#i don't feel like i have a good handle on ruby as a companion yet - i don't think shes been given much room to flex her character

[le-guin]

FINALLY getting to watch ncuti's episodes of doctor who bc the friend i watch with finally has the time. Space babies was forgettable and fine and the best parts were getting to know 15 and ruby, i love that their dynamic feels very "two troublemakers seeking out shenanigans" it's refreshing and it's great so far, and the devil's chord was absolutely fantastic and maestro was a delight to watch

ending musical number was also a delight until my friend mentioned that he's not a big fan of musicals in tv shows which has me A LITTLE worried for when we watch buffy the vampire slayer next and inevitably get to their QUITE CRUCIAL musical episode

[cringecompanionapologist]

So I Made Up a Needlessly Complicated Version of the Ruby's Mother Reveal

Yeah, it's been several months and I'm still frustrated and overthinking it. RTD finales have prioritized spectacle over sense before, so it's not like this is some kind of apocalyptic show-ending problem. I know the fandom treats every mistake, or thing that they personally don't like, as an apocalyptic show-ending problem, but the show just keeps on going whatever they think of it. There's gonna be more Doctor Who. We're not done yet.

But, yeah, Empire of Death was a bit of a mess. Specifically, the reveal of Ruby's mother was poorly done. The fact that she's just some normal woman is actually pretty good in theory. The problem is mainly in the way it's set up.

(This is gonna be long)

When I was The Church on Ruby Road when it aired, despite all the emphasis put on it, I assumed Ruby's mom was just some ordinary woman giving up her baby for ordinary reasons. Everyone was guessing the name of every female character in the history of the franchise and I was thinking, "Guy's, it's probably no one. We might meet her someday and do an emotional thing about it, but this is gonna be a Rose's dad situation where we meet the parent the character never met to find out that they're just a normal, average person. No big deal."

I thought the "Ruby is adopted and doesn't know who her biological parents are" thing was mainly a way to have the new companion bond with the Doctor. He hears about Ruby's situation and he realizes that he also doesn't know who his biological family is, and that maybe it's not really important to the person he became, but it's a part of his life, some small part of who he is, and he's curious. Since RTD's not just gonna retcon the Timeless Child, this would be a good way to handle it. Whatever the hell it does to the lore of the show, a character's backstory only matters in how it shapes who they are in the present. If a character learns something new about their past, you can ignore a lot of the implications of what this means for The Lore, if it leads to something interesting with the character.

(I suppose we're doing a little tangent about the Timeless Child now)

The biggest problem with the Timeless Child was that it both changed everything and changed nothing. Seeing the Fugitive Doctor, a Pre-Hartnell Doctor, travel in a TARDIS shaped like a police box, sometimes with companions, mostly acting just like a new series Doctor has a negative effect on the Hartnell Era. Apparently One's arc was becoming who he already was anyway.

But, let's say you're a more casual fan. You haven't seen the classic series. You don't know anything about the Hartnell Era. Maybe you started watching the show in Series 11. If you don't know All the Lore, then it doesn't matter how the show in 2020 fucks up what the show was in 1964. What matters is how this will effect the characters in the show as it is in 2020 moving forward.

And it really doesn't. The Doctor freaks out, because she has this past that she didn't know about, and then she admits that she never let where she came from define her before, so it doesn't have to matter. The only reason the Doctor has a Big Dramatic Reaction, as far as the audience can tell, is because there was a Big Dramatic Reveal, so it has to have a Big Dramatic Reaction.

So, when it comes to the show's past, the Timeless Child changes too much, but when it comes to the show's present, it doesn't really change anything, so depending on your relationship with the show, it's either a major insult to the Hartnell Era and the First Doctor's character arc, or it's just a lame twist that didn't go anywhere.

RTD fixed the second part, the part that effects the show in the present, in The Church on Ruby Road. He had the Doctor realize, through meeting Ruby, that he was basically adopted and, even if it doesn't really matter to who he is now, he still feels like he needs to know. Now the importance of the twist isn't based in the lore, but in the character, which gives you a reason to give a shit. It feels like this might go somewhere.

But then Space Babies aired. We have the strange, magic snow. The Doctor's memory of being at the church and seeing Ruby's mother changed, so now she's pointing ominously, when she wasn't before. The events of the night are apparently being rewritten in memory. So, it became clear that who Ruby's mom was was going to actually be important to the season's plot, not just as a character thing.

Then The Devil's Chord doubles down on this, having A LITERAL GOD be freaked out by the fact that The One Who Waits was apparently there when Ruby was born. So, yeah, Ruby's mom has to be important. Even if her mom wasn't important, her birth apparently was, since a powerful being that scares A LITERAL GOD found it important to show up.

Then the season ends and we get the twist that Ruby's mom was completely ordinary and she was only special because everyone thought she was. But why did everything think she was special? Because the show made it perfectly clear that she was! You've got magic snow, changing memories, all technology seeming to glitch around the incident. This isn't just a case of "she's the main character so she's gotta be special". We only thought who Ruby's mom was was important because we were repeatedly told that it was. So, it feels like the audience is being told they were foolish for listening, paying attention, basically doing what they were told to do.

I've tried to figure out all the supernatural stuff about the reveal, how it might all go back to Sutekh, but that doesn't make sense either. If Sutekh's been clinging to the TARDIS since The Pyramids of Mars, then he's been a lot of places and it didn't have these results. This isn't the first mystery the TARDIS has landed in the middle of either. Why was Ruby's mom worth all this, but not the cracks in time, or where all those different Claras came from?

Also, why does the GOD OF DEATH give a shit who anyone's mom is if he's just gonna kill them all anyway? Why is the GOD OF DEATH so invested in the details of one random person's life?

