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Doctor Who: now discussing Empire of Death (with spoilers!)
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I’m with the consensus on this, it had nice bits but it did not pull together at all. It felt like a Chibnall episode almost in the way it regurgitated elements of other stories (Turn Left, RTD’s Years and Years) without successfully saying or doing anything new with them and then just didn’t wrap up properly. Like you said, Ian, what was with the signing? What was she saying that could terrify and alienate so many different people? How did she travel back? It just frays apart.
I thought the pub stuff was pretty mean spirited too, tbh.
And the ongoing cameos of Susan Twist, the best-named actor in history.
I hadn’t noticed that. That has to be something, surely. Checking on imdb, she’s been in every episode since Christmas. There’s no way that’s innocuous.
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Combine that with the precognitive powers of The Simpsons and it appears pop culture is gaining sentience.
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Grant Morrrison is shitting themself with anticipation right now
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I liked Dot and Bubble. The messages were pretty on-the-nose, but I think they needed to be for a younger audience.
I’ve already seen several comparisons to Black Mirror, which feels very apt, even down to the absurd humour of her not being able to function on a basic level on her own.
I liked the way the interface was presented and the sense of design (all those cosy pastels) and the shallow slang-y insincere surface-level conversations were done well.
The lead actress was also really great and trod that line between being awful, but not quite so horrible that you wished her ill. And the big moment at the end was unexpected but made sense in the context of the rest of the episode. And Gatwa acted it really well.
It’s the kind of weird episode that I like the show to do every once in a while, a bit more experimental than usual (and, like Blink, I suspect it was also a way of not having to have the Doctor and Ruby film for very long).
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Yeah, I agree. That was really well done and properly brutal at the end, but not in a way that felt unearned.
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I enjoyed that. I was thinking about halfway through that there had to be some kind of twist and I though it was when the Lindy sold the dancer guy out to get away, so the reveal that they were all racists was unexpected and quite well done..I especially like how it reframes the rest of the episode you just watched.
And we finally get Ruby and The Doctor acknowledging Susan Twist keeps popping up. Interested to see what the larger plot is going to be here.
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And we finally get Ruby and The Doctor acknowledging Susan Twist keeps popping up. Interested to see what the larger plot is going to be here.
Ruby did acknowledge her in the last episode too, asking if she’d met her before. So it’s nice to know that this is an in-universe thing happening and not just stunt casting of what are meant to be completely different characters in the world of the show.
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Looking at the rest of the series and the series as a whole, it’s a little disappointing that there’s only one episode this series by new (to Who) writers. Across three 60th specials, a Christmas special, an 8 episode series and another Christmas special, all but one episode has been written by a current/former showrunner. It get that RTD’s excited to be back in the saddle, but it’s not a great statement about the longterm future of the show.
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I realky liked this. A razor sharp commentary on social media, racism and the whole ‘Me! Me! Me!’ culture.
I also loved the super-slugs, just the right level of awful and comic.
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So I was in the same boat of “decent episode, some fun bits, the twist was a bit out of nowhere”, but someone was pointing out that there’s a lot of hints about Penny’s racism earlier on in the episode – she doesn’t recognise the Doctor when he comes back into her feed, she’s shocked when Ruby and The Doctor are in the same room, she says to her friends The Doctor isn’t as stupid as he looks and he’ll be disciplined… I think it’ll hold up better on a rewatch than a lot of similar episodes.
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I think I loved that the AI was murdering them because it hated them. It was a nice touch.
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I thought Rogue was fine as a frothy bit of fun. The kind of thing that would have been a regular filler episode in the old RTD days, a bit silly and predictable but still very watchable.
My wife has watched Bridgerton and I haven’t so she enjoyed it more than I did on that level too.
I do think it crossed the line into feeling a bit fan-fiction-y at times, and the Doctor’s romantic relationship felt very sudden and over the top (albeit explained by finding someone who’s so like him in so many ways) but that suited the melodramatic nature of the genre they were pastiching.
Plus “Why isn’t it cloaked?”/”Well it’s behind a tree” felt like Red Dwarf dialogue and got the biggest laugh of the episode for me.
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Yeah that felt like a complete waste of time to me. We’ve had years of the Doctor being this basically sexless being, So I don’t really buy him seemingly falling in love in the space of an episode. Especially with such a boring and forgettable character🤷♂️.. I also have zero interest in Brigerton or that particular period setting, so this episode was not made for me at all. Hopefully the two part finale will save this series from being a total bore.
