Doctor Who Series 14, Episode 7
“The Legend of Ruby Sunday”
Posted by Kim
You know that feeling when you’ve sat through all twenty minutes of end credits for a Marvel movie just for that scene that teases what’s going to be next in the universe only for it to be a niche reference that has all the comic fanboys going wild but just leaves you saying…who?
Yeah. That’s how I felt in the final five minutes of “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.”
Ordinarily, when it comes to fandom, I do my best to not to yuck people’s yums. I know there are a lot of fans that are beyond excited, if not downright giddy about the return of Sutekh, and that’s great for them. Unfortunately, the recap for this episode falls to me though, and I have to speak my truth. And this is my truth: as a NuWho girlie who has only dabbled in Classic Who, the Sutekh reveal was a pretty big bummer.
I know that sometimes these are the breaks when you aren’t a Classic Who fan. There have been plenty of times where I’ve just had to recognize that a monster was a Classic reference and go with it. I mean, I didn’t know what a dalek was the first time I watched “Dalek.” However, “Dalek” made damn sure I knew what a dalek was and how dangerous they were within minutes. I didn’t know who the Master was the first time I watched “Utopia,” but I somehow immediately knew I was meeting the Doctor Who equivalent of the Joker. I didn’t know Cybermen, I didn’t know Sontarans, I didn’t know Zygons, and so on and so on. All of these mentions prove there ARE ways to introduce classic villains that can thrill old fans without alienating new ones. For me, that’s where “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” fumbles the ball.
Everything about those last few minutes feels like it plays exclusively to the fans who know Sutekh, from the “it’s the wrong anagram” realization to the way Sutekh’s name filled the teleprompter screens. It all just, to me, screamed “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS?? AREN’T YOU EXCITED?” Since I DIDN’T know who Sutekh was, it just…sucked all the fun and excitement out of it for me. For the first time in my thirteen years as a Whovian, I felt like I was truly on the outside looking in and it did not feel good. Russell T. Davies raised me in this fandom, y’all! I never expected his Doctor Who to make me feel excluded or like I wasn’t in the club. But damn, he really did this time.
(To be completely honest, I wasn’t having that much fun with the episode in the first place, but I’ll get to that.)
Perhaps it was the bait and switch of Susan that left me cold? Russell’s been dropping the hints about her return all season to where, as much as it’s become a fandom joke over the decades, this time it felt like it actually WAS Susan. The Doctor was talking about her openly! He was doing the emotional work of processing his guilt about what went down with her in preparation for potentially coming face to face with her again. Yanking that away at the last minute feels a bit cruel to me and I’m someone who writes fan fiction. Bring cruel to fictional characters is my hobby. But I’m never cruel to characters for being cruel’s sake, and I never thought Russell was that kind of writer either. And sure. We could still meet Susan in “Empire of Death” because we ALL know that Mrs. Flood is not who she purports herself to be. I could come back in my recap for next week declaring that the inevitable twist at the end was brilliant and that I never should have doubted Russell’s genius. That could all very easily happen, but as for this recap, again, I just have to say I’m bummed! The switcheroo is not nearly as a satisfying “GOTCHA!” moment as Russell thinks it is, I fear.
Ultimately, look. I love the way Doctor Who respects it vast history. It respects its past possibly more than any other long running show I’ve had the pleasure of being a fan of. I am just wondering if we ALWAYS have to tie our big finale event episodes back to something from Classic Who? At what point does the constant self referencing just become a snake eating its own tail? As Sage said in her recap last week, part of what made “Rogue” so fresh and exciting was that it was completely new, that we had new people playing in the sandbox, creating new villains. Shouldn’t we, in this new era of Doctor Who, be looking forward rather than digging back into our archives? Someone came up with the Sutekh story all on their own in 1975, after all. Shouldn’t we keep adding to our gallery of villains rather than constantly going back to the closet full of old ones?
I did go to Tubi and watch “The Pyramids of Mars” (WITH COMMERCIALS!!) before rewatching “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” just to see if knowing Sutekh backstory changed any of my perspective on the episode. It didn’t. After all, I didn’t have any sort of emotional investment in Sutekh’s return. Instead, it just felt like that it was a classic story that RTD was clearly fond of and he wanted to play with those toys because he wanted to and could do it with a Disney level budget. Which is his right as a showrunner! I guess I just expected more from him though, and that why I am disappointed. That’s on me though. Expecting a middle-aged fanboy to NOT lean into his fanboy roots is like expecting a man on a Bravo show to NOT be a fuck boy. It just doesn’t happen, you know?
