Chapter the 316th, where the Doctor takes a dog / god for a walk.
Plot:
[This is a relatively recent story of the streaming age, so be warned that there are spoilers ahead.] The Doctor and Ruby visit UNIT HQ in the present day. He wants their help in the cherchez of deux femmes - the mysterious woman whose faces keeps appearing everywhere he goes in the universe, and Ruby's birth mother. The former is easy as she's already on UNIT's radar: it's Susan Triad, the only nice tech CEO in the world. She's doing a big launch speech that very day, and Mel is undercover as one of her media team. The latter femme search requires a time window that UNIT have kept secret since the 1970s - and presumably rebuilt from scratch every time they've moved HQ. Feeding this room-size device with a CCTV tape of the night Ruby was left at the church on Ruby Road allows The Doctor and Ruby to be back there to see if they can ID her mother. But something else appears, a dark swirly force that seems to have the TARDIS police box within it. UNIT Archivist Harriet's surname turns out to be Arbinger: she's the Harbinger of the 'One Who Waits', the head of the pantheon: the swirly cloud resolves and it's Sutekh, who has survived in the space-time vortex by clinging on to the TARDIS (and become a larger and more doggy-faced god in the process). The Doctor and Mel are at Susan Triad's launch, and Triad also turns out to be under Sutekh's control. She releases dust that dissolves anyone with whom it comes into contact.
The Doctor and Mel escape on Mel's Vespa and race back to UNIT HQ as thousands of Londoners are dissolved by a growing cloud of dust. Most of UNIT's personnel are similarly dissolved; the Doctor and Mel rejoin Ruby in the time window chamber. Sutekh controls the TARDIS, but the version within the time window (from when it visited 2004 in The Church on Ruby Road) becomes solid from the power of their memories, and the trio escape in it. Across the universe the dust cloud rolls out; Sutekh has created a version of Susan Triad on every planet the TARDIS has ever visited, and each of them spreads the dust. The only reason the Doctor is still alive is because Sutekh is tortured by not knowing what significance Ruby's birth might have. Using a spoon he was given by a kind woman on an almost deserted planet - the memory TARDIS needing something real to fully function - the Doctor materialises the TARDIS in 2046, and uses the DNA database set up by villainous Prime Minister Roger ap Gwilliam to successfully trace Ruby's mother. Luring Sutekh with the possibility of that knowledge, the Doctor manages to hook intelligent rope round the dog god's collar, which he then attaches to the real TARDIS. The Doctor takes off, dragging Sutekh behind the ship. Pulling Sutekh like this through the vortex undoes the damage and restores the universe. Everyone comes back to life. Reluctantly, the Doctor cuts the rope and Sutekh floats free in the vortex and is killed. Ruby is reunited with her birth mother. The Doctor leaves her behind on Earth, but says he'll see her again.
Context:
I watched both episodes from the Blu-ray back to back on an evening early in December 2024. I was briefly tempted to try pausing Empire of Death at the probable point during the action that the Doctor explains to Ruby about his previous altercation with Sutekh, to watch the whole of the Pyramids of Mars Tales of the TARDIS (see First Time Round and Deeper Thoughts sections for more details) before resuming Empire of Death again. It was getting too late in the evening for me to stay up for another 76 minutes, though, and besides it was a pretty silly idea. Nonetheless, next time I watch this story, I'm sure I'll again consider doing it that way.
Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This post marks the completion of another season of Doctor Who, meaning that I have in total completed 31 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, 13 and 14); I've also completed five Doctors' televisual eras (fourth, seventh, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth).
First Time Round:
As with most of the series, I watched both The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death just after midnight when they landed on the BBC iplayer, accompanied by middle child (boy of 15 years old, 14 at the time), on the 15th and 22nd June respectively. In the following days afterwards, I watched both again with the other two of my children (young man of 18, girl of 12). In between the episodes on the 20th June, I watched the aforementioned 'Tales of the TARDIS' version of Pyramids of Mars - which gave the uninitiated relevant backstory in an edited omnibus of the 1970s Tom Baker story where Sutekh first appeared - on its broadcast on BBC4. I could not interest any of the family in watching with me, but I enjoyed it very much. After I'd watched Empire of Death, I witnessed a strongly negative reaction from some fans I know, and many others online. I didn't understand this at all. It was like they had seen a different show to me; I will go into this more in the Reaction section below.