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I liked this – a fun, not too heavy episode with some neat sequences. For instance, Rogue’s face when the Doctor finds his Kylie track was perfect. Similarly, Ruby handing Lord Barton his arse.
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I thought it was ok. The cosplaying aliens were a fun idea. Rogue just felt like Captain Jack redux though.
Also, was there an extra face in the row of past Doctor heads when the machine scanned the Doctor? Between Whittaker and Hartnell.
Yes, it was Richard E Grant.
Presumably this means The Curse Of Fatal Death is now canon.
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Oh was it? I didn’t recognise him (wasn’t a very flattering picture of Pertwee either). Curious as to where they’d fit his Shalka Doctor in (not that it really matters any more).
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I thought The Legend Of Ruby Sunday did pretty well in building up the tension to its final reveal, but at the same time that’s pretty much all it was. There wasn’t really much story, it all seemed more concerned with self-satisfied outmanoeuvring of fan theories and revelling in its own red herrings (and even then I know quite a few people had guessed the surprise villain anyway).
It wasn’t a bad episode, but it also didn’t land quite as strongly as other finale-setup episodes have done in the past. Partly because this villain just doesn’t quite have the cachet of Daleks or Cybermen or the Master in terms of being an iconic Who villain.
Still, I’m hopeful that the concluding part will be a fun romp now that all the setup is out of the way.
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I liked that. It still builds on the mystery around Ruby, while resolving others that have been running across the series.
I know the revealed villain has a history in Doctor Who, but nothing more than that.
A shame it’s an eight episode series, but the quality has been excellent.
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And we still have the mystery of Mrs Flood to be revealed. Who knows, maybe she’s Susan.
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On a lighter note:
Who felt old when being reminded that Ruby Sunday was born 24 Dec 2004?
How much of the audience asked: What’s a VHS?
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That was fun. Definitely a ton of setup and the first half felt like I was being hit with a bunch of information I already knew. But the ramp up to the end reveal was cool and reminded me of the old RTD days.
Susan has to show up in some fashion in the finale. There’s no way they dig up that plot thread and just use it as a fake out. And Ruby has to be some kind of demigod at this point, If only to give the Doctor some kind of weapon/advantage over the other gods. Because I’ll be pissed if he beats Sutekh with another silly game.
Looking forward to the next week. Hoping it’ll be big and flashy considering they’re doing the cinema screenings.
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And we still have the mystery of Mrs Flood to be revealed. Who knows, maybe she’s Susan.
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It’s not exaclty hiding yourself away if you’re married to Brian May!
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It’s not exaclty hiding yourself away if you’re married to Brian May!
If you’re standing next to him then nobody is looking at you.
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I haven’t kept up with the series (or discussions here) to date. Not out of distaste, but because my daughter really wanted to watch Ncuti’s Doctor and she’s had A-Levels and other stuff going on so we had to wait for her to finish. The end result being we’ve binged the first six episodes of the series over the last week. It has been good fun overall, I think, carried along by the actors’ charisma more than the brilliance of the writing.
I thought Space Babies was a terrible debut, and Rogue didn’t particularly work for me (but was liked a lot by my Bridgerton watching daughter).
Dot & Bubble was a bit “on the nose” but I was left physically angry by the twist at the end, which was magnificently done. Interestingly my kids didn’t get it, which hopefully says something about society today versus the one I grew up in, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.
The Devil’s Chord, Boom and 73 Yards were all fantastic. Really enjoyed them.
Looking forward to the season finale two parter.
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And what’s with the flickering images throughout the series? I assume that’s building up to something. I do hope we’re not the only ones to have noticed those, and it’s not just my TV being possessed!
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And what’s with the flickering images throughout the series? I assume that’s building up to something. I do hope we’re not the only ones to have noticed those, and it’s not just my TV being possessed!
Yes yes. I’m sure when Sue appeared as the tea lady she was all blury swirly for a few seconds, but I couldn’t find it on YouTube etc, so put it down to transmission or receiver issues.
But maybe…
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And what’s with the flickering images throughout the series
I’m sure when Sue appeared as the tea lady she was all blury swirly for a few seconds,
I can’t say I’ve noticed either of these. I just checked that bit of the Devil’s Chord on iPlayer and she seemed normal enough.
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And what’s with the flickering images throughout the series
I’m sure when Sue appeared as the tea lady she was all blury swirly for a few seconds,
I can’t say I’ve noticed either of these. I just checked that bit of the Devil’s Chord on iPlayer and she seemed normal enough.
