DOCTOR WHO: THE LEGEND OF RUBY SUNDAY / EMPIRE OF DEATH (TV) (2024, UK, 98m, 12) ***
Sci-Fi, Adventure
dist. BBC; pr co. Bad Wolf/BBC Wales; d. Jamie Donoughue; w. Russell T. Davies; exec pr. Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson; pr. Vicki Delow; ph. Chas Bain (Colour | 2.00:1); m. Murray Gold; ed. Ben Drury; pd. Phil Sims.
cast: Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor), Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart), Yasmin Finney (Rose Noble), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Michelle Greenidge (Carla Sunday), Anita Dobson (Mrs Flood), Angela Wynter (Cherry Sunday), Gabriel Woolf (Voice of Sutekh), Alexander Devrient (Colonel Christofer Ibrahim), Lenny Rush (Morris Gibbons), Genesis Lynea (Harriet Arbinger), Aidan Cook (The Vlinx), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Vlinx), Susan Twist (Susan Triad), Fela Lufadeju (Bailey Sinclair), Tachia Newall (Colonel Winston Chidozie), Jasmine Bayes (Corporal Alice Sullivan), Sian Clifford (Kind Woman), Amol Rajan (Himself), Fela Lufadeju (Bailey Sinclair), Faye McKeever (Louise Miller).
The Doctor and UNIT investigate Ruby’s past. But as UNIT’s Time Window reveals horrifying secrets from Christmas Eve when Ruby was abandoned by her mother, the mysterious Triad Technology unwittingly unleash the greatest evil of all. A traditional two-part season finale sums up this series as a whole. The set-up in the first episode is well-paced and gradually builds the tension through to its wonderful cliffhanger reveal. Unfortunately, after a decent start, the pay-off, in the second episode, is a bit of a mess with too many of Davies’ tropes regurgitated making it feel more like a ‘greatest hits’ package than a cohesive story. His tendency to want to push the emotional scale to 11 verges on soap opera at times, and whilst domesticity can provide a neat counter-balance to the fantastic tales the series presents, when laboured it can also detract from the adventure as a whole. The solution to Ruby’s story arc is the biggest disappointment for those presenting all kinds of convoluted theories. However, to a certain extent, I like Davies’ almost sadistic sense of humour in making the whole Ruby’s mother arc resolution a non-event. The problem was this became a greater focus than the return of Sutekh. In the Doctor’s ultimate defeat of Sutekh’s universe-threatening dust of death, Davies merely found a way to press the reset button, a trick that has been used before and is dramatically unsatisfying. The introduction of the Memory TARDIS also seemed a convenient, and not very well explained, plot device. The Mrs Flood mystery remained unresolved and looks like it will be carried forward as a continuing arc next season. That said there was still a lot to like in individual scenes, with the Time Window sequence being very well-realised visually and making for an impressive sequence. Gatwa produced his best, and most Doctor-like, performance of the season; Gabriel Woolf’s voice remains chilling, even after all these years; and Langford’s Mel is much more likeable as a character second-time round. So, like the series as a whole, this finale was a mixed bag, delivering some brilliant individual scenes in an otherwise too loosely written story, which took liberties with its audience by relying on too many plot conveniences.
