A timelady and companion of the 4th Doctor's. We saw two incarnations of her travel with the Doc before she was called back to Gallifrey, in the EU she's served as Lord President and had many other adventures, we've yet to se her return to the show, and I doubt she's Mrs. Flood.
They are but he’s also thrown out a bunch of references to Missy and Clara so I think he’s just messing with us at this point. Could be any of them or none of them.
You might be best served by just reading up on [a wiki two two](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romana_(Doctor_Who)). But to sum it up, Romana is another Time Lord (full name: Romanadvoratrelundar) that traveled with the Doctor as a companion.
As a Time Lord, she can regenerate (and has in the show), so a different face is not unusual. She'd know what a TARDIS is, and especially the Doctor's. That whole "who would leave a police box in the middle of a sidewalk" thing could be just a show for the humans, or her sense of humor. And there's plenty of room for plot development and conflict there.
Isn't it weird for someone to notice the police box being there in the first place?
Shouldn't its perception filter for most people just cause them to walk past without any remarks, or maybe even remembering there was a police box in the first place? Don't remember the exact moment you are describing, so there might be a reason people did notice it. But they shouldn't normally right?
And points “at him”. That’s what fucked him up. He didn’t understand that she didn’t know he was there. He thought she saw him and that freaked him out since that was the only person who ever did.
Sutekh didn't trick the Doctor about Ruby's mother, he also wanted to know who Ruby's mother was.
You know it's bad when even your defenders don't know what happened
Yeah, this season had a lot of "Mystery Box" bullshit. I had hard flashbacks to the Star Wars Sequels. I like a well made Mystery Box, and Doctor Who knows how to pull them off. I just say "Bad Wolf".
For me, a Mystery Box is as good as its conclusion, and here, the Boxes this seasons fell flat.
See I saw something about how tlj inspired Ruby's arc and immediately got a bad feeling - I do see why having Ruby's mum be a rando is a good idea in terms of Ruby's character, but like... Why couldn't sutek see her then? He's a god and she's some random woman. To me that's the thing that really makes the whole thing fall flat for me - that and basically EVERY mystery in the season being "oh it was all sutek!" Just isn't a very satisfying answer given how many seemingly unconnected mysteries we got. It also doesn't explain the alternate timeline shenanigans of 73 yards, like why the doctor vanished.
Should’ve been that future Ruby was Ruby’s mom and the reason she couldn’t be seen was the Tardis was obscuring her identity because knowing that She is her own mom would cause a paradox or something like that
Because reality was being distorted. Ruby and the doctor believe the mother was special so the universe acted like she was special. Remember, we already know that the tardis +suteck have reality warping effects. Now put in that the doctor, Ruby , and even the gods think something's off and that will become the truth. It wasn't till the suteck left that the "myth" effect disappeared.
That's why right afterwards it was super easy to find her parents. The reality warping effect was gone.
See if the show actually explored that that could have made an interesting point about how we create myths and make seemingly unimportant things important. Unfortunately the show doesn't explain or explore that and I had to go to reddit to even attempt to see it that way
Same. I was reminded a lot of the Disney Star Wars films this episode. Ruby's mother being a no one and it just being hand waved away reminded me of Rey's parents. Her pointing to the street sign to give Ruby her name reminded me of Han "solo"
I think if you experienced them in reverse order Bad Wolf wouldn't do it anymore. The last time I rewatched the Bad Wolf conclusion it was kind of cringe, these things are for the young. I wish Sutekh's silliness didn't eat up 70% of the already tiny season.
It's bi-generation all over again.
The people who simply can't accept that doctor who would ever have bad writing were writing paragraphs and paragraphs to explain how obvious everything was only for RTD to say things that directly contradicted all the explanations
That's the point. The trick was getting the Doctor to solve that one mystery for him. The snow is probably ALSO a tool of Sutekh to keep Ruby and the Doctor invested in Ruby's origins. If it didn't snow all the time at mysterious moments, the Doctor probably wouldn't have been invested in who Ruby's mother was at all. He would've just accepted that he might never know.
That theory falls apart completely because it snowed in 73 yards when Ruby was outside her mums door crying. A timeline where the Doctor didn't even exist and Sutekh doing it would literally change nothing for him. Overall its better to just rule it as bad writing and move on.
It very well could be bad writing, but let's not pretend that we've seen the last of Ruby Sunday. She's going to be in the next season, and we haven't even met her dad yet. There's no way RTD would write in the snowstorm so frequently and not give that specific pay off. Optimistically, I'm assuming that the Ruby's mom reveal was meant as a diversion until we get the next ruby twist.
It stopped snowing right after that, after it became abundantly clear that changes nothing for Sutekh anymore.
I mean it's very possible I am wrong, but I don't think Sutekh is the kind of deity to just give up without a last ditch effort.
The snow ended up being the beacon that The Doctor used to get a good look at Ruby's mother, kind of like the Master. It doesn't actually have to make sense, but it would make sense that the time window imprinted the snow memory on Ruby in a way that was permanent.
Unit got that DNA Data AFTER Doctor and Ruby got it from the future. They travelled to the 2040s to collect the DNA data in the remembered tardis, so it wasn't something Suthek had access to.
A god can’t travel in time? The toy maker could, and he was scared of Sutekh. Also Sutekh reaches through time to control Mel, into the very room where they’re finding the DNA records.
Also, he had the literal tardis
To be fair, he would have had no idea where to begin looking because he doesn’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of practically all of history the way the Doctor does. If it weren’t for Ruby subconsciously remembering the alternate timeline then they’d never have the idea to investigate the mandatory gene samples.
The Doctor literally figures this out and tells you, out loud: Sutekh let's him live, because the Doctor is Sutekhs tool in figuring out that mystery that intrigued him. He was fully planning to kill the Doctor AFTER he got his answer, but until he got that one mystery solved he couldn't.
Sutekhs one flaw is that he couldn't let that one mystery go, and got dragged through his worst nightmare for it by the person he tried to manipulate into solving it for him.
but that doesn’t explain why he cared about the mystery in the first place- your making a circular argument where HE made it important as a mystery, but the reason we were given that he cares about the mystery is the importance the doctor and ruby placed on it.
My interpretation is that Sutekh didn't initially care when he latched onto the TARDIS, but once the Doctor landed on Ruby Road to save baby Ruby's life, it became a fixed point not just for the Doctor and Ruby and the rest of time, but for Sutekh's personal timeline as well.
Sutekh chose that night and the mystery of Ruby's mother as the bait for his trap, seeing the obsession of a mortal girl and the pain of the Doctor's lost indentity and toying with it for his own means. He used his powers to make time raw and unstable around Ruby, making that fixed point in 2004 all the more appealing to them, not realising that by doing so, he was imbuing that night with more and more power, until the mystery of Ruby's mother outgrew Sutekh's designs. In spite of his efforts, the lure of that night and the belief of its importance became so potent that it captured Sutekh himself.
Sutekh is a callous, vain, spiteful god who wants a silent universe all to himself. He isn't used to caring about the folly of mortals, so being caught up in the affairs of one girl and her mother - beings who he considers little more than insects - is an intolerable nuisance. He needs to know the answer so that he can have his silent universe, otherwise that question will torture him for eternity. And because he imbued that night with so much power as a fixed point, the mystery became fixed as well. The moment Sutekh became part of events, he made sure that he could not know the answer and that drives him mad.
yeah that makes a lot of sense to me i like that explanation, although (and again I may just be being stupid) why was it necessary to make them care about Ruby’s mum- as in what was the trap? Was it the use of the time window? did that make him more powerful or something? I didn’t get that impression personally- was it to get the tardis to Unit? If so, it was already there when facing the Toy Maker? Basically ima assuming there’s some missing bit of the puzzle in my brain that makes him making a trap make sense
The best way I could explain it that by choosing to use Ruby's story as the bait for his trap, Sutekh preys on the Doctor's insecurity and his curiosity.
Insecurity because the Doctor has recently learned that they were a foundling, abandoned when they were a child, with no way to find their real parents or family and with no resolution as to why. The same as with Ruby being abandoned as a baby. As for curiosity, the nature of Ruby's fixed point in time is something the Doctor has never seen before, likely because Sutekh used his powers to make it so unstable. With such an unprecedented situation like this, it makes them all the more likely to chase any possible leads that might appear.
You take these two vulnerabilities then introduce a mysterious woman called Susan, the name of their lost granddaughter, which is also an anagram for TARDIS, who then starts popping up again and again throughout time and space. How could the Doctor not investigate?
It's especially effective with a companion like Ruby. Being left as a baby by her mother has shaped her entire life so for her to then find out that her best friend has a granddaughter that they left behind, it would make sense for her to push them to reconnect with her. And with the destruction of Gallifrey, the Timeless Child revelation and their years of living with Donna and co, the Doctor is in a position where they would want to reach out to their remaining family and make amends.
I believe the main plan was to distract the Doctor long enough for Sutekh to manifest and steal the TARDIS from the Doctor, waiting until they finally fell for the bait that was Susan Triad in 2024. With the TARDIS in his control, and everyone else in the universe dead, Sutekh can then force them to find the identity of Ruby's mother and then kill them with no questions left unanswered.
I don't think Sutekh expected them to create a memory TARDIS and escape but he allowed it knowing they would likely seek out the identity of Ruby's mother anyway. I am unsure if them using the time window made Sutekh stronger or if Sutekh chose to appear in order to distract the Doctor at a pivotal moment by getting an innocent man killed.
Yeah I suppose Sutek was privy to the conversations about the doctor not going to see Susan Triad due to it being a trap, so he did the killing to encourage him to go. I get everything your saying it’s really clearly written so thanks- my only issue is how exactly did letting the doctor be curious about Ruby’s origin benefit him any more than just letting the doctor go off and adventure as per usual? I suppose the groaning Tardis and constant warnings of the one who waits may have typically made the doctor focus on solving this mystery instead of Ruby’s origin, but then i’d argue the focus on Ruby didnt actually lead to any real wasting of time? Like he scanned Ruby in the Tardis once and aside from that i don’t really remember it causing him to be less focused on normal doctor life. Also, the doctor failing to investigate a season long arc isn’t exactly new which Sutek would have observed many times. Still, i’m a lot more satisfied after hearing your thoughts. Hope what i’ve typed makes some sense i’m bit delusional with all this heat today
why does anybody care about anything? this is the whole flaw of getting overinvested: if you're gonna start digging deeper and deeper you will always find something that you will never understand. At this point it's almost a socratic questions exercise. Yes, Ruby, the Doctor AND Sutekh all were invested in Ruby's mom. Ruby and the Doctor could let it go and sort their priorities out, and therefor defeated sutekh, Sutekh couldn't let it go and therefor fucked up his practically undefeatable plan. That's a character flaw. Villains are defeated by their character flaws. that's how it goes almost all of the time.
mmm yeah see this is the point though, you’re the one saying there’s a logical explanation, and then when i point out that there is a deep flaw you say i’m looking at it too deeply. I’d genuinely like for you to make it make sense to me, but it seems we’ve agreed that there isn’t much of a logic to be found.
