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Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: bbc, disney, doctor who, Japanese horror, Millie Gibson, Ncui Gatwa, russell t davies
Doctor Who: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" Goes All-In on Callbacks
In "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," Doctor Who starts answering the questions from the season with callbacks and deep cuts to past stories.
It's all come to this – Doctor Who begins the two-part finale of a too-short season with "The Legend of Ruby Sunday." It starts with the Doctor and Ruby diving right into solving the season-long puzzles: Who is the woman played by Susan Twist who's popped up in a cameo in every episode this season? Who is Ruby's birth mother? Then there's the one that the Doctor hadn't even stopped to ask: who is The One Who Waits? The answers come thick and fast, and nobody is happy by the time the cliffhanger ending kicks in. It's Screenwriting 101, and when everything starts happy and cheery, it's all going to end in horror by the end. The script is a clockwork piece of plotting where things get steadily worse.
A Smarter, Gentler UNIT
This episode features the fullest picture of what modern-day UNIT is like. They're no longer a bunch of trigger-happy soldiers but a more Scientific and strategy-based body under the command of Kate Stewart (Gemma Redgrave). For once, they're chuffed to be ahead of The Doctor when they're already investigating the mysterious woman the Doctor and Ruby kept encountering all season. And UNIT employs teenagers now like Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) and boy genius Morris Gibbons (Lenny Rush, who nearly steals every scene he's in as the smartest and most sensible one in the room), probably as part of some Youth Work Experience program. The banter between Kate and the staff and personnel is fun and likable enough to feel like a backdoor pilot. If they're being set up for a spinoff series, this is the way to establish them. Davies' script emphasizes Kate insisting on tactics to avoid anyone getting killed, but of course, it still happens. They're all smart, competent… and when things hit the fan, they're still ineffectual against god-like menaces with powers beyond human scope. That's just how it is.
Return of the Domestic Scenes
Since it's been a short season, we've seen fewer domestic scenes featuring the companion's home life and family members than in previous seasons. Ruby's mum Carla (Michelle Greenidge) and gran Cherry (Angela Wynter) show up, as does Mrs. Flood (Angela Dobson), who turns out to know about The One Who Waits, but we still don't know who she really is or if she's a baddie. Was she threatening Cherry or just going all mysterious? Anita Dobson played it ambiguous on purpose. Still no answers for who she really is, though she probably isn't Susan, since she didn't recognise the TARDIS when she saw it the first time in "The Church on Ruby Road."
Interestingly, it's Carla who calls the horror "the Beast", which is a Christian term for the Devil, so myth is at play here. And Ncuti Gatwa has said he'd like the Doctor to fight the Beast in a recent interview.
Susan Twist is an Anagram Trap
Russell T. Davies planned this all. He's just impish enough to cast Susan Twist, knowing her real-life name would become part of the puzzle and the "twist." He knew that naming her character "Susan" and having the Doctor bring up his granddaughter by name for the first time in the new series was laying that trap for the Doctor and for us, especially viewers who know the classic series. Her name is revealed in this episode as Susan Triad. The Doctor thinks it might be his granddaughter sending him a message to reunite. The Doctor also explains why he never went back to see Susan after he left her. It's a bit of a retcon explanation from Davies where the Doctor tells Kate he thought Susan would be better off without him because he brings death everywhere he goes.
UNIT scientific advisor Morris Gibbons (Lenny Rush) calculates it's a trap, and of course it is. "S Triad" is an anagram for "TARDIS." But the Doctor is too emotional to miss the real anagram – Susan Triad Technology = Sue Tech = Sutekh. Otherwise known as Set or Setekh, the Egyptian god of Death that the Fourth Doctor sent to his death in the 1975 story "Pyramids of Mars."
