The Doctor Who finale was inspired by Star Wars... but not in a good way

Doctor Who's revival season is now over. The rebooted series stars Ncuti Gatwa as the titular Time Lord and featured former showrunner Russell T Davies back at the wheel, working with a hefty budget injection from Disney. Even still, it was very much a mixed bag. From the brilliance of episodes like "73 Yards" and "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" to poorer offerings like "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord," the series had flashes of brilliance mixed in with less inspiring moments.

The real highlight of the season was the larger storyline involving Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and her parentage. In the Christmas special, we learned that Ruby was left outside a church by a mysterious hooded figure on Christmas Eve. Ruby — taking her name from the road she was left on — grew up never knowing who her mother was. However, in the season finale, it's revealed that her mother is not the sinister person we all predicted. She's simply Louise Miller, a totally normal NHS nurse.

This reveal that Ruby's mother was simply a struggling teenager abandoning her child to protect her from an abusive home was a sweet twist. Turns out Russell T Davies was inspired to write this plotline after being annoyed by the Star Wars sequel trilogy. “This is kind of my reaction to – bear with me now – the Star Wars films. I can't remember their titles but, in the last trilogy, [The Last Jedi] said that [Daisy Ridley’s Rey] was nothing special. There was nothing special about her parentage," he said in the BBC's commentary of Empire of Death.

The Force Awakens, the first movie in the new Star Wars trilogy, set up a mystery surrounding Rey's parents. In the sequel The Last Jedi, we learned that they were nobody of significance. But then the thrid and final movie, The Rise of Skywalker, reversed course and revealed that Rey's father was actually a clone of Emperor Palpatine, one of the most consequential figures in the Star Wars mythos. "That she just got the Force...an ordinary person with the Force. And then, in [The Rise of Skywalker], they changed it all so that she was this child of the Emperor...and I really loved the version where she wasn't special," Davies mused.

This led to Davies making his own version of the story set in the Whoniverse, and it certainly worked out in his favor. Ruby Sunday's plot was one of the highlights of the season!

The new season of Doctor Who is now streaming on BBC iPlayer and Disney+. Season 2 is officially on the way, with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson returning alongside a new companion played by Varada Sethu. Russell T Davies remains at the helm.

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