TV Review: ‘Doctor Who’ Episode “Empire of Death” Offers an Unsatisfying Resolution that Makes Little Sense

With the Doctor Who Series 1/Series 14 finale “Empire of Death,” I once again find myself with an episode where I can’t imagine even beginning to try to write a spoiler-free review. It was a massive let-down in every conceivable way after the huge build-up of “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” but while we were robbed of the satisfying ending I would have liked to have seen, I can’t, in good conscious, talk about it without a spoiler ban. So here is your warning.

**WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!**

In the season finale, Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf) has come and killed all of humanity a million times over. It turns out that Sutekh has been hanging onto the Doctor’s TARDIS since his previous appearance in the fourth Doctor serial “Pyramids of Mars” from 1975 and, every time the Doctor landed somewhere, Sutekh planted a version of Susan Triad (Susan Twist) who would eventually bring about the death of all things.

But one mystery still evades Sutekh. Even as he clung to the TARDIS, he couldn’t make out who Ruby’s (Millie Gibson) mother was, and that’s the last thing he wants to sort out before he eliminates all life in the universe. So, the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby must find a way to use that curiosity to defeat the God of Death and reverse all the destruction he’s caused.

First, let’s talk about the reveal that Ruby’s parents are, basically, nobody, and every single clue we were given the entire season was a red herring. I kept thinking about this episode being similar to the reveal in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (and spoiler warning for Star Wars here, too) that Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) parents were actually nobody special, and then that was clumsily retconned in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker when it was revealed that Rey was actually Palpatine’s (Ian McDiarmid) granddaughter, which not only ruined the perfect reveal from The Last Jedi but forced audiences to imagine Palpatine getting biblical with a woman, and nobody wanted that.

What’s the difference between the two? Forgive me if I’m wrong on this because I haven’t gone back to watch the Star Wars sequel trilogy in a while after how much I hated Rise of Skywalker, but I don’t remember there being a ton of clues that Rey’s parents were someone special other than the fact that she was force sensitive.

So, it would make sense that she turned out to be just a regular person who happened to be good with the force. That can happen in the Star Wars universe. The past eight episodes about Ruby Sunday, on the other hand, were loaded with clues that Ruby’s parentage was something out of the ordinary, and frankly, some of those clues don’t make sense in light of the reveal of who Ruby’s mother really was.

First of all, the Doctor’s memory of seeing Ruby’s mother at the church changes in the episode “Space Babies.” If Ruby’s mother is a regular person, then why did the memory change, and suddenly he now remembers Ruby’s mother pointing seemingly at the Doctor?

Furthermore, it’s revealed that the reason Ruby’s mother was pointing was to mark the name of the road as the name for her daughter, which is a weird and not-very-human thing to do. And why did Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon) say in “The Devil’s Chord” that Ruby had a secret song buried in her heart if there was nothing special about her birth? There’s a lot of loose end that Davies failed to tie up, and that’s before you even get into the fact that we still have lingering questions from “73 Yards” that remain unanswered.

Some people have been arguing that Davies doesn’t explain everything because he doesn’t want to spoon-feed answers to the audience, and that would be fine if there weren’t so many questions with mismatched answers. Davies used to tie his endings up with ham-fisted explanations that seemed convoluted and overly convenient, and now he’s switched to not explaining things at all. Maybe more will be revealed next season, but I’m not hopeful about that.

Speaking of unsatisfying endings, how exactly did the Doctor defeat Sutekh in this one? Ruby held his interest long enough to put a dog collar around him, and then the Doctor dragged him through the time vortex? And somehow that killed Sutekh and brought back everyone he had killed? How? It makes some vague sense when you watch it live, but it falls apart from the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Also, it became rather obvious that everyone who died was going to come back eventually. At first, when everyone in UNIT was being killed, and it looked like the show might be killing off Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), I thought that might be a bold and surprising plot twist. While I would deeply miss the character, I’d respect it as a daring plot choice.

But by the time Sutekh had killed Carla (Michelle Greenidge), Cherry (Angela Wynter), and Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), it became clear that too many main characters were dying to not bring at least the majority of them back. It was obvious that everything had to be reversed by the end of the episode. No characters were going to be shockingly killed off. This time, everyone lives, again.

In the end, it feels like Sutekh wasn’t that much of a threat because there have been no lingering deaths, and he was defeated rather easily. For all the talk about him being the most powerful of the gods and the most powerful foe the Doctor has ever faced, he seemed to be a fairly underwhelming villain. The Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), Maestro, and The Mara all seemed harder to defeat. At least they fought back, while Sutekh barely put up a struggle.

As many fans have been pointing out in hilarious memes, Sutekh claims to have been clinging to the TARDIS since the fourth Doctor serial “The Pyramids of Mars,” which means that he was awkwardly hanging around for some major, strange events in the TARDIS’ history.

What happened to him when the TARDIS was blown up by the Silence in “The Pandorica Opens”? Or all the times that the Doctor’s TARDIS was captured by enemy forces—Did Sutekh just hang around hoping for the TARDIS to be rescued? Is he somehow also wrapped around the 14th Doctor’s (David Tennant) identical TARDIS that he made in “The Giggle”? And most importantly, how did multiple members of the pantheon including The Mara, The Trickster (Paul Marc Davis), The Toymaker, and Maestro all fail to notice that there was another fellow god hanging off the TARDIS?

Ultimately, the episode is just nonsensical and gives no satisfying resolutions to anything. The Mrs. Flood mystery isn’t answered, but instead we’re given more cryptic clues about her, including, as some fans have pointed out, an outfit that looks an awful lot like an outfit worn by the fourth Doctor companion Romana (Mary Tamm). What that means is anybody’s guess, but there’s a lot of people banking on her being a Time Lady of some sort. But, given the bait-and-switch that is “Empire of Death,” I’ve given up hope that Davies will ever offer a satisfying ending to anything.

Rating: 51/100

The full Series 1/Series 14 of Doctor Who is now streaming on Disney Plus

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