The plot itself is logical enough. It's you who doesn't accept that sometimes people are obsessed by all kinds of things for not entirely rational reasons.
no I accept that as a fact, my point is the doctor says in the episode that Rubys mum became important because they thought she was, and that made the mystery so appealing to Sutek. This post is saying Sutek is the reason they were so interested. Do you not see how that’s completely circular? Again i keep saying if i’m wrong can someone explain how, i’d like to be wrong!
but Sutek has no interest in finding out who the doctors mother is, nor his true name, nor his origins, nor where Susan is.
Plus if he 'knows all' in the realm of the dead, which he states to Mel. Louise is dead, so he already knows who Ruby's mother is and would have more understanding of the universe and about the doctor and Ruby if he killed them both.
Finally how much MORE intrigue has Rubys parentage got over every other missing or unclaimed child in the universe? Ruby just wants it more than them? Is it because the doctor is involved? It makes no sense.
You might want to rewatch the episode. I double checked to see if I misremembered, but while the Doctor does indeed say that he and Ruby invested more significance into the mystery than ordinary people usually get, he does NOT claim that that is why Sutekh got invested too. No reasoning for his motivation is given, just reasoning for how an ordinary person could defeat a god: The god was wrong. Significance isn't inherent but granted by others.
Then the show needed to build up Sutekh’s character so that fit better.
Because right now, we’re kind of stuck with the idea that Sutekh was an insane Osiran-turned-deity who wanted above all else for the universe to be devoid of life….and to know **all** the tea about a teenager’s birth mother. Forget Clara, forget River Song, forget the Cracks or the Beast or the creature on Midnight or any of the dozens of mysteries the Doctor has encountered and been stymied by for at least a lengthy period of time…THIS is the one that after thousands of years stuck to the TARDIS, and after only a year or so of them trying to work it out together, Sutekh just has to interfere with so he can learn the answer?
It is utterly incongruous, and doesn’t make a lick of sense because *it seems wildly out of what little character Sutekh is given* . And it’s piled on top of a variety of mysteries around Ruby that aren’t properly explained by this twist.
It makes sense to question why a literal god is so invested in a single mortal’s origins that he kills all laugh in the universe apart from those that can solve the mystery for him. That’s not being over-invested, it’s a legitimate question.
Why would Sutekh care about the mother of some random woman?
The doctor cares because Ruby is his friend and she can make it snow, no prizes for guessing why Ruby cares.
The doctor meets orphans all the time, why is this the one who he decided he should make it snow for and plant the special woman throughout time?
But that can’t really be true…? The Doctor has encountered others things he never really solved before. Far more interesting than “who is this random human’s mother.”
Most notably, one would think the GOD OF FUCKING DEATH ITSELF might be absolutely fascinated by what in the hell The Beast was.
So what makes her so special?
I’m sorry, I usually am the one defending shows from this sort of critique, but it makes **no goddamn sense.**
Sorry, I don't buy it. Not only do I not believe that Sutekh couldn't find this out himself, not only do I not believe that out of everything that he's seen traveling alongside us since the Pyramids of Mars that *this* is the one mystery he's most interested in but I also don't believe that Sutekh would risk letting the Doctor live even if he was interested and couldn't find out himself.
That's a good point. Out of all the places the Doctor has been since the Pyramids of Mars, the mystery of Ruby's parentage is what spurs Sutekh back into action? Unbelievable.
This is what bugs me most about the whole explanation. The Beast, the Creature from Midnight and the “monster” from Listen, the Guardians, the Curator, the Valeyard, the Timeless Child and basically everything connected to that…..he’s been witness to(or at least heard about) it all. There is absolutely no shortage of long running mysteries and questions that Sutekh had to choose from to get obsessed over.
Not to mention the ones that were solved, but only after years and years of adventures like the Cracks, River Song, and Clara.
He is literally known as The One Who Waits. So what the hell made who some girl’s parents are such a compelling mystery to him after what, maybe 6 months or so?
I don’t know, because his entire personality basically boils down to “he wants to rule over an eternal silent empire of ash and death…. and spill the tea on exactly this one topic, and this topic only.”
Moreover, why should he care? Because it’s the one thing he doesn’t know? Give over. There’s tons he doesn’t know. The identity of some rando’s mother is beneath him to know.
Otherwise if he knows everything I guess he knows the Doctor’s true name?
I think it was said that Sutekh can see every living thing in the universe, but can't see Ruby's mum. That would make it a big enough thing to get involved with. The one person you can't see
The question is why he couldn't see her?
I'd like it if that's resolved somewhere, maybe in the Mrs Flood storyline if she places some cloud over Ruby's mum?
^^^^^. It's deliberately stated and unanswered why Ruby's mom couldn't be detected by Sutekh/Big Dog. That's not poor writing (well, not inherently, could still be but we don't know yet), that's leaving another question to be answered next season. Patience, my friends. The episode even ends before Ruby gets to meet her father. As mentioned maybe Mrs Flood had some influence (why is she living next to Ruby and her family?), or maybe Ruby's father is responsible for why Ruby's mom is undetectable.
It definitely feels like there's more going on than just addressed in the episode, it's not a 1 series arc by the looks of it
Personally, I quite like it. Leave there something more to look into
Then again.... Sutekh is powerful enough to create snow, kill everything, have a random woman live countless lives all over time and space, possess people and more. Why not in the far future ...Google or look up stuff about Ruby and her mum. After 2040 something the DNA testing is available so he could've easily figured that out himself no?
I mean if he can create literal people out of nothing, im sure he could scan some technology and internet.
Gods make reality become timely wimey. They warp reality to fit their narrative and beliefs (rules) . Ruby's mother was originally just a regular person. But (church of Ruby road) the very first instance the audience, doctor, Ruby, suteck, tardis has a chance to know who the mother is, the doctor instead has to go save Ruby. At that moment, the myth of Ruby's mother was born. A myth that with each interaction, events became stronger to the point that even the gods believed she was special. And if the gods believe your special, well that becomes the truth.
So since Ruby's birth, her mom is a myth. That's why when she tried to look for her mother, information could never be found. No DNA links could be found. Once the gods who originally believed this were gone, the myth was broken and UnIt was easily able to find her mother and father.
As to why Suteck needed to know about the mother, well it's a combo of two things. One, a god the supposed father of all gods not knowing something is a paradox to them. And two, the scene with the spoon, it explained how the death was spreading out. It wasn't just people dying, it was memories. Those memories allowed the death to work itself up the family tree. The spoon lady even said that it starts with the children. So if Suteck is to spread to everything, then it must know the Ruby's mother to be able to guarantee it's spread .
Basically the only thing special about Ruby, (at least for now) is what we already learned in the church on Ruby road. Her life it's just. Coincidence.
Or maybe it was Sutekh making it snow and play the music and there was nothing special about Ruby at all. It was all Sutekh making it *seem* like there was something special about her so the the Doctor would investigate who her mother was.
Shame they didn't, yknow, explain any of this.
I mean ruby's mother is very confusing. Like I get that it’s the mystery that made itself real but surely this would have happened before? Unless it’s only because of the salt?
Everything about the mystery is under explained to the point of being pretty BS as a mystery.
Like okay, the mystery became real because people thought it was important, but why couldn't they see her face in the first place? Why did the doctors memories of the event change?
Did the mystery become real because a being a powerful as Sutekh got invested in it and it bent reality? Or can it just happen to anyone at any time? Or was it the salt?
Why was Sutekh so invested in the mystery anyway? He was there that night on top of the TARDIS, what stopped him from seeing who she was?
Did Ruby actually make it snow and play music or was that Sutekh doing it to get them to investigate it?
RTD spent a seasons setting up a big mystery with loads of unexplainable things happening and then the explanation at the end is "it's not actually important, you just thought it was" or it isn't explained at all.
No, Russel. You wrote those things happening. You made the doctors memories change, you made a woman who's face couldn't be seen by anyone, even a god, you made a companion where it snows and plays Christmas music around her. Now explain it!
>or was that Sutekh doing it to get them to investigate it?
If Sutekh did it to get them to investigate it, then why would he be invested in finding out the answer to the point of letting them live longer? But if Sutekh didn't do it and Ruby is actually normal then what did do it? Also Sutekh seems able to detect if life is still present anywhere so it can't've been that he was worried he'd missed someone, because he'd know, right?
I've got to imagine that Ruby's found mum is a plant and the actual truth of who Ruby's real mum is will explain more next season.
Quote from RTD about next season says we will see more of ruby and her family. I think the family is also a plant, her origin story is too cliché to be real
>why couldn't they see her face in the first place?
That one made complete sense wdym. A few hours after giving birth to a child some 15 year old girl put on robes with a hood and black full face mask, walked really slowly through the snow in the middle of the night to the local church, left her baby on the doorstep, walked really slowly out of the church and down the road. Teleported a couple feet forward to get past the spot the doctor and ruby where standing in the time window, continuing further before spinning 180 on the spot to point at a road sign directly behind the random guy who was following her.
What part of that seems unusual to you?
Unironically thought, the snow can't have been Sutekh because it happens while they are looking through the database and freezes mel.
Sutekh wouldn't have any reason to make it snow to "push them to solve the mystery" because they already had, they where seconds away from reading her mothers name. All he did was impede his own minion from delivering the name to him
Pretty much. The entire season has been “sure that dance scene was weird…but it’s only there because reality is being warped by cosmic powers unleashed at the edge of the universe! Just wait and see!”
Now that the finale has come and gone, people are starting to cope about these things being explained next season and how this is all actually good writing.
I swear to god, if this was Chibnall the entire season would have been tossed in the trash and lit on fucking fire over this and I will never not get the sense that a people are so much more forgiving because it’s RTD….and frankly, probably that the Doctor isn’t a woman.
i wonder if there was some executive meddling, but i think people just want to like doctor who again. Hopefully, next season will be better than this one.
My guess is that the snow hasn’t been wrapped up yet. We’re getting more of her next season, so maybe something that will be resolved during the christmas episode?
Perhaps. it's a good hypothesis. or Sutekh purposefully shaped the entire plot this season to trick the Doctor into investigating Ruby's origins and into killing the whole universe. Who knows. If only there was an explicitly explained pattern.
He shaped the entire plot, then forgot he did that and got SOO invested in the mystery that he was defeated in an extremely underwhelming way by people he should've been able to completely dominate with his mind.
Why would he though? What does he gain by getting the Doctor to investigate Ruby's mom? Sutekh literally gains nothing from it. It's actually his downfall, even.
So, Sutekh made Ruby's mom mysterious to get the doctor to investigate her, because he wanted to know who she was because he made her mysterious? I know time travel often ends up in convoluted plots but that's some serious circular logic there.
