On that level, the episode just about works. As an exercise in pure spectacle and gathering momentum, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” carries itself along with enthusiasm and charisma. There are plenty of individually thrilling moments. But beyond those and a general sense of urgency, there’s not a great deal holding it all together. Here, more than ever, Russell T Davies and team are counting on our investment in the characters to keep us engaged. Without that investment to paper over the cracks, the whole thing feels like it teeters on the edge of collapse.
This is Davies in bombastic finale mode, and it might be the most that this new era has evoked his previous tenure so far. There are echoes of “Army of Ghosts”, “The Sound of Drums” and “The Stolen Earth”. Everything here is designed to be big. The opening TARDIS arrival at UNIT headquarters (why does it fly in dramatically rather than just materialise? Shut up, it looks cool), the extended cast of new and old faces (welcome to Lenny Rush, and welcome back to Yasmin Finney), the general emotional tenor… Everyone gets a hug and a moment in the spotlight, even if their reason for being there is tenuous (I’m looking at you, Carla).
Davies’ season finales are famously quite divisive, and go for huge spectacle and huge feelings above all else. Viewers who aren’t fans of that won’t have the best time here.
Not that it’s all smooth sailing for viewers who do generally enjoy such episodes. One issue “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” struggles to get past is the feeling that not everything is entirely earned. That might be a consequence of the shorter season, or the fact that there hasn’t been much sense of progression for the various arc breadcrumbs like Susan Triad or Ruby’s true parentage. The Doctor and Ruby have started to notice the woman’s face that keeps appearing, and this episode implies more appearances in adventures we haven’t seen, but the Doctor bringing the issue to UNIT feels less like a natural consequence of careful plotting and more like ‘well, it’s the two-part finale so we’d better start wrapping up these mysteries’.
Similarly, while Ruby’s impossible memory snow has cropped up a number of times, there hasn’t been much discussion of it outside those brief moments. The Doctor and Ruby haven’t really talked about her birth mother or what happened at Christmas 2004, and the hint of tension at the end of “Space Babies” hasn’t gone anywhere, so posing the question to UNIT now just feels like another plot thread that needs addressing because we’ve reached the end of the series.
That’s unfortunate, because this is really the plot thread in which we should have the most investment – an emotional conflict rooted in one of our main characters. It should feel weighty. But because of the way the episode is structured, it feels a little out of place. The Doctor suddenly throws it in, even though there is no particular reason for the two mysteries to be connected. In fact, the characters quickly dismiss the idea that that they’re linked, and the Doctor’s reaction implies that he hadn’t even considered that a possibility, adding to the overall disconnect. Naturally we assume there is going to be some sort of connection, because we’ve been watching the series and know how story arcs work. But there’s no reason for the characters, in-universe, to assume a connection, so it feels weird that Kate and UNIT would be so indulgent of the Doctor’s investigation into Ruby’s parentage, and devote so many resources to it – especially when they’ve already been looking into Susan Triad, suspect a trap, and have the ticking clock of her imminent address to the United Nations.
