Holistic Review: This two-parter sets up a dazzling array of promising plot elements, but rather than developing any of them in interesting ways, it continually chooses the path of least resistance (and least character development).
Empire of Death has a lot going for it: the story promises to bring back Melanie Bush and UNIT, and resolve the mystery of Ruby's mother, and on top of those three massive draws, it even springs the surprise return of top-tier one-hit-wonder adversary Sutekh, who has frequently recurred in spin-off media but hasn't been seen onscreen since his first appearance in 1975. It should be a shoo-in for a guaranteed win. So why does the whole thing fall so flat?
From my perspective, the answer to that question is broadly two-fold:
So, to address them in turn:
1. The plot
The biggest culprit, for me, is the plot; or rather, the near-total lack of same. To boil it down to basics, Sutekh re-emerges on Earth and activates his harbingers across the cosmos, destroying life not just on Earth but throughout nearly all of space and time. Thanks to the memory TARDIS, the Doctor manages to escape Sutekh's clutches with Ruby and Mel, to track down information on the one life that Sutekh hasn't been able to annihilate: that of Ruby's mysterious mother. After discovering her identity on a dead future Earth, the Doctor and Ruby take the name back to Sutekh, where they trick him, lashing him into the TARDIS to be towed into the vortex and set adrift. Sutekh's death serves as an antidote to his deadly sands across the time-space continuum, and the God of Death ultimately burns up in the vortex.
Even aside from the fact that the whole story relies on a reset button, there are, immediately, two massive problems with this plot.
Now, if all that downtime were channelled toward character development, I would have zero problem with this decision, but as we'll discuss in the next section, it isn't. No, instead of a satisfying forward-moving plot or meaningful character development, the runtime of The Legend of Ruby Sunday is devoted to two inconsequential plot threads: the dual mysteries of Susan Triad and Ruby's birth mother.
The official Disney+ summary tries to make the episode sound more exciting — "The Doctor and UNIT investigate the night of Ruby's birth, but unleash an ancient evil." — but they don't unleash anything. The evil is already there, hanging out unseen, biding its time to reveal itself until we're ready for a cliffhanger. Unlike in Pyramids of Mars, there's no specific turn of events that unleashes Sutekh, and his emergence doesn't seem to happen during Triad's broadcast for any pre-planned reason, except that it's more dramatic for the whole world to witness it via telecast.
Up until that moment, UNIT and the Doctor alike remain unable to dig up any concrete leads on Susan Triad. The predominant theories are that she's (a) actually the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, regenerated into a new form (which finally confirms that Susan is, in fact, a Time Lady with regenerative powers), or (b) an unspecified trap for the Doctor. As it turns out, (b) is the correct answer, but this isn't confirmed until the episode's closing moments. Everything that comes beforehand is just filler. Don't get me wrong, I was hanging on every word of their discussion, but nothing actually happens during these scenes of everyone trying to puzzle out who Susan Triad is.
So the focal point of the first episode becomes the scenes set in the time window chamber, investigating the identity of Ruby's birth mother. This thread does at least start out really atmospheric, with the tantalizing prospect of answers as the Doctor and Ruby explore an immersive black-and-white recreation of the closed-circuit VHS recording from the night of Ruby's birth.
On the upside, the idea of a device that can generate a 3D representation of a historical event (whether that event was in 1776 or 2005) is ripe enough with possibility that it might anchor a series all on its own. And it generates some nice moments during the story: its creation of the memory TARDIS, the idea that it can connect to Ruby's memories to provide cryptic answers to her questions, and the delightful reference when it reruns a couple of clips from Pyramids of Mars.
However, just like the investigation into Susan Triad's true identity, the time window scenes never amount to much of anything but padding. We spend a full 11 minutes recreating the night that Ruby was abandoned at the church, yet the scene yields not one useful crumb of information; the only way it even affects the plot is by rendering a workable Memory TARDIS. (On the topic of the memory TARDIS, this appears to be the moment when it was created, and in the cut scenes, we see that it also fades out of existence shortly after delivering the Doctor, Ruby, and Mel to 2046. So it seems to be a bit of a minor miracle that it still exists on some plane to reunite Doctors and companions in their dreams in Tales from the TARDIS.)
The entire point of the time-window plot thread is to uncover clues to the identity of Ruby's mum, and this goal fails spectacularly. The plot doesn't really start moving forward again until the swirling mist materializes around the TARDIS.
Even more frustratingly, this problem isn't confined to The Legend of Ruby Sunday. Similarly, Empire of Death devotes 5 whole minutes to the Doctor's solo excursion to Agua Santina to find... a spoon. I dislike pretty much everything about this interlude. Okay, sure, I can buy that, because the memory TARDIS is an entirely thought-generated projection, it contains no corporeal metal objects that could anchor the memory window to reality. But we've been given no indication before this point that the memory window needs a real-world metal component, much less why, and we don't ever find out what function the spoon serves. Nor is it the slightest bit clear why the Doctor is having such a hard time finding something metal: metal isn't alive, so it wouldn't have been wiped out of existence by Sutekh. It should be the very easiest thing to find, in fact. So the premise of the Doctor's visit is already on very shaky ground, and the script continues to leap from idea to idea with little regard for whether they make sense contextually. How did the Kind Woman escape the dust of death herself? If it only annihilates life, then why are all the buildings gone, like the opera house? The Kind Woman gives her spoon to the Doctor, assuring him that "I'll forget it in a minute," but when the Doctor needed it, she was conveniently able to remember where she'd safely tucked it away. And while it's creepy that Sutekh's death wave can travel down family lines, it makes zero logical sense.
Sure, I appreciate the uplifting idea behind making "the most important person" in all of time and space an average human being, but it's not as if this is some revelatory new concept; by series 14, it's practically an overused trope that the Doctor regularly trots out to encourage various aforementioned average human beings. We've seen RTD and Moffat fawn over human characters for (or despite) their ordinariness so many times before: Martha with her year-long walkabout, the Doctor-Donna (around whom creation also turned), Impossible Girl Clara, and Madge the super-mom, to name just a few. So, as the wrap-up to a yearlong mystery, this is massively unsatisfying. RTD tries to explain away his underwhelming revelation in this exchange:
Nope, sorry, don't buy it. This whole plot element is frankly ridiculous, but in an unsurprising way, because that's exactly what RTD tends to do: ladle on the unearned glurge.