But no one else in the past 60 years of traveling on the tardis was ever mysterious? Doesn’t that kind of inherently imply there’s some reason it only ever happened with rubys mom?
Listen, I know we all love the show, and we all want to give it a chance because first season with new doctor returning writer etc can be rough
But let’s be honest
With the exception of about 3 episodes Mx
This season was a mess
I dunno. I liked every episode.
Parts of Space Babies sucked though. Mostly the space babies themselves.
Also didn’t like the twist at the end song.
But tbh, I’ve found this season to be refreshing overall. Is it perfect? Fuck no! But am I more entertained by it than Chibnall’s era? A thousand times yes.
The rest of it makes sense to me but if the snow was supposed to be Sutekh as well then that's some Grade-A bullshit. What's Sutekh got to do with snow? They're the God of death. Specifically; dusty sand Thanos death.
So your saying sutekh made ruby’s mother seem important, then why did sutekh want to know who the person he made a mystery around was, why did he delay his mission to learn the answer to a mystery he purposefully created?
He didn't purposefully create it, he misattributed importance to it because it happened around the time he became strong enough to re manifest. And once he'd decided it must be important, that's when all the weird stuff happened.
I think this is it. Makes the most sense with the timelines. He was only able to fully manifest during Wild Blue Yonder and that is also when the toymaker showed up again.
When the answer to all your questions is "a god did it to fuck with you" then there's probably something wrong with the plot. Some questions, okay I get that. The TARDIS groaning, Susan Twist, and the weird god stuff makes sense to be Sutekh related. But everything, down to Ruby's mum being important? That smacks of setting up a bunch of mysteries and red herrings and then losing the thread a bit and attributing everything unexplained to the gods because that's easy.
the ruby’s mother pointing at the sign thing is the one that confuses me the most
like it’s probably the most difficult moment of her life, she’s just abandoned her child to save her from abuse. wearing an oversized cloak at night so no one recognises her then just as she’s walking away she stops, turns 180 degrees and points at a sign for a minute before continuing
Because the nobody around to see her would see her and name her Ruby after the church so Ruby has a connection with her "real mum" and Carla can just die I guess.
I would have died laughing if they'd included a scene where they asked her about it and she told them she wanted her kid to be named Streetlight because she was the light of her life and she was being left on the street and nobody got it. But Ruby is a nice name. Honest.
But if Sutekh was addicted to the Ruby soap opera and that's all he wanted to see the end of before dust/rope, why create all the Susan misdirects that just distracted from solving *that* mystery?
The Doylist reason is just that Murray Gold reuses themes a lot. This isn't new to this season and hasn't always been significant before. This same season also included Saxons theme and Rings of Akhaten. Sometimes it's just there as mysterious music, menacing music and solemn music.
No indeed, he didn't do the music for SJA apart from the theme. The only other instance of him reusing someone else's music is when the Flux is discussed in Wild Blue Yonder and Akinola's Flux theme is briefly reprised. I don't think he ever reprised any Classic Who music in Series 1-10 apart from the theme obviously. The Trickster's theme also reappeared in Mrs Flood's scene on the roof right at the end.
This would seem to be a hint that there is more to Ruby (the hidden song in her heart) and that it's tied to Mrs Flood. But with how her mom was handled and the Master's theme was reused in the build-up to Sutekh the wind has been taken out of my sails in speculating about this.
If Sutekh has control of the Tardis, why doesn't he just go back in time and go to the woman and lift the hood. He has minions who can figure it out. She doesn't just disappear after walking away a short distance at 1mph. Very easy person to find and identify really.
All this "can't cross personal timeline" stuff doesn't work when either Sutekh or the Doctor could have parked the Tardis around the corner and identified the women without their past selves knowing.
The whole thing is poorly written. Sutekh wanted to escape in Pyramids and nearly did but the Doctor stopped him. Now we're expected to believe 4th Doctor failed and Sutekh did get out, hung about on the TARDIS for a long time, could've destroyed the universe anytime but kept waiting.
And let's go by this dumb explanation in the meme. It would only work if he wasn't present back when Ruby was dropped off. And that he just heard Ruby was mysterious so he manipulated the Doctor to find the answer. Instead Sutekh was there when Ruby was dropped off and could have easily emerged and found Ruby's mother especially since the Doctor was distracted with the goblin king.
To just hand wave bad writing as saying it's the fans that dont understand or have bad media literacy is stupid. Like with Chibnall and his Timeless Child bit. If you are going to introduce something different that's fine but explain it in the episodes don't leave it to behind the scenes or expanded universe content. Same with biregen in the giggle.
Correct, Sutekh got invested in a mystery that didn't really have an answer. That was the main flaw that was being abused to defeat Sutekh in the first place: He thinks of himself as important, all-knowing and all-powerful, but in reality he was a bitch-ass dog who got invested in a nothing-mystery and he got dragged through his worst nightmare because he didn't want to kill the only thing that could stop him, because he got overinvested in trivial shit.
There is no answer. RTD tried to do a Glass Onion/The last Jedi and fucked up a bit, but yeah, literally everything fits the "Sutekh tried to keep the Doctor and Ruby invested in a mystery that intrigued him by any means possible, which ultimately led directly to his reveal and his downfall".
And why couldn't anyone else, even when they tried their absolute hardest to?
Pretty sure during the time window sequence they even mention her being 66 meters away (another 73 yards pull) and that the pointing was an unexplained change in the timeline.
If it really was just a teenager in a cultists outfit then that's some awful writing.
I’m sorry but this doesn’t really make any sense. Sutekh was tricking the Doctor into caring about Susan’s mom why? That didn’t change how often he was materializing the Tardis in new locations, and even if it did, it’s clearly stated in the finale that Sutekh thinks Susan’s mom IS important. He ends up getting tricked by Ruby, not the other way around, so I don’t know if this theory holds much weight…
I can't speak for the entire fan base, but for me this meme making this things all about Susan is a bad straw man. The god dropping fake Susans everywhere to mess with the Doctor is not one of the problems at all.
After being completely turned off by Space Babies, the story arcs and mysteries are all that kept me engaged and watching every episode. Well played RTD, you actually made me think you had something up your sleeve
I don't think we have the entire puzzle yet. Snow doesn't really work with the whole "ancient egypt" theme Sutekh's got going on, and don't forget how in Church on Ruby Road the Doctor seemed to be very upset while Ruby was singing, almost as if he was in a completely different episode.
I believe the snow has something to do with Mrs. Flood. I'm basing that on the fact that at the end when she gives her story speach at the end she's wearing a winter coat and it's snowing.
Because memories are powerful and that was an incredibly important, raw and open point in time so memory of it causes it to snow.
Yes I know that's stupid but it's a stupid show so you gotta roll with it.
I didn’t realise much of the “fandom” were BAFTA-winning writers with immense knowledge on its ins and outs and decades of experience and acclaim to back it up.
Doctor Who, of all things in the world, can be described as since its inception: “delightful nonsense.” The canon isn’t even consistent with itself. Yet people are so obsessed with perfect stories.
I’ve read much of what “it should’ve been” according to them. How arrogant is that? It’s hilarious. And it’s by the same people that have manufactured a narrative that RTD has an “ego” because they don’t like him, which is doubly hilarious. The irony is totally lost on them.
All I can say to them is, don’t quit your day job. You are not a better writer than the show-runner of a multimillion-viewed programme that oversaw its most popular era still to this day. And you almost certainly statistically never will be.
It’s everywhere these days. “I don’t like it therefore it must be bad writing!” YouTube essays by prideful uni students that believe they’re special. Reddit threads “fixing” stories, naively unaware that it’s with the benefit of no deadlines, pressure or expectation. “Fans” of things assuming because they attach themselves to a brand they automatically know more than actual successful writers, who are also (real) fans anyway. It’s so obnoxious.
And their favourite response? “Oh it’s not my job to write it.”
STOP PRETENDING IT IS THEN. Go watch a murder mystery drama if you’re so hung up on pedantic details.
I’m sorry, William Shakespeare. We’ll all try to meet your standards one day.
I might be misremembering, but didn't the Doctor explicitly say that the reason Sutekh emerged from the TARDIS when he did is because Ruby's mother was "the one being he couldn't understand" or something like that? It's one thing to not give out all the answers and trust your audience to connect the dots, but it's another entirely to have the protagonist, who has pretty much always been characterized as very intelligent, theorize on an answer, never have that answer be meaningfully challenged nor any alternative answers suggested, and then still expect your audience to come to a conclusion that contradicts that answer.
That is entirely possible, too. I just don't like the kneejerk reaction of "it wasn't explained to me and therefor it must be bad writing" as if the whole thing about this season conclusion wasn't exactly about inferring meaning and importance being an individuals own responsibility.
Okay, but WHY was Sutekh so invested in finding Ruby's mother? You're saying that it was all an elaborate trap but the episode makes it explicitly clear that the only reason Sutekh didn't instantly kill Ruby and the Doctor was because he wanted them to find out the identity of Ruby's mother, it's even how they were able to trap him.
And just... why would a God of death care about that? He's gonna kill everything anyway, why does the identity of this one person concern him? They do provide an explanation, Sutekh could see all of time and space but couldn't see the face of the mother and so he assumed the mother was of greater power. But we never got an explanation as to WHY he couldn't see her face or anyone couldn't see her through the time window. The episode tires to say "Oh, she was ordinary but we BELIEVED she was special so she became special!" and that explanation has so many holes in it, swiss cheese is having an existential crisis. It's an explanation but hardly a good one and FAR from satisfying.
“oh it is a good twist becuase you couldn’t predict it” . well I couldn’t predict if the twist was that she was the daughter of a snow man with the face of Chris chibnall but that doesn’t make it a good nor satisfy twist.
I think that Russell knows what's happening and thinks it's obvious, and thinks that explaining it to the audience would be seen as talking down to the audience
I have decided to disillusion myself into believing her story hasn't ended yet and the next episode that I have convinced myself is coming Saturday will explain all
Yeah I'm a little confused if it's a season break or if it's a new season just cause this season felt really short and yeah I thought that floods speech was more general rather than linked to Ruby's story
what's there to be confused about? this series was 8 episodes, next series will also be 8 episodes. and Mrs Flood is a mystery that spans multiple series, just like river song and the falling of the silence both were
"It was snowing the night Ruby was born and it keeps snowing all around her, actual snow, which means that night is so raw and so open, the last thing that I should do is take a time machine back there."
It's a crap explanation imo, because it was made out to be a mystery, but it IS an explanation.
So I’ve been a Doctor Who fan for about ten years now, but this is my first time paying attention to online discussion about a season. Are you guys always this grumpy?
