The penultimate episode of Doctor Who season 14 was released on June 14. For fans who were hoping for some answers to questions posed during earlier episodes, I’m afraid this one leaves with nothing except more questions and a yearning for the season finale.
Warning, spoilers for Doctor Who Season 14, Episode 7, The Legend of Ruby Sunday, follow.
I have to admit, The Legend of Ruby Sunday could well be the best episode of the season so far, but that’s not saying much considering we’ve had two ‘Doctor-lite’ episodes and a string of stand-alone stories. However, as opposed to previous episodes, this one feels quintessentially Whovian in the best way, so let’s get into the bones of what happened.
Thankfully, the episode does indeed put Susan Twist’s character in a much bigger spotlight than we’ve seen before. In The Legend of Ruby Sunday, she stars as Susan Triad, the leader of a tech company hoping to release their product for free to the world. Mel, a long-time fixture of Doctor Who, is undercover and working alongside her.
What may come as a surprise is that Susan Twist is described as ‘nice’, with no ill-will apparent during Mel’s time with her, although this is put to question later on. We do learn that her previous appearances in the season are known to her only as dreams, although it’s not clarified how those dreams placed her into the Doctor’s timeline.
It turns out that UNIT has been keeping an eye on Susan Triad for a while. There’s a perfect moment during which the Doctor notices that her name is an anagram. The staff at UNIT, including Rose Noble, are left wondering how he could have missed that particularly obvious plot point, which, knowing what we know now, is incredibly ironic.
Ruby then goes on to point out that her name is Susan, triggering the Doctor to believe that she may or may not be his granddaughter. He goes through something of a crisis as he realizes that he might finally be reunited with his kin, with Mel at one point having to metaphorically knock some sense into him.
There’s a Time Window, which is essentially just the Doctor Who version of Star Trek’s Holodeck, where the Doctor and Ruby go to try and figure out who her birth mother is. Spoiler alert, we’re still none the wiser, but the experience does introduce a new threat in the shape of a nondescript and ominous black mist.
Apparently, this mist has been attached to the TARDIS for an undisclosed amount of time, which is why the TARDIS has been groaning as though it’s in pain for the entire 14th season. Eventually, UNIT forces this mist to materialize around the TARDIS inside UNIT headquarters, only for it to become a fifty-year-old villain, returning for the first time since 1975.
And that’s where fans are split. Not over how good the episode is or how impressive and spooky the reveal of the villain was. For the first time this season, the fanbase is pretty much in agreement over the quality of the episode. No, what’s got fans divided is when they started watching Doctor Who and whether they know who the hell this villain is.
For those who started watching in 2005, I can save you the effort of sprinting to the Doctor Who Wiki pages. Without going into the side stories from audio dramas and comics, rather focusing entirely on what we’ve previously seen in the Doctor Who TV series, here’s what we know about Sutekh:
- The first and only appearance of Sutekh was almost 50 years ago, in 1975
- The Doctor (played at the time by Tom Baker) and his then companion Sarah Jane faced off against Sutekh in a four-part episode, The Pyramid of Mars
- Sutekh is an Osiran God, a race that is heavily based on Egyptian Mythology, in which he is known as Set.
- He’s capable of possessing those around him, which is apparently what he’s done to Susan Triad, laying a trap for the Doctor using her as the bait
- Sutekh wants to destroy all life, not just on Earth but throughout the entire universe
- Until now, it was believed that Sutekh was trapped by the Eye of Horus in a time tunnel that was designed to keep him trapped until he aged to death
The clues have been sprinkled throughout season 14, including incredibly obvious references to Pyramid of Mars, such as an almost frame-by-frame remake of one particular scene where the Doctor took Sarah Jane to an alternate, ruined timeline, as pointed out by u/Light1209 on Reddit two months ago
Credit where it’s due because even though I’ve seen the older episodes, I didn’t see this one coming. I’m kicking myself now because even the current TARDIS takes huge design inspiration from the TARDIS in 1975.
The Legend of Ruby Sunday left us in limbo, with Ruby trapped inside the Time Window, Sutekh inside UNIT with Kate and Rose, the Doctor facing off against a now skeletal Susan Triad, and still no idea who Ruby’s mother actually is. And none of this is to mention the weirdness surrounding Mrs. Flood, who makes a small but very creepy fourth-wall-breaking appearance in the episode, telling the audience that “a storm is coming”.
