DOCTOR WHO-EMPIRE OF DEATH (the TV episode, not the BBC Adventures novel)

 

DOCTOR WHO-EMPIRE OF DEATH (the TV episode, not the BBC Adventures novel)  SPOILERS if you need them for something that spoiled itself. SPOILERS. HORRID. 

 

Where to start? I hate this show now. Literally, hate it. How did such a great premise end here?

 

I don’t know where else to go? Forget the disappointment in all the crap about Ruby’s mum and then her dad and her being named. How did Ruby’s mum Louise (WHO? From the Peter Cushing movies?) name her by pointing at a street sign if no one but the Doctor saw that and DIDN’T know that? If he did know that, why didn’t he tell someone? What shitty dialog. What shitty plotting.

 

Forget that everyone here dies and we just knew that Kate (sad to say) would be back and everyone else would be, too, and all of that dust death would be reversed…that was signposted from the moment it happened. That’s the trouble with big epic deaths and destruction in this HORRID series, you can’t do that without the audience knowing you’re cheating and you’ve done it so many times before (with the Master for one) but now…you stopped Sutek because…he wanted a name? How did Louise escape Sutek? She didn’t. She did?

 

And worse than all that shitty shit, Ruby put a leash on the dog Sutek? Really? That’s what stops him? Death to death is life? WTF?

 

And the rope pulling Sutek can be broken by closing the TARDIS doors on it? WTF?

 

This IS truly the worst DW story ever written, produced, and made. Horrid acting, horrid dialog, a crying (a lot) Doctor, an incomprehensible solution to a stupid, boring cliché problem, and a companion death that is reversed…again.

 

And we still do not know who Mrs. Flood is (though she did use a term Clara used so maybe, horribly, she IS Clara as some obsessive, tasteless fans have claimed).

 

It is clear this show has no sense now (maybe that’s why the Sense Sphere wasn’t name checked among the many name checks, which, BTW only serve to remind of us greater superior adventures from the classic series and from the first RTD run).

 

On top of that, it negates for a time, the idea that traveling with the Doctor was fun. He did it for fun but yells out into space angrily and in horror because HE brought Sutek to all those worlds and somehow that allowed Sutek to bring death to all those worlds.

 

And speaking of that…Earth is dusted in what seems like five minutes. The rest of the universe? What the FUCK is that scene with the Doctor, the dead baby (morbid) and the woman who is forgetting her memory (I’m sure RTD will come out with some chat somewhere that the baby is the Doctor and the woman is the Doctor’s mother, F him)? The dusting happens slowly? It’s infected DNA? Sutek can bring death to all HE TOUCHES. Where he talks death happens. Oh, and not life btw. And you can’t reverse death by re-deathing it. Death on death doesn’t bring life. How stupid does RTD think we are? How stupid IS HE?

 

One of the dumbest stories ever and retroactively one of the dumbest seasons of DOCTOR WHO ever.

 

What a total let down but where it was going was always going to be a disappointment. Who cares about Ruby? Who cares about her mum and her naming? Who cares about Mrs. Flood? Who cares about any of this?

 

This is just a disgusting, sad, boring, illogical, senseless show with no meaning. I hate how RTD tries at the end to philosophize to us about one thing or another about Ruby’s mum being just ordinary and more important because she’s important to them. What hogwash. What a POS script this was and this season is a bunch of garbage. DOCTOR WHO deserves a new Michael Grade and I hope it gets one soon. I hope that Disney cancels this and never airs that crappy next season RTD is planning and frankly, at this point, I don’t care if I never see that. It must be even worse than this shit.

 

What more is there to say? Every scene is stupid. Every moment signposted when it’s not being totally WTF. Kate holds hands with that soldier. Totally unprofessional.

 

All of these things hark back to better stories.

 

Where did the memory TARDIS come from? If they had told us that Sutek needed the Doctor alive because if he killed the Doctor the TARDIS would die and he was tied  to the TARDIS, I might have accepted that but no, it’s because he needs the name of Ruby’s mother for some reason? What utter shit.

 

They. Stopped. Sutek. With a dog leash.

 

So Susan Twist is a real being, is she? Sutek created life, did he? So against the entire thing he was.

 

So…all the Egypt stuff was cultural appropriation was it? NO. Unless Egypt took it from the Mars “gods”. I’m pretty sure PYRAMIDS OF MARS meant that all the Egypt stuff came from the likes of Horus and Sutek and their clan and not from Earth and NOT that Mars took it from Egypt.

 

I’m sure there’s more to complain about in almost EVERY scene of this crap. The TARDIS has a whistle that just drops out of the ceiling? What? A TV that works on memory? I felt as if I were watching WILLY WONKA.

 

The Doc tries to talk Ruby out of seeing her mom because…he wants Ruby to come with him? What a wanker. And he leaves. He doesn’t do families but Ruby has changed him to think more about family? Maybe some day he will go see Susan? That sound changed to you? Not even close to good character development or a character change or growth. Just because someone says they’ve learned from someone else, doesn’t mean they have and his actions prove he hasn’t learned a thing or changed at all.

 

All in all this is a shining example of how NOT to write a good TV episode, a good TV season, and a good story. It’s also a shining example of how NOT to write characters, for these are dull and static, never changing but saying they have. The “rising” action comes out of nowhere and out of magic and the slap happy answers are a dog leash and tying the greatest monster he ever faced to it and dragging him behind the TARDIS ---remind me again who drags people they don’t like behind them in vehicles?

 

The TALES FROM THE TARDIS was equally lazy writing, too: anyone can write, “Hey, Ruby I remember when I faced Sutek…”   “Who is that on the screen I’m watching?” “Oh, a very good friend, like you are, Sarah Jane Smith. Lemme tell you a story…”  Gosh. And they removed the hand from Sutek’s ass. Too bad they’re talking out of their own in every line of dialog in this garbage.

 

Nothing good in any moment. Just awful. A total destruction of DOCTOR WHO.  

Have to add this: RTD wanted to present an emotional Doctor: in addition to all of the blatant mistakes in every scene we get from the end scene a Doctor who is smilingly ineffective: instead of someone we can like being presented, instead we get an ineffectual "mystery man" who comes off more dysfunctional and unfriendly again and who cries because he cannot commit to either Susan or Ruby. He comes off as a smiling jerk.  And I said it this way too: too bad it's all surface level, he can't commit to either Ruby or Susan at the end and comes off as a dysfunctional cry baby wreck rather than the "man of mystery" that RTD probably intended for him, so he's not emotional at all but emotionally closed because he can't commit to either relationship or even care about the other person or persons.