There's two explanations that both tend to be ignored by the fanbase at large. One I was reminded of by this comment section, which is already given by the Doctor early in the season: It's a very raw and powerful memory, weird things with memories happen when time traveling. I don't remember the exact line anymore. Throughout the season there wasn't so much a focus on why it snowed, at least not from the characters in the show itself. It's mostly that that was a driving motivator for the characters to keep investing interest in trying to find Ruby's mother. WHY it snowed wasn't that much of a mystery in the first place, fans just ignored the explanation that was given.
The Other Possible explanation was my own that inspired me to make the post; Sutekh has been messing with memories, has been creating full people out of nothing, has been trying to force the Doctor and Ruby into finding out who Ruby's mother is. If you see Sutekh creative full-blown humans with a family and a past on every planet, and eternal universe killing dust-storms, I find it a bit odd to say that snow would be outside of his capabilities. Sutekh therefor has motive, means, opportunity and an established pattern of being guilty of everything else this season as well. To me it made more sense just assume that the snow was part of the pattern as well, especially after getting ANOTHER confirmation that Ruby nor her mother are inherently special.
Is media literacy dead?
They literally said that Ruby was important because the God's thought she was (plus everyone else).
Swear this is Hell Bent 2.0
Guess I have to wait 5 years for fandom to catch up
People understand what the episode said, just fine. They just also understand that the explanation is both incredibly unsatisfying and fails to explain everything.
What changed time between Church and Space Babies? That's never explained at all. Why did Sutekh care in the first place? What made him think there was anything more to the situation than a woman in a cloak? If every strange event was caused by Sutekh's interest, what sparked that interest in the first place?
Was that genuinely the first person Sutekh ever saw wearing a cloak, and he flipped his shit over it?
At this rate, Mrs Flood will be revealed to be a slightly mental old woman who coincidentally says ominous things. Why? I dont know. Blame the salt, I guess.
The salt at the edge of the universe being the catalyst for Sutekh's manifestation would have been a far better explanation than "he's just been chilling for 37 seasons and randomly decided now is the time to enact his plan yo" imo even if we wouldn't have gotten all these Sutekh memes
What does media literacy even mean? Is it about spotting fake news? I have my English degree and took media studies and it's not a phrase that was ever used. Analysis, certainly.
The gods thinking Ruby's genetic heritage was magic doesn't really explain how they'd come to think that in the first place, or be responsible for the magic snow without noticing they were. Ruby herself just thought her birth mum was important, not an alien/goddess.
Almost no one thinks the Hybrid arc is good either, and the defense of it is 'it's supposed to be bad and not matter'. We're still going to think the same about this.
I understand it to mean people's ability to understand the message of a piece of media as opposed to it's actual plot
One example would be being able to understand that Godzilla is about monsters fighting each other but also about the power of nuclear bombs and radiation the horrors of man and all that jazz
Meanwhile my English tutorial group happily mocked the plot of Beowulf, our lecturer, a medieval specialist, giggling at the ridiculousness! And that one isn't terribly serious to begin with. It's not forbidden at all to make fun of a plot, and pulling one apart often throws up something interesting about the writing choices - it was rather *encouraged*. In writing this tosh, RTD himself has made (questionable) assumptions about how the audience think this kind of story works: you don't get to that by treating plotting as sacred, hands off.
Not sure where this idea that having themes means you can't criticise the plot comes from. This is just particularly daft pop culture, and we did it with literature/literary fiction (my group ending up winning our case that Swift's *Waterland* would just be silly melodrama if it wasn't also so irredeemably boring). Doesn't make any sense to me because surely even just from genre fic. on TV, it's obvious that this little care for *any* aspect of the writing (not as though the theme of family was handled well either) isn't just normal.
It's more the inability to realise the secondary themes as if Godzilla was only ever a big scary monster I'd assume your peers would understand the themes of Beowulf
Another example would be people saying metal gear solid isn't political
I usually roll my eyes at the whole ‘media literacy’ thing but seeing the entire fandom have a meltdown over things that actually were explained (maybe not very clearly but still) in the episode is definitely a ‘were you actually watching it or just hate posting on Reddit the whole time’ situation for me.
Maybe its just me, but I got the general gist of it on first watch.
They have the Doctor literally say "she important because people believe she is" outloud
Problem is, the plot still fucking sucks even if it's explained lmao. Being explained doesn't mean that this season's plot was enjoyable or that it feels well written. It's written, sure, but in a way that just feels like a pointless mess that probably isn't actually over and will start to be better with several seasons of hindsight and further development.
I feel like RTD couldn’t have made everything more clear in the finale but then I login to twitter and Reddit and well, apparently he didn’t make it clear enough.
The anagrams were obvious traps. The doctor brought up Susan so it was fresh in our minds and for those who don’t know anything about the past show. Susan triad appeared and used an anagram. Unit immediately recognised it and assumed it was a trap. Trap suspicions confirmed even more when they discover Susan was name of his granddaughter.
The magic in the world bring more prevalent simce WBY and 73 yards confirming ye olde folktale style magic being the norm. So when the snow was confirmed to be linked with rubys past. It made us think there was a mystery around her birth, mix that in with the circumstances of the doctor struggling to remember that night clearly, and it being a fixed point in that time that got meddled with by magic time hopping goblins. Making this pivotal night on rubys birth being so messy. Then the show went out of its way to explain that time is memory and memory is time…and memory can be very easily tricked and altered or changed, which could interfere with time. Mix this in with the doctor believing Ruby to be special and it manifests as snow
If you want get all scifi about it, then it being a timeywimey messy point in time with contradiction meant that snow leaked through into the future or something. But it doesn’t need a scifi explanation as the magic and metaphor and symbolism is what’s important (as thats how traditional magic and folktale magic works). But people were looking for a scifi explanation and it confused people.
Seeing people confused over the snow has me baffled as it seemed clear enough - to me at least - what was going on. Ruby had constructed memories from second-hand information she possessed about the night of her birth (she knew it was snowing and that Carol of the Bells was being sung by the church choir) and as such whenever she was made to think of that night she would invoke that idealised, storified version of events, hence the snow. The reason she was even able to do this was (again) pretty clear from the jump I thought; since Wild Blue Yonder the universe has been increasingly susceptible to forces of fantasy and whimsy. It's the same suspension of normal physical laws that allowed the Doctor to duplicate the TARDIS with a comically-oversized mallet that also gave Ruby the power to manifest the snow.
It's this throughline of Ruby conceiving this semi-mythical origin for herself that ultimately proves to be the undoing of Sutekh. Similar to how the "hidden song" disturbed Maestro (how on Earth is this puny, ordinary human doing *that??*) the same ambiguity surrounding Ruby was concerning for Sutekh, too. He found it perverse that such a "myth" could not only exist, but also couldn't be seen or understood, not even by a God. And of course it couldn't be, because fantasy and reality had become so delicately intertwined at this particular point; that night on Ruby Road had become a maelstrom of shadows and everchanging memories. Timelines involving goblins and time travelers had overlapped and caused history to splinter and un-splinter. And at the centre of it all was a woman who could never be identified.
Of course Sutekh hated this. At this holy place, on this one holy night, a creation myth was being played out involving the purest form of life - a newborn baby. To a God of Death, a bringer of absolute destruction, this was an abhorration. And *he couldn't figure it out.* Of all the places he had been to riding the spine of the TARDIS, it was *this* particular night that made no sense, and it angered him.
As for the question on why Susan Triad appeared everywhere - again, pretty sure that was answered. Whenever the TARDIS materialised, Sutekh's avatar took form. This was a long game in which he seeded his "Angels of Death" across the universe, through both time and space, ready to bring his gift of death. And the anagrams? Sutekh explains this, too. He saw Susan's past inside the TARDIS and decided to use an "apparition" of her to both lure the Doctor in and, in a sense, weaken him by using the idea of Susan against him.
A lot of the questions people have are given answers, and the ones that aren't explicitly explained away can be pieced together by looking back across the series as a whole and picking up on the narrative cues.
I'm blaming Mrs Flood.
Any relation to Mr. Flood, the Gravemind from Halo?
Mr "Monument to All Our Sins?"
♪♫♫♪ Open up my eager eyes, ‘Cause I’m Mr. Monument to All Your Sins! ♪♫♫♪
now RTD said her name is just a name, no reference, no red herring or clue. however it is RTD so maaaybe....but doubtfull
Honestly I'm waiting for Mrs Flood to be Susan or the Mother of all
I'm personally liking the Mrs. Flood = Ramona theory .. https://preview.redd.it/777zicnmfj8d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e3277b3b43093a0758cafd1e2ae9f5118fefb0f
Background for someone not fully caught up with classic who?
A timelady and companion of the 4th Doctor's. We saw two incarnations of her travel with the Doc before she was called back to Gallifrey, in the EU she's served as Lord President and had many other adventures, we've yet to se her return to the show, and I doubt she's Mrs. Flood.
The similarities are striking
They are but he’s also thrown out a bunch of references to Missy and Clara so I think he’s just messing with us at this point. Could be any of them or none of them.
You might be best served by just reading up on [a wiki two two](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romana_(Doctor_Who)). But to sum it up, Romana is another Time Lord (full name: Romanadvoratrelundar) that traveled with the Doctor as a companion. As a Time Lord, she can regenerate (and has in the show), so a different face is not unusual. She'd know what a TARDIS is, and especially the Doctor's. That whole "who would leave a police box in the middle of a sidewalk" thing could be just a show for the humans, or her sense of humor. And there's plenty of room for plot development and conflict there.
Isn't it weird for someone to notice the police box being there in the first place? Shouldn't its perception filter for most people just cause them to walk past without any remarks, or maybe even remembering there was a police box in the first place? Don't remember the exact moment you are describing, so there might be a reason people did notice it. But they shouldn't normally right?
It was parked in the middle of a sidewalk, if I recall.
Come on, we all know she's The Rani 😉
Ramona Quimby, Age 8? Unlikely :p
I don't know who this Ramona is but maybe she's Romana
Mrs. Flood. Mrs. Fl Ood. Mrs. Fucking Loving Ood!!!!! Holy shit! It was the Ood all along!!!
Welcome back, the Ood!
Sutekh when a man who **literally** cannot die exists: "i sleep" Sutekh when a 15 year old wears a cloak: REAL SHIT?!?
And points “at him”. That’s what fucked him up. He didn’t understand that she didn’t know he was there. He thought she saw him and that freaked him out since that was the only person who ever did.
Again, Day of the Doctor must’ve been so awkward for Sutekh
He meets with his future selves and plots and fumes and looks longingly at the 1st through 3rd doctors' TARDISes
And he must be so pissed that his plan hasn’t worked yet
My theory is simple. I think RTD wanted the audience to fuck themselves.
He likes to troll us. This is known.
He also expects the intelligence of the fandom, he called out the S Triad stuff, written ahead of time
Hahaha
Up yours, children.
I do that without his permission every night before bed.
