“The Legend Of Ruby Sunday/The
Empire Of Death”(15th Dr, 2024)
(Series 14/1A
episode 7, Dr 15 with Ruby and Mel, 15-22/6/2024, showrunner: Russell T Davies,
writer: Russell T Davies, executive producers: Julie Gardner, Jane Trantor,
Joel Collins and Phil Collinson, director: Jamie Donoughhue)
Ranking: N/A (but #130ish)
reviewed 23/6/2024
‘Hey Sutekh, you made it! Welcome to the 21st
century Dr Who party. I know it’s difficult to find your way round here at
first, what with all the CGI and orange sparkly pixie-dust going on, but it’s a
nice place when you get to know it and loads of your friends from the 20th
century are here – even the giant crab in the corner! And if you get in
trouble, just give me a shout –this Silurian will be right over’
‘Yesssss Ssssssutekh, come and have a drink and tell
usssssssss all about how you got here’
‘Oh but I’ve been here all along, waiting for my
chance to get out. I’ve been all over the universe in part of that infernal
blue box over there, hitching a ride through the time vortex. I’ve been on more
adventures and journeys in timer and space than any of you – even that bunch of
Daleks singing noisily over there in the corner’
‘That’s a dear, you don’t know what you’re saying,
we’re all a bit disorientated when we get here, not ourselves – and believe me
I know all about that being a Zygon! But why did you suddenly decide to wake up
now?’
‘Erm…erm…erm…Is that a buffet table I see before me?
I hope they do doggy bags’
‘Yes it’s right over there weakling God scum, right
by my Sontaron flag and on top of the Auton is pretending to be a table with
the presents on top of it. Tell me, what gift did you bring to the party?’
‘Well I went to the chemists and they were all out
of death so I bring you…Sutekh’s gift of Pringles and cheesy nibbles’
Well, here we are, at the end of the shortest season
that was planned that way for thirty-six years (poor ‘Flux’ got the short straw
thanks to covid) and yet a season that still raised so many mysteries and so
many points of continuity that needed clearing. Does the two-part finale clear
them all up? Hell no: after years of
seeing Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall invent finales out of thin air it feels
as if Russell T Davies wanted a piece of the same and made everything up as he
went along. Does that make this story the disappointing monstrosity the rest of
the fanbase seem to think it is though? Actually no, for all its many faults I
really enjoyed ‘Legend/Empire’ (despite the fact that both names make
absolutely no sense in context) and felt caught up in it in a way that I
haven’t been for a god half of this year’s stories. Given the extra space of
two episodes it felt as if Russell had more time to play to his strengths, of characterisation
and big emotional set pieces, giving us time to properly know the two main
characters we’ve been rattling round space and time in. The stakes were higher,
the tension bigger and it felt more like Dr Who than a lot of the other more
adventurous stories have been this year, the one episode in 2024 that feels
recognisable if you come to it straight from classic Who (as many did after
watching the ‘Tales From The Tardis’ version of ‘Pyramids Of Mars’). Whisper it
quietly but I actually preferred this story to that garbled mess, a story that
everyone always hails as a classic but for me is an even bigger case of making
it up as you go along.
Everything here has only added to my opinion that
Russell T Davies spent lockdown - the single biggest exterminator of humans in
a century and easily the biggest thing to happen to the world since he was in
charge of Dr Who - in isolation with his classic Who DVDs, looking for
inspiration for the series of Youtube shorts and Dr Who tweetalongs organised
by Dr Who magazine that united fans all over the world – quite possibly with a
Marvels superhero film on in the background as inspiration. Before the world
suddenly and confusingly decided to move on even though the pandemic hadn’t.
