Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday Review

If you’ve been paying attention to the Doctor Who community during this season, you’ll know that it’s been awash with endless theories about what all the big reveals are going to be in this two-part finale. Every day there’d be several new pitches for the true identity of Susan Twist or Ruby’s mother; some very interesting, others a little mad, but all quite fun.

Watching The Legend of Ruby Sunday, you get the sense that Russell T Davies knows his audience perfectly, and was well aware that we’d all get overexcited theorizing, to the point where almost no reveal could live up to whatever headcanon we’ve conjured. To help negate that potential disappointment, the wild speculation and different ideas have been baked into the episode, partly as a tease for the audience, but also as an important part of the plot.

It didn’t take long for people to connect the name “Susan Twist” to the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and so that’s the assumption the Doctor works under for the majority of the episode. We have the Doctor arrive on the scene only for UNIT to already be on it and have made several connections the fans made weeks ago. It lulls us into a false sense of security by making us believe that we’re ahead of the plot when actually, it’s a setup for one big rug-pull right at the end.

What’s more, it takes great joy in dangling the answers to these mysteries agonizingly out of reach for ages. The scene in the time window is absolutely heartbreaking in how close we get to answers, only for them to be constantly swiped away. It puts us in a frustrated mindset which helps us sympathize all the more with Ruby, who is in tears at being so close to learning the identity of her birth mother, yet finding the truth just out of reach.

It leads to an episode dripping in tension that stands out from everything else we’ve seen in this series. While yes, Boom thrived on a similarly tense atmosphere it was a much more contained, single-focus episode. Meanwhile, this one uses that tension to build up to the final reveal, keep us guessing, and split our focus between several different places where we might find our answers.

We’re invited to lean in at every moment, giving us scene after scene where some hint or twist almost shows itself, constantly stringing us along. We get to see Ruby Road on Christmas 2004, only for that to raise even more questions. We see a strange monster turn a man into dust, only for it to seemingly disappear and tell us nothing. We see the Doctor come face-to-face with the woman who might be his granddaughter, only for that to force us to reconsider the mystery that has persisted all season.

All that build-up, and even when everything starts going haywire, the questions persist. We get our reveal of one massive mystery, but the other one is still pushed just out of view until next week, which is a genius way to keep people speculating just that little bit longer. Plus, it allows all of the focus on the reveal of Sutekh.

Having it be Sutekh was a good decision. While he’s technically a one-off villain from the Tom Baker era, the extended universe has played around with him a lot in novels and audio dramas, so he has a solid foundation of existing in the Whoniverse while being a bit of a blank slate for characterization and powers – not that it takes much imagination to work out what the god of death can do. It gives us a fresh character to play with that furthers the supernatural themes of other big-bads this season like the Toymaker and the Maestro.

It hits the right level for audience expectations too. A few people saw coming thanks to the teases, but it was by no means one of the dominant theories among fans. It strikes a good balance of being something outside of what was predicted, but still having good connections to all the clues – it wasn’t a swerve for the sake of a swerve. Plus I’m very glad that it wasn’t one of the three standard villains for Doctor Who finales, as that was something RTD leaned on constantly during his 2000s run with the show.

Even though I’m sure we’ll get a more in-depth explanation next week, looking back I can already start to make the connections of how all the clues line up across the season and come up with explanations for things we haven’t had explained yet. If Sutekh had somehow been clinging onto the TARDIS this whole time, that explains why Susan Twists’ face appeared wherever the Doctor went, and raises the further question of when the TARDIS became infected.

It makes for what I believe is the best kind of cliffhanger. Rather than worrying about the immediate danger the characters are in, we’re forced to look back and reconsider every assumption we’ve made up until this point, and how it all changes going forward. We may only have one episode left, but there’s such a giant web to untangle, and that’s how you get people hyped for the second part of the story.

Rating the first half of a two-parter is always a little tricky, as if next week’s episode is a disappointment, it could make this episode worse in hindsight. For example, think back to how you felt watching Fugitive of the Judoon the first time versus how you feel about it now after The Timeless Children. That said, given that this season has consistently delivered top-tier episodes, and is now a strong contender for my all-time favorite season of Doctor Who, I feel confident that next week’s finale won’t let me down.

Score: 9/10