This story contains substantial spoilers for the climax of the current season of Doctor Who.
It is clear that, current Doctor Who showrunner and head writer, Russell T Davies has long been a super-fan of the show that he took over in 2005 and is now leading into its sixty-first year. An almost encyclopedic grasp of Who-history has informed his choices to bring back long-dismissed ’80s characters such as Bonnie Langford’s Melanie Bush; to drop plot hints that revolve around ’60s characters such as The Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan; and to resolve a season-long mystery by resurrecting the Fourth Doctor’s nemesis last seen in 1975, Sutekh the Destroyer.
What seems to have escaped Davies’ recollections of the history of the peculiar cultural phenomenon that is Doctor Who is that season-long story arcs never work. It’s hard to say why, but something about the idiosyncratic nature of a show that smashes headfirst into temporal causality, repeatedly — as part of its very nature — seems to start unraveling when drawn out across different stories and different time periods. This season has been no exception and Davies’ attempt to tie what has been a strikingly great series of stories together with a universe-shattering conclusion has ended feeling more like a damp squib than the fireworks teased.
Before we review the conclusion to the ten-episode mystery, let’s take a quick tour of multi-story arcs throughout the history of television’s most durable science fiction franchise.
While one could argue that the first attempt to tie multiple stories together with a through-line might be 1965’s The Daleks’ Masterplan which strung together at least three separate stories — two by Dalek creator Terry Nation and one by Dennis Spooner — into an attempted large scale epic featuring the show’s most popular characters, ultimately it was aired as a single narrative piece. One should really look to 1978’s Key to Time sequence as the first formal attempt to make an entire season fit into a single narrative.
The Key to Time season (1978/1979) took six stories — some of them wonderful, including Douglas (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) Adams’ The Pirate Planet — and strung them together by saying that The Doctor was going through the universe trying to collect the six pieces of the titular Key so that the Colonel Sanders-looking White Guardian (Don’t ask.) could put them back together in order to stop time, take a good hard look and the state of the universe and do some repair work on, well, everything.
The problem with this sequence is that, while many of the stories are very good, the actual Key plot feels incidental and, by the time the audience had reached the end, some six months after it had started, they really didn’t care anymore. It didn’t help that the final two stories were the weakest of the season.
Given the lack of enthusiasm for the Key to Time, it made perfect sense to reuse the Guardians characters that featured in it as to try to do another multi-story arc a few years later. Didn’t it? It evidently must’ve to somebody and The Fifth Doctor went through The Black Guardian Trilogy.
This time the production team was a little less heavy-handed about it than before and pushed the overarching story way into the background. They also had a clever trick up their sleeves which was to put an agent of the evil Black Guardian, Mark Strickson’s Turlough, on the TARDIS to actively work against The Doctor.
This sequence of episodes — not quite the entire season this time — does hold together a little better than the Key to Time (though the individual stories are not as strong), but it struggles with issues created by the very idea that makes it interesting: Turlough the double-agent. The character telegraphs his entire storyline from word one, probably reflecting the production staff’s wariness towards having a companion be too mean, and there is little doubt — at least not enough that might arouse any tension whatsoever — that he is both working for the bad guy and that he will eventually become a good guy.
Without that tension, the Black Guardian Trilogy doesn’t amount to much.
The final attempt of Classic Who to do a season-long arc features the aforementioned Melanie Bush and it is the worst season of Doctor Who ever made.
The Trial of a Time Lord, comprising all of season 23, is poorly written, chaotic — primarily because the story’s original mastermind, Who-legend Robert Holmes, passed away early on in the process and script editor Eric Sayward, who should’ve steered the narrative ship gracefully back into port was at war with seemingly everybody involved in the production — and irredeemably campy.
It was so poorly received that the show went on hiatus for almost a year to then return with a new Doctor, script editor and a mostly new stable of writers.
Given the repeated failure of these kinds of extended stories, it was a bit of a surprise when Russell T Davies, in 2005, brought the show back to television screens after an almost two-decade-long absence and made season-long arcs an almost mandatory component.
