Doctor Who Reviews: "Empire of Death"

Over the years, it’s been common of his enemies to refer to the Doctor as a “bringer of death” or some like term -a way to emphasize the Doctor’s longevity and the fact that against his best efforts he has been a cause of suffering through the universe. And it’s the kind of thing that does hurt him. He is a haunted figure by the destruction left in his wake. And nobody was ever better at exploiting this than Russell T. Davies. The wounds of the Time War, worn constantly by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, was the greatest purveyor of that. You felt their pain, and it only highlighted their enigma.

Enigma isn’t really something that Davies seems much concerned about on this run through, though that pathos is still top of mind. And the death that has come from the Doctor’s impact is brought to the fore in “Empire of Death” in a way quite literal and more forceful than ever before. It plays on that, but also makes a point of redefining the Doctor as a champion of life, as part of Davies’ renewed philosophy for the character and the show in times like these. The point is made stirringly, in a periodically flawed but ultimately quite sensational finale.

It of course is the follow-up to “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”, and like many a successful Part Two makes that Part One look even weaker by comparison. And the curious thing is there is enough material in this episode that it could have filled two parts if Davies wasn’t so set on making the Sutekh reveal a cliffhanger. It makes parts of the episode feel rushed and busied, but not so much so that the pacing is distracting, or has no room for pause.

But it does open very promptly on the aftermath of Sutekh manifesting in control of the TARDIS at UNIT Headquarters with the intent to kill everyone in the universe. As mentioned last week and in every Doctor Who post since, Sutekh is a fan favourite villain (and the Doctor even validates that by calling him the greatest monster he has ever fought) from 1975’s “Pyramids of Mars”, and seems to have been the primary reason so many old-Who-heads were declaring last week’s episode the best of the series. At the end of that story the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane defeat Sutekh by trapping him in an endless time tunnel where he is forced to die of old age. This it turns out is not what actually happened to him and he had instead attached his consciousness to the TARDIS following the Doctor ever since and creating a new incarnation of Susan Triad everywhere the Doctor landed, including his numerous visits back to Earth. Acting as sentinels they are carriers of Death, which Sutekh finally unleashes, as in giant dog form and voiced by Gabriel Woolf, who first played the part forty-nine years ago (and has gotten better with age), he immediately sets about a wave of turning everyone to dust, starting with the UNIT personnel and in a devastating beat, Kate Stewart herself.

It’s reminiscent of another early character death meant to portend grave stakes. I’ve noted a couple times in the last year my concern ahead of this new series of Doctor Who the statement that Davies at one point made about wanting to make the show more like the MCU. “Empire of Death” is probably the most Marvel that Doctor Who has gotten since Davies came back, but mostly it’s in the form of him aping the plot of Infinity War and Endgame. At the start of this episode, he essentially pulls a Thanos, with everyone across the time and space the Doctor has been to crumbling to dust. The Doctor manages to escape with Mel and Ruby in the Time Window’s manifestation of the TARDIS -a memory TARDIS as the Doctor calls it. Not quite so durable as the real thing (he has to tie it together with intelligent rope -of the same make as the gloves- to get it to function), but looking very neat with its ramshackle aesthetic and bits and pieces of memories from across his lifetimes -Mel is very touched by a spotted tie and later is seen clutching for comfort a vest with question marks on it.

But little familiarities like this are soon irrelevant as the Doctor watches from space as the whole world is shrouded in the sands of Death. The TARDIS shows him that so many other planets are too, the universe itself is dying and the Doctor realizes that inadvertently, he is the cause. And there’s a bittersweet moment where he recalls the various points he touched down on Earth, with particular sobriety at 2005. Gatwa is given the opportunity to carry this sequence on raw anguish, at one point simply screaming out the TARDIS doors into a lifeless galaxy. He does well by it, an actor very naturally suited for intense drama.

Gatwa plays it big in this scene, as is required; but what’s far more effective is his nuance in the one that follows -it’s own isolated little story within the larger whole. In a dusky cloak, the Doctor arrives on a barren world that has not yet been fully consumed by Death, where in a little hut he meets a woman, played by Sian Clifford (who you might remember as sister Claire of Fleabag). Here we see that memory is affected by Death as well, as she hardly remembers much of her city, her world, her husband, and even her child. It is in a painful moment that we see her child has died first. She relates with exquisite gravity though the fleeting memories of a world and a specific life tinged with joy and love -an opera house she knows not her connection to, only that it made her happy. The Doctor is here at a last refuge of life to kindly ask for metal and is heartbroken -for good reason. Clifford imbues such a sense of weight and loss, and an envy of the dead much as she doesn’t vocalize it. It’s as powerful an image of apocalypse -real human apocalypse- as has ever been seen on Doctor Who. And when she turns to dust at the end of the scene it is more tragic than any regular character either in this episode or those Marvel movies it evokes. It made me cry.

Clifford carries the scene, but Gatwa’s utter solemnity on the frays of his good nature is its backbone. One of the greatest signs of how the lives of ordinary people matters to him. She gives him a spoon that he promises he’ll use to save the universe.

Indeed, it helps re-power the Memory TARDIS so that he can look for clues in how to defeat Sutekh, watching clips from their last encounter (Ruby asking who the man with the hair is). The Doctor concludes that they are being kept alive by Sutekh because of the mystery of Ruby’s mother -that Sutekh doesn’t know who she was either and thus solving that mystery could hold the key to defeating him. And an unconscious part of Ruby conjures up the BBC interview with Roger ap Gwilliam seen in “73 Yards” -even though Ruby has no memory of it. But it points them in the direction of 2046 where Gwilliam had introduced a mandatory DNA register, and inevitably Ruby’s mother would be in there.

