Sutekh's back and Kate just had a flapjack, as RTD lines up a plethora of mysteries that surely all will be explained in the next and final episode of the series, surely
Myriad single tears later, an old man takes credit for the women doing all the work in this season finale
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Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we? Susan Triad has turned into Sutekh’s puppet, along with Harriet Arbinger, and they’re threatening everyone with some death dust. Before you know it Sue is blowing kisses to the TV crew and they fall to the floor like grains of sand. Doc and Mel manage to escape the recording studio but UNIT’s approach of “fire first, run away later” doesn’t go to plan and their HQ now needs a good old spring clean after Ms Arbinger dusts the lot of them.
While Doc and Mel outrun a dust cloud on a surprisingly speedy scooter, the rest of the planet is getting engulfed, including Ruby’s mum, grandma, and Mrs We’ll-Totally-Find-Out-All-About-Her-This-Week Flood. No time to care about that though, as Doc and Mel meet up with Ruby in the Time Window. There’s a handy memory of a TARDIS there that enigma Ruby can patch up a bit just by thinking about it, so they use it to escape into space.
Sutekh’s dust of death touches every world and every time that Doc has ever visited. You see Sutekh’s been having a piggy-back ride on the TARDIS all this time and left little Susan Triad-like presents everywhere. Things look hopeless for Doc and co, but there’s one thing that might help them stop Sutekh: solve the riddle of who Ruby’s mum is. A riddle that’s so important it’s the last concern of Sutekh before wiping out all life in the universe. Surely only a time-wimey, ingeniously planned out explanation can be waiting for us as the conclusion to this whole season, right? Right?
Hot mess.
Still enjoyed.
XOXO,
Joseph
Insta: joseph_buck
Hi everybody,
Finale time! Wow, this has been such a short season.
UPS:
• Superb performances from Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, Bonnie Langford and Gabriel Woolf.
• Mel affectionately touching parts of the Sixth and Seventh Doctor’s costumes. That was nice.
DOWNS:
• Sutekh was defeated incredibly quickly and easily. Funny how defeating him seemed to take far more effort when he was mostly imprisoned in Pyramids of Mars, than when after he had evolved and was completely unrestrained here. Also Doctor, don’t feel pity for the satanic God of Death who Thanos-snapped away the entire universe not long ago.
• The reveal of Ruby’s mother. Cripes, that was anticlimactic. I appreciate to some extent not making her someone of great cosmic significance, but the reveal makes several prior clues retroactively nonsensical.
• For example, if Ruby and her mum are completely human, why can Ruby magically generate snow?
• Why was an ordinary teenage girl wearing an oversized cloak, why was she pointing dramatically to a street sign in front of nobody and why was her face always obscured? Sod you all for caring, that seems to be the answer.
• Why did Louise’s details not show up on any database prior to DNA testing being made compulsory in 2046? I refer you to my previous answer.
• As well performed as Ruby’s (temporary) departure scene was, it didn’t feel satisfying or dramatically earned to me. As this season has been so short, the development of the Doctor and Ruby’s relationship has felt rushed to me – it feels as they should have been have been a few more episodes before we got to this point. Not helping this are several episodes (73 Yards, Dot and Bubble, and Rogue) where their time on-screen together has been very limited. Yes, she’s coming back next season but that might only for a select number of episodes and she’ll be sharing screen time with a new companion who will most likely take the overall focus. Her tenure as primary companion has already finished and it feels like its finished too soon.
Overall, a very messy and disappointing conclusion to not only a story featuring the grand return of a fan favourite Classic villain, but also an entire season-long story arc. Dear dear.
RATING:
1.4 Sutekhs being dragged through the Time Vortex by the TARDIS like the naughty boy he was.
Hi folks
Before: so let’s see if RTD can nail this one. For me there’s only been two great RTD finale: Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways and The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. Army of Ghost/Doomsday is ok and I dislike Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords and End of Time.
After: oh dear. Definitely a swing and miss for me. As soon as the whole of the UNIT staff turned to dust, I knew a reset was coming. The middle section was kinda good but the way they fooled Sutekh at the end felt weird.
As for Ruby…if she is normal why does it snow for her? The reveal doesn’t land because the snow ability jars with being perfectly normal. As does the song at her heart.
I’ve watched this once and waited a couple of days to score and it sadly gets weaker for me 2/5
Cheers
Kieren
Hello everyone!
