Tripwire’s Man In Los Angeles Reviews Episode Seven of Doctor Who Season One

Hinting At A Larger Story

Tripwire’s man in Los Angeles Robert Cave just reviewed Doctor Who Season One: The Legend of Ruby Sunday…

The Legend Of Ruby Sunday
Writers: Russell T Davies
Director: Jamie Donoughue

Season finales are tricky creatures. I mean, writing Doctor Who is a challenging gig at the best of times; you have over sixty years of other Doctor Who stories across various media to compete with as you try to do something that is new and different and satisfying. But with a season finale you need to do all that AND something extra to increase the scale of the threat, something that possibly alters the status quo and that feels significantly over and above what we might reasonably expect from a TV show that can go literally anywhere in time and space on a weekly basis. And as this is a two-part finale, you then need to cut it in two and carefully weigh the two halves so that when you hit the big “To Be Continued” moment the audience is left both wanting to watch the second part immediately AND to re-watch part one to see if they can spot any clues as to what is to come. It’s a balancing act that I think writer Russell T more than pulls off here.

Doctor Who S1,15-06-2024,The Legend Of Ruby Sunday,7 – The Legend Of Ruby Sunday,Colonel Ibrahim (ALEXANDER DEVRIENT), The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) &
Morris Gibbons (LENNY RUSH),*NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL 00:01HRS, SUNDAY 9TH JUNE, 2024*,BBC STUDIOS 2023,Alistair Heap

The Legend of Ruby Sunday isn’t really a plot-heavy episode – it’s more about character moments and paying off some of the mysteries that have been set up throughout Ncuti Gatwa’s first season. And there have been mysteries aplenty. Firstly, we have the one of Ruby’s (Millie Gibson) origin, which has been largely kept on the back burner since The Church on Ruby Road. Next, we have the familiar face of the actress Susan Twist, who has appeared as multiple characters across the show’s Disney+ era, ending here with the technologist, Susan Triad. Speculation about exactly who she is and what she represents has been the backbone of the season. And then there is Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson), and the Doctor’s Granddaughter, Susan, who has probably got more shoutouts this season than at any time since her last appearance in The Five Doctors (1983).

As showrunner, Russell T. has long made a habit of dropping breadcrumbs hinting at a wider story arc or narrative connection or misdirecting the audience from the same. Actually, thinking about it, he’s been doing this his entire career – as far back as Why Don’t You…?, the kids’ TV show he produced and directed in the mid-80s. That show also had a mysterious Susan; one “Susan Denim”. Sue Denim – do you see?  Pseudonym! Russell T has literally been pulling the same tricks for decades! What’s more, Show-makers in the classic era of Doctor who also resorted to increasingly obtuse anagrams to hide the identity of a recurring actor in the credits of the RadioTimes. Susan Twist is just, if you’ll forgive the pun, the latest twist in this proud tradition.

But back to the episode in hand, we start with a gorgeous scene of the TARDIS flying into UNIT’s current London HQ. We are introduced (or are reintroduce) a range of UNIT staff, including Rose Nobel (Yasmin Finney) and teen genius scientific advisor Morris Gibbons (Lenny Rush). Everyone is great, but it’s too many characters to easily keep track of, which is probably what Russell T was aiming at, so that we would glide over Gatwa’s inquiry into Rose’s “uncle” – surely a reference to the fourteenth Doctor? We are also not meant to notice UNIT’s archivist Harriet (Genesis Lyneaa) isn’t given a last name when everyone else is. Harriet Arbinger was always just a harbinger, standing in plain sight.

And speaking of the need to pay close attention, UNIT’s got some Time Window technology, which they apparently use mainly for looking at the past, such as CCTV videos. And did you catch the reference to how the CCTV camera on Ruby Road was placed 66 metres from the Church? That is almost exactly 73 yards… Weren’t the Time Window effects gorgeous? And largely realised through practical effects. V. impressive. Also impressive was Bonnie Langford as Mel. She’s only had to wait the best part of forty years to be given something more substantial to do than scream, and her calling out the Doctor’s emotional outburst was also great to see.

Then we got to the big reveal that Susan Triad, of Susan Triad Technologies is not a just reference to the TARDIS and Doctor’s granddaughter Susan Foreman, but to Sutekh, the god-like being last seen in the 1975 Tom Baker story The Pyramids of Mars. It’s another anagram; Susan Triad Technologies; Sue Tech; Sutekh. It all fits in well with this Disney+ Who era and its new emphasis on Gods and myths. We even get a bit of a roll call of this new pantheon of divine monsters, some we’ve encountered recently, like the Toymaker and the Maestro, others longer ago, such as the Mara (from Kinda and Snakedance) and the Trickster (The Sarah Jane Adventures) and there are a whole host of others too. And could it be that the person leaving Ruby at the church is indeed the Trickster? Aside from a love of hoods, The Trickster is also described as the “God of Traps,” and didn’t Morris say the probability of this being a trap had reached 100%?

Yeah, the episode does climax with the emotional rush that combines the return of Sutekh with the revelation that it has somehow co-opted or seduced the TARDIS, but I couldn’t help but look sideways at some of the less obvious things happening throughout the episode. There did seem to be an inordinate amount of work being put into ferrying Carla Sunday around this week. The Doctor uses his sonic to get her into UNIT HQ and then she’s sent home by UNIT at the end of the episode. It all seems a bit laboured unless it has further relevance for the future. Notably it is Carla who identifies Sutekh as “The Beast” – way before Sutekh reveals itself. Which is interesting as Gabriel Woolf, the actor who played the voice of “The Beast” in the 2006 two-parter The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, also provided the voice of Sutekh, both here and Pyramids of Mars. Is RTD telling us that Sutekh and Satan are exactly the same entity? Could be.

And then we get to the fourth-wall breaking Mrs Flood. After re-watching the Church at Ruby Road again, I noticed this time round that Mrs Flood doesn’t recognize the TARDIS until she sees it dematerialise in front of her. It is only subsequently that she turns to camera to share her knowledge of such matters. Since then, she has largely been, as she says here, “hiding herself away”. Added to all the talk of the Doctor’s Granddaughter; could it be that we are getting some more RTD misdirection? Is it a case of the old switcheroo? Could Mrs Flood be The Doctor’s Granddaughter Susan? Might we even get a brief return of David Tennant as the 14^th Doctor? He at least would have a spare TARDIS while the original remains in Sutekh’s clutches. Or maybe the Doctor will end up using an “almost solid” image of the TARDIS from the Time Window?

I have no idea what is going to happen next, but I am reasonably certain we only have to wait a week to find out the answers. See You then.

Go behind the scenes on the episode here too

Go Behind The Scenes On Doctor Who: The Legend Of Ruby Sunday