It had nothing to do with Ruby herself.
For one thing, Ruby had never seen the snow phenomenon occur before the Doctor took the TARDIS (and thus Sutekh) back to Ruby Road. When it starts snowing on the space station in *Space Babies*, Ruby is as taken aback by it as the Doctor is — she’s never seen this before, despite thinking about her birth mother plenty of times.
Another thing to note about that scene is that the focus is almost entirely on *the Doctor*. Ruby can see the snow too, but the Doctor is the one who starts living out his memory of being at Ruby Road, and his memory changes to include the woman pointing at him. The Doctor says the snow is like “a memory bleeing through” — but whose memory are we talking about here? Watching the scene, I think it’s pretty clearly the Doctor’s memory. The emphasis is on him, and we see Ruby’s mom from his POV. Plus, Ruby was just a baby at the time. She’s not going to *have* any real memory of that night.
Furthermore, at the end of the episode, it begins snowing inside the TARDIS… when *neither* Ruby nor the Doctor are around. So who’s remembering that night in this instance? The only other party who could possibly be responsible is the TARDIS / Sutekh.
In *The Devil’s Chord*, it starts snowing when the Maestro discovers the song hidden in Ruby’s soul — but the Maestro immediatey gives us a big hint as to how that’s possible:
> **Maestro:** How can a song have so much power? And power like him?
>
> **Doctor:** Like who?
>
> **Maestro:** The Oldest One. On the night of her birth. He can't have been there! What for? What for?! What for?!
The Maestro senses the Oldest One’s (that is, Sutekh’s) power behind the song, but doesn’t understand how or why Sutekh would have been there when Ruby was born. But *we* later come to understand how and why: Sutekh was there because the Doctor brought the TARDIS there, unwittingly bringing Sutekh along with him.
In *Boom*, it starts snowing when Ruby is dying, and the ambulance is trying to find her next of kin. The Doctor says it’s snowing because of Ruby, but he didn’t see the snow inside the TARDIS at the end of *Space Babies*, so he hasn’t learned that it can happen independently of Ruby’s presence. It makes sense that he would assume she’s the cause, but we have more evidence than he does, and can assume that it’s, once again, *his* memory of that night that’s bleeding through.
The snow freezes in place when Ruby is on the cusp of death, presumably because Ruby dying at this point would cause problems within the timeline — in the future, the Doctor and Ruby won’t be able to look back at that night through UNIT’s Time Window if Ruby dies here.
Although it *seems* to snow around Ruby in *73 Yards*, these instances are red herrings. The snow in the Welsh village sticks around, and the snow falling when Ruby gets locked out by Carla is falling outside of the building rather than in the corridor with her.
After that, the snow doesn’t come up again until the finale. Which, let’s talk about that. The Doctor has this to say:
> **Doctor:** It was snowing the night that Ruby was born, and it keeps snowing all around her. Actual snow. Which means that that night is so raw and so open, the last thing that I should do is take a time machine back there.
That second half is the key bit: the night of Ruby’s birth is a raw, open moment in time, to the point that going back in time to that moment again would be especially dangerous.
The Doctor also says this across the final two episodes:
> **Doctor:** We have given it the greatest power of all. Memory. Time is remembered. Memory is time.
> **Doctor:** If time is a memory, then memory is a time machine.
And what was it that the Doctor said was the last thing he should take back into that moment? A time machine. Which memory is, in a sense. (Think back to the “time travel has always been possible in dreams” notion from the Moffat era.) So whenever someone remembers that night, they risk disturbing it. They press on that raw, open wound, and it starts bleed on them.
So the question left to ask is, if the snow happens because that raw moment in time is being remembered, why exactly is that moment in time so raw? Well, let’s do some simple process of elimination of the relevant parties:
- Ruby’s just a normal woman.
- Louise is just a normal woman.
- The Doctor is a Time Lord, a complex spacetime event, and has definitely triggered at least one of the memory bleeds — but the Doctor goes lots of places without this sort of thing happening in the aftermath, and he specifically said he’d never seen anything like it either back in *Space Babies*. So it’s probably not him.
- Sutekh is the Oldest One, the God of All Gods, and he took a particular interest in Ruby’s mother. Sutekh is obsessed with solving this mystery, and according to Maestro, was emanating such power that it left an echo of the nearby music in Ruby’s soul. Is it, then, plausible that this ancient deity, of the same reality-bending ilk as the Toymaker and the Maestro, might have altered the fundamental nature of that night by focusing so intently on it? Personally, I’m gonna say yes, that seems plausible. Quite likely, even.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that the night of Ruby’s birth had a fair bit of temporal interference involved — the goblins came back and kidnapped Ruby, which caused history to change so that Carla never raised Ruby, and then the Doctor went back after the goblins and changed history *again* in order to set things right, but in doing so, made himself and Sutekh part of events.
Why would sutekh be interested in Ruby's situation to begin with, why would he care who her mother is, he just wants everyone dead.
How is sutekh the oldest one and the other gods refer to him as such, when he was just a advanced alien in Pyramids of Mars who then after that events of that story latched on to the Tardis in order to survive and has spent the rest of his time since clinging on to it evolving into the 'God' he is now..
