Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | 1x08 "Empire of Death"
Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | 1x08 "Empire of Death"
Logline
The Doctor has lost, his ageless enemy reigns supreme, and a shadow is falling over creation. Nothing can stop the devastation … except, perhaps, one woman.
Written by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: Jamie Donoughue
I liked it but I'm finding the answers to a lot of the mysteries unsatisfying and I feel somewhat deflated. Why the snow? Why the song? Doesn't make sense if her parents are just humans
My interpretation is that it's mostly the idea that they believed that the incident was so important, it started to "bleed" into Ruby's present in times of emotional distress.
If we want a stronger explanation than that, you could argue that that point in spacetime was probably weakened by the presence of the TARDIS and Sutekh at nearly full-strength, plus whatever weirdness was caused by the use of the time window to view those events, and the creation of the Memory TARDIS.
That was an almost stereotypical RTD finale - a strong emotional core, with a resolution that threatens to go off the rails entirely.
The actual resolution of the Sutekh part was probably the weakest aspect, for me. The Doctor...threw him into the time vortex again, but this time it's permanent, I guess precisely because he'd done it once before. Okay, fine, I guess.
The stuff with Ruby's mother resolved more nicely, even if I'm not sure the actual events on Ruby Road hold together all that well. The idea of someone being important simply because people believed her to be important is a nice sentiment, and Louise's ordinariness makes Ruby a kind of anti-Clara (I really like Clara, but I still think this is a good thing).
Mrs. Flood still doesn't seem evil to me.
…threw him into the time vortex again, but this time it’s permanent, I guess precisely because he’d done it once before. Okay, fine, I guess.
It's not terribly satisfying outcome, admittedly. I mean, it was fun to watch in the moment, sure, but it's not exactly a clever resolution... 🤷
Yeah, I think it works well enough, even if it's not super compelling.
I feel like they need something to tie it all together and my theory/head cannon is that Mrs. Flood is a DC's Mojo-like God tier character. Flood is aware of her viewers, hence the wall breaking. It's not that Ruby's mother was important to Ruby or the doctor that made her important to Sutek, that's the misdirect, she is important to us the multi-reality audience of Mrs. Flood presents Dr. Who. She's in control, scripting events, seeding mystery and events. The doctor will have to beat fate, beat the writers, to get out of next season alive.
Oh boy, Mrs. Flood...
At this point, she has to be a Time Lord, right? She knows what a TARDIS is (though crucially, she didn't recognize the Doctor's TARDIS until she actually saw it dematerialize, and she also didn't recognize the Doctor himself), and in last week's episode she exactly mirrored the Doctor's line about Time Lords regenerating to "hide themselves away".
The fourth-wall breaking stuff is interesting, but I feel like she's got to be a Time Lord, possibly one we haven't met before.
That was an OK finale.
I'm of two minds about the resolution with Ruby's mum. On one hand, there being no significance at all is a bit of a let down, but on the other hand when dealing with gods, the whole point of the power is the belief, and that explanation does tie everything up fairly neatly. (not sure why ruby kept snowing though). Seeing her get back together with her mum was a nice send off.
Getting rid of sutek by throwing him off into the vortex, and having that undo everything was a bit iffy for me. There's not been an established precedent that throwing someone into the time vortex undoes every action they ever did, and surely if that were the case that leads to a paradox?
Lots of call backs to past DW. Including the trend that at the end of the season every single person in the universe dies. But I guess that is the risk when you have a show that's gone on for so long, once you've pushed the limits of danger to the max, there's not really any way to escalate the tension further.