The Legend of Ruby Sunday - A Review

I haven't been overly impressed with the new RTD era to be honest, but would never write the man off. With The Legend of Ruby Sunday we have a definite return to form. 

His series finales were often his best work back in the day, and if this episode is anything to go by then this should be another great one, once we see it in its entirety.

I do have two relatively minor problems with this first half, so I'll get them out of the way now.

I don't like the new Sutekh. It's an all too obviously CGI'd jackal monster. The humanoid Sutekh we got in Pyramids of Mars - especially the Egyptian masked one - worked perfectly fine. (The jackal-headed one not so much, and I was hoping they would have given us an improved version of that. Maybe next week).

(And wasn't Sutekh just a long-lived alien who simply inspired stories of gods? He, personally, wasn't a god at all. RTD2 seems to be equating god-like beings with real gods. Hopefully an explanation next week once we get to see him properly).

The other thing is that title. We are no further forward with Ruby's mysterious abandonment as a baby, although the search for it is what initiates this crisis.

Basically, the Doctor returns to UNIT HQ to seek their help with two problems. The first is the strange woman they keep running into (and here we discover that there have been a few unseen adventures, where she's seen as a Borg-like being and a blue demon). The Doctor also wants their help in tracing Ruby's mum.

These two seemingly disparate events may be connected - and indeed do become intertwined.

The woman proves to be known to UNIT, as her name Susan Triad - or S Triad - is an obvious anagram, and she runs a global IT company (always a potential threat in Doctor Who). 

There's a suspicion that she might be the Doctor's grand-daughter. It's finally confirmed that Susan (Foreman) is his blood relative, and is a Time Lord. 

Something new which RTD2 throws in, however, is that he may not already be the parent to her parent - i.e. she actually originated in his own personal future. He suggests he has yet to meet the person with whom he will have a child who will in turn have Susan, if that makes sense.

UNIT's Mel is working for Triad undercover, and her news is that the mogul is definitely human (but this doesn't rule out the use of a Chameleon Arch).

Ruby has an old CCTV VHS tape from the night of 24th December 2004, but the detail is quite literally a blob in a snowstorm. UNIT have a "time window" which offers a holodeck-style environment which the Doctor and Ruby can enter to see what is happening in 3D. 

The Doctor had revisited the church on Ruby Road on this night in person, and discovers that events are playing out slightly differently to what he recalls. Something is tampering with Time. 

Unfortunately, by close of episode, we still don't know who the hooded woman is, as a hellish black cloud appears from behind the TARDIS, killing a UNIT officer.

The Doctor sets off with Mel to meet Triad, who's about to deliver a big speech.

Back at UNIT, it turns out that the cloud hasn't gone away. It has actually invisibly hitched a ride on the TARDIS ever since Ruby Road, and now it reveals itself - the aforementioned big black four-eyed jackal Sutekh.

He's voiced as before by Gabriel Woolf.

Turns out the clue was there all the time - Triad likes people to call her Sue, and she is works in tech - Sue Tech... She's revealed to be a walking cadaver, just like Marcus Scarman, and like him gets to deliver the famous "I bring Sutekh's gift of death..." line. Twice.

Elsewhere, that nice Mrs Flood turns out to be nasty Mrs Flood, but she only features briefly this week. Is she just a servant of Sutekh, as Triad has been shown to be (as well as UNIT's Harriet Arbinger, aka H Arbinger), or is she a quite separate villain exploiting what's going on?

Donna's daughter Rose is now working for UNIT, but I'm afraid Yasmin Finney is totally wasted here. There really wasn't any point having her in this episode.

Another new UNIT member is child prodigy Morris (Lenny Rush) who is the latest scientific adviser. He was originally going to simply provide vocals for the Space Babies, but they decided he deserved a much better role. Quite right too.

The Vlinx has had an upgrade, which seems a bit pointless as we hardly saw it before - and it barely features at all this week.

The episode fairly rattles along and will grip you from the start as we delve into the two mysteries. It's pretty much all about build-up though - don't expect too much action or spectacle. Ncuti Gatwa finally delivers the performance I would have liked to have seen from the start. He still has the odd funny moment, but the campness has been dialled back and we get to see him frustrated by his inability to work out what's happening, and furious with himself at the loss of the UNIT officer.

I think that all this talk of Susan still has to lead somewhere. It would be disappointing if it didn't go anywhere.

Only a brief teaser for Empire of Death. We know that there is a scene of a grey ash cloud billowing through city streets, with the Doctor on the back of Mel's moped, as that was in all the series trailers. We also know from these that the Doctor and Mel find themselves in the "Memory TARDIS" at some point. There's also a hooded figure in a desolate landscape. The destroyed Gallifrey?

And talking of that, we can now guess what the Tales of the TARDIS is going to be on Thursday 20th June (on BBC Four) - a cut-down Pyramids?