But, I like the idea of Ruby being ordinary. That's what most companions are, especially in the new series. They're normal people who end up in extraordinary situations and, because of that, end up doing extraordinary things. They aren't special because of who they are or where they came from, but because of what they do. That was the twist with Clara in series 7. There was nothing extraordinary about her before she met the Doctor, but she became extraordinary, showing up all over time and space, because she met the Doctor. I don't even like series 7 but it pulled off the "companion is just a regular person" twist better than Season/Series 1/14/40 did.

So, Ruby should be ordinary, but the season doesn't set it up properly. So, I thought of a way that the extraordinary set up could be used for the ordinary reveal, by basically having the ordinary inside the extraordinary. He's the way that I, some random person on the internet, but make this work:

So, I'm not even sure this works with Sutekh as the antagonist, but it works with Some Kind of Evil God Thing. Honestly, Sutekh in Empire of Death is more Some Kind of Evil God Thing, than the Specific Evil God Thing in Pyramids of Mars, so maybe this is fine.

Anyway, The One Who Waits has been waiting in The Void, or The Shadows, watching the Doctor, Waiting for...him to meet Ruby. Because Ruby was meant to be a trap. She's deliberately similar to Rose, who's basically the template for the new series companion. Ruby is 19 years old, blond, and has a four letter name that starts with R and refers to a shade of red. She practically has an IDEAL COMPANION sign floating over her head.

If there's too things the Doctor can't resist it's people who remind him of Rose, and mysteries. Clara became a companion because there was a mystery around her that got the Doctor's attention. So, we have a combination of Rose and Clara and a Big Damn Mystery for the Doctor to solve, with her backstory of being adopted giving her an even stronger emotional connection to the Doctor. There's no way she won't become a companion and there's no way the Doctor won't want to solve the mystery around her.

Ruby being abandoned on the doorstep of a church, though it is something that probably happens sometimes, looks like something out of a movie. It looks like how Ruby might imagine it, shrouded in mystery of a cloaked woman, surrounded by the beautiful but haunted Carol of the Bells and falling snow, all happening on a major holiday to drawn even more attention to it.

This whole scene was arranged by The One Who Waits (whoever that is, Sutekh or not. We'll just go with The One Who Waits for now). The One Who Waits is a god, sort of warping reality to create this big dramatic story.

So, Doctor meets Ruby and they go on adventures. The appearance of the various Susans creates another mystery to attract the Doctor's attention. Everywhere he goes with Ruby, a Susan appears. The One Who Waits has just created a bunch of copies of an original Susan and as his creations, he can control them and they do his bidding, even though they also can have lives and identities of their own.

The thing is, the Susans don't show up wherever the Doctor goes. If this had been happening since his 4th incarnation, he probably would've noticed that before hitting the 15th, especially since it only took a few months for the Doctor to notice it after Ruby showed up. The Susans show up wherever Ruby goes. Now that she's the Doctor's companion, the Susans are being scattered everywhere.

So, the Doctor is trying to figure out The Mystery of Ruby's Mom and The Mystery of the Susans at the same time. When they get things set up at UNIT and see Ruby's mom's face...It's another Susan. This only motivates the Doctor to investigate those further, eventually leading him to the right place at the write time for The One Who Waits to reveal himself.

But, no, Susan isn't Ruby's mom. The mysterious woman who placed Ruby on the steps of the church is a Susan, but not Ruby's mom. We get a sort of flashback revealing that Ruby's mom is...the same women she is in Empire of Death. But, she doesn't leave Ruby at the church. She puts her up for adoption, possibly at an agency, and the Susan either works at the agency or adopts Ruby and leaves her at the church in a staged dramatic scene. The One Who Waits basically waited for a baby to born and given up for adoption under the right circumstances.

The One Who Waits, being a God, had no problem erasing all records and memories of baby Ruby prior to the church. He could also fuck around and make DNA samples not lead to anything. He had to make sure Ruby couldn't solve the mystery on her own and he's a god, so he can kind of do whatever he wants to achieve that.

So, it turns out Ruby was an ordinary human with an ordinary mother who put her up for adoption for ordinary reasons, but she just happened to be someone the Doctor's enemies could use as part of a trap. The One Who Waits, being a god, makes the magic happen. The snow, the changing memories, all this god fucking with everyone. Ruby became extraordinary because she was basically selected at random for happening to fit a set of criteria. And we get an exchange that's sorta like:

Ruby: All this trouble for someone who wasn't special.

Doctor: Of course she's special! She's your mum! Everyone's special to someone.

Or something like that. I dunno. I'm just writing AU fanfiction at this point.

[tinycastleguy]

I'm nearly caught up with NuWho and can I just say that I 100% get now why people have literal Rose-tinted glasses for the first four seasons.

Say what you want about Russell T Davies, but he at least knows how to write good female characters. His companions are relatable, funny, and have very real flaws and wants that anyone can identify with.

I don't see myself in a sexy girlboss archetype with a complicated backstory that revolves around the Doctor. I don't see myself in a woman that goes from giving people kissograms in her small town to having her own perfume line, and becoming a model when she gets bored of it. I'm not interested in a police officer who we're told has all these incredible traits but we barely get to see her exhibit any of them.

Not only do characters like Rose and Donna feel like people that we could meet in real life, but they provide the plot with a human lens that both contrasts with and challenges the Doctor's. Martha is the weakest RTD character in this regard (imagine being the first black companion and your arc is about being compared with a blonde white girl) but this still applies to her for the most part.

I will admit that I was initially vibing more with Moffat's writing before he actually became the showrunner, but I have a newfound appreciation for what RTD was doing with the show after feeling like this element was missing in later seasons.

Disclaimer: I haven't gotten to the newest season yet so I have no clue how Ruby is handled as a character. Also don't worry I could never hate Bill Potts <3