It was just my version! Spooky
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And what’s with the flickering images throughout the series
I’m sure when Sue appeared as the tea lady she was all blury swirly for a few seconds,
I can’t say I’ve noticed either of these. I just checked that bit of the Devil’s Chord on iPlayer and she seemed normal enough.
It was just my version! Spooky
Yeah. I’d maybe keep an eye for anything sinister going on around you, man.
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I thought that was pretty good. Nice to see the memory TARDIS thing explained and it tie directly into the Tales of the TARDIS version of Pyramids of Mars that came out the other day.
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I thought it was a pretty terrible finale if I’m honest. All of RTD’s worst traits – a nonsense story with no real logic or meaning to it, flat resolutions that didn’t really resolve anything, and pretty much all of the teases and setups from earlier in the season came to nothing in the end (who are Ruby’s parents? Some randoms. Who is Mrs Flood? No clue. What was 73 Yards really all about? Fuck knows). A big disappointment.
Plus I thought Gatwa was unusually flat in this one – a lot of shouting of lines with no real depth or sincerity to any of it. It all felt a bit stage school.
It’s a shame as it retrospectively colours the first half of the story too – that was all waffley setup for the cliffhanger, this is all waffley treading-water until the resolution – and with only eight episodes this season it means a quarter of it has been wasted on a story that feels like a whole lot of nothing.
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Also, I don’t think the resolution they give to the mystery of Ruby’s parents is particularly well thought-out or positive, especially for anyone watching who might be in a similar situation (raised by foster parents). It creates the impression that finding your birth parents and reconnecting with them is the be-all and end-all, and is something that will turn out as a fairytale happy ending, which I’m not sure is a thoughtful message to be sending.
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The one thing I found genuinely interesting about it was the (intended? unintended?) allegory for covid, a wave of death sweeping the earth, guilt over being the one who inadvertently brought death to others, everyone isolated and separated, the eradication of truth etc. – but that was maybe me reading into it too much.
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I’m somewhere in the middle in that it definitely felt like RTD standard finale # 2 (see for example Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords). Lots of marking time until the big reveal at the end of episode 1, lots of marking time until the big finale moment where the day is saved… But I didn’t mind it so much? I’ve been kinda skeptical about RTD’s return in general, and was expecting a lot of the same tropes and pacing problems that we’d all gotten tired of by the time he left first time, so this wasn’t a big surprise. It was well-executed for the most part, had good effects, and I’m always here for a joke about how UNIT’s guns are useless (though at the same time I’d like to see them be useful maybe once or twice?)
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Man, I was really hoping this would be good, but the whole thing left me feeling rather cold.
In the end Sutekh seemed to be dealt with quite easily and everything he did was undone, so what was the point?. He’s been attached to the Tardis for years but it’s only when the Doctor blew a whistle that it finally fought back?. They can’t seem to decide if the Tardis is just some Time Machine or a kind of sentient being/machine that is in it with the Doctor.
The Susan tease came to nothing, as did the Ruby mystery. I get not wanting to make her another Amy/Clara where all of time and space swirls around her. But They leaned soooooooo hard into the tease that the actual pay off landed with a massive thud.
Who is Mrs Flood?…I don’t really give a toss anymore to be honest🤷♂️. She’ll probably just be another random god, the god of storytelling probably.. It’s not the mystery I was really that invested in because the pay off seems so obvious and boring.
And don’t forget the universe was dying and 14 was just out there chilling with Donna in his perfectly functioning Tardis that doesn’t have an evil god attched to it I guess?🙄.. And I’m really gonna need this Doctor to stop crying. I think he’s done it pretty much every episode now and it’s just way too much. That should be a real moment, but it just comes off to me as extremely overdramatic and a bit of a drama school shortcut to show emotion.
I’ve been split on this season, but this capper makes me lean into it being a bit of a flop overall which is a real bummer.
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Well at least I didn’t go and see one of the midnight cinema showings. That would have been brutal.
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The whistle was TARDIS recall device. A rheinstadt something or other from… I think the Two Doctors. I think that could have done with being explained more, but given it was in amongst loads of old/recreated props in the TARDIS, there was significance to it being more than just a whistle.
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They should have had the Doctor change the channel on the tv screen that was playing Pyramids of Mars and give the Two Doctors a quick watch.
