#legend of ruby road

[rainbowconvection]

Okay. My most haterish opinion. 9 and Rose were clashing every 2 seconds, and the fact of their relationship surviving that was part of why it ended up so strong. Ruby should have at least queried the Doctor having the opportunity to see who her mother was. As someone versed in sci-fi, I get why receiving the answers might have changed history, but it was an opportunity for character drama, and I'm a little puzzled on why Russel T didn't take it. It might get explained by the finale. But this is also why applying the mystery box formula to the companion doesn't work all that well.

[bluntshavingrazor]

Until we are explicitly told otherwise, I choose to believe that that was actually tech billionaire Susan Triad heckling Ruby's band during their Christmas Eve performance in a London pub. Usually she's very nice as Mel reported, but she'd had a bit too much to drink and got carried away in the moment.

[bennie0315]

I might be over thinking but there has been a lot of emphasis on mothers and fathers, or lack thereof, this season.

In the star beast we find Donna and Shaun are now parents to a daughter, Rose.

In Wild blue yonder the not things and Donna going on about Auntie iris and mummy and daddy.

In the giggle the orphan puppets are all alone with their mother, because the father puppet burned on TV. And the TV man who bought stooky bill the puppet said what would mummy think of me now, when he was turned into a puppet, and then Donna surviving because she passed on the metacrisis to her daughter.

In the church on ruby road, Ruby has an adoptive mother because she was abandoned by her real mother at the church and the doctor also talks about being an orphan, not knowing his real parents.

In space babies all the babies are abandoned by their mums and dads and they think ruby and the doctor are their mummy and daddy and again the doctor talks to them about being an orphan himself and the doctor says the machine was mother and father to the babies and the boogie monster because it created both.

In the devils chord Maestro sings a song about her daddy being mean or something, her father being the toymaker. Also Henry arbinger ("harbinger") calls the maestro his daddy 💀

In boom the little girls dad dies by the ambulance and she talks about how her mummy went to heaven.

In 73 yards ruby gets abandoned again but by Carla this time, her adoptive mother.

In Dot and bubble lindy pepper bean talks about her "mommy" who's susan twist.

In rogue the dukes late mother is the portrait on the wall. (also susan twist)

And then in the legend of Ruby Sunday the doctor mensions that he is a father (or not let anyway because wibbly wobbly time wimey) Kate also mensioning her father (the brigadier) telling her stories about the doctor when she was younger. Mel mensions losing her family and now they're investigating rubys birth mother and we uncover some sort of demon thing from a past episode, and then the thing starts naming gods and stuff then says...

"there is incensor, the god of disaster and her children called doubt and dread and standing on high is the mother and father and other of them all."

The Maybe I'm just crazy, yeah I think I'm losing my marbles, this is bonkers 😂even for me, but there is definitely a theme here.

[who-datgirl]

Okay y’all so I have been thinking about the finale since Friday and the more I puzzle on it, the less I believe Ruby’s fairy tale ending was genuine. I of course was a big proponent of the “Ruby is River’s daughter theory”, but I am starting to be one of those people who think she is an unknown member of the pantheon. More specifically, I think she may be the daughter of The Trickster, I’ll go into why.

Let’s start with Ruby’s “mom” in the flashback, her hooded face with humanoid lips visible gives me serious Trickster vibes from SJA. A constant lament was “WHY CAN’T I SEE HER FACE?” Well, The Trickster really doesn’t have much of a face aside from ruby-red lips and sharp teeth. Honestly, why would a 15 year old have such an ominous cloak and where did she get it between the maternity ward and abandoning Ruby at the church? Granted a 15 year old still high on painkillers from giving birth could definitely do some zany shit, but it seems like a stretch to me. If my hunch is somehow correct, I would go so far to say that in the time window they did not see Ruby’s parent crying under the hood, but rather laughing maniacally. In fact, I honestly thought she was laughing when I first watched that scene. If the “mom” is actually The Trickster, then he would definitely have been laughing as he takes great pleasure in messing around with The Doctor and their companions.

The Trickster is the god of traps, which typically involves some narrative that a person falls prey to in order to be ensnared by the trap set for them. Ruby as the child of that entity could totally be able to create narratives that people would happily believe and become a part of, or to put it succinctly: a story. It isn’t any further of a stretch than the god of games having a child that is the god of music.

