Okay, yes, this post is late… but! As a benefit to that it does mean this post can be about the one and only Doctor Who.
I have been watching the episodes weekly, and now that I’ve watched the season finale. Let’s discuss, shall we?
So, you have been warned. Check the tags.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The God of Death
Confession: I have not watched any Classic Who, and quite honestly I’m not in any rush to. Not all that bothered to be honest. As such, I catch some of the references but most of them go straight over my head, and if I’m being really honest, I’m not all that bothered about having any of them explained to me. All this to say: Who the hell is Sutekh?
When he was revealed last week I got the same feeling I get when someone moderately famous appears in a TV Show, and the filmography around their entrance gives off that impression that you should know who they are. It’s more obvious in sitcom’s because the audience tends to cheer. Doctor Who had very clearly met him before, everything from reactions to cinematography told you as such. We didn’t even have to see The Doctor’s face to know this was a return and not an entrance.
It felt as though the audience was cheering and I did not yet know why. If this was an actor I did not yet know I would’ve googled them and eventually got to a “Oh, okay, that’s why”, in this vain we did a quick google of the TARDIS Wiki, immediately following and felt caught up enough for this week, if not still somewhat confused but not bothered enough to go watch the Classic Who episodes.
Honestly, if Sutekh had been from a variety of different mythologies I may have got it, but as it goes Egyptian is not on my list of vaguely known. Whereas, The Greeks’ and The Romans’ perhaps, you can thank the Epic musical for sparking my interest there, Norse perhaps even only due to Asgard, if not also a primary school education, and strangely enough also Sumerian, we can thank Carmilla for that one. But The Egyptian’s? No.
Regardless. Here he was. All dog-like and hanging off the edge of The TARDIS.
Strange pantheon to have The God of Games and Music and then also right near that just casually The God of Death. Quite a leap, but there we are.
I understand he sees death as a gift or whatever, but side note: Who in their right mind would want eternal isolation? Like I’m sure sitting upon your high horse of goddom is super painful for you, but seriously, why? Didn’t Maestro effectively aim to achieve a similar thing? Do the God’s only hate us? What do they want with silence? Forget being an evil god, that sounds like a truly horrific existence and why anyone, including those of evil ascension, would want to achieve that for themselves is actually a motivation I simply cannot fathom.
Anyways. Evil God of Death, classic villain if there is anything else, and hey… did The Doctor just kill a God? I know he’s totally done worse, morality-wise, whatever monster he may claim to be becoming, but he did in fact just Kill A God, right? Damn, Doc, damn.
Sidenote: Sutekh isn’t really an anagram of S Triad-whatever. The Doctor can “it was the wrong anagram.” all he wants, but I’m fairly certain if you have to change a ‘C’ to ‘K’ to get the word it doesn’t really count as an anagram. If he’d gone by ‘Set’ it would be a different story, though.
Anyways, I was largely confused, then somewhat underwhelmed, and now he’s dead! So, moving on from that, I guess.
I Had A Line
I adore Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. I love The Doctor and many of his companions, but she is perhaps one of my favourite parts of all of New Who. No harm should come to Kate Lethbridge-Stewart because I will riot.
When discussing this upcoming episode I had somewhat dramatically said that if they kill Kate I might actually quit. I am likely exaggerating, because I care about The Doctor too, but I will be deeply frustrated. An unforgivable slight, if I dare say so.
So, anyways they killed Kate, didn’t they? Rude.
I actually almost quit the episode. Cried a great deal, and took a brief minute to recover before continuing. Saddest part of the whole episode, I will not be taking opinions. How dare they kill Kate.
Thankfully, The Doctor did as he does and she’s fine! So, all is forgiven. I do, however, believe that we are on several Kate-death-fake-out’s at this point and my heart cannot take another. Please leave her alone. I am begging you. Let her keep showing up but, please, stop killing her.
Why Are They Hiring Children?
Seriously, Morris and Rose?
And who armed Morris? Why does Morris have weapons? He is a Child!
I feel like the fact they just faced down a Death God is a good enough reason for why children, regardless of their intelligence, should not be hired at UNIT… or at the very least should not be considered part of the core staff who cannot be evacuated in the case of A Death God in the office. Just a suggestion.