And then, as I have harped on about for most of this series, there’s the Ruby Sunday of it all. For an episode called “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” she sure did play a passive role in it and we definitely did not learn anything new about her. I’ve been searching for gifs for this recap all week and the sheer lack of gifs OF Ruby for an episode that bears her name truly says it all as far as how much of a non factor she was in the episode. What are we DOING HERE, fam? Did we really have to go back to the church again, especially in a Holodeck/Dreamatorium sequence that dragged on for ages and once again revealed NOTHING? Did we really have to make Ruby’s search for her mother her entire personality in this episode, mostly reducing her to a blubbering mess crying out for the mother that she never knew? Millie Gibson is a beautiful crier, but God, she deserves better than this storyline! I want to know more about who Ruby is as a person and this whole mystery is preventing that from happening.
What really continues to blow my mind here is the complete lack of understanding about the complexity of Ruby’s need to know who her birth mother is. It’s been eight full episodes and we don’t have any solid idea about Ruby’s motivation to find her. Is this something she’s always wanted? Did this all come up once Ruby hit what I am guessing is the age her mother was when she gave her up? What? The way she cried out for her in the church sequence just speaks to something deeper that we’re just not even exploring here, all in the name of building up this “legend” of her birth. Finally, I don’t like Ruby’s origins being tied to the literal God of Death and I don’t like how this whole reveal is being dragged out for shock value. The chances of all of this having a satisfactory ending are SO SMALL and I just don’t understand the lack of nuance this whole arc has been written with.
As to not have this be a TOTAL downer of a recap, I do have to say there were things I enjoyed about the episode. It’s very WATCHABLE even when it makes no sense. Ncuti and Millie DELIVER with their performances and their BFF chemistry continues to delight me. I love that Mel is still thriving as a UNIT operative. It was wonderful seeing Rose Temple-Noble again, even though I am very confused as to what a fifteen-year-old girl is doing at UNIT. (Is she a summer intern?) I thought Jemma Redgrave turned in one of her finest performances in her time with Doctor Who, showing all the layers of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. All of the UNIT stuff was great! I love that we’re truly establishing a home base for the Doctor to come back to whenever he’s in modern day London. I thought there were some genuinely scary sequences and I thought the make-up for Sutekh was fantastic. But right now, there are just too many dangling threads and questions with answers that are being punted to “Empire of Death.” I love a good cliffhanger as much as the next person, if not more, but each episode of a multi-episode arc needs to be able to stand on its own, you know? And right now, I can’t say that this one does.
Timey Wimey Observations
- The nearest CCTV to the steps on the church on Ruby Road was 66 meters away. 66 meters is approximately 73 yards. Coincidence? I think not.
- Ncuti’s leather jacket is SEXY. And he’s also still wearing Rogue’s ring!
- WHO is the him Morris is referring to when he said “We’ll get him.”
- HOW’S YOUR UNCLE?
- I’m glad I am not the only one who immediately thought of Billy Madison when Mrs. Flood turned on Cherry Sunday.
- If there’s one thing I am always going to enjoy, it’s the memes:
- I’m very amused that Kate is a Davina McCall fan.
- I loved the Doctor’s emotional outburst in the elevator bank and I love that Mel let him HAVE the outburst and then was like “Get it together, my dude.” That’s real friendship right there.
- I am SURE this is a coincidence, but I am just going to leave this here.
- If looks could kill, the Doctor would have regenerated right there on the spot.
- The Time Window is yet another instance of Ruby and/or the Doctor getting stuck in a situation where they can’t move. Has this all been intentional or was NO ONE keeping track of how many times that happened this series?
- NO MORE ANAGRAMS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. You aren’t being as clever as you think!
- RTD has really been trolling us for the entire series, hasn’t he?
What are your thoughts on “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”? Let us know in the comments.
uhhhmm, i’m a lifelong classic who fan *and* have rewatched them pretty recently and i did not catch the sutekh redux *at all*, and also felt the end was a bit anticlimactic.
And *agreed* about the passivity of Ruby– I also felt it was out of character for her to be wailing “Mum” after the person who dropped her off when she’s been pretty insistent all season, and rightly so, that her mum is Carla. And this new thing where every companion is super duper special on a cosmic level and every episode has to be part of this cosmic arc.
I was very excited to see Kate, Rose, and Mel again!
Ooooh also Cherry is another color of red?!