Doctor Who Season 1 has explored the past, the present, and the far-off future, and so far basically every episode has stood alone. You can watch episodes like “Dot and Bubble” or “73 Yards” like they are separate entries in an anthology that only share a couple of characters. However, there’s much more to this season than just a collection of one-off adventures. There’s a massive Easter Egg hiding right in plain sight, and soon we’ll get to learn exactly what’s going on — almost two decades after the show attempted it the first time.
Doctor Who is the perfect example of a “semi-episodic” series. While most of the episodes are episodic and stand-alone, there are some common throughlines that keep coming up over and over again. Who exactly is Ruby Sunday? Why does it keep snowing when she’s around? Who left her on Ruby Road all those years ago? But one of the biggest questions has been hiding right in plain sight: who is the mysterious woman who keeps appearing in these adventures over and over, all the way back to “Wild Blue Yonder”?
In the season so far, the actress, Susan Twist, has portrayed an astronaut, a hiker, a robot ambulance, and even a portrait, but we didn’t get a clue of who she is actually playing until the teaser for the next episode, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the first part of the season’s two-part finale.
“In every dream I’m there,” she says. “Everywhere I land, a woman appears,” the Doctor explains. “She doesn’t know why, but she remembered them.” It looks like this mystery wasn’t just a season-long Easter egg for devoted fans, but a key part of the season-long plot — and maybe even the answer to the mystery of Ruby’s origin.
It’s not the first time that Doctor Who has adopted a strategy like this. In fact, it’s not even the first Doctor Who Season 1 to use it. When current showrunner Russell T. Davies initially rebooted the series back in 2005, multiple episodes in the first season contained references to “Bad Wolf,” appearing as a call sign, a TV station, and even in German and Welsh. It all led up to the penultimate episode, “Bad Wolf,” the first part of a finale where Rose Tyler, imbued with the time vortex, dubs herself “Bad Wolf” and uses the energy to resurrect a dead Captain Jack Harkness.
This iteration of Doctor Who is taking the “Easter egg” strategy from the 2005 season and combining it with a “mysterious companion” story like the ones surrounding Clara Oswald and River Song in later seasons. The result is something that is brand-new, but still classic Doctor Who.
