Doctor Who hasn’t given us a part one that sucks you in and sets the stage like The Legend of Ruby Sunday since the early RTD days. There’s another YouTuber I watch, Council of Geeks, and I agree with her that they needed more episodes. If they’d given us more like this one, the experimental episodes at the front end of the season wouldn’t have been so glaringly a thing.
Joining me again is the River Song to my Doctor, Mrs. Know-It-All, and we’re spoiling the heck out of this one. If you haven’t seen the episode, that’s your warning.
The recap, so it’s out of the way. The Doctor and Ruby visit UNIT headquarters to investigate the woman they’ve seen throughout time. UNIT already knows her: tech entrepreneur Susan Triad, whose staff Mel has infiltrated. The Doctor also wants to identify Ruby’s birth mother using UNIT’s time window. They enter a 3D projection of Christmas Eve 2004, but Ruby’s mother is inexplicably obscured, and an entity appears and kills a UNIT officer. Mel brings the Doctor to meet Susan Triad, who reveals she’s dreamt of being the individuals the Doctor observed. UNIT discovers the entity concealed a second instance of the TARDIS in 2004, and theorizes it already invisibly surrounds the TARDIS. Kate Stewart demands it show itself. UNIT analyst Harriet Arbinger is revealed to be a servant of the Pantheon and delivers an unsettling monologue in a demonic voice. The entity manifests in the form of a Set animal, an Egyptian dog. Susan Triad transforms into a ghoulish figure, and we learn that Susan Triad Technology, or “Sue Tech,” represents Sutekh, the god of death, an old enemy of the Doctor. Sutekh declares its intention to kill everything in the universe.
RTD at His Best, With Disney Money
It’s been a rough season for me, a rocky one. This is RTD at his best, and I’d have felt very differently about the year if there’d been more like it.
The funny thing is where it puts the show. I think RTD set himself up as a template. When he first started, it was original thing, original thing, original thing, Dalek, Cyberman. So when he left, everyone went original thing, Dalek, Cyberman, Dalek, Cyberman. Now he’s saying okay, guys, you can go back further and find us some more. I think that’s a great place to be.
They do their fly-in, which I thought was interesting. Someone online recently asked how come the TARDIS doesn’t dematerialize anymore, and my only response was Disney money. It’s not the first time we’ve seen the TARDIS fly, but we’re definitely seeing it more. I feel like somebody early in the process asked why they just did the fading in, somebody said it was for budget reasons originally, and the answer came back: we’re Disney, we can make you fly, let’s see that bad boy fly.
We got to see Rose Noble again, and I was so excited. And this episode doesn’t stop moving. The Doctor comes out and he’s spitting it all out to everybody.
The Trauma Dump, and Eight Episodes That Are Really Seven
He completely trauma dumps every Susan Twist appearance on UNIT in one go. I asked Mrs. Know-It-All what that did for her, and the answer was nothing.
The only problem I had with it is they showed scenes we never got. One is Susan Twist as a Borg, one is Susan Twist as a weird demon thing, and we clearly didn’t see those episodes. Mrs. Know-It-All said that’s probably why it didn’t mean much to her. A couple of them were from episodes we did see, but for people who are just starting to watch, she figured the reaction is “I don’t understand what’s going on,” because she had that thought too, and she’s been watching with me for a while now. She called it a bad choice.
I don’t think it was a bad choice. I think it was Russell having to address the fact that he doesn’t get so many episodes anymore. He went from 13 to 10 to now eight. And technically Disney’s counting the Christmas special as episode one in their lineup, so this one’s numbered eight in their run when it’s only the seventh episode of the season. It’s the penultimate episode, technically.
I really liked the buildup. We start to see Mel, and she’s still doing stuff as a former companion, which is wonderful. She’s tough, man.
The one thing I bumped into was the stacking. On top of the very important Susan Twist stuff, they suddenly dump on us that by the way, I also have this friend of mine and I need to find out what we can about her past. You banged these two things together and they didn’t feel like they had anything to do with one another.
