It’s time for Doctor Who to bring back its most powerful villain - Sutekh, the all-powerful Osiran. Doctor Who was brought back to the small screen in 2005 by showrunner Russell T. Davies, and since then its gone from strength to strength.
From the outset, Doctor Who has made no secret of the fact it’s been drawing from the classic series. Classic monsters have been brought back, and not just the likes of the Daleks and the Cybermen; there have been everything from Autons to Silurians. There are rumors that the much-anticipated Doctor Who season 12 will bring back yet more familiar threats.
One of the most interesting ideas, ripe to return, is the threat of Sutekh and his rogue Osirans. He was introduced in 1975’s “The Pyramids of Mars,” which saw the Fourth Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith arrive in the early 20th century. They discovered that an Egyptian archaeologist named Marcus Scarman had unwittingly disturbed an ancient evil, a being known as Sutekh the Destroyer. He was one of the most powerful members of an alien race known as the Osirans, and he feared that one day something would evolve that could challenge his supremacy. In order to prevent that, he resolved to destroy all life across the cosmos, but he was ultimately restrained by his own people. It took 740 Osirans to defeat Sutekh, and the survivors imprisoned him within a pyramid in Saqqara in Egypt. He was trapped there until Scarman’s exploration, and launched a desperate attempt to escape.
“The Pyramids of Mars” was one of the most fascinating stories in Doctor Who history, and it draws upon the popular trope that ancient gods and demons were really powerful aliens. This been successfully deployed since by films and TV shows like Stargate, and even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dabbled with it, reinventing the Asgardian gods as ancient aliens. There’s an incredible depth of potential to this, because of course Sutekh wasn’t the only Egyptian god, and the entire Egyptian mythology can be subtly repurposed into sci-fi. The Doctor Who potential was best demonstrated by Justin Richards’ tie-in novel, “The Sands of Time,” which saw the Fifth Doctor confront another rogue Osiran called Nephthys.
In thematic terms, the Osirans would be a perfect fit for Doctor Who season 12. The Jodie Whittaker era is subtly different to previous iterations of Doctor Who, focused on cultural commentary as much as it is on sci-fi. Given that’s the case, the post-colonial debate over who should possess Egyptian relics would surely be of interest to the show’s writers. The British Museum contains countless artifacts that were essentially looted by Egyptologists in the early 20th century, and is still resisting calls from the Egyptian government to return them. In Doctor Who, this debate could heat up quite quickly, simply because these relics could contain real power. In Justin Richards’ “The Sands of Time,” one canoptic jar was broken during a theft at the British Museum, freeing the trapped mind of an Osiran who had sided with Sutekh.
It’s even possible that Sutekh himself could return. In “The Pyramids of Mars,” the Doctor ultimately triumphed by proving that a race had indeed evolved that could defeat Sutekh - the Time Lords. Time is the weapon of the Time Lords, he insisted, and he trapped Sutekh in a temporal vortex where time passed at an accelerated rate, until he withered away and crumbled to dust. But the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks saw all of time and space subjected to immense strain, and it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a scenario where Sutekh broke free from that vortex. Should that happen, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor would be faced with one of the most destructive forces in creation, and she’d need to resort to her wits to beat Sutekh once again.
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