The following contains spoilers for “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.”
In an episode full of disorientation, the most important has to be its title, since we've learned very little about what the legend of Ruby Sunday really is. Instead, the first part of the series' two-part finale is essentially an hour of building a sense of dread that overflows in its final moments. I could cheat and say “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is just “” – the first half of the 2006 season finale – with a bigger budget. Except the big bad revealed at the end is a villain of a much deeper cut than the usual corners of Doctor who history.
The Doctor and Ruby arrive at UNIT headquarters to ask about the mysterious woman, Susan Twist, who follows them around the universe. Meanwhile, UNIT has been monitoring someone named Susan Triad, a British tech billionaire who will announce her gift to humanity that same day. Even the fools at UNIT realize that S.TRIAD is an anagram of TARDIS and the Doctor believes that Triad, or the mysterious woman in general, could be her granddaughter.
But there's also the question of Ruby's parentage to discover, which gives the Doctor a reason not to simply confront Triad. The Doctor, Ruby, and a UNIT soldier enter the time window (a low-quality holodeck) to try to see who left Ruby on the church steps. But the story is a bit confusing and Ruby's faceless mother, unlike what we saw in “The Church on Ruby Road”, turns around and points ominously towards the TARDIS. Not long after, the TARDIS is engulfed in a black cloud of swirling evil that no one is sure what to do about.
The Doctor then encounters Triad just before going on stage, prompting her to remember all of her other selves. Every time she Triad dreams, she is somehow aware of those countless alternate selves. And as she takes to the stage, the Doctor asks the UNIT HQ team to scan the TARDIS. Similarly, he is enveloped in an invisible cloud of malevolent things that threatens everyone in the area.
(ASIDE: This is the . And this is the second time they've completely misunderstood how to put together something that looks even remotely evocative of what they're parodying. I know the conventions of technology presentation have mutated since the Steve Jobs era, but they're not even trying.)
A UNIT employee, Harriet Arbinger (Wait…) begins muttering about a dark prophecy as Triad goes off script. The Doctor, standing near her, watches as she turns into a skeletal monster as the TARDIS is threatened by a giant animal head surrounded by Egyptian iconography. It turns out that Susan is not the Doctor's granddaughter, nor even a key component of the story, but an innocent. An innocent who has been co-opted by Sutekh, an all-powerful Egyptian god we first saw in 1975.”Indicate the credits.
It's a short synopsis, mainly because these scenes play slowly as the tension builds. “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” takes its time, letting the screw gently turn until you're almost happy when the big reveal happens. It is an exciting tour on a first watch, although I imagine it will not have much value when you see it again for the third or fourth time. But, of course, that has often been a problem with the episodes written by Russell T. Davies. It's also a good way to take advantage of bookings for next week's final. .
Was it easy to guess that we would get Sutekh back after his only appearance in “Pyramids of Mars”? The rumors have certainly been going in that direction over the last month, and it's not like we haven't gotten a clue or two along the way. Longtime Davies fans will remember that Vince sees the cliffhanger from the first part at the end of the first episode of Queer as folk. And we've already lifted an entire scene from “Pyramids of Mars” (the jump to a ruined future) in “The Devil's Chord.”
If you're not familiar, “Pyramids of Mars” is a classic and another blockbuster from the pen of the greatest serial writer of the 20th century, Robert Holmes. At the time, Holmes was the series' script editor and had commissioned a story from writer Lewis Griefer. But Griefer's material was so poor that Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe decided a replacement was needed. Holmes was then tasked with writing an entirely new episode in a small amount of time. The finished episode was attributed to the pseudonym Stephen Harris, but it's all Holmes under the hood. Unfortunately, due to various rules about writing credits, the end credits for “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” actually credit Lewis Griefer as Sutekh's creator and omit Holmes, which seems pretty harsh.
But putting that little injustice aside, let's get to the end.
Susan Turning Corner
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Well, it looks like we have our answer that Susan Twist was something of a turn-off.
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Gabriel Woolf, who voiced Sutekh in 1975, is back to voice him now.
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When Mrs. Flood was left in charge of Cherry, she was clearly aware of Sutekh's return and seemed delighted by it. But she didn't seem to be an omen, so it's likely that she is representing another different malevolent character from the series' past.