There’s that same sense of scale and panic that the world is going wrong and
needs to be put right that came from the youtube lockdown videos in 2020 along
with a sense of comfort that if we listen to the science and listen to the
Doctors, including our Doctor, we will all get through this (Just check out the
‘kind woman’ commenting on the shops being out of stuff and that she hasn’t
seen anyone for days). Sutekh bringing his gift of death to the whole world is
so close to the maps of the early pandemic showing the stats and figures of
every country and the way it spreads from children to parents (because they
left the sodding schools open as a mass super spreader!) is uncomfortably like the
real thing. The idea that Sutekh’s ‘death’ is a ‘gift’, because the people
who’ve died don’t have to grieve and carry on like the survivors, We know that
lockdown was the moment when Russell re-connected to the series he thought he’d
left behind and started thinking about becoming showrunner again, after hearing
that Chibnall was thinking of stepping down and there was no obvious
replacement in line, with tweetalongs to Russell’s stories ‘Rose’ ‘New Earth’
and ‘Gridlock’, as well as his enthusiastic participation in stories written by
other writers under his watch, getting a bigger and more immediate response
than anything he’d written in years. Was the original plan, perhaps to start
tweeting along to older stories with modern showrunners writing prequels and
sequels to those too? In which case ‘Pyramids Of Mars’ was an obvious place to
start: we know from interviews that it was one of the first Dr Who stories that
really gripped the mind of a then-eleven-year-old Russell and opened his eyes
up to what Dr Who could be. Even though Sutekh clearly dies in the original he
was a God. Surely a God would have a backup plan and find a way to survive?
Russell was always too much of fan to want his Who to replace or reboot the old
series: one of his big things he wanted to do as showrunner was make fans look
to the episodes that he’d loved growing up and now here was his chance again.
What’s more Gabriel Woolfe, the voice artist who’d done so much to make Sutekh
come alive in 1975, was still alive and still acting, even at the age of 91.
Russell had adored his voice, leaving instructions for casting director Andy
Prior in many of his scripts that he wanted a voice ‘like Sutekh’s’ and being
most amazed when Prior finally tracked him down to be the beast in ‘The Impossible Planet’. Had he
had longer as showrunner the first time round, had Russell not been rushed off
his feet and distracted by the terminal illness of his husband Andrew, then
Russell might well have brought Sutekh back then. In other words having Sutekh,
one of his favourites, return was high on Russell’s bucketlist – and after the
world kicked the bucket in such a mass way the time seemed right.
I do wonder, though, about having demi-Gods in Dr
Who. This is a series that puts so much emphasis on ‘science’ and how it can be
‘potentially real’ that when it starts sticking Gods with magical powers in
there it all gets a bit silly. It’s a big and unlikely universe though and
Sutekh’s back story (largely ignored here as ‘cultural appropriation’) as a God
to Ancient Egypt gives him a better claim to being ‘real’ and believable
compared to, well, The Beast actually plus The Toymaker and Fenric and The Gods
of Ragnarok and the Fendahl and all those other beings who like to run around
being immortal and all-powerful. The problem comes when they start messing
around with the other planets. I mean, why bother? If I was a God I might enjoy
being worshipped but human beings (not to mention Oods and Thals and Exxilons
and all the other inhabitants of the planets mentioned during the course of
this story) would seem like ants to me, hardly worth bothering with. Sure
Sutekh is angry with the Doctor and wants to get his revenge on him and all the
places he’s been to, but really why bother killing most of the universe in all
timezones, just because you can? I mean, it’s going to get awfully boring with
no one to gloat at or have worship you all day. Usually that’s explained away
in Dr Who terms because a race like The Daleks or Cybermen believe in
conquering the universe and making everyone like them – but Sutekh doesn’t want
anyone to be like him. And of course the other trouble with a demi-God is how
do you realistically fit them into a drama that’s partly about everyday life
without the end looking a bit stupid? The fact is you can’t and Sutekh is being
used here as an ‘insert bad guy here’ without any rationale as to why this
would be Sutekh’s plan or indeed any of his characteristics in ‘Pyramids Of
Mars’ (when he wants people to bow down and worship him, not die). The sight of
Sutekh, a being with more power than perhaps anyone we’ve ever seen in this
series, turned into a giant CGI dog and tethered on a rope dangled outside the
Tardis like a dog out of a car, is one of the silliest the series has ever had,
which is really saying something. The new-look Sutekh is impressively huge and
Woolfe’s purring vocals are as deliciously dangerous as ever, miraculously
undimmed by age, but turning him into a big dog is really not the way to go.