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Only just started to watch more episodes of this season. And I have to say, Space Babies was pretty crap. I mean, just because you keep repeating it, the words “Space Babies!” doesn’t get any funnier. Jesus. There’s fun silliness, and there is just daft silliness. Honestly, what the fuck, man.
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Bet Sutekh was sitting there loving all the drama of this will they won’t they.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Yeah, it was a weird choice to say Sutekh had been in the TARDIS since Pyramids rather than just since the 60th or something.
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That was a disappointing finale. Barely coherent and anti-climactic. Landed with a solid thud at my house.
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Whittaker is returning to the role for Big Finish audios.
https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/jodie-whittaker-returns-to-doctor-who
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Hmm, adventures with 13 and just her one companion Yas..Neat idea, they should have made a tv show about that.
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Whittaker is returning to the role for Big Finish audios.
https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/jodie-whittaker-returns-to-doctor-who
I’d be interested to see how those turn out, whether it makes for a period of re-evaluation like Colin Baker got or if it just cements her reputation from on the TV.
Incidentally, I watched an episode of Pointless today (I’m about a season and a half behind) and jackpot category was Jodie Whittaker era Doctor Who. One of the questions was just name an episode from her era. Every single episode was pointless.
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Every single episode was pointless.
But what about the gameshow?
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I finally got around to watching season one (ha!) of Doctor Who. No idea who they think they’re fooling by billing it as season one but never mind.
Silly life things got in the way of me watching it as it aired – as well as a greatly diminished interest in the show after recent years – but it was actually quite good to be able to blast through it in just over a week, watching one episode a day. I’m not sure if it would have held my interest as much had I kept having to wait for a week for the next episode.
Some thoughts on each of the episodes…
Spoilers, of course…
Space Babies – seems like most people didn’t care for this but I found it to be a perfectly fine bit of light Who. If rewatching, make a drinking game out of it and take a shot each time Gatwa excitedly yells “space babies!” You will be in trouble. 5/10.
The Devil’s Chord – terrific performance by Jinx Monsoon as Maestro. Surprised that it took this long to get the Beatles into a Doctor Who story (unless they were already in one that I don’t know about). Ringo and George got screwed over in terms of their screen time. I was rather expecting the Beatles to burst into the final battle to save the day, kicking the door down and launching into Helter Skelter. Sure, the timeline doesn’t work for that song but the Doctor could have warned them to maybe think twice about using it. 7/10.
Boom – basically a bottle episode on top of a land mine. They tried hard to make it work but the tension is non-existent when you’re well aware that the new Doctor is not going to get blown up. 6/10.
73 Yards – look, I like a bit of Donnie Darko as much as anyone else who was a disaffected youth in the early 2000s, but I was mostly distracted with just how cunty everyone in that Welsh pub was. Five pounds for a half-pint of coke! Davies must have had a bad experience in Wales at some point. These sorts of time loop storylines only ever end in a “if you squint hard enough it might just about start to sort of make sense” manner. As with Donnie Darko you can only hope to pull it off with sufficient style to do so with feeling, which I think this episode did. 8/10.
It was at this point that it became clear how little the Doctor has actually done and how clumsy he has been. He stood on the fairy circle in Wales and had nothing to do with anything that unfolded from that. He stood on the land mine and was saved by Private ChatGPT. He only survived Maestro because of Ruby’s distraction. He ran away from the boogeyman. Not exactly the pro-active type. And the crying! Oh, so much crying.
Dot & Bubble – there’s not much for the Doctor to do here once again, this time outsourcing his standard role to poor Ricky September. Still, Gatwa acted the absolute shit out of his big scene at the end. I did catch onto the racist undertones as the episode progressed but that ending still hit pretty damn hard. Nice to see a twist to the formula here as well, with the supposed protagonist of the story turning out to be a total piece of crap as events unfold. 9/10.
Rogue – this one didn’t work. The Doctor going from just meeting someone to seeing his sort-of fiance sort-of die in front of him in one single 45 minute episode was too much to make work. Admittedly, Captain Jack II’s final words being “find me” and then the Doctor in the next scene being all “hmm, nah” was quite funny. Also not exactly the Doctor’s finest hour, ditching Ruby alone with the danger while he’s busy flirting. And I have no clue what Ruby’s plan was meant to be by going along with the wedding at the end. And them switching the contents of the trap at the end didn’t make any sense. And that one alien looked like a really shit Sesame Street character. On the plus side, if you need another drinking game idea, take a shot every time someone says “cosplay”. You’ll be sober for the first half but then you’ll wind up urgently requiring medical attention. 4/10.