The show was back. It was revitalized and exciting. The writing was great. The acting was incredible. And those arcs…
Look, let’s be honest, they weren’t very good. Mythology laid on mythology laid on mythology, like a roof with 20 layers of shingles, made things more and more incomprehensible. Each season you could count on starting with a bang, having some cracker episodes in the middle, puffing out an air of warm and cozy nostalgia throughout; and then collapsing at the end like an under-trained marathoner.
The lead-up was always tantalizing, but rarely did it pay off.
Again and again, the audience was led through a maze of clues and red herrings, teases and rising stakes, and again and again, the show failed to stick the landing.
Some of these arcs held together better than others, Peter Capaldi’s second season as The Doctor which climaxed with the truly classic episodes Heaven Sent and Hell Bent managed to hold things aloft, just barely. Also, the three-story arc that preceded this current season featuring the return of David Tennant as The Doctor, worked pretty well. But the nature of Doctor Who is that it is not great because of its more epic ambitions, but because of its success at deeply humane, contained, parables that come one elegant story at a time.
The new season of Doctor Who is no exception. With Davies back in charge, the familiar teases and red herrings began to pop up throughout the season. Who is Mrs. Flood? Who is Ruby’s mom? Who is this recurring face (actress Susan Twist) that we see throughout the season in different roles? It was exciting. It made for terrific water cooler conversations.
Surely there would be an extraordinary pay-off, right?
When will we ever learn?
After a season of legitimately great episodes — and I mean truly classic, 73 Yards ranks amongst my favorite episodes of Doctor Who ever — this climax was jaw-droppingly deflating. Ruby’s story is that she is just an average person (ala The Last Jedi) and her birth mother is also just an average person. And the villain — the terrifying Egyptian god, Sutekh the Destroyer — didn’t finish his “destroying all life” shtick because he couldn’t figure out what everyone else was looking at and got… distracted?
“Excuse me, God of Death coming through! Got some death stuff to do!” — Sutekh
“Huh? What? Sorry, we’re just looking at this old videotape of a woman abandoning a baby.” — UNIT
“What? Oh, can I see?” — Sutekh
The climax to the season-long story began with The Legend of Ruby Sunday which attacked the series’ main mysteries head-on. The Doctor and Ruby land dramatically back in UNIT’s tower in central London and lay their cards on the table.
“Why do we keep seeing this one person’s face throughout time?” and “What’s the deal with Ruby’s mum?”
The episode then takes off at a pretty exciting clip trying to solve these two mysteries and to tie them together. An absolutely beautiful sequence where The Doctor and Ruby use a “Time Window” to step into the images captured by a decades-old security camera VHS tape brings us one tantalizing step closer to being able to see Ruby’s mother’s face as she abandons the child at the church on Ruby Road, but while they are trying to get a clear look things begin to go wrong.
In parallel, both the events in the Time Window and also a TED-style talk being given by a tech pioneer played by Susan Twist (the recurring face) begin to collapse in disarray as nothing on either front seems to be working the way it is supposed to. And then we meet the force behind all of the season’s oddest events, the true Big Bad of the season, the one repeatedly referred to as “He Who Waits”, the god that The Toymaker and The Maestro report to: Sutekh!
And if you recognize that name prior to this episode, you have probably been watching Doctor Who since Russell T Davies was going through puberty. And if you don’t, you are probably quite puzzled by what’s going on.
Doctor Who — with its new distribution through Disney+ — has the broadest viewing platform in its history. The money being thrown at the show and its publicity is staggering considering the shoestring it is used to operating on. It makes a great deal of sense for the show to have re-numbered its seasons to start again at number one and to spend a few episodes re-introducing the concepts and characters for new viewers.
What makes very little sense is, without explanation, dramatically re-introducing a villain that hasn’t been on the screen in almost five decades and expecting this new audience to keep up.
It was fun for us old folks, though. Sorry kids.
