Fifteenth Doctor - Episode 7 & 8

So... My theory about why Rose Tyler and the Meta-Crisis Doctor are safe. Sutekh is the God of Death of *this* universe and only *this* universe. It looks very much like the Bad Wolf universe doesn't have any aliens or monsters or gods in it - the only danger it has ever encountered that needed the Doctor was the Cybus Industries Cybermen - and how lucky were they that the Doctor turned up just then??? That means there is no Doctor in that universe (other than the McD). There are no Axons, no Daleks, no Nestene. Otherwise the Earth - and most of the rest of the universe would have been destroyed or already conquered. The Doctor managed to repair the damage that allowed travel from one universe to another at the end of Journey's End and stated categorically that there was no way back. (And - so far - there hasn't. Rose Tyler's later appearances were set before she had met the Doctor and as a projection of The Moment.) That means that whatever Sutekh did to activate all the Susans, wouldn't have reached the Susan in the Bad Wolf universe (assuming that he was even able to create one there, which is not guaranteed if the energies needed for creating gods don't exist in that universe. Presumably Narrativium (see Terry Pratchett for an explanation of that one).) And, if he was able to set her off in the universe then his energy was able to reach her. There's no reason to presume that the life energy generated by his death couldn't reach there either. I was also interested in the things you said about the reveal of Ruby's mum. It really didn't work for me, not because of it was a bad idea and it 'should' have Susan, Missy, the Mara or a bubble wrap monster from The Ark in Space, but it felt like the ordinariness was unearned (in the same way that the revelation that Rey was a Palpatine was unearned). There were no hints that this might be the case and the reveal of the truth came out of nowhere. All the mysteries were shown to be red-herrings - the cloak, the pointing, the lack of any evidence of her existence - hell, just the fact that she was left in a church doorway at midnight on Christmas Eve. They were just cast aside as an irrelevance, once the revelation was revelated (and pointing to the street sign as an indication that she wanted her daughter to be named Ruby was absolute garbage. Who was she telling? Wouldn't a note pinned to the baby's blanket have been a more sensible idea?). I don't know how I would have changed it - maybe just taken away some of the obvious 'clues' - she didn't need a cloak to hide her identity, the cctv could have just not picked up her face. It was snowing, after all, so maybe she was in a big coat with the hood up. And so on. So, while I applaud the concept (although there is a big part of me that wishes she had been the Doctor's Great-granddaughter and Susan Triad had been actual Susan), I found the actual execution to be lacking in the extreme. That ended up being far longer than I intended. Can you tell I've thought about this?

Ellen Mellor