20 Worst Moments In Modern Doctor Who (According To YOU)
19. Empire Of Flashbacks (Empire Of Death)
One of the biggest problems with the most recent era of Doctor Who was its over-reliance on nostalgia, including excessive use of flashbacks.
Nowhere was this more obvious than in Empire of Death when the Doctor and co. literally watch clips from Pyramids of Mars on a television monitor.
It’s one thing to do repeats or re-edits, so fans can brush up on their knowledge of past stories in their own time. But having characters literally just rewatch a story from 1975 feels cheap and lazy.
And more than that: it suggests that knowledge of that story is essential and risks alienating new viewers.
As nice as it was to see Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen on screen in the year of our lord 2024, it went down like a lead balloon with existing fans, who felt it was way too much and just wanted to get on with the story.
New series Sutekh needed to stand on his own feet (well, paws). And it would've been perfectly possibly to do this by leaning into the “God of Death” angle a bit more. But the clip show stuff dragged it all down, and ultimately ended up pleasing no-one.