Bad Wolf in Three
Susan Triad was this season's equivalent of the "Bad Wolf" mystery that Davies wrote in his first season in 2005. This season has three Bad Wolf arcs: Susan Twist, Ruby's mother, and The One Who Waits. Pyramids and threes have been a recurring motif this season. Triangles have been in the background and imagery. There have been three season-long mysteries posing as the new Bad Wolf this season: Susan Triad, the identity of Ruby's birth mother, and The One Who Waits.
It was Sutekh All Along
It's fitting that the Doctor's biggest and deadliest enemy ever is a God of Death beyond science. Davies has seeded Sutekh's presence all season with the TARDIS groaning to signal Sutekh's presence, ever watching, ever waiting. In "The Devil's Chord," the Doctor took Ruby to a devastated 2024 that's the result of Maestro winning. It's a direct echo of a scene in "Pyramids of Mars" where the Fourth Doctor took Sarah Jane to a destroyed present day that's the result of them not stopping Sutkeh in 1911. It's a quintessential Doctor Who scene for teaching new viewers one of the rules of time travel and its consequences. That was a big clue that the Big Bad is Sutekh, a god who hates the Doctor and the universe and had millions of years thinking about how to destroy them all. Even the BBC gleefully released a short compilation video all over social media showing the clues like the agonised roar the TARDIS emitted, which is the sound of Sutekh's coming.
So why was Sutekh just lurking since the 60th Anniversary Specials rather than just showing up and killing the Doctor and the world? Because angry gods like their revenge long and insidious, drawing it out so that their victim would suffer the longest. It's all in Sutekh's speech at the end.
Callbacks Again
Davies gave fans a list of past episodes to watch in preparation for this one, but he left two off the list because, in hindsight, they would have been dead giveaways for the reveals in this episode. Obviously, he left out "Pyramids of Mars", but "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" also recalls elements from 2007's "Utopia". In that story, the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), Martha (Freema Agyeman), and Captain Jack (John Barrowman) travel to the end of the universe and meet kindly professional Yana (Derek Jacobi) who turns out to be a disguise adopted by the Master when he fled the Time War, and promptly regenerates into his next body (John Simm). Susan Triad is that unicorn: a tech billionaire who's genuinely nice and idealistic enough to give her operating system free to the world, only to turn out to be burned out as an avatar for Sutekh. It's nice to know that Susan Twist will be on the convention circuit for years to come because, as Catherine Tate half-jokingly said, that's every Doctor Who cast member's pension fund sorted.
Japanese Horror Invades Doctor Who Again
When the horror starts to take hold, the story uses imagery and mood from Japanese horror. It's all atmosphere and the unseen. UNIT soldier Colonel Chidozi (Tachia Newall) is the redshirt of the story after the script establishes him as a likable and sensible soldier before killing him off-screen and showing his body reduced to dust, the first real clue it's Sutekh. Then there's a demonic possession of the TARDIS, which has never happened before and feels terrible, like a violation. The image from the videotape of the night of Ruby's birth starts up again, like the haunted video from The Ring. Even the mystery woman, who might be Ruby's mother, flickers like Sadako from The Ring. Chris Chibnall directly lifted from The Ring during "Flux" when the Weeping Angels invaded the world through a video transmission. Doctor Who has always lifted from the best and the gothic horror vibe is a callback to the Fourth Doctor's early seasons run by producer Philip Hinchcliffe.
By the end, Doctor Who goes full supernatural horror, and the story goes full Neil Gaiman in its dark, poetic dialogue. The apocalyptic world-ending threat feels more frightening with a supernatural twist because it's driven by a mad god's hatred rather than some amorphous would-be conqueror. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson are still intense and lovable as things go horribly wrong in time for next week's big finale.
Doctor Who is now streaming globally on Disney+.
Doctor Who Season 1 Episode 7: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"
8/10
Doctor Who Season 1 Episode 7: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" starts to pay off all the questions and mysteries running through the season with many callbacks to past stories from years before and a reveal that's a deep cut to the show's 1970s continuity, but only longtime fans will notice them while new viewers can easily follow what's going on, including the cliffhanger ending's full plunge into supernatural apocalyptical horror.
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