“You’ve seen my life. I bring disaster, Kate, disaster.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
It seems like the new season of Doctor Who has barely started, but we’re already into the endgame with this jaw-dropping penultimate episode, the first of a big two-parter. A run of eight episodes is, sadly, pretty short to flesh out a new Doctor, particularly when he’s been virtually absent for two of those eight episodes – but Ncuti Gatwa has been as superb as I always knew he would be. This episode showed us more of that irrepressible joie de vivre, but coupled with the melancholy we’ve seen in the past, drawn from centuries of bad experiences which, rightly or wrongly, the Doctor considers himself responsible for.
And presumably, he has some responsibility for what’s going on here. To get the big one out of the way first, the Big Reveal of “the One Who Waits” was suitably epic. Sutekh the Destroyer (still voiced, magnificently, by original actor Gabriel Woolf), last seen in 1976 apparently expiring of extreme old age at the end of an ever-lengthening time tunnel! I don’t think any of us saw that one coming (well, unless like me you made the mistake of looking at social media the morning before you watched it).
We know, from Queer as Folk if nothing else, that Pyramids of Mars, Sutekh’s original story, is one of Russell T Davies’ favourites, and apparently he’s had the idea for this brewing in his mind virtually since he originally watched it. In point of fact, we don’t actually see Sutekh doing very much in that story; he’s imprisoned and powerless for the most part. What we get to convey his threat is dire warnings from the Doctor, and that glimpse he gives to Sarah of an alternative present day if Sutekh isn’t stopped – just like, in fact, the one he gave Ruby in The Devil’s Chord. Obviously not a coincidence – Pyramids must have been on RTD’s mind for that one too.
It’s a very big deal for fans like us that this memorable baddie has been revealed to be at the heart of everything this season, but it did occur to me that, for newer viewers, a returning villain from a one-off appearance in 1976 might not have had the requisite impact for the story. Fortunately, Russell’s script, coupled with Jamie Donoughue’s dynamic direction, invested the dastardly Osiran’s return with sufficient brio to make it seem a very big deal whether you knew of him previously or not.
What we’re obviously going to get here is Sutekh actually unleashed and causing havoc. And it was at the Doctor’s hands that Sutekh, originally, was seemingly destroyed, so he might have a point about bearing some responsibility for all of this. Refreshingly, what we got here was a Doctor very much musing on his past, something that should reassure old-school fans concerned that this ‘soft reboot’ was going to downplay the decades of continuity that preceded it.
In fact, despite being sold as giving us answers to new plot points (like the mystery of Ruby’s origins, and the ubiquitous Susan Twist), this was an episode chock full of references to the show’s past. Much of it was set in the new, Avengers-like, UNIT HQ, with Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart returning as the head of that ‘top-secret’ organisation (so ‘top secret’ is it that it now has an enormous, branded skyscraper in Central London, and even ordinary folk like Carla Sunday know exactly what it is).
UNIT’s recently established policy of recruiting the Doctor’s former companions as agents has given RTD licence to bring back pretty much any Earth-based companion he likes, whenever he wants, and so here we had the very welcome return of Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush. Between this and The Giggle, Mel has been given more character than she ever had when she was in the show proper, and Bonnie, who enviably seems to have barely aged, is getting her teeth into it with relish. We even got a little more info about Mel’s backstory, as she confided that the Doctor had helped her when her family were killed – as Mel was, effectively, given no origin story at the time, it’s great to have some of her background finally revealed.
It did, though, make me wonder whether Ace or Tegan, both established to be working with UNIT, would pop up. And perhaps they will next time, though it wouldn’t particularly harm the story if they didn’t. What is, however, a little difficult, is that thanks to the (also welcome) presence of Yasmin Finney as Rose Noble, it would be hard to avoid involving the now Earth-based Fourteenth Doctor (here obliquely referred to by the current one as her “uncle”). Yes, he may be ‘retired’, but let’s face it – it’s hard to imagine that any version of the Doctor caught up in such world-shattering events would be able to resist the temptation to get involved.
And maybe he will. Or maybe there’ll be a throwaway line explaining why he can’t. Or maybe the script will just ignore the fact that he’s been established to be there. It does seem to me, though, that RTD has somewhat hamstrung himself with that ‘bi-generation’ concept, in that the ‘retired’ Fourteen will either always have to be involved in any contemporary Earth-based story, or there’ll have to be a contrived explanation as to why he isn’t.
Still, I suppose that’s more of a problem for pedantic fans than casual viewers. They’re probably more interested in the answers to the questions posed by this year’s plot. And, to be honest, they aren’t here. At least not yet. OK, we got Susan Triad explaining that she had dreams of being all those other people (and things) we’ve seen the actor portraying, but so far no explanation as to how or why. Her amusing recreation of former Prime Minister Theresa May’s awkward ‘robot dance’ could do with some explaining too 😊
And despite that lengthy, excellently realised, Time Window glimpse into the night of Ruby’s birth, we still don’t have any answers there either. We have at least found out that Anita Dobson’s enigmatic Mrs Flood is definitely a wrong ‘un (how nasty do you have to be to deny an old lady a cup of tea?), but still don’t know who she is, or what she’s doing.
Presumably those explanations are due next week, as we find out just what Sutekh’s plan is, how he’s returned, and what his connection is to all those recent events. At least, hopefully we will. Often, with two-part Who episodes, the conclusion seems like a bit of an anticlimax after the buildup of the first part. And Russell doesn’t help himself with having to up the stakes every time he writes a season finale. Consider the escalating threats in his original run – the fate of Earth at the hands of the Daleks, the fate of Earth at the hands of the Daleks and the Cybermen, the fate of Earth at the hands of the Master, the “destruction of reality itself”, and finally the “end of Time itself”. No wonder incoming showrunner Steven Moffat had to actually start with the destruction of the universe.
Right now, though, I can’t find it in myself to criticise much about this – it was an excellent first part. As with all two-part stories, it’s hard to make a proper judgement about it until we’ve seen the second half, as any missing answers or apparent plot holes here may well be resolved. For now, all I can say is that for me, this delivered everything I’ve wanted in a season finale after what I felt was a somewhat uneven first season for the new regime.
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