Editor's Note: This recap contains spoilers for Doctor Who Season 1, Episode 7, "The Legend of Ruby Sunday."
The Big Picture
- The penultimate episode of
Doctor Who
's newest season wraps up with a rollercoaster of emotions and setup for a jaw-dropping finale. - The episode teases the Doctor's complex familial connections, hints at mysterious villains, and reunites beloved characters.
- The heavy lifting of setting up a finale is evident, keeping viewers on edge for the epic showdown in "Empire of Death."
The time has come to see whose Doctor Who theories panned out and whose came up empty! From the opening minutes of "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," it is abundantly clear that showrunner Russell T. Davies knew going in exactly what we'd all be doing with that Susan Foreman name-drop back in "The Devil's Chord." Davies plays with the season's biggest theories, before theatrically and dramatically revealing "The One Who Waits" in the episode's final moments, giving the audience as many new questions as answers. "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" is an emotional roller coaster with as many tender beats as there are heart-pounding sequences, and it does the heavy lifting of setting up what will likely be a jaw-dropping finale.
With the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson) touching down at UNIT for the big two-part season finale, we get a plethora of returning faces, as well as some delightful new additions. Jemma Redgrave's Kate Stewart has a pair of strong scenes with Gatwa that certainly stand out. Meanwhile, Michelle Greenidge is back to support Ruby through the twists and turns of the finale, though I still wish she would be given some true Jackie Tyler-level content to work with. Yasmin Finney returns in lieu of Catherine Tate and, while it's not super clear why Rose is at work when Donna isn't, it's so lovely to have Rose and Ruby interact that it doesn't matter. Classic companion Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford) is also back following her re-emergence in "The Giggle," and she finally gets more to do than the running and screaming days of the '80s.
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The Doctor and Ruby sweep into UNIT with little to no preamble, bounding out to wrap Rose Noble in a sweeping hug and kick off the proceedings with gusto. In the whirlwind of reunions, David Tennant fans (myself included) get a sweet little reference to Donna and Fourteen as the Doctor asks about them while also revealing that this incarnation may have stopped by the Noble residence once or twice, as this is clearly not the first time he’s met Rose. He introduces Rose and Ruby, who have swiftly become one of my favorite Doctor Who duos. We rapidly need a few new and returning UNIT agents as well, from the ever-handsome Colonel Ibrahim to newcomers Morris Gibbons (a 13-year-old genius) and Harriet (head of the archive). If you noticed Harriet doesn’t get introduced with her full name, there’s a reason for that — as it’s later revealed, she’s another Harbinger, akin to the one that preceded Maestro.
The Doctor dives into a brief recap of every place we’ve seen the mystery woman (Susan Twist), minus Ruby’s alternate timeline in “73 Yards.” There are also a couple of additions from unseen adventures, including one that I believe to be a Star Trek reference as some truly stunning makeup work transforms Twist into a would-be Borg. Luckily for the Doctor, UNIT has already found her. On Earth, Twist is a woman named Susan Triad, a billionaire genius with alien technology. Davies pokes a little fun at the obvious S. Triad/TARDIS anagram here, having the Doctor put it together like a big puzzle. However, Kate and her very capable team have already figured that out and have been keeping tabs on her for quite some time. (Davies also slips in a clever dig at Elon Musk that should elicit a snort from the target audience.)
Ruby believes it’s quite clear that this could very well be the Doctor’s granddaughter; however, she doesn’t understand how he wouldn’t recognize her on sight. As the moment comes for any companion, Ruby gets a crash course in regeneration, but the Doctor promises to keep this face for a long, long time — and I certainly hope he does after Gatwa’s incredible first season in the role. We get a glimpse inside Triad HQ as Mel is revealed as a secret agent gathering intel on the enigmatic Susan. However, the biggest discovery that they’ve found so far is that she is, shockingly, quite nice.
With one mystery addressed, the Doctor switches gears rather abruptly to bring our attention to the ongoing riddle of Ruby Sunday’s true origins. After everyone takes a moment to gush over Davina McCall, who appeared as herself in “The Church on Ruby Road,” Morris poses the obvious question of whether all of their mystery women are the same person. When Rose questions why the Doctor can’t just take the TARDIS back to the night Ruby was born, given his penchant for breaking the rules, he explains that doing so could have world-ending paradoxical consequences given that he’s already been there once. Luckily, as ancient as the tale of Ruby’s birth sounds, Harriet points out that it wasn’t actually that long ago, and we did have such vast technological advancements as CCTV footage in 2004. Further luck is in our heroes' favor, as Ruby admits she has a copy of that very footage, and the Doctor sends her and Rose off to retrieve it from the shoebox under her bed.