I think as the season went on, Ruby subconsciously created her own happy ending and bio parents piece by piece. Finding her parents seemed to be a process of creation as it unfolded. The DNA scan in 2046 only showed Ruby’s DNA twice. After defeating Sutekh though, 2024 UNIT was able to seamlessly find some ordinary and flawed woman eager to reconnect with and apologize to her abandoned child. Her bio mom is even willing to reach out to a presumable one night stand from 20 years ago, catch up with him, and see if he wants to become a father figure after two decades. Also the origin of Ruby’s name through a street sign that seemed to not exist in the footage, until it suddenly did, felt like an actual change to the timeline. I have nothing against this ending per se, it just all felt deliberately too perfect as if reality was bending entirely to Ruby’s deepest desires. To top it off Ruby somehow pulled the exact narrative of 10 and Rose’s goodbye for 15 and herself, almost as if unconsciously she tuned into one of The Doctor’s deepest heartbreaks to reflect how horribly she felt about leaving them.

I don’t think Ruby’s real story is close to done. I think her perfect ending will start to show cracks, and the reality of it will seem more created than true. Eventually we may even see her wake up to the truth of her power in time for The Trickster to come in and truly fuck around with things for her and 15. It would be interesting to see her owning her power to send her own bio parent into a narrative that The Trickster could never escape.

There is just too much that went unaddressed. How did Ruby conjure snow? Why was Maestro so disturbed by her hidden song that they said there was something seriously WRONG with her (Maestro literally refers to her as a CREATURE)? How did she fold her own timeline back in 73 yards? Why were people so terrified of or infuriated by the apparition that we now know was Ruby? Did the Ruby in the distance tell people about her ties to the Pantheon of Discord? Did the apparition know the truth of Ruby that is hidden even from herself? Why would Sutekh care about the hooded parent more than anything else he creeped on during his centuries attached to the TARDIS? Is he a Jerry Springer fan, obsessed with “you ARE/ARE NOT the parent” reveals?

One final thing that makes me think they may pull a child of The Trickster into the story. In SJA before Elisabeth Sladen passed, they were planning on revealing that her adopted daughter Sky was really The Trickster’s child all along. The episode never aired as SJA could not go on without Elisabeth. I could see RTD honoring her show by making that story canon through Ruby. After all, Ruby too is an adopted daughter.

[morksphincter]

yall ik that a lot more important things happened in this episode but like when the doctor asked rose how her mum is and how her UNCLE is was he referring to 14 or am i tripping

[worstwolverinesbf]

what if rubys her own mum like ouroboros coz shes the old lady haunting herself and it would explain why the orphan finding lady found no dna or anything

[spelledwiththej]

I haven't seen anyone actually thinking about the fact that the doctor openly says that the order of the events the 24th of December 2004 changes each time he goes back there

Now, my main theory is that ruby is a timeloop incarnated and that because of this she's also her own mom and the main thing about timeloop media is that each day is the same day but the person who's aware of the situation changes it, just slightly, everyday...

Now... Ruby's "bio mom" (aka ruby herself) IS the person that does something different everytime (first just walking away, then speak to the doc, then pointing in silence) and she literally cannot be filmed properly BECAUSE she's not static as everyone/ everything else is

AND RUBY MAKES IT SNOW

SHE IS NOT STUCK IN THAT NIGHT SHE IS THAT NIGHT, HER WHOLE LIFE IS COMPRESSED AND EXTENDED INTO ETERNITY AT THE SAME TIME

SHE IS THE WOMAN IN VHS ANS SHE CANNOT BE FILMED BECAUSE SHE IS NOT IN THAT MOMENT SHE IS THE MOMENT AND HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE HER ACTIONS EVERYTIME

[leikeliscomet]

Only 2 important things happened this episode and this was one of them. And yes I'm ignoring the Scotland era for the sake of the meme 🤧

[taran-wood-beast]

At least we got Boom and 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble and Rogue and Joy to the World and Lux and The Well and The Story And The Engine.

[ernstiggroteadelaar]

are we all ignoring that every time the tardis landed in the flat of the Sundays and destroyed the ceiling SUTEKH WAS HANGING ON TO IT

[idkaguyorsomething]

hey wait ¿so what the fuck was susan triad, head of major research company susan technologies, doing at the club where ruby’s band was playing?

[avemakuta]

Another thought on 15 killing Sutekh and how it differs from his killing of the Goblin King:

Sutekh was killed in cold blood. Yes, it was necessary, but the fact remains that Sutekh's manner of death required the Doctor to personally kill a helpless being. Once he was on that leash and in the Time Vortex, his fate was entirely in the Doctor's hands.

Whereas for the Goblin King, he was an active threat until just about the moment of his death. There was no point where the Doctor had to look at a defeated and defenseless Goblin King and decide to kill him.

And I think that is an important difference. The Goblin King died in battle, Sutekh was executed.

[deathdefyinggarlic]

while it would be cool and make some sense for the hooded woman to be ruby, i think i would be a little disappointed by that resolution? like i thought about that reveal after The Church on Ruby Road and was fine with it - but after all the crazy interesting stuff that has happened, I’m expecting a little more from the reveal