The One Who Waits is waiting no more, and you might be surprised to learn who he is…
Recap
The Doctor heads to UNIT—which contains Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney), Morris Gibbons (Lenny Rush), Colonel Christopher Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), and Harriet Arbinger (Genesis Lynea) in HQ today—to ask them for help with the woman that keeps appearing in his travels. The group is generally unsurprised to see her pop up; they’ve been tracking a woman on Earth who looks the same, a Susan Triad (Susan Twist), who is the leader of Susan Triad Technology. They’d already flagged her because “S Triad” is an anagram for TARDIS, and they figured that meant something. Mel (Bonnie Langford) has been undercover working with her PR team, and has found her to be very… nice. The Doctor has a thought that perhaps Susan could be his granddaughter, owing to her having the same name, leading to a conversation with Ruby about regeneration.
The Doctor then introduces Ruby to UNIT, explaining all the strange happenings that have occurred around her. The group thinks that they might be able to shed some light around Ruby’s parentage, so Ruby heads home to pick up the VHS tape of the CCTV footage from the night she was dropped off at the church. Carla insists on coming with Ruby, and the Doctor gives her UNIT access to Kate’s dismay. They leave Cherry at home with Mrs. Flood, who proceeds to be very unconcerned with taking care of Cherry; Mrs. Flood claims that she’s always “hidden away” for whatever reason, but that now there’s a storm approaching and “He waits no more.”
The Doctor asks if UNIT has a Time Window, even though he long ago made them promise never to mess with time technology. Of course they have one, though it’s very bare bones. They use the tape and Ruby’s memories to help the window along, producing a landscape of that night. Though Ruby’s mother is there, she has a hood up and no one can see her face regardless of the angle. When the Doctor arrives to stop the goblins in the past, Ruby’s mother seems to point at him, or possibly beyond him. Colonel Winston Chidozie (Techie Newali) goes to investigate and walks behind the TARDIS. The Doctor then leaves and the TARDIS disappears, with Ruby’s mother now gone—but directly behind where the TARDIS had been is a fiery swirling vortex using Chidozie’s voice.
The Time Window overloads and shuts down, leaving behind only Chidozie’s body, which has practically turned to dust. The Doctor goes with Mel, who is preparing Susan Triad for the launch of a major free technology she’s offering to the world. When he has a little breakdown before meeting Susan, Mel helps him buck up and keep going. The Doctor meets Triad and knows she’s not his Susan, but when she mentions trouble sleeping, he asks if she’s been having dreams of the other places he’s seen her. It’s clear that she has, but she rushes away to begin her presentation.
As UNIT analyzes the data from the window, they realize that the swirling vortex had the TARDIS at the center of it. It occurs to them that the entity they saw is now in their time and around the TARDIS itself. They analyze the ship and find the entity is there and invisible. Harriet starts speaking strangely and it becomes clear that she’s the harbinger (H. Arbinger) of The One Who Waits, who appears to UNIT and reveals himself to be Sutekh (Sue Tech, get it?), the god of death. The god has Susan possessed as well and she kills her assistant mid-broadcast, then reaches for the Doctor…
Commentary
I missed finale lead-ups like this. No one does mounting tension quite like Davies, and he’s really good at one thing that always works on me: Keeping the viewer looking so many directions at once that you don’t really have enough time to figure out what’s going on until it’s right on top of you.
Of course, if you’re familiar with the serial that Sutekh heralds from—Pyramids of Mars—you know this is gonna get gnarly. The Fourth Doctor failed to prevent the escape of Sutekh from a prison created by brother Horus, but he solved that initial problem by messing with the time tunnel that would release him by essentially making it so long that Sutekh would die of old age by the time he emerged. Sounded good at the time, but now he’s free of it and unsurprisingly pissed and ready to wreak vengeance on the one who did this to him.
As a general side note, the Pyramids of Mars serial is casually racist in a way that many earlier Who stories unfortunately were—yes, they did that thing where they posit that the ancient Egyptian gods (and their tech) were obviously aliens. (They did it before Stargate, too, which is always funny to me.) Sutekh and Horus are Osirans (which, that’s also cringey), a race which is largely gone from the universe… but Sutekh is still kicking and trying to get free to conquer all with death.