And my criticism of the reveal is just scratching the surface. The search for Ruby's mum really annoys me on just about every level possible.
Maybe there are layers to Louise that we have yet to uncover — RTD has, after all, gone on record that "the story as we go into 2025 of Ruby's family is not quite at an end. There's more revelations to come." So I'll withhold full judgment for now... reluctantly and dubiously.
Ruby, too, is a broken record. She seems more upset about her memory-mum walking away from her (in a recording from 20 years ago!) than she does about the fact that this entire time-window experiment was a flop. Later, in the middle of a gunfight with Sutekh, the episode feels that what we need to cut to is a shot of Ruby yelling for the millionth time "Why can't I see her?!" Actually... let's count just how many times Ruby gets a variation of that line!
| part 1, 22:30 | "Why, why can't we see her properly?" | ||
| part 1, 22:57 | "I want to see her!" | ||
| part 1, 27:08 | "I can't see her! She's gone." | ||
| part 2, 01:57 | "Why can't I see her?" |
RTD tries so hard to script tearjerking moments about Ruby's mum, but they just don't work for me because they feel unnatural, unearned, repetitive, and/or overdramatic.
But okay. We know there's still more to come in the Ruby family saga. So maybe next season, Ruby will discover that forcing herself into Louise's life was a very very bad choice. (But somehow I don't see RTD driving the story in that direction.) Plus, we still have no explanation for the materializing snow, the echoing carol, why the Doctor's memory of Ruby's mum changed, or why Maestro was convinced that something about Ruby was 'wrong', so surely some future development will resolve all of these apparent inconsistencies. Right???
Fortunately, one thing that the story really gets right is Sutekh's reveal. Impressively, lots of folks online managed to puzzle out his identity, no doubt partly due to sneaky RTD copying a scene from Pyramids of Mars in The Devil's Chord. I, on the other hand, was oblivious to such foreshadowing; nor did I key into Carla's comment that "I know its name! It's the Beast!" (and we know who voiced him, don't we!)
Following the reveal of a dark presence manifesting around the TARDIS, The Legend of Ruby Sunday begins teasing us with the possibility that this is a dark presence we already know. "The gods bring harbingers to warn us of their coming," the Doctor muses, "but which god?" Then, as Susan Triad begins to fall under its spell, the screens behind her flash "I am returning", which pointed strongly in the direction of a classic-series villain. But Sue's line "I dream of worlds with orange skies" was a momentary misdirect, which had me expecting an ancient Gallifreyan adversary.
And then Harriet gets this thrilling and spine-tingling monologue, which properly launches (and teases) the Pantheon, and all but assures the eventual reappearance of one of my most-wanted classic-series monsters:
I wouldn't have suspected Sutekh at all (given that he was never really a god, just an alien with godlike powers) except that a couple of people in one or another of the Doctor Who Facebook groups that I belong to brought up the idea in one of many threads on the topic. (I really should leave these groups so that I'm not constantly exposed to theories that I don't want to read. It planted a seed, whereas I would've been totally shocked if I'd never thought of it.)
And when Harbinger!Sue growls "I bring Sutekh's gift of death to all humanity," I was flooded with emotion.
Sutekh's plan has precisely one good element, but even it is flawed. Ever since Pyramids of Mars, we learn, he's been invisibly clinging to the TARDIS exterior, regaining his strength and slowly attaining godhood from his exposure to the time vortex.
For one thing, this finally explains the sequence from the start of Pyramids of Mars, when the TARDIS lurches and Sarah sees a vision (or premonition) of a malevolent jackal head floating in the console room. That scene never really made sense, so I'd always just assumed that the TARDIS had passed through the control beam from Mars holding Sutekh prisoner, or something. It's never made explicit, but we can now retcon that scene as Sutekh, moving through the time vortex in the opposite direction at the story's conclusion, latching onto the TARDIS as he was being sent to his death. (We're never told why the Doctor believed he had died several thousand years in the future, but perhaps we can assume that Sutekh faded away from the time corridor not because he'd died but because he'd glommed onto the TARDIS.)
It also enables Sutekh to put into motion a plan that hinges on deliciously personal revenge: he uses the Doctor's TARDIS to seed the universe with invented lifeforms — in twenty-first century London, she manifests as Susan Triad, renowned tech entrepreneur and pioneer — whose sole purpose is to serve as sleeper agents, activated at Sutekh's signal to spread his dust of death across all of time and space simultaneously. As the Doctor soon realizes, while he's not responsible for Sutekh's plan, he has absolutely enabled it, by giving Sutekh access to every world where the TARDIS has materialized since his travels with Sarah, and dooming them all to certain death at Sutekh's hand.
Even though it has echoes of Clara being splintered all across space and time, this is a clever resolution to the mystery of Susan Twist. What's especially great is that when the Doctor shows up in UNIT HQ, expecting to drop an RTD-style revelation bomb on his friends... it turns out that, just like fandom with a Steven Moffat twist, they'd all figured it out way before the Doctor did. Repeatedly. Not only does all of UNIT already know exactly who the Doctor's mysterious woman is, they're way ahead of him re: any potential traps being laid.
Thank goodness RTD is finally lampshading his own predilection for names of secret import. (Mind you, he's going to keep on doing it and not lampshading it, and we'll be coming back to that. Many times.)
Given later revelations, I also feel duty-bound to point out that anagrams don't really seem like a Sutekh sort of thing to do; the Toymaker, absolutely, or the Land of Fiction, but never Sutekh. It's obviously just RTD having fun stringing the audience along, trying to lay red herrings and then giggling with delight when he springs the real surprise. It's so cheesy, yet on this occasion, I couldn't help but enjoy how much fun he's having (even while I was wincing in pain).
On the downside, despite Susan Twist's perpetually-winning performance, Susan Triad comes across as little more than a plot cipher. The biggest problem is: she's launching this free software to benefit the world, but we have absolutely zero idea what it does, or what Triad Technology as a whole does. In a resonant moment, RTD suggests that their software launch is a reaction against the sociopolitical influence of wealthy executives ("We know what we've done, the tech billionaires. We've taken your money, while our technology spreads lies, and fraud, and riots. But no more! It ends today.") but without specifics. It's just a red herring to throw the Doctor off Sutekh's scent, so RTD never bothers to go into detail about exactly why Susan Triad is so renowned.
Still, I like that Sutekh is weaponizing the knowledge he's gleaned from the TARDIS. Now he knows exactly how to pique the Doctor's interest, setting up tantalizing Doctor-specific bait with the anagram "S TRIAD" and the name Susan.
