Photo: Disney+
Who’s ready to put the UNIT in unity? This week’s episode of Doctor Who is a team mission on Earth. After the TARDIS skids into UNIT headquarters, the Doctor and Ruby join up with familiar faces, including Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Rose Noble, an upgraded Vlinx, and Colonel Ibrahim. The military organization that investigates alien threats has also made a couple of new hires: Harriet is the head of UNIT’s archive, while child genius Morris Gibbons is its scientific adviser.
The Doctor is hoping UNIT can help him look into two women. First, there’s Susan Twist, whose face we’ve been seeing all season. On this planet, she’s Susan Triad, an IT genius who goes by the nickname Sue. Luckily, UNIT has already been keeping tabs on her, and even has a live feed as she rehearses a speech she’ll be making to the United Nations today about her S Triad Technology. (It’s about to go worldwide for free, but the tech has been out for a while — Donna mentioned in “The Giggle” that UNIT uses Triad, and fans with much better eyesight than me spotted Triad ads on a bus in “The Church on Ruby Road.”)
Former companion Mel has gone undercover on Susan’s media team, taking daily DNA samples of Susan that have so far all come back human. UNIT also hasn’t found anything alien in her software. Still, the Doctor’s definitely still intrigued, given that S Triad is an anagram of TARDIS … and his granddaughter is named Susan.
Then there’s Ruby’s birth mother. According to the Doctor, he’s time-locked out of the moment that she abandoned Ruby on Christmas Eve because he already went there once to save baby Ruby from the goblins. Harriet points out that CCTV cameras were nearby that night, and Ruby goes home to retrieve a VHS tape with the grainy footage.
When Carla realizes that mothers can be involved in UNIT, she decides she wants to come along to “the nitwit tower,” too. Next-door neighbor Mrs. Flood is recruited to watch Cherry, who beams and hints that she’d like a cuppa. “Well, we’d all like a lot of things that aren’t going to happen,” Mrs. Flood replies. Looking out at an approaching storm, she ominously adds, “He waits no more.”
The Doctor wants to analyze Ruby’s tape with a Time Window. Kate splutters that the Doctor forbade UNIT to experiment with time technology, then immediately admits there’s one ten floors down. Carla and Mel have arrived by now, so there’s a small crowd watching when the Doctor, Ruby, and Colonel Winston Chidozie (head of Time Window Security) get behind the glass.
We’ve seen the Doctor step through Time Windows that kinda operate like doorways, but this one is more like a 3-D projector. It starts snowing before Morris even hooks the tape up to the system, and then Ruby’s memories and the VHS give the Time Window enough power to show us the night she was abandoned. Ruby’s hooded mother walks toward the Doctor and Ruby, but it’s as if there’s TV static over her. She speeds by in a surge of energy, and no one catches a glimpse of her face. In contrast, when the TARDIS arrives, it appears almost solid. “If time is memory and memory is time, then what is the memory of a time machine?” the Doctor muses.
While the past Doctor saves baby Ruby, her birth mother stops walking and breaks down in tears. Carla also starts crying, wishing she could tell this woman that she took Ruby in. And now we’ve arrived at the part of the memory that’s been changing for the Doctor. We see the hooded figure turn and point right at the Doctor(s) standing in front of the TARDIS. So far, the Doctor has so far been physically restraining a sobbing Ruby, telling her she can’t move and interfere with this fixed point in time. But he must be incredibly curious about this woman because, despite Kate’s protests, he instructs Colonel Chidozie to go see if there’s anything else she could’ve been pointing at. Chidozie moves out of sight behind the TARDIS.
Morris is the first to notice the appearance of a swirling, growling cloud of black dust that contains red lights. “What is that?” he asks. “When is that?” Kate adds. According to Morris’s readings, it’s hot, cold, radioactive, and dead all at the same time. So … something outside the laws of the known universe? Sounds like another god is on the way.
Chidozie, who has vanished, responds to Ruby after she brings up their Manchester connection. He says he’s lost in hell, and that something ancient and waiting has seen into his soul. The Window explosively powers down, and Kate rushes in to see Chidozie’s dust-covered corpse.
The Doctor decides it’s time for Mel to take him to Susan. He stops to punch an elevator — Chidozie’s death probably hasn’t helped with the Doctor’s suspicion that he brings disaster wherever he goes — but Mel tells him to pull it together. There are only a few minutes before Susan is scheduled to give her speech. As she walks away from a short conversation, the Doctor asks if she dreams about the people and places we’ve seen in past episodes. She doesn’t respond, but the Doctor can tell she remembers.
