The History Behind Doctor Who’s Big Returning Villain

At this level, trendy Physician Who has been round for nearly so long as basic Physician Who was—which implies the chance for returning legendary baddies that the collection hasn’t already taken is operating somewhat skinny. However this week, Physician Who lastly performed another acquainted ace up its sleeve (no, not that Ace), and introduced again one in every of its most notorious one-off villains.

“The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the penultimate episode of the present season of Physician Who, revealed the mysterious purpose why Physician and Ruby have been seeing the identical girl (performed by perpetually persistent visitor star Susan Twist, a reputation born for use in Physician Who in such a capability) throughout their adventures in Time and Area. Now manifested in modern-day London as nebulous tech mogul Susan Triad, the pinnacle of Triad Applied sciences, the episode climaxed with the reveal that Triad was the truth is a herald for one more of the gods which were menacing the Physician from the shadows since final 12 months’s sixtieth anniversary specials. First there was the Toymaker, then Maestro, and with an apart point out of Sarah Jane Adventures baddie the Trickster, we obtained to the ultimate reveal: the god of Demise of this nice pantheon, Sutekh!

Who Is Sutekh?

Though re-introduced right here because the God of Demise—not like the Egyptian deity he’s named for, Set, whose domains included the desert, violence, and dysfunction—Sutekh appears to be like slightly totally different from after we final noticed him in Physician Who. Now an enormous, multi-eyed doglike apparition, who has apparently been hidden across the TARDIS itself since as early as final 12 months’s anniversary particular “Wild Blue Yonder,” manifesting solely as a peculiar groan and wheeze sound from the time ship, Sutekh beforehand appeared as a big, humanoid doglike creature, sporting darkish robes and an Egyptian-inspired masks to cover his true face.

Sutekh was the final surviving member of a race known as the Osirans, an interstellar empire of beings with huge godlike powers that impressed the cosmologies of many cultures throughout the universe by their affect and look—together with historical Egypt on Earth. Initially the the guardian of the ruling order of the Osiran civilization, the Osirian Court docket, Sutekh ultimately betrayed his personal folks in a lust for additional energy, believing he might free the universe from the chaos of free will by granting them the inevitability of dying. He destroyed his personal homeworld, Phaester Osiris, and started to carve a path of bloody destruction throughout the galaxy, earlier than the surviving Osirans—together with Sutekh’s personal brother, Horus—managed to imprison Sutekh in a pyramid on historical Earth, utilizing a robust machine known as the Eye of Horus. Itself positioned on an analogous pyramidic construction on Mars, the Eye suppressed Sutekh’s huge psionic powers and his true type, imprisoning him for 1000’s of years.

The place Has Sutekh Appeared Earlier than?

Sutekh has solely appeared in a single Physician Who story previous to “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”: the enduring 1975 serial “The Pyramids of Mars.”

Starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen because the Fourth Physician and Sarah Jane Smith, “Pyramids” is basically set in 1911, when an Oxford College professor named Marcus Scarman inadvertently uncovered the tomb Sutekh was imprisoned in throughout an excavation in Egypt. Instantly killed by the Osiran, Sutekh tried to make use of Scarman’s type as a vessel to lastly hatch a plan to flee imprisonment and proceed is quest to deliver dying to all life within the universe: utilizing Scarman’s sources in addition to some creepy Osiran robo-mummies, Sutekh deliberate to launch a rocket on the pyramid on Mars holding the Eye of Horus, releasing his true type. Defeated by the Physician moments earlier than he might escape—locked right into a time tunnel that the Physician shunted the exit for into the far future, believing he had aged Sutekh to dying—Sutekh was by no means seen on display once more till “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” revealing that the Osiran seemingly escaped the Physician’s lure.

Within the UK at the very least, this week the BBC will re-broadcast “Pyramids of Mars” in an omnibus format as a part of the Tales of the TARDIS collection, that includes new interstitial materials starring Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson because the fifteenth Physician and Ruby. Presumably that new materials gained’t be essential to understanding the occasions of this week’s season finale, “The Empire of Demise,” however for those who can entry it, “Pyramids” is commonly hailed as a basic Physician Who story, so it’s value trying out!

What Does Sutekh’s Return Imply for Physician Who?

Proper now, it’s tough to say—however even when dealing with Sutekh in “The Pyramids of Mars,” the Physician acknowledged, and struggled to beat, Sutekh as an especially highly effective entity not like something he’d confronted earlier than. Even within the constrained type of his imprisonment, Sutekh was able to psionic energy that would overwhelm the Physician. The implication in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is that that is Sutekh really unleashed to his full potential. Nonetheless he managed to outlive the time tunnel he was trapped in, or how he grew to become a part of this new pantheon of gods, stays to be seen. And that’s even earlier than you get into all the opposite questions raised by the construct as much as his reveal in “Legend”—why Susan Triad and all the opposite variations of her had been essential to his return, how he’s been in a position to seemingly be hidden and related to the TARDIS for therefore lengthy, and if he has any connection to the thriller behind Ruby’s delivery mom.

We’ll discover out, hopefully, in “The Empire of Demise”—in addition to how the Physician will handle to defeat him this time.

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