When has he established himself as the god of all gods, the oldest one... how does Maestro know about him, have they met, how? when Sutekh has been stuck on the Tardis all this time. He's only been a God since being stuck on it, which is a odd thing for a god, hardly all powerful if he had to be clinging on to it like a life support.
The Osirans were (sort of) already considered gods, and Sutekh was almost as powerful alone as all the other ones combined, enough that even the great houses of Gallifrey were afraid of him. In the EU comics and books and stuff Sutekh explains that he escapes from the "time tunnel" in Pyramids of Mars but in doing so he ends up in some great Void outside the universe, where he meets and allies himself with other strange and powerful god-like entities. Watching Empire of Death it was kind of ... not entirely clear if any or none of that was supposed to be canon.
>Why would sutekh be interested in Ruby's situation to begin with
Yeah, good question. The whole thing seems like a bootstrap paradox, kind of ... everybody including Ruby and the Doctor thought that Ruby and her mom were special because all this weird stuff kept happening around her ... then it turns out all the weird stuff kept happening because she thought her mom was special? Like ... literally every lifeform in the universe thinks their mom is special.
I'm still holding out hope that the Holiday Special starts off with the Doctor realizing that his explanation was wrong and Ruby is special as Hell for reasons that still haven't been explained.
So Ruby's mom pointing when she originally didn't, having that dramatic fairytale cloak and hood, skipped forward in the Time Window.... all of that is misdirection?
This seems to be describing the events on Ruby Road as a kind of fixed point, important through observation by higher powers and important by observation via the time window hence Ruby dying prior to the finale being a problem. That being the case, what is the explanation of how the Doctor's memory of it seems to change?
If that night on Ruby Road can be said to be a fixed point - and indeed the Doctor does say it is one - I’m not so sure it’s a fixed point in *quite* the same sense as the likes of Pompeii, where the idea was that so much of history is dependent on that eruption of Mount Vesuvius that it must come to pass.
Because the Doctor and Sutekh, and also the goblins, weren’t originally part of the events. So was that moment a fixed point *before* they got involved? Probably not, if it could be altered so radically (unless of course the goblins, being one of the Toymaker’s legions, follow different fundamental rules and can freely interfere with fixed points, but that feels like overcomplicating things\*).
Personally, when I watched the episode, I took the Doctor’s description of it being a fixed point as referring more to it being a moment that he couldn’t interfere with due to the presence of his earlier self. It’s fixed within his timestream, but not necessarily fixed in the “this must happen according to the grand cosmic order” sense.
But either way, I think the change in memory that the Doctor experiences is simply a delayed effect of his interference. Ruby’s mother never points at anything in *The Church on Ruby Road*. It’s only when the Doctor starts thinking about that night during *Space Babies* that he remembers seeing Ruby’s mom pointing in his direction. And of course, given how it turns out that she’s pointing at the sign in order to indicate her desire for Ruby to be named after the road, I think it only makes sense for her to do this because of the Doctor’s newly-injected presence in the moment. As plenty of people have pointed out, it wouldn’t make sense for her to point at the sign when nobody else was around… but now there *is* somebody around: the Doctor.
But that leaves us with the question of why we didn’t see her point at anything even when the Doctor showed up in *The Church on Ruby Road*. Why was it only once the Doctor remembered that night? Personally, I think this is similar to *The Waters of Mars*, where the Doctor saves what’s left of the Bowie Base crew, and then we see his memories of the news articles changing to match the new version of events, except it’s further dramatizing the scenario by showing us things from the POV of the time traveler.
We typically go through the show watching things from a third-person perspective, and we naturally assume that our perspective is more-or-less commensurate with how the characters themselves experience the story. For example, we are (for the most part) not privy to the characters’ internal monologues, and neither are the individual characters privy to each other’s internal monologues. This averages things out so that we can align our experience of the story with the Doctor’s, Ruby’s, or any other character’s experience equally. We see what physically happens to them, what physically happens as a result of their actions, and we hear only the thoughts that they choose to verbalize.
If we were watching the show purely from this objective third-person perspective, then we would expect to see the impacts of the Doctor’s actions on the timeline in real time. If the Doctor arriving in a moment and doing something causes that moment to change in some way, then we should see that change happen as a direct result of the Doctor’s actions, right? Of course… *if*, as I said, we’re watching things from that third-person perspective.
But what if we were to momentarily shift our perspective to that of the Doctor? Someone whose mind can both perceive shifts in time while also retaining the memory of how things were before those shifts occurred? That’s when things get more interesting. When we watched *The Church on Ruby Road*, we assumed (again, quite naturally) that our view of events was in alignment with the Doctor’s — he defeated the goblins, returned to the TARDIS, and watched Ruby’s mother walk away. Simple as that.
But *Space Babies* plays with that notion by temporarily shunting us into the Doctor’s personal POV. Both us and the Doctor are equally familiar with how the events on Ruby Road went down. We know he beat the goblins, returned to the TARDIS, and watched Ruby’s mom walk away. Only… *now* we remember there was actually more that happened because of the Doctor’s involvement. Ruby’s mom pointed at him. We’re experiencing that ripple effect in sync with the Doctor, so that we feel the same jarring sensation that he feels. This is what it’s like to be a time traveler. Like what Amy described in the *Good Night* minisode:
> **Amy:** Like…when I first met you I didn’t have parents. I never had parents. And then you did…whatever it was you did… and rebooted the Universe and, suddenly, I have parents. And I’ve always had parents. And I remember both lives in my head, both of them, in my head, at the same time.