Meanwhile, Harriet has taken charge of analyzing the VHS tape, which now includes footage of the black cloud. When rewinded, the recording reveals that the TARDIS is at the heart of the cloud. Interesting! Looks like the time lock didn’t apply to this time machine.
The TARDIS parked in UNIT HQ groans. The Doctor, listening in over comms, says he’s heard that noise before. The Doctor chalked it up to Rogue’s moral void last week. But the sound also reminds me of a certain classic serial … could it be?
Kate clears the room of nonessential staff, and at the Doctor’s orders, sends Ruby to the Time Window. The Vlinx’s scan confirms that there’s a life-form on the TARDIS that is somehow woven into the fabric of the ship itself, and Harriet launches into an unsettling monologue about someone who has “hidden in the howling void” and seduced “the vessel.” People can be described as vessels, but I’m inclined to believe that she’s talking about the TARDIS, especially since she adds, “The Lord of Time was blind and vain and knew nothing.” The Doctor suddenly asks what Harriet’s full name is. It’s Harriet Arbinger. We’ve got another harbinger of the gods.
Meanwhile, a sinister voice interrupts Susan Triad’s speech. She starts rambling about her dreams, and the words on her teleprompter change. “I am returning,” one line reads. Harriet is speaking in unison with the same deep, echoing voice. After name-dropping a bunch of gods, she declares that the ultimate one has returned. The cloud around the TARDIS shows itself and transforms into a giant, dog-like creature with red eyes.
And there it is. Susan Triad Technology is short for Sue Tech … Sutekh. (And yes, Gabriel Woolf reprising his role as the original voice of Sutekh.) If you haven’t watched Classic Who, Sutekh was introduced in the four-part 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars. He was described as the last of the Osirans, an alien race whose wars inspired Egyptian mythology. His goal is to destroy all life. The Fourth Doctor only managed to defeat Sutekh because he hadn’t actually returned yet; Four made the time corridor that Sutekh was traveling through extend so far into the future that he died of old age before ever reaching the end. Or so we thought! The 2016 comic story Old Girl reveals that Sutekh managed to step sideways into the Void, where he was trapped with many gods from other realities … until the salt trick freed some of them, perhaps?
The reveal of Sutekh as a villain doesn’t answer everything, of course. The broken Time Window powered up so that Ruby is once again staring at her birth mom on Christmas Eve, reminding us that we still don’t know who she is or why she was pointing. Also, it’s still not totally clear how Sutekh returned. Why did Susan need to be scattered across time and space? Does she have anything to do with the taken-over TARDIS?
The Doctor doesn’t have time to ponder these questions, though. Susan has collapsed and risen with a mask-like face and red eyes. After turning a staffer to dust with a touch of her hand, she approaches him. “Did you think I was family, Doctor?” Sutekh says through her. “I bring Sutekh’s gift of death. For you, and for all in your tiny, vile, incessant universe.” Considering that the Fourth Doctor once said that there wasn’t a lifeform in the galaxy that could stand against a freed Sutekh, it makes sense that Fifteen seems too horrified to even attempt to run. How is he gonna get out of this? Since we end on a cliffhanger, we’ve got a week to wonder.
• Ruby has really found her footing as a companion. I almost forget that she’s so new to this that she still needs to have regeneration explained to her.
• Morris checks the probability of a trap throughout the episode. I know we’re all focused on Sutekh now, but maybe the Trickster truthers shouldn’t give up yet on their theories that the god of traps will play a role in the finale?
• Jemma Redgrave is so funny when she’s disgruntled. I rewinded just to look at Kate’s face when the Doctor granted Carla access, and when he guffawed at UNIT’s primitive Time Window.
• The Doctor says that due to timey-wimey reasons, he can have a granddaughter before a daughter. I mean, his family tree has always been complicated; Jenny was born solely from a tissue sample of Ten.
• Skip this if you want to go into the finale blind, but the official synopsis for the episode is already out: “The Doctor has lost, his ageless enemy reigns supreme, and a shadow is falling over creation. Nothing can stop the devastation … except, perhaps, one woman.” Who do we think that woman is? Ruby? Her birth mother? The Doctor’s daughter or granddaughter? Kate? Mel? … Cherry Sunday, because she’ll never get her cup of tea if the world is destroyed?