I love her, but it’s Kate, right? Is UNIT so understaffed she can just go around offering jobs to anyone with a braincell she meets? Like I understand hiring old companions and even Morris, he proved to be quite useful, but Rose? What’s Rose done? Why is she offering jobs to random teenagers? Doesn’t Donna also work there now? Does Rose work with her mother?
I like you, Kate, but every person you meet does not need a UNIT-stamped paycheque. They will probably, in fact, be safer without it.
A Name
I feel like there was a message being made with the very important somebody turning out to be just ordinary, ‘normal’ as Ruby says. One of those ‘everybody is somebody’ messages, I’m sure. Which as a general rule I am super on board with. I have been watching Agents of SHIELD lately. The whole ‘nobody is nobody’ is in the Pilot and runs through the whole series, it’s a very important message and I agree.
However, this one was dumb. So dumb.
I love it, great episode, but are you serious?
She was pointing at the road sign? For whose benefit? No body was there, until the TARDIS showed up! Did she think the man who just walked out of a strange box was going to name her child after a road sign! Why was she ominous? Why hide her face? What the hell is with the music? Why the snow? Why was the snow even a thing at all when it is all so ordinary!
I’m not saying it has to be special, and the whole things being made special by perspective thing I can agree with, but they made it special! They made it supernaturally special and then it was nothing! It was a special enough to scare off A God and then she’s just… a random woman?
Everybody matters, yes, but narratively speaking they built her up like she was the holy grail, and then she was… so much less than that.
The message overall is one I approve of, but the execution of this in particular was more underwhelming than anything. It was like having your hopes riled up and then crushed. We were curious, guessing and theorising, these wild theories wondering who, why and occasionally what this woman was. Then we were essentially told she was just Karen from down the road. She could’ve been a pile of dirt, it would have the same effect.
AOS achieved the same message in it’s 45-minute Pilot (It’s Pilot!) to a much better effect. So, I am once again concluding this week that you should just go watch Agents of SHIELD. I am.
One more thing, though, they imply this woman is Sutekh’s motivation for revealing himself, right? He couldn’t see who this woman is, so he one-up’s Thanos and Snaps everyone to find out who. Dumb. Ridiculous and dumb. I have seen some villains with ridiculous motivations, this might take the cake. Like, yes, he wants to give his gift of death regardless, and he was definitely still setting in motion the same plan with his many Avatar’s across time and space clinging to The Doctor’s Sexy TARDIS, but he chose now because of a name he didn’t know? Ridiculous. A Name!? Really?
Death over here just got too curious he thought he’d kill the whole universe and then cross his fingers and hope that 1) The Doctor would be encouraged to figure it out and 2) that he would still be able to do that with everyone, ya know, dead. In the history of stupidly motivated and stupidly executed plans I think we may have a new winner.
All that destruction for a name and achieved silence, which is still a strange secondary thing to want.
I mean, The Doctor was figuring it out anyways! He just had to be fricken’ patient, but I’m sure the grand death would’ve come shortly thereafter anyways. Someone always wants to end the world, regardless of how much sense it does or does not make. Personally, as despicable as they tend to be, the ones who want to rule it usually seem to make a lot more sense. What fun is a universe if it’s empty? Most beings hardly survive a few months, never-mind years, isolated. Does anyone really want an eternity of isolation?
Regardless, if I read it right, all this for a name. How dumb.
A name, that in the end, was meaningless to everyone except Ruby, and even then she thought she was just ‘normal’. Probably still would’ve if The Doctor hadn’t convinced her otherwise. Though, the ‘everybody is somebody’ is totally on brand for him, and I’m vaguely recalling definitely done before.
Why Are We Saying Goodbye?
No, seriously, why?
He helped her find her mother, yes. This does not have to be goodbye though! He has a Time Machine for godsakes. If he really wants to hang out he just jumps a few weeks into the future when she’s free. It’s not like he hasn’t had companions that live lives alongside knowing him before. Most of Moffat’s, to be fair, who almost all are in some state of death, but that is hardly my point.
Ruby wants to take a couple weeks? That’s fine, you don’t have to say goodbye because she found her parents! Just have a relationship like normal people, Jesus. Regardless, he has A Time Machine! Even if they go venturing he can have her back literally within the hour they left. I know he’s frequently late, but that’s besides the point too.
