And Su could have it all, my empire of dust

Previously on Doctor Who…

The Doctor and Mel were trapped with a zombified Susan Twist! Kate and the rest of UNIT were trapped with a TARDIS-clutching Sutekh and Ruby was trapped in The Volume…er, I mean the Time Window. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday sure did try and juggle a lot, but let’s see if Empire Of Death can catch everything that’s been left up in the air or if it ends up a load of balls, all over the palce.

Doctor Who Spoilers

With Sutekh returned and in control of all of time and space thanks to his unique connection to the TARDIS, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) is beaten. Escaping Sutekh’s clutches in a figment of the imagination, Mel (Bonnie Langford), Ruby (Millie Gibson) and The Doctor can only watch as an infinite wave of dust and death envelopes all of creation – or at least, every bit of it the Doctor has visited since he landed at the priory in 1911. But as death becomes everyone, why are the Doctor, Ruby and Mel still alive? It turns out that Sutekh is a bit of a continuity geek (I mean he has been following Doctor Who obsessively since 1975 so we know he’s just a big nerd) and, like all of us, is obsessing about the identity of Ruby’s mother. So, the race is on – first one to solve the series’ arc mystery wins.

As is typical with Russell’s finale writing, we get buckets of style but never, it feels, quite enough substance. He’s a grandmaster of building up the hype but he invariably frustrates and disappoints when it comes to delivery. He also loves to homage his favourite cinematic and TV influences and this time it’s pretty clear that RTD’s personal time window was set for 2017-2018, a period of cinema that’s a big influence on Empire Of Death. Sutekh’s initial takeover of London lifts its visuals directly from The Mummy (yes, that terrible one) while Sutekh’s overall plan (and the way it happens) is basically doing a double Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War right down to the dusting of beloved heroes in front of our eyes. Of course, as soon as we saw big name characters like Kate Stewart (Gemma Redgrave) or Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) turned to dust, it became blindingly obvious that everything would be undone and the long-term impact of Sutekh’s attack would be precisely zero. The final obvious influence on Empire Of Death is from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but we’ll come back to that later.

Having got this far on hope and hype, the latter archly stoked by Russell T Davies himself with a manic glee usually only reserved for the latter incarnations of The Master, Empire Of Death does actually present us with some amazing ideas, even if they never really get fully explored. The idea that everywhere the Doctor has been since Pyramids Of Mars has been laid waste is an amazing concept, an omnicide occurring simultaneously across multiple worlds at multiple points in time. It’s a way bigger deal than the supposed Flux was, as well as being more coherently defined. Of course, arguably Sutekh parasitically hitchhiking on the TARDIS throughout time and space is a bigger and more problematic retcon than anything the Timeless Child arc attempted and you don’t even need to go back that far to find the first episode which raises new questions (did Sutekh just have to hang around a Welsh cliffside for 80 years in 73 Yards?).

73 Yards is the thin end of a very, very big wedge and I can’t wait to see continuity pedants tying themselves in knots for years to come trying to rationalise all the contradictions (In The Giggle, did Sutekh get duplicated too or did he have to quickly make a judgement call about which one to hang on to? Which bit of the TARDIS did Sutekh cling to when it was pulled apart in Frontios? Where was Sutekh during The Doctor’s Wife? Did Clara put Sutekh in her handbag along with the tiny TARDIS in Flatline? Was ¼ of Sutekh deleted to escape Event One in Castrovalva? And what happened to Sutekh during The Big Bang? To quote Benoit Blanc, “It makes no damn sense. Compels me though.”)

It’s a fun move to make the Memory TARDIS canon (although why the Doctor insists Ruby “remember the TARDIS” harder when Mel – who travelled in it much longer and further than Ruby is standing right there – is another clumsy moment), lending credibility to Tales Of The TARDIS as well as providing The Doctor a Sutekh-free mode of transport to plan his fightback, a fightback that awkwardly involves taking advantage of the fruits of fascism as Roger ap Gwilliam’s 2046 national DNA database solves the twenty year question of Ruby’s parentage as easily as UNIT solve it in 2024 the episode’s overlong coda. It’s another trademark of Russell’s writing: a retroforeshadowing that takes previous events and belatedly gives them a significance they didn’t originally have.

