The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death
OK, so The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death didn't make a lickspittle of sense, but I'm not sure why anyone thought it would. Well, I suppose, we had vaguely hoped that RTD might have learned a bit of restraint and matched it with a stronger sense of plot coherency but, honestly, nothing about the season up to this point had suggested "restraint".
Given it was, like most, if not all, of RTD's finales, a hot mess, was it any fun? It was really. There are at least two finales I like less than this. I enjoyed the UNIT family, the memory Tardis, Mel... I really liked the Doctor and Ruby working together at the end to catch Sutekh. I thought the Time Window was effective even if it went on a bit long.
I enjoyed Sutekh though I do slightly question the wisdom of building your season finale, a season that was being pushed as a "jumping on" point for new viewers, on a one-off monster from 1975. Agreed, it was a one-off monster from a truly excellent story from 1975 but new viewers aren't to know that, and beyond being a God of Death, I'm not sure this Sutekh really owed a great deal to the last one.
Obviously, I'm not arguably the most successful British TV show runner of my generation, so it may be that I am missing the genius here.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elisi linked me to this guy on YouTube who is watching Doctor Who for the first time starting with The Church on Ruby Road and it's delightful. He seems to be enjoying it immensely and has now looped back to Rose, so hopefully he is typical of the new audience.
I wasn't all that impressed with the resolution to the mystery around Ruby. I get, and appreciate, the intention behind it - but it does leave a whole load of stuff (the snow, Maestro implying she had some buried melody related to the Toymaker, or possibly Sutekh) unexplained. Maybe we will get more next season when Millie Gibson will be back, at least in some episodes. I am amused by the thought that the thing that finally got Sutekh to stop just lurking on the Tardis and watching stuff happen was that he was as curious as everyone else about who she was. Sutekh, is really, just another Doctor Who fan!
Anyway, it was fun. It would have been nice if it could have been a bit tighter and had more of a logical thread through it, but I wasn't really expecting it to so I wasn't really disappointed.
Given it was, like most, if not all, of RTD's finales, a hot mess, was it any fun? It was really. There are at least two finales I like less than this. I enjoyed the UNIT family, the memory Tardis, Mel... I really liked the Doctor and Ruby working together at the end to catch Sutekh. I thought the Time Window was effective even if it went on a bit long.
I enjoyed Sutekh though I do slightly question the wisdom of building your season finale, a season that was being pushed as a "jumping on" point for new viewers, on a one-off monster from 1975. Agreed, it was a one-off monster from a truly excellent story from 1975 but new viewers aren't to know that, and beyond being a God of Death, I'm not sure this Sutekh really owed a great deal to the last one.
Obviously, I'm not arguably the most successful British TV show runner of my generation, so it may be that I am missing the genius here.
elisi linked me to this guy on YouTube who is watching Doctor Who for the first time starting with The Church on Ruby Road and it's delightful. He seems to be enjoying it immensely and has now looped back to Rose, so hopefully he is typical of the new audience.I wasn't all that impressed with the resolution to the mystery around Ruby. I get, and appreciate, the intention behind it - but it does leave a whole load of stuff (the snow, Maestro implying she had some buried melody related to the Toymaker, or possibly Sutekh) unexplained. Maybe we will get more next season when Millie Gibson will be back, at least in some episodes. I am amused by the thought that the thing that finally got Sutekh to stop just lurking on the Tardis and watching stuff happen was that he was as curious as everyone else about who she was. Sutekh, is really, just another Doctor Who fan!
Anyway, it was fun. It would have been nice if it could have been a bit tighter and had more of a logical thread through it, but I wasn't really expecting it to so I wasn't really disappointed.