Alas, for me, that's as far as I can praise Sutekh's plot to destroy the universe. Otherwise, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Sutekh's defeat also feels ludicrous and poorly motivated, typical RTD freewheeling.
In that sense, this is a very typical RTD plot, at least when he's not really trying: it's all about the spectacle rather than careful plotting (with the hopes that we'll be so caught up in the excitement that we won't bother to scrutinize the plot) and it's frustratingly generic.
Another example of this is the whole scene onboard the memory TARDIS, as controls emit sparks for no reason, and the Doctor directs Ruby and Mel to hold various levers down for equally no reason. "No, no no no no no no no, we need that!" cries the Doctor, as something random explodes randomly. What is it and why do they need it? Who cares! It's exploding! Because nothing is happening for any discernible reason, Mel and Ruby — instead of proactively helping — are reduced to following the Doctor's bizarrely arbitrary instructions, wherein they (like the seventh Doctor and Ace in Tales of the TARDIS) seem to be taking urgent actions, like winding ropes around controls, for no evident purpose. It reads as if RTD wants the companions to feel vital to the plot, but instead of tailoring the script to their strengths, he gives them busy work. This is more freewheeling narrative; we're not given any reason why the levers need to be tied down, we're just told that they do. As a desperate attempt to put out both figurative and literal fires, it creates some sort of narrative propellant and excitement, but it's purely situational, not at all grounded in any sort of comprehensible plot. Which I suppose is often true of TARDIS console-room scenes — it happens in Empire of Death, for goodness' sake, when the Doctor instructs Ruby to "hold that lever down" as they tow Sutekh into the vortex — but we're usually given at least some explanatory context (as for example the scene of Mel stabbing at buttons as she tries to pull up the mayday message in Terror of the Vervoids). And after all that, how does the Doctor manage to stabilize the memory TARDIS? He... wraps a stretchy rope around one of the monitors, then hooks it onto the edge of a control bank. Well, I mean, naturally. What wouldn't that fix? ("That hook is a molecular bond," he 'explains' to Ruby and Mel. "It's like intelligent rope." Huh?! What does that have to do with anything?!) Oh well. At least all this faffing about gives us an excuse for a scene of Mel interacting with the fourth Doctor's scarf.
And it's never a good sign when one of the characters has to prompt the Doctor to explain the plot, as Ruby does here: "What just happened?" Though, to be fair, this was a problem in Pyramids of Mars too, when the Doctor 'killed' Sutekh via a macguffin that he didn't bother explaining to Sarah until after it was already done.
The story also frequently features very typical not-trying RTD dialogue, by which I mean, pretentious and cringeworthy. See the cliché and inaccurate "We meet again, my old friend." from Sutekh, the Doctor's "This feeling that you have now, this doubt... Have you ever felt so alive?", and others that I'll be citing below. There's also the moment when Sue, in a hurry to get to her broadcast, nevertheless takes the time to answer a vital question that the Doctor didn't even ask: "Look, a lot of people want my time. All I want is a bit of shut-eye. God knows I don't get enough sleep."
2. The lack of character development
Another major problem: Because the story's plot is so paper-thin, it doesn't provide many ways for the characters to contribute meaningfully to the plotline. Instead, as we've just discussed, the story wastes time on inconsequential plot threads, like the time window, the non-starter mystery of Ruby's mum, and the Doctor's desperate life-or-death hunt for cutlery.
What makes this really sad, to me anyway, is that the script devotes so much time to these pointless or poorly-scripted plot elements when it could instead have been lavishing time and attention on its rather long cast list. In particular, the story features two legacy characters who would've really benefitted from some loving character-specific development; instead, in both cases, RTD scripts them as generic, with practically no overt continuity with their original appearances and no meaningful growth or increased depth.
Sutekh
But we don't really see any evidence of his newfound powers or his unrestricted liberation. For goodness' sake, in Empire of Death, Sutekh could move around if he wanted, but — because he's now rendered with CGI, rather than portrayed by an actor in costume — he chooses not to, instead remaining coiled around the TARDIS for the story's duration. He even makes Harriet rematerialize the TARDIS in the time window chamber when he wants to confront the Doctor, rather than simply walking ten floors down. This is a strange choice for a being who spent millennia forcibly restrained on an uncomfortable stone chair.
Weirdly, and disappointingly, Sutekh's Osiran trappings (and, for that matter, origins) are also stripped away. There's no Egyptology to speak of in this episode at all; even Sutekh's collars are inscribed with meaningless symbols instead of recognizable hieroglyphs. When Ruby asks about the Egyptian influence on Pyramids of Mars, the Doctor handwaves it away as "cultural appropriation", without bothering to explain that it was the Egyptians who lifted the signifiers of Osiran culture, not the other way around. (Then again, perhaps this was RTD's subtle attempt to move away from the racist trope of aliens being responsible for all of the advanced skills displayed by ancient non-white cultures, in which case, bravo.)
Frustratingly, thanks to the effects team and RTD's redesign, Sutekh longer resembles a sinister, menacing jackal-headed humanoid as much as he does a cute slavering puppy (with multiple eyes). I mean, why does he have a regular dog mouth, for goodness' sake? While it is at times an unsettling CGI creation, if I'd had to guess what fictional creature his new form represented, I would've guessed Cerberus. I don't love that Sutekh now appears to be pure canine — it gives the impression that, rather than truly honoring the original, RTD is inventing brand-new characters under the same familiar names.
Worst of all, perhaps as a result of this kid-friendly redesign, Sutekh's characterization seems watered down. In Pyramids of Mars, Sutekh had menace. He was terrifying and unpredictable, inflicted pain with evident glee, and would murder you as casually as swatting a fly. New Puppy!Sutekh does nothing but growl and speechify at you, and seems reluctant to actually hurt anyone.
Even Gabriel Woolf's mellifluous voice loses its power, partly because his dialogue is quieter, but largely because Murray Gold's bombastic score (along with background noises like canine growls and TARDIS creaks, and an echoey sound effect) keeps drowning out the subtle nuances of Woolf's delivery. Compare Empire of Death to Pyramids of Mars, in which Woolf's voice was front-and-center, allowing the audience to cling to every sultry syllable; whereas here, at times, you can hardly even make out the words. In my opinion, the sound editing does Woolf a grave disservice.
