#tbh I feel like I shouldn't have brought Gabriel back

[being-of-rain]

In the days before The Legend of Ruby Sunday, I thought to myself 'RTD did a lot of big bombastic series finales in his day, and always with Classic Who villains. But that was fifteen years ago. Maybe he's mellowed.' Dear readers, he had not.

Here's my thoughts on the episode! But fair warning, they're mostly that it was just okay. I mean it was fine. It was a fun, mindless bit of build-up and spectacle. Of course it was very much a Part One, so a lot of my thoughts are just 'I wonder where this will go next episode.'

Firstly, I don't think I'm a massive fan of RTD's method of story arcs, which is to sprinkle references to something throughout a season that'll be part of the final story without much elaboration. It feels less like a story, and more like a drawn-out teaser for the finale. And continuing a trend that started in RTD's last full season that I'm not crazy about, there was so many arcs and plot hooks too. Before the episode my brother and I listed as many we could think of, and it actually addressed almost all of them, plus one or two we forgot about or thought wouldn't come back. It started to feel like the characters were ticking off a shopping list of questions. And I know that these things basically just exist for fans to speculate about. And I can't pretend I didn't have fun joking and memeing about all the arc elements with other fans. But as someone who both isn't really that interested in genuinely theorising about how a series is going to end (odd for a Dr Who fan, I know) and who really likes story/character arcs that develop over time, I guess I'm just not the target audience. This season the arcs have pricked my curiosity, but not much more than that - except make me wish they did more with the supernatural elements than a few badly-conceived gods and the cool fairy circle episode.

Anyway, Sutekh! In the last few years the TV show has done the Morbius Doctors, Beep the Meep, the Toymaker, the Shalka Doctor... I really shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore, but I still sit in bemused shock when a finale revolves around Susan and Sutekh. And that is pretty fun. We had basically nothing of Sutekh this episode, so I'm very interested what the next episode will do with him.

I'm especially curious how much it'll dip into the Egyptian mythology aspect. Because on one hand, Pyramids of Mars is sorta built on the problematic and awkward trope that aliens at least inspired Egyptian culture. On the other hand, I think the Egypt link & aesthetic is a big part of Sutekh's identity as a villain/monster. I remember being bored when Big Finish tried to divorce him from it in their latest audio with him (but tbh I trust RTD to at least do a more entertaining story than that, even if he's boiling Sutekh down into simply a God of Death). Similarly, I think a really big part of why Sutekh made a big impact on the original Dr Who fandom is how he was a genuine overwhelming threat to the Doctor, something that probably won't be as big of a shock today. But the final part of Sutekh's identity is Gabriel Woolf, and he's absolutely as entertaining as ever.

As for Susan, after all that drama it'd almost be stranger if she didn't appear in some form in the finale. I'm wondering if Mrs Flood is Susan, something that's really weird to say seriously after thinking people were wrong about her being an important character for 6 months. At the very least I really hope they give Carole Ann Ford some kind of cameo, because it'd be such a missed opportunity if the very first companion actress was still alive and they didn't do anything with her.

What else? Mel continues to be lovely, and I continue to wonder if there's any reason it was her in particular who was brought back or if it was just to have a classic Who companion hanging around. Rose continues to be precious, and her instant bonding with Ruby is just adorable. I missed Ruth Madeley's Shirley, I assume it was filming conflicts that led to her being replaced by a preteen? When Harriet was introduced I distinctly remember thinking 'oh she's cute, I hope she sticks around.' And the Vlinx continues to have 1-2 lines and no explanation.

The VHS-powered time window was an extremely cool concept, but I feel like it didn't look as good and distinct as it could have. I'm not totally certain what I'd have done different but I still felt underwhelmed. And I'll say something I've said a lot, but I wish there was at least some vague rules to things like the time window. I don't care about scientific accuracy or real life logic, only narrative logic; if anything can happen with only a bit of poetry to justify it, the stakes and losses and victories aren't nearly as satisfying.

And this might make me sound like someone who looks for anything to complain about, but I feel there's something off about how UNIT is depicted recently. Like it's being glorified and simplified as 'the good guys' maybe more than it has any time before in the TV show's history. And it feels especially awkward when some of the UNIT characters are armed and armoured soldiers. I'm just very not in the mood to heroise someone who I might see committing war crimes on the news, you know. So I'm not really a fan of this version of UNIT and how it's consuming so many past companions.

Anyway!

Mystery Woman 1 (Susan): Sutekh. Mystery Woman 2 (Mrs Flood): Susan? Mystery Woman 3 (Ruby's mum): At this point I have to assume it's the Rani or Iris Wildthyme or Gillian Who or something.

[flightfoot]

Tbh I'm mostly convinced that Adrien feeling doesn't matter for the writers or mostly the character in universe because ISTG WHY NO ONE TELL HIM ANYTHING???

Felix is the most random thing that ever introduced in the series, because he's exist solely for plot convenience. He has things that Adrien actually could have but writer forbid it because he'd be too broken and probably overshadow Marinette or other characters.

WHY KAGAMI TELL FELIX LADYBUG IDENTITY?????? If she tell him because "oh yeah he's my bf now and he deserves to know" then she deserve to be snapped hard on the forehead. As of right now I want to believe it's because Felix programed her to tell him everything she know when he ask for her ring back then.

