With The Legend of Ruby Sunday, we’ve had a few new characters confirmed as part of The Pantheon:
The Toymaker - god of games The Trickster - god of traps Maestro - god of music Reprobate - god of spite The Mara - god of beasts Incensor - god of disaster Doubt and Dread - children of Incensor The Threefold Deity of Malice, Mischief, and Misery Sutekh - god of death
Some of these are characters we’d seen before associated with The Pantheon (The Toymaker, Maestro), some are brand new (Reprobate, Incensor, Doubt, Dread), but I think the most interesting is characters we’ve seen before that have now been retconned into being part of the pantheon (The Trickster, The Mara, Sutekh).
I’m wondering if there’s any other characters people would like to see be retconned into being part of the pantheon, and if so, who?
The obvious ones that come to mind for me are The Gods of Ragnarok who could easily be confirmed to be The Threefold Deity, and The Beast who I’ve seen theorised is another form of Sutekh.
A slightly more niche one that comes to mind as well, having mentioned The Beast, is Abaddon given he’s the son of The Beast, he’s already got Billis as his Harbinger as well.
The obvious one is Fenric (and thus all the other “Elder Gods” such as the Animus, Great Intelligence, etc). And because expanded media tied the Elder Gods into the Lovecraft Mythos, then there’s another can of worms (especially in Lovecraft has made it to the public domain).
That does sound like something RTD would do. Something along the lines that the Pantheon was a group that travelled from the Doctor’s original Universe with the Doctor/after the Doctor.
And it would explain the seemingly endless regenerations the Doctor has…
It could work, but I really hope they don’t go that route
I could see it working if they claim that godhood is a rank, or a title you can claim, with membership that changes over time, rather than a single species where they all have to be biologically related
I could see it working.
I guess I just don’t need the Doctor to be anything more special than “An Idiot. With a box, and a screwdriver. Passing through, helping out, learning”.
Well, he’s already had having a bunch of people pray to him as a plot point (“Sound of Drums”/“Last of the Timelords”), and come back into existence because someone believes in him (“The Pandorica Opens”/“The Big Bang”).
Obviously Fenric, that’s rather obvious and I don’t know if there’s a reason they didn’t mention him when talking about all the gods or if RTD just forgot.
Light, the Great Vampire or any number of weird things from the VNAs would work. Hell, if they’re going real obscure, they could make some references to the Enemy or something (but only in reference, trying to actually fit it into this Pantheon would probably ruin the concept).
One thing I haven’t seen anybody bring up yet is the Land of Fiction and the Master Brain, could be the product of a God of Stories or something. However, a quick look on TARDIS guide tells me that apparently the Gods of Ragnarök created it so I guess it’s already been established.
One thing I really don’t think should be in the Pantheon is the Midnight Entity because I feel that ruins the point of not knowing what the hell it is or where it came from. If it was just a “god of imitation” or something, that would be a lot less scary than an unknowable thing that shouldn’t exist slowly consuming the passengers of Crusader 50.
i don’t think it is/should be one of the pantheon, but i feel like it doesn’t make sense in a similar way to how the pantheon doesn’t make sense. i guess i could see it as part of the pantheon but much less dramatic/visible than the others, and not necessarily part of all the drama going on in this season.
Yes, Fenric seems like the most obvious choice and the most surprising omission. Could he, perhaps, be a rival to Sutekh?
I wish (so very much) that the Great Intelligence was part of this. Much as I enjoyed Moffat’s time as showrunner, his take on the Great Intelligence was surprisingly underwhelming to me.
I’ve thought about the Fendahl so much. A real favourite of mine. My current thinking is along these lines:
We know that the Fendahl is an evolutionary dead end, what happens when life turns in on itself and becomes the ultimate manifestation of death. Interestingly, there is a reasonable ecological basis for this. All life converts energy from order to disorder so that it can maintain its own localised order. Life accelerates local entropy in order to support itself. The Fendahl is the most literal expression of this, life that draws all other life into its influence (kind of like a biological black hole) and reduces it to… nothingness.
This seems very much like the ultimate in biological experimentation. I wonder if the Fendahl is a result of Sutekh’s interference with the natural evolutionary process on the mythical fifth planet. After all, we see something similar with the skull influencing human evolution on Earth. Thus, Sutekh is the God of Death whilst the Fendahl is the literal manifestation of death.
It’s a good feeling, isn’t it? “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” was a lovely homage to “Pyramids of Mars” and yet a totally different story (whilst staying true to the original). I think we’re in for something pretty special on Saturday!
