let the Doctor pretend to be okay and instead hugs him into acknowledging his feelings. I kind of like it.

-- The four specials were all so close together that I was genuinely surprised to realize that Rose had never met Ruby.

-- After more digging that I probably should have invested in, it appears that the absence of Shirley Anne Bingham is entirely due to a scheduling conflict and nothing more sinister. I didn't hate her replacement, but I did miss her.

-- The plotting went to great lengths to get Carla into the UNIT building but separated from Ruby. That might be entirely down to the need to get Cherry alone with Mrs. Flood, but I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't a larger purpose behind it.

-- The Susan Twists that we didn't get to meet looked pretty cool.

-- How long must the photo shoot have been for Susan Twist just to shoot all those magazine covers?

-- I might just be being dense, but who is the obvious evil genius with alien technology that they hadn't caught yet? Is this a British reference? Being American, once I heard evil my first thought was Donald Trump, but of course he's a fucking idiot, so 'genius' kind of rules him out.

Quotes:

The Doctor: "Ruby, this is Kate. We love Kate. I knew Kate’s dad. He was the best of men."

The Doctor: "Colonel Ibrahim! Someone has been working out."

The Doctor: "The name is TARDIS Technology."
Kate: "Well, obviously."
Colonel Ibrahim: "Even I got that."
Morris Gibbons: "Name, Anagram, TARDIS. Probability of a trap 95% and rising."

Kate: "We’ve got her undercover on the media team, and she’s discovered one surprising thing. Susan Triad turns out to be really nice."

Mrs. Flood: "I’m always just hiding myself away."

Cherry: "I would like a cup of tea."
Mrs. Flood: "Would you, sweetheart? Well, we’d all like a lot of things… that aren’t going to happen."

Kate: "A phoenix is just a bird until it burns."

The Doctor: "Kate, do you have a time window?"
Kate: "Wh... You expressly told us in the 1970s, UNIT was absolutely forbidden to experiment with any form of time technology."
The Doctor: "Do you have a time window?"
Kate: "Ten floors down."

Kate: "We’ve got sound and vision!"
I do love a Bowie reference.

Kate: "Doctor, when is that thing? Is it now, or 2004?"

Mel: "Finished? Now stop grizzling and fix it."

Susan: "Well, top marks for enigmatic."

An enthusiastic part one for the finale of Ncuti's inaugural season. I'm going to have to wait to give this a score once I've seen how it all plays out.

I did enjoy it a lot, though.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, retired firefighter, and roughly 78% water. You can find more of his work at the 42nd Vizsla. If you'd like to see his raw notes for this and other reviews, you can find them at What Was Mikey Thinking.

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