Here is my mini review for “Empire of Death”
Er, Sutekh has been travelling this whole time with or on the Tardis? WTF?
Had RTD finally completely lost his marbles? Just explain this to me please, I don’t understand!
Come to think of it, does Tennants duplicate Tardis also have a Sutekh wrapped around it?
Oh yeah, the whole universe is going to be destroyed again, with another silly little thing ( bringing Death to death…groan ) to reset time, everyone and everything.
And Ruby? Why this big mystery?
Oh, I long for those classic stories set on space station, or an interesting planet, solving a dilemma, without the fate of everything in the balance. Sigh….
Gatwa deserves better than this…. heck Sutekh deserves better!
The Doctor screaming? I wanna scream!
Please find some new good writers…please..
The only thing going for this episode is special effects ( Maybe Ruby in that black top wasn’t bad either 😁 )
Too many flaws and the worst of the season, & a dreadful ending…Ughh! What a pity
0.5 I can’t even think of a rating system ’cause I’m so annoyed!
GP Haynes
Down Under…that other dusty place
It wasn’t very good, was it? There’s too much to mention so I’ll bullet point:
• Ruby’s mum being a nurse is fine, but making a massive mystery out if it was a terrible idea. The TARDIS couldn’t work it out, Ambulances from the 51st century couldn’t work it out, two ACTUAL GODS couldn’t work it out, but it was on a databank from the 2040s? Nonsense. Pointless buildup for a nothing reveal.
• Now we’ve solved the mystery of the reoccuring old lady. Tune in next year for: the mystery of the reoccuring old lady!
• Oh no, 73 yards is back!
• The scene with the kind woman on the distant planet was by far the best thing Russel T Davies has written since his return in 2023. Absolute gold standard scene. She forgot her baby died? I cried!
• The sonic screwdriver can’t look like a gun, but a child can have one in his segway?
• putting Sutekh on a lead was really funny.
• The Memory TARDIS rules! Using 13’s TARDIS design as a campfire? Inspired!
• I saw this at the cinema, and everyone was so deflated once the episode ended. The room was silent in a collective, slightly heartbreaking, OK.
2.5, I think.
Overall, this series – and the specials – have really taken the wind out of my sails with Doctor Who. It’s a little bit upsetting. Fortunately, there’s so much good – properly great – Doctor who to watch or listen to elsewhere, but my excitement for season 2 is burning low…
This week, Thanatos snaps his Infinity paws and sends the universe to Dustbusterville, while a Strange Doctor, The Scarlet Stitch and A Red-Headed Skull use a time travel device to undo all the bad bad.
The stakes have literally never been lower!!!
“I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere”. Her name is Ruby. Ruby Skywalker
So to recap: A neglectful mother and her forgotten baby give up a spoon; the Future of the NHS is a 23&Me Pit Stop (I guess Downing Street finally got those budget cuts in), and just so we are all clear: A rope, some gloves, and a whistle.
Sutekh was beaten by 50% of the Temu version of Cluedo.
The memory of a Time Machine is stronger than it’s ability to blow a rape whistle, apparently. Can a TARDIS experience trauma?
In the end, The Doctor took the dog for a walk and left him with No Way Home; “Are You My Mummy?” gets the “Worst. Answer. Ever”, and the Twist at the end was that it was just terrible writing. Not my cup of tea.
Just this once, everybody lives. Again.
At the time of this writing, only 180 more shopping days til Christmas!
More Flood, less watered-down story arcs, please.
2.0 out of 5. This is what happens when you make 8 episodes instead of 12. Do better, Russ. Seriously. WTF.
Hi Gang,
So last week I asked could RTD stick the landing – where do we start?
Sutekh’s DUST of Death – It’s Sutekh’s GIFT of Death why change such an iconic line?
Oh look everyone’s being dusted guess he’ll find a clever way of undoing that
Did The Doctor just send Sullivan off to die?
Sutekh’s letting the Doc & Ruby live because of her need to find her real mum??
They teleport from 2046 to the present day? How?
They stick a dog lead on Sutekh and an all-powerful god can’t release himself? He’s dragged through the time vortex and rips it, and the universe is restored?
Ruby’s Mum is just a regular person and Ruby’s not special even though you’ve been telling us she is.
Who is Mrs Flood??
NuWho is replete with finales that disappoint and as you may guess from what I’ve written I hate this too
Right?
NOPE!!!
