Last week’s episode of Doctor Who’s return series, The Legend Of Ruby Sunday, 

offered the kind of penultimate installment that Russell T Davies always did well in his first run of the show. 

Notwithstanding the okay-go-through-that-again build up to the Sutekh reveal, it was a large scale blockbuster episode, setting up Empire Of Death. 

As for finale episodes? They tended to be a bit more mixed, and so it proved did this one.

First, the order of business with Empire Of Death required killing pretty much everyone. 

Picking up pretty much where we left off last time, the show was in a hurry to defeat the Doctor. Sutekh had been revealed, now let him wreak a lot of damage.

Appreciating Sutekh wrapped around the TARDIS was one of the weaker visual effects of the series, there’s little doubt what was happening: people were dying in dust clouds,

 Avengers-ish like. The Doctor telling us that basically this was the most terrifying villain he’d faced, with the impact of Sutekh’s plan quickly established. I did think as I was watching that everything nearly died with Flux a year or two ago (something that’s still impacting Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor), but still: destruction was fast. The point was made.

Fair does too: the sequences of dust coming down the street and laying waste to whatever was in its path looked strong. At one stage it reminded me just a little of the film Deep Impact, a film where the visuals have dated a fair bit. No danger of that here.

But back to business. Doctor Who loves a bit of a retrofit, and here, it turned out that the Doctor hadn’t managed to rid us of Sutekh back in the 1970s in Pyramid Of Mars. Someone needs to have a word with Tom Baker there. Instead, if I’m following this correctly, Sutekh has been hitching a ride with the TARDIS ever since, and as such, has travelled the breath of time and space. In doing so, manipulating things and growing stronger, until Ncuti Gatwa came along.

Thus, we got a lot of death very early on, but that kind of pretend death that feels a bit weightless. The fact that so many people were buying it – all but a handful, really – meant that they were bound to come back by the end of the episode. We’re too well drilled in the narrative of television to buy that. Did anyone really think that UNIT and Mel had popped along to be knocked off? Me neither.

A few weeks ago in these reviews I asked questions of perception filters, which were getting a namecheck, and whaddya know: they cover roughly 73 yards. In fact, the episode 73 Yards was the one to rewatch as well, given the flashback to the most dangerous Prime Minister in the world, Roger ap Gwilliam. Turns out that his decision to introduce compulsory DNA registration in the year 2046 is quite the turning point in the search for Ruby’s mother. And quite useful in defeating a villain too.

On that point: a bit of me can’t help but reflect that two terrific foes from Doctor Who past – The Celestial Toymaker and Sutekh – have been brought back, and I’ve enjoyed seeing them both. It’s been real nerd gold seeing them appear, but then a little odd to see them so easily defeated in the end.

I get that the episode’s emotional stakes here weren’t ultimately about a battle between the Doctor and a foe, but still: we’re told that Sutekh has basically been on the Doctor’s tail for such a period of time, and then he’s gone like that. On the plus side, I genuinely love – and it feels very Doctor Who-y – that he’s beaten by an elastic rope, a glove, and a whistle. But still.

Likewise, Susan Twist’s appearances in this series have been terrific, and the mystery of just who she was a fun one. I hope that she does take up that UNIT invitation though, else it feels like she’s not quite had the ending the building up would have justified.

The mystery of Ruby’s mother was far more satisfying and a real highpoint, leaving a further narrative thread too. It may have been against the Doctor’s advice, but Ruby’s conversation with her mother – an ordinary person, who effectively sort of saved the universe by being so ordinary – led to a small, tender, emotional moment that I found really quite moving.

That, and we then got an apparent farewell to Ruby Sunday that few of us are buying too. Crumbs have been left: we know that Ruby’s father appears to be a wrong’un for undisclosed reasons, and that might just be in Russell T Davies’ back pocket for a future story. But also, Ruby uttering to the Doctor “I love you” doesn’t really feel like the ultimate farewell. As much as I don’t think the central pairing has worked as well as the Doctor’s adventures with Rose or Clara, there’s unfinished business here.

I think Bonnie Langford’s return has really paid off, even when she was turned into a deadly force of destructive evil. And when Empire Of Death went smaller – the Doctor simply questioning why he was still alive – it worked better for me. Plus, as ever, Russell T Davies takes a line or two to aim salvoes at how the modern world could be better, and I love he’s getting that into a show aimed primarily at youngsters. And heck, the man can pack a hell of a lot of punch into a single line.

Then, of course, Anita Dobson got a new coat.

She’s been a mercurial figure in the background here  since The Church On Ruby Road, when she clearly knew what a TARDIS was. Then she went Evil Anita Dobson last week. Now she’s foretelling a terrible end for the Doctor. We were concentrating on the woman who became Susan Triad for the last few weeks. But Anita Posh Coat is emitting danger and lots of it. With a sad, deflated Doctor – and watching Ncuti Gatwa inhabit the role has been the highlight of the series as far as I’m concerned – we head to the Christmas special with danger clearly ahead.

Still, I can’t say I was particularly blown away by Empire Of Death. It felt a little tame on the whole for me, albeit lifted significantly by Ruby’s reunion. I’m well schooled enough in the world of Russell T Davies Doctor Who to appreciate that what looks resolved now may not be. I also think this particular run of eight episodes has had two or three absolute corkers in it. As such, I’m a happy Doctor Who fan. I’m glad it’s back, I’m glad it’s soaring, and I hope that the younger audience needed to keep this brilliant programme firing get slightly more out of Empire Of Death than me.

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Source: USA Today