Can Russell T. Davies do what the TARDIS has been struggling to do all season and stick the landing? Regardless of how you feel about it, I think most Doctor Who fans would agree that RTD tends to prioritize the big emotional beats he wants to hit in a finale over the logic of the plot resolution. And hey, when you’re trying to make the big bad of every season the Doctor’s toughest challenge yet, it gets harder to find a believable way to save the day.
Even the Flux ultimately only destroyed half the universe; Sutekh is gunning for 100 percent of it and has control of the TARDIS. There’s a lot of pressure to provide a satisfying payoff after all the setup last week. No wonder this episode hits the ground running.
Roughly 15 minutes in, nearly everyone in the universe has gotten an STD (a Sutekh-ually transmitted death). In the Classic-era serial Pyramids of Mars , Sutekh was an alien whom the Doctor aged to death in a time corridor, though comic readers were later told he sidestepped into the Void. Now, thanks to some retconning, Sutekh was actually sent into the Time Vortex where he latched onto the TARDIS and evolved into his “true godhood.
” Any time and place the TARDIS landed, its hidden stowaway birthed a Susan — a name Sutekh learned while learning the ship’s secrets. The TARDIS’s perception filter gave the Susans a real past each time. But now they’ve been converted into Sutekh’s “angels of death,” who are turning everyone to dust on all planets.
