The Cutprice Guignol

I need you to imagine me, three coffees in, cat standing on my elbow, fingers pressed to my temples, eyes half-closed, staring at this blog post with no idea where to start. Because what do I even say about that?

The Legend of Ruby Sunday, the first part of the finale for this season, was, if nothing else, a lot of episode. Most of it, to be quite honest, I generally enjoyed, with some fantastic highs that elevated it above a lot of the dreck we’ve got this season so far. But I also have some serious doubts about what this is setting up for the finale proper – and the rest of this rebooted Who in general.

As the Doctor tries to unravel the mystery of Ruby’s existence, he and Ruby head to UNIT to have the requisite fifteen minutes of “OH! It’s (insert character name and bio here)!” before they try to figure out the strange re-occurrences of Susan (Susan Twist, giving the Theresa May shuffle a whole new spin) throughout history – as, in the modern day, Susan prepares to launch a huge new tech campaign, Sue Tech.

Snarky as I might be about the usual UNIT re-introductions, it’s always good to have Kate Stewart (the ever-fantastic Jenna Redgrave) back on my screen – she’s a solid, commanding presence, and a perfect example of how to use a stoic and strong character to underline the major incoming threat. When Kate’s worried, you know you’ve got good reason to be, right? The rest of the recurring UNIT characters, I was less impressed by, especially Rose (a returning Yasmin Finney); it truly felt like Russel T Davies saw two young women in the same room and decided to make Ruby and Rose best friends forever because that’s just what the girlies do (now, if they’d met pissed in the lady’s bathroom of a nightclub, I would have believed it).

Okay, but let get into the positive, because there really was a lot of stuff I thought worked beautifully this episode – most significantly, and appropriately given the episode title, the stuff that revolved around Ruby. I think this season has relied a lot more on tell than show when it comes to the Doctor and Ruby’s relationship, in a way that’s left them feeling like best friends just off-camera where we never get to see the meat of it, but this episode felt far more like an actual attempt to prove their chemistry and connection rather than just assure us that it’s there.

The highlight of this episode, without a shadow of a doubt for me, was the sequence where the Doctor and Ruby used UNIT’s magical time box (don’t worry about it! No questions, please!) to go back to the night of her abandonment. It’s a great sequence just from a genre storytelling perspective, the strange, uncanny horror of a moment in time held in captivity, the TARDIS possessed by a strange being who’s scoffing up UNIT redshirts like me with a packet of peanut M&Ms.

But beyond that, this is Ruby’s moment. Millie Gibson, when she actually gets something to do, has consistently been an impressive performer in this role, and this was probably the height of her character so far – given a chance to see her birth mother, she’s raw and desperate, left with no answers to the question she’s had her entire life. It’s hard to watch at times, knowing what this means to her, and seeing the show drawing together some of the genuinely intriguing and emotionally-rich threads laid out in Ruby Road gives it a bit of weight. The Doctor’s protectiveness of her feels profoundly real, born of his experiences with her rather than of experiences we’re told about that happened when the cameras weren’t rolling.

Huge credit, too, has to go to Michelle Greenidge as her adoptive mother Carla – I was totally caught off-guard and a little choked up by her reaction to seeing Ruby’s birth mother, that compassionate wish that she could promise this woman that her daughter would be okay and that she would raise her well. As I said in her introduction in Ruby Road, Russel T Davies does extended family really well (for the most part), and Carla is such a good example of that, filling in some of the gaps in Ruby’s characterisation through the sheer strength of Greenidge’s warmth and kindness that Carla has clearly passed on to her daughter. While I haven’t been entirely convinced of the Ruby throughline over the course of this season, this scene alone was almost enough to sell it to me. It’s a killer emotional punch, that leads in the reveal of the big bad for this season, and…well.

It’s Sutekh. All the theories about granddaughter Susan and meta-narratives and what have you are tossed out in the first half-hour, to make way for a dramatic reveal that Sue Tech is actually an anagram of Sutekh (which, no, it bloody isn’t, it’s a hononym for Sutekh), and the creature possessing the TARDIS (as far back as Wild Blue Yonder, apparently) is the God of death from the same pantheon as the Toymaker and Maestro.

The character first appeared in the Tom Baker serial Pyramids of Mars, which I’ve got no issue with – Doctor Who has a rich, deep history, and frankly, if you’re not making use of that at least a little bit, you’re not doing it right. But it certainly is a choice to make the big bad for this new first season of the show – as Ncuti Gatwa’s season has been so consistently championed as, especially by Russel T Davies – a throwback like this. We couldn’t have something new? I mean, I’m glad it’s not the Daleks or the Cybermen again, but it feels strange not just to rely on an old-school villain for a season that’s meant to be a fresh start – but to rely on this one in particular.

Look, I’ll say it – I’m not convinced about the inclusion of Gods (or, at least, creatures with God-like powers) in Doctor Who. One of the things I’ve always loved about the show is the way it grounds stories in some sense of internal logic, and creates (at it’s best, anyway) characters and villains who have actual motivations and drivers behind their actions. Sutekh wants to destroy the universe because he’s the God of Death. Because that’s what the God of Death does. His master plan and end goal is destruction, because…because it just is, alright?

He wasn’t made that way by a tyrannical creator, like the Daleks, he hasn’t got a long, deep history with the Doctor like the Master, he does what he does, because he does. That’s not a particularly compelling villain to me – a threat, sure, but a threat without a lot of depth behind it. Of course, I’ll wait to cast full judgement until we see how it unfolds next week, but based on the characters earlier appearances in the series, I’m just not super convinced that this is going to have the satisfying storyline punch I was hoping to see. Oh, and I hate the way he looks. That’s an ugly-ass design, and the CGI is very much reminding me that Disney have a hand in this era of the show, I’ll just say that.

It’s a mixed bag for me, this episode, that really hinges on what goes down next week. I want to believe that Sutekh can be updated and re-fashioned into a more interesting villain than “evil God does evil God things because evil God”, but, with how dreadfully disappointing a lot of this season has been, it’s hard to exactly have a lot of faith. I would love to hear what you thought of this episode and especially of Sutekh’s return here – I know it’s going to be a much-discussed choice as we head into the finale next week, and I’m keen to hear from other fans about whether it works for them or if I’m just being an old misery.

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(header image via iNews)