Sutekh didn't trick the Doctor about Ruby's mother, he also wanted to know who Ruby's mother was. You know it's bad when even your defenders don't know what happened
Yeah, this season had a lot of "Mystery Box" bullshit. I had hard flashbacks to the Star Wars Sequels. I like a well made Mystery Box, and Doctor Who knows how to pull them off. I just say "Bad Wolf". For me, a Mystery Box is as good as its conclusion, and here, the Boxes this seasons fell flat.
See I saw something about how tlj inspired Ruby's arc and immediately got a bad feeling - I do see why having Ruby's mum be a rando is a good idea in terms of Ruby's character, but like... Why couldn't sutek see her then? He's a god and she's some random woman. To me that's the thing that really makes the whole thing fall flat for me - that and basically EVERY mystery in the season being "oh it was all sutek!" Just isn't a very satisfying answer given how many seemingly unconnected mysteries we got. It also doesn't explain the alternate timeline shenanigans of 73 yards, like why the doctor vanished.
It was ~~Agatha~~ Sutekh all along!
Should’ve been that future Ruby was Ruby’s mom and the reason she couldn’t be seen was the Tardis was obscuring her identity because knowing that She is her own mom would cause a paradox or something like that
That is an absolute clusterfuck of an idea and also very in keeping with the show I love it
Literally what I thought was gonna happen all the way up until it was revealed out of nowhere that she’s just some random bum
Who would of gave birth to Ruby then or is she a product of self-incest Ya know like Fry from Futurama
Because reality was being distorted. Ruby and the doctor believe the mother was special so the universe acted like she was special. Remember, we already know that the tardis +suteck have reality warping effects. Now put in that the doctor, Ruby , and even the gods think something's off and that will become the truth. It wasn't till the suteck left that the "myth" effect disappeared. That's why right afterwards it was super easy to find her parents. The reality warping effect was gone.
See if the show actually explored that that could have made an interesting point about how we create myths and make seemingly unimportant things important. Unfortunately the show doesn't explain or explore that and I had to go to reddit to even attempt to see it that way
If your idea of a fun story is warping reality to confuse everyone, then, I really don't even know how to begin with that
Same. I was reminded a lot of the Disney Star Wars films this episode. Ruby's mother being a no one and it just being hand waved away reminded me of Rey's parents. Her pointing to the street sign to give Ruby her name reminded me of Han "solo"
I think if you experienced them in reverse order Bad Wolf wouldn't do it anymore. The last time I rewatched the Bad Wolf conclusion it was kind of cringe, these things are for the young. I wish Sutekh's silliness didn't eat up 70% of the already tiny season.
Makes about as much sense as him sparing James Cameron from universal death because he wants to know what happens in the next avatar movie.
Do you reckon he asked George RR Martin about Winds of Winter
That’s a better one 😂
It's bi-generation all over again. The people who simply can't accept that doctor who would ever have bad writing were writing paragraphs and paragraphs to explain how obvious everything was only for RTD to say things that directly contradicted all the explanations
They built all this mystery and there was little payoff ):
That's the point. The trick was getting the Doctor to solve that one mystery for him. The snow is probably ALSO a tool of Sutekh to keep Ruby and the Doctor invested in Ruby's origins. If it didn't snow all the time at mysterious moments, the Doctor probably wouldn't have been invested in who Ruby's mother was at all. He would've just accepted that he might never know.
That theory falls apart completely because it snowed in 73 yards when Ruby was outside her mums door crying. A timeline where the Doctor didn't even exist and Sutekh doing it would literally change nothing for him. Overall its better to just rule it as bad writing and move on.
It very well could be bad writing, but let's not pretend that we've seen the last of Ruby Sunday. She's going to be in the next season, and we haven't even met her dad yet. There's no way RTD would write in the snowstorm so frequently and not give that specific pay off. Optimistically, I'm assuming that the Ruby's mom reveal was meant as a diversion until we get the next ruby twist.
‘There’s no way’ - it’s RTD. Of course there’s a way.
Oh... that hadn't even occurred to me... they did just casually drop that little line about going to meet her dad but never show it on screen...
I was expecting her dad to be Roger Ap Gwilliam They said his name was William but what’s Gwilliam without the G
Roger is younger than Ruby
It stopped snowing right after that, after it became abundantly clear that changes nothing for Sutekh anymore. I mean it's very possible I am wrong, but I don't think Sutekh is the kind of deity to just give up without a last ditch effort.
The snow ended up being the beacon that The Doctor used to get a good look at Ruby's mother, kind of like the Master. It doesn't actually have to make sense, but it would make sense that the time window imprinted the snow memory on Ruby in a way that was permanent.
Why didn't Sutekh just do whatever DNA test UNIT did? Is he stupid?
Unit got that DNA Data AFTER Doctor and Ruby got it from the future. They travelled to the 2040s to collect the DNA data in the remembered tardis, so it wasn't something Suthek had access to.
A god can’t travel in time? The toy maker could, and he was scared of Sutekh. Also Sutekh reaches through time to control Mel, into the very room where they’re finding the DNA records. Also, he had the literal tardis
To be fair, he would have had no idea where to begin looking because he doesn’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of practically all of history the way the Doctor does. If it weren’t for Ruby subconsciously remembering the alternate timeline then they’d never have the idea to investigate the mandatory gene samples.
Tbf Sutekh being more powerful doesn’t necessarily mean he can do everything CT can
no that’s not the point, if it was Sutek that wanted him to be interested WHY DID HE NOT KILL THE DOCTOR
The Doctor literally figures this out and tells you, out loud: Sutekh let's him live, because the Doctor is Sutekhs tool in figuring out that mystery that intrigued him. He was fully planning to kill the Doctor AFTER he got his answer, but until he got that one mystery solved he couldn't. Sutekhs one flaw is that he couldn't let that one mystery go, and got dragged through his worst nightmare for it by the person he tried to manipulate into solving it for him.
but that doesn’t explain why he cared about the mystery in the first place- your making a circular argument where HE made it important as a mystery, but the reason we were given that he cares about the mystery is the importance the doctor and ruby placed on it.
My interpretation is that Sutekh didn't initially care when he latched onto the TARDIS, but once the Doctor landed on Ruby Road to save baby Ruby's life, it became a fixed point not just for the Doctor and Ruby and the rest of time, but for Sutekh's personal timeline as well. Sutekh chose that night and the mystery of Ruby's mother as the bait for his trap, seeing the obsession of a mortal girl and the pain of the Doctor's lost indentity and toying with it for his own means. He used his powers to make time raw and unstable around Ruby, making that fixed point in 2004 all the more appealing to them, not realising that by doing so, he was imbuing that night with more and more power, until the mystery of Ruby's mother outgrew Sutekh's designs. In spite of his efforts, the lure of that night and the belief of its importance became so potent that it captured Sutekh himself. Sutekh is a callous, vain, spiteful god who wants a silent universe all to himself. He isn't used to caring about the folly of mortals, so being caught up in the affairs of one girl and her mother - beings who he considers little more than insects - is an intolerable nuisance. He needs to know the answer so that he can have his silent universe, otherwise that question will torture him for eternity. And because he imbued that night with so much power as a fixed point, the mystery became fixed as well. The moment Sutekh became part of events, he made sure that he could not know the answer and that drives him mad.
yeah that makes a lot of sense to me i like that explanation, although (and again I may just be being stupid) why was it necessary to make them care about Ruby’s mum- as in what was the trap? Was it the use of the time window? did that make him more powerful or something? I didn’t get that impression personally- was it to get the tardis to Unit? If so, it was already there when facing the Toy Maker? Basically ima assuming there’s some missing bit of the puzzle in my brain that makes him making a trap make sense
The best way I could explain it that by choosing to use Ruby's story as the bait for his trap, Sutekh preys on the Doctor's insecurity and his curiosity. Insecurity because the Doctor has recently learned that they were a foundling, abandoned when they were a child, with no way to find their real parents or family and with no resolution as to why. The same as with Ruby being abandoned as a baby. As for curiosity, the nature of Ruby's fixed point in time is something the Doctor has never seen before, likely because Sutekh used his powers to make it so unstable. With such an unprecedented situation like this, it makes them all the more likely to chase any possible leads that might appear. You take these two vulnerabilities then introduce a mysterious woman called Susan, the name of their lost granddaughter, which is also an anagram for TARDIS, who then starts popping up again and again throughout time and space. How could the Doctor not investigate? It's especially effective with a companion like Ruby. Being left as a baby by her mother has shaped her entire life so for her to then find out that her best friend has a granddaughter that they left behind, it would make sense for her to push them to reconnect with her. And with the destruction of Gallifrey, the Timeless Child revelation and their years of living with Donna and co, the Doctor is in a position where they would want to reach out to their remaining family and make amends. I believe the main plan was to distract the Doctor long enough for Sutekh to manifest and steal the TARDIS from the Doctor, waiting until they finally fell for the bait that was Susan Triad in 2024. With the TARDIS in his control, and everyone else in the universe dead, Sutekh can then force them to find the identity of Ruby's mother and then kill them with no questions left unanswered. I don't think Sutekh expected them to create a memory TARDIS and escape but he allowed it knowing they would likely seek out the identity of Ruby's mother anyway. I am unsure if them using the time window made Sutekh stronger or if Sutekh chose to appear in order to distract the Doctor at a pivotal moment by getting an innocent man killed.
Yeah I suppose Sutek was privy to the conversations about the doctor not going to see Susan Triad due to it being a trap, so he did the killing to encourage him to go. I get everything your saying it’s really clearly written so thanks- my only issue is how exactly did letting the doctor be curious about Ruby’s origin benefit him any more than just letting the doctor go off and adventure as per usual? I suppose the groaning Tardis and constant warnings of the one who waits may have typically made the doctor focus on solving this mystery instead of Ruby’s origin, but then i’d argue the focus on Ruby didnt actually lead to any real wasting of time? Like he scanned Ruby in the Tardis once and aside from that i don’t really remember it causing him to be less focused on normal doctor life. Also, the doctor failing to investigate a season long arc isn’t exactly new which Sutek would have observed many times. Still, i’m a lot more satisfied after hearing your thoughts. Hope what i’ve typed makes some sense i’m bit delusional with all this heat today
why does anybody care about anything? this is the whole flaw of getting overinvested: if you're gonna start digging deeper and deeper you will always find something that you will never understand. At this point it's almost a socratic questions exercise. Yes, Ruby, the Doctor AND Sutekh all were invested in Ruby's mom. Ruby and the Doctor could let it go and sort their priorities out, and therefor defeated sutekh, Sutekh couldn't let it go and therefor fucked up his practically undefeatable plan. That's a character flaw. Villains are defeated by their character flaws. that's how it goes almost all of the time.
mmm yeah see this is the point though, you’re the one saying there’s a logical explanation, and then when i point out that there is a deep flaw you say i’m looking at it too deeply. I’d genuinely like for you to make it make sense to me, but it seems we’ve agreed that there isn’t much of a logic to be found.
