Doctor Who Reviews: "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"

Judging the first half of a two-part episode can be tricky because by design you don’t have the full story. Part one is inevitably all set-up for what is to be concluded in part two -what is “Bad Wolf” without “The Parting of the Ways”, “The Stolen Earth” without “Journey’s End”, “The Pandorica Opens” without “The Big Bang”? The two-part finale had been a Doctor Who signature throughout the Davies and Moffat eras and produced some really great stories, often the grand conclusion to series-long arcs, and it’s exactly what Davies is replicating with “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and next week’s finale “Empire of Death”. The big story arc at hand is of course the identity of Ruby’s mother, combined with a few recurring threads like that fourth-wall breaking neighbour Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), a curiosity with the Doctor’s family and specifically his granddaughter Susan, and a mysterious woman’s face that has shown up in just about every episode this series. And Davies here plays around with teases at some of these intersecting, but without any major reveals just yet.

I’ll try not to let this being an unfinished story temper my assessment of it -I’ve learned that mistake from Infinity War. But “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is extremely heavy on set-up and false starts, with a few red herrings and a particularly long middle section that mostly engineers drama around the central question of Ruby’s mother without delivering on anything of substance, prolonging the question.

Still, there is quite a bit to like here, starting with a return of UNIT and a whole crew of characters, some of whom we’ve never met before like tech expert Harriet (Genesis Lynea) and child genius Morris (Lenny Rush), and some of whom are welcome reprisals like Bonnie Langford’s former companion Mel and Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney). As the TARDIS materializes in their now familiar command centre, The Doctor enthusiastically introduces Ruby to each of them, not forgetting of course Kate Stewart -before relaying their problem: there is a woman (Susan Twist) who has been appearing through each of their adventures -as a former officer aboard the baby station, as the Ambulance’s face, as an unusually old Finetown resident, and in a painting in the Regency Estate. Who she is is resolved fairly quickly as UNIT reveals her as Susan Triad, the multi-millionaire founder of British tech conglomerate Triad Industries. The fact that her name works out to be an anagram of TARDIS has been picked up on by UNIT, and is why they have been monitoring her through Mel as she prepares to launch a bold new venture.

It’s Ruby who picks up on her name and connects it to the Doctor’s long-lost granddaughter. A compelling idea -enough so to close out the cold open- and it’s clear that Davies is curious about investigating whatever happened to Susan Foreman, one of the great open-ended questions in Doctor Who history (I know there was an Eighth Doctor audio drama that resolved it, but those don’t carry the weight or, sorry to say, the legitimacy of the show proper). Certainly he knows how to use it as a way to subtly connect the Doctor with Ruby through mutual lost family members. But of course her mystery is more pressing, as we learn that UNIT has of course been interested in Ruby’s backstory; Morris raising that it could be that this mysterious Susan Triad showing up in their adventures as well as that manifested snow of the moment of Ruby’s abandonment could be connected. And everyone mutually decides to leave Susan hanging while they look into uncovering Ruby’s parentage through elite UNIT technology.

Using UNIT’s Time Window device (a primitive one by the Doctor’s estimation, and made in secret despite him telling them in the 70s not to make it), they have the power to step into a moment in time if it has been preserved through recording or other data -but not influence time in any real way. Ruby happens to have a VHS tape of the CCTV footage of her cloaked mother leaving her at the Church on Ruby Road, so she retrieves it from home, Carla coming with her; but not before leaving Cherry in the care of neighbour Mrs. Flood, who after their departure we see a little glimpse of her true nature as she refuses to make tea for Cherry and eagerly anticipates a coming storm. She makes an offhand comment about “always hiding herself away” in front of Carla, deliberately invoking what the Doctor had just a scene or two earlier described as a reason for a Time Lord changing face as he explained regeneration to Ruby for the first time. It’s a hint only, designed to fuel anticipation, and that seems to be Davies’s big play this episode, as we see heavily in the next sequence.

It should be noted though that the episode establishes the UNIT personnel very efficiently. Mel and Rose are quite prominent of course -Rose and Ruby get along incredibly well, but the whole crew that we see feel like a fairly solid team -Harriet comments sarcastically about the challenge of parsing an old VHS tape, Colonel Winston Chidozie (Tachia Newall) has an instant rapport with Ruby, and Morris hangs around all episode as purveyor of exposition and an occasional smart remark. The characters aren’t developed necessarily, but they’ve got personality -and it’s what makes what happens to a couple of them a little more effective than if they were just standard UNIT redshirts. And they all play some part in setting up the video footage in UNIT’s discount holodeck for the Doctor and Ruby to possibly clock once and for all the face of Ruby’s mother. And as the Doctor and Ruby stand in observation, unable to move very much without disrupting the technology, the scene plays out more or less as we saw it from a different vantage point in “The Church on Ruby Road”. As Ruby’s mother approaches them, her face remains hidden and she’s past them before anything can be ascertained. We see the TARDIS materialize and the Doctor go on his little quest to rescue baby Ruby from the goblins and the woman remain in the distance in the picture while the TARDIS stands alone and as the Doctor observes, more solid than the rest of the memories.