In other ways, this two-parter swaps out Sutekh's former abilities and characterization for shiny new ones which do feel fitting and interesting, but are also somewhat arbitrary. For example, his forehead now boasts a red jewel which vaguely echoes the glowing green eyes of his former mask. Sutekh never explicitly unleashes whatever power it has, but we do see green energy flickering painfully over the Doctor's body, which is presumably an updated version of the same eye-power. He's also gained the power to "see through the dead", which in practice means that he can spy through anyone living or dead, because "every living thing contains dead cells."
I was hoping perhaps Sutekh's reappearance would likewise mean a reappearance by his servitor-robot mummies. Alas, like the Yeti, they've been omitted from their puppet-master's episodes in the revival. In their stead, Sutekh now has skeletal harbinger servants, whose role is more akin to that of the possessed Marcus Scarman from Pyramids of Mars, a zombielike servant who likewise (in a nice continuity touch) professed to "bring Sutekh's gift of death" to the world. In that story, Scarman could (literally) burn the life out of people with a touch; here, the harbingers' touch crumbles people to dust. Dust feels right for the god of death (and mummies) — it's a very character-appropriate, and appropriately terrifying, method of destruction — but there was really no need for the change. What does work is his 'dust of death', which his harbingers can blow out of thin air, and which disintegrates any living thing it touches as it drifts and billows through the air, and (problematically) even back along non-physical genealogical lines. However, I worry that it threatens to make Sutekh too powerful and unstoppable. Sutekh originally said that every place where he treaded, he brought death, not every place where the winds could reach! Had he possessed this power in Pyramids of Mars, he could've destroyed the universe even while trapped.
The only upside, really, is Sutekh's puzzling upgrade to godhood. I'm reminded of how Olaf on Buffy went from being just another troll in "Triangle" to a 'troll god' in "The Gift", with a hammer now capable of inflicting damage on a god, purely because the plot needed it to happen. Here, at least, there's no plot service in elevating Sutekh from "alien with incredibly advanced powers, revered as a god by the ancient Egyptians" to "actual god"; it's just really cool. And, it could be argued, it grants Sutekh the status that he truly always deserved. I'm hopeful that RTD will eventually give us an explanation for how characters like the Toymaker and, squee, the Mara are now being retconned as (and upgraded to) gods, or if he's just going to pretend they always were. Either way, it's a cool enough development that I can totally roll with it if that's what RTD wants to do.
Mel
But even for me, a dyed-in-the-wool rabid fan of Mel, Empire of Death didn't really live up to even my mildest hopes. I don't think it's too much to ask that, when a classic companion returns, we learn a little more about them — especially in the case of Melanie Jane Bush, a character crying out for onscreen backstory — and that they contribute meaningfully and proactively to the plotline, in character-consistent ways. Of course, as I've harped on about mentioned, part of the problem is that there really isn't much plot here for Mel to contribute to, so while she's constantly part of the action (for which I'm grateful), she's mostly relegated to just hanging around the Doctor watching events unfold.
Mel's original tenure as a companion was a mere six stories (20 episodes) long. Now she's added a whole two additional stories to her list of appearances (the equivalent of 6 classic-series episodes), and even still, her backstory gets practically zero expansion. RTD is still being coy about Mel's past: "Don't worry," Mel reassures Carla about Ruby, "She's safe. I lost my family to the most terrible things, but the Doctor helped me. I swear." This is additional confirmation from The Giggle that Mel joined the TARDIS crew at least partly because her family suffered some awful fate, but it's not new information, nor does it clarify any of the details. (Plus, while I'm happy to get one tiny crumb of Mel's backstory, I'm not sure this is the very most reassuring story to relate to Carla!)
The only new thing we learn about Mel in this two-parter is that she can ride a Vespa. And it's a good thing Mel outruns Sutekh's deadly dust to deliver the Doctor to UNIT HQ, because that's literally all she does of note in the entire second half of the story. She tags along in the memory TARDIS with the Doctor and Ruby, but she gets almost no lines, does nothing proactive — Mel rummages for sonic screwdrivers in the memory TARDIS, but nothing comes of it — takes a nap (which means that she's not contributing to the narrative at all), and then she's possessed for the remainder.
Nor does RTD seize on Mel's second new-series appearance to finally show the audience any of what makes the character special. This is all the more frustrating because the second half is basically a three-hander between the Doctor, Ruby, and Mel, and still Mel gets next to zero characterization.
Do we see Mel's enthusiasm? Her empathy? Her deep caring? Her moral crusading? Her guilelessness? Her unintimidatable nature? Even a hint of her (former?) healthy eating (or hypothetical vegetarianism), or her dedication to fitness, or her green thumb? No, none of the above, aside from one brief exchange in which Mel and Ruby comfort the Doctor that he's not to blame for the destruction of the universe, and a shot of Mel and Ruby rushing to his side as he collapses in grief.
Most annoying of all, to my incredible frustration, RTD even scripts numerous moments that seem obviously designed to show off Mel's character, and then he just... either forgets that Mel is even there, or forgets how she would react. These include:
So rather than asking Mel to do the honors, the Doctor just uses the sonic screwdriver. Witness how hard my eyes are rolling.
Now let's just take a moment to reflect on the fact that Terror of the Vervoids touches on every single one of those aforementioned aspects of Mel's personality (except for the computer skills), and people still called Mel a cardboard cutout character. I'm really glad that new-series fans are loving Mel despite the way she's been written, but if someone could please clarify for me how this story characterizes her better than Vervoids did, that would be great, kthxbye.
But, okay, fine, I thought; if RTD is going to squander Mel in two appearances, then maybe the lack of backstory (for her and other characters) meant that he was waiting to make Bonnie Langford a regular in The War Between Land and Sea, which would finally feature some truly Mel-centric episodes. But nope: that doesn't appear to be happening either! Honestly, Big Finish is (and has been, since 2000) writing so much better for Mel.
At least, though RTD didn't give Mel very much to do, he gave Bonnie some good moments. She gets to share a couple of one-on-one scenes with Gatwa, as the Doctor and Mel semi-infiltrate Susan Triad's telecast, and it's great to see the two of them working together, even if Mel doesn't really get to do anything. Then there are the touching moments in the memory TARDIS, when Mel spots the sixth Doctor's spotted cravat and fondly clutches the sleeve of his multicolored coat, and later snuggles up to the seventh Doctor's question-mark jumper... so moving! so adorable! I live!