No seriously WTF IS HAPPENED IN THIS EPISODE I CANT EVEN

I swear s5 is a flip flop season because INCONSISTENCY IS GONE TO THE ABYSS

Yeah people not telling Adrien things for very little reason is unfortunately a series mainstay, whether intentional or not. That's been going on pretty consistently since season 2, when Marinette got brought into the fold on being the Guardian and other Miraculous, and Adrien was left out of the loop. And then there was everything that happened in season 4 with the Ladynoir conflict. Looks like it's continuing with season 5, though I really hope someone thinks to tell him he's a senti. I mean, there ARE arguments that could be made about why they don't want to tell him just yet - like being afraid that Gabriel might command Adrien in such a way that he ends up spilling the beans about knowing he's a senti, and thus endangering himself even more - and that they'd tell him once they got Adrien's amoks back from Gabriel and that was no longer a worry.

I'd want that to actually be stated out loud as reasoning by the characters though, otherwise it just comes off as "not telling Adrien in order to prevent him from having his own opinion and making his own decisions on what to do with the information", which has been stated in the past as reasoning for not telling Adrien (well, Chat at the time) about things that undeniably concern himself, back when Ladybug decided to trick Chat into revealing his secret identity to a third party in order to prevent the possibility of Chat refusing to do so if she just asked him to outright.

As for Felix... okay yeah he does seem to get some OP plot conveniences (especially with that special glass that let him see hidden items, where did he get that?) and I'd love for Adrien to be given more of the ability to affect things, but dammit I do enjoy watching a lot of Felix's shenanigans.

Kagami telling Felix Ladybug's identity... yeah I don't think she should have done that. That wasn't her secret to tell, and it's a very dangerous secret on top of that. When Alya told Nino about her still helping Ladybug, that was HER secret to tell, primarily, it mostly concerned her and she was the one most in danger if it got out, plus it'd already caused a schism between her and Nino before this, so she had reason for it. When Nino revealed his and Alya's secret identities to Adrien and later to Marinette... well he still shouldn't have done that, Alya's identity wasn't his secret to tell, but he was right about it being a very low-value secret at that point, since Monarch already knew their identities, and Adrien and Marinette being trustworthy.

I don't think Felix commanded her to do that though, it just doesn't fit with the image of Feligami that the show is selling. I think it's more just a matter of Kagami being an emotionally vulnerable teenager who has someone who's there JUST for her, for the first time in her life, someone who's very devoted to her immediately, and who's willing to act on it - she's jumping into that relationship headfirst without a safety net, in order to meet her emotional needs. And thus, since she sympathizes with Felix so heavily, she tells him any information that she thinks will help fulfill the goal of freeing her and Adrien from their parents.

Do I think this was the right choice? No. It would have been better if, after Felix tells her everything he knows, she then privately went to Marinette, revealed that she knows she's Ladybug, and tried to recruit her help, maybe even trying to get her to reveal her identity to Felix (though I don't think this would have been necessary).

Do I think it makes sense for a girl in Kagami's position though? Yes. Especially with how much she and Felix are in the honeymoon phase of a relationship.

[jellojolteon]

Thoughts on ml movie below the cut (not really looking for any response, just to drop my thoughts somewhere, but y'know standard spoiler warning too)

Really mixed bag? Like genuinely and truly. There were parts of it that made me laugh! The humor was genuinely fun and I loved the use of cuts! There were parts that were really great! And the visuals are unquestionably stunning.

I'll abstain from an opinion on the musical numbers since that isn't really my cup of tea and I can't judge em

And I'm willing to let rest that this is a retelling, and it's a cool take on the story in terms of what got brought back (mime guy from the pv??? Amazing so glad that got given a proper use) and even the characterizations are fine in my book, especially given limited runtime.

But I think that this movie (and this seems like a common problem in the show too, at least to the point through s3 where I had stopped watching) (and the marketing too tbh) is that it tries to do too much with too little substance. It spreads itself too thin. What even IS the theme here? Is it the love over death thing? Is it self-acceptance? So much was stuffed in that it was all tell and almost no show.

It pays lip service to the original idea of trying to put another Real Girl Superhero into the spotlight and simply by virtue of the mechanism that the agreste family plays in the story, aka them as the driving force of the plot, it's hard to handle it and have Marinette still be clearly the main character. In retrospect, there's almost a bitter irony to Adrien cockily proclaiming that he's the main hero and Marinette is the sidekick. I think if Marinette had really had her growth focused clearly in one direction it wouldn't have been so bad, but the multiple themes really eat away at forming a cohesive picture about her and her growth and cementing for the audience that she's the star. I guess the "she-hero" bit just bugs me an exceeding amount.

As a result of the allotment of character complexity, it almost feels like Gabriel is the most compelling character, even though he's still sort of flattened into a two-dimensional version of himself. He's an asshole to Adrien at the beginning, like pretty blatantly, and then explains away everything at the end and boosh suddenly everything is ok. I didn't even pick up that he had any sort of atonement or one-on-one time with the French judicial system, outside of the implication of him going to jail by trusting Nathalie with the secret of Emilie. So like. I guess the things that make Gabriel most compelling are his longer hair when he was younger and his absolute scuzzy gutter dad look lmfao.

(side note, part of me lived in fear of being spoiled of the parts of the show I haven't watched, but I guess if there were such spoilers I missed em. It just surprised me that they were willing to play their hand on Gabriel=Hawkmoth with so little fanfare, but then again maybe I shouldn't be asking so much when it was already all spread so thin)

So like

Yeah

It didn't necessarily have me staring raptly at the screen, but most of my gripes are of the same flavor that I have for the show anyway.

There were much worse uses of my afternoon 😂