Chatter Box Film

[Contains spoilers for The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death].

The first season of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor Who era has come to an end with Empire of Death, and this was a rough finale to sit through!

All of these convoluted mysteries glued together to build up hype during season 1, eventually led to a very underwhelming, lackluster and poorly executed finale.

The show had a great twist building up to Susan Triad’s role leading into The Legend of Ruby Sunday; using the doctor’s granddaughter as a misdirection was both clever and annoying since we now have to wait longer for The Doctor to reunite with Susan Foreman. There was also a brilliantly shocking reveal for Sutekh returns which rolled into the Empire of Death episode.

Empire of Death did well in the first half; the stakes were incredibly high with nearly everything being wiped out across time, the momentum of who Ruby’s mum could be and how The Doctor could stop Sutekh after all of this was exciting.

This all came crashing down when they began to play it too safe with some nonsensical plot points for defeafing Sutekh and the reveal of Ruby’s mum.

“Bringing death to death” to cancel it out? Suddenly all life is back again just like that? No losses and The Doctor may have just brought life back to all of his greatest villains throughout time as well. He definitely saved planets such as Skaro.

Sutekh has been clinging onto the Tardis since Tom Baker’s Doctor assumed he had defeated him by sending him to the end of his life in the vortex. However, this plot point doesn’t add up when there are clearly episodes in which the TARDIS was damaged, dipped it into the heart of a burning star, miniaturized, multiple times that past Doctors landed next to each other and “all 13 of them” in space, which means multiple Sutekhs there doing nothing. So many other things happen to the Tardis in past 50 years.

Sutekh was also taken down by the same way he had survived in the time vortex clinging onto the Tardis since Tom Baker’s Pyramids of Mars episodes in the 1970s. The VFX scenes of Sutekh being dragged through the time vortex looked cool though.

The reveal of Ruby Sunday’s mum was ridiculously over-hyped… it’s explained that she is just ordinary afterall and her mum is a new character who abandoned her.

Ruby has now got her name by her mother dramatically pointing at a road sign which was laughable and mediocre to write. Nobody else was around to actually see her do that except the Doctor, but he didn’t name her because he only put the baby outside the door of the church and then went back to the future again.

The explanation in the beginning of the season was better that it was just because she was abandoned on Ruby Road, it didn’t need this extra part about her mother choosing the name.

The only reason I can think of for them including it, is that the coffee shop scene wouldn’t properly work at the end if she didn’t name her to begin with, otherwise she may have not known Ruby was her daughter’s name in the first place when the barista called her. That’s if her mum didn’t watch Davina McCall’s interviews with Ruby looking for her.

Also, why did Ruby have some “hidden” song inside of her that Maestro would be shocked by? And she was able to make it snow around her. The memory kept changing for no reason and an ordinary human wouldn’t be able to do that.

Outside of this, in the behind the scenes of a new show called Doctor Who: Unleashed, Davies mentions there’s more to tell about Ruby and her family in season 2. Maybe these unusual situations still get answered despite her being ordinary?

However, Russell T Davies made this entire season surrounding the mystery of Ruby Sunday and this is basically a slap in the face to people who had been waiting for an exciting payoff in the finale. Davies must have known there would be high fan speculation online about Ruby and her mum, with people trying to think of who these are and how important the characters could be, to then intentionally do the opposite.

The two part finale also brings back Yasmin Finney’s Rose Noble, who seems massively underused in these two episodes; either standing there or complaining about UNIT not giving out any meaningful jobs.

Lenny Rush’ performance as Morris Gibbons was great and he was a standout in The Legend of Ruby Sunday, Davies decision to give him a larger role here instead of in Space Babies was a great idea! Although, UNIT oddly hiring a kid to work at a dangerous high level security facility and equipping him with weapons is questionable.

There has been some good episodes although overall, it’s been quite a weak season to get new fans into the show; when there has been far better seasons to show the best of Doctor Who with stronger plots and greater defeats.

Apart from parts of The Devil’s Chord and Rogue, it’s all been doom and gloom. Doctor Who has been lacking that fun adventure in time and space aspect. The show should get back to more The Doctor and companion (s) just enjoying being in a different time, and going off to explore and then encountering villains. And bring it back to a 10 or 13 episode season!

Unfortunately, this is not Russell T Davies’ best work! I would recommend letting more of a variety of writers in for each episode next season instead of six out of eight episodes being written by Davies. The pacing was all over the place as well.

Hopefully in season 2, there’s a lot more involvement from Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor as well, instead of his time being taken up due to scheduling commitments on the Sex Education series. There are also two companions in season 2; the doctor will be travelling with Ruby and an upcoming second companion played by Varada Sethu.