It’s as if Russell spent lockdown watching old Dr Who DVDs, Marvel superhero
films and Flux’ and saw the big Korvanista dog ands thought ‘what a swizz they
made him friendly when they could have made him frightening – I could do better
than that’. But for all the money and makeup and whizzbang technology Sutekh is
still far scarier as a Human. I keep reading, over and over again on my
timeline, how young children were scared by the Sutekh in ‘Tales Of the Tardis’
but weren’t scared of this one at all, even though he killed far more people in
a far crueller way.
Even so, I still got wrapped up in the plot, which
at 110 minutes in total didn’t feel as rushed or as diluted as a lot of
Russell’s other scripts. He’s always been good at summing up characters and
making them feel ‘real’ quickly and then seeing how they cope when the odds are
against them and there are a lot of good examples of that this story. The
second UNIT family are a bit odd at first glance (I mean, I know I’m getting
older and all and the cast of UNIT look younger every time I see them but
seriously: I know Rose Noble is the daughter of one of the Doctor’s most
beloved companions and new scientific advisor Morris Gibbons is a genius, but
they’re both teenagers who want to be at school – either UNIT is the height of
UK technology and knowledge and full of danger, or it’s a place that does work
experience for bright but inexperienced children; surely it can’t be both? And
what happened to Shirley and Russell’s desire for inclusivity with the
disabled?) but it’s nice seeing the Doctor have a base again full of people he
trusts. Kate Stewart feels like an actual character In Russell’s hands, rather than the
Brigadier’s daughter the way she did with Moffat and Chibnall, struggling to
stay strong in the face of ridiculous odds and skirting round the fact that
UNIT have been messing around with time windows when they thought the Doctor
wasn’t looking. Rose Noble got frustratingly little to do (I still want to see
her a full time companion she’s got such potential) and Lenny Rush, who stole
the show in ‘Dodger’ from Christopher Eccleston which isn’t easy to do, is one
of Who’s best child stars so far, making the most of his few lines, though we
badly need to see more of both to truly get to know them. When Russell kills
everyone off it’s a big emotional moment – even when, yes, you know full well
they’re not simply going to kill all life midway through an episode and leave
it at that and they’ll all be brought back to life within about half an hour. Even
the figure credited as simply ‘Kind Woman’, who doesn’t really need to be there
at all for plot purposes, nicely sums up both the scale of the destruction and
how, even when civilisation is crumbling, people can still be good and decent
(she’s the person that gives the Doctor hope that the universe is worth
fighting for and has the same sense of community spirit as people in early
covid times, back when we were all in it together instead of leaving the
elderly and vulnerable to cope at home alone). Mel, too, is a character with a
long history with Russell T Davies: in case you missed the review for ‘The
Giggle’ basically his first job in television, on children’s make-do-and-mend
programme ‘Why Don’t You?’ shared a rehearsal room with the Dr Who of season 24
and Russell, already a huge fan, looked across at Bonnie Langford laughing and
thought ‘these are my people – how do I join them?!’ It might be the fact fans
have got used to her and the fact that Mel is now not so silly and squeaky as
she was when she was young but she feels like a real person in Russell’s hands
across three stories than she did in the 1980s across twenty weeks, with her
weakness of gullibility and refusal to take no for an answers turned into
strengths of never going up and believing that there is always a way out of
anything. Her comforting the Doctor when
everything seems to be lost is a really nice moment and Bonnie makes for a
great sparring partner with Ncuti. Ruby gets a lot of nice character touches
too, from being the one to fool Sutekh at the end and discovering her birth
mother, even if she weirdly says almost nothing for the first half of the
second story (is she in shock?) We don’t quite get the huge emotional payoff
Russell is clearly going for, if only because it doesn’t feel as if we know
Ruby that well yet (she’s only been around for eight stories and nine weeks
actually on screen, with her seven months as ‘the new companion’ the shortest
since Sara Kingdom sort of was but really wasn’t in ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’.
