Doctor Who, after all, is king of the cliffhanger. For a present that thrived on needing to get folks to tune again in subsequent week as storylines stretched throughout a number of episodes, few ongoing sequence have mastered the artwork of a final minute hook screaming into the closing titles that will have you ever seated this time in seven days. “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”, the penultimate episode of the current season, has that. And it’s actually good. It’s simply obtained a fairly muddled episode earlier than all that.
A lot of “Legend” is basically about biding its time for that closing reveal—the darkish entity who’s behind each little crumb of teasing throughout Physician Who’s newest season, every thing from bizarre groans the TARDIS has been making, to only why Ruby’s birth mother is such a thriller, and to, after all, why Susan Twist has been exhibiting up as probably the most persistent visitor star of a Physician Who season in years. Very immediately, the Physician has determined it is a factor he now has to instantly care about, however he’s additionally determined it needs to be the time he has to instantly care about Ruby’s parentage, even when she’s been randomly making it snow all season lengthy. And so, our heroes are off to UNIT to say hello to their outdated mates, and ask the large query they need to’ve been asking all season lengthy: has anybody seen Susan Twist currently?
Conveniently, they’ve—Susan is now taking part in one other Susan, Susan Triad, a world tech head getting ready to introduce some extremely imprecise software program to the world that guarantees to vary every thing. We by no means know what, how, or why, “Legend of Ruby Sunday” just isn’t really on this. It simply wants you to know that Susan Twist is Additionally Right here. And so, inside just a few scenes, the episode is already getting away from itself, pulling in a bunch of sparsely interconnected instructions: the Physician and Ruby are at UNIT as a result of they hope UNIT can use billions of kilos value of presidency tools to have a look at some CCTV footage from the night time Ruby was left on the Church that might give her her identify. They additionally want to assist the Physician determine why his personal TV present retains casting the identical lady, however then not solely is that lady already right here, she… could be the Susan, as in, the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, a idea floated nearly completely on the idea that “S. Triad” is a clumsy anagram of “TARDIS.”
What this implies is that immediately the Physician and Ruby are immediately pulled between three potential enormous storylines—the (potential) return of Susan, whoever Susan Triad actually is that if she isn’t a Time Lord, and making an attempt to make use of UNIT’s doubtful “Time Window”, which basically seems like a Quantity set however is a window in time and area, to determine the id of Ruby’s mom. There’s additionally an enormous forged to cope with impulsively with the return of UNIT—acquainted faces like Kate and Mel, and Rose Noble (who now has a job there, anticipating potential shoplifters which… looks like a wild misuse of UNIT assets!?), and newcomers like scientific advisor Morris (Lenny Rush), archivist Harriet (Genesis Lynea), and troopers like Colonels Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) and Chidoze (Tachia Newall). So ultimately, regardless of how briskly the TARDIS comes crashing in within the opening, what “Legend” is sort of completely about is having this enormous forged shuffle about as we watch for that climactic divulge to click on into place.
In some methods this works—there may be a lot up within the air all through the episode that there’s a lingering sense of dread that’s efficient, as you and the Physician and Ruby alike attempt to race via all the probabilities of what’s actually occurring. However in lots others, it’s largely irritating. There’s an absence of movement to “Legend” that pulls the Physician and Ruby between all these warring plot threads—one minute they’re having this emotional frustration that it doesn’t matter what they struggle with the Time Window, they’ll’t see Ruby’s mom in its gateway to Christmas Eve. The subsequent, the Physician and Mel are racing over to Triad Applied sciences to attempt to sus out Susan earlier than her huge, extremely imprecise keynote speech to the world, and they’re additionally attempting to navigate the Physician’s discomfort on the risk that his personal granddaughter is not only nonetheless alive, however a possible menace.
Every one in every of these threads on their very own might’ve made a compelling episode, however collectively they jumble into one thing that feels incoherent, and the place not one of the emotional beats you’re meant to really feel for the Physician and Ruby—who themselves have struggled to feel like a very tight friendship this season in a number of methods already—get the time to breathe or actually land. And since all these threads can’t really lead someplace apart from the reveal on the finish of the episode, alongside the best way there’s simply little narrative momentum apart from poor Morris annoyingly having to yell “chance of a entice!” with more and more greater percentages to remind you that is all constructing to one thing.
Fortunately, that one thing is fairly killer. Push and pulled between UNIT HQ and Triad Applied sciences, the Physician realises all too late that he and UNIT alike had been wanting on the incorrect anagram: Susan Triad was a crimson herring, and Susan Know-how was there in all of it alongside. This nice evil, this groaning drive that has been hiding across the TARDIS in plain sight, this mystical drive that has each reworked Sue and even Harriet—full identify Harriet Arbinger, a herald of the pantheon—into skull-faced heralds of its arrival: Sutekh (as soon as once more voiced by Gabriel Woolf!), now a god of loss of life made flesh, the legendary villain of “The Pyramid of Mars”, again to menace the Physician as soon as extra. And it’s legitimately a incredible reveal—that lingering dread that’s bubbled up all through “Legends” and its myriad plot threads pays off in basic type, an excellent cathartic launch that’s every thing you need out of a Physician Who villain reveal: the little puzzle, the physique horror of Sue and Harriet’s transformations, a fully horrifying loss of life when the previous touches somebody they usually flip into skeletonized mud.
It’s ok, even, that you simply sort of neglect within the second that it’s basically Russell T Davies riffing on previous work—Sutekh’s reveal here’s a fascinating mirror to the Professor Yana/Master twist in 2007’s “Utopia”, which aired on this precise weekend 17 years in the past, proper all the way down to the truth that Murray Gold re-leverages among the rising and falling strings from that reveal’s soundtrack. That you just even neglect, maybe extra importantly, that nothing that occurred within the 40 minutes beforehand actually mattered all that a lot compared. Was the legend of Ruby Sunday solved? TBD. Did it matter the Physician thought his granddaugter had returned? Not likely. Did UNIT really assist at any level apart from the very fact Mel obtained to bike the Physician to Triad Applied sciences and Morris might maintain yelling about entice likeliness? Properly… they did present just a few mooks to die and ramp up the strain, I suppose. That was considerably helpful in an episode that, by and huge, felt prefer it struggled to seek out an existence past organising Sutekh’s reveal.
Which principally implies that, as nice as that 5 minutes is, we’ll have to attend till subsequent week to see if it was value it—or quite, that Physician Who can justify a little bit of aimless arrange right here with a deliciously villainous efficiency. If there’s any basic villain the revived model of the present hasn’t performed with but to do it, Sutekh is up there: “Pyramids of Mars” is a classic for a reason, and the reason being Sutekh’s horrifying, emptied feeling of simply how far past he was when it got here to the Physician and humanity. A chilly and calculating villain, the enormous monstrous type we see in “Legend” enveloping the TARDIS in roars and cackles, hidden beneath mysterious puzzles and anagrams, already looks like a mixture of the acquainted and the brand new.
If subsequent week’s finale can pull off Sutekh as an all-time villain for the fashionable period of the present, then perhaps we are able to forgive “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” for being little greater than a stepping stone. If it could possibly’t? Properly, not less than we obtained a fairly incredible cliffhanger right here—and typically with Physician Who, that’s the most effective you possibly can hope for.
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