By Hannah Sole | TV | June 17, 2024 |
By Hannah Sole | TV | June 17, 2024 |
Previously, on Doctor Who: Fifteen and Ruby faced off against really committed cosplayers and met a dashing bounty hunter called Rogue.
This week: Fifteen enlists UNIT’s help to find and identify two mysterious women, and it all goes a bit wrong… Spoilers are ahead!
‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’ is less about the plot and more about the reveals, some of which were straightforward and some less so, though the Big Bad reveal had been correctly guessed by some fine folks on the internet who must be feeling very proud of themselves right now! I did not see this one coming; I haven’t watched Classic Who since I was a kid and will happily ‘fess up to some immediate Googling during the credits, from which I can verify that this particular Big Bad was last seen battling Tom Baker’s Doctor and Sarah Jane back in the 70s. But I am jumping ahead.
Mysterious Woman Number One is our beloved Twist Bingo Lady herself. Fifteen shows UNIT a montage of appearances from her, including some from adventures we haven’t seen. Turns out, everyone at UNIT knows who she is: Susan Triad, the genius behind S Triad Technologies, who is about to launch some free techy tech stuff for the world. UNIT saw the name, thought ‘duh, TARDIS anagram’ and kept a close eye, assuming that she must be an evil tech billionaire like Elon Musk. Ruby sees the name and thinks she could be Fifteen’s granddaughter, Susan. Mel, working undercover in Susan’s team, has reported that she’s really nice. Good old Sue, the Tech Guru. Techy Sue, you might say. If UNIT were better at descriptive yet slightly disrespectful nicknames, maybe what happened next wouldn’t have been such a surprise.
Mysterious Woman Number Two is Ruby’s birth mother, and Fifteen wants UNIT’s help tracking her down too. There isn’t much to go on, but when there’s a contraband Time Window lurking in UNIT’s tower, and you’ve got Ruby’s magic snow and a staticky CCTV video to plug into it, there’s enough to have a sneaky peep at that ill-fated Christmas Eve scene once more and try to figure out what’s happening.
We still don’t get to see the face of the woman who left Ruby at that church, and who knows if the woman who left her there is really her birth mother, but she literally points out the Big Bad at the heart of this season: what’s been making the TARDIS groan, what’s probably been weighing it down and preventing it from taking off and landing properly, and that’s a Spooky Cloud of Death floating around the Memory TARDIS in the Time Window. Spooky Cloud of Death immediately kills the poor UNIT soldier who was guarding the Time Window.
Fighting off the waves of guilt at another loss, Fifteen goes off with Mel to meet Susan Triad instead. They leave the TARDIS at UNIT HQ, where it slowly dawns on everyone in the room that Spooky Cloud of Death might be on this TARDIS too, and if so, Kate’s going to have to call the Health and Safety Executive again, because this command centre is once again a death trap and at least she doesn’t have to explain the Toymaker Spice-Up-Your-Life-ing people to death. Imagine having to write the workplace risk assessments for UNIT…
Speaking of, there were two things in this episode that made me mad, and the biggest was how UNIT are so consistently bad. “We love Kate,” says Fifteen, and YES, we do! But UNIT are on the chocolate teapot end of the usefulness scale rather more often than they should be, and that starts with the staff. Does UNIT even have an HR department? It’s like 90% nepobabies and redshirts in that place. The remaining 10% is ‘people who definitely shouldn’t have a security clearance’. Two actual children as essential workers? Morris should be in school, Kate! Instead, you’ve got him playing around with forbidden time technology and reporting back from his Admiral Akbar Trap Likelihood Calculator. And what do you think Donna’s going to do when she finds out you didn’t evacuate her teenage daughter from the most dangerous room on the planet when you had a chance? You never give her “proper work” but now she’s so essential, she’s on the front line? I fear for you, Kate. I really do.
