Hogan Reviews

It’s time for a good old fashioned Russell T. Davies two-part finale, complete with world, nay universe-ending stakes and a returning foe. Strange feeling nostalgic for something that was only last done 10 or so years ago, but there you have it. Was it a good RTD finale though? Let’s find out and close out the Fifteenth Doctor’s first season.

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson) arrive at UNIT HQ to ask their help in finding the mysterious woman who they’ve seen in one form or another across their adventures and see if it ties back to the mystery of Ruby’s birth and how it snows in real life whenever Ruby thinks about it. Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and team agree to help, especially when the mysterious woman not only exists in this time period but is a woman called Susan Triad (Susan Twist) who is a major tech mogul who is on the verge of a major announcement about giving away free technology. It’s pointed out that “S. Triad Technologies” is an anagram for “TARDIS Technologies” and that using Susan on top of that means it’s almost certainly a trap, though the thought that it might be his granddaughter hasn’t escaped The Doctor’s mind. One mystery at a time though and The Doctor and Ruby retrieve a VHS security tape from Ruby Road on the day Ruby was left behind and use a massive “time window” to digitally recreate the scene and try and get a look at Ruby’s mum as she walked away, but not only is her face blocked by darkness but she seems to point ominously at The Doctor.

Eventually a random UNIT guard somehow goes missing within the digital recreation but before figuring that out The Doctor soon departs to meet with Susan, which he does thanks to Mel (Bonnie Langford) having been planted as an undercover UNIT agent in her staff. Ms. Triad admits to The Doctor that she’s been having dreams where she’s been her other selves in those far away places but doesn’t know what they mean, while UNIT discover a strange ghostly shape around the TARDIS. Soon it’s revealed that the ghostly shape is in fact Sutekh (still voiced by Gabriel Woolf!) and the anagram wasn’t anything to do with Susan but instead Susan Technologies, or Sue Tech … Not sure if that’s worse than Professor Yana being “You Are Not Alone” or not, but hey-ho, the revelation was great! Susan turns into a spooky skull-headed thingy while a random UNIT techie does the same thing and all hope seems lost.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention Rose was in the episodes… she literally did nothing though, so… you can’t blame me.

Starting the second half, all hope is literally lost! The two Sutekh slaves blow deadly sand and kill everyone at UNIT HQ and at the studio where Susan was, with The Doctor and Mel only just escaping and heading to find Ruby at UNIT, where they manage to will a version of the TARDIS into existence thanks to the time window creating a vision of the machine and the past being made of memories or some bollocks. The inside though is crammed full of Doctor Who lore and old TARDIS pieces, so that was fun. The Doctor, Mel and Ruby leave and watch Earth get surrounded in death, with Sutekh revealing that he’d clung onto the TARDIS at the end of their first encounter and has been spreading his will to every planet and time period the Doctor has visited since then, taking the form of the same woman, and that now they’re all spreading death to every planet and time he’s ever visited. The Doctor screams in rage knowing that, even though he wasn’t aware of it, he had brought death to the universe…

It’s certainly up there with the finale where Davros tries to destroy the universe with various planets in terms of crazy scope, I’ll give it that. I really enjoyed the redesign of Sutekh and even though it messes about with continuity again, I’m happy to see him return. It had a fun finale as well, which I’ll get to in the spoilers.

The Continuity:

“Bow before Sutekh” indeed!

Obviously the big one is Sutekh himself, who debuted in Fourth Doctor classic “The Pyramids of Mars” and then made several appearances since in audios and comics, but much like the Toymaker when he reappeared in the previous series, this implies its there first meeting since the previous TV story, so… if you want the audios and comics to still “count” in your head you’ll have to do some classic Doctor Who timey wimey fiddling, but that’s easy enough!

Apart from that and obviously the new version of UNIT returning and the whole series-long arc bit of Susan Twist’s character and Ruby’s birth mother being wrapped up, that’s your lot. Which is quite a bit to be fair! Oh, and that’s not including all the visual callbacks in the Memory TARDIS, or the fact that Sutekh is referred to as the leader of a pantheon that also includes several other powerful beings, including recent God-like beings The Toymaker (First appeared in First Doctor story “The Celestial Toymaker” and reappeared last year in “The Giggle”) and the Maestro (appeared earlier this series in the episode “The Devil’s Chord”), plus The Mara from Fifth Doctor classics “Kinda” and “Snakedance”. So yeah, quite continuity heavy, really!

Overall Thoughts:

“It’s okay now, Ruby. I have a whistle.” “Um… not sure how that’s going to help…” “Oh, it will. Trust me!” “Um… okay…?”

As far as crazy-in-scope two-part finales go, this had a lot going for it. The central mystery was fun to follow, and the revelation of Sutekh and his general redesign were great fun. Really enjoyed the final half of the final episode as well though I will say together there was a lot of feet dragging in the early half. Still, I enjoyed it, a good end to a fun series.

The Doctor soon realises that the only reason the three of them are alive is because Sutekh can’t find out who Ruby’s mother is either, it’s such a big mystery that it even escapes his power, so he’s keeping them alive until they can give him that answer. They travel to the 2040s thanks to a vision of Roger ap Gwilliam from the great “73 Yards” episode tipping the Doctor off that at that point DNA registration was compulsory so all they need to do is access their database and they can find out who Ruby’s mother was. On the way there Mel becomes possessed by Sutekh and so when they begin the search she becomes all skull-faced and demands to know the secret but The Doctor and Ruby escape with the PC data in hand. The Doctor hatches a plan and soon he and Ruby arrive at UNIT HQ to confront the apparent God of Death head-on.

The Doctor wanders the wastelands of… a planet. Cool looking robes at least!

Sutekh begins tormenting The Doctor with his powers until Ruby is about to reveal the big secret only to smash the computer and hook Sutekh’s collar with some unbreakable rope that was mentioned in passing earlier in the episode while The Doctor does some magic with a whistle that causes the TARDIS to snap out of Sutekh’s control and return to him. The Doctor and Ruby attach the other end of the rope to the TARDIS and drag Sutekh across the time vortex, and because “bringing death to death creates life” all of Sutekh’s killing in the previous episode is undone completely. Yeah, not sure on that one, but the image of the large Sutekh creature being dragged screaming across the vortex and tearing holes in it as he went was great, so I won’t complain.

After all that we get the reveal that Ruby’s mother was just a normal person and the only reason she had “power” was because she was so hard to track that so many people assumed it was for a special reason and that belief made it real enough to trick Sutekh, a God. Hmm, again, not sure on that, but again, whatever! Ruby meets her and they get all teary and eventually she decides to stay behind and get to know her birth mother so The Doctor heads off alone…