And one of those stories, ‘Boom’, knocked her out for most of it). I know a lot
of fans are disappointed that Ruby turned out to be just ordinary too but
actually I’m all here for that twist, that even the most ordinary person in the
world can still be the most important by keeping her wits about her and fooling
Sutekh even when the Doctor has effectively messed up.
What I don’t get is why this series went to such a
big deal about the mystery of who she was, only to swerve the answer at the
end. For as well as demonstrating the best of Russell T this series also
features him trying to do a Steven Moffat and turn series fourteen/1A (we
really need a better name!) and turn everything into a massive puzzle like the
ones that ran across series five-seven, one of the biggest innovations since
Davies had hung up his showrunning shoes. Moffat inherited and borrowed quite
heavily from Davies’ ideas and they’re actually very similar as writers, so its
natural Davies should want to have a bash at this in reverse. Only he’s not
very good at it. Back when Moffat was in charge there was fevered speculation
about various clues and endless chats online as to what on Gallifrey could be
going and the answers, almost always, were wilder and more interesting than
anything we could have got: all that stuff about River Song’s origins and who
Clara really was, a story very like Ruby’s but with a really clever resolution.
Moffat has the sort of brain that must make him a chess champion: he’s always
fifty moves ahead of you. Russell sees writing plots as more like a crossword:
he has lots of ideas he wants to fit together and slot in and he’s good at papering
over the cracks for them – but he fits them in retrospectively where he can
rather than seeing an entire series as an organic whole. He thinks he’s teased
us by making us look in the wrong direction with the tease of Susan coming back
(because there’s always a Susan Twist at the end), a brief moment when it’s
hinted Ruby might be Mel’s daughter (which is dropped straight away) and the
anagram of ‘S Triad’ technology being the ‘Tardis’ and then actually makes it a
cliffhanger plot point that ha ha ha it was all a ruse and meant ‘Sue Tech’ all
along. Only we guessed that in the first week. And it was in fact, a throwaway joke
in a book Lawrence Miles once had rejected, but which the author liked enough
to tweet (I know because I saw it. And if I could see it then Russell could too).
So much of this story spends so long looking over its shoulder to check we’re
getting all the clues that it forgets to actually get on with telling a decent
story. And If you’re going to land conundrums like this then you have to have a
solution that tops anything the whole mass Dr Who fanbase can come up with on
their own – and this just wasn’t. I know a lot of fans adored the big scary
cliffhanger but honestly, as someone who saw the twist coming and isn’t that
big a fan of the original Sutekh, it was one of the most boring ones going. And
this is a season that’s demanded we look for a twist at the end – only for the
twist at the end to be that there isn’t one, that everything is ‘normal’.
That’s not a twist, that’s sloppy writing.
What’s more Russell has huge problems trying to tie
his two mysteries together, Sutekh and Ruby. They just don’t go at all. We’re
led to believe that Sutekh, the most powerful being in the universe, is so
caught up in the question of who Ruby’s mum is that he puts his killing spree
on hold long enough for his nemesis and current best friend to get away. Why is
he so obsessed? He has the arrogance to think he can defeat anyone, never mind
some random someone’s mother (although I do like the idea that an Egyptian God
is sort-of defeated by a ‘Mummy’, which is sort-of the plot of ‘Pyramids’ after
all, the Doctor wrapping up in bandages and pretending to be a mummy who wasn’t).