Mrs. Know-It-All didn’t see it that way. If you recall, the Doctor said it spelled out TARDIS technology. So if the TARDIS was what was at play, especially once they went back into 2004, he really couldn’t separate the two. And that goes back to a couple of times this season, the snow especially, where the Doctor says the TARDIS seems to have a stomach ache. You start to realize whatever ends up happening has been happening with the TARDIS for a minute. It just wasn’t as forward as we probably would’ve liked. It was a tiny little drop when we wanted a big one.
A Third of the Episode in the Volume
So they decide to look into Ruby’s background, and it turns out they have CCTV from 2004, which I thought was so funny, because people forget Great Britain’s had CCTV way before everybody else, all over the place. It’s not just the camera on a bank.
In 2004 the camera was facing the wrong direction, and through some sci-fi jiggery pokery, with her memory and this thing and wavy handy things, we can suddenly see all around and get the whole picture. Fine. They then spend a third of the episode in this, and I’m going to call it what it was. It was the volume. Think about how easy it is to use a volume stage and make the imagery change the way you want it to look. I’m like, that’s kind of brilliant.
Mrs. Know-It-All caught the thing in the time window that nobody on screen did. It starts snowing, and the 13-year-old, whose name neither of us could remember, says we haven’t even started yet. Nobody picks up on it, inside UNIT of all places. Either make it snow and tell me why, or have someone freak out about it. It’s such an integral part of this entire thing and they went right past it.
When I first saw the episode, the rushed factor read to me as exciting. There’s things happening. Now that I’ve had time to sit on it overnight, the more I look at it, the more I sit here and go, they had to really cram a whole lot in because we had so few episodes. It wants to feel like the David Tennant ones, the big buildup to this thing we’ve all had questions about, and I didn’t have a whole lot of those questions. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got questions about this part one. I’m sucked into what’s happening in this story. But the story keeps wanting to say, oh my goodness, it’s what we’ve been looking at all along, and I’m like, what were you looking at?
Except for the snow. The snow’s happened the entire time, and Mrs. Know-It-All really hopes we get a huge, wonderful, beautiful explanation for it, because if we don’t, that’s a letdown. He tries to give a tiny bit of one: the moment is burned through time because of so much travel back and forth across it, so the snow is part of her and things leak through. But they don’t explain why it happened on a spaceship, or here, or there. If you want to make it like Cardiff with Torchwood, where this one spot is where things happen, I get that.
Kate’s Look, and “I Always Bring Destruction”
In the past they face this big smoky thing, we don’t know what it is, the energy flux happens, everything turns off and dude’s dead. The soldier who was in there with them.
I thought it was interesting that Kate gives the Doctor this look and doesn’t act on it. She knows this is dangerous work. They’re UNIT, they’re always risking their lives, they all know the stakes. But the look on her face just shouts, in another universe I would totally blame you and dress you down right now. And she keeps it in. I love the actress, I love the character, and I’m glad we get to see somebody who’s lived through several Doctors make that call. It’s smart.
Mrs. Know-It-All thinks she bit her tongue for another reason. Before they went into the time window, they thought this was possibly his granddaughter, and he says he always brings destruction. Then one of her people is killed, and it’s that “always bring destruction” all over again. So she’s very angry, she’s very hurt, and she’s leading them. She has to hold it together.
Susan, and What I Think We Actually Get
I was not expecting them to imply that Susan Triad was the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan. The minute that implication happened, Mrs. Know-It-All looked at me, and I was just shocked. Mainly because it felt awkward earlier in the season, in The Devil’s Chord, when he says technically I’m right over there in this one little garbage yard and my granddaughter’s there. Who? Granddaughter? In that moment I wondered, could he be going there?
I don’t think Susan Triad ends up being Susan, his granddaughter.
I really liked the moment where the Doctor has to grapple with the fact that the soldier died, and Mel is literally like, get up, stop it. Then she questions him: why haven’t you ever gone to see your granddaughter? He says, look at me, I bring death and destruction and crazy around me, I don’t want to ruin her life. I asked Mrs. Know-It-All if that’s a valid position for him. She said she doesn’t know. Thank you. I don’t either, because part of me is like, she was with you.
Kate brings the full breadth of their relationship to the same question. My father told me stories for years and never ever mentioned a granddaughter. And he says, I was a different Doctor back then.