So far I’m appreciating the revival because Davies is very clearly showing us in no uncertain terms that alien or not, Sutekh is, in fact, a god, on par with any other god. To that end, the reveal of Sutekh has a great deal in common with the way that they released the Devil on the show in season two’s “The Satan Pit,” particularly with Harriet’s litany proceeding it. But even with that coming for the season finale, there’s so much else going on that needs unpacking, starting with Ruby’s mother and the possibility that maybe Susan could somehow be related to all of this? Or to Ruby herself?
The choice to make Ruby’s biological mother within in the Time Window like something directly out of a horror movie was an excellent ploy, and so effective as a red herring during the entire sequence. Also, the introduction to that with the Doctor knowing that UNIT has been experimenting with time tech despite his mandate, and then coming in to laugh at their shoddy work was beautiful. Fifteen is just so good. (Also, this week’s outfit? The costume changes have been brilliant, but to have him go full modern rockabilly right now was a thing I was not prepared for, you gotta warn me.) I also need to give a moment to the fact that Kate seems to have finally internalized the fact that she’s going to be spending her entire career working with and around her childhood hero, and that means she’s allowed to hug him, and will now do it whenever she thinks either of them need it? I sniffled.
Gibson turned in a stellar performance here, but the one place in the episode where I actually cried was when Carla started talking about Ruby’s mother weeping at leaving her child behind, and trying to call across time to a woman she doesn’t know to tell her that she took care of her daughter and that she was safe and loved. We still have no idea who Ruby’s mother is, but Carla Sunday instantly feels this need to bond with her, to empathize with her, to assure her that her child has this wonderful future ahead of her. Carla is incredible. Also, the Doctor just fully granting her access to UNIT when he used to be such a grump about any companion’s mother hanging around, this is growth, yet again. We love it.
I do need to take a moment and acknowledge what a big deal it is that we now know for sure that (1) Susan is a Time Lord, which wasn’t a given, and (2) the Doctor hasn’t actually had kids yet. That’s… so good? It gives the story an entirely new weight and makes so much sense out of the Doctor’s relationship with Susan back when he show started—there were many questions about how they wound up traveling together that needed answers, and now we’ve got new but far more interesting ones.
For example… when the Doctor has kids eventually, will it be a version of them who has recovered all their memories? Because if so, that makes the Doctor’s choice to run away with his grandkid that much more heartbreaking; he’s just started in on a forced regeneration cycle with his memory erased and is subconsciously reaching for a part of himself that knows who he is. Moreover, did Susan know her grandfather before meeting this version? Because she either came with him to get to know him better, or she came with him because she knows about this time in his life, and is actively choosing to safeguard him at a point when he’s vulnerable and relearning who he is. Like… do you see? The possibilities here are endless and so good.
Also we have to talk about Mel! Mel being such an absolute star, who can wriggle her way in anywhere because she’s peppy and sunny and generally wonderful. But she still gets that moment when the Doctor is drowning in his feelings to stand there and tell him that the universe doesn’t have time for it, he can go down that well after the work is done. From anyone else that would feel unnecessarily callous, but from her it’s just a reminder of all the things she’s already been through with him—she knows how he gets, and that he needs the tweak sometimes. (Six could be so dramatic; she’s dealt with far worse.) It’s a moment borne of their specific history, which is something the show has been so great at tackling of late. You can see it when she turns away and continues on, and he just… grins. He adores her and she’s right and he would never let her down. That was how they worked.
But who is Mrs. Flood? Because I don’t buy that she’s just an agent of Sutekh, something else is going on here. And we’ve only got one more episode, so I’m guessing not all the mysteries will be solved.
Time and Space and Sundry
- Okay, but if Ruby turned out to be Susan’s daughter, and the Doctor was accidentally now tooling around with his great-granddaughter, I would love it? That’s a genuinely beautiful loop around for the show to take, a great way of rebuilding the original (OG 1963) dynamic of the series in an entirely new way. It’s fine either way, but I’m excited at the prospect.
- The Doctor asks about Rose’s mom and her “uncle” and I desperately wanted her to say “Mum’s on holiday with uncle because if he’d gotten wind of the stuff with Susan Triad, he’d be living under a desk here driving everyone mad, so her job is to distract him until you figure this out.” Because you know that’s exactly what’s happening. (Also, Rose and Ruby bonding is my other favorite thing, yes, more.)
- Sorry, but the Doctor and Colonel Ibrahim clearly have a thing going on the same way Ten did with Ross. The Doctor loves very specific UNIT boys…
- Apparently Lenny Rush was going to be one of the voices in “Space Babies,” but the producers were so impressed with him that they wanted to give him a bigger role. Which then further plays into UNIT employing various brilliant and disabled folks, which is continuing to make me so very pleased.