And why does Sutekh arrive now? He’s been waiting for 49 years (Earth time, not
Tardis time – goodness knows how long that’s been!) to appear and we’re led to
believe he’s been waiting for Ruby. Only it turns out that it’s all a complete
coincidence. They could at least have tied in the fact that Sutekh seems to
have woken up again within the Tardis after Donna poured her coffee onto the
console - or if not how come the Tardis has been crash-landing every time it’s
materialised since ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ and not ‘The Android Invasion’? (The next
story after ‘Pyramids Of Mars’). While I’m glad that Ruby turns out to be,
basically, a nobody born to Earth parents for a change (although the dad’s
weird name and possible links to the crooked politician from ’73 Yards’ might
be setting up another twist for next year) it leaves so many unanswered
questions about her. I’m willing to buy that her fifteen year old mum left her
on the steps of a church for safe-keeping in 2004, but how did she conceal her
pregnancy in a toxic family that, it’s hinted, were sexually abusing her and so
knew to look out for such signs? What fifteen year old in 2004 dressed in a
cloak? Why does the mum point to a street-sign, in the pitch dark, in such a
menacing way when there’s no one around to see her (and it’s a whacking coincidence that
the Church that took her in and handed
her over for foster care seems to have named her Ruby too). How come this was
such a crazy point in time that time itself started going weird even when using
Tardis technology (and how come poor soldier Sullivan – a relative of Harry
perhaps? – snuffed it during a simulation when Sutekh in the Tardis was nowhere
near?) How come, after all those years of searching for her daughter while working
in the NHS, with easier access to a genetic database than anyone else, the mum
never found Ruby? How come, if genetic records are compulsory in 2046, they
have no record of Ruby or anyone in her family in the future in ‘Boom’? How
come Maestro knew about Sutekh coming back – has he been on the phone to her or
something? How come ‘The Devil’s Chord’ told us that Ruby was ‘not right’ when
actually she’s normal? What happened to Dr 14 and indeed all the other
bi-regenerational Doctors, a lot of whom must be wandering round planets the
Doctor has been visiting since 1975 and thus are in trouble too? What happened
in all the multi-Doctor stories since 1975: was Sutekh on board the Tardisi of
Drs 1-5 (in ‘The Five Doctors’) plus War and 10-11 (‘Day Of The Doctor’) waving
to himself rather than going ‘you know what? There’s a whole bunch of me now, I’m bringing the plan forward!’ What
happened to Sutekh during the events of (here goes) ‘Logopolis’ (in which he’d
have been shrunk to a titchy size and ended up inside The Master’s Tardis), ‘Planet
Of Fire’ (where the Tardis is set alight), ‘Frontios’ (when half the Tardis was
jettisoned – I mean what was Sutekh clinging on to), all stories with Kamelion
inside the Tardis (when they must surely have encountered each other) and ‘Journey
To The Centre Of The Tardis’ (when people kept falling into the eye of harmony
in alternate timelines and being set alight) just to name a few obvious ones?
Even the episode titles are unnecessarily misleading: it turns out Ruby isn’t a
legend in a legendary sense and there is no empire, just death. Above all, why
does it snow so often round Ruby when that had no bearing on the plot
whatsoever? A lot of fans felt cheated by the ending, not because it was bad (although
a lot of people are saying it is) but because it raised so many big questions
and then answered them in the simplest and most boring way, as if Russell
worked out his solution late on and then tried to add clues backwards, rather
than having a fully formed plan from the outset.
Well, aesthetically I can at least answer the last
one: Ruby makes it snow because she ‘is’ Russell, the same way Rose, Martha and
especially Donna were all extensions of himself (seriously: ‘Turn Left’ is
Russell’s love song to Dr Who and what his life might have been like if he’d
never ‘met’ the Doctor and ‘Journey’s End’ has him preparing to leave the show,
his memory wiped, to become an ordinary mortal again). Russell made it snow in
‘The Christmas Invasion’ on a whim, because that felt more Christmassey to him,
and then so many people commented on it that he had to do it every year – and a
few stories in between. It’s a neat metaphor: as a writer with power he can
change the weather and snow is a good fit: he’s too optimistic about the human
race to make it rain, too pessimistic to make it all sunshiney (besides, where
would the drama be?) but covering his
characters in a blanket of snow that makes them shiver and which changes everything
they thought they knew about their cosy little world, leaving tiny footprints
as they come and go, is too good a metaphor not to use in some story somewhere.
