'Doctor Who's' Overly Complicated, Slightly Nonsensical "Empire of Death" Is the Kind of Season Finale We Love

The first Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who contained several consistent hallmarks: Fiesty companions who prove ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things; complex supporting characters with depth and agency; deep cuts from classic lore; and twisty plots that tended to make almost no sense at all from a technical or even general logic standpoint, and yet the emotional beats of which somehow managed to land exactly right. "Empire of Death" marks the first season finale of Davies' second tenure as showrunner, an hour that can basically be summed up thusly: Folks, we are so back. 

This was, to put it in technical terms, a completely bonkers episode. It featured everything from Fourth Doctor Tom Baker to multiple major character deaths. The latter, naturally, are eventually reversed in an ending that grounds its cosmic stakes in the ordinary bonds of human connection. (Oh, and sorry in advance to everyone who thought Ruby's mother was Susan Foreman/Rose Tyler/Thirteen/Romana..... Ok, not sorry.) Davies can say whatever he wants about "soft reboots/fresh starts." "Empire of Death" is everything you loved (and hated) about Davies-style season finales, made bigger and bolder with the help of a Disney budget. It is utterly ridiculous, weirdly emotional, and over the top in every respect. 

Did this episode answer all the questions this season posed? Nope! Do many of its plot twists make a ton of sense? Not really! (Tell me true, Whovians — did any of us really expect them to?) But Davies' take on the franchise has always been clear that it's the heart of his stories that matter, and from Sutekh's defeat to Ruby's reunion with her birth mother, this is a finale that delivers on those things in spades.

Picking up immediately where we left off last week with the sudden appearance of Classic Who villain Sutekh, the God of Death, the finale starts with quite a bit of exposition, explaining the Doctor's first encounter with the ancient being and how it survived. Apparently, Sutek hitched a ride on the TARDIS since the Fourth Doctor era, slowly growing in strength and plotting the Time Lord's ruin. It's an intriguing idea in that particular way Davies loves, setting up wild, entertaining twists that span literal decades of canon... without necessarily thinking them through all the way. 

Was Sutekh there when Harold Saxon turned the TARDIS into a Paradox Machine in "The Last of the Time Lords"? Did he get shrunk into a tiny angry Egyptian dog in "Flatline"? Blown up when Twelve regenerated into Thirteen? Trapped in House's bubble universe during "The Doctor's Wife"? No idea! There are times when it could really suck to be an immortal god, I guess! But, at any rate, Sutkeh's in charge now and about to use the Doctor's greatest joy — traveling the universe — as the means of its destruction. 

Not content simply to kill everyone at UNIT HQ (and if you didn't know this episode would be getting a reset as soon as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart bit it, please learn better for next time) or even everyone on earth with his Dust of Death, Sutekh has been steadily populating the cosmos, every planet the Doctor has ever set foot on, with a version of A Character Played by Susan Twist, whom he can subsequently control and use to wipe out all life within each of them. It's devastating to watch Fifteen run down a catalog of everywhere he's been, from Earth to Karn to the Ood Sphere to Skaro, and recognize the dead, friends and enemies alike. It's not his fault, but when has that stopped the Doctor from blaming himself?

But, thanks to UNIT's Time Window, which still contains the memory of a TARDIS from that night on Ruby Road, Fifteen, Mel, and Ruby can escape before being desiccated by Sutekh. I'm not sure if we just watched the birth of the Remembered TARDIS that keeps showing up in the BBC's Tales of the TARDIS series, but it certainly looks the same, made up of bits and bobs from the various costumes and consoles of all the Doctors who have come before. 

Look, for all that Davies and Disney hyped the blank slate of this season and the fresh start of the franchise's platform switch, even going so far as to declare this outing the first season of a new era, Doctor Who has rarely felt so connected to its own past as it does here. From the inclusion of a Fourth Doctor villain and a former Sixth Doctor companion, references to everything from Daleks to Ood, and a plot that only works because of the Doctor's lingering guilt over abandoning his granddaughter literally decades ago, this is a story with emotional layers that go well beyond the general nonsensical plot beats of Sutekh's return. 

(That brief snippet where Mel discovers Six's coat is why I will follow Russell T. Davies to the ends of the Earth; I am just saying.) 

In the end, Ruby is the key to defeating Sutekh, though not in the way many of us might have initially assumed. Unlike Clara or Amy, Ruby isn't magical, impossible, or anything special, and neither is her mother. (Thank goodness.) Instead, it is Sutekh's obsession with her, her ordinariness, and his inability to see or understand her mother's sacrifice that keeps them all alive long enough for the Doctor to figure out how to trick and trap him using the same intelligent glove from Fifteen's first adventure and a string of rope developed using the same technology. (That's strong enough to hold a god, apparently.) 

If you look at it too closely, this plan has more than a few holes. For example, how does dirtbag Roger ap Gwilliam still enforce mandatory DNA testing in 2046 if Ruby essentially drove him mad and prevented him from being Prime Minister back in "73 Yards"? How can Sutekh control the dead cells in Mel's body enough to take her over but not those in the Doctor's or Ruby's? The idea that Death plus a second application of Death somehow restores life is...well, it's Peak Davies: utter nonsense, but loads of fun. 

Plus, just this once, Rose, everyone lives: Kate, Carla, Mrs. Flood, Mel, Harriet, Susan Twist, and even that random UNIT soldier who died last week are all restored as Fifteen joyously drags Sutekh through the Time Vortex sprinkling life in his wake. And this time — though he claims it makes him a monster to do it — the Doctor makes sure the death god is truly defeated this time.  

"Empire of Death" also solves the season's other big mystery, finally revealing the identity of Ruby's mother. Named Louise Allison Miller, she was just fifteen when she got pregnant and gave her baby up in secret to protect her from her violent stepfather. Her mysterious pointing was actually her gesturing toward the sign for Ruby Road, bestowing the name on her daughter. 

Now a thirty-five-year-old nurse, Louise is incredibly ordinary, a woman made meaningful, like so many other things, simply because her existence is invested with meaning and significance by others, by Ruby and the Doctor and Mel and everyone at UNIT searching for her, by a god who couldn't see her. It's, yet again, dodgy logic—and none of this explains her occasional ability to make it snow and blare Christmas carols—but if you didn't get a bit teary when Ruby told her mom she just wanted to say thank you for keeping her safe, you may not be watching this show in the correct spirit. 

But for all that this is a season finale, the episode still leaves plenty of doors open. Despite Millie Gibson being confirmed to be involved in next season in some capacity, she certainly seems set to start a new (and very Earth-bound) adventure getting to know her birth family. The Doctor (for now, at least) is on his own again. Mrs. Flood is....something. Something old enough to know what The One Who Waits is, who follows the Doctor's story, can recognize a TARDIS, and sports a very fancy cape that looks quite like one of Romana I's signature outfits. IS she Romana? Some other servant of the White Guardian? Another god with a killer fashion sense? I guess we'll find out in 2025. See you soon, Whovians. 

All eight episodes of Doctor Who Season 1 (or 14, or 40, or however you like to refer to it) are streaming on Disney+.