Most memorably, though, national treasure Bonnie Langford finally gets to play evil on Doctor Who — which she (unlike many other companions!) never got to do during Mel's original run — and she absolutely slays it. Her line delivery is chilling — "Give Sutekh the name.", and especially "I bring you a gift, holy Sutekh. The last two creatures in existence to die at your hand. [...] And you can stand alone for all eternity, gazing upon your empire of dust and ice and oblivion." — and there's a freaky moment (accentuated by the sound effects) when harbinger-Mel twists her neck to stare at Ruby.
My "Let Mel Wear Green" campaign continues undiminished; this week, RTD puts her in — of all colors! — that questionable Dragonfire coral, though I must admit that I absolutely love her jacket (especially the bias cut which Mel seems to favor these days) and it does make Bonnie stand out onscreen. (I like Mel's round blue moonstone-esque necklace too.) Later, while the Doctor is on Agua Santina, she mysteriously acquires an oversized maroon sweater — actually, I've just realized everybody changes into sweaters; the memory TARDIS must have a chilly draught — which then vanishes when she acquires her harbinger robes; when she's restored to life, she's wearing the coral jacket again. Also mysteriously acquired is the ponytail that she sports when she and the Doctor hop on her Vespa, but one assumes Mel has long since acquired proficiency with putting her hair up while running for her life.
Thankfully, despite the lack of great characterization, Bonnie is given a handful of really good Mel lines, like "You'll be amazing!", "There's nothing we can do... except fight!", and "I'm going as fast as I can!" And she gives a really fun delivery of "Being an ambulance?", "Best time of my life.", and "The god of death created life." (But why is special-guest-star Bonnie listed so low in the credits?!) No matter what gripes I have about the missed opportunities for writing her character, I'm beyond thrilled to have Bonnie back in Doctor Who. May these be the first of many such appearances!
Alas (or perhaps thankfully), it's not just Mel who suffers. Thanks to the lightweight script, most of the cast are reduced to being passive observers. I'm delighted that RTD is giving us more time with characters that we love, but I don't just want them to show up physically. I want them to get something to do.
I have higher hopes, at least, that the Vlinx (Aidan Cook, voiced by Doctor Who stalwart Nicholas Briggs) might be developed in the spinoff. If anyone needs it, it's the Vlinx: he's appeared out of nowhere, with completely unclarified powers and abilities — it's not even clear yet what the Vlinx's function within UNIT is — and we know absolutely nothing about him. Frustratingly, that trend continues here. I'd hoped that he and Mel would get some development in at least one of these UNIT stories. Characters shouldn't be included in an episode just to pad out the cast list; they should also have a purpose in the plot, and that's really not the case for either Mel or the Vlinx. Then again, with the exception of Kate, "uselessness" seems to be the tone word for nearly all of the UNIT characters this week.
As the head of UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) is guaranteed some strong moments, though these all happen in part one, before Kate is wiped from existence in part two. I adored Redgrave's delivery of "Right, fine, thanks." as Kate throws up her hands, "Which was white.", "I think she did the right thing getting you out of that house.", and the sudden shifty look she gets when the Doctor asks if UNIT has a time window. She's also really good at ratcheting up the tension on lines like, "I hate to say this, but... the shape exists around the TARDIS on the VHS, but what if it exists around the TARDIS now, and we just can't see it?" Even Kate doesn't really get any character development, as such, but she's the only UNIT member who plays an important role in the plot and drives it forward.
In contrast, Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) might as well not even have been in the story at all. She starts out strong, immediately forging a lovely giggly rapport with Ruby as instant besties:
But after this auspicious beginning, she virtually disappears from the plot. What was the purpose of including Rose if she's only going to be asked to tag along behind Ruby to pick up a VHS tape?
Meanwhile, a character who does get (very minimal) development is brand-new scientific adviser Morris Gibbons. (So what happened to Shirley? UNIT is going through scientific advisers way fast.) Not that he needed to be there either: his only function is to operate the time window, which the Doctor seems perfectly capable of doing himself. And I just don't know that I'm won over by Gibbons. Poor Lenny Rush had massive boots to fill, with us all missing Osgood and now Shirley too. Plus, child geniuses are historically a hard sell, and although that isn't an automatic negative point for me personally, there's something about Lenny Rush's acting style that isn't completely convincing me. On lines like "Kinda disappointed", "Probability of a trap 95% and rising", "So — sorry, you, you've got, er, a woman that you keep seeing, and a woman that you've never seen. Is it the same woman?", "What... is... that?!", "That thing is hot, it's cold, it's radioactive, it's dead... it's everything. I don't know!", and "Except... the trap is here.", his delivery feels a bit stilted. I think RTD did Morris a disservice by scripting him as unimpressed; it's admittedly an unexpected juxtaposition with the character's age, but it just doesn't work for me.
I was much happier with Genesis Lynea as Harriet Arbinger. At first, Harriet seems like yet another minimalist, thankless part, one of a sea of faceless UNIT staff with ill-defined roles — ie, what exactly does the Director of the Archive do, and why is she suddenly hanging out in the main UNIT control room? — but toward the end of part one, Harriet finally gains a purpose, as a sleeper agent for Sutekh. It's Lynea's performance that's largely responsible for the chills of delight and terror that were tingling up and down my spine as she begins to intone Sutekh's praises in a quite terrifying voice. I also really like the look of surprise on Harriet's face just before the blue beam lances out of the TARDIS console and flings her out of it, and I enjoyed Lynea's delivery of "But it was 2004. There was CCTV footage." (Every once in a while, RTD loves to invert his own tropes rather than playing right into them, and that was a delightful example.) Sadly her character gets completely sidelined in part two, but she squeezes in another great delivery of "Sutekh is the god of death, and by his hand, all creation shall fall into dust and ashes and ruin." One wonders, has Harriet really been a harbinger all this time, a spy within UNIT, or has she only just been overtaken as a vessel like Sue?
Partway through part one, the thought suddenly hit me: should I be suspicious that this story includes a Colonel Ibrahim? Is that his first name? Could he have been named for his ancestor Ibrahim Namin??? Turns out, no, Alexander Devrient is playing Colonel Christopher Ibrahim, who has no evident familial connection to Sutekh. And he's going to be a regular on The War Between Land and Sea, so it's a shame that I don't have a better sense of the character yet. Still, he finally gets some proper personality on this line:
Tachia Newall gives a friendly performance as Colonel Winston Chidozie, but he gets so few lines before his death that it's hard to get much sense of the character. But Newall does a really nice job with his spooky lines as Chidozie speaks through Sutekh. Similarly, Jasmine Bayes only gets about one line as Corporal Alice Sullivan, so (though it's a great delivery!) it's unclear why that role couldn't have been reassigned to someone like Ibrahim.
