And somehow it's time for the big two-part season finale already; time flies when you've only got 8 episodes, I guess. So we return to UNIT to investigate the Mystery of Susan Twist. Why does she appear everywhere the Doctor shows up? Oh, and I guess as long we're here, what's up with Ruby's biological mother?
It's a bit odd; it's like there are two more or less unrelated plot threads happening here, and the less exciting one is the one the episode is named after. It feels like the stuff with Susan Triad should be the more urgent plot point, with her about to release free software to the entire world and being the same face following the Doctor everywhere, but it often feels like it gets pushed to the back burner in favor of Ruby's storyline. Certainly the Doctor spends more of his time in UNIT's time window room -- although the moment where he first beholds the fancy room with a large glass partition and shiny surfaces and lots of controls and displays and starts to bend over laughing, declaring "this is rough! Wow! You have lashed this together Woo!", is a pure delight -- trying to work out some of the puzzles around Ruby. Well, I say "some of the puzzles", but it's really just "who is her birth mother?" and "why does it snow around her a bunch?" But they have a time window and an old VHS copy of the CCTV footage near the church at the relevant time, so they can construct a window into the evening of 24 December 2004 by the church on Ruby Road. There's a lot of stuff about not moving (because I guess they've kind of traveled back in time?) to avoid disturbing things and wondering why Ruby's mother is now pointing and what's going on with a weird swirling cloud that wasn't there before on the tape. It's all delivered with a lot of intensity and urgency, but it ends up being more a curiosity (albeit one that ends with a dead soldier, turned to something like sand) than anything else.
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The Doctor and Mel talk to Susan Triad. ("The Legend of Ruby
Sunday") ©BBC
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But hooray! Kate is back, and so is Rose Noble, plus the Vlinx and Mel! It's really quite wonderful to see Mel back and this time being more active than she was in "The Giggle"; here she's infiltrated Susan Triad's operation to find out more about what she's up to (because UNIT are also concerned about a tech CEO whose name is an anagram of "TARDIS"). It feels like she has more to do now than she did when she traveled with the Doctor, now that she's no longer being called upon to scream on pitch, but the same sense of feistiness still persists in her present-day actions. It's kind of like the best possible Mel, and it's great. We also get the wrinkle that Susan Triad is apparently quite likeable and pleasant to be around, unlike, say, Daniel Barton from
Spyfall -- so if she is an alien intent on taking over the planet, she's doing an excellent job of hiding it. But then we
also get the possibility, raised by Ruby, that Susan Triad may actually be Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, so we get the possibility floating around that maybe this is actually a regenerated Susan. That wouldn't really explain why she's been showing up everywhere, but nevertheless the Doctor seems willing to at least entertain the possibility. But that turns out to be something of a red herring (which, honestly, given that Carole Ann Ford is still alive and kicking, seems like a good thing -- I'd be rather unhappy if they had recast Susan) for something else.
And of course, because this is the start of the series 14 finale, we learn that the two seemingly disparate plotlines are in fact closely related. Well, no, that's not fair. It's more that the use of the time window reveals that the swirling cloud that appeared is related to the TARDIS somehow, and that that swirling cloud is also related to Susan Triad. The fact that "S. Triad" is an anagram of TARDIS turns out to be a red herring. Don't worry, there's still a clue in the name (for some reason -- maybe he just likes showing off); it's just that the clue is in the name of the company: Susan Triad Technology, which can be (awkwardly) shortened to Sue Tech. In other words, Sutekh, returning to the show for the first time since 1975's
Pyramids of Mars.
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Sutekh reveals himself. ("The Legend of Ruby Sunday") ©BBC
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We'll have to wait for next episode to answer such questions as "how?", "why?", and "no but seriously, how?", but nevertheless we get a nice big cliffhanger here, with Susan Triad turning into a servant of Sutekh (looking, it must be said, a lot more skull-like than Marcus Scarman did when he was a servant in
Pyramids) and bringing death to humanity. And as if that weren't enough, Sutekh himself has manifested himself around the TARDIS, looking a lot bigger and a lot more like an alien dog than he did in
Pyramids of Mars. Gloriously, however, he's still voiced by Gabriel Woolf, who voiced him back in 1975, and so those silky smooth tones go a long way in making this reveal work. But yes, it seems Sutekh was the One Who Waits, mentioned by the Toymaker and Maestro, and is apparently now a leader of a whole set of gods, including not just the Toymaker and Maestro, but also the Trickster (from various
Sarah Jane Adventures stories), the Mara (
Kinda/
Snakedance), and some other beings we haven't met yet, like Reprobate and Incensor. And now he's once more ready to bestow the gift of death upon everyone...
(Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention: what's the deal with Mrs. Flood (the woman who knew what a TARDIS was)? Why is she being so rude to Ruby's grandmother, and how does she know Sutekh is about to return? More questions for next time, it seems.)