The Legend of Ruby Sunday – it was nothing but set up for the next episode, so pretty hard to judge on its own merits. There was a whole lot of stalling for most of it but the way they cranked up the tension in the final ten minutes was highly effective. Plus we got the epic line “do you ever dream of being an ambulance?”. 6/10.
Empire of Death – aww, crap. Every time, even when I should know better, I get sucked into these big important mystery arcs and, every time, the big grand finale lets me down. Like ordering a nice warm bowl of cream of tomato soup and getting a bowl of stale piss. Permit me to rant.So we’re told all season long that Ruby is super-duper important and mysterious and even Maestro is afraid of her and it all turns out to be nothing more than Sutekh being after a bit of gossip? If he’s that easily distracted by vague mysteries that go absolutely nowhere they could have given him a boxset of Lost and bought themselves plenty of time.We go through the big anticlimax with Ruby and then we’re straight into trying to hook us for the next episode by teasing the big important mystery arc for Mrs Flood? Seriously, Russell?Sutekh just chilling on the Tardis would have worked better if it had been a result of the salt that was spilled at the edge of the universe and the Doctor’s concern about that. Him having been there for decades is just daft. Can just imagine him curling up into a ball, trying to get out of the way of Captain Jack while he’s hanging onto the Tardis as well.Sutekh killing those people in the TV studio with a touch was pretty damn sinister. But as soon as he started wiping out UNIT with a dust cloud it was clear that everything was going to wind up getting undone. The obsession with making things as grandiose as possible just winds up doing harm to the story.An awful lot of time in this episode (the whole season, really) was given over to promoting the idea that if you’re adopted you just need to find your birth mother and everything will be okay. For a show that’s ostensibly aimed at younger viewers that seems, frankly, irresponsible.The Doctor getting so emotional about having to say goodbye to Ruby, even though he doesn’t have to and we already know she’ll be back… and, really, Ruby taught him all about family? Forgot all about him being the son-in-law of Amy and Rory, I guess.Speaking of family-ish folk, what was the point of Rose being there? When all of UNIT is unloading onto Sutekh she’s just in the background swiping on her tablet.UNIT giving a machine-gun segway to a 13 year-old seems questionable. There was an amusing moment with him, at least. We see him taking a bite of pizza in the celebrations at the end, we cut to the Doctor for a couple of lines of dialogue, we cut back to him and that slice is GONE. Hungry work being a genius.The Doctor taking his dog for a walk in the time vortex at the end to reverse the polarity of death was fun and all – although I guess he brought back Skaro but not Gallifrey? Interesting.The Doctor getting all worked up about Sutekh turning him into a murderer when he had already skewered a goblin at Christmas…So there’s a 15 year-old girl in an abusive relationship who just had a baby in secret and she decides to dress up in a giant gothic black cloak to give the baby away? That would be way more conspicuous in 2004 than just doing it in her regular clothes. Like they said, this isn’t Dickens.And then she points at a street sign, unaware of anyone being around to see her, and that’s meant to be how Ruby got her name? That makes no sense. I had assumed that the street name was an obvious name choice that was given to her by someone in the church.Ruby thinks her birth mother saved her life by doing what she did. What she did was abandon a newborn outside in the dark, in the snow, in the middle of winter. There are safer choices, I’m sure.I could go on for a while here so I better just stop.At least I enjoyed about half of the episodes!3 users thanked author for this post.
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Not yet got to him, still on the 1st Doctor set on iPlayer.
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The First Doctor Adventures: Volume 1: The Destination Wars
The first of two stories in this set sees the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan visiting a far future Earth-like society, racked by conflict, with an enigmatic inventor turning up as a saviour figure.
Said saviour figure turns out to be the Master, who stranded himself on the world due to a crashed ship. So to get the technology he needs, he starts a war to speed up technological development, while selling weapons to both sides, along with use of tine dilution.
It’s a smart, well-executed story, with a good audio cast. It also shows good use of Who’s continuity, without requiring much knowledge of it. The way the Doctor resolves the story works well too.
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Might as well put this here: Blake’s 7 is getting blu-ray releases of the same standard as the Who Collection sets.
They’re doing replacement special effects, but with new model shots rather than CGI, which is cool.
https://x.com/InvincibleChr1s/status/1826573584669577563
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