And it’s only been eight episodes! (And a Special) You know what you can’t create in eight episodes? A relationship I care enough about to be sad when a scene like this happens. You have not nearly given them enough time. At least… not the way they’ve done it.
Agents of SHIELD spends the first half of Season 1 (just over 8 episodes, you’ll notice) focusing most of it’s narrative energy into building team trust, dynamics and relationships. By the time they significantly endanger a character we are wholeheartedly convinced that they will all kill, if not be killed, for each other. You have found that family and, by the gods, are we convinced of it. Yet! This team building includes Skye’s betrayal in Episode 5. It’s not a deep one in the grand scheme of things, but they have convinced us enough of the relationships even by that point that it is a small enough gut punch we feel with the rest of the team, and we care about Skye too!
Notably, though, none of them are saying goodbye.
My point is that they took a solid half season, with an emphasis on relationship building (along with setting up the questions for the plot) to build those relationships before they did anything too drastic. They took the time.
In all of eight episodes, maybe one episode does anything to convince me The Doctor cares about Ruby beyond the early stages of a friendship. ‘Rogue’ is brilliant, and does a pretty decent job of at least letting us know he cares a whole lot. These episodes tend to be, for the sake of time, devoid of all those little scenes that show us the building relationship. Scenes AOS emphasised in it’s early seasons. Scenes I think we have lacked this season in Doctor Who, though, I have not gone and rewatched yet.
This does also allow me to comment on my growing grievance with the shortening of seasons, because I think it’s dumb. New Doctor Who has never been especially long, I suspect for budget reasons, but it’s been longer than eight, generally. Anything more than 10 is a solid enough number, though I am not generally a fan of ‘half seasons’, as I tend to call them, especially when it is a series that traditionally had the 20+ episode format that gets cut to it, but some shows make it work. Even if I think they deserved the 10 episodes they didn’t get. Falling viewership and budgets may be at work, but I’m just saying some stories need the time. Time is important! They should use it! Some suffer for being cut, and some get far too much of it. I miss 20+ episodes seasons, I really do. They can be so rare now.
Tangent aside. They should not have said goodbye. It was not as impactful as I think they wanted it to be, largely because I thought it was dumb they were saying it at all, and also because I didn’t really believe they each cared that much about the other. A lot, sure, but that much? The depth the acting, score and filmography implied? Not quite. Perhaps they needed more time, perhaps some episodes just needed adjusting to give that impression. To show they have a relationship instead of bragging about the fact they’re making Doctor Who at all. Some episodes do just feel like showing off a universe, but we have a new doctor and companion to get to know and only eight episodes to do it in. They do not have time to show off a universe, especially if they want us to care when they say goodbye (for now)!
The goodbye is dumb. Okay?
Oh, Also, Who Is Mrs Flood?
Ominous ending she gave us, and remains a question mark. I have watched series that don’t answer everything in the final episode, but they at least come with some sort of satisfying conclusion. Ya know, AOS Season 1 ends with still some open questions but largely satisfying because they have answered many others very well.
Here, though, with the answer to the Ruby riddle being so underwhelming not getting an answer on Mrs Flood just felt like an extra kick in the teeth.
Though, narratively I know that because The Doctor is yet to even suspect anything it would be dumb for us to find out. I don’t care, though. Who the hell is Mrs Flood?
Some angel/god of something? Maybe? Fricken’ Sandman! Hell, my brother even said Clara Oswald, because she called him ‘Clever Boy’. A Timelord perhaps? Who the hell knows. Big, I’m sure, with the way things have gone. Just answer the question, though!
To Conclude
That’s us done till Christmas! No more Doctor Who for a good Six Months. I’m sure what’s next will be a blast, but for now I’ll have to find something else to focus on.
At the moment, I am watching AOS again, as mentioned, so assuming I don’t finish and move on to something else before the next post, or at least without writing anything at all, you can presume to see them pop up. I love AOS with my whole heart, and enjoy talking about it, so I will endeavour but not promise to write and post about them soon.
Regardless, thank you for reading this weeks post, though it was a little late! I hope you enjoyed it and will join me for the next one. This one was, admittedly, a little bit of a ramble, but I did write it basically immediately after I got around to watching the episode. I hope it was fun nonetheless.
You can follow me on Instagram at: @thebomff or on Threads at: @thebomff
On to the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to the BBC, Marvel and all other relevant parties.