I never used to look forward to UNIT stories, but since Kate took over, and as it's become more science-focused rather than military-focused, I feel I'm actively looking forward to its return appearances these days. In The Legend of Ruby Sunday, RTD seems to be making a concerted effort to bring back the "family" feel of UNIT stories — with everybody greeting each other with warm hugs, and especially in the sweet scene of Ruby and Kate sharing a chummy discussion about Davina McCall (though, amusingly, Morris finds it mildly annoying, given the more pressing questions on the table!) — and that's a development I really like. And I do love the feeling of their brainstorming session, as a bunch of experts put their heads together in an attempt to finally make headway toward solving some of our season-long mysteries.
And speaking of season-long mysteries, we finally get some answers about the mysterious woman who keeps cropping up across time and space! Especially after her breakout performance in 42 Yards, I'm ever so happy to see Susan Twist more centrally featured in an episode, this time as Susan "Sue" Triad, tech entrepreneur and overall nice person. Her performance throughout is spectacular and engaging, but I especially loved Twist's delivery of "I'm not Beyoncé.", "Well, if you don't mind my saying, I'd remember a handsome chap like you.", and "All my ideas come to me in dreams!" I love seeing Sue being goofy as she dances ("We've had our fun. Especially you, whoo!"), and Twist gives an amazing performance as Sue gets subsumed in Sutekh's will, her personality draining away as we watch. Now that she's reinstated and good again, I wouldn't mind Susan Triad becoming a semi-regular character, though she does threaten to tread on Mel's IT territory.
Her loyal assistant, Bailey Sinclair (Fela Lufadeju), gets barely any lines that aren't functional, but in the moments before his death ("You said you were a doctor! Why don't you try to help?"), he gets a bit of character.
Michelle Greenidge and Angela Wynter have been total delights this season as Ruby's family, Carla and Cherry Sunday. Neither one gets used particularly well this week; Carla, at least, has an expanded role in the story, but only to represent a touchstone to Ruby's home life. She barges her way into UNIT but does absolutely nothing of consequence while there, and eventually just gets shuffled back home again. But they both sink their teeth into some great lines. For Carla, we've got "Is she? Well, if your mother's part of it, then Ruby, you can tell her your mother is too." and "Vamoose! 'Cause I'm coming with you to the nitwit tower!" (so cute), and I enjoyed her delivery of "But, I wanted to say... [...] I wanted to say thank you, Doctor. You brought her home." Meanwhile, Cherry gets "If you're chasing after that Doctor man, I'm warning you! Him is trouble!" And have I mentioned yet how lovely it is that Carla has finally bucked the trend of RTD-era shrewish mothers?
Ruby's birth mum, Louise Miller (Faye McKeever), seems like a delightful woman, if for no other reason than that she joyfully embraces Ruby as part of her life again!
And then there's the perpetually intriguing Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson), whose mystery certainly deepens this week, but in ways which I suspect will not help us narrow down her identity. I'm reminded of Buffy season seven, in which all the clues to figure out the identity of Buffy's mysterious new Big Bad were laid right out for anybody who could put the pieces together; in contrast, with Mrs Flood, I'm not so sure.
In terms of character hints, we already know that Mrs Flood is inclined toward pessimism and nosiness, and she can be a bit of a pain, and that she can break the fourth wall, which she does again here in the chilling moment when she looks right at the camera to intone, "He waits no more." Lines like "I had such plans." — plans which will be back on track now that she's been un-dusted — do lead me to believe that she's going to be the Big Bad of season 15. Her lack of empathy toward Cherry, and her obvious superiority complex, also point in the direction of her being a villain. Her line "Then tell your maker I will come to storm down his gates of gold and seize his kingdom in my true name." implies that she might even be another of the Pantheon (if she believes herself capable of invading heaven itself) who, yet again, is concealing her true identity behind a no-doubt-meaningful pseudonym. I guarantee you that Mrs Flood is gonna pull a "you should've thought to ask what my name meant!" moment, possibly when we finally learn her first name just before her true identity is revealed. What's really throwing me off is her companion cosplay: her line "Oh, that clever boy!" seems like a reference to Clara, whereas she shows up in the coda wearing a striking copy of Romana's snow-white robe and hooded feather coat from The Ribos Operation.
Then again, here's another reason why I don't like to speculate: any theory I come up with will invariably be wrong, because RTD loves to explicitly mislead. Mrs Flood is talking like an ancient god, but she's probably just another ordinary human with delusions of grandeur!
Dobson gives a great delivery of "I nursed my old mum through diabetes and a hip operation. She died of an ulcer. But that was when I wasn't looking." and, on the opposite end of the normalcy spectrum, "I'm sorry to say his story ends in absolute terror. Night-night!"
The story's only other guest character is the Kind Woman, played with touching melancholy by Sian Clifford. Every word that comes out of her mouth seems weighted down by sadness, and yet there's a sort of optimistic tranquillity to Clifford's performance. It gives the impression that, here and now, the Kind Woman is relatively content, but only because all of the tragedy that still scars her spirit has temporarily slipped her mind. It's a pretty awesome nuanced performance, and Clifford nearly justifies this otherwise-pointless interlude all by herself. It's hard to single out any single line, but I loved her delivery of "It began with a B," and the sheer joy that instantly hits her when, despite no longer remembering her husband's name, she recalls that he was "Tall, he was tall."
As the fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa already seizes every opportunity to run the gamut of emotions, but this two-parter is especially good in that respect, as the Doctor reunites with old friends, struggles with the prospect of reuniting with his granddaughter, and endures a rematch with one of his worst-ever adversaries. Gatwa is great in the scene discussing Susan with Kate, as a range of conflicted emotions flickers over his face, and he's likewise emotive when the Doctor first meets Sue, searching her face for any sign of his granddaughter. ("Have we met before?") He also plays Ruby's farewell scene gorgeously, knowing that she'll never be able to get back in the TARDIS with him long-term no matter how much she wants to. Gatwa delivers convincing moments of exuberance ("Give me the lovin'!"), hilarity (the way the Doctor can't help but burst out laughing when he sees their time window lash-up), and anguish ("I travelled to all those worlds. I thought it was fun.", and "I loved you, Mel."). And the Doctor gets a good speech, admitting that he's stooping to Sutekh's level out of sheer necessity. (The only line I have to ding is when he says, of Ruby's mother, "She drives us crazy, but Sutekh, oh..." The stress should be on 'us' rather than 'she': "she drives us crazy...") And I love the Doctor's zippered black leather jacket.