The plot itself is logical enough. It's you who doesn't accept that sometimes people are obsessed by all kinds of things for not entirely rational reasons.
no I accept that as a fact, my point is the doctor says in the episode that Rubys mum became important because they thought she was, and that made the mystery so appealing to Sutek. This post is saying Sutek is the reason they were so interested. Do you not see how that’s completely circular? Again i keep saying if i’m wrong can someone explain how, i’d like to be wrong!
but Sutek has no interest in finding out who the doctors mother is, nor his true name, nor his origins, nor where Susan is. Plus if he 'knows all' in the realm of the dead, which he states to Mel. Louise is dead, so he already knows who Ruby's mother is and would have more understanding of the universe and about the doctor and Ruby if he killed them both. Finally how much MORE intrigue has Rubys parentage got over every other missing or unclaimed child in the universe? Ruby just wants it more than them? Is it because the doctor is involved? It makes no sense.
You might want to rewatch the episode. I double checked to see if I misremembered, but while the Doctor does indeed say that he and Ruby invested more significance into the mystery than ordinary people usually get, he does NOT claim that that is why Sutekh got invested too. No reasoning for his motivation is given, just reasoning for how an ordinary person could defeat a god: The god was wrong. Significance isn't inherent but granted by others.
Then the show needed to build up Sutekh’s character so that fit better. Because right now, we’re kind of stuck with the idea that Sutekh was an insane Osiran-turned-deity who wanted above all else for the universe to be devoid of life….and to know **all** the tea about a teenager’s birth mother. Forget Clara, forget River Song, forget the Cracks or the Beast or the creature on Midnight or any of the dozens of mysteries the Doctor has encountered and been stymied by for at least a lengthy period of time…THIS is the one that after thousands of years stuck to the TARDIS, and after only a year or so of them trying to work it out together, Sutekh just has to interfere with so he can learn the answer? It is utterly incongruous, and doesn’t make a lick of sense because *it seems wildly out of what little character Sutekh is given* . And it’s piled on top of a variety of mysteries around Ruby that aren’t properly explained by this twist.
It makes sense to question why a literal god is so invested in a single mortal’s origins that he kills all laugh in the universe apart from those that can solve the mystery for him. That’s not being over-invested, it’s a legitimate question.
Why would Sutekh care about the mother of some random woman? The doctor cares because Ruby is his friend and she can make it snow, no prizes for guessing why Ruby cares. The doctor meets orphans all the time, why is this the one who he decided he should make it snow for and plant the special woman throughout time?
Didn’t Sutekh even say in the episode he just had to know because it’s the one thing he DIDNT know? Or something like that?
But that can’t really be true…? The Doctor has encountered others things he never really solved before. Far more interesting than “who is this random human’s mother.” Most notably, one would think the GOD OF FUCKING DEATH ITSELF might be absolutely fascinated by what in the hell The Beast was. So what makes her so special? I’m sorry, I usually am the one defending shows from this sort of critique, but it makes **no goddamn sense.**
The Cat looking god got killed by curiosity
curiosity killed the dog cat thing
Sorry, I don't buy it. Not only do I not believe that Sutekh couldn't find this out himself, not only do I not believe that out of everything that he's seen traveling alongside us since the Pyramids of Mars that *this* is the one mystery he's most interested in but I also don't believe that Sutekh would risk letting the Doctor live even if he was interested and couldn't find out himself.
That's a good point. Out of all the places the Doctor has been since the Pyramids of Mars, the mystery of Ruby's parentage is what spurs Sutekh back into action? Unbelievable.
This is what bugs me most about the whole explanation. The Beast, the Creature from Midnight and the “monster” from Listen, the Guardians, the Curator, the Valeyard, the Timeless Child and basically everything connected to that…..he’s been witness to(or at least heard about) it all. There is absolutely no shortage of long running mysteries and questions that Sutekh had to choose from to get obsessed over. Not to mention the ones that were solved, but only after years and years of adventures like the Cracks, River Song, and Clara. He is literally known as The One Who Waits. So what the hell made who some girl’s parents are such a compelling mystery to him after what, maybe 6 months or so? I don’t know, because his entire personality basically boils down to “he wants to rule over an eternal silent empire of ash and death…. and spill the tea on exactly this one topic, and this topic only.”
Moreover, why should he care? Because it’s the one thing he doesn’t know? Give over. There’s tons he doesn’t know. The identity of some rando’s mother is beneath him to know. Otherwise if he knows everything I guess he knows the Doctor’s true name?
I think it was said that Sutekh can see every living thing in the universe, but can't see Ruby's mum. That would make it a big enough thing to get involved with. The one person you can't see The question is why he couldn't see her? I'd like it if that's resolved somewhere, maybe in the Mrs Flood storyline if she places some cloud over Ruby's mum?
^^^^^. It's deliberately stated and unanswered why Ruby's mom couldn't be detected by Sutekh/Big Dog. That's not poor writing (well, not inherently, could still be but we don't know yet), that's leaving another question to be answered next season. Patience, my friends. The episode even ends before Ruby gets to meet her father. As mentioned maybe Mrs Flood had some influence (why is she living next to Ruby and her family?), or maybe Ruby's father is responsible for why Ruby's mom is undetectable.
It definitely feels like there's more going on than just addressed in the episode, it's not a 1 series arc by the looks of it Personally, I quite like it. Leave there something more to look into
Big agree. There's no way we're done explaining everything.
Then again.... Sutekh is powerful enough to create snow, kill everything, have a random woman live countless lives all over time and space, possess people and more. Why not in the far future ...Google or look up stuff about Ruby and her mum. After 2040 something the DNA testing is available so he could've easily figured that out himself no? I mean if he can create literal people out of nothing, im sure he could scan some technology and internet.
Gods make reality become timely wimey. They warp reality to fit their narrative and beliefs (rules) . Ruby's mother was originally just a regular person. But (church of Ruby road) the very first instance the audience, doctor, Ruby, suteck, tardis has a chance to know who the mother is, the doctor instead has to go save Ruby. At that moment, the myth of Ruby's mother was born. A myth that with each interaction, events became stronger to the point that even the gods believed she was special. And if the gods believe your special, well that becomes the truth. So since Ruby's birth, her mom is a myth. That's why when she tried to look for her mother, information could never be found. No DNA links could be found. Once the gods who originally believed this were gone, the myth was broken and UnIt was easily able to find her mother and father. As to why Suteck needed to know about the mother, well it's a combo of two things. One, a god the supposed father of all gods not knowing something is a paradox to them. And two, the scene with the spoon, it explained how the death was spreading out. It wasn't just people dying, it was memories. Those memories allowed the death to work itself up the family tree. The spoon lady even said that it starts with the children. So if Suteck is to spread to everything, then it must know the Ruby's mother to be able to guarantee it's spread . Basically the only thing special about Ruby, (at least for now) is what we already learned in the church on Ruby road. Her life it's just. Coincidence.
^^ The entire way they beat him is by offering him information on Ruby’s mum If Sutekh tricked them into investigating the mother that’d be different
It’s not bad, it just turns out people are stupid.
The snow really is the confusing thing, I guess the salt could be an explanation?
Or maybe it was Sutekh making it snow and play the music and there was nothing special about Ruby at all. It was all Sutekh making it *seem* like there was something special about her so the the Doctor would investigate who her mother was. Shame they didn't, yknow, explain any of this.
I mean ruby's mother is very confusing. Like I get that it’s the mystery that made itself real but surely this would have happened before? Unless it’s only because of the salt?
Everything about the mystery is under explained to the point of being pretty BS as a mystery. Like okay, the mystery became real because people thought it was important, but why couldn't they see her face in the first place? Why did the doctors memories of the event change? Did the mystery become real because a being a powerful as Sutekh got invested in it and it bent reality? Or can it just happen to anyone at any time? Or was it the salt? Why was Sutekh so invested in the mystery anyway? He was there that night on top of the TARDIS, what stopped him from seeing who she was? Did Ruby actually make it snow and play music or was that Sutekh doing it to get them to investigate it? RTD spent a seasons setting up a big mystery with loads of unexplainable things happening and then the explanation at the end is "it's not actually important, you just thought it was" or it isn't explained at all. No, Russel. You wrote those things happening. You made the doctors memories change, you made a woman who's face couldn't be seen by anyone, even a god, you made a companion where it snows and plays Christmas music around her. Now explain it!
>or was that Sutekh doing it to get them to investigate it? If Sutekh did it to get them to investigate it, then why would he be invested in finding out the answer to the point of letting them live longer? But if Sutekh didn't do it and Ruby is actually normal then what did do it? Also Sutekh seems able to detect if life is still present anywhere so it can't've been that he was worried he'd missed someone, because he'd know, right? I've got to imagine that Ruby's found mum is a plant and the actual truth of who Ruby's real mum is will explain more next season.
Quote from RTD about next season says we will see more of ruby and her family. I think the family is also a plant, her origin story is too cliché to be real
>why couldn't they see her face in the first place? That one made complete sense wdym. A few hours after giving birth to a child some 15 year old girl put on robes with a hood and black full face mask, walked really slowly through the snow in the middle of the night to the local church, left her baby on the doorstep, walked really slowly out of the church and down the road. Teleported a couple feet forward to get past the spot the doctor and ruby where standing in the time window, continuing further before spinning 180 on the spot to point at a road sign directly behind the random guy who was following her. What part of that seems unusual to you? Unironically thought, the snow can't have been Sutekh because it happens while they are looking through the database and freezes mel. Sutekh wouldn't have any reason to make it snow to "push them to solve the mystery" because they already had, they where seconds away from reading her mothers name. All he did was impede his own minion from delivering the name to him
Oh god, that salt is going to be how people justify things that don't make sense for the rest of time isn't it?
Pretty much. The entire season has been “sure that dance scene was weird…but it’s only there because reality is being warped by cosmic powers unleashed at the edge of the universe! Just wait and see!” Now that the finale has come and gone, people are starting to cope about these things being explained next season and how this is all actually good writing. I swear to god, if this was Chibnall the entire season would have been tossed in the trash and lit on fucking fire over this and I will never not get the sense that a people are so much more forgiving because it’s RTD….and frankly, probably that the Doctor isn’t a woman.
The amount of "This thing that seems bad was actual because is going to turn out to be an in universe tv show" I saw was remarkable.
i wonder if there was some executive meddling, but i think people just want to like doctor who again. Hopefully, next season will be better than this one.
We don't have an answer yet. Ruby is still a companion, despite what that ending would make you think.
My guess is that the snow hasn’t been wrapped up yet. We’re getting more of her next season, so maybe something that will be resolved during the christmas episode?
Perhaps. it's a good hypothesis. or Sutekh purposefully shaped the entire plot this season to trick the Doctor into investigating Ruby's origins and into killing the whole universe. Who knows. If only there was an explicitly explained pattern.
