Ruby Sunday
Ruby Sunday was a companion of the Fifteenth Doctor.
Abandoned as a baby by her mother, Ruby was soon fostered, and then adopted, by Carla Sunday and raised alongside other children that she fostered, developing a protective personality and changing the lives of Carla and her adopted grandmother, Cherry, for the better. Upon her nineteenth birthday, she and the Doctor defeated the Goblin King and his Goblins, preventing them from continuing to abduct the babies of the world. She then joined the Doctor in his travels.
Biography
Early life
Ruby was believed to be born around 2PM on 24 December 2004. Within the next few hours, her mother travelled to the church on Ruby Road, abandoning her outside in the snow. The Fifteenth Doctor then arrived in his TARDIS, having travelled back from 2023 to negate a cracked timeline where the Goblins stole Ruby before she could be found and ate her. The Doctor was successful in saving her, and left Ruby to be found by the vicar, restoring the original timeline. She was named "Ruby" after the road the church was located on. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"])
Growing up
Ruby was raised in Manchester and fostered by Carla Sunday, who often took in other children to simultaneously foster, but Ruby would be the only one she adopted. Ruby did her A levels, but her results were negatively affected by moving from Manchester to London, into the flat belonging to Cherry Sunday because of her declining health and refusal to move to Manchester. Ruby considered the move to have been "tricky" and "expensive". (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]) Ruby and her family lived through the pandemic, the recession and the Giggle together. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"])
Meeting the Doctor
On 1 December 2023, Ruby, having wanted to find the truth about her parentage, ended up on a television series presented by Davina McCall which attempted to reunite "foundlings" like Ruby with their families. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]) Before going on the show, Carla told Ruby to not let anyone tell her story for her. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"]) While an interview for the show was being filmed, Davina told Ruby about how there was no guarantee her family could be found and Ruby told her about her adoptive family, (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"]) but found it was too personal to speak about how much she appreciated Carla. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"]) However, filming was cut short when a heavy studio light nearly fell on Ruby and an electrical plug ricocheted against the back of Davina's head, as the Goblins began to weave bad luck into Ruby's life, having sensed a "chance of coincidence".
Following the interview, Ruby was befell by a long series of bad luck, such as Bobby McGeever asking her out, causing Ruby to believe she was the centre of "a whirlwind of bad luck". On 22 December, while playing in her band, her musical keyboard stopped working, halting their performance. The next day, she nearly dropped her drink at a nightclub, only for the Fifteenth Doctor to arrive and catch it for her. She later left the club in a taxi, where her friends playfully called her a jinx.
On Christmas Eve, which was also her nineteenth birthday, Ruby learned Carla was fostering a new baby, Lulubelle. While Carla went out to buy items for her, Ruby received a phone call from Davina giving her the news that they had not been able to trace her birth family. The Goblins then arrived to steal Lulubelle from Ruby. Ruby chased them to the roof, grabbing the ladder that was suspended from their ship to follow them. As it drifted away from the house, the Doctor bounded over and leapt onto the ladder with her. He gave her one of his intelligent gloves to help her hold on to the ladder. However, the goblins captured and tied them up once aboard. While tied up, the Doctor informed her the goblins were time riders, "bimbling" on Ruby's timeline to create seemingly coincidences to then capture Lulubelle and feed her to the Goblin King. Working together, the pair escaped and freed Lulubelle, returning her to the house before Carla returned.
However, the goblins then "bimbled" back to 2004 to steal Ruby as a baby instead, but the Doctor managed to save her and kill the Goblin King, causing the Goblins to fade away. The Doctor then returned to 2023 to ensure Ruby had returned, and then went back to his TARDIS. Realising he was a time traveller, Ruby left Carla and entered the Doctor's TARDIS. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"])
Early travels
Arriving atop the Jason Orange Plaza in Mancopolis 2424, the Doctor and Ruby dodged being run over by a tram, only to be arrested by the Care Force for being "tram raiders". A weather orb, noticing they weren't smiling, began raining on them. After stopping the orb, the mayor of the city, Mary Mulberry, communicated to them via the windows of a tower which also functioned as screens, believing them to be auditors sent by the Galactic Central Exchange; she ordered Zhi, one of the Care Force, to bring them to her, and, on the journey to the Mancopolis City Hall, she explained to them how Mayor Mulberry saved the city and its population after the 2399 Event.