- Davies does love his wordplay/anagram stuff (there was the Yana thing and the “Bad Wolf” prevalence, and so on), and I genuinely never want him to stop doing it? Especially because the twist in this is down to the Doctor being so grandiose in his own legend-ness that he effectively mutes his best asset: UNIT also comes to the same anagram conclusion with S. Triad, because to them, he is the greatest thing in universe. It never occurs to them that it could be something else, and it also never occurs to him because of course it doesn’t.
- The person doing the voice of Sutekh is in fact Gabriel Woolf, the man who played the part way back in 1975, so this return was literally a half-century in the making—the man is now 91 years old. I am… so happy about this? I might explode.
Finale’s coming. How do you stop a god of death?
he Doctor asks about Rose’s mom and her “uncle” and I desperately wanted her to say “Mum’s on holiday with uncle because if he’d gotten wind of the stuff with Susan Triad, he’d be living under a desk here driving everyone mad, so her job is to distract him until you figure this out.” Because you know that’s exactly what’s happening. (Also, Rose and Ruby bonding is my other favorite thing, yes, more.)
I like that vision. I will also note that Donna has canonically missed every single alien invasion that happened, so why change that now? The only ones she noticed were ones when she was with the Doctor as a companion and he wasn’t on holiday. Her streak continues and provides a pretty good reason why The Doctor may not show up for this invasion, unless he does.
I love how now that we know it’s Sutekh, the bit in The Devil’s Chord where the Doctor shows Ruby the alternate apocalyptic future turned out not to just be a nod to when the Fourth Doctor showed Sarah Jane the same thing in Pyramids of Mars, but damned foreshadowing of Sutekh’s return. Well played, Mr. Davies.
Yes. Well-played indeed. A reference that meant two things at once (like S Triad)
I thought it was way too labored. S Triad Technologies becomes Susan Triad Tech becomes Sue Tech? That’s just trying way too hard to be clever. And it bugged me when the Doctor said “We had the wrong anagram.” “Sue Tech” isn’t an anagram, more of a portmanteau.
Also, it’s kind of cheating to give someone a fake surname to create an anagram. I can’t find any indication that the surname “Triad” actually exists. And it does look to me like Darit and Ardit are valid surnames; “S Ardit” would be too easy to decipher, but “S Darit” could’ve worked.
“I can’t find any indication that the surname ‘Triad’ actually exists.”
Paging the Maestro and their secret chord… (Very much agreed on “Sue Tech”.)
I suppose an in-universe handwave could be that “Triad” is a simplification of a Greek surname like Triandafilos or Triantopolous.
My initial reaction to this episode was that it felt too drawn out, as if there was too much story for one episode but not enough for two, but this has been a perennial problem for Doctor Who stories with this format, and at least they’re a lot better at it now than the people who first gave it a go in 1985.
I also didn’t think the Susan fakeout was necessary unless they’re actually going to do something with her in the finale, though I really like the timey-wimey twist on her parentage. It’s at least a lot more interesting than most of the speculation about it that I’ve heard over the decades.
However, my biggest complaint about the episode is that it brought Rose back but didn’t do anything with her. I think she was criminally underdeveloped in her first appearance, so when I saw her show up here, I really hoped we’d learn more about her.
That being said, I loved Gatwa in this. His acting has been one of the strengths of this season, and he mostly does great work here, particularly during the scenes where he was mourning Colonel Chidozie (RIP Cheetham Hill) and meeting Sue Triad. I also thought Susan Twist was terrific, and I’m glad Lenny Rush got a bigger part. And count me among those who are delighted that Gabriel Woolf is back as Sutekh. He’s been a part of the franchise on and off for fifty years, so I’m pleased that he got the opportunity to return to the show.
This wasn’t bad, but like “73 Yards,” it felt way too constructed to set up a mystery for its own sake, rather than having a mystery that makes sense in-story. I mean, this was a hell of a convoluted way for Sutekh to free himself. I guess the idea was that he set up a recurring mystery with a woman named Susan showing up everywhere the Doctor went so that he’d go to UNIT and ask them investigate, then think it was his granddaughter so he’d be motivated to dig deeper, and I guess somehow the Time Window was necessary to let Sutekh through, but it’s just all so convoluted, more the writer showing off his own cleverness than a story that really comes together organically.
