TV Review: Doctor Who Episode ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’ Teases the Return of a Character Who Left the Show in 1964

So far this season, I’ve tried my best to write spoiler-free reviews. But for the first part of the season finale, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” we’ve got a lot of big revelations happening that could change everything; we’ve got a surprise villain returning, and we’ve got Julie’s superfan theories about what’s to come in the season finale “Empire of Death.”

I frankly don’t know how to write a spoiler-free review. So, if you haven’t watched “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the only thing I’m willing to tell you is that it’s really exciting and definitely worth watching, and that’s coming from one of Russell T. Davies’ harshest critics. Other than that, I suggest you go watch the episode before you read this review because I can’t be held responsible for spoiling Doctor Who for you.

**WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!**

The Legend of Susan Foreman

First, we have some shocking revelations about the Doctor’s long-lost granddaughter, Susan. For those who haven’t seen the 1960s era of Doctor Who, let me break down what happened. Trust me, my summary will be much more entertaining than watching the actual episodes. I’ve seen every episode of Doctor Who from 1963 to today (and recreations of the lost episodes) and I love this franchise with all my heart, but I don’t recommend the first Doctor era. It’s rough.

So, in the beginning, there was the First Doctor (William Hartnel) and his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) living undercover in the 1960s in England. They lived in a spaceship at 76 Trotters’s Lane. They send Susan to school for some reason, mostly just to blend in with humans, but it becomes pretty clear to Susan’s teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterson (William Russell) that she has superhuman intelligence. When Barbara and Ian go to investigate, they get stuck in the TARDIS after it takes off. Back in those days, the Doctor didn’t have any idea how to steer a TARDIS, but he kept saying the problem was that the navigation system was broken (technically the 12th Doctor proved this was bullshit when he flew the first Doctor’s TARDIS for him). So the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan went on a bunch of adventures for a few years.

One day, while defending the Earth from a Dalek invasion, Susan met and fell in love with a human. The Doctor left her by literally locking her out of the TARDIS (the first Doctor was a dick) but left her with a promise:

“One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in your beliefs and prove to me I am not mistaken in mine.”

Susan only returned once in the series after that in one of the anniversary specials, but it was a version of Susan from before she left the Doctor. We don’t know what happened to her after she parted ways with her grandfather. We never learned who Susan’s parents were. In fact, some fans have theorized she wasn’t really his granddaughter; they just called each other that out of familiarity. Honestly, there’s so much we don’t know about Susan, and nobody has gone back down that road to reunite Susan with the Doctor on the television show. There are vague references to her (the 12th Doctor keeps a picture of her on his desk and talks to it sometimes), but she has never appeared on the show. The Doctor has yet to fulfill his promise of going back for his granddaughter[1], and keep in mind that Carole Ann Ford is the only original cast member who is still alive.

Okay, so with that all in mind, the 15th Doctor era seems to be setting up to address the elephant in the room that every other era of the series has gone out of its way to ignore. The 15th Doctor talks more about Susan in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” than he has from 1964 to 2023 combined. The Doctor tells Kate that he has a granddaughter, but does not have a daughter yet.[2] So that means that, as far as the Doctor is aware, Susan’s mother hasn’t been born yet. I worded that very carefully, because I have a theory, and it’s a whopper if it’s true, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The One Who Waits Will Wait No More

Okay, now moving on to Sutekh, I did not see that coming. I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Okay, that’s not true, one person I saw on Facebook made a meme that they thought was a joke, and it turned out to be a perfectly accurate guess at what was coming up. I’m linking to it here with the permission of the author. I saw that and thought to myself, “That would be hilarious if they were bringing back Sutekh. But they would never bring back Sutekh.” Then they brought back Sutekh. Holy shit.

Sutekh is an actual Egyptian deity in the real world, although I think he’s more commonly known as Set in the real world. He’s also not supposed to be the god of death in Egypt, but he comes close; he’s the god of deserts, storms, disorder, and violence. And foreigners, but wow does that last one not look right next to all the others.