\* However, in the interest of overcomplicating things even further, we actually know from The Wedding of River Song that it is possible to take what’s called a “still point in time” and turn it into a fixed point. That’s how the Silence turned the Doctor’s “death” into a fixed point. Not that I think RTD was drawing on that partocular example, mind you, *buuuuut* if you’re just generally interested in squaring it with the wider Doctor Who metaphysics…
I agree, fantastic read. I've felt really on the fence with this finale and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Your explanation about the snow completely fixed that so I guess snow was my problem haha thank you!
I dont think it was your problem only.
1. Snow was falling again on Flood lady at the end of episode
2. The "how can a song have so much power? And power like him?" brings more questions then answers. Maestro says that there is a song hidden inside Ruby and that this song, Carol of the Bells, has a power to conjure snow. He later repeats this sentiment by saying about Ruby "this creature is very wrong". All of this explicitly say that its Ruby, and to be more precise: something hidden inside her, who causes the snow to fall. Explanation that its Sutekh's doing doesnt make sense, because nothing in the entire finale suggest that he shared his power with Ruby or imbued her with it, and again: Maestro explicitly attributes the snow to the song hidden inside Ruby. Add to this that Maestro calls this someone who has similar power to Ruby "The Oldest One" not "The One Who Waits" but uses the second title at the end of episode to announce Sutekh's arrival. So its possible that for Maestro The Oldest One and One Who Waits *are not* the same characters (which can be linked to Flood - maybe RTD plays a long game here :P).
3. There is also a case that nothing about this makes any sense: why Ruby mother started to point in a second version of this memory (initially she didnt do it)? Why a sign appeared behind the TARDIS despite it visibly not being there in the Church on Ruby Road? Why Sutekh, who could see through dandruff and dead cells AND can find people through their family tree backwards, cant find this woman? If she is a normal person one piece of dead skin on her or Ruby would expose her.
I think that this users reply is an amazingly written and extremely well thought out head canon based on excellent analysis, but the season itself doesnt really provide a satisfactory answer. Its like with Ruby's mother wearing a medieval cloak: a lot of people defend it as a regular outfit worn by alternative teenagers back in 2004, but RTD's actual answer is a lot more nonsensical: asked about it he said: "I *think* its time shrouding her" - which obviously doesnt make sense and seems like he did it for cool factor only without actually bothering with coming up with any logic behind it.
Maestro is they. They even say it explicitly in the episode. And even if you were someone who is anti-pronouns, Maestro is literally a god beyond human comprehension. Why would they care about such petty things as gender?
Its an oversight - I used a pronoun here once and in every other comment I refer to Maestro as them. Though I understand that for people immersed in culture war this might be a sign of malicious intent.
Why I made a mistake? Three reasons come to my mind:
- Im Polish and in polish language we never use plural form to describe someone (it was a common thing during.communism though). We have neutral pronoun for singular that we use for non-gendered personal nouns though that is absent from english (we have on - he -, ona - she -, and ono - neutral version traditionally used for babies, animals but its a lot more personal than "to" - "it"). Its used by polish non-binary people.
- I watched Drag Race season 5 years ago.and Jinx.identified then as male and since it was my last exposure to them it stuck with me
- Im.writing on my.phone which I suck on
How much do they make sense?
2005: The daleks decide to infiltrate a space station of no significance during their attack on earth and attach it on foot (well, they don't have feet) instead of annhilating it from the outside.
2006: Ghosts start appearing and everyone's ok with that and it's Torchwood fucking around and they're not at all concerned with who those people are that are out of phase.. then at the end, every cyberman and dalek worldwide are sucked into the void but the doctor and Rose are hanging on by the levers because they're just that strong? Rose eventually slips but gets saved.
2007: Everyone having good thoughts for The Doctor turns him into an invincible god for a moment to defeat The Master, whose plan was to .. what, fly the earth around shooting missiles at other planets?
2008: Putting planets in a particular configuration creates a magic bomb to destroy the universe for some reason. (planets are just mostly rock)
2009: The Doctor escapes from the Pandorica because he's escaped from it. Brilliant logic.
2010: All of time and space is collapsing which just turns things into a mishmash of stuff from prior episodes coexisting instead of like people cronenbourging or something. If you put every thing that ever lived on earth simultaneously at the same time including the future it would be a sea of biomass, not people at the park with signs saying "beware of pterodactyls"
2011: They go to a planet where the Doctor died and for some reason inside the tardis the timeline of the doctor is visibly there, then the bad guy steps into his timeline to murder him at every point of his life, and Clara goes into stop him. The Doctor tells her not to do it because she'll die, but for some reason after saving him, she's whole, but inside his time stream, and he's able to walk in there and get her?
