‘Doctor Who’ Reveals Mrs. Flood’s Identity & Who Archie Panjabi Is Playing — and Brings Back [Spoiler]

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 6 “The Interstellar Song Contest.”]

Doctor Who, in what could have easily just been a fun adventure for the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu), just delivered two jaw-dropping moments.

First, Carole Ann Ford returned as Susan Foreman, the Doctor’s granddaughter and his very first companion. “Go back, Grandfather. Go back,” he saw her in flashes seeming on the TARDIS, as he floated and began freezing in space. “Find me.” Then, he saw her again as he tortured the man responsible for bringing the danger to the Contest.

Ford first appeared on Doctor Who 62 years ago and hasn’t been on the screen in over 30 years, since the Dimensions in Time Children in Need special in 1993.

“At that extreme moment in the Doctor’s life where he’s frozen in space and could be dying, I wanted something extraordinary to bring him back. It was a great moment sitting with Juno [Dawson], who wrote that script, to say, ‘Please can you put in Susan?’” showrunner Russell T Davies said during the Doctor Who Unleashed episode (watch it below). “Susan appeared to him and pulled him out of his deep freeze.”

Ford credited “fan power” with her return. “I think fans have been saying, where is she? What’s happening to her? Are we going to see her again?” She and Davies met at the screening of the first 60th anniversary special, “The Star Beast.” She shared, “While we were hugging, Russell said to me, ‘Would you like to come back?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course, I’d like to come back.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s good because you’re coming back.”

Then, a mid-credits scene confirmed who Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), who has been in every episode of the season thus far (and was introduced during the last), is, after she, like the others in attendance at the Contest, was returned — and she bigenerated! (Yes, there has now been a second bigeneration, after David Tennant‘s Fourteenth Doctor did just that in the third 60th anniversary special, leading to the introduction of Gatwa’s Fifteenth.) With the Doctor gone, “it’s safe,” she said. “I’m afraid my double brain stem froze, lethal for a Time Lady. But I’ve got my own knack for survival.”

Mrs. Flood bigenerated into Archie Panjabi‘s character. “Our name is The Rani. Although, she’s become a Rani, while I’m The Rani, the definite article, so to speak,” she said. She asked Mrs. Flood if she had the vindicator ready (yes), then began walking off. “I have a date to arrange,” the Rani said, clearly taking charge. “As for the Doctor, I will bring him absolute terror.”

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The Rani is a renegade Time Lord and the Doctor’s nemesis. She was originally played by Kate O’Mara and was last seen in that same Dimensions in Time special.

“Finally we found out who Mrs. Flood is,” Davies said in Doctor Who Unleashed. “I think ever since Mrs. Flood appeared, people have been saying she’s the Rani, and sometimes you just want of deliver what people expect. Yes, she’s a Time Lady. Yes, she is the Rani. And yes, she has bigenerated, and now she’s Mrs. Flood and Archie Panjabi as The Rani, which is so exciting.”

He continued, “It was kind of the plan almost from the beginning. I always thought she was the Rani, which actually is a very old Doctor Who villain who has never been back since the show came back in 2005. She’s kind of being waiting in the wings, and the time has come.”

So what does this all mean?! What did you think of these two major moments? Let us know in the comments section below.

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