Not to mention that it handed the Doctor the Idiot Ball. As soon as he suggested using the Time Window, I said “That’s the trap,” and I said it again several times as the scene played out (because none of the characters on the screen seemed to hear me for some reason). And as soon as Chidozie stepped behind the TARDIS, it was blatantly telegraphed that something horrible would happen to him, but it was a couple of minutes before anyone even noticed he was gone.
The claim that the Doctor hasn’t had children yet is a retcon. The Tenth Doctor explicitly said in “Fear Her” and “The Doctor’s Daughter” that he’d been a father in the past, the Eleventh boasted of having “dad skills,” and Clara mentioned in “Death in Heaven” that the Doctor had had children.
It’s interesting that the listing of the gods of the pantheon at the end included the Mara from “Kinda” and “Snakedance” and the Trickster, Sarah Jane Smith’s nemesis from The Sarah Jane Adventures.
“(They did it before Stargate, too, which is always funny to me.)”
It shouldn’t be, because there was nothing remotely innovative about Stargate. That movie was just a rehash of tropes that were already decades out of date when it came out. Sci-fi stories positing ancient gods and pyramid-builders as aliens have been around for ages; the original Star Trek did it with the Greek gods in the live-action series and Kukulkan and Lucifer in the animated series, and of course Arthur C. Clarke did the “Satan was actually an alien” thing in Childhood’s End — and let’s not forget Doctor Who‘s “The Daemons” and “The Satan Pit.” It’s not just other cultures’ deities that get the treatment.
In all honesty it occurred to me that an entire episode of The Doctor KNOWING that Sutekh was coming, but seeing his plans crumble beneath the power of an outright Godlike being might have been a more appropriate reintroduction for the character, but I’m withholding judgement until we see the conclusion of this two-parter.
Also, it’s worth considering that The Doctor having already been a father, but not yet having produced Susan’s own parent, is a possibility.
I mean you can do quite a bit of getting around when you can enjoy multiple lifetimes …
If the kids the Doctor fathers in his future end up with him in his past, then it all still works…kind of.
i liked it. I loved some things about it. what almost kicked me out of the story & had me hesitating whether or not to finish watching it, was when the Doctor says he didn’t have kids yet. there are quite a few reboots I won’t watch for the reason that they severely retcon the original. some retcon is ok, sometimes even better. But 10 explicitly mentions he has had a kid.
__________________________
From “Fear Her”
ROSE: Easy for you to say. You don’t have kids.
DOCTOR: I was a dad once
———————————-
From “The Doctor’s Daughter”
DOCTOR: Donna, I’ve been a father before.
DONNA: What?
DOCTOR: I lost all that a long time ago, along with everything else.
DONNA: I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me? You talk all the time, but you don’t say anything.
DOCTOR: I know. I’m just. When I look at her now, I can see them. The hole they left, all the pain that filled it. I just don’t know if I can face that every day.
DONNA: It won’t stay like that. She’ll help you. We both will.
DOCTOR: But when they died, that part of me died with them. It’ll never come back. Not now.
DONNA: I tell you something, Doctor. Something I’ve never told you before. I think you’re wrong. (I included this whole speech because I thought was important)
‐———————————
And also when Clara was pretending to be the Doctor in “Death in Heaven”
CLARA: Well, gentlemen. Where to start? I was born on the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’m a Time Lord, but my Prydonian privileges were revoked when I stole a time capsule and ran away. Currently pilot a Type 40 Tardis. I’ve been married four times, all deceased. My children and grandchildren are missing, and I assume, dead. I have a non-Gallifreyan daughter created via genetic transfer. How much more do you need? I’m the Doctor. (Again quoted whole speech because she obviously knew, whether because the Doctor told her or she found out in her trip through 11)
__________________________
If he doesn’t have kids yet, did Susan and/or someone come up to him as Doctor 1 & just tell him they were his kid/grandkid? Something like River? What about Jenny? He forgot her? Well, we have just a few days to wait & see, unless it’ll be resolved next season.
Didn’t 15 bond with the AI in Boom by specifically mentioning he was a father?
Yeah, among other reasons, that’s why this is a strange retcon
That was kind of a big plot point, which is why I think this is going to end up being more complicated than simply a retcon.