Back at the Sunday flat, Ruby and Rose catch Carla up on the goings-on at UNIT. When Rose reveals that her mother is a part of the organization, Carla decides she’s coming along too. Greenidge has delivered an excellent performance each time we’ve gotten to see her this season, and it’s wonderful to see Carla brought into the fold for this adventure, however briefly. As they all head out, their kooky neighbor Mrs. Flood comes over to look after Cherry in their absence. After a brief moment of sugary sweetness that made me wonder if she was the Doctor’s missing granddaughter, her vibe shifts to startlingly sinister. As the clouds darken the skies of London, Mrs. Flood promises that“He waits no more,” after tossing some vaguely ominous threats at Cherry. As much of a delight as Anita Dobson’s winks to the camera have been, if anything happens to Cherry Sunday I will be throwing Mrs. Flood directly into the time vortex.
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Meanwhile, Mel puts her spy boots on and snags a DNA sample from Susan as she talks about her humble upbringing, adding more veneer to her all-too-human facade. Mel hops back on her motorbike and heads over to UNIT. We get there before her and are treated to a beautiful moment of reminiscence between Kate and the Doctor. They dwell on the concept of family as they discuss her father and his granddaughter. He also reveals that because of the wibbly-wobbly life of a Time Lord, he doesn’t actually know who the mother of his children is. The Doctor, very reasonably, worries about the hurt and danger that he brings with him wherever he goes. However, Kate is quick to offer a comforting word, assuring him that he also brings joy. All the while, the likelihood that everything with Susan is a trap is only increasing.
Mel returns and the Doctor sweeps her up into a big hug — an appropriately joyful reaction after Mel helped usher this Doctor into existence. She reports in with her DNA sample, which proves Susan to be human, pointing all the more directly to the fact that she very much isn’t. Given that this is a season filled with mythical beings, it’s all too obvious that Susan is more than she appears to be. Rose and Ruby return with the tape, and we get a few moments of levity as the Doctor asks Kate if UNIT has a time window — something he expressly told them not to develop, so of course, it’s merely ten floors down.
The time window is a large room lined with lights in a grid format, and I must say, close enough, welcome back Star Trek Holodeck. After some mild preamble, and the introduction of a guard who is immediately, to keep borrowing Star Trek references, a red shirt. With all our major players in attendance, the Doctor and Ruby enter the time window while everyone else mans the control stations on the other side of a large glass window. With a little bit of magic and whimsy, Ruby sets the stage by reciting everything she knows about the night she was born, and it begins to snow. As they pop the tape in and the machine whirrs to life, Ruby and the Doctor find themselves within the glitchy black-and-white recording. As a child of the '90s, I can’t help but enjoy the nostalgic VFX work to build out the surrounding scene with Ruby and the Doctor sticking out in vibrant color.
Unable to interact with the malleable moment in time, the Doctor and Ruby watch helplessly as they learn absolutely nothing new. As everyone waits with bated breath, we essentially run back through the familiar beats of that night to no avail, as the Doctor tries desperately to figure out what’s so different about Ruby’s mother. Tears fall down Ruby’s face as her heart breaks in front of everyone, and her mysterious mother once again slips through her fingers. With her hood still up, Ruby’s mother turns around and points at something in the distance, though we cannot tell if she’s aiming for the Doctor in the past, he and Ruby in the present, the TARDIS, or something unseen. Against Kate’s advice, and his own better judgment, the Doctor sends the guard to investigate behind the TARDIS. Leaving us no closer to the answer to her identity, she turns and walks away as Ruby cries.