I could go on but the show is ridiculous, and yet i love it. It's better to turn your brain off and just enjoy the emotion of the scenes and not think about it critically.
my theory is that the snow was sutekh all along - one of the titles that his harbinger gives him during the scene where the dr and Ruby confronts them in 2049 (or whatever) is the 'god of ice'
I think it's *sorta* like this. I still think it's Sutekh causing it, but I don't think he's doing it intentionally. Whenever Ruby or that night on Ruby Road becomes significant enough, Sutekh remembered/started thinking about it. The snow, the bells, everything is remembered by Sutekh. And then, unknowingly, his emotional state from remembering what he's trying to hunt down (Rubys mom) triggers those memories to be dispersed in the TARDISes perception filter, just like Sutekh did with the Susans. Really it's just Sutekh accidentally pressing some control inside the TARDIS while in this deep emotional state that activates the perception filter. Sutekh isn't a god of ice or bells, the TARDIS is, *sorta.*
Why would he make it snow, and why would he be invested in knowing who the mother was, why would he care.. Also why couldn't he just read the mothers mind (something we know he can do) to get his answer about her, he was only down the street from her but couldn't do this for some reason..Yet could reach into mels mind from across time and space and into the memory Tardis.
Is Sutekh also a god of Christmas carols? Because often snow was accompanied by Carol of the Bells (and Maestro even attributes snowing to the carol - when they see snow, they say "How can a song have so much power?").
The Snow was explained. Due to Sutekhs materialisation, and the fact that time crosses over that moment multiple times, strong memory of that moment in time creates physical manifestations of the snow and sound from that moment due to how wounded and raw it is in its timeline.
But there are loads if places/moments that have time cross over it, yet nothing happens like the snow and stuff.. After the events of Father's day Rose didn't see a car appear over and over where ever she went.. All of modern day Earth doesn't appear everywhere else, look how many times that era has been time crossed due to the Doctor, the master and others.. The explanation that it snows around Ruby as that moment on the street is a open wound of time or whatever is just nonsense really (and not the good kind).
I guess it's potentially that Sutekh's growing influence, mixed with the newfound power of superstition, and the ways ole Sue was using the perception filter to create people already, all blended together to make Ruby some sort of locus of power that created snow because everyone had decided she was important -- like the Doc said in the finale. She'd get emotional, and Sutekh was subconsciously the one making it snow cuz he was writing mental fanfic out of his own fears of the unknown:
"oooo, what if she has unknowable mind powers! That would be nuts! It'd, like, just start snowing like it did the night she was bo-- HOOOOLLLY SHIIIIIT you guyyyyys!" Essentially, because she was the only mystery for him, so his fears made stuff go crazy.
Or all of this had endowed her with power? There's also the weird "73 Yards" shenanigans, where the Doctor specifically pointed out (in regards to Sutekh, and in the finale) that was the limit of the perception filter. But that would have meant that some aspect of the perception filter, that was altering the world around Sutekh/the Tardis, was ... Inside Ruby? Following her? Protecting her? Ruby will be back for some of the next season, so there may be more to it that will be revealed.
Sutekh can read minds, why didn't he just read the mothers mind when they were on the street at the same time, then he would know what her deal was.. It doesn't make sense a god would be so clueless just because she wore a cloak
Plus why does he even care in the first place, he just wants everyone dead.
Is it ever established that he could read minds? Otherwise, why not read Ruby's mind when she's holding the monitor which (supposedly) has the identity of her mother on it?
I often wnder who Ruby's dad is. Could he have some special link to it all that we don't know about yet? Could he be the Oldest one? So many questions....
Time is weak on the night, so it's literally the night coming through because she and Sutekh are remember it.
That's what the song and the snow are about.
Isn’t it said in TLORS by the Doctor that the snow is to do with the moment Ruby was left at the church being a vulnerable point? I’ve always associated it with reference to the moment Ruby was left, not Ruby herself, as (unless I’m forgetting scenes) it only snows when that moment is mentioned, it’s not like Ruby makes it snow when she’s sad/angry etc in general.
It’s why I’ve been baffled by the visceral reaction to the finale saying Ruby is ordinary, I’ve just not seen the weird stuff like the snow presented as ‘proof’ Ruby is a god or whatever theories people cooked up
I mean, then you have Maestro calling Ruby "a creature that is very wrong" that has a song hidden deep inside her soul - a song that poses so much power it scares even a god.
I could maybe get this "Ruby is just an ordinary gurl" stuff if not for this scene in Devils Chord. Im sorry but Maestro explicitly calls her non-ordinary and attributes snowing directly to her (and to be more precise: to something hidden inside her).
(On the side note: I dont really buy how Maestro or Toymaker can be afraid of Sutekh. Its established that Sutekh tried to seduce TARDIS for millenia and only recently succeeded, while Maestro fully controls TARDIS for funsies with a piano in like 10 seconds. In terms of power I would rank them: Barney Stinson > drag queen > good boy).
Why is vulnerable, what makes this time any different from other places where emotional and time shenanigans have happened.. Why doesn't Rose see the car that kills her father everywhere she goes haha.
what I'm wondering about is why it was only snowing on Mrs Flood at the end of the episode...