He shaped the entire plot, then forgot he did that and got SOO invested in the mystery that he was defeated in an extremely underwhelming way by people he should've been able to completely dominate with his mind.
Why would he though? What does he gain by getting the Doctor to investigate Ruby's mom? Sutekh literally gains nothing from it. It's actually his downfall, even.
As the episode said, she was the one person he couldn’t see
So, Sutekh made Ruby's mom mysterious to get the doctor to investigate her, because he wanted to know who she was because he made her mysterious? I know time travel often ends up in convoluted plots but that's some serious circular logic there.
Why do assume Sutekh made her mysterious? She just was
So then we still have the question: why? What made her mysterious? Why did it snow?
But no one else in the past 60 years of traveling on the tardis was ever mysterious? Doesn’t that kind of inherently imply there’s some reason it only ever happened with rubys mom?
Just because there was *an* answer, doesn't mean that it feels satisfying, sufficient or well thought out
This is the best take regarding the finale that I’ve seen
Listen, I know we all love the show, and we all want to give it a chance because first season with new doctor returning writer etc can be rough But let’s be honest With the exception of about 3 episodes Mx This season was a mess
I dunno. I liked every episode. Parts of Space Babies sucked though. Mostly the space babies themselves. Also didn’t like the twist at the end song. But tbh, I’ve found this season to be refreshing overall. Is it perfect? Fuck no! But am I more entertained by it than Chibnall’s era? A thousand times yes.
The rest of it makes sense to me but if the snow was supposed to be Sutekh as well then that's some Grade-A bullshit. What's Sutekh got to do with snow? They're the God of death. Specifically; dusty sand Thanos death.
So your saying sutekh made ruby’s mother seem important, then why did sutekh want to know who the person he made a mystery around was, why did he delay his mission to learn the answer to a mystery he purposefully created?
He didn't purposefully create it, he misattributed importance to it because it happened around the time he became strong enough to re manifest. And once he'd decided it must be important, that's when all the weird stuff happened.
I think this is it. Makes the most sense with the timelines. He was only able to fully manifest during Wild Blue Yonder and that is also when the toymaker showed up again.
So basically a wizard did it.
In the episode where the wizard was explicitly stated to also have done everything else, yeah.
When the answer to all your questions is "a god did it to fuck with you" then there's probably something wrong with the plot. Some questions, okay I get that. The TARDIS groaning, Susan Twist, and the weird god stuff makes sense to be Sutekh related. But everything, down to Ruby's mum being important? That smacks of setting up a bunch of mysteries and red herrings and then losing the thread a bit and attributing everything unexplained to the gods because that's easy.
the ruby’s mother pointing at the sign thing is the one that confuses me the most like it’s probably the most difficult moment of her life, she’s just abandoned her child to save her from abuse. wearing an oversized cloak at night so no one recognises her then just as she’s walking away she stops, turns 180 degrees and points at a sign for a minute before continuing
Because the nobody around to see her would see her and name her Ruby after the church so Ruby has a connection with her "real mum" and Carla can just die I guess.
i do like the idea she wanted her daughter to be named lamppost or road and is pissed someone misunderstood her point
I would have died laughing if they'd included a scene where they asked her about it and she told them she wanted her kid to be named Streetlight because she was the light of her life and she was being left on the street and nobody got it. But Ruby is a nice name. Honest.
this... isn't what happened.
what...is what happened then?
He spawned in some Susans.
Well that's alright then
But if Sutekh was addicted to the Ruby soap opera and that's all he wanted to see the end of before dust/rope, why create all the Susan misdirects that just distracted from solving *that* mystery?
I think RTD had different plans but changed their mind
OP if the actual reason behind every gaping plothole in this season is “Sutekh did it”, RTD needs to immediately sign up to some writing classes.
Whats up with the musical reference to the trickster in the devil's chord
The Doylist reason is just that Murray Gold reuses themes a lot. This isn't new to this season and hasn't always been significant before. This same season also included Saxons theme and Rings of Akhaten. Sometimes it's just there as mysterious music, menacing music and solemn music.
Did Murray gold do the music for SJA?
No indeed, he didn't do the music for SJA apart from the theme. The only other instance of him reusing someone else's music is when the Flux is discussed in Wild Blue Yonder and Akinola's Flux theme is briefly reprised. I don't think he ever reprised any Classic Who music in Series 1-10 apart from the theme obviously. The Trickster's theme also reappeared in Mrs Flood's scene on the roof right at the end. This would seem to be a hint that there is more to Ruby (the hidden song in her heart) and that it's tied to Mrs Flood. But with how her mom was handled and the Master's theme was reused in the build-up to Sutekh the wind has been taken out of my sails in speculating about this.
I thought I recognised the music during the sutekh scene, I thought It was just because its the same composer
If Sutekh has control of the Tardis, why doesn't he just go back in time and go to the woman and lift the hood. He has minions who can figure it out. She doesn't just disappear after walking away a short distance at 1mph. Very easy person to find and identify really. All this "can't cross personal timeline" stuff doesn't work when either Sutekh or the Doctor could have parked the Tardis around the corner and identified the women without their past selves knowing.
The whole thing is poorly written. Sutekh wanted to escape in Pyramids and nearly did but the Doctor stopped him. Now we're expected to believe 4th Doctor failed and Sutekh did get out, hung about on the TARDIS for a long time, could've destroyed the universe anytime but kept waiting. And let's go by this dumb explanation in the meme. It would only work if he wasn't present back when Ruby was dropped off. And that he just heard Ruby was mysterious so he manipulated the Doctor to find the answer. Instead Sutekh was there when Ruby was dropped off and could have easily emerged and found Ruby's mother especially since the Doctor was distracted with the goblin king. To just hand wave bad writing as saying it's the fans that dont understand or have bad media literacy is stupid. Like with Chibnall and his Timeless Child bit. If you are going to introduce something different that's fine but explain it in the episodes don't leave it to behind the scenes or expanded universe content. Same with biregen in the giggle.
nothing is more mysterious than a normal woman who didnt want a baby.
That's not an answer.
Correct, Sutekh got invested in a mystery that didn't really have an answer. That was the main flaw that was being abused to defeat Sutekh in the first place: He thinks of himself as important, all-knowing and all-powerful, but in reality he was a bitch-ass dog who got invested in a nothing-mystery and he got dragged through his worst nightmare because he didn't want to kill the only thing that could stop him, because he got overinvested in trivial shit. There is no answer. RTD tried to do a Glass Onion/The last Jedi and fucked up a bit, but yeah, literally everything fits the "Sutekh tried to keep the Doctor and Ruby invested in a mystery that intrigued him by any means possible, which ultimately led directly to his reveal and his downfall".
Why couldn't Sutekh see Ruby's mother then?
And why couldn't anyone else, even when they tried their absolute hardest to? Pretty sure during the time window sequence they even mention her being 66 meters away (another 73 yards pull) and that the pointing was an unexplained change in the timeline. If it really was just a teenager in a cultists outfit then that's some awful writing.
Except he didn't explain any of this shit. You're claiming he did on the basis that "Sutekh did it" is an explanation, but it isn't one.
I’m sorry but this doesn’t really make any sense. Sutekh was tricking the Doctor into caring about Susan’s mom why? That didn’t change how often he was materializing the Tardis in new locations, and even if it did, it’s clearly stated in the finale that Sutekh thinks Susan’s mom IS important. He ends up getting tricked by Ruby, not the other way around, so I don’t know if this theory holds much weight…
I can't speak for the entire fan base, but for me this meme making this things all about Susan is a bad straw man. The god dropping fake Susans everywhere to mess with the Doctor is not one of the problems at all.
After being completely turned off by Space Babies, the story arcs and mysteries are all that kept me engaged and watching every episode. Well played RTD, you actually made me think you had something up your sleeve
I don't think we have the entire puzzle yet. Snow doesn't really work with the whole "ancient egypt" theme Sutekh's got going on, and don't forget how in Church on Ruby Road the Doctor seemed to be very upset while Ruby was singing, almost as if he was in a completely different episode.
I believe the snow has something to do with Mrs. Flood. I'm basing that on the fact that at the end when she gives her story speach at the end she's wearing a winter coat and it's snowing.
There's nothing to figure out. The episode tells you exactly what has happened, it just doesn't make sense
Because memories are powerful and that was an incredibly important, raw and open point in time so memory of it causes it to snow. Yes I know that's stupid but it's a stupid show so you gotta roll with it.
I didn’t realise much of the “fandom” were BAFTA-winning writers with immense knowledge on its ins and outs and decades of experience and acclaim to back it up. Doctor Who, of all things in the world, can be described as since its inception: “delightful nonsense.” The canon isn’t even consistent with itself. Yet people are so obsessed with perfect stories. I’ve read much of what “it should’ve been” according to them. How arrogant is that? It’s hilarious. And it’s by the same people that have manufactured a narrative that RTD has an “ego” because they don’t like him, which is doubly hilarious. The irony is totally lost on them. All I can say to them is, don’t quit your day job. You are not a better writer than the show-runner of a multimillion-viewed programme that oversaw its most popular era still to this day. And you almost certainly statistically never will be. It’s everywhere these days. “I don’t like it therefore it must be bad writing!” YouTube essays by prideful uni students that believe they’re special. Reddit threads “fixing” stories, naively unaware that it’s with the benefit of no deadlines, pressure or expectation. “Fans” of things assuming because they attach themselves to a brand they automatically know more than actual successful writers, who are also (real) fans anyway. It’s so obnoxious. And their favourite response? “Oh it’s not my job to write it.” STOP PRETENDING IT IS THEN. Go watch a murder mystery drama if you’re so hung up on pedantic details. I’m sorry, William Shakespeare. We’ll all try to meet your standards one day.
Literally the only one of these that wasn’t explicitly spelled out for us was the snow. There’s still no reason for that
RTD wanted us to look stupid so he could elevate himself
I might be misremembering, but didn't the Doctor explicitly say that the reason Sutekh emerged from the TARDIS when he did is because Ruby's mother was "the one being he couldn't understand" or something like that? It's one thing to not give out all the answers and trust your audience to connect the dots, but it's another entirely to have the protagonist, who has pretty much always been characterized as very intelligent, theorize on an answer, never have that answer be meaningfully challenged nor any alternative answers suggested, and then still expect your audience to come to a conclusion that contradicts that answer.
Maybe they will explain the snow in the next season RTD said that nothing is what it seems with Ruby's Family
That is entirely possible, too. I just don't like the kneejerk reaction of "it wasn't explained to me and therefor it must be bad writing" as if the whole thing about this season conclusion wasn't exactly about inferring meaning and importance being an individuals own responsibility.
RTD: This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: huge success. It's hard to overstate My satisfaction.
The "beauty" of RTD, he tries to be too clever.