What takes the biscuit with UNIT though is the reveal of another Harbinger, cunningly disguised as someone called Harriet Arbinger. Who set up Harriet’s work email address, huh? No alarm bells there? They can ‘well duh’ about S Triad all they like, but THEY BE DUMB.
Fifteen meets Susan briefly before she goes live; she reveals that she’s not sleeping due to having weird dreams, which appear to be the other timey-wimey iterations of her. This reference to her dreams unsettles her just as she’s going live with her big speech, and RTD and Murray Gold troll us for a moment with the Master Reveal sound motif, before she collapses and Harriet Arbinger starts doing a possessed voice speech and the true Big Bad is revealed. Susan Triad Techology becomes Sue Tech, which becomes Sutekh, the God of Death, and Papa God to the other gods we have seen so far, the One Who Waits No More. Daddy’s home, and he’s mad.
This brings me to the second thing that made me mad, and it’s disproportionately mad this time. “It was the wrong anagram,” says Fifteen, aghast, at the Susan Techiness of it all. THAT’S NOT AN ANAGRAM.
Sutekh was trapped in the Void for untold ages, and apparently spent much of that time dreaming up ultra petty wordplay schemes to mess with the Doctor’s head when he eventually got out. “Did you think I was family?” he asks through Techy Sue. Oof. Back at UNIT, Sutekh manifests as a huge bat perched on the TARDIS. Ruby’s been sent back to the Time Window, where there may or may not be a Memory TARDIS with a Spooky Cloud of Death waiting as well. CLIFFHANGER TIME.
Bonus Mysterious Woman Number Three
Anita Dobson is back as Mrs Flood, Ruby’s nosy neighbour, of ‘Never seen a TARDIS before?’ fame. This week, she brings some sass and a suspiciously clear understanding of what is going on. There is much speculation about who Mrs Flood might really be now as well. Is she the real Susan? She talked about hiding herself away moments after Fifteen said something similar about Time Lords. Is she wearing a Clara jumper and shirt as a red herring? Is this a Pond / River / Flood thing? Is she the God of Not Making Tea? Is she the third point of this Mysterious Woman Triad? Is this triad “the threefold deity of malice and mischief and misery”? Have I fallen too far down the vortex?
Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff
How long has Sutekh been hanging around on the TARDIS? The first Susan Twist appearance was in ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, I think, when Fourteen and Donna met Isaac Newton, just after the coffee spillage. Any signs from before this?
Maestro had a wee Harbinger too, with a similarly rubbish disguise. Is there a God of Disguises? Because he probably needs to do some training for the others.
Trickster, the God of Traps, was a Big Bad in the Sarah Jane spin-off.
The nearest CCTV camera to Mysterious Woman Number Two was 73 yards away…
Rule 1: The Doctor lies. This is more likely than RTD forgetting that the Doctor has talked about his children before as real entities, not hypothetical timey-wimey ones.
Gabriel Woolf is reprising his role as the voice of Sutekh. He also voiced The Beast from Ten’s era.
“How’s your uncle?” Is Fourteen just chilling at home while the world is about to turn to dust? Is there a Sutekh on his TARDIS too?
Has the TARDIS ever been this ominous before?
Techy Sue’s Theresa May dance was a thing of beauty and adds a touch of whimsy to the bat-faced God of Death, huh?
For Classic Who Sutekh, check out ‘Pyramids of Mars’. Nu-Who Sutekh is styled more red than green, and seems to have a massive ruby on his head. CLUE?
One more week until we find out who left Ruby at the church. Is this the same person who gave birth to her? My pick earlier this season was Jenny, but that feels like a long shot now. The outfit does look a bit like Thirteen’s but my current lead guess is that Future Ruby left Baby Ruby at the church to keep the timeline intact, pointed at Spooky Cloud of Death as a warning to Present Ruby, and there are more timey-wimey shenanigans to come…
Next week: Sutekh starts turning everything to dust and Fifteen vows to put a stop to him once and for all…