Entering the Mayor's office, the Mayor vocalised her belief that they had been a deliberate distraction to enable the Exchange to sneak an assault ship into the city, which she promptly had destroyed. She offered a negotiation, but, after realising they weren't non-humans since they weren't going shift into another form, she threatened to dismember one of them. As they tried to escape through a lift, she had the duo teleported to a dark space filled with "massive people-eating silkworms". (COMIC: Mancopolis [+]Loading...["Mancopolis (comic story)"])
Legacy
After their first adventure together, the Fifteenth Doctor mentioned Ruby in his diary, as he recounted his early exploits. (PROSE: First Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...{"page":"31","1":"First Day of the Doctor (short story)"})
Other realities
Ruby existed in the Daft Dimension, appearing on the cover of an issue of Doctor Who Magazine with the Doctor. (COMIC: The Daft Dimension 600 [+]Loading...["The Daft Dimension (DWM 600 comic story)","''The Daft Dimension'' 600"])
Psychological profile
Personality
Ruby was protective of the children Carla Sunday fostered, acting as a supportive sibling figure. She instinctually sought to protect Lulubelle after the Goblins kidnapped her, even when faced with precarious and life-threatening obstacles. She also sassily confronted the Goblin who hissed at her.
She was also comfortable with her abandonment, embracing the term "foundling" upon Davina McCall's usage of it. However, she did seek out her biological mother and father, if only to understand the truth behind why they left her. However, when Davina's search for Ruby's family was in vain, Ruby expressed disappointment in having no other relatives. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"]) During the interview with McCall, Ruby thought to herself about how, without Carla, she would have been lost, and that she loved her adopted mother "more than anything", but found it was too personal to speak about to Davina on-camera. (PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (novelisation)"]) Upon moving to London, Ruby felt stranded and that she was waiting for her life to begin. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"])
Ruby was pleasantly surprised to discover that 2424 Manchester still used trams, but was less pleased when a living cloud began raining on her and the Doctor, as that too was familiar to her. (COMIC: Mancopolis [+]Loading...["Mancopolis (comic story)"])
Skills
Ruby could play a GO:PIANO88 musical keyboard, and was the keyboardist in her band. Despite some initial difficulty, she also proved able to improvise a song on the spot. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes
- Ruby was first mentioned in First Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["First Day of the Doctor (short story)"], but her surname was obscured, having her name recorded as "Ruby S".
- Ruby possesses a scar cutting through her right eyebrow, which is a real scar actress Millie Gibson received as a child.
- Davina McCall, in The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"], tells Ruby that no matches for her DNA sample were found in the available databases. While some have speculated online that this means Ruby is alien or from another point in time, it should be noted that the United Kingdom National DNA Database, for example, uses only samples from convicted criminals.
- In the real world, there have actually been cases highly comparable to Ruby's, where "foundlings", who have been abandoned at locations such as hospitals and churches, have had their parentage unknown and untraceable.[1] Long Lost Family (the television series implied in The Church on Ruby Road to be the one Davina presents) makes use of DNA searching, particularly in the special Born Without Trace, where DNA samples have been matched to relatives of a parent who have consentingly added their DNA sample to an online database, with further detective work afterwards being required to find a parent;[2] if the parents have no relatives, or those relatives haven't submitted their DNA to an online database, then DNA searching doesn't work, just like in The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"].
Merchandise
- Titan Merchandise, for MCM Comic Con, released an exclusive t-shirt, sweatshirt, cup and coaster using a promotional picture of Ruby Sunday. These were later sold by Forbidden Planet.
- A poster of Ruby was included with Doctor Who Magazine #598.
Other matters
- A clip of Millie Gibson as Ruby was used in the Whoniverse ident released on 31 October 2023, almost two months prior to her debut in The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"].
- Various pieces of fan art of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby were shared by the Official Doctor Who Twitter account under the #FanArtFriday and #DWFanArt hashtags.
- The baby who played Ruby in the 2004 segments of The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"] has yet to be credited.
- The Fifteenth Doctor Audition Piece [+]Loading...["The Fifteenth Doctor Audition Piece (script)"], a script written by Russell T Davies for the auditions of the Fifteenth Doctor, features an unnamed companion; it is unclear if this is meant to be a generic companion or an early version of Ruby.
Footnotes
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