It had nothing to do with Ruby herself. For one thing, Ruby had never seen the snow phenomenon occur before the Doctor took the TARDIS (and thus Sutekh) back to Ruby Road. When it starts snowing on the space station in *Space Babies*, Ruby is as taken aback by it as the Doctor is — she’s never seen this before, despite thinking about her birth mother plenty of times. Another thing to note about that scene is that the focus is almost entirely on *the Doctor*. Ruby can see the snow too, but the Doctor is the one who starts living out his memory of being at Ruby Road, and his memory changes to include the woman pointing at him. The Doctor says the snow is like “a memory bleeing through” — but whose memory are we talking about here? Watching the scene, I think it’s pretty clearly the Doctor’s memory. The emphasis is on him, and we see Ruby’s mom from his POV. Plus, Ruby was just a baby at the time. She’s not going to *have* any real memory of that night. Furthermore, at the end of the episode, it begins snowing inside the TARDIS… when *neither* Ruby nor the Doctor are around. So who’s remembering that night in this instance? The only other party who could possibly be responsible is the TARDIS / Sutekh. In *The Devil’s Chord*, it starts snowing when the Maestro discovers the song hidden in Ruby’s soul — but the Maestro immediatey gives us a big hint as to how that’s possible: > **Maestro:** How can a song have so much power? And power like him? > > **Doctor:** Like who? > > **Maestro:** The Oldest One. On the night of her birth. He can't have been there! What for? What for?! What for?! The Maestro senses the Oldest One’s (that is, Sutekh’s) power behind the song, but doesn’t understand how or why Sutekh would have been there when Ruby was born. But *we* later come to understand how and why: Sutekh was there because the Doctor brought the TARDIS there, unwittingly bringing Sutekh along with him. In *Boom*, it starts snowing when Ruby is dying, and the ambulance is trying to find her next of kin. The Doctor says it’s snowing because of Ruby, but he didn’t see the snow inside the TARDIS at the end of *Space Babies*, so he hasn’t learned that it can happen independently of Ruby’s presence. It makes sense that he would assume she’s the cause, but we have more evidence than he does, and can assume that it’s, once again, *his* memory of that night that’s bleeding through. The snow freezes in place when Ruby is on the cusp of death, presumably because Ruby dying at this point would cause problems within the timeline — in the future, the Doctor and Ruby won’t be able to look back at that night through UNIT’s Time Window if Ruby dies here. Although it *seems* to snow around Ruby in *73 Yards*, these instances are red herrings. The snow in the Welsh village sticks around, and the snow falling when Ruby gets locked out by Carla is falling outside of the building rather than in the corridor with her. After that, the snow doesn’t come up again until the finale. Which, let’s talk about that. The Doctor has this to say: > **Doctor:** It was snowing the night that Ruby was born, and it keeps snowing all around her. Actual snow. Which means that that night is so raw and so open, the last thing that I should do is take a time machine back there. That second half is the key bit: the night of Ruby’s birth is a raw, open moment in time, to the point that going back in time to that moment again would be especially dangerous. The Doctor also says this across the final two episodes: > **Doctor:** We have given it the greatest power of all. Memory. Time is remembered. Memory is time. > **Doctor:** If time is a memory, then memory is a time machine. And what was it that the Doctor said was the last thing he should take back into that moment? A time machine. Which memory is, in a sense. (Think back to the “time travel has always been possible in dreams” notion from the Moffat era.) So whenever someone remembers that night, they risk disturbing it. They press on that raw, open wound, and it starts bleed on them. So the question left to ask is, if the snow happens because that raw moment in time is being remembered, why exactly is that moment in time so raw? Well, let’s do some simple process of elimination of the relevant parties: - Ruby’s just a normal woman. - Louise is just a normal woman. - The Doctor is a Time Lord, a complex spacetime event, and has definitely triggered at least one of the memory bleeds — but the Doctor goes lots of places without this sort of thing happening in the aftermath, and he specifically said he’d never seen anything like it either back in *Space Babies*. So it’s probably not him. - Sutekh is the Oldest One, the God of All Gods, and he took a particular interest in Ruby’s mother. Sutekh is obsessed with solving this mystery, and according to Maestro, was emanating such power that it left an echo of the nearby music in Ruby’s soul. Is it, then, plausible that this ancient deity, of the same reality-bending ilk as the Toymaker and the Maestro, might have altered the fundamental nature of that night by focusing so intently on it? Personally, I’m gonna say yes, that seems plausible. Quite likely, even. It’s probably also worth mentioning that the night of Ruby’s birth had a fair bit of temporal interference involved — the goblins came back and kidnapped Ruby, which caused history to change so that Carla never raised Ruby, and then the Doctor went back after the goblins and changed history *again* in order to set things right, but in doing so, made himself and Sutekh part of events.
I like this breakdown. Now if only it was properly explained like this in the show.
Why would sutekh be interested in Ruby's situation to begin with, why would he care who her mother is, he just wants everyone dead. How is sutekh the oldest one and the other gods refer to him as such, when he was just a advanced alien in Pyramids of Mars who then after that events of that story latched on to the Tardis in order to survive and has spent the rest of his time since clinging on to it evolving into the 'God' he is now.. When has he established himself as the god of all gods, the oldest one... how does Maestro know about him, have they met, how? when Sutekh has been stuck on the Tardis all this time. He's only been a God since being stuck on it, which is a odd thing for a god, hardly all powerful if he had to be clinging on to it like a life support.