What catches him though is when his past self makes his reappearance and the woman turns and points at him, in full Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come fashion, which did not happen to his recollection. Though everyone tries to identify another source, it is confirmed the Doctor is the only thing in the scene she could possibly be pointing at, which actually does spook him a touch -”time is changing” he notes. It’s not long after this that she leaves, Ruby herself in emotional tatters after having gotten her hopes up, only for a wreathing black cloud-like entity to appear around the TARDIS, and with all of the UNIT officials unable to tell if it’s a vision from 2004 or a real thing in the chamber with them. Eventually they get some ominous ambiguous speech about “being in hell” from Chidozie, who appears to be caught up in it as well before the vision and entity vanish and Chidozie’s body is revealed turned to dust.

All through this sequence there’s some suspenseful and atmospheric directing work done by Jamie Donoughue, though he is somewhat forced by the script to stall the pacing, mostly through adding reaction shots from everybody and repetitive moments of the Doctor restraining Ruby. Carla doesn’t come into the Time Window immediately, there’s a shot of her alone with the UNIT guards while the Doctor and UNIT figure this system out, before belatedly showing up to the scene -a choice which typically indicates something askew, or in Doctor Who something suspicious (and it wouldn’t be a surprise given how frequently we’ve seen Carla in a hostile context already) -but it doesn’t lead anywhere, at least not in this episode, as she maintains character and is supportive of Ruby from the sidelines throughout the whole endeavour. Another mere pacing tactic it would seem.

This sensation of shuffling in place continues into a couple more scenes that are careful not to actually build to anything conclusive -until the show’s final minute. Yet there are considered moments here, such as Kate’s cold glance towards the Doctor as he apologizes for Chidozie’s death -not long after she herself had asserted he brings joy in lieu of his own dour opinion. Similarly there’s a moment where the Doctor, on following Mel to meet with Susan -desperate that she provide an answer- has a small frustrated breakdown that she talks him out of in a very classically Melanie Bush way. Still, as the episode builds to an end-point it stretches itself more thin, preferring to add layers of mystery -such as the enigma being woven into the power of the TARDIS (whatever that means) and the notion that Susan’s appearances in other stories are enigmatic projections in dreams. There’s also the somewhat understated detail that the big public speech she starts giving live, and which is mostly backgrounded by the Doctor and Kate figuring things out, is a renunciation of her wealth and influence -clearly the actions of some hostile force, but seemingly disconnected from what it ultimately turns out to be.

In the last minutes of the episode, Kate theorizes that the creature was emanating from the TARDIS just as it proves to be the case at UNIT HQ with a deep voice emerging from Harriet pronouncing a grandiose, creepy bout of ancient proselytizing (and Lynea delivers it with particular menace) at the same time that Susan seems to lose control of her senses and collapses. Harriet is another H. Arbinger announcing the arrival of a God, and invokes both the Maestro and the Toymaker (as well as the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures) as part of that collective. The messages on Susan’s prompter become more cryptic, and in the midst of all of this Ruby is drawn back to the Time Window on her own to conjure that moment again. The God that comes is indeed in Susan’s form, the Doctor realizing he got the anagram wrong -it is Sutekh, the God of Death, whose great dog appears over the TARDIS, threatening to bring the gift of death to humanity.

This singular reveal and its associated Egyptian ephemera appears particularly random given the leads that were cultivated. To the majority of the show’s target audience, this is a completely new monster -though Sutekh was indeed a relatively memorable one-off villain from the Fourth Doctor story “Pyramids of Mars”. And I appreciate Davies mining old Doctor Who for monsters again like he did with the Toymaker. But it is a resolution that doesn’t really mean anything -even though the gravity of Sutekh’s ambitions are stressed. As a cliffhanger it’s fairly mild, because it doesn’t effect the personal stakes for either the Doctor or Ruby -Ruby whose “legend” isn’t actually expounded upon in this episode, and whose mystery almost feels like the secondary priority by the end.

It is more or less as I expected, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is predominantly set-up and a re-affirmation of the series’ main story tenet without exploring it very much. Probably it will play better paired with next week’s episode -I don’t know why the series opened on a double-header that were very distinct standalone shows but didn’t conclude on the pair that are highly dependent on each other. The hints it gives and the potentials it entertains are mostly interesting, but they aren’t enough to carry the episode. However it does have some charming character moments for the actors to play, particularly Ncuti Gatwa, and Jemma Redgrave actually -even if it is in that well-worn space of reminiscence and the associated pathos. The Time Window provides for some good haunting visuals and the personalities around the plot give it some nice colour. But it is a fairly mediocre “Part One”, even by Doctor Who standards. I hope that Part Two relieves its burden.

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