Loved the episode, even though it was slow/weird at times. But several things in the plot made no sense (I know, I know, it’s Doctor Who…sense is not compulsory, but still). Two things especially:
Why would he expect it to be Susan? She was specifically left behind on a future earth in effectively a different timeline (and without a TARDIS or anything). Other than Mel, as far as I can recall, all the other companions who we’ve met again after they left the doctor were the ones who were left on Earth in their respective times – Ian, Sarah, Jo, Tegan, Ace, Graeme…and for Mel we have a clear story of how she got back (through space, not time, as far as I could gather, and that too because she was in a technologically advanced part of the galaxy…and it was still a complete surprise to the
DocDoctor. So why would he expect his Susan? Also why would he expect to recognise her on sight (can’t just be that she’s a time lord, since he has consistently failed to recognise the Master – be it Yana, Saxon, Missy or Sacha. In the classic series Drax recognised the Doctor just fine though so the lore is inconsistent!)
Also, we’ve been explicitly told by the Doctor himself, on multiple occasions, that he has had children. Though I suppose we could reconcile this using Rule 1: The Doctor Lies!
Really curious how Sutekh got out of the time tunnel given that the 4th Doctor seemed pretty sure he’d died after 7000 years…but I assume there’s a timey-wimey reason (faking death, chronon disintegration, reversing the polarity) that we’ll find out next episode. Again, the Master used to get away from all kinds of certain death, from T. Rexes to Volcanoes, so there is certainly precedent here.
Nonetheless, really looking forward to the finale. Which is a good sign – Doctor Who is fun again!
“Other than Mel, as far as I can recall, all the other companions who we’ve met again after they left the doctor were the ones who were left on Earth in their respective times – Ian, Sarah, Jo, Tegan, Ace, Graham…”
I wonder if the show will go on long enough that we will eventually meet Zoe Heriot as she’s living in the show’s present?
It’s funny, I saw a lot of speculation last week that the big reveal would be Sutekh, based only on the look of one of the Susan Twist characters. Then the preview revealed that persona to be a random alien (a griffin), and everybody thought that theory had been debunked. But many fans had the name Sutekh fresh in their mind when the reveal happened.
Regarding Mrs. Flood, her line “I always hide myself away” seems to echo what the Doctor said about regenerating one’s face to hide (and she’s the one who said at the end of the Christmas special “What? You’ve never seen a TARDIS before?”, and Susan claims to have been the one who coined the term). But it is hard to square Mrs. Flood being Susan with her ominous warning to Cherry.
Talking of Susan, how would the Doctor know whether they’ve had kids, if so much of their life is still missing? That would be reason enough to look inside that fobwatch.
I was afraid that Shirley Bingham was gone and they were just replacing one person with a disability with another, but it seems she’s coming back, so hopefully we’ll get to see her and Morris Gibbons interact in a future episode!
It’s amazing that Gabriel Woolf got to voice Sutekh again, but it doesn’t beat the giddiness I felt at hearing Ysanne Churchman returning as Alpha Centauri in Empress of Mars (even though that was a mere 43 years gap for her).
I have questions.
How does Sutekh know about Susan? I don´t remember Doctor mentioning her in Pyramids of Mars (I´ll need to rewatch it). And even Kate never heard of her (though Brigadier did meet Susan in Five Doctors (did Doctor introduce her as his granddaughter? I´ll need to rewatch this one, too.) Whis makes me think RTD wants to make sure we understand that Sutekh didn´t get the information about Susan from UNIT. Which makes me think: could Mrs. Flood be Susan? And somehow linked to Sutekh as someone hiding from him, or trying to stop him? Sutekh knows about her – knows her, uses her name as bait. I didn´t think so after christmas episode (Mrs. Flood seemed to recognize Tardis only After she seen her dematerialize; I thought she may be a time lady (used to seeing tardises with working chameleon circuit). Now I keep thinking about that weird retcon… why mentioning Doctor possibly not meeting his kids before his granddaughter? Maybe to point out that his family could be a bit timey-wimey… Did Doctor and River ever have kids? Just… that name, Flood, makes me think about River.
I hope it´ll be explained next time, but Sutekh somehow managed to survive, he got to the end of universe (maybe that was his way of getting out of the coridor – somehow escaping beyond time and space itself), he attached himself to the Tardis, in present day he posessed Susan Triad (I suppose she was a real person with different name), but still hopped around with the Tardis, making his human form (Susan T.) somehow manifest in all the places – and making her dream about it? Why? Was it really just to get Doctor to the present day? What is this tech Susan T. is giving for free? Why did Doctor decide to solve both mysteries, Susan and Ruby, at once? How are they connected?