Sutekh launching onto the back of the time vortex and never letting go is a
neat metaphor for Russell’s jumping on point as a fan (once you cling to the
Tardis you’re on it for life!) The fact he climbs back to life now, at a time
of death and destruction that so reminds him of Sutekh’s power in his
childhood, feels like a natural part of his own ‘character arc’. After all, his
first ever professional links to the series were when his Russell stand-in
character Vince in breakthrough series ‘Queer As Folk’ sat down to watch ‘Pyramids
Of Mars’ on VHS. It’s where Russell sort-of ‘came in’ as a fan and the idea
that Sutekh has been sleeping in his subconscious for all that time waiting to
get out is a neat metaphor for the story itself.
There’s maybe another thought of fancy going on in this story too: Sutekh tears down whole worlds in Dr Who, basically wiping out everything that’s happened in the series since 1975 and only hangs around the show and keeps it alive to they can try and solve the ‘big mystery’ of the year (in this case Ruby’s parentage) without caring for the characters. Ever since its second ever episode (no seriously, it was a review of ‘An Unearthly Child’ episode two) people have been saying that Dr Who isn’t as good as it used to be. Russell, as showrunner, was more immune to this than most: his era on the show has come to be seen as a ‘golden age’ when without him we wouldn’t have had Dr Who back at all. Even so there’s been some, err, interesting revisionism going on about his time in charge, a combination of a backlash against the 10th Doctor (who some see as smug and arrogant, even though that was his entire character arc, for which he paid for dearly in ‘The Waters Of Mars’ and ‘The End Of Time’) and the revelations about Noel Clarke and John Barrowman and how uncomfortable Christopher Eccleston felt on set. To a sensitive soul like Russell it must have felt as if fandom was trying to burn down everything he’d ever created. It would be apt, for the writer who once described toxic fandom in ‘Love and Monsters’, to give us an update and to make fandom not just a rogue shape-shifting monster who absorbs everything but a God who can wipe out the entire show if they persuade enough people to stop watching en masse. ‘Legend/Empire’, then, is Russell as Ruby, an ordinary person standing alone in front of a sea of critical voices trying to kill his entire world and not being sure what to do about it. The shots of Sutekh’s ties to the Tardis, the biggest single symbol for the series, and being flung into the time vortex to die feel like the wish of a weary showrunner wondering why he ever bothered, one who still loves the show passionately but not all the surrounding noise that gives with it. This is, also, of course Dr Who being brought back from the absolute dead when all the lights were going out (as the BBC were seriously considering cancelling it when Chris Chibnall left), the only thing keeping it going being the ‘rope’ that still ties Russell to the series that’s not left his brain since childhood. I love the scene of all the planets turning back on (a sort of mirror of ‘Journey’s End’ turning them off) as if they’ve all started living again inside Russell’s head. Death might be a ‘gift’ to the critics and fans who want this series to die, but Russell loves it too much to let it go if he can help it.