Overall, this is a decent week for Millie Gibson. And a good thing, too, because The Empire of Death turns out to be her swansong, at least as a full-time companion.
On the downside, the script mostly requires Ruby to wail about her birth mother. (Did we learn nothing from Benni?) Like many other characters in this story, Ruby is still sorely in need of some deep characterization. Alas, she only gets one brief glimmer of it:
So now we finally know what neighborhood Ruby is from, which should in theory make her characterization a bit more well-grounded (and I do appreciate that this connection helps her communicate with Chidozie after he's been subsumed by Sutekh), but practically speaking I'm not sure it makes a big difference.
Happily, Ruby also gets a line which, for the first time, has seriously impressed me.
And the scene in which she defeats Sutekh's plans by dropping and smashing the monitor is a great moment of strength and empowerment for Ruby.
Plus, Ruby learns about regeneration in this story — even though we have no reason to expect that she'll be witness to one — and I love that, even before Ruby has been made privy to the fact that Time Lords can change their appearance, she doesn't even stop to question whether Susan Triad could be the Doctor's granddaughter. She just accepts it.
On the not-entirely-convincing side is Gibson's overemphatic line "She's got it in a box!", but I enjoyed Gibson's delivery of "Actually, we even tried Davina McCall, but we got nothing.", and "Oh my god... do you think you can clean it up? I can see my mother?" And I love Ruby's action-heroine black top and pulled-back hair.
How amazing is it to have Gabriel Woolf back as Sutekh? And what a fun surprise! When Sutekh first begins to speak, I didn't pick up at all that it was Woolf's voice, until his longer line "I am Sutekh, the god of death. I am the night. I am the terror. I am the loss! And all life will perish at my hand." Alas, as I mentioned above, all of the competing sound effects muffle the nuances of Woolf's voice, and I don't think Sutekh's scripted lines sparkle like they did in Pyramids of Mars, either. Having said that, Woolf transforms a couple of mediocre lines with his gripping delivery, like "Show me the name. Show me, child!" and "I have travelled with you for all this time, riding the spine of your ship, staring into eternity, and evolving into my true godhood." Just having him back is absolutely incredible, and I hope it won't be the last time.
Aside from the Harbinger makeup, Susan Twist gets new prosthetics to portray a couple of characters that we haven't seen before. My favorite is the Griffin from Varsitay, which looks absolutely terrifying. I'd love to see them appear in a future story.
I very much like every iteration of the dissolving-into-sand effect, its most memorable moments arguably being Bailey's gradual dissolution, and when the blanket draped over Cherry's legs collapses. There are great shots of (a giant!) Australia being swallowed up from both sides by Sutekh's sands of death, and of a star near the TARDIS being extinguished. Similarly, the effect of Chidozie's dessicated corpse is striking, as if he were a sand sculpture himself.
The time window effects are even more dazzling, especially in the scene of the time window building the VHS world around them. And despite my reservations about why it happens, the moment when the image of Ruby's mother judders past them is creepy.
Sutekh's form coalescing around the TARDIS in the time window looks fantastic, too; it resembles a cloud of flies, which would be appropriate for Sutekh. (Back in 1995, Doctor Who Magazine published an entertaining comic with the fifth Doctor and Peri, "The Curse of the Scarab", involving another Osiran — Kephri, who titles himself "god of the swarm" — who could summon a cloud of flies to devour his enemies.)
The Legend of Ruby Sunday features another variant TARDIS materialization — weirdly, it whirls through midair and flies through the doors of UNIT HQ (and amazingly, Kate already has a protocol for just such an occasion!) — but the effect of it skidding across the floor to a halt is great.
The only effect that I'll ping as unsatisfying is the shot of Sutekh burning up in the time vortex. As an effect, it looks great, but in terms of continuity, it makes very little sense, as the time vortex is not a fire.
In the overlap between effects and music, there's a wonderful moment when the time window explodes and the music crescendoes before the time window powers down.
Murray Gold's music is effective, but it can't settle on a tone. The moment that really jumps out at me is during the tense time-window sequence, when the Doctor yells "Now turn on your machine!" and suddenly bombastic childish horns start tootling, giving the whole story a Jumanji-like air, which is quite at odds with the eerie atmosphere both before and after. There's also the inappropriately jaunty happy music as the TARDIS flies into space... over an Earth that's being decimated by Sutekh's sands. Then again, I think Gold's music just sets my teeth on edge in the same way that RTD's freewheeling scripting does; witness the way it soars all glurge-like as Ruby sobs, "My name is Ruby."
But I like the menacing music as Kate and the Doctor study Chidozie's corpse, and the haunting chanting music during Sue's transformation is really great, with special props to the sound team for the gorgeous echo-followed-by-dark-silence when Harriet first intones the name of Sutekh. And I like the music as Mel checks her DNA scanner.
The time window set is really impressive; I can only assume that they saved enough money on this two-parter, by re-using the UNIT control room and filming Sue's broadcast on location, to be able to build such an expensive-looking set. I love that it's bi-level, and the glass-walled room looks expansive, with controls twinkling away on the other side of the barricade.
Of course, there's also the Memory TARDIS, which was revealed back at the start of the season in the adorable, and often cathartic, Tales from the TARDIS series. (JAMIE AND ZOE THO. Should I forgive RTD this entire episode for making that happen? Part of me thinks he earned it. Okay, so I'll forgive him for this. But not for Space Babies.) I mean, it's just a peerless set, crammed absolutely lovingly full of details from nearly every previous TARDIS. Highlights, for me, include the Hartnell light fixture which dominates the console room, the mini Whittaker crystals, Bessie's WHO 1 license plate, the tin of (Edmond's?) custard as the Doctor mentions Venus, and what appears to be a blue dematerialization circuit tucked into a bowl on one of the console panels.
I can't say that I was bowled over by Jamie Donoughue's direction, but I liked the Sutekh POV shots, the shot of the camera swirling around Ruby in the time-window snowstorm, and there's a great shot of Harbinger!Mel and Harbinger!Sue advancing toward the Doctor and Ruby, hands outstretched.
