Empire of Death - A Review

And so the latest series has drawn to its conclusion, but was it with a bang, or with a whimper...?

I'll be taking a look at the season overall next week, but for now: how did Empire of Death perform as a follow up to the well-received The Legend of Ruby Sunday?

We've seen a few finales fail to capitalise on a promising opening half over the years, after all.

I went into the episode with a number of questions which I wanted answered:

• Who is the hooded woman seen on Ruby Road on 24th December 2004?
• Is she Ruby's mother?
• If not, then who is?
• (And what about her dad?).
• What's with the snow every time she gets emotional?
• Who is Mrs Flood, that she recognises a TARDIS and senses impending doom?
• Will Cherry ever get that cup of tea?
• How did Sutekh go from being a dead alien to being a deity that real deities are scared of?
• Will there be Mummies (and not just Ruby's)?
• Do all these references to Susan (Foreman) actually lead anywhere?
• Is there any point in having Rose in this story?
• Will RTD finally manage to write a series finale that doesn't rely on a great big deus ex machina reset?

Had most of these questions been answered in the negative then there were going to be a lot of frustrated / disappointed Doctor Who fans out there. 

As it is, there is at least one disappointed fan - me.

I found the episode really quite dull, with even the destruction of all life throughout the universe aesthetically boring. There was a scene with an unnamed woman on some planet which, whilst nice enough, was totally irrelevant to the story. Some might call it a character moment, but others will call it padding.

The manner of Sutekh's defeat was rushed and made little sense. At least towing the Earth home through space actually had a logic to it. Here, I couldn't quite work out exactly what the Doctor did. Was it simply sticking a leash on Sutekh and dragging him into the Vortex? How did blowing a whistle lead to him regaining control of the TARDIS when we've never seen any of this set up. And if that's all it took, why did he not do it earlier?

I couldn't understand the explanation about how 2046 could still happen, when life ended in 2024. One minute Sutekh has destroyed life everywhere, and through all times visited by the TARDIS - the next those visits by the Doctor mean they still exist. But when the Doctor gets to 2046, Sutekh has obviously been... Totally confusing. There isn't even a half-hearted attempt to have any sort of internal logic to the series these days.

What does "the death of death means life" actually mean - apart from a dreaded RTD reset.

Paint yourself into a corner, lacking the narrative imagination to provide a get-out, and all you're left with is the metaphorical big red button. 

The minute I saw main guest characters reduced to dust, only a couple of minutes in, I knew that there was going to be a lazy deus ex machina resolution.

Sutekh got dragged through the Vortex - but how exactly did that bring everyone come back to life again? And if it is time resetting then why would they recall any of it and why would there be dust everywhere?

Sutekh is then seen to burn up - when we know he can survive being stuck in the Vortex as that's how all this began.

As I've already answered the last of my questions (No, he can't) I'll work back through the others.

• The presence of Yasmin Finney in this story was pointless. She did even less in the finale.
• Disappointingly, no. All the talk of granddaughter Susan was a trawler-full of red herring, and led absolutely nowhere. 
• Disappointingly, no. RTD2 had a stab at "cultural appropriation" at one point. But weren't the Egyptians inspired by the Osirans - not the other way round?
• Left unexplained. Sutekh simply hitched a lift on the TARDIS and would have gathered knowledge and skills from all of the subsequent voyages of the ship, but this wouldn't necessarily turn him into a god, especially one feared by other gods who are properly immortal.
• Eventually, but only after the overly drawn out coda.
• Mrs Flood remains an enigma. Thing is, do we care? The character hasn't been properly threaded through the series adequately enough for us to actually give a toss. She might just be another of this new pantheon RTD2 is stuck on. The white costume in the closing moments might suggest a certain Guardian, though it also resembled Romana's Ribos outfit.
• The snow thing went nowhere. Jumping ahead with the questions, Ruby's mother turns out to be an ordinary Earth girl - meaning Ruby is an ordinary Earth girl, so where did the snow come from? 
• (And how can an ordinary Earth woman create a Memory TARDIS, full of things which she cannot possibly have any memory of?).
• Just some 15 year old boy.
• Yes, Ruby's mum was a girl of 15 who abandoned her baby. UNIT discover this in a couple of hours through a DNA match. Yet the god-like Sutekh can't do the same - even when he has two UNIT computer experts and an IT mogul under his control... Sorry, but it's nonsense.
• And whilst Ruby had a happy ending with her adoption search, let's not forget that for thousands of people things don't work out that way, and they face further rejection and abandonment.

Overall, I was very much disappointed with the finale. I just found it dull, with a less than satisfying conclusion. Much is made of Ruby's departure - but we already know she features again in Series 15 so she hardly merits such a prolonged coda.

I said it last week, and I'm going to repeat it but I did not like the new Sutekh. Tales of the TARDIS the other night just served to confirm that a good actor in robes and mask is far, far more effective than a stupidly expensive and ultimately unrealistic CGI effect.

Despite the next Christmas Special (and most of S15) being already in the can, no trailer at the end...

Ah well, at least Cherry got that cup of tea...