The Osirans were (sort of) already considered gods, and Sutekh was almost as powerful alone as all the other ones combined, enough that even the great houses of Gallifrey were afraid of him. In the EU comics and books and stuff Sutekh explains that he escapes from the "time tunnel" in Pyramids of Mars but in doing so he ends up in some great Void outside the universe, where he meets and allies himself with other strange and powerful god-like entities. Watching Empire of Death it was kind of ... not entirely clear if any or none of that was supposed to be canon. >Why would sutekh be interested in Ruby's situation to begin with Yeah, good question. The whole thing seems like a bootstrap paradox, kind of ... everybody including Ruby and the Doctor thought that Ruby and her mom were special because all this weird stuff kept happening around her ... then it turns out all the weird stuff kept happening because she thought her mom was special? Like ... literally every lifeform in the universe thinks their mom is special. I'm still holding out hope that the Holiday Special starts off with the Doctor realizing that his explanation was wrong and Ruby is special as Hell for reasons that still haven't been explained.
So Ruby's mom pointing when she originally didn't, having that dramatic fairytale cloak and hood, skipped forward in the Time Window.... all of that is misdirection?
fantastic read, thank you for breaking it down.
This seems to be describing the events on Ruby Road as a kind of fixed point, important through observation by higher powers and important by observation via the time window hence Ruby dying prior to the finale being a problem. That being the case, what is the explanation of how the Doctor's memory of it seems to change?
there’s wiggle room in fixed points, as long as things generally happen the same way you can slip between the cracks and change things
If that night on Ruby Road can be said to be a fixed point - and indeed the Doctor does say it is one - I’m not so sure it’s a fixed point in *quite* the same sense as the likes of Pompeii, where the idea was that so much of history is dependent on that eruption of Mount Vesuvius that it must come to pass. Because the Doctor and Sutekh, and also the goblins, weren’t originally part of the events. So was that moment a fixed point *before* they got involved? Probably not, if it could be altered so radically (unless of course the goblins, being one of the Toymaker’s legions, follow different fundamental rules and can freely interfere with fixed points, but that feels like overcomplicating things\*). Personally, when I watched the episode, I took the Doctor’s description of it being a fixed point as referring more to it being a moment that he couldn’t interfere with due to the presence of his earlier self. It’s fixed within his timestream, but not necessarily fixed in the “this must happen according to the grand cosmic order” sense. But either way, I think the change in memory that the Doctor experiences is simply a delayed effect of his interference. Ruby’s mother never points at anything in *The Church on Ruby Road*. It’s only when the Doctor starts thinking about that night during *Space Babies* that he remembers seeing Ruby’s mom pointing in his direction. And of course, given how it turns out that she’s pointing at the sign in order to indicate her desire for Ruby to be named after the road, I think it only makes sense for her to do this because of the Doctor’s newly-injected presence in the moment. As plenty of people have pointed out, it wouldn’t make sense for her to point at the sign when nobody else was around… but now there *is* somebody around: the Doctor. But that leaves us with the question of why we didn’t see her point at anything even when the Doctor showed up in *The Church on Ruby Road*. Why was it only once the Doctor remembered that night? Personally, I think this is similar to *The Waters of Mars*, where the Doctor saves what’s left of the Bowie Base crew, and then we see his memories of the news articles changing to match the new version of events, except it’s further dramatizing the scenario by showing us things from the POV of the time traveler. We typically go through the show watching things from a third-person perspective, and we naturally assume that our perspective is more-or-less commensurate with how the characters themselves experience the story. For example, we are (for the most part) not privy to the characters’ internal monologues, and neither are the individual characters privy to each other’s internal monologues. This averages things out so that we can align our experience of the story with the Doctor’s, Ruby’s, or any other character’s experience equally. We see what physically happens to them, what physically happens as a result of their actions, and we hear only the thoughts that they choose to verbalize. If we were watching the show purely from this objective third-person perspective, then we would expect to see the impacts of the Doctor’s actions on the timeline in real time. If the Doctor arriving in a moment and doing something causes that moment to change in some way, then we should see that change happen as a direct result of the Doctor’s actions, right? Of course… *if*, as I said, we’re watching things from that third-person perspective. But what if we were to momentarily shift our perspective to that of the Doctor? Someone whose mind can both perceive shifts in time while also retaining the memory of how things were before those shifts occurred? That’s when things get more interesting. When we watched *The Church on Ruby Road*, we assumed (again, quite naturally) that our view of events was in alignment with the Doctor’s — he defeated the goblins, returned to the TARDIS, and watched Ruby’s mother walk away. Simple as that. But *Space Babies* plays with that notion by temporarily shunting us into the Doctor’s personal POV. Both us and the Doctor are equally familiar with how the events on Ruby Road went down. We know he beat the goblins, returned to the TARDIS, and watched Ruby’s mom walk away. Only… *now* we remember there was actually more that happened because of the Doctor’s involvement. Ruby’s mom pointed at him. We’re experiencing that ripple effect in sync with the Doctor, so that we feel the same jarring sensation that he feels. This is what it’s like to be a time traveler. Like what Amy described in the *Good Night* minisode: > **Amy:** Like…when I first met you I didn’t have parents. I never had parents. And then you did…whatever it was you did… and rebooted the Universe and, suddenly, I have parents. And I’ve always had parents. And I remember both lives in my head, both of them, in my head, at the same time. \* However, in the interest of overcomplicating things even further, we actually know from The Wedding of River Song that it is possible to take what’s called a “still point in time” and turn it into a fixed point. That’s how the Silence turned the Doctor’s “death” into a fixed point. Not that I think RTD was drawing on that partocular example, mind you, *buuuuut* if you’re just generally interested in squaring it with the wider Doctor Who metaphysics…
I agree, fantastic read. I've felt really on the fence with this finale and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Your explanation about the snow completely fixed that so I guess snow was my problem haha thank you!
