Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday

Well, we’re into the endgame for what has been a somewhat unfulfilling season of DOCTOR WHO. There’s still time to make it all come together, but this first half of the final two-parter doesn’t really carry its load. It was definitely intriguing, and maintained a sense of build and suspense throughout it. But it also evidenced a lot of the weaknesses showcased throughout the rest of the season as well, and so it wound up being mostly a lot of set-up for a story that will play out next time. And for all that we got a few partial answers, it maybe wasn’t quite as forthcoming as it needed to be.

I swear, back in the day, Russell’s plotting was a lot tighter than this. He’d occasionally introduce plot twists or resolutions that didn’t really make sense for effect–the Doctor being transformed from an emaciated Gollum-figure into an incandescent God by everybody on Earth chanting his name at the same time at the end of Series Three being a prime example–but for the most part, he played fair, and he remembered that the Doctor was meant to be the protagonist, the Doctor and the companion, in this case, Ruby.

Poor Ruby. For an episode that was named after her, she really gets precious little to do this time out. The search for her parents feels a bit shoehorned in–and it is–but never takes center stage apart from needing to drive the plot. So she gets to be sad, and to not learn anything apart from the fact that her adoptive mother loves her, and that’s about it. As I stare at Ruby, she still feels less like a character than a collection of traits. I feel as though I don’t really know much about her. What is/was her job? Why does she go with the Doctor and why does she stay with him? What’s her perspective? As compared to Russell’s previous companions, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble, Ruby feels surprisingly thing as a character.

And the central Doctor problem is all over this episode: the Doctor drives nothing, solves nothing, moves the plot forward not at all. For most of the episode’s run time, he stands around in bafflement as other characters shout exposition at him and clarify what is going on. I really don’t get the disconnect here, but it’s frustrating. I want to see the Doctor taking action. The Doctor’s the one who should be shouting exposition at other people. He’s the title character, he’s meant to be at the center. But here again, he seems hapless, for all that once again, everybody else in the series genuflects to him. Hell, Mel has to tell him to get up and solve the problem–and the Doctor does rise, but then he doesn’t do much of anything.

I think part of the difficulty that this episode had was that the characters immediately intuit that the Doctor’s two problems are inter-related, for no good reason at all. So the Doctor shows up at UNIT saying that he’s got a problem: a mystery woman who is following him throughout time and space. And it turns out, this mystery woman is about to make a world-changing announcement in 60 minutes on live television, and UNIT has been tracking her movements for weeks and has embedded Mel as a deep cover operative near her. So there’s a ticking clock, sixty minutes. So what happens next? The Doctor says, “Oh, by the way, could we maybe find Ruby’s mom as well?” And then everybody in the cast immediately turns to that task. Guys, come on–clearly that’s business to conduct after you’ve dealt with whatever potential threat is about to be unleased in under an hour. And yes, the two things wind up being connected, but there isn’t any evidence of that when it comes up.

I tend to think that the Ruby’ mother plotline should have been a parallel thing, one that Millie Gibson could have carried simultaneous to the Doctor and UNIT investigating Susan Triad. UNIT is a bit organization, they can do two things at once. And then, when it became apparent that there was a connection between the two, then you could have dovetailed everything together. But the structure of this episode felt sloppy to me, enough to where I wanted to kick the television at certain points. (Don’t get me started on the fact that the mystery woman turns and very clearly points AT THE TARDIS, and a room full of people including the Doctor can’t work that out. “Maybe it’s something behind this Police Box that she’s pointing at!” Yeah, good thinking, doomed soldier guy.)

So let’s get to the reveals. I did appreciate the manner in which Russell’s familiarity with fandom allowed him to weaponize its speculation against us. While it was a little bit forced–there are other people in the world named Susan, Ruby–the fact that he dispenses with a bunch of fan theories in the first ten minutes shows that he’s ahead of the game. The Sutekh reveal had been floating around as a theory in fan circles for about a week–Rich Johnston in particular seemed really taken with it. And to be honest, I thought it was a stretch. More fool me.

With all of that said, Russell is starting to have only a relatively limited number of characters under which he can hide Susan, assuming that her return hasn’t been a huge red herring through the whole of the series. My gut says that Mrs Flood is the obvious choice, but I also think she’s the obvious choice for the figure under Ruby’s mother’s hood (my primary theory that it’s Ruby herself seeming to not really be on the table any longer.) I suppose it’s still possible that Susan Triad could be Susan, she dreamed of Orange Skies, after all. But that feels as though it would be a relatively weak payoff–though if she died and then regenerated into new companion Varada Sethu, that could be pretty cool. And one dark horse guess that I really don’t quite buy into but which feels like the sort of move Russell would make: Susan is Cherry Sunday, and she gets up out of that sick bed to confront Mrs Flood, who’s the harbinger of Horus and the opposition to Sutekh. That would make Ruby the Doctor’s Granddaughter’s adoptive granddaughter. Which is insane, but not outside the realm of possibility.

In any event, I’m still hopeful that Russell can pull the narrative threads together well enough to provide a satisfying conclusion. And if nothing else, this episode has me thinking about it, puzzling out its mysteries. So there’s that. I expect that it’s all going to come down to what the plot of next week’s episode turns out to be. They’ve pointedly shown us nothing from this episode, which I think is a great move, and one that I hope they’re able to sustain for the erst of the week. And Thursday’s new Tales of the TARDIS has to be Pyramids of Mars. Which makes sense, as the one Doctor we didn’t get in the initial set was Tom Baker. The wraparound is apparently the Doctor and Ruby in the Memory TARDIS, and how that works given the position of the players at the cliffhanger is a bit mystifying. But there’s nothing that says the final episode needs to pick up exactly where this one left off, after all.