After all the build-up through this series, they arrive in 2046, dead as everywhere, and the Doctor is able to access the records and relatively quickly find Ruby’s mother. It’s a bit anticlimactic, but the suspense is well played -the snow and “Carol of the Bells” comes back heavier than ever. Before the Doctor and Ruby can properly identify her though, Mel is killed and taken over as another of Sutekh’s minions, bringing them back to 2024 with the information he desperately seeks. Ruby plays at revealing it for him in exchange for the Doctor’s life in a strained sequence that goes exactly where you’d expect -she drops the frozen pad and in Sutekh’s distraction, she and the Doctor take back control of the TARDIS; and the Doctor, tying Sutekh to it with the intelligent rope, spins the TARDIS into the time vortex, dragging Sutekh along. If you ever wanted to see the opening credits with a giant dog hanging off the back of the TARDIS… It’s visually funny, but for the Doctor it turns into real triumph as he confronts this manifestation of the Death he’s always brought with him, and once and for all rejects it. Dragging the god of Death through all of the space and time he brought death to, it cancels each other out -the death of death is life and the Doctor pronounces himself as representing such, as life is brought back to every corner of the universe. Less potent perhaps than “on your left”, but satisfactory all the same.

I think a small part of Davies has been chasing the high of that moment from “The Doctor Dances” in 2005 where the Ninth Doctor manages to restore a swath of people to life. “Just this once, everybody lives” he pronounced jubilantly in what many would say is the high point of Christopher Eccleston’s entire tenure as the Doctor -and which kind of became a defining moment for New Who. This Doctor’s speech isn’t nearly so succinct or immediately memorable, but the expression Davies and Gatwa are aiming for is very much the same. Here though it is paired with a great mood shift.  He severs the rope, killing Sutekh -the first instance of this Doctor directly killing someone, and without Death on his back anymore. He may not bring it with him, but he can deal it out -much as it might scar him.

The episode would end here if not for the need to return to that series-spanning mystery. Everybody at UNIT back from the dead, they finally manage to do it and isolate Ruby’s DNA. Her mother is ….Louise Miller (Faye McKeever), a nurse in Coventry from a troubled home who had Ruby as a teenager. A completely ordinary person, no fateful or cosmic connection whatsoever. The Doctor explains that the interest Sutekh and the universe itself seemed to have in her was simply the mystery -burdened with arbitrary significance as so many figures are, and that her creepy pointing towards the Doctor was not aimed at him but at the signpost behind him for Ruby Road -proclaiming to no one in particular that was to be her child’s name.

Great subversion, weak explanation. The reveal that Ruby comes from nowhere special is nice and really heartening, and a much better background for a companion than one who has some kind of grand cosmic ordinance with the Doctor. At the same time, Davies built up this mystery quite a bit, injecting a lot of provoking and complicated questions in there, only for it to amount to essentially a red herring. Particularly the solution to the problems of the living memory enforced by the universe itself and the pointed finger feel very trite and unconvincing. Sure, there’s a point to be made there, but this context seems forced around it rather than something it could naturally fit into. The meaning behind it is admirable, the execution slipshod.

Still, the following scene ,where after some deliberation Ruby does go to meet her, is played very sweetly -and with ample emotional fulfilment from Gibson. We next see her and Louise bonding with Carla and Cherry -but she leaves them for a moment to see the Doctor. And in what appears to be a fulfilment of that early rumour that Gibson would be leaving the show after one series, Ruby is given a strong goodbye by the Doctor. He assures her she has a new adventure awaiting and that it’s where his adventure with her stops. It’s a lovely parting scene -the Doctor expounding on what she taught him about family (Susan is again invoked, and the possibility of finding her), and promising that someday he’ll see her again. Director Jamie Donoghue really holds on those sentimental shots of the pair, and there’s an especially nice bit where as Ruby and family watch the TARDIS disappear it overlays perfectly with a wardrobe behind -a little symbolic nod perhaps to another magical world inside a small box.

“Empire of Death” proves a really solid ending to what was generally a really solid series -with only a couple honest disappointments throughout and a handful of excellent moments, including in this episode. A bit of a harried start and with some convoluted methods of plotting, especially in wrapping up that mystery in the end, are nothing to the sharp thematic core of the Doctor’s relationship to Death and what he does to redefine it, paired with some great declarations and beautiful scenes -the one at the midpoint sure, but Kate’s death, the Doctor’s angst, and the little beat reminiscing with Mel -who I appreciate is such a big part of this episode- makes it stand out fairly strongly. Though we didn’t get to know her as much as we might’ve, Ruby got a worthy exit -the kind it’s always nice to see for a companion -and throughout this series, Millie Gibson took to the material very well. And if “73 Yards” is any demonstration, she’s a bloody good actress for her age. A perfectly likeable, loyal companion.

As for Ncuti Gatwa, he’s made his mark and it’s a good one. I look forward to seeing him stay on as the Doctor for a while. And in spite of my reservations, a few of which I still have, Russell T. Davies has earned back that goodwill and trust. Some of his priorities aren’t as fresh, I remain a touch wary of some storytelling instincts. But he still knows Doctor Who and for the moment is pushing it in a good direction.

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