10 Most Confusing Scenes In Doctor Who History

Even a galaxy-sized brain like the Doctor's would struggle to understand some of these.

#DoctorWho

[johna]

I think we can all agree the pointing was, in fact, ultimately pointless.

[danielmontague]

The whole Ruby Road, and Ruby's mother storyline was really confusing, but only because it didn't seem to actually be anything at all

[alpinehouse]

Sutekh apparently desperate to find out who Ruby's mother is when he was literally there on the night. God-tier threat foiled by a cloak and a leash.

[Sunprism]

Orson Pink's Family Links sounds like a local breakfast sausage brand

[harveyburton]

The pointing at the ruby road sign gives the Truman show vibes of Who are you talking to? meme

[cometbook]

The Time Flight episode has the biggest question for me, how do the passengers, crew, Doctor etc get on and off the Concordes so easily? There's no staircase in sight.

[Lumibear.]

My feeling on the whole Ruby Road Pointing thing is that RTD just wanted to beat the internet fandom’s guesses so badly that he did a few extra inserts, ADR’S and edits to the ending right at the last minute, so that sure it wasn’t guessed beforehand, but also it now didn’t make any sense anymore.

[ugolomb]

The solution to the pointing *should* have been that some entity tampered with the memory -- inserting the pointing into the Doctor's recollection (in Space Babies) and into the VHS and the Time Window (in Legend of Ruby Sunday). Louise Miller, the birth mother, *didn't* point -- only her memory-image did. RTD could have then explained who did it, and why -- or left the solution for the next season. Either option would have worked better than what he actually did

[Jamezevans]

8:41 I’ve worked out what the Season 1 finale was saying, why Ruby could make it snow & why Ruby’s birth mother turned & pointed at a lamp signpost that wasn’t originally there.

On Christmas Eve, 2004, 15 year old Louise Miller leaves her newborn baby by a Church on Ruby Road in Manchester. She’s found by the Vicar, taken to hospital, & named Ruby by a paramedic or social worker after the road she was found on. Soon after, Ruby’s placed with foster carer Carla Sunday while the Police attempt to locate her birth parents, which fails & so Ruby stays with Carla, who eventually adopts her.

Because Ruby’s birth mother is an unknown woman with an unknown face, that’s what her existence becomes to Ruby, a cloaked figure with a shadowed face. Because of that lack of knowledge, she naturally invents myths & stories around her birth mother as a coping mechanism. Similar to how Tracy Beaker created a myth about her birth mother Carla, that she was a famous Hollywood actress.

In 2023, wanting to find her birth parents & family, Ruby applies onto the spinoff of Long Lost Family, Born Without Trace. They take a sample of Ruby’s DNA, but fail to find any matches on DNA databases. It’s a coincidence that not even extended or distant birth relatives submitted their DNA to ancestry databases, could be another Goblin coincidence. Perhaps the Goblins went back in time & stopped any of Ruby’s birth relatives from doing ancestry heritage DNA tests.

After meeting the Doctor & saving her foster sister Lulu from baby eating Goblins, they go back in time & remove baby Ruby from the step of the Church to eat her instead, which changes the timeline, & erases Ruby from existence. The Doctor goes back in time to 2004, stops the Goblins, & saves Ruby, putting her back on the doorstep. He glimpses Ruby’s birth mother walking away into the night before leaving in the TARDIS.

However, those actions have consequences, because of all of the temporal interferences & disruptions, that night becomes a raw & open wound in time. As revealed in the finale, thinking back to the past, recalling memories, is a form of time travel, & so because that 2004 Christmas Eve night on Ruby Road became open in time, that allowed Ruby to bring that night into the present whenever she memory time travelled, which is why snow fell around her & why the church choir singing was audible.

Also, the temporal disruptions on that night in 2004 made it become a raw & malleable moment in time, so whenever Ruby memory time travelled back to that night, the myths & stories she’d built around her birth mother growing up became real, as, in a way, those were her subjective & invented memories of what happened that night, built on top of the real memories of that night, buried in her subconscious as she was a baby when it happened.

For example, for Ruby her birth mother had always been an unknown woman with an unknown face when she was growing up, so that perception became real when Ruby first memory time travelled after that night had become raw, in the baby station corridor, so her birth mother became a properly cloaked figure with a shadowed face that’d always glitch past Ruby whenever she tried to see her as we saw in the time window.

Another one of Ruby’s myths became real in the baby station corridor too, & that was her birth mother turning & pointing at a lamp-sign post to tell a nearby witness to name her baby Ruby, so as that became real, time changed, thus the Doctor’s memories of that night changed too. Before all of this timey wimey stuff, there was no lamp sign-post with the name of the road, nor did Louise Miller turn & point at it to tell a witness to name her baby Ruby, that was a myth Ruby created when she was growing up, a dream she had or story she invented or picture she drew, which she unintentionally made real.

[MrStephenRockwood]

Regarding the Ruby Road ending, I believe they had a different ending in mind for this season. They were clearly trying to establish that there was something unique about Ruby (she can just make it snow somehow) and the person in the cloak was certainly pointing at the Doctor. Whatever the ending was supposed to be it didn't work out for some reason so they had to change it during filming.

[peterquinn]

The chess problem in "Curse of Fenric" is based on a classic problem in computer logic called "Prisoner's Dilemma". The problem is based on a point weighting system of whether to betray the other prisoner or to work together. It is mentioned during the story, .

[Genideb]

About Master's disguise, I know that it is very simple explanation but he just love disguises. Don't you do something irrational just because you like it?

[lexruptor]

You know, I think that's why I liked Missy so much. She was very Delgado, which is nice. People forget that, while always antagonistic, The Master wasn't always John/Sasha insane, they used to be more of a Moriarty type character, and Missy dies a great job, as a character, of melding those two sides. She kidnaps planes by freezing them in the sky, she demands 7 snipers, she's capable of intellectual communication and change, rather than being so insane as to be a living non-sequitor, and it's so refreshing. The Master these days is tedious when they should be, as Missy was, intriguing, and full of mystique and charm. Harold Saxon wasn't even charming, he was a prick tbph, and a psychotic one at that.

[alwaysbored]

The Ruby Road storyline is pretty much just as dissapointing as the hybrid storyline

[mattheller]

Rubys pointing should have been number 1. its even more pointless and confusing that the ponds being on the run for 3 months

[porygatto]

Personally, I love "Day of the Moon"'s start. It was intriguing and made me wonder what was going on, almost feeling like I missed an episode in between. I love these kind of introductions, depicting a different scenario and then explaining what happened. 😊
But that's my personal liking.

I think the "spoon scene" in "Empire of Death" would have worked perfectly as the opener scene, before telling us the rest of the universe was dead. It's so out of place and didn't payoff well in the final episode, but would have been great as a "wait what's going on- ooh the universe is dying! *cut to where we actually left last week*".

I have a suggestion for a possible video: "Scenes that could have started an episode"? Listing episodes that could have worked better by mixing the order of some scenes. 😮

[Pinkyorkie]

I’m really hope the pointing at nothing thing turns out to be something to do with the trickster somehow or Atleast gets explained

[pelicanformation]

I think if you are going to have long running storylines that make characters bigger than would be expected, you really need to have a clear vision of where you are going from the very beginning and decisions will lead to that place.

[finnstewart]

I'm still holding out hope that RTD has something at least a little bit less disappointing regarding Ruby's family, but the more bizarre statements he's making, the less I have that faith.

[Skaramine]

The Silence might have been unable to see River saved by the TARDIS thanks to the Perception Filter 15 mentioned in 76 yards.