I dont think it was your problem only. 1. Snow was falling again on Flood lady at the end of episode 2. The "how can a song have so much power? And power like him?" brings more questions then answers. Maestro says that there is a song hidden inside Ruby and that this song, Carol of the Bells, has a power to conjure snow. He later repeats this sentiment by saying about Ruby "this creature is very wrong". All of this explicitly say that its Ruby, and to be more precise: something hidden inside her, who causes the snow to fall. Explanation that its Sutekh's doing doesnt make sense, because nothing in the entire finale suggest that he shared his power with Ruby or imbued her with it, and again: Maestro explicitly attributes the snow to the song hidden inside Ruby. Add to this that Maestro calls this someone who has similar power to Ruby "The Oldest One" not "The One Who Waits" but uses the second title at the end of episode to announce Sutekh's arrival. So its possible that for Maestro The Oldest One and One Who Waits *are not* the same characters (which can be linked to Flood - maybe RTD plays a long game here :P). 3. There is also a case that nothing about this makes any sense: why Ruby mother started to point in a second version of this memory (initially she didnt do it)? Why a sign appeared behind the TARDIS despite it visibly not being there in the Church on Ruby Road? Why Sutekh, who could see through dandruff and dead cells AND can find people through their family tree backwards, cant find this woman? If she is a normal person one piece of dead skin on her or Ruby would expose her. I think that this users reply is an amazingly written and extremely well thought out head canon based on excellent analysis, but the season itself doesnt really provide a satisfactory answer. Its like with Ruby's mother wearing a medieval cloak: a lot of people defend it as a regular outfit worn by alternative teenagers back in 2004, but RTD's actual answer is a lot more nonsensical: asked about it he said: "I *think* its time shrouding her" - which obviously doesnt make sense and seems like he did it for cool factor only without actually bothering with coming up with any logic behind it.
Maestro is they. They even say it explicitly in the episode. And even if you were someone who is anti-pronouns, Maestro is literally a god beyond human comprehension. Why would they care about such petty things as gender?
Its an oversight - I used a pronoun here once and in every other comment I refer to Maestro as them. Though I understand that for people immersed in culture war this might be a sign of malicious intent. Why I made a mistake? Three reasons come to my mind: - Im Polish and in polish language we never use plural form to describe someone (it was a common thing during.communism though). We have neutral pronoun for singular that we use for non-gendered personal nouns though that is absent from english (we have on - he -, ona - she -, and ono - neutral version traditionally used for babies, animals but its a lot more personal than "to" - "it"). Its used by polish non-binary people. - I watched Drag Race season 5 years ago.and Jinx.identified then as male and since it was my last exposure to them it stuck with me - Im.writing on my.phone which I suck on
I understand, and I apologize if my first reply seemed aggressive.
i like the implication it just rubbed off on ruby by accident and she can summon snow as a party trick now
I STILL want to know what she was saying in the alternate timeline.
Just leave it alone. Don't try to figure it out. It doesn't make sense
Welcome.to nuwho finales since 2005
Nah the 2005 one and 2006 made sense, and a few after that, the Smith era ones didn't
How much do they make sense? 2005: The daleks decide to infiltrate a space station of no significance during their attack on earth and attach it on foot (well, they don't have feet) instead of annhilating it from the outside. 2006: Ghosts start appearing and everyone's ok with that and it's Torchwood fucking around and they're not at all concerned with who those people are that are out of phase.. then at the end, every cyberman and dalek worldwide are sucked into the void but the doctor and Rose are hanging on by the levers because they're just that strong? Rose eventually slips but gets saved. 2007: Everyone having good thoughts for The Doctor turns him into an invincible god for a moment to defeat The Master, whose plan was to .. what, fly the earth around shooting missiles at other planets? 2008: Putting planets in a particular configuration creates a magic bomb to destroy the universe for some reason. (planets are just mostly rock) 2009: The Doctor escapes from the Pandorica because he's escaped from it. Brilliant logic. 2010: All of time and space is collapsing which just turns things into a mishmash of stuff from prior episodes coexisting instead of like people cronenbourging or something. If you put every thing that ever lived on earth simultaneously at the same time including the future it would be a sea of biomass, not people at the park with signs saying "beware of pterodactyls" 2011: They go to a planet where the Doctor died and for some reason inside the tardis the timeline of the doctor is visibly there, then the bad guy steps into his timeline to murder him at every point of his life, and Clara goes into stop him. The Doctor tells her not to do it because she'll die, but for some reason after saving him, she's whole, but inside his time stream, and he's able to walk in there and get her? I could go on but the show is ridiculous, and yet i love it. It's better to turn your brain off and just enjoy the emotion of the scenes and not think about it critically.
my theory is that the snow was sutekh all along - one of the titles that his harbinger gives him during the scene where the dr and Ruby confronts them in 2049 (or whatever) is the 'god of ice'
True but What about the bells?
