Warning: Contains spoilers for 'The Legend Of Ruby Sunday'
Ever since Russell T. Davies’ return to the helm of Doctor Who last year, the showrunner has been hard at work filling his new-look Whoniverse’s mystery box with an ever-growing pile of questions. Who is Ruby Sunday’s mum? Why does Susan Twist keep popping up here, there, and everywhere? What’s the deal with the TARDIS’ weird groaning? And just who — or what — exactly is The One Who Waits? Well, with ‘The Legend Of Ruby Sunday’, the first in the series’ somehow here already two-part finale, Davies finally gets down to the nitty gritty of doling out some answers. Well, sort of, at least. This is a Russell T. Davies series finale part one after all.
This most part one-iest of part ones kicks off with the Doctor (Gatwa) and Ruby (Gibson) barreling the TARDIS into UNIT HQ to investigate the identities of the two mystery women dominating their lives — the seemingly omnipresent Susan Triad (Twist), and Ruby’s nowhere-to-be-found mother. An exposition-heavy first 20 minutes sees a typically prescient RTD lining up fan theories and knocking ‘em down — a withering “well, obviously” meets the Doctor’s anti-climactic observation that S TRIAD is an anagram of TARDIS — whilst unsubtly teeing up expected spin-off series to come. It’s a cumbersome and somewhat lethargic opening salvo, filled with lots of pointing at screens, Leonardo DiCaprio-style. But it’s leavened by the welcome returns of UNIT boss Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), Donna’s daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney), and former companion Mel (Bonnie Langford) — as well as by the introduction of UNIT’s whizzkid 13-year-old Scientific Advisor Morris Gibbons (a brilliant Lenny Rush) and not-at-all suspiciously named new archivist Harriet Arbinger (Genesis Lynea).
Things pick up when the Time Window, a retrofuturistic bit of hush-hush UNIT tech that dates back to the era of the Third Doctor, comes into play. Essentially a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey twist on Tony Stark’s B.A.R.F memory recreation kit, the Time Window — in all its 70s striplight-lined, knobs-and-dials laden, holographic glory (“This is rough!” playfully chides Gatwa’s Doctor upon first seeing it) — neatly dovetails the possibilities of the show’s bigger, Disney-funded VFX budget with Who’s more nostalgic, DIY trappings. It also presents Ruby, aided by a fuzzy old VHS tape of that fateful Christmas Eve in 2004 when she was left outside the church on Ruby Road, with an opportunity to go back in time and finally find out who her mother is.
A real tenderness has characterised Gatwa and Gibson’s Doctor-companion dynamic throughout this series, and the vulnerability they display during the Time Window sequence helps anchor the episode as Davies readies an almighty mid-episode tonal shift. The image of the Doctor and Ruby — both foundlings long-since left questioning who they are and where they belong — holding onto one another as static-fuzzing snow falls about them is both haunting and beautiful. Haunting too (albeit in an altogether less beautiful and altogether more hide-behind-the-sofa type way) is what follows as the Time Window catastrophically destabilises, allowing Davies to put a pin in Ruby’s maternal mystery so that another, more pressing mystery figure can come to the fore.
If you’ve found yourself wondering why the TARDIS has been acting a little peaky of late, groaning and wheezing and crash-landing all over the shop, then now we have an answer. In ‘The Legend Of Ruby Sunday’’s breathless final 15 minutes, we learn that the series’ big bad — The One Who Waits heralded by The Toymaker (‘The Giggle’) and Maestro (‘The Devil’s Chord’) — is the literal God of Death, Sutekh, who’s been hitching a ride atop the Doctor’s poor old spaceship for some time. It’s an epic rug-pull that works as a logical climax to the ‘Pantheon of Gods’ arc RTD has been teasing ever since the Fourteenth Doctor’s salt-circle shenanigans in ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ for newcomers, and as an exciting reintroduction of another deep-cut big bad for dyed-in-the-wool Whovians. Irrespective of whether or not you’re au fait with Tom Baker’s classic Who four-parter ‘The Pyramids Of Mars’, the threat that Sutekh presents to the Whoniverse is self-evident. It's also a welcome respite from the usual Daleks/Cybermen/Master revolving door of supervillainy.
From Harriet Arbinger’s doomful monologue (yes, H ARBINGER was a bad omen, who knew?), to Ncuti Gatwa’s terror as Susan Triad Technologies shortens to ‘Su Tech’ before his eyes, to the nightmarish imagery of dusted bodies and mummified faces that precipitates the One Who Waits’ arrival, it’s clear this God of Death chap is a big deal. And when he does eventually make a grand entrance, in all his Jackal-headed glory, gravelly voiced and imperious thanks to the baritone of 91-year-old OG actor Gabriel Woolf, Sutekh doesn’t disappoint, immediately flexing his godly powers to devastating effect. Such is his immediate impact that, by the time we reach the episode’s dread-filled, Infinity War-esque end, it seems we’ve got a bona-fide RTD barnstormer of a finale on our hands, despite the choppy opening.
But with only one episode of the series remaining, and precious time lost in the opening throes here, Davies has undeniably left himself a lot to do with ‘Empire Of Death’. A fistful of pressing questions still demand answers in the finale: Who is Ruby’s mum? What’s with Susan Triad’s dreams? And is Anita Dobson's enigmatic Mrs Flood actually the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan after all? Or The Rani?Whichever way the series’ big finish goes, it should be a hell of a watch.
