Doctor Who ‘Empire of Death’ spoilers follow.
As this season of Doctor Who went along, the shifts in our new Time Lord’s characterisation from the 14 iterations that have gone before him crystallised. If Ten was the “the man who regrets” and Eleven was “the man who forgets”, then Fifteen was the Doctor who had finally done the work and found some peace.
In ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’, he told Kate he had been a “great enigma” and was still trying to shake that part of himself off. Compared to his bottled-up predecessors, this Doctor has been a raw, open nerve, able to flash a charming grin or let out a guttural scream or gently weep in quick succession.
Yet despite his emotional sincerity, this season has also been hesitant to unzip the Doctor’s very real baggage. He said precious little about his past and whenever he did mention his granddaughter or Gallifrey, it was always with that now-trademark Gatwa wry smile.
At first it seemed that the bigeneration handover from David Tennant’s brief 60th anniversary Doctor was an opportunity to wipe the array of recent Time Lord tragedies off the board and usher in a new, lighter era. But with the season finale, the scab has been picked off, leaving the Doctor more vulnerable than when he first arrived.
Once the Doctor realises the enormity of Sutekh’s devastating dusty reach, he breaks down. “Every world I ever stood upon – all dead. It is my fault, because I travelled to all those worlds. I thought it was fun,” he says, before a guttural scream into the dark emptiness around.
The Doctor has to reckon with his own history being rewritten – all those pleasure-seeking jaunts take on a sinister new significance. In this new Sutekh context he is become death, destroyer of worlds.
We could have lingered in this space for some time, with the Doctor’s travel spots eradicated, and the question of what it was all for hanging heavy. But he has to go and save the day at, it turns out, the expense of his own spiritual corruption.
The planets start to come back online. “We bring life to the whole flipping universe,” the Doctor hoots. (Could Gallifrey be among them? More on that later.) His job isn’t quite done, because Sutekh is still lassoed to the front door and, as he tells Ruby, it’s time for him to “become a monster”.
In the memory TARDIS we see a clip of the lovely Sarah Jane from a vintage Who episode, as she asks why Sutekh wasn’t killed by the Osirans, since he posed such an calamitous threat. “It’s against their code,” says Four. “To have killed him would have meant that they were no better than him, so they simply imprisoned him.”
As it turns out, that perhaps wasn’t the best course of action. But as a result, the task of Sutekh’s destruction falls to the Doctor. Our good, humanity-loving Doctor, who is trying to plough a pacifist path.
So far this season he’s been unable to bring himself to kill another baddie. The Bogeyman was rehabbed and released. Maestro was trapped in a piano. The Chulder were banished somewhere liminal with poor Rogue. Even the Finetime slugs were left to their own sluggishness.
That moral code falters here, as the Doctor is forced to doom Sutekh to the fiery time vortex. “That’s how you win,” he tells Sutekh, who in that moment seems too preoccupied by the buffeting vortex to revel in this supposed triumph.
When Ruby sees the Doctor one final time, he’s back in his tan leather coat, but feels more like that stoic enigma he’s been trying to shake off. When saying goodbye to Ruby we get one tear once she’s left the TARDIS and he doesn’t respond to her “I love you”.
Perhaps it’s having to sink to Sutekh’s level or perhaps it’s knowing how close his travels came to dismantling everything. Either way it begs the question of how the Doctor will feel about his sojourns in the future, but facing off against Sutekh ripples beyond the wound left on the Doctor’s moral code.
Decimating and then reviving most of the universe must have some consequences. For one, there’s that niggling question of Gallifrey.
The repeated references to the Doctor’s granddaughter this season, and even in that final scene with Ruby, must be gearing us up to see Susan – the real one, not the Twist – at some point.
With this season’s focus on good vibes most of the time, there could have been a risk of this Doctor becoming too untethered from his history. For a moment there, the focus shifted to the mystery of Ruby, but with that (anticlimactically) settled, the TARDIS door has been left open to see how this epic extinction event and its swift restoration plays out in the life and mind of the Doctor.
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Deputy TV Editor
Previously a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape for Digital Spy, when she’s not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas.
When she’s not bingeing a box set, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we’re all watching.