Reaction:
As usual when watching back episodes for the blog that I know have proved contentious on broadcast, I watched Empire of Death waiting for the moment when it all started to go south such that I would see the flaws many other people had seen... and, as is often the case in these circumstances, I waited and waited and the moment never came. I enjoyed it as much on this watch, if not more, than the previous times. Now that the dust has settled on the finale, and the season as a whole, it's clear that one of showrunner and writer Russell T Davies's aims was a slight Marvel-ification of Doctor Who, with the creation of its own set of Titans, albeit characters still weaved from Who's own past. Having given us a few of the pantheon (the Toymaker and Maestro, both of whom are namechecked in the Harbinger's speech at the climax of the first episode, as was another old monster the Mara, alongside a few others that we haven't - yet - met), the big bad "The One Who Waits" is revealed to be memorable 1970s villain Sutekh. Davies brings the character back from the dead: last seen in the vortex, Sutekh has endured clinging on to the TARDIS, invisible and intangible but feeding off time energy. It's an inventive way to bring back an interesting villain, adding the oomph a finale needs without resorting to the usual fallbacks of the Daleks, Cybermen or Master (who've perhaps become overused in recent years). The villain seducing the Doctor's TARDIS to the dark side is another great idea, leaving the Doctor without his greatest protection. Maybe a tiny flaw of Empire of Death is that it doesn't explore this as much as it could - the Doctor gets another TARDIS very quickly. What he gets (the memory TARDIS) is another magnificent and original concept, though: a just-about working space-time machine constructed from remembrances. Without impeding the action, it provides ultimate fan service, with long-term viewers straining to spot its every visual reference to stories gone by.
I read complaints online about how the seduced TARDIS subplot shouldn't have been done as it contradicted Matt Smith story The Doctor's Wife (where the TARDIS is personified as a woman who sees past and future, but who doesn't give the Doctor the nod that one day she'll be taken over by an fake Egyptian deity). Do people seriously think Davies should have abandoned his plotting because he can't go back in time to change a story from 2011? People may not have wanted the rematch, but that's what the writer has written; it seems silly not to engage with it on its own terms (particularly as 'being with godlike powers blocked the personified TARDIS from seeing these moments of its future' is a perfectly plausible filler for the continuity hole, and doesn't need spelling out). Another frequent complaint I saw online was how obvious it was, as soon as lots of regular characters got killed at the end of the first part, that there was going to be a reset at the end. People said this killed the tension, but I don't believe they felt that watching it; I just think they want other people online to know how clever they are. Sutekh is ultimately going to be defeated, that's a given - so should any spectacle, even if temporary, be toned down? The same people would complain that the stakes were too low, if so. Or should everyone have stayed dead? This is redolent of the imdb.com reviewer mentality: any episode of anything where a regular gets killed rates higher on imdb.com. It feels like a slightly adolescent urge for the show to be gritty, angsty drama again just like it was .. well, never, except maybe in the imaginations of adolescents watching first time round (oh, and in the Virgin New Adventures novels of the 1990s, I guess). To my mind, the quiet scenes in the memory TARDIS - Mel's battling against Sutekh's control, the Doctor's sadness at his adventuring having caused the calamity befalling the universe - speak more of the cost of this battle than leaving people dead.
Another gripe people had was that they felt conned. A great mystery had been set up through the year suggesting that there was something significant about Ruby's untraceable biological mother, only for it to be revealed that she is just an ordinary - magnificently ordinary - person. In a way, the drama was showing us ourselves: Sutekh's fatal flaw was that he thought like a fan, obsessing over details and imbuing them with more significance than they deserved. Viewers waiting for Ruby's Mum to be revealed to be the Rani, or whoever, missed the grounded and real and much more important story: a young Mum giving up her baby, and a girl growing up always wondering. That's where the real drama resides. Objections to this were similar to those raised against Star Wars sequel The Last Jedi (and those reactions were a direct influence on Davies when writing his finale, as he has mentioned in interviews). Star Wars franchise storytelling has always reflected ancient myths - or, if one is less charitable, terrible soap operas - where everyone turns out to be long-lost relatives of everyone else; Doctor Who, on the other hand, has always counterpointed the extraordinary with the ordinary. Ruby's birth parents being just a normal couple of teenagers (people are still holding out hope that her Dad is going to turn out to be the Master, or whoever, but I doubt it'll happen) is in keeping with Who's style. The phenomena witnessed around Ruby through the season (echoes of the day of her birth such as Carol of the Bells and snow falling) are all explained if one's paying attention. The combination of the TARDIS, Sutekh's power and the time window made it possible for memories to become matter. In The Devil's Chord, Maestro has the following dialogue tying it together: "Power like him... the oldest one... on the night of her birth, he can't have been there."
