We’ve seen this kind of thing before on Doctor Who of course. In series six, Madame Kovarian kept popping up in front of the duplicate Amy Pond to indicate that the real Amy was out there somewhere having been kidnapped and kept captive by Kovarian. In series seven, Clara stepped into the time winds and popped up as echo versions of herself throughout the Doctor’s timeline.
Twist is due to appear as “The Portrait” in episode six “Rogue” and is also on the cast list for series 14’s two-part finale “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and “Empire of Death”. Keep an eye out for her in those, and in particular, make note of whether the Doctor ever looks directly at her while in the same room.
At the time of writing, the Doctor has only interacted with a living, breathing Susan Twist cameo character once, but a bit of neat panto choreography ensures that the pair never come face to face. In “The Devil’s Chord”, the Doctor and Ruby buy two cups of tea from a character played by Twist. All the time the Doctor is facing the camera, she’s facing away from it, and when he turns to face her, she turns away from him. (Check for yourself around the 10 minute mark.)
The only other time the Doctor’s been in the same room with a Twist character was at the pub gig in “The Church on Ruby Road”, when they had no interaction. In every other encounter, the Twist cameo has been a pre-recorded video (“Space Babies”, “Dot and Bubble”) or AI avatar (“Boom”). In “Space Babies”, both the Doctor and Ruby were distracted by the malfunctioning spaceship at the precise moment that Twist’s character began to speak on the video. And in “73 Yards”, only Ruby saw and spoke to the hiker played by Twist in her suspended timeline – an event which Ruby still has a vague memory of according to her double-take in “Dot and Bubble”.
So, why does the TARDIS keep bringing the Doctor to planets and places where a Susan Twist cameo is never far away? And what happens if the Doctor and a Susan Twist character ever actually look at each other? A long-lost family reunion, or something…else?
Doctor Who series 14 continues with “Rogue” on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+.
