The History Behind Doctor Who's Big Returning Villain

At this point, modern Doctor Who has been around for almost as long as classic Doctor Who was—which means the opportunity for returning legendary baddies that the series hasn’t already taken is running rather thin. But this week, Doctor Who finally played one more familiar ace up its sleeve (no, not that Ace), and brought back one of its most infamous one-off villains.

“The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the penultimate episode of the current season of Doctor Who, revealed the mysterious reason why Doctor and Ruby have been seeing the same woman (played by perpetually persistent guest star Susan Twist, a name born to be used in Doctor Who in such a capacity) across their adventures in Time and Space. Now manifested in modern day London as nebulous tech mogul Susan Triad, the head of Triad Technologies, the episode climaxed with the reveal that Triad was in fact a herald for another of the gods that have been menacing the Doctor from the shadows since last year’s 60th anniversary specials. First there was the Toymaker, then Maestro, and with an aside mention of Sarah Jane Adventures baddie the Trickster, we got to the final reveal: the god of Death of this great pantheon, Sutekh!

Who Is Sutekh?

Screenshot: BBC/Disney

Although re-introduced here as the God of Death—unlike the Egyptian deity he’s named for, Set, whose domains included the desert, violence, and disorder—Sutekh looks a little different from when we last saw him in Doctor Who. Now a giant, multi-eyed doglike apparition, who has apparently been hidden around the TARDIS itself since as early as last year’s anniversary special “Wild Blue Yonder,” manifesting only as a peculiar groan and wheeze sound from the time ship, Sutekh previously appeared as a large, humanoid doglike creature, wearing dark robes and an Egyptian-inspired mask to hide his true face.

Sutekh was the last surviving member of a race called the Osirans, an interstellar empire of beings with vast godlike powers that inspired the cosmologies of many cultures across the universe by their influence and appearance—including ancient Egypt on Earth. Originally the the guardian of the ruling order of the Osiran civilization, the Osirian Court, Sutekh eventually betrayed his own people in a lust for further power, believing he could free the universe from the chaos of free will by granting them the inevitability of death. He destroyed his own homeworld, Phaester Osiris, and began to carve a path of bloody destruction across the galaxy, before the surviving Osirans—including Sutekh’s own brother, Horus—managed to imprison Sutekh in a pyramid on ancient Earth, using a powerful device called the Eye of Horus. Itself located on a similar pyramidic structure on Mars, the Eye suppressed Sutekh’s vast psionic powers and his true form, imprisoning him for thousands of years.

Where Has Sutekh Appeared Before?

Sutekh has only appeared in one Doctor Who story prior to “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”: the iconic 1975 serial “The Pyramids of Mars.”

Starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, “Pyramids” is largely set in 1911, when an Oxford University professor named Marcus Scarman inadvertently uncovered the tomb Sutekh was imprisoned in during an excavation in Egypt. Immediately killed by the Osiran, Sutekh attempted to use Scarman’s form as a vessel to finally hatch a plan to escape imprisonment and continue is quest to bring death to all life in the universe: using Scarman’s resources as well as some creepy Osiran robo-mummies, Sutekh planned to launch a rocket at the pyramid on Mars holding the Eye of Horus, freeing his true form. Defeated by the Doctor moments before he could escape—locked into a time tunnel that the Doctor shunted the exit for into the far future, believing he had aged Sutekh to death—Sutekh was never seen on screen again until “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” revealing that the Osiran seemingly escaped the Doctor’s trap.

In the UK at least, this week the BBC will re-broadcast “Pyramids of Mars” in an omnibus format as part of the Tales of the TARDIS series, featuring new interstitial material starring Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson as the 15th Doctor and Ruby. Presumably that new material won’t be crucial to understanding the events of this week’s season finale, “The Empire of Death,” but if you can access it, “Pyramids” is regularly hailed as a classic Doctor Who story, so it’s worth checking out!

What Does Sutekh’s Return Mean for Doctor Who?

Screenshot: BBC/Disney

Right now, it’s difficult to say—but even when facing Sutekh in “The Pyramids of Mars,” the Doctor recognized, and struggled to overcome, Sutekh as an extremely powerful entity unlike anything he’d faced before. Even in the constrained form of his imprisonment, Sutekh was capable of psionic power that could overwhelm the Doctor. The implication in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is that this is Sutekh truly unleashed to his full potential. However he managed to survive the time tunnel he was trapped in, or how he became part of this new pantheon of gods, remains to be seen. And that’s even before you get into all the other questions raised by the build up to his reveal in “Legend”—why Susan Triad and all the other versions of her were necessary to his return, how he’s been able to seemingly be hidden and connected to the TARDIS for so long, and if he has any connection to the mystery behind Ruby’s birth mother.

We’ll find out, hopefully, in “The Empire of Death”—as well as how the Doctor will manage to defeat him this time.

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