The following contains spoilers for Empire of Death.
“Empire of Death” is a typical Russell T. Davies series finale: bombastic, dense, and completely uninterested in resolving the story. The episode jumps around for as long as it needs to before jumping to a climax. Because Davies Really What’s interesting is the scene that follows and the all-too-brief moment when Ruby Sunday drinks coffee.
At the end of “Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and (classic series companion) Mel (Bonnie Langford) come face to face with Sutek’s minion (Susan Twist), who unleashes a deadly dust cloud that turns anyone it touches into a pile of dust. The Doctor and Mel escape the cloud on Mel’s scooter, but this action scene feels like it took up most of the episode’s budget.
The pair return to UNIT HQ and are reunited with Ruby in the time window, where Sutek’s dog form, still clutching the TARDIS as a prized possession, annihilates the rest of the UNIT staff, including Kate (Jemma Redgrave), Rose (Yasmin Finney) and Morris (Renee Rush). I just found out It doesn’t last more than 30 minutes.
Stekk explains to the Doctor that he had (at one point) attached himself to the TARDIS and followed it every step of the Doctor’s journey. On every planet the Doctor landed on, he had planted a Susan Twist character there, each one staying to trap the Doctor and spread Stekk’s murderous dust. He then used the TARDIS’s perception filters to hide his actions. The filters are
The Doctor, Ruby and Mel rush into the TARDIS in the Window of Memory, only to find that it is a normal TARDIS, which was a small set collected from the 60th anniversary Framing series. In “The Classic Series,” actors from the classic series introduce new audiences to the classic series episode. During the flight, the three witness what Steph has done to the universe: she has made it cold and empty, giving Ncuti Gatwa the opportunity to scream her grievances into the literal void.
Uncovering the true identity of Ruby Sunday’s mother is now crucial, especially considering Sutek is interested in the answer. The three board the Memory TARDIS for a final journey to a dystopian future where the evil Prime Minister Roger ap Gwilam has instituted compulsory DNA testing to ensure Britain remains a racially pure nation. (Yes, that’s a bit… Wow) But it also gives the Doctor an opportunity to use the records to determine who Ruby’s mother is.
As the information appears on the screen, everyone is pulled back to UNIT HQ in 2024 by an equally inquisitive Steph. Steph uses his powers to drag the Doctor to the floor and threatens his life unless he tells her the information stored on the device Ruby is holding. However, when Ruby gets close to the dog, she destroys the screen the data is being displayed on and snaps a smart rope around Steph’s collar, capturing him.
The Doctor whistles to command the TARDIS to come back, and he and Ruby clip the other end of the lead to the console and vanish, and they take this giant evil alien dog for a walk through a time vortex which, er, something happens and brings everyone back to life. Don’t think too much about it, just enjoy the impressive visuals of the TARDIS dragging the giant evil dog through some amazing CGI.
Then the Doctor has a line about having to become a murderer to stop Steke’s murders. He throws Steke into the whirlpool. I don’t know why it’s more successful this time around, because that’s what happened last time too, but like I said, consistency wasn’t the focus of the episode.
Back at UNIT HQ, everyone is revived and eating pizza, and the location of Ruby’s mother is tracked down. She got pregnant at 15 and gave her daughter away to avoid retribution from her evil stepfather who might have hurt her. However, she never tried to track down her daughter, and never even told her father that she had given birth. When asked why Stetek was interested in Ruby’s mother, the Doctor says it was because people invested time and emotion into her. This feels like Davies is chiding the audience for focusing on the questions he himself weaved into the series for this purpose.
I get what Davis was trying to say, but it’s not a fair response to point a neon sign at Ruby and tell her she matters. I don’t know why she can bend reality to her will, or make it snow every time she thinks about being abandoned. We obsess over this question not because we’re assigning meaning to meaningless things, but because the show and its characters do.
The Doctor and Ruby are standing outside a coffee shop, where Ruby’s mother sits, sipping her drink and staring at her phone. The Doctor suggests that since her mother didn’t care enough to look for her, he probably won’t contact her. But undeterred, Ruby goes in, orders a coffee, and sits on a large bench opposite her mother. Her mother looks up when the waiter calls her name.
From there, we see Sunday and the others catching up on their lives, but of all the wonders of the universe the Doctor would love to see, this seemingly joyous reunion is not what he wants, and he chooses to leave Ruby there, saying they will meet again, but given that he left his own granddaughter behind, it’s just as likely he’ll forget about her altogether.
The TARDIS then departs for a new land.
I don’t think “Empire of Death” gave a satisfying conclusion to the previous episodes, but I didn’t expect it to either. Davis’s approach is to ignore the mechanics of storytelling in favor of atmosphere and moments of emotional character drama. A giant dog in space is weightless compared to the scene where Ruby sits across from her mother. Ironically, this is where we should have let things drag on. The anticipation of whether she’ll speak up would have been a better use of the show’s time than much of what happened last week.
But it left me wondering who in this world benefits from a happy ending. Davis nearly died of a drug overdose in the mid-’90s and lost his partner to brain cancer in 2018. He’s a cynical, nihilistic writer who believes humanity could succumb to the most evil of fascism if it missed just a meal or two. And yet he rarely offers up a quip at the end of an episode. Doctor Who.
No companion leaves without a parting gift big enough to ease the pain of leaving the Doctor; in fact, on two different occasions, companions get personal clones of David Tennant. Will Ruby get a happy ending here, reunited with her mother, or will it be her mother who gets the greatest forgiveness? She never tracked down her daughter or repaired the rift, but here she is embraced with love.
In fact, this episode makes me have a lot of questions. For example, is it okay for people who abandoned you to live the easy life of moving on? What about the strange twist that the Doctor killed Stetek but then resurrected a planet full of evil beings with a wave of resurrections? After all, Telos, one of the Cybermen’s hangouts, is named as a place that was saved. Maybe it’s better to remember that sometimes you just need to turn your head and feel. Doctor Who. See you in the Holiday Special!
Mrs. Flood Corner
Mrs. Flood loses contact with Sutek and breaks the fourth wall at the end of the episode by dressing up as a glam rock Mary Poppins. She tells the audience that the Doctor’s end is near and is delighted with the idea, further fuelling the idea that she’s playing a long-standing villain. Given that Mrs. Flood is played by a woman, the obvious guess is that she’s a future incarnation of either Missy or Rani. Right?