The glimpse into the past takes a turn when a dark swirling cloud of doom appears where the TARDIS was and the guard has disappeared. Not only can UNIT not identify the figure, but they can’t tell if it exists in 2004 or 2024. Carla calls it “the Beast,” which may be more spot-on than expected, as the truth about the creature comes to light in the episode's final moments. The voice of the guard finally responds to Ruby’s worried calls. However, the revelation that he’s “in hell” is certainly not one anyone would’ve hoped for. As the time window hits a fever pitch, everything shuts down violently, and in the wake, the guard’s body is the only thing that remains. Undercutting her earlier words to him, Kate looks upon the Doctor with nothing but disappointment as his insatiable curiosity gets that man killed.
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Having exhausted this avenue of questioning, the Doctor asks Mel to take him to Susan. Upon their arrival at Triad, however, the Doctor has a brief breakdown at the helplessness he feels whenever he causes harm in his genuine attempts to help. Mel, getting to reverse the relationship she often had with the Doctor in the '80s, gives him the pep talk he needs to get up and fix it. The Doctor meets Susan and if you were expecting some magical moment in which he reunites with his long-lost family, you’ll be disappointed. It’s anticlimactic, as the Doctor searches for something that just isn’t there. Susan, however, does get to make a delightful “doctor who?” joke before the Doctor brings her whole life crumbling down around her ears. As she dashes off to address the whole world on live television, the Doctor asks if she remembers all of the worlds in which they’ve run across each other. It unsettles her so much that she practically runs away.
Back at UNIT, they discover that the recording has changed after running the tape through the time window and dive into an investigation. At the heart of the swirling cloud, they find the TARDIS, which begins to make that unnerving groaning sound both in the past and the present. Kate questions whether the figure is also still wrapped around the TARDIS, and they just can’t see it — she just so happens to be completely correct. The Doctor urges her to evacuate the building. However, she simply sends away all nonessential personnel (aka all the characters without names, and Carla). Without further instructions, the Doctor demands that they take Ruby to the time window immediately.
From here, things crescendo rather quickly, as Susan falters on camera and a dark twisted voice overlays through her teleprompter speech. Simultaneously, Harriet Arbinger appears to become possessed, delivering a speech running through the full pantheon of gods, from those we’ve seen before like the Toymaker, Maestro, and the Trickster, to those we haven’t, like Malice, Misery, and Mischief. Finally, Harriet and Susan introduce our ultimate big bad: Sutekh, the god of Death. While it’s unclear how it’s connected, the time window kicks on all on its own, taking Ruby back to the night she was born once more. Further puzzling is the discordant strains of the Master’s theme, previously pounded out on the piano by Maestro, playing over the key moments of the reveal.
As Susan transforms into a skeletal figurehead of Sutekh, the dark cloud around the TARDIS materializes into Sutekh’s true form — an intimidating winged dog with menacing teeth and a taste for blood. Sutekh first appeared in the Doctor Who serial “Pyramids of Mars,” serving as an antagonist for the fourth Doctor. At the time, Gabriel Woolf played Sutekh, and then Woolf later voiced "The Beast" in Season 2 of the rebooted series in 2006, giving weight to Carla's name for the creature. Ultimately defeated when the fourth Doctor trapped him in a time tunnel, Sutekh has subsequently appeared in expanded Doctor Who media, including a run of comics and Big Finish audio dramas. From the first half of the finale, it’s unclear how much Davies plans to incorporate the expanded canon or if we’ll pick up somehow directly from “Pyramids of Mars.”
We leave all our heroes on the brink of total destruction as everyone is facing Sutekh in one form or another. It’s also possible that Carla and Cherry are in danger as well if Mrs. Flood turns out to be another of his minions. Ending on such a cliffhanger, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is very much the first part of a two-part story. The episode is responsible for a lot of heavy lifting as far as setup and does a solid job of bringing all the disparate threads of the season together. We’ll ultimately have to wait for “Empire of Death” to see if Davies has stuck the landing, but anticipation is high for what should be an epic showdown.
Doctor Who
"The Legend of Ruby Sunday" doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it does the heavy lifting to set up an action-packed finale.
- The Doctor gets some touching emotional beats with several of his beloved companions.
- Seeing the whole gang come together feels very fitting for a Davies finale.
- The plot twist reveal in the final moments was just predictable enough to be satisfying for viewers who put those particular puzzle pieces together.
- This is very much part one of a story, with most of the plot revolving around set up for the finale, so it's unclear if part two will stick the landing.
Don't miss the Doctor Who season finale when it airs on Disney+ next Friday at 7 PM ET.
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