Maybe people didn't like the subtext that they were similar to the villain of the piece, that they'd missed the true emotion of the story to focus on side issues. There is definitely some fan baiting in the story: gloriously, in the first few minutes of The Legend of Ruby Sunday, the script blows out of the water the two main theories that fans, including me, had been painstakingly documenting through the season (Triad's forename is Susan like the Doctor's granddaughter, 'S Triad' is an anagram of TARDIS); that was all too obvious. Instead, the menace is hidden in a different way: SUE Triad TECHnologies = Sue Tech = Sutekh. This was a fun moment, except for pedants like me who feel physical pain at the Doctor's line "It was the wrong anagram". Arggh! It's not an anagram. Its not even a hidden word clue, it's two concealed homophones in a longer phrase. I accept that "It was the wrong wordplay" wouldn't be as strong a line; anyway, I didn't immediately go online to complain about it (I saved it until now). It's also true that Ruby's teenage mother's choice of winterwear (sinister hooded coat) is pushing the misdirection maybe a little too far, but I am oblivious concerning the teenage fashion choices of 2004, so what do I know? The scenes with Ruby's mother - Ruby seeing her in photos for the first time, Ruby ignoring the Doctor's caution to go and meet her, Ruby approaching her in the coffee shop, and the realisation when the barista calls out Ruby's name - more than make up for those minor quibbles, and Millie Gibson is terrific in all of them. There's also very effective links back to mid-season story 73 Yards, retrospectively explaining more of that earlier story and propelling the finale's narrative forward; the moment where Ruby knows exactly how many yards 66.7 metres equates to gave me goosebumps, and dangerous politician of 2046 Roger ap Gwilliam inadvertently contributes to Sutekh's downfall.
There's so many riches: Lenny Rush gives a fun performance; I particularly liked when he used the inbuilt machine guns in his Segway. Susan Twist, finally in a full proper role, is great. Anita Dobson is fantastic, funny and sinister in equal measures. The scenes of Mrs. Flood and Cherry Sunday are great: "He waits no more". Shivers. There's a great quiet scene in the first episode between the Doctor and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart where he talks about his family. The effects work in the time window scenes is exemplary. It's a brilliant cliffhanger between parts one and two (quibbles about anagrams notwithstanding). The Vespa chase sequence is exciting and well realised (both in terms of practical and visual effects work). The scene on the planet Agua Santina with Sian Clifford giving the Doctor a spoon was nice, and very reminiscent of the Flux episodes (I liked the Flux episodes). Nothing's perfect, of course: for example, it's nice to see Yasmin Finney back as Rose, but there is literally nothing for her to do. Perhaps Sutekh should have been powerful enough to work out Ruby's parentage sooner, but his fatal flaw would probably have meant he refused to believe the simple truth of it anyway. Besides, if he had, he'd have won and Doctor Who would have finished. Maybe that's what some fans want. The final scenes of the Doctor defeating Sutekh proved controversial, but I loved them. Sutekh as a dog on a lead - albeit an intelligent lead, a nice callback to the Christmas Goblins story - being pulled along by the TARDIS to undo his former damage to the universe is silly but fun. If one doesn't want silly but fun, but instead yearns for dark and gritty and angsty, Virgin New Adventures novels are available in second hand bookshops and on ebay.
Connectivity:
It's frustrating; More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS features clips of Pyramids of Mars, but none of them include Sutekh, so there's no link there. Unless I blinked and missed it, there's no clip featuring Bonnie Langford as Mel either. On the other hand, both the documentary and The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death include new material featuring people who work for UNIT, returning companions and villains from the show's past, and a malevolent force invading the TARDIS.
Deeper Thoughts:
2024: A Divided Year. Now that it is December of 2024, it is probably time to look back at the events of the last twelve-month. A theme I've seen commented on already, and that I've also personally noticed, has been division. It was there in the politics; not just the extreme divisions of war as between Israel and Palestine or Ukraine and Russia, but in party politics pretty much everywhere. The UK had a general election where the two biggest parties looked more and more like polar opposites, and the second half of the year, when they had swapped places as parties of government and of opposition, did nothing to lessen that. The US in its presidential election was also split between Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Evil, and for some unfathomable reason chose the latter. Such division has been seen in miniature in Doctor Who fandom too, with Ncuti Gatwa's first season provoking extremes of reactions in either direction for different viewers. I get the feeling that this took some by surprise. The return of Russell T Davies to the showrunner role was seen as an unalloyed good when announced. His three David Tennant stories in 2023 offended nobody as far as I could see (and I scanned a lot of online reviews and discussions at the time). It was an anniversary, though, and the episodes saw the return of the most popular modern Doctor and one of the most popular modern companions; a certain amount of goodwill was to be expected. Come the actual season of goodwill and The Church on Ruby Road shown on Christmas Day 2023, and then throughout the eight episode run in 2024, things were different. The anniversary was over, Tennant was gone, and there seemed to be many more voices of disapproval. A reason this might have surprised is that Davies's first tenure (when running the show broadcast from 2005 to January 1st 2010) happened before mass market use of twitter.
