Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Empire of Dying’
If Ncuti Gatwa’s first full run of episodes manning the TARDIS has been characterised by something, it’s huge swings.
Over the course of this season, the “Physician Who” showrunner Russell T Davies has explored racism, queer love, the risk posed by expertise and even fandom itself, with episodes starting from the abstruse (“73 Yards”) to the surprisingly saccharine (“House Infants,” which I’ve largely suggested associates skip).
The season has, at occasions, felt overstuffed, nevertheless it’s been the overhaul “Physician Who” wanted after shedding some momentum below its earlier showrunner, Chris Chibnall. Davies’s ambition is simple, and the penultimate episode — by which the evil god Sutekh returned after practically 50 years — was one of many boldest, scariest “Physician Who” episodes in years.
Whereas the finale doesn’t fairly preserve the strain, “Empire of Dying” continues to be an efficient and satisfying finish to the season. The episode opens with a number of unfastened ends to tie up: Sutekh must be stopped, and we nonetheless want to find the identities of Ruby’s mom and her neighbor Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson).
The motion picks again up in medias res, with Sutekh’s hollow-faced, red-eyed servants Susan (Susan Twist) and Harriet (Genesis Lynea) uncurling their palms and blowing out a brown mud that turns everybody it touches to ash. Kate (Jemma Redgrave) and her crew at UNIT, Britain’s supersecret extraterrestrial activity drive, are shortly destroyed.
Mel (Bonnie Langford), who was one of many Physician’s companions within the Eighties, pulls him onto her orange scooter and a swerving digicam follows them by the streets of an apocalyptic London. In UNIT’s Time Window, Ruby (Millie Gibson) continues to be making an attempt to recreate the reminiscence of the evening she was deserted as a child, however the Physician arrives and informs her they’ve bought “worse issues.”
Sutekh (voiced by Gabriel Woolf, who additionally performed the villain the primary time round) has captured the TARDIS, and he greets the Physician as an “previous buddy” earlier than dropping a bombshell: Sutekh wasn’t destroyed by Tom Baker’s Physician again in 1975, however clung onto the TARDIS through the Physician’s subsequent travels by time and area, biding his time. Wherever the Physician landed, Sutekh replicated and deposited new variations of the mysterious lady now often called Susan to convey never-ending destruction to each planet, in each timeline.
The Physician, Ruby and Mel take refuge in a “remembered TARDIS,” made up of earlier iterations of the spaceship. It’s held collectively by a expertise, first seen within the current Christmas particular known as “clever rope,” and it’s packed to the rafters with trinkets from Docs’ previous.
The Physician normally places on a courageous face and hides his emotion, however all through this season, Gatwa’s Physician has embodied the complete spectrum of human feeling. As he watches the damaging mud blowing throughout Earth from area and blames himself, he emits a guttural sob of anguish.
The unanswered query of Ruby’s origin nonetheless hangs within the air, and Sutekh calls for the reply. The Physician and Ruby need to know, too, and journey with Mel to the 12 months 2046, the place they observe down her DNA data in a Division of Well being database.
When Ruby reads her mom’s title on the display, she appears extra perplexed than ever. She turns round to the fearsome sight of Mel, who now has the identical skull-like face as Susan and has been possessed by Sutekh as a proxy by whom he can even study Ruby’s mom’s identification.
Mel transports the Physician and Ruby again to Sutekh, the place the god makes use of his powers to bend the Physician to his will. Angrily branding Sutekh a “nice huge god of nothing,” Ruby hooks the Physician’s clever rope onto Sutekh’s bejeweled collar, whereas the Physician blasts the unique TARDIS away from Sutekh’s grasp.
“I’m again!” trills the Physician in a playful singsong tone, as he clips the clever rope onto the TARDIS and he and Ruby fly off, dragging Sutekh together with them like a canine on a leash. It’s a climactic second, solely undermined by some distractingly rudimentary visuals. I can solely assume that Episode 7 used up the inexperienced display finances.
The Physician watches by the TARDIS’s open doorways as Sutekh’s claws catch on the material of time, reviving all of the individuals beforehand turned to mud. The Physician and Ruby have fun — however now the Physician should destroy Sutekh and decrease himself to the monster’s stage. “You win, as a result of I pleasure myself that I’m higher than you,” the Physician shouts. He cuts the rope, and Sutekh is consumed by flames.
Subsequent, the query of Ruby’s mom. The reply is a bit of underwhelming: She is an odd lady, known as Louise, who was simply 15 when she gave Ruby up.
Ruby is, in fact, joyous. However she can also be confused. How might the destiny of the universe hinge on this lady? Properly, the Physician explains, Louise was essential “as a result of we predict she’s essential.” She was essential to Ruby, and subsequently the Physician, and in flip, Sutekh.
After so many advanced theories all through the season, it’s a considerably simplistic reply. Ruby reunites together with her mom at a espresso store, in a real tear-jerker of a scene.
“I’ve proven you monsters and planets and legends, however this? Honey, your journey is simply starting,” the Physician tells Ruby as she leaves the TARDIS, however he guarantees that he’ll see her once more.
And that, declares a voice over, is how “the story of the church on Ruby Street involves an finish.” Ruby is gone, for now, though casting bulletins from the present’s producers have acknowledged that Gibson and Varada Sethu, one other returning actress, will each be companions subsequent season.
There may be one remaining unanswered query: Who’s Mrs. Flood? She is the one talking to us within the voice over, it seems. The digicam pans as much as the roof of Ruby’s home, the place an older lady is standing in a white fluffy coat, holding a parasol as she stares down the lens.
Of the Physician, she teases: “I’m sorry to say, his story ends in absolute terror.” The shot zooms in on Mrs. Flood’s darkly rimmed eyes and purple lipstick-smeared mouth. She grins, and ends the episode with a chilling “Night time, evening” — a promise of extra creepiness to come back when “Physician Who” returns for Season 2.