I fucking love it!!! Yes, I know I’m in the very small minority, yes, I’m not blind to its flaws, but from the opening minute I was totally gripped. Mel in the memory TARDIS hugging Sixie’s coat and Seven’s tank top. Ruby’s ending broke me – meeting her mum
and saying goodbye – RTD made me cry in a cinema TWICE!! I don’t know what will happen next season but I can’t wait!
I award this 4.5 not letting Susan Twist make the teas out of 5
Andy Parkinson
@caffreys71
If I did have a TARDIS, and could pop back to see my 10-year-old self just as he’d finished watching, oh, I don’t know, episode 3 of Paradise Towers, I could tell him Dr Who is still on the telly in 2024. I could tell him it was even camper and sillier and more overwrought than what he’d just watched. I could explain the writer had scoured his VHS collection for 70s highlights like UNIT and Sutekh and great big silly silver robots (though the K1 beats the bloody Vlinx any day). I could tell him the music is even louder and more annoying now. I’d have believed it. I’d believe anything back then: I was the sort of kid who watched Paradise Towers. But if I told him the least daft, most watchable and moving bit of the season 40 finale was Bonnie Langford’s acting – well, that I wouldn’t have believed. 2.0 gifts of dusty old Who cliches out of 5.
Overall, I just don’t quite get who RTD was hoping to win over with this series. I was expecting a clean-slate, series-1 approach that took all the potential new Disney viewers and gave them 45-minute thrill-ride chunks of family fun with a joyous, charismatic new lead. Instead we’ve had the most unpredictable, uneven run since season 26, full of loose ends and great ideas, obsessed with the Who of Russell’s childhood, hamstrung by an underwhelming series arc that didn’t need to be there. Let’s hope we get more standalone stories and more new writers next year.
okay here is my review for empire of death. i’m trying very hard to be nice.
likes:
– i kinda liked ruby saying “i love you”! platonically i hope, but honestly her departure was the most interesting and deepest their relationship has ever been, in every other episode it kinda felt like a surface level friendship
– memory tardis was complete fanservice but it was nice to spot some stuff.
– claire from fleabag was here!
– this has nothing to do with the episode itself but i’m really reaching – i saw this in the bfi and i had a fun time! i met frank skinner (three lions guy, also in doctor who s8ep8) and some youtubers, and it was my first imax experience!
not-so-likes:
– sutekh was written so terribly and differently to the amazing pyramids of mars that they LITERALLY REMOVED HIS BEST LINES FROM THE PYRAMIDS TALES OF THE TARDIS EPISODE so that it didn’t seem so contradictory. for example, in the original he says he doesn’t care about the doctor or his origins or beings/existence in general – he’s a methodical god that doesn’t care for games. in this one he’s a petty schemer who cares so much about an nhs nurse that he kills everyone in the universe except two people. to rectify this, they cut half of the doctor/sutekh conversation in tales of the tardis.
– rose literally says nothing the whole episode.
– why connect the whole episode to a scene from 73 yards, and then DELETE THAT SCENE FROM 73 YARDS?
– they literally laser harriet to death, who is hinted at being sentient and trapped under sutekh’s control.
– the dialogue really sucked
let’s play a little game i call…………..RTD-doooooooooos or RTD-doooooooooooon’ts
you’re russell t davies returning to doctor who under a new disney contract, writing season one. do you:
– use the new platform to establish doctor who for new viewers like you did in 2005, hinting at the past of the show but focusing on building characters and making a solid story that all viewers enjoy
– use the new disney money to write stories you’ve always wanted to write in the past, rewarding old fans and convincing new viewers to check out past episodes
– use the new connections to expand writers room instead of writing 6/8 episodes yourself (maybe get ONE writer of colour?), focus on standalone episodes that build a solid foundation/fanbase like series 11
OR
– pretend you’re doing all of those but actually do none. weave a story that has a terrible payoff because you’re more focused on tricking doctor who tiktok theorists than actually making sense. confuse all the fans, not because the story is complicated but because we have no idea who this episode is even for, because it’s inaccessible for anyone. make a joke out of season-long plotlines that make it feel like other plotlines (mrs flood) aren’t worth paying attention to anymore, and say it was “like star wars” while completely misunderstanding what made it good in star wars, and eventually making the worst season finale you’ve ever written.
conclusion: this is just NOT the way to write stories. i’ll be honest gang, it’s hard to be positive about this one. 2.5/5
apologies that this one was so long guys, it kinda got away from me.