The historical past of Physician Who was eternally modified by the season finale episode “Empire of Death” — however not in the best way we had been anticipating.
Regardless of inspiring a flurry of fan theories about Ruby Sunday‘s mum (may or not it’s Rose?), showrunner Russell T Davies merely gave us the statistically most probably reply. As foreshadowed in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the thriller mom was … an bizarre younger girl. As an alternative of the looks of Susan the Physician’s granddaughter, we realized that her title was sprinkled all through historical past by Sutekh the Destroyer, god of dying.
However that does not imply Whovian brains aren’t exploding at what Davies simply casually revealed alongside the best way, beginning with this unbelievable headline:
Sutekh has been hanging across the TARDIS for the final 49 years of Physician Who.
Credit score: Disney+
In “Pyramids of Mars” (1975), the one story previous to this season to comprise Sutekh, the Physician (Tom Baker) and Sarah-Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) thought he had trapped his strongest enemy in a time hall, the place he aged greater than 7,000 years. Then they jumped within the TARDIS and shortly left the scene of the lure — a burning priory in 1911 that might someday turn out to be UNIT HQ.
However from that time onwards, we now know, Sutekh was wrapped across the TARDIS, “staring into eternity and slowly evolving into my godhood.”
That is proper — each single Physician Who story from “Pyramids of Mars” to “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” has been irrevocably modified, as a result of every one now incorporates secret Sutekh.
The Sutekh-on-the-TARDIS period now begins with “The Android Invasion” (1975) and continues for an astonishing 231 extra TV tales, together with every little thing within the final 19 “New Who” years of Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, Tennant once more, and now Ncuti Gatwa. There are tons of of implications. To select only one: When Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) clung to the skin of the TARDIS in “Utopia” (2007), he was using with Sutekh to the literal finish of the universe.
No marvel Gatwa’s Physician screamed when he considered all of the worlds he’d by accident contaminated with Sutekh’s Susan clones. We must always too. In watching him do it, oblivious themselves, the TV audiences of the final 49 years are successfully complicit. Title one other present that can provide you a twist like this!
The twist does, nevertheless, additionally mess with the tales of Sutekh’s return in Physician Who comics, novels, and Large End audio dramas. However hey, you may all the time head-canon that downside away by saying Sutekh bought splintered in time, or some such typical Who rationalization.
The Reminiscence TARDIS is now canon.
That ersatz TARDIS held along with “memories and wishes”? Not solely is it a fan’s dream, with extra Easter eggs than you may wave psychic paper at — such because the “WHO 1” license plate from the Physician’s automotive Bessie within the Jon Pertwee period, and the traditional present’s TARDIS console on the ceiling — it is also the setting for Tales of the TARDIS, a latest BBC sequence that repackages traditional multi-part tales in omnibus editions — together with, most just lately, “Pyramids of Mars.”
In bookend scenes, companions and Docs from the traditional period (all performed by their authentic actors at their present creaky ages) reminisce within the so-called Reminiscence TARDIS. Not one of the characters know the way they bought there, besides to counsel that the TARDIS itself is dreaming. Now we all know why — and Davies can pat himself on the again for putting one of many key moments from the finale in a spin-off that began the earlier yr.
Easy methods to watch: Tales of the Tardis is streaming on BBC iPlayer within the UK. No phrase but on when or even when Tales of the TARDIS will ever land on Disney+, although the companion bookend scenes have been uploaded by followers to YouTube.
Mashable Prime Tales
The Physician likes to look at himself in “Pyramids of Mars.”
Gatwa’s Physician spends chunk of his first scene with Sutekh staring on the traditional Tom Baker story in query. Now at first look, it could appear unusual that this supposed reminiscence of the Physician’s seems very very like a BBC manufacturing from 1975, full with digicam angles and cuts.
However there’s precedent for this, most notably in “Trial of a Time Lord” (1986). On this season-long story, the Physician (Colin Baker) and his prosecutor the Valeyard (Michael Jayston) argue over a number of new-to-us Physician adventures whereas they watch them on an enormous projector display screen in court docket. The battered cathode ray tube display screen Gatwa is toting at the least appears far more Physician-ish.
Easy methods to watch: “Pyramids of Mars” is streaming on BBC iPlayer within the UK and Britbox within the U.S.
Mel misses the Sixth Physician’s uncommon outfit.
Ncuti Gatwa and Bonnie Langford in “Empire of Death.”