But in the Doctor Who universe, Sutekh was a one-off Doctor Who villain from 1975 in a fourth Doctor serial called “Pyramids of Mars.” There, some over-eager human archeology professor accidentally gets himself possessed by Sutekh who almost uses that professor to get himself free from his prison, but the Doctor manages to trap Sutekh in a time tunnel where he’ll die of old age before reaching the end. Apparently Sutekh got out.[3]

We now have this idea of The Pantheon, all the gods of different things, which mostly pulls form a bunch of other eras of the show. At the end of this episode, Harbinger starts listing off the many gods,\ and mentions Toymaker (from the 14th Doctor’s “The Giggle” and the first Doctor serial “The Celestial Toymaker”), Maestro (from the 15th Doctor episode “The Devil’s Chord”), the Mara (from the fifth Doctor episodes “Kinda” and “Snakedance”), The Trickster (from the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures), some god named Reprobate whom we’ve never met, and Sutekh. Suddenly these disparate characters from across the lives of the Doctor are strung together as the overarching threat of the season, but the big headline is that the big guy is back, Sutekh. Remember, the fourth Doctor’s episode was entirely about keeping Sutekh from getting out. Now the disaster that the Doctor prevented is happening anyway. This is worst-case scenario. This is probably the most dire thing the Doctor has faced.

Julie’s Predictions

So, we can’t really make out who Ruby’s mother is, but (and I admit that I wasn’t the first person to notice this; someone online pointed it out to me) whoever she is, she’s wearing odd pants for a snowy December 24th. She’s wearing pants that are not entirely unlike the pants that the 13th Doctor wore. And now that you mention it, the cloak she’s wearing is not entirely unlike the 13th Doctor’s coat with the hood pulled up. (I should know, I have a replica of the 13th Doctor’s coat in my own size.)  Remember that the 13th Doctor was the first female Doctor in the history of Doctor Who. I’m going to make a bold claim that I am not the first to make, but I think Ruby’s mother is the 13th Doctor. But I’m going to take it a little bit farther and say that I then think, somehow, Ruby is going to have a daughter named Susan. This is why the Doctor says he doesn’t have children yet. Ruby is Susan’s mother, who he has always been waiting to meet.

How does the Doctor not remember leaving Ruby at the church, you ask? It’s established in the episodes “Day of the Doctor,” “The Doctor Falls,” and “Twice Upon a Time” that, when two versions of the same person—or at least two versions of the same Time Lord—are in the same place at the same time, they can’t retain their memories of what happened. When the 15th Doctor went back to rescue Ruby from the goblins in “The Church on Ruby Road,” he erased the 13th Doctor’s memory of what happened. How does the Doctor not remember an entire pregnancy? Who is the father? Good questions, and I don’t have good answers to those questions. But I feel like it would be fascinating if true, and I think that it would make for a fun, surprise return of the too-often maligned 13thDoctor.

Now, even if my theory is way off-base come next week, there’s one thing that’s for sure; the Pandora’s box that is the very topic of Susan has been opened and it will not be closed very easily. Even with the bait and switch in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” where we’re led to suspect that Susan Triad the Doctor’s granddaughter and instead she turns out to be a harbinger of Sutekh, I feel like we’re going to find a way back to Susan again. They’re telegraphing it at this point. Something has to happen with that character, and that is unprecedented.

As for the other mysteries, we know that Mrs. Flood is in some way associated with the return of Sutekh. I think she has to be a human who became possessed by a member of the Pantheon during the events of “The Church on Ruby Road.” Notice, in that episode, Mrs. Flood seems floored the first time she sees a TARDIS take off, but by the end of the episode, she knows what a TARDIS is. I think she’s got to be either possessed by Sutekh or by another member of the Pantheon. The Mara, for example, can possess people.

In Conclusion

I have to hand it to Russell T. Davies that he’s made a season where guessing about what’s going to happen next is a lot of fun. “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” was wildly entertaining and kept me guessing the whole time, and I still have so many questions I want answers to. I just hope those answers are satisfying, as I haven’t always been satisfied with Davies’ conclusions in the past.

Rating: 91/100

[1] Okay, that’s a little bit of a lie. You see, in the audio stories from Big Finish Productions, Susan and the eighth Doctor actually run into each other at one point. She’s married the human she fell in love with, and she had a son named Alex Campbell who is the Doctor’s half-human great-grandson. There’s a whole lot of controversy over whether Big Finish audios count as canon, and that could be another subfootnote of itself, but it seems that Russell T. Davies is clearly signaling that he will ignore the audio stories.

[2] Okay, a little bit of bullshit there. The Doctor has a daughter named Jenny. He really doesn’t like talking about Jenny. I really wish someone would bring her back, as well. [3] Okay, so technically he got out in the audio books, too.

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