For a season finale, there’s not actually that much action or even adventure in Empire Of Death. Its flashy visuals and polished production serve to distract from the fact it’s actually a very talky episode, and one that operates with a very small cast. The only notable new guest star is Sian Clifford but she does so much with her brief appearance that it becomes the emotional heart of the entire episode. It’s a poignant exploration of the wider effects of the Doctor’s current predicament and her gradual realisation of the things she’s forgetting as her life diminishes is way more impactful than seeing Kate Stewart crumble to obviously temporary dust. If the episode had more of that and less of the Doctor, Ruby and Mel literally watching Doctor Who on TV it would have been a much, much stronger episode.

Again, throughout the episode we get a tremendous performance from Ncuti Gatwa, especially in the scenes where his Doctor finally gets to show a bit of backbone for once. The fifteenth Doctor wears a single tear the way the fifth wore a stick of celery but in this episode you finally get a proper sense of the power of a Time Lord simmering below the surface his affected nonchalance. It also feels very Doctor Who that the ultimate solution to the problem caused by Sutekh being dragged through the time vortex is to drag him through the time vortex yet again, although it does lead to the biggest (okay, second biggest) missed opportunity of the whole episode. I can’t help but feel that, having attached an intelligent bungee cord to Sutekh collar, the 4th, 10th or 11th Doctors would have shouted “Walkies!” as they dragged the dog-god into eternity to bring death to death, a reset button Star Trek: Voyager would be proud of.

And with Sutekh’s empire done and dusted (heh), all that was left was to finally solve the mystery of the identity of Ruby’s parentage, a mystery that ends up being solved insultingly easily and in egregiously disappointing fashion. Like Rey (before the craven fan capitulation of Rise Of Skywalker), Ruby Sunday finds out her parents are nobodies, their story better suited to ITV’s Long Lost Families than Doctor Who. The difference here is that in Star Wars, the mundane identity of Rey’s parents was meant to shatter the aristocratic assumption that great power must be inherited. Here Ruby’s parents being unfortunate teens fundamentally fails to explain why Ruby herself seemed to have great power. If her mum was just an ordinary young girl, how did Ruby contain a song that terrified Maestro or have the ability to manifest snow wherever she went? I’m going to end up quoting Benoit Blanc again, aren’t I? It might not have landed with such a leaden thud if RTD hadn’t spent the entire season since Ruby was introduced hyping up the mystery and then layered on the flat-out stupidest explanation for why Ruby’s mother pointed at something after leaving her daughter at the church. To paraphrase Benoit Blanc, “it makes no damn sense. Infuriates me though”. I do have to give RTD props for calling Ruby’s mum Louise Miller (fan-baitingly close to Lucie Miller) and casting an actress who bears a passing resemblance to Sheridan Smith. That would have been a reveal for the ages!

The last few scenes of Empire Of Death are mawkish, schmaltzy drivel of the type I hoped we’d left behind in the Chibnall era. For Davies, it’s surprisingly poor writing, crass and obvious in its sentimentality and clumsily awkward in its inclusion, adding to the general air of hurriedness that permeates the whole of the series 14 – like there wasn’t quite enough time to get everything done given all the competing schedules of those involved.

Still, there’s something comfortingly classically Russell T Davies in a series finale which doesn’t really make a lick of sense when you take a step back and examine it but – Ruby’s parentage aside – the emotional beats of the story and characters hit land so well you don’t really care. Gatwa has cemented his presence as The Doctor and while Mrs Flood’s teasing rooftop sign-off is as cynical as you can get, you bet your life I’m aching to know who she really is. Roll on Christmas and Joy To The World!

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