Credit score: Disney+
Talking of Colin Baker, his polka-dot bow tie and his eyesore of a multicolored coat is entrance and heart within the Reminiscence TARDIS — which explains why Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) has a nostalgic second when she sees them.
Mel was launched in “Trial of a Time Lord,” however misplaced that model of the Physician within the very subsequent story when he regenerated into the Seventh Physician, Sylvester McCoy. Was this her means of claiming McCoy ought to have stored the coat?
The Physician has historical past with spoons… and whistles.
The spoon that the Physician procures on a distant planet is way from the primary to look within the present. McCoy’s Physician, like McCoy himself, preferred to play the spoons. Peter Capaldi’s Physician as soon as dueled Robin Hood in a splendidly foolish spoon-on-sword battle. And Jodie Whittaker’s Physician melted Sheffield metal spoons to make her sonic screwdriver.
However that is nothing in comparison with the Physician’s love of (literal) canine whistles. He used one many occasions within the Tom Baker period, typically to summon his robotic canine Okay-9 and typically to incapacitate or annoy army figures and officers. The truth that it was a canine whistle ought to have been a clue to the Physician’s plan to pull Sutekh by way of the Time Vortex like Mitt Romney with the household canine.
The Beatles teased the ending of “Empire of Death.”
The Beatles in “The Devil’s Chord.”
Credit score: Disney+
“My dog is alive, he’s not dead,” the Beatles sang earlier within the season, in “The Satan’s Chord.” On the time it was seen merely as doggerel (pun very a lot meant), a sign that the world had misplaced its musical mojo. However the big invisible dog-headed deity sitting exterior the TARDIS on Abbey Highway knew in another way. If solely the Physician had listened to the Beatles!
Sutekh is cultural appropriation.
Talking of the dog-headed alien deity, why did he simply occur to appear to be the Egyptian god named Sutekh? “Cultural appropriation,” says the Physician — a well timed reversal of an outdated Who trope.
In “Pyramids of Mars,” Tom Baker’s Physician says Sutekh was so evil that cultures throughout the universe designed their gods to appear to be him — which is, y’know, a bit dismissive of 1000’s of years of historical Egyptian historical past. So it is becoming that the primary Physician actor born in Africa (Gatwa is Rwandan-Scottish) will get to face up for the dignity of the continent’s oldest civilization.
73 yards is the radius of the TARDIS’ notion filter!
Aneurin Barnard as Roger ap Gwilliam in “73 Yards.”
Credit score: Disney+
Sutekh created all these Susans on the fringe of the TARDIS’ notion filter — which the Physician reveals to be a distance of 66.7 meters. Ruby remembers that that is 73 yards. Which is in fact the title of this season’s episode through which an older model of her follows Ruby at this distance for her complete life till she breaks a time loop, erasing her reminiscence of the complete story.
In “73 Yards,” UNIT commander Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) postulated that the thriller stalker had one thing to do with the TARDIS’ notion filter. (Confirmed!) That is additionally the gap of the CCTV digicam that recorded the occasions on Ruby Highway seen in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.”
We additionally see Roger ap Gwilliam (Aneurin Barnard), the longer term fascist Prime Minister from “73 Yards,” whose genetic database allowed Ruby to search out her mum. However that raises a terrifying prospect: if the time loop is damaged, and Ruby’s stalker not scares Gwilliam into resigning, and Sutekh restored the lives of everybody in that future Britain, does that imply the nuclear-mad PM will get to launch his missiles in spite of everything?
Extra Physician Who planets than ever bought a shout-out.
Skaro, dwelling of the Daleks. Telos, dwelling of the Cybermen. (Properly, certainly one of their houses — lengthy story.) The Ood Sphere, dwelling of the Ood. These are simply a few of the planet that get a shoutout from the Physician as Sutekh inadvertently restores life to all of them. (Agua Santina, the planet with the lady with the spoon and the infant, is completely new.)
The others are fairly deep cuts, to place it mildly. Solely two are from the New Who period: Messaline from “The Doctor’s Daughter” and Shan Shen from “Turn Left.” The others are all traditional present areas: Vortis from “The Web Planet”, Tigella from “Meglos,” Calufrax from “The Pirate Planet,” Spiridon from “Planet of the Daleks.”
You might in all probability watch all these tales, however you may need to be an historical god wrapped round a TARDIS to have that form of time in your arms.
Easy methods to watch: All Gatwa’s first season of Physician Who is on Disney+, the place out there, and on BBC iPlayer within the UK.