Russell might well have thought twice about coming
back though: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a relentlessly critical backlash
to a single episode as I have with ‘Empire Of Death’ and I’m not quite sure
why. I mean it wasn’t a classic and it was oddly paced: the whole thing with
the rope coming out of nowhere –something Moffat would have made a plot point
six episodes ago and made us forget about particularly. It was quite unevenly
put together for a two parter too: the first half was all boring setup and the
ending was rushed, with the big cliffhanger (the first of the new era since
Russell took charge a second time) came at the wrong time, as if he’d forgotten
how to do it: had they used the moment, ten minutes into ‘Empire’, when the
universe was being wiped out and the Doctor looked broken, it would have been a
far more natural and devastating break. Mucking around with a sub-plot about a ‘time
window’ that went nowhere and sucked all the drama out of the story was a bad
idea, while it felt like the part with S Triad only just got going before we
were rushing headlong into Sutekh’s reveal. Even in the vastly superior second
part we didn’t spend nearly enough time in 2046 (how come everyone is DNA testing
now and how come the world population has fallen from some 8 billion in 2024 to
a mere 76 million in 22 year’s time? (Is Russell, always covid cautious like a
lot of people In TV, as anxious as me about how many people the pandemic
continues to kill off every day and all the rare illnesses it’s causing people
to develop?) and the sub-plot of Mel being possessed is the sort of thing we’ve
seen so many times before it’s got old (and it robs us of more time seeing Mel
as Mel: honestly after all the publicity build up I thought she was going to
spend the entire episode riding Dr 15 round on a motorbike rather than a single
short chase scene). What s the significance of the kind woman and her gift of a
spoon (is it symbolic of the 4th Doctor’s desire to travel ‘with a
teaspoon and an open mind’, not a quote from ‘Pyramids’ but ‘The Creature From The Pit’?) But re-watching the weird cut-down and CGI-treated
‘Pyramids Of Mars’ the other day (a lot better than the horrid colourised and
re-edited ‘Daleks’ but not a patch on
the original with its intrusive modern music and weird combination of shots)
this story is no worse in terms of pacing than the so-called ‘classic’ that
inspired it.
For there was a lot in this finale I liked: the
mystery of Susan Triad and her lack of memory at who she was is a great idea
that kept us on our toes: the Doctor desperately asking her about her dreams
(‘have you ever been an ambulance?’ is a fan-favourite quote already!) when she
hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, only to be a ‘trick’ to lure the Doctor in
is a great idea and one we’ve legitimately never had before, not to the extent
of building an entire character who keeps returning in stories. The ‘Kind Woman’
has confused many but she’s a very Russell style character, there to sum up how
drastic a situation is rather than move on the plot – she’s at one with all his
characters in times of stress who do the right thing and give him hope as
individuals even when the massed public have got something badly wrong; it’s
subtle but meeting here is the turning point that makes the Doctor think there
is a chance of putting things right, somehow (although in the end his plan goes
wrong and Ruby improvises her way to a solution instead, which is an even
better ending). The fact that Sutekh, buried deep in the Tardis (and presumably
sharing houseroom with the lost Sontaron from ‘The
Invasion Of Time’), can only manipulate things using the Tardis’ perception
filter at a distance of up to 73 Yards is a clever idea: it explains a little
bit more about what happened in the story ’73 Yards’ too (well, sort of:
presumably Sutekh was so angry at his grand masterplan being interrupted at the
Doctor’s death he kept the Tardis ‘turned on’ and haunted Ruby for fun). The
Doctor’s horror at the thought that his journeys since ‘Pyramids’ have put so
many people in danger and caused such suffering through his recklessness is
brilliant (and I‘m not just saying that because it was part of a story I
submitted to the Big Finish writing competition in lockdown, which I lost:
Russell made it into more of a story than me). The reprise from the one part of
‘Pyramids Of Mars’ I always found powerful, the sight of a destroyed world and
what it would look like if Sutekh ‘wins’, is reprised here but not in some
vague possible future but right here right now and the idea of stars going out
(just like ‘Stolen Earth/.Journey’s End’), with references to lots of
fan-favourite planets, is a really neat touch that sells the idea of just how
big this threat is (only ‘Logopolis’ threatens this many planets and indeed
destroys a lot of them: poor Traken, for instance, is destroyed by the Doctor’s
carelessness twice now!) I love the Doctor’s subtle kiss of gratitude to the
Tardis as he gets it back from Sutekh’s control, so under-stated (Ncuti has
been getting better and better this year, although his latest scream of wild
fury and defeat isn’t one of his best moments). I love the idea of the ‘Memory
Tardis’ from ‘Tales Of The Tardis’ being turned into a continuity point, with a
near-defeated Doctor, Ruby and Mel huddled together in the cold watching the
universe die, utterly lost and helpless in the wake of the big bad. Most of all
I love the fact that even a God as powerful as Sutekh can be tricked by Ruby
smashing all evidence of who her mum is, just as he’s got the Doctor in a
green-tinged death grip (go girl!)