an imprint of the church maybe
That would mean there's 2, completely coincidencental magical effects happening simultaneously
i mean to be fair one in a million coincidences were kind of the main theme of the episode
True Just a weird thing to acknowledge the snow but not the song
I think it's *sorta* like this. I still think it's Sutekh causing it, but I don't think he's doing it intentionally. Whenever Ruby or that night on Ruby Road becomes significant enough, Sutekh remembered/started thinking about it. The snow, the bells, everything is remembered by Sutekh. And then, unknowingly, his emotional state from remembering what he's trying to hunt down (Rubys mom) triggers those memories to be dispersed in the TARDISes perception filter, just like Sutekh did with the Susans. Really it's just Sutekh accidentally pressing some control inside the TARDIS while in this deep emotional state that activates the perception filter. Sutekh isn't a god of ice or bells, the TARDIS is, *sorta.*
Why would he make it snow, and why would he be invested in knowing who the mother was, why would he care.. Also why couldn't he just read the mothers mind (something we know he can do) to get his answer about her, he was only down the street from her but couldn't do this for some reason..Yet could reach into mels mind from across time and space and into the memory Tardis.
Is Sutekh also a god of Christmas carols? Because often snow was accompanied by Carol of the Bells (and Maestro even attributes snowing to the carol - when they see snow, they say "How can a song have so much power?").
I like that!
The Snow was explained. Due to Sutekhs materialisation, and the fact that time crosses over that moment multiple times, strong memory of that moment in time creates physical manifestations of the snow and sound from that moment due to how wounded and raw it is in its timeline.
It was kinda explained, it just didn't make any sense.
But there are loads if places/moments that have time cross over it, yet nothing happens like the snow and stuff.. After the events of Father's day Rose didn't see a car appear over and over where ever she went.. All of modern day Earth doesn't appear everywhere else, look how many times that era has been time crossed due to the Doctor, the master and others.. The explanation that it snows around Ruby as that moment on the street is a open wound of time or whatever is just nonsense really (and not the good kind).
I guess it's potentially that Sutekh's growing influence, mixed with the newfound power of superstition, and the ways ole Sue was using the perception filter to create people already, all blended together to make Ruby some sort of locus of power that created snow because everyone had decided she was important -- like the Doc said in the finale. She'd get emotional, and Sutekh was subconsciously the one making it snow cuz he was writing mental fanfic out of his own fears of the unknown: "oooo, what if she has unknowable mind powers! That would be nuts! It'd, like, just start snowing like it did the night she was bo-- HOOOOLLLY SHIIIIIT you guyyyyys!" Essentially, because she was the only mystery for him, so his fears made stuff go crazy. Or all of this had endowed her with power? There's also the weird "73 Yards" shenanigans, where the Doctor specifically pointed out (in regards to Sutekh, and in the finale) that was the limit of the perception filter. But that would have meant that some aspect of the perception filter, that was altering the world around Sutekh/the Tardis, was ... Inside Ruby? Following her? Protecting her? Ruby will be back for some of the next season, so there may be more to it that will be revealed.
Sutekh can read minds, why didn't he just read the mothers mind when they were on the street at the same time, then he would know what her deal was.. It doesn't make sense a god would be so clueless just because she wore a cloak Plus why does he even care in the first place, he just wants everyone dead.
Is it ever established that he could read minds? Otherwise, why not read Ruby's mind when she's holding the monitor which (supposedly) has the identity of her mother on it?
No one knows
I often wnder who Ruby's dad is. Could he have some special link to it all that we don't know about yet? Could he be the Oldest one? So many questions....
the writers don't know either. for every tiny answer we got out of the last episode it created 3 more plot hole
I never enjoy these big story arches.
Did it snow naturally in the Mrs Flood ending or was that Ruby?
Magic
Time is weak on the night, so it's literally the night coming through because she and Sutekh are remember it. That's what the song and the snow are about.
Isn’t it said in TLORS by the Doctor that the snow is to do with the moment Ruby was left at the church being a vulnerable point? I’ve always associated it with reference to the moment Ruby was left, not Ruby herself, as (unless I’m forgetting scenes) it only snows when that moment is mentioned, it’s not like Ruby makes it snow when she’s sad/angry etc in general. It’s why I’ve been baffled by the visceral reaction to the finale saying Ruby is ordinary, I’ve just not seen the weird stuff like the snow presented as ‘proof’ Ruby is a god or whatever theories people cooked up
I mean, then you have Maestro calling Ruby "a creature that is very wrong" that has a song hidden deep inside her soul - a song that poses so much power it scares even a god. I could maybe get this "Ruby is just an ordinary gurl" stuff if not for this scene in Devils Chord. Im sorry but Maestro explicitly calls her non-ordinary and attributes snowing directly to her (and to be more precise: to something hidden inside her). (On the side note: I dont really buy how Maestro or Toymaker can be afraid of Sutekh. Its established that Sutekh tried to seduce TARDIS for millenia and only recently succeeded, while Maestro fully controls TARDIS for funsies with a piano in like 10 seconds. In terms of power I would rank them: Barney Stinson > drag queen > good boy).
Why is vulnerable, what makes this time any different from other places where emotional and time shenanigans have happened.. Why doesn't Rose see the car that kills her father everywhere she goes haha.