Mark Harrison | On 22, Jun 2024

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations. For more on Doctor Who, see our Whoniverse channel.

More than any other episode of Doctor Who, Russell T Davies’ season finales tend to split the room. On this note, Empire of Death is conversant with past finales, and while the resulting casserole of Big Bad horror, apocalyptic action set-pieces, and family melodrama tastes just like Papa RTD used to make, its fabulous nonsense won’t pass the sniff test for everyone.
 
Granted, it’s an engrossing helping of Who, but it’s loaded with stodgy Whats, Hows and Whys left over from previous episodes. Last week, Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor was looking for his long-lost granddaughter and Millie Gibson’s Ruby sought answers about her birth mother. But as this week’s no-messing “Previously” recap has it, the cliffhanger revealed dog-headed god of death Sutekh the Destroyer (voiced by the mighty Gabriel Woolf) has ensnared the Doctor’s TARDIS.
 
Spoiler-lite reviews get tricky from here on out, but let’s start by looking back at “Season One” of the Gatwa and Gibson years, shall we? For starters, the surprise reintroduction of a villain from the 1975 Fourth Doctor serial Pyramids of Mars isn’t the most natural end to a run of insistently new episodes. Davies launches Part Two by unleashing this Biggest and Baddest of Big Bads on London, but the dramatic spectacle quickly devolves into “and then” storytelling. And hey, under “any other business”, it’s the end of the universe, again.
 
Given the breadth and depth of the showrunner’s other episodes this season, including The Devil’s Chord, 73 Yards and the excellent Dot and Bubble, it’s difficult to call this barking-mad casserole of life-and-death stakes and familiar tropes as anything other than pedestrian. Despite its massive scale, it all comes off small, whether in Jamie Donoghue’s direction of the action sequences or how shockingly underserved the guest stars are.
 
As usual, Gatwa and Gibson enliven everything they’re given and they do get some good stuff here, but an early shot of Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) using a tablet and trying to look busy is par for the course – she has no dialogue at all in the 55-minute runtime. On the brighter side, Bonnie Langford gives a stunning performance as 1980s companion Mel and Fleabag’s Sian Clifford shines in a heart-stopping aside at the edge of the apocalypse. And, of course, 91-year-old Woolf’s sinuous tones do more for Sutekh’s fear factor than any CG doggo visuals.
 
Coming at the end of a run that’s flexed its newness, whether in its fresh young leads or its “Season One” billing, this is a thunderous reminder of the showrunner’s strengths and weaknesses. When character leads, with beats that recall It’s a Sin as well as Davies’ previous Whoniverse outings, it’s belting. But resolutions aren’t his strong suit, and the bigger picture runs into the same problem as 2021’s Flux, and for some of the same reasons.
 
Empire of Death is an entertaining but bang-average Doctor Who finale that shrinks its fantastical gods and monsters to fit a more formulaic denouement. Though filled with fun moments and emotional wallops, the plot blows itself out of all proportion early on and then never quite settles down. Davies writes these ones for constant “What” moments, but as in previous finales, the handwaving of “How” and the weirdness of the “Why” are bound to frustrate.
 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– The Memory TARDIS features elements of many previous console rooms and was previously seen in the 60th anniversary miniseries Tales of the TARDIS, where past regulars come back together to reminisce and bookend classic serials ranging from The Time Meddler to The Curse of Fenric. It was devised as a last-minute iPlayer exclusive in summer 2023, after it had already featured in this finale – wibbly wobbly, timey wimey…
 
– “You great big god of nothing!” All plot grumbles aside, pulling a Mortal Kombat-style finisher on Sutekh through the time vortex is the gnarliest resolution we could have expected. On the other hand, we could have done without the Doctor wringing his hands and speechifying over whether or not killing the literal emperor of thebp murder-verse makes him a monster too – Gatwa elevates a generic Doctor moment, but the dialogue is hot nonsense.
 
– We’ve mentioned the Marvelisation of UNIT before and here, it’s a miscalculation on Davies’ part to recall the dust-busting ending of Avengers: Infinity War at the top of the hour rather than as last week’s cliffhanger. Existential devastation has a way of sorting itself out in Doctor Who finales, but it undermines the stakes almost from the jump. And that one late shot of the revived gang really underscores how this glut of characters isn’t really doing anything but loitering around waiting for the long-rumoured UNIT spin-off. Oh, except Kate (Jemma Redgrave) appears to have a thing going with office hunk Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient) – love that for her.
 
– Sutekh’s return is obviously a bucket-list pitch for RTD, who has said he first came up with sequel fan fiction about the villain as a kid. One reading of the episode is that Sutekh represents death to Doctor Who because he’s been hanging around since the 1970s and just wants it all to end. This in an episode that features archive footage of Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, and Carole Ann Ford, and nods to the latter’s role as Susan.
 
– Ruby’s mother is revealed as Louise Miller (Faye McKeever), who got pregnant aged 15 and dropped her baby off at Ruby Road while, um, cosplaying The Traitors? In BBC iPlayer’s in-vision commentary for the episode, Davies explicitly states that the reveal of Ruby’s parentage was his response to the “Rey from nowhere” flip-flop in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. This will probably be as popular with hardcore fans as the other Episode 8 did, even if it’s not as good. Putting aside the meta-angle of this mystery-unboxing, the coffee shop scene where mother and daughter reunite is a real highlight of the episode.
 
– “Doctor Who Will Return” – next up, Steven Moffat writes the 2024 Christmas special Joy To The World, starring Gatwa alongside guest stars Nicola Coughlan, Joel Fry, and Timothy West.
 
– … And Ruby Sunday will also return. RTD has called the ending of this episode (which is brilliantly acted by both Gatwa and Gibson) a natural pause in the Doctor and Ruby’s story, but she’ll be back alongside the new companion (played by Varada Sethu) in several episodes of the already-filmed Season Two, coming to our screens next year.
 
– “And that’s how the story of the Church on Ruby Road comes to an end…” We get no more answers about Anita Dobson’s Miss Flood this season, but her hysterically camp rooftop address leaves you laughing. Night-night!

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