Admittedly it could all have been put together in a
better way – with a lot more Sutekh, given they’d gone to all that trouble to
create him - and been surrounded by stories that didn’t keep promising us a
four course banquet and then ending up serving up a plate of reasonably good
sandwiches. I mean, they were nutritious and tasty enough and better than no
sandwiches at all (a lot of fans forget just how much trouble Dr Who was in
across 2021 before Russell got Disney involved and I’m the sort of fan who
found things to like in ‘The Trial Of A Timelord’, I’ll totally take a sloppy
and clumsy series over cancellation) but if you promise a brilliant mystery and
then don’t deliver on it people are always going to be disappointed. I do think
in time, though, that fans will come to appreciate this story more than they do
now, when it leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. After all, I for one enjoyed
Russell going back to using his more detailed, subtle, complex and empathetic
writing after a run of stories which I (mostly) really enjoyed but which did
feel a little like cartoons, broad and big and colourful. And of course there’s
still the chance that some mysteries might get solved at a later date: Mrs
Flood, for one, looked furious at having her plans thwarted and being killed by
Sutekh just as she was getting close to Ruby’s family so here’s betting she’s
the big bad of next year (and my pet theory now so you can all laugh at how wrong
I was in a year’s time: she’s a sort of Clara in ‘The Name Of The Doctor’ sent
to keep an eye on the Doctor with elements of the people he most trusts: she’s
dressed like Clara for most of the series but suddenly started wearing Romana’s
costume from ‘The Ribos Operation’ during her fourth-wall break to camera at
the very end). Plus…if all those destroyed worlds were brought back to life is
this a sneaky backdoor way to getting Gallifrey to come back from the dead
(again?!) As much as half the fanbase seem to be giving up on the show in
droves this year there’s so much to look forward to with Who and I can’t wait
to see you there, starting at Christmas…
+ POSITIVES
The Tardis is possessed! Such a great idea that Who had never really done
before and it looks like it too, with one of the best uses of CGI in the modern
series as black swirling plumes of smoke intertwined it. As much as Sutekh just
looked like an angry Scooby Doo who’d eaten too many Scooby snacks the sight of
him twirling the Tardis round like a toy was really effective too. The sight of
UNIT shooting bullets at it in desperation before finding it impervious and getting
taken out one by one was very well handled too, making the most familiar sight
in all of Who that’s been home across the past sixty-ish years somewhere scary
and dangerous.
- NEGATIVES
That said, the plumes of sand overtaking the world were a CGI effect too far.
They looked uncomfortably like the dust bowl from the twin towers on 9/11 and
it’s always a bit dodgy when Dr Who starts copying real events that resulted I real
deaths. Plus nobody reacts the way they should: yes we see one crashing car but
there’s no panic, not much screaming, no real surprise. I mean, this is a
tsunami of sand in a city street, you’d at least be surprised if nothing else. And
why is Sutekh even messing round with sand? He seems to have given up on all his
‘Egyptian imagery’ for the rest of the story.
BEST QUOTE:
‘You made my life bigger and better Ruby Sunday and now – goodbye’
PREQUELS/SEQUELS:
In case you hadn’t guessed by now, this story has quite a lot to do with 4th
Doctor story ‘The Pyramids Of Mars’…
Previous ‘Rogue’ next ‘Joy
To The World’
BEST QUOTE:
‘You made my life bigger and better Ruby Sunday and now – goodbye’
Previous ‘Rogue’ next ‘Joy
To The World’
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