I know we live in a world where everybody wants the backstory, the prequel, the whatever. I love having some mystery behind the Doctor. I’m still scared someone’s going to tackle the idea of revealing his real name, and I’m like, don’t do it, just leave it alone. So do we really need to go to Susan?
Here’s what I think we get if RTD is smart. Nobody we think is Susan is Susan. But we get a moment where the Doctor sees her from a distance. Maybe they even recreate the moment the old Doctor left, and you see him come back to that moment just to see her, and he still decides not to go. I’d be okay with that. I’d be okay with eye contact and smiles and then going, too. She just knows: it’s good to know you’re okay, Grandpa. You don’t need an entire storyline.
Remember, this is supposed to be the Doctor who recovered. Presumably at some future point David Tennant’s Doctor will turn into him, the way Time Lords work, so he’s going through rehab in the wrong direction. Part of rehab is making peace, sometimes making amends, coming to a closure point. Even if it’s “I can’t get closure,” understanding that is a form of closure. I feel like that’s some of his journey, and the Sutekh thing is one of those things. The Maestro was a result of what happened with the Toymaker, which was a result of what happened with the Toymaker back in the day. The dominoes are falling.
Mrs. Flood Hides Herself Away
I love the very Russell T Davies thing where the whole family has to get involved. With Rose it was her mom and Mickey. Now it’s Ruby and her mother, and her mother gets Mrs. Flood to come watch granny.
I’d love to say I connected these two dots myself. That’s a lie. I saw a reviewer connect them and I want to talk about it. Earlier, when the Doctor first reveals to Ruby that Time Lords change their face, she had no clue. He tells her it’s just something we do, it can save us if we’re dying, or sometimes we can hide ourselves away. And Mrs. Flood later says, oh, you know me, I’m always hiding myself away. Then you go back to that specific turn of phrase from before: what, you’ve never seen a TARDIS before?
And she’s not this sweet little Mrs. Flood all of a sudden. I have a feeling she’s either the ultimate misdirect for being Susan, or she’s another character we’ve all talked about: the Rani, another Time Lady from back in the day.
She breaks the fourth wall again and we see the storm she’s bringing in, and they make a big thing of it. She’s not so nice about it either, and Mrs. Know-It-All was so sad, because Cherry just wants a cup of tea. That poor old lady is still waiting for her cup of tea.
Is Mrs. Flood genuinely tied to the Sutekh story, or just opportunistic? We both think she’s not necessarily connected to Sutekh, but she’s going to be extremely important somehow. This has the tones of Steven Moffat’s series with Matt Smith, where in The Eleventh Hour you’ve got this one alien creature saying silence will fall, and that line doesn’t pay off until the next season. I don’t think we’re going to know anything about Mrs. Flood until next season.
A lot of people online are criticizing how deep he’s going. Why do all this if you’re trying to create a brand new fandom and this is supposed to be their jumping-on point? I feel like some of the best stories let you know there’s history, even if there’s never been history. Mrs. Know-It-All had the word for it: curiosity. It keeps you going. How many times has she turned to me and said, I don’t understand this part, where did this come from?
I think everything happening now rolls from one place. It started with the 60th anniversary, with the Doctor and Donna at the edge of creation, speaking into it, starting superstitions and pulling the Pantheon out of the darkness. It rolls into a snowball they have to deal with now, and it’s going to reverberate through time.
Bad Wolf Had Room. Arbinger Didn’t.
I asked Mrs. Know-It-All what she thought of the reveal that the new chick at UNIT is Harriet Arbinger. She’d forgotten all about the harbinger. It was such a flash that it didn’t resonate with her like it did with me. Some of these things feel important and unimportant at once, and you don’t remember them until they say it again.
In the first series you had Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, all over the place, and you were able to go, oh, I think this is important. We really haven’t had time for the show to make this important to us. I’ll put some of that on how we’ve been trained as an audience, and I’m okay with being retrained. Give me good stories. But this is where you need more episodes. As the medium-new fan between us, only doing this a few years, Bad Wolf stuck in her head. Arbinger doesn’t.
I didn’t realize this until one of the reviews I watched mentioned it. At some point the cast list came out and the one actress was just marked as Harriet. Someone said, watch her last name be Arbinger, because the Maestro’s little boy was Henry Arbinger. And someone on Reddit had literally connected the dots and said if Sutekh shows up, I want credit. Bro, how in the world did you math it like that? That speaks to the fandom and how rabid we are about this material. You see those connections, you say no, and then it comes true and you go, oh, that’s brilliant.