It is worth noting that RTD named a list of historical Doctor Who episodes to watch before the finale. None of them were Pyramids of Mars, the only one that would’ve featured Sutekh. Also worth pointing out that, after part one of this finale, he issued a new Tales of the TARDIS episode that featured a re-edited version of that classic story. It not only filled in the gaps for those not familiar with Classic Who, but also served as a bridge between part one and two of the finale by having the story bookended with The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson) stranded in a “Memory TARDIS” (Don’t ask.) discussing what had happened, clearing up things that newer viewers might not have understood, and clarifying (kind of) what they were going to try to do in the finale.
Are you a Disney+ viewer and wondering where you can see this entr’acte episode that will explain what’s going on? Sorry, Disney didn’t pick up Tales of the TARDIS. Only folks in the U.K., the ones most likely to have already known about Sutekh, can watch it.
But surely it all comes together in the finale, Empire of Death, you opine.
It doesn’t.
The Legend of Ruby Sunday had a thrilling pace, some delightful character pieces, a legitimately mesmerizing and touching scene in the Time Window and some seemingly valid stakes. Empire of Death doesn’t even have those things. It simply says that the audience was foolish to put too much stake in the story of Ruby’s mum, or indeed, Ruby herself. It explains that, while Sutekh is the most powerful villain The Doctor has ever faced, he can be stopped by a spoon and a piece of rope and a whole bunch of hand waving. It brushes aside the adoptive mother that raised Ruby to favor her biological mom. Each explanation seems more and more like a last minute afterthought.
It also has The Doctor violating one of his most core principles, not to kill.
“Just touch these two strands together, and the Daleks are finished… Have I that right?
You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies because of the fear of the Daleks!
Well, the final responsibility is mine. And mine alone. You see, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives… could you then kill that child?
Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other, and it’s it? The Daleks cease to exist? Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations, can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word “Dalek”?
But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent life form, then I’d become like them. I’d be no better than the Daleks.” — The Fourth Doctor refusing to commit genocide on the most genocidal race – Genesis of the Daleks
Now look, this show has been on for over sixty years. This principle has been tested and failed before, particularly in the Nu-Who era. What is so strange about this time is that they put Ncuti Gatwa through this whiplash series of emotional shifts where he seems to be facing this code directly, and then failing. It feels deeply nihilistic which is not only the antithesis of Doctor Who, but also of Russell T Davies’s writing; usually so deeply ethical.
Even the thus far note-perfect Gatwa seems to struggle to keep on point during dialogue like this:
“Sutekh the Destroyer! The Lord God of Death itself! You win! Because I pride myself… I pride myself that I am better than you. Because if you’re death… then I must represent life. Surely, that’s what I am. Life! And that’s how you win, Sutekh. Because you’ve turned me into this. I am the one that brings death.” — Empire of Death
Do what now?
So much about this episode is baffling and rushed, but there are a few moments where the show takes a breath and revels in some of the barely contained emotion that has so propelled most of this season: the Doctor warning Ruby that she may not want to race into a relationship with her biological mom as Ruby bolts directly to the woman, ignoring the advice; the sad vignette with the mother who’s memory is flickering out prior to her being absorbed by Sutekh’s Dust of Death; Kate Stewart’s brave sad “last” words. These showed just how strong an RTD script can be.
The season, however, did seem to fall into a hole of its own digging by setting up a card house of mysteries that it was unprepared to solve — almost unprepared to take seriously — before the wind that blew the Dust of Death from Sutekh’s hand simply knocked it over.
Do the positive aspects of this new, once again refreshed, Doctor Who outpace the clunky drag of the season-long arc? I think they do. Dot and Bubble, Rogue, Boom, 73 Yards: all wonderful stories in a season thick with them. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson are the TARDIS crew we’ve been waiting for for a long time without having known that we needed them. Passion, compassion, love, pain; the season pushed the limits of this British institution and brought a new sense of hope and joy to it.
If the show leans on these strengths next season and restrains its more epic ambitions, we should be in for something very special. Doctor Who fans, like myself, hope that they do exactly that.
Doctor Who airs on the BBC and BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ everywhere else.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