The social media popular around that time were not as efficient at being the instant criticism engine that twitter subsequently became. Fans were still using online message-boards and discussion forums. I was one of said fans, and I can tell anyone who wasn't there, particularly the fans who were children then and have since grown up, that every episode of Russell T Davies' first tenure divided opinion, with as many declaring each episode the worst as the best. As such, I believe Ncuti's hit rate is going to be no better or worse than any other Doctor's. The online reaction will remain the same, though. Indeed, I think it always has, and only the medium has changed. If the 1970s Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe - whose era in charge was and is looked on by many as the high quality mark for Who stories - had returned to manage Doctor Who in the late 1980s, he would have got as much criticism in the fanzines as 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner did. I don't know why anyone would be masochistic enough to take on the Who showrunner role, as one's work only seems to be appreciated in retrospect; nevertheless, I'm glad that someone of Davies's calibre and experience decided to come back. He has given us an energetic new lead duo, and explored those characters effectively in a shortened run of stories. There's another season already in the can for 2025, and there will be a spin-off show The War Between the Land and the Sea shown in that year too. Even if there isn't a huge amount of merchandise in toy shops as there was in Davies's first period in charge (it would be rare for such a continuously long-running show to explode with that sort of public popularity twice) I think the series is in good health. A couple of stories (73 Yards, Dot and Bubble) were very strong indeed, and even those that didn't work as well (Space Babies) were doing different and interesting things.
On the home video front, 2024 brought the usual two Blu-ray box sets of classic seasons. I'd hoped for three instead of two, and got my wish in a way. The same team of restorers and special feature content makers did work on a third season for Blu-ray as well as Tom Baker's season 15 and Sylvester McCoy's season 25. It just wasn't Doctor Who, but instead was the first season of Who's 1970s rival / sister show Blakes' 7. More division: I have heard that this has enraged some fans who want the Who release rate to be faster, and would rather all the people involved concentrated on Time Lords only, without involving themselves with that ragtag bunch of freedom fighters fighting the oppressive Federation. I'm fine with the team diversifying, and will most likely pick up a copy of the Blakes' 7 set at some point. The new Tales of the TARDIS prompted by Sutekh's return on TV was an edited omnibus version of the last of the Osirans' first appearance in the series, Pyramids of Mars, topped and tailed by new footage of the Doctor and Ruby in the memory TARDIS. This was released as part of Ncuti's first season boxset. The only animation of a missing 1960s story was The Celestial Toymaker in June. It worked very well, the new style enhancing the original story. I hope the team that worked on it, and the other regular team (whose last known project was The Underwater Menace animation that came out late in 2023) are both working away on new titles for release in 2025. The other classic series release in 2024 was The Daleks in Colour, the first in a new line of re-edited and colourised 1960s stories. After a TV showing for the 60th anniversary in 2023, the Dalek story was brought out on disc early in 2024. The War Games has been given similar treatment for a TV outing over Christmas 2024, and will no doubt be available to own shortly afterwards.
The blog has covered 28 stories so far this year. As well as all seven of Ncuti Gatwa's 2024 stories, there has been at least one story blogged for each of the Doctors except Christopher Eccleston (but the year's not over yet). Colin Baker's entry was a webcast not a fully canonical TV story, and Paul McGann's was an even shorter webcast. They count, though, or at least I've decided that they do. Aside from Gatwa, the only actor to rack up more than two stories on the blog in 2024 is David Tennant with three, one from his first tenure, two from his second. I've also covered a few 'off-piste' adventures: a webcast featuring an alt-Doctor, an extended TV skit featuring an alt-Doctor, and a documentary with some new in-universe dramatic scenes. I went back to Gallifrey again for a holiday (see The Ice Warriors post for more details), and was lucky enough to get a ticket to every BFI Doctor Who event this year (and one Blakes' 7 event too, but I won't say any more about that for fear of upsetting any purists!). The write-ups of these events (except the Blakes' 7 one, natch) can be found in the Deeper Thoughts sections of the following vaguely connected or wholly unconnected posts (this is the problem with having blogged most of Doctor Who now, there's only so many places to provide a home for sharing these events): the screening of the Darkness & Light documentary and Horror of Fang Rock from the Season 15 Blu-ray box set was coupled with the Full Circle blog post; the showcase of newly animated The Celestial Toymaker went with The Sensorites; the first attempt to screen an updated The Happiness Patrol from the season 25 Blu-ray box set was paired with Survival; the second, successful attempt to screen an updated The Happiness Patrol is covered alongside The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood. I hope to attend more such events in 2025, but whether I'll be able to share them here depends on their scheduling, and how quickly I finish the very few stories I have left to blog.
In Summary:
I love it. So there.