Many people have issues with the reveal assuming you know who Sutekh is. It sort of bothered Mrs. Know-It-All, and she told me why. She got her answer, then it was the wrong anagram, which was very exciting, and then it clicks and it’s Sue Tech, and all she had was the look on my face. The look said, I know this is bad. But she’s at an advantage, because I sit next to her when we watch. If she’d watched it by herself, she’s not sure it lands. In all honesty, she thought the Egyptian looking thing on top of the TARDIS was the problem, and that’s where it gets confusing. Does it change forms? I think what’s on the TARDIS is almost an avatar, there to show what it is.
Who Sutekh Is
Sutekh, also known as Sutekh the Destroyer, is one of the most memorable villains in the Doctor Who universe. He first appeared in the 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars, during the Fourth Doctor’s era, portrayed by Gabriel Woolf. And they brought Gabriel Woolf back. That’s his voice.
He’s what’s called an Osiran, a godlike alien race. Consider him like Q from Star Trek. The character’s inspired by Egyptian mythology, specifically the god Set, whose emblem was a dog. Sutekh’s goal is to destroy all life in the universe, driven by his belief that any form of life could eventually challenge his supremacy. To do it he commands an army of robot mummies, which I hope we don’t see.
If you’ve got access to classic Doctor Who, go back and watch Pyramids of Mars. I’ll warn you: there’s a lot around it that’s sort of sus and sort of bad writing. But every time the Fourth Doctor and Sutekh are together, those scenes are actually really good, and it’ll give you some context.
At the end, the Doctor wins by sending Sutekh 10,000 years into the future. I’m noticing a lot of older Doctor Who solved problems by hand waving them away, into the future, into the abyss, into your memories. This series is actually trying to grapple with those repercussions. I wonder if they get to a place where the Doctor can’t just let things go anymore. He’s got to finish them, or they keep coming back and hurting everything.
The Jacket, and a TARDIS You’re Scared Of
The jeans and the leather jacket. He’s going through his leather phase. It’s hard to pin down his look. I can wear a colored scarf and you go, Tom Baker. I can wear a bow tie and you go, Matt Smith. I don’t know what the outfit is for this Doctor. My brain goes to the orangey leather jacket. Mrs. Know-It-All goes to the striped one with the orange shirt from the 60th anniversary, because that was the first picture we saw. But whenever the Doctor Who YouTube channel throws up his thumbnail, he’s wearing this jacket, so I think the jacket is definitely his look.
How do you make the TARDIS terrifying? They did. I’d never been scared of the TARDIS until this. Call me crazy, but that 13-year-old looked really scared when he saw it on the monitor, and they made it something I would not go near. I was waiting for it to open up like Monster House. I was waiting for the windows to turn red, because the red was already surrounding it like big eyes.
There’s an image floating around of the title card for the next episode, where “police public call box” has been replaced with the words Empire of Death. You start to wonder: did Sutekh hop on when they were at the edge of creation? Has the TARDIS been that screwed up since then? That’d make sense to me 100 percent. It’s been hiding and waiting and biding its time since everything got thrown back to the beginning.
The Verdict
Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday gets a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
Mrs. Know-It-All went first, and she went eight. She wanted to say eight and a half, but she had to turn to me for a lot of questions, the whole Sue Tech thing especially. She liked it. She just had to wonder about it more than she wanted to.
I was very happy. This was everything I’d want from a Russell T Davies comeback penultimate episode. I’m still penalizing it for trying to behave like we’d had all this great buildup and wonderful episodes the way previous seasons have, and frankly I thought most of the season’s been lackluster until the last three episodes before this. So at the end of the day I’m only giving it a nine.
We didn’t discuss this beforehand, and she didn’t know I was going to go that high. I loved it. For me this felt like what I want from Doctor Who, and between the Bridgerton episode, the bubble episode and this one, I finally understood who his Doctor is.
We’re never this far off. Normally we’re apart by, like, a point five. She’s freaking out over it.
What did you think of the episode, and which one of us is closer, the eight or the nine? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
