Doctor Who: Empire Of Death Review - 7 Ups & 5 Downs

This one is straddling an up and a down, but on the whole, it's got to be a down from me.

It turns out that Ruby's mum, after all this, was just an ordinary woman called Louise. I actually quite like this, in an 'anyone can be a hero' sort of way. It also harkens back to the Doctor's prior sentiments about no-one being unimportant. My mind, like many others I should think, jumped straight to the Star Wars sequels, where Rian Johnson similarly revealed Rey's parents were nobodies, only for JJ Abrams to turn around in the next film and say 'Just kidding, she's a secret Palpatine lol'.

That always really irked me, and it seems Russell was in the same boat, as he makes reference to exactly the same thing in the commentary and positions Empire of Death as his response to The Rise of Skywalker.

The down here is because RTD tried to have his cake and eat it too. Everything we've seen throughout this series has pointed towards some sort of supernatural conclusion to this story. Ruby can magically make it snow, she has 'Carol of the Bells' locked away in her heart, the Doctor's memory of the night of Ruby's birth is modified, and Ruby's mother is a glitchy mess when viewed through the time window. None of this is explained away by the handwave of 'she's important because we made her important', and if this misdirection has absolutely no basis in logic, it isn't a 'gotcha' moment, it's just bad writing.

Don't get me started on the fact that, all along, Ruby's mum was actually pointing at the road sign to name Ruby. You're telling me that, when she dropped her off, she wrapped herself up in her The Traitors™ cloak, dropped her at a church, and then decided, rather than leaving a note, to point at a sign in the hopes that one day, Ruby would use a time-travelling VR room to work that out? It's clearly a revelation to Ruby that this is where her name came from, despite the fact that she was already named Ruby for this very reason.

Also, Louise's identity is completely out of reach to a near omniscient being, and the episode's attempt to write around this is an easily-sidestepped government mandated DNA test. Seriously? That's the best we could do, is it?

The intention here is great. The execution, though? Absolutely shocking.