Sutehk has been riding around in the Tardis for a while, at least since Wide Blue Yonder where we first heard the groaning. The Tardis knows about Susan being The Doctor’s granddaughter, so Sutehk could well have gotten the information from it.
I’m guessing having grandkids before having kids is a timey wimey thing, where the Doctor meet Susan before he met her mother and Susan never told him who her mother was. It could also be The Doctor deflecting any questions. The fact that Russel allowed a mention of the Doctor being a father in Boom, indicates that something is going on. The Doctor may have been addressing ONLY the Susan situation, not his marital history in general
Thank you so much, seriously, for the light-bulb realization that Sutekh latched on from the edge of the universe or whatever in “Wild Blue Yonder” because it was colossally bugging me that we had no explanation for Susan Twist having been everywhere ; we still don’t have an explicit one yet, but your observation calmed me down a bit. :^)
For a second I thought: what, Sutekh interrogating Tardis? Wow, interesting. But I get it now. Doctor did mention Susan to Ruby – obviously Sutekh was listening. Now I imagine Sutekh spying on Doctor and Ruby this whole season – basically watching the show. :D
I’m fairly confident that you don’t STOP a god of Death, you survive them,
Concerning the episode, I liked a good deal of it (Especially the reminder that Ruby was born in THIS Milennium and that surveillance cameras were at work, even when not especially helpful) though one was rather annoyed by:-
(1) The Doctor mocking UNIT’s efforts to bootstrap their technology from ‘digital’ to ‘quantum’ without a lick of help from the sometime resident expert who absolutely refused to help at any point – it felt like cultural chauvinism, rather than a friendly nudge in the ribs.
(2) Everyone assuming that enigmatic figure in the cowled robe MUST be Ruby’s birth mother (One would like to point out that Ruby’s mother is the one who raised her, loved her and is currently standing right next to her) when all we know about this figure is that they’re vaguely humanoid, cloaked in mystery and played postman with Baby Sunday.
In an episode built around the danger of making Assumptions, this might be a very dangerous one.
Anyway, I suspect this episode will be only as good as it’s sequel: whether or not the final episode proves to be a genuinely Grand Finale will dictate my final grade for this episode (Since so much hinges on whether or not Sutekh justifies yet another “The Doctor failed to see THIS one coming!” villain reveal).
Yeah, I’ve been wondering if I missed something re the Doctor and everyone else just assuming that the hooded lady is in fact Ruby’s biological mother.
Except there’s reason to believe she is, because Davina McCall said in “The Church…” that there was no genetic record for Ruby’s mother on file anywhere. True, there are no doubt mundane reasons why someone’s DNA wouldn’t be in any database, but the fact that Ruby hasn’t been able to track down her birth mother by any possible means does seem to imply that there’s something anomalous about her. If the hooded woman isn’t her mother, there would still be a separate mystery about why there’s no evidence of her mother.
I am very glad that Susan Triad isn’t Susan Foreman. The idea that Susan would become a villain just seems majorly unpleasant. I’d rather she never turned up again if that’s the only option.
The whole thing with the Doctor saying he hasn’t been a parent to Susan’s parents yet is such an odd thing from one angle, given the comments (as noted here) of the past. I can’t really see RTD wanting to deal with all that, so I almost feel like it’s on purpose to open up some new area of speculation, like the Doctor’s origins.
I think this is the consequence of how much of the “lore” was cleared up during the 11th and 12th Dr eras. There we got to be told that the Dr’s real name was important/but not actually important, we saw Clara choose the Dr’s TARDIS, we saw Clara be the inspiration behind why the Dr runs, we got told why the Dr left Gallifrey, we got the TARDIS explained in two different ways, and we got the Time War defused. Moffatt wrote the show like it was ending and while it was nice to have those little things tied up in the short term, for an ongoing show it closed off a lot of things. I think that indirectly has led to both the Timeless Child revelations and possibly this as well. Things that I don’t think are intended to be “solved” but to be left for people to ponder.
I was going to say this before I saw the final episode, but while it’s nice to see Bonnie, I’m not sure why Mel is here.
Well, to be fair, Susan Triad wasn’t actually a villain, just someone taken over by Sutekh, the same way Mel was later. And the possiibility that she was Susan Foreman was already debunked by the time she was taken over.
What is the deal with Kate seeking out the hand of one of the security guys after danger had passed? Surely, fraternizing with staff is forbidden?!