Mark Harrison | On 15, Jun 2024

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations.

It’s two-part season finale time, baby. Russell T Davies’ latest season might be a shorter run than before, and it might be all shiny and new in a lot of ways, but if you can rely upon The Legend of Ruby Sunday for anything, it’s loads of returning characters, questions heaped upon mysteries and a stonking “TO BE CONTINUED” cliffhanger.
 
Wasting no time, part one of two literally flies straight into the Avengers-like UNIT Tower last seen in The Giggle, where the Doctor hopes to track a mysterious woman – Susan Twist – he’s noticed throughout time and space. UNIT may also hold some answers about Ruby Sunday and what really happened at the church on Ruby Road where she was found that fateful Christmas Eve.
 
These two plotlines interweave throughout Episode 7, dangling as many new threads as it untangles. A big clue involving an anagram is addressed before the titles even get going. The main thing RTD’s Doctor Who scripts have in common with the old-fashioned serialised tales are that part one sometimes feels built from the cliffhanger down. Without giving anything away, this looks to be another bottom-heavy two-parter, with much of what it brought in with it still left in the air by the time its 45 minutes are up.
 
Then again, dangling is rarely this much fun. Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor has spent a lot of this season in one place, but this story gives him a bigger arena for running and joking and Doctoring. The same can’t be said for the episode’s title character – Ruby instead reprises her Long Lost Family Christmas special to UNIT head Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) instead of Davina McCall. Millie Gibson reliably smashes all the emotional beats anyway.
 
Speaking of Kate, that big Marvel-like set gets crowded with familiar faces fast. The returning guest stars on deck include Kate, Carla Sunday (Michelle Greenidge), Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford), Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), and Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) and that’s without the other UNIT staff roving about. The best new addition is Lenny Rush as new scientific advisor Morris Gibbons, whose constant odds calling makes him the C3PO for RTD2.
 
Unlike 2008’s The Stolen Earth, still the high watermark for a big team-up finale, this has to take a long time introducing and reintroducing everyone. And once that’s done, they’re mostly milling around for director Jamie Donoghue to try and keep up with amid the slow-burn anarchy of the main plot. It gives the episode some scope, but we might be in trouble once all these characters need something to do next week.
 
Between all the anagrams and the anarchy, The Legend of Ruby Sunday is a compelling drumroll of an episode, hyping the season’s going concerns up to blockbuster scale on its way to an almighty cliffhanger. The excitement of that ending will keep us afloat for another week but, for now, we’re the Ones Who Wait…

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

 
– Finally, that’s who Susan Twist is! Sort of. Despite a big old misdirect in the pre-titles sequence about the Doctor’s long-lost granddaughter, tech billionaire Susan Triad is the seemingly benevolent mastermind behind “S Triad Technology”, planning a global launch of free software to debunk the state of the internet and the media. And the twist is, she’s apparently lovely to all her employees, including undercover Mel. Then again…
 
– “I bring Sutekh’s gift of death to all humanity.” Heading up the Pantheon of Discord we’ve been hearing about again since last year’s 60th anniversary specials, “The One Who Waits” is Sutekh, an omnicidal Osiran warlord who was last seen bothering the Fourth Doctor in 1974’s Pyramids of Mars and has since enveloped his TARDIS like a tumour. Other name-checked members of the Pantheon include the Toymaker, Maestro, the Mara (from the Fifth Doctor adventures Kinda and Snakedance) and the Trickster (the Big Bad of The Sarah Jane Adventures and a big mover in 2008’s Turn Left.)
 
– “It was the wrong anagram.” Look, not everyone can be Steven Moffat, but the shell game RTD seems to be playing with hardcore fans is a hoot. “S Triad Technology” is an anagram of “TARDIS Technology” but the “Sue Tech” meme coming true is just wild. So much of the episode is built up to the reveal of The One Who Waits rather than a decisive action, so we’ll see, but right now, anything is possible – quick, wish for Paul McGann or The Rani!
 
– Among the new UNIT staff are Morris, constantly calling out the odds of this all being a trap, and Harriet (Genesis Lynea) – as in The Devil’s Chord, another H Arbinger brings forth Sutekh. Also on UNIT’s payroll: Evil-Lyn, Dominic Badguy, and Peter Ian Staker.
 
– On that note, we’re not big fans of the SHIELD-ification of UNIT. Yes, they had a helicarrier long before the Avengers movies did, but the opening of this one is a little abrupt. If the Doctor’s going to the big stupid London skyscraper for help with Ruby and Susan Triad now, why didn’t he just do this weeks ago? Except cos it wasn’t the finale yet, obvs.
 
– Covered with a spooky VHS-quality pallor, the Time Window sequence revisits last year’s Christmas special from another angle and ramps up the horror of the climax. In the big cliffhanger, Ruby is trapped in the simulation and apparently about to see her mother’s face. Incidentally, did you clock that the CCTV camera on Ruby Road is about 66 metres away from the church? I’ll give you one guess how far away that is in yards…
 
– The earliest cliffhanger in the episode comes when lovely old Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) is left alone with Ruby’s gran Cherry (Angela Wynter) and shows a nasty streak, foretelling Sutekh’s arrival. Will Cherry Sunday ever get a cup of tea??? Tune in next week, same Who time, same Who channel…

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