Okay, but WHY was Sutekh so invested in finding Ruby's mother? You're saying that it was all an elaborate trap but the episode makes it explicitly clear that the only reason Sutekh didn't instantly kill Ruby and the Doctor was because he wanted them to find out the identity of Ruby's mother, it's even how they were able to trap him. And just... why would a God of death care about that? He's gonna kill everything anyway, why does the identity of this one person concern him? They do provide an explanation, Sutekh could see all of time and space but couldn't see the face of the mother and so he assumed the mother was of greater power. But we never got an explanation as to WHY he couldn't see her face or anyone couldn't see her through the time window. The episode tires to say "Oh, she was ordinary but we BELIEVED she was special so she became special!" and that explanation has so many holes in it, swiss cheese is having an existential crisis. It's an explanation but hardly a good one and FAR from satisfying.
I think Mrs Flood is the key to the future of dr who 😂
at that point just shoot them lol
Tbh the snow is unclear but I take it as Sutekh pushing down on that moment in time
Mrs Flood isn't anyone special, she's just a regular person and anyone who thinks that she is important is a fool for reading too much into it
“oh it is a good twist becuase you couldn’t predict it” . well I couldn’t predict if the twist was that she was the daughter of a snow man with the face of Chris chibnall but that doesn’t make it a good nor satisfy twist.
I think that Russell knows what's happening and thinks it's obvious, and thinks that explaining it to the audience would be seen as talking down to the audience
Didn’t the doctor explain it? Something about it being a powerful fixed point?
Sutekh isn't why it was snowing, but Sutekh being there is partially what made it such a fixed point. It's also what scared Maestro.
I have decided to disillusion myself into believing her story hasn't ended yet and the next episode that I have convinced myself is coming Saturday will explain all
I mean, were not getting a story next Saturday, But flood's speech to the camera basically confirms that the story isn't over yet
Yeah I'm a little confused if it's a season break or if it's a new season just cause this season felt really short and yeah I thought that floods speech was more general rather than linked to Ruby's story
what's there to be confused about? this series was 8 episodes, next series will also be 8 episodes. and Mrs Flood is a mystery that spans multiple series, just like river song and the falling of the silence both were
It really was a clusterfuck tbh
"It was snowing the night Ruby was born and it keeps snowing all around her, actual snow, which means that night is so raw and so open, the last thing that I should do is take a time machine back there." It's a crap explanation imo, because it was made out to be a mystery, but it IS an explanation.
So I’ve been a Doctor Who fan for about ten years now, but this is my first time paying attention to online discussion about a season. Are you guys always this grumpy?
but what is the explanation for the snow though? like i dont remember that being mentioned or explained, and sutekh is never shown making snow.
There's two explanations that both tend to be ignored by the fanbase at large. One I was reminded of by this comment section, which is already given by the Doctor early in the season: It's a very raw and powerful memory, weird things with memories happen when time traveling. I don't remember the exact line anymore. Throughout the season there wasn't so much a focus on why it snowed, at least not from the characters in the show itself. It's mostly that that was a driving motivator for the characters to keep investing interest in trying to find Ruby's mother. WHY it snowed wasn't that much of a mystery in the first place, fans just ignored the explanation that was given. The Other Possible explanation was my own that inspired me to make the post; Sutekh has been messing with memories, has been creating full people out of nothing, has been trying to force the Doctor and Ruby into finding out who Ruby's mother is. If you see Sutekh creative full-blown humans with a family and a past on every planet, and eternal universe killing dust-storms, I find it a bit odd to say that snow would be outside of his capabilities. Sutekh therefor has motive, means, opportunity and an established pattern of being guilty of everything else this season as well. To me it made more sense just assume that the snow was part of the pattern as well, especially after getting ANOTHER confirmation that Ruby nor her mother are inherently special.
and we met merridew before we met ruby and the doctor went to the church
Is media literacy dead? They literally said that Ruby was important because the God's thought she was (plus everyone else). Swear this is Hell Bent 2.0 Guess I have to wait 5 years for fandom to catch up
People understand what the episode said, just fine. They just also understand that the explanation is both incredibly unsatisfying and fails to explain everything. What changed time between Church and Space Babies? That's never explained at all. Why did Sutekh care in the first place? What made him think there was anything more to the situation than a woman in a cloak? If every strange event was caused by Sutekh's interest, what sparked that interest in the first place? Was that genuinely the first person Sutekh ever saw wearing a cloak, and he flipped his shit over it? At this rate, Mrs Flood will be revealed to be a slightly mental old woman who coincidentally says ominous things. Why? I dont know. Blame the salt, I guess.
The salt at the edge of the universe being the catalyst for Sutekh's manifestation would have been a far better explanation than "he's just been chilling for 37 seasons and randomly decided now is the time to enact his plan yo" imo even if we wouldn't have gotten all these Sutekh memes
You know, we can understand what the writer was going for and still think it was shit.
What does media literacy even mean? Is it about spotting fake news? I have my English degree and took media studies and it's not a phrase that was ever used. Analysis, certainly. The gods thinking Ruby's genetic heritage was magic doesn't really explain how they'd come to think that in the first place, or be responsible for the magic snow without noticing they were. Ruby herself just thought her birth mum was important, not an alien/goddess. Almost no one thinks the Hybrid arc is good either, and the defense of it is 'it's supposed to be bad and not matter'. We're still going to think the same about this.
It's a catch all term people made up so they could say "you just don't get it", but make it sound a little fancier.
I understand it to mean people's ability to understand the message of a piece of media as opposed to it's actual plot One example would be being able to understand that Godzilla is about monsters fighting each other but also about the power of nuclear bombs and radiation the horrors of man and all that jazz
Meanwhile my English tutorial group happily mocked the plot of Beowulf, our lecturer, a medieval specialist, giggling at the ridiculousness! And that one isn't terribly serious to begin with. It's not forbidden at all to make fun of a plot, and pulling one apart often throws up something interesting about the writing choices - it was rather *encouraged*. In writing this tosh, RTD himself has made (questionable) assumptions about how the audience think this kind of story works: you don't get to that by treating plotting as sacred, hands off. Not sure where this idea that having themes means you can't criticise the plot comes from. This is just particularly daft pop culture, and we did it with literature/literary fiction (my group ending up winning our case that Swift's *Waterland* would just be silly melodrama if it wasn't also so irredeemably boring). Doesn't make any sense to me because surely even just from genre fic. on TV, it's obvious that this little care for *any* aspect of the writing (not as though the theme of family was handled well either) isn't just normal.
It's more the inability to realise the secondary themes as if Godzilla was only ever a big scary monster I'd assume your peers would understand the themes of Beowulf Another example would be people saying metal gear solid isn't political
I usually roll my eyes at the whole ‘media literacy’ thing but seeing the entire fandom have a meltdown over things that actually were explained (maybe not very clearly but still) in the episode is definitely a ‘were you actually watching it or just hate posting on Reddit the whole time’ situation for me.
Maybe its just me, but I got the general gist of it on first watch. They have the Doctor literally say "she important because people believe she is" outloud
Problem is, the plot still fucking sucks even if it's explained lmao. Being explained doesn't mean that this season's plot was enjoyable or that it feels well written. It's written, sure, but in a way that just feels like a pointless mess that probably isn't actually over and will start to be better with several seasons of hindsight and further development.
I feel like RTD couldn’t have made everything more clear in the finale but then I login to twitter and Reddit and well, apparently he didn’t make it clear enough. The anagrams were obvious traps. The doctor brought up Susan so it was fresh in our minds and for those who don’t know anything about the past show. Susan triad appeared and used an anagram. Unit immediately recognised it and assumed it was a trap. Trap suspicions confirmed even more when they discover Susan was name of his granddaughter. The magic in the world bring more prevalent simce WBY and 73 yards confirming ye olde folktale style magic being the norm. So when the snow was confirmed to be linked with rubys past. It made us think there was a mystery around her birth, mix that in with the circumstances of the doctor struggling to remember that night clearly, and it being a fixed point in that time that got meddled with by magic time hopping goblins. Making this pivotal night on rubys birth being so messy. Then the show went out of its way to explain that time is memory and memory is time…and memory can be very easily tricked and altered or changed, which could interfere with time. Mix this in with the doctor believing Ruby to be special and it manifests as snow If you want get all scifi about it, then it being a timeywimey messy point in time with contradiction meant that snow leaked through into the future or something. But it doesn’t need a scifi explanation as the magic and metaphor and symbolism is what’s important (as thats how traditional magic and folktale magic works). But people were looking for a scifi explanation and it confused people.
Seeing people confused over the snow has me baffled as it seemed clear enough - to me at least - what was going on. Ruby had constructed memories from second-hand information she possessed about the night of her birth (she knew it was snowing and that Carol of the Bells was being sung by the church choir) and as such whenever she was made to think of that night she would invoke that idealised, storified version of events, hence the snow. The reason she was even able to do this was (again) pretty clear from the jump I thought; since Wild Blue Yonder the universe has been increasingly susceptible to forces of fantasy and whimsy. It's the same suspension of normal physical laws that allowed the Doctor to duplicate the TARDIS with a comically-oversized mallet that also gave Ruby the power to manifest the snow. It's this throughline of Ruby conceiving this semi-mythical origin for herself that ultimately proves to be the undoing of Sutekh. Similar to how the "hidden song" disturbed Maestro (how on Earth is this puny, ordinary human doing *that??*) the same ambiguity surrounding Ruby was concerning for Sutekh, too. He found it perverse that such a "myth" could not only exist, but also couldn't be seen or understood, not even by a God. And of course it couldn't be, because fantasy and reality had become so delicately intertwined at this particular point; that night on Ruby Road had become a maelstrom of shadows and everchanging memories. Timelines involving goblins and time travelers had overlapped and caused history to splinter and un-splinter. And at the centre of it all was a woman who could never be identified. Of course Sutekh hated this. At this holy place, on this one holy night, a creation myth was being played out involving the purest form of life - a newborn baby. To a God of Death, a bringer of absolute destruction, this was an abhorration. And *he couldn't figure it out.* Of all the places he had been to riding the spine of the TARDIS, it was *this* particular night that made no sense, and it angered him. As for the question on why Susan Triad appeared everywhere - again, pretty sure that was answered. Whenever the TARDIS materialised, Sutekh's avatar took form. This was a long game in which he seeded his "Angels of Death" across the universe, through both time and space, ready to bring his gift of death. And the anagrams? Sutekh explains this, too. He saw Susan's past inside the TARDIS and decided to use an "apparition" of her to both lure the Doctor in and, in a sense, weaken him by using the idea of Susan against him. A lot of the questions people have are given answers, and the ones that aren't explicitly explained away can be pieced together by looking back across the series as a whole and picking up on the narrative cues.
I mean it makes sense and everything. It was just a shit payoff for a season long mystery.