The day Empire of Death aired, I flew down to San José, Costa Rica, where my friend Nancy had been teaching a study-abroad Spanish class for US university students. After the two of us had dinner at the Mercado Central, I headed back to my hotel for the episode's 5:00 premiere. To mark the occasion, I'd packed a couple bags of jelly babies that I'd bought while I was in the UK around the time Space Babies aired, with the intention of trying a bit of a jelly-baby taste test. (This time I pitted the classic Maynards/Bassetts vs Morrisons, and unsurprisingly, Maynards won by a mile.) And, for some local color, I stopped by the nearby supermarket — called Peri! — and picked up a Guayabita guava-filled chocolate bar. (I'd ordered Guayabita chocolates off Amazon to stock my work-desk candy dish during the pandemic, when travel was an impossibility, so it was fun to get to try it in bar form, in the country where it was made. I'd actually forgotten it was Costa Rican!) My journal from that night reads, "...and sat down at 5:00 to watch Empire of Death (which was ridiculous — Mel got nothing to do, not even hacking; Sutekh was dispatched so easily, and wasn't given much real menace; and Ruby's parentage mystery was a damp squib. Blah!"
Minor points:
Kate: "Evil genius with secret alien software? It's top of our list. God knows we've stopped enough of them. Well... except the obvious."
Morris: "We'll get 'im."
Doctor: "It can save us if we're dying, or sometimes we can hide ourselves away with a new face."
Cherry: "I would love a cup of tea."
Mrs Flood: "Would you, sweetheart! Well, we'd all like a lot of things... that aren't going to happen."
Kate: "My father, he'd tell me stories about you when I was a kid. He'd sit there in the firelight, telling tales of the Doctor, his eyes shining. But he never, ever mentioned a granddaughter!"
Doctor: "I was a different Doctor back then, Kate. The great enigma. Still can't shake it off. I'm trying."
Kate: "If you've got a granddaughter, that means you've got kids?"
Doctor: "Well, not quite. Not yet."
Kate: "But, you mean, you can have a granddaughter before a daughter?"
Doctor: "Life of a Time Lord."
Kate: "But — okay, the grandchild exists... and you've got the TARDIS, but you've never gone back to see her? Why not?"
Doctor: "You've seen my life. I bring disaster, Kate. Disaster. What if I go back and ruin her?"
Kate: "For what it's worth, I think you bring joy. Hmm? Do you think Susan Triad is her? Do you want it to be? Doctor, what if you just said hello to her face, look her in the eye. Would you recognize her?"
Doctor: "Yes. [...] I can't."
Kate: "Come here. Come on."
She pulls him into a hug.
Mel: "I'll have some of that."
They run toward each other, laughing, and the Doctor spins Mel up into a hug.
Mel: "Oh, yes!"
Doctor: (affectionately) "Hello, trouble!"
Mel: "Kate's got a chrysalis theory."
Kate: "Er, just because Susan Triad is nice doesn't mean she can't change. A caterpillar doesn't know it's a butterfly. And a phoenix is just a bird until it burns."
Doctor: "Kate, do you have a time window?"
Kate: "Wha– You expressly told us in the 1970s UNIT was absolutely forbidden to experiment with any form of time technology."
Doctor: "Do you have a time window?"
Kate: "Ten floors down."
Carla: "She's given away her child. She's crying her heart out. I took her in, darling! And she's safe! And she's wonderful."
Chidozie: "I am lost."
As long as we're on the subject, can I just point out that RTD leans on this dialogue crutch twice more in this story alone?!
Sutekh: "But I will find them, out there in the hollows of this desolate universe. They are hiding somewhere, lost in the wind and the wilds."
Doctor: "I got a bit lost."
Doctor: "Now, I warn you that time has tides and hollows and secrets, and this fixed point on Christmas Eve is the wildest I have ever seen."
Doctor: "Hello, hi there. I'm the Doctor."
Sue: "Ah! Nice to meet you, pet. Doctor who?"
Doctor: "Just, just the Doctor. Hello."
Sue: "Ah, well, top marks for enigmatic."
Doctor: "Kate, get Ruby to the time window."
Ruby: "What for?"
Kate: "You do not question. You move!"
Kate: "She's possessed."
Doctor: "Kate, who is she?"
Kate: "Harriet. You, you met her."
Doctor: "Yeah, I know, I know. But what is her full name?"
Kate: "Harriet. Harriet Arbinger."
The screen shows the name "HARRIET ARBINGER" (magically) collapsing to become "HARBINGER".
Doctor: "It was the wrong anagram."
Harbinger!Sue: "I bring Sutekh's gift of death for you, and for all in your tiny, vile, incessant universe."
Kate: "Because I have to hope the birds will sing again. There will be birds!"
Doctor: "A long time ago, in the England of 1911, Sutekh had been bound and imprisoned for all eternity."
Doctor: "I swear to you, on both the hearts of the last of the Time Lords, I will stop you. I will defeat you. And I will turn back death. And why... am I still alive?"
Mel: "Is this thing safe?!"
Doctor: "Absolute death trap, Melanie B."
Doctor: "She was pointing at the name of the road. She was naming you."
Ruby: "So we've gotta go, and... I'm sorry."
Doctor: "Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry at all. Your life is out there now. I've shown you monsters and planets and legends, but this... honey, your adventure is just beginning."
Ruby: "But you could come and see my dad. ...You don't do that, do you? Will I ever see you again?"
Doctor: "Of course you will! Of course you will."
Ruby: "Your own granddaughter, you left her and never went back."
Doctor: "And that was my mistake. Maybe I'll find her again, one day."
Ruby: "I love you."
Doctor: (smiles noncommittally)
I can't be too miffed at this story, because not only does it bring back my most beloved Mel for another two hours of Doctor Who (meaning that, thanks to the revival, she's now equalled the amount of time she spent in Colin Baker's company), it also pits her against Sutekh, one of Doctor Who's best-ever villains, whose return is a real jaw-dropping moment. Unfortunately, the only way this story is "great" is in concept. The Doctor, Donna, and Mel vs the Toymaker was, for the most part, everything I could've wished. But the Doctor, Ruby, and Mel vs Sutekh misses so many obvious ways to make the episode a classic to remember. Yet again: could we please have a script editor?
| posted: | 20 December 2024 |