It’s so funny to me that he just describes them both like they’re just two complete randos. 
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That’s more my issue!! Like… That’s you!!!
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Talk on Susan stuff has made me think more about this and happy to report that almost a year on I still hate this decision. There’s many issues with EoD but genuinely my personal biggest gripes are that teasing Susan so much then not having her appear at all, even as someone other than Susan Twist, feels super disrespectful to fans of her who were hyped up by the teasing, and that her omission genuinely makes the ending weaker imo.
When The Doctor tells Ruby not to go and speak to her bio mum but she does anyway, that’s such a perfect teaching moment for him, when he’s already expressed anxieties about seeing Susan again, and when he’s very much closed off on his feelings despite all season being all about not being closed off. She sees her bio mum, and in my mind the next logical step is he feels inspired and goes to find Susan. And then he… just doesn’t? Idk if anyone else felt this way but it made the ending feel incomplete and like something was missing, and as if 15 was very close to having a character arc that could have been wrapped up/progressed in a meaningful way here that just… wasn’t.
I like this episode less and less the more I think on it, and while yes this particular issue I have is set around my own expectations, I genuinely believe if they had been met even if only with a brief minute or two cameo, the episode would thematically have been significantly stronger, and not made me feel like RTD was just trying to spite myself and fellow Susan fans.
Sigh.
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Even the briefest glimpse of Carole Ann Ford, I agree, would have felt better. I agree with everything you said, and it seems a shame not to have Carole even there for a moment while she’s still with us if we’re going to do all this Susan baiting
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With Empire of Death, all season I was hoping for something inspired loosely by Meet The Robinsons, and my initial thought was that the robed woman would be Ruby, and it’d be about finding and accepting her new family, moving on, etc.
To just have it as “time shrouding her” was a let down. Kind of the same thing I have with Torchwood season 4, it feels like it ultimately builds up to nothing consequential.
And yeah, I totally understand the feeling of writer’s spite being a part of it. Especially with the “we got the wrong anagram” moment, as I watched an analysis video after Devil’s Chord aired, and the content creator instantly worked out it’d be Sutekh’s return by a billboard in the background. So, it then felt even more insulting when fans worked out the real twist, and the show acted as if they would’ve came to a different conclusion.
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Honestly had so much hope for this one and just wanted 2 things
- Ruby’s mom is someone important
- Sutekh is actually cool in it
Got neither of those.
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What with Susan being hinted at for nothing, and Ruby’s whole magical snow thing coming to absolutely nothing and her birth mother just being a human, it felt like the entirety of EOD was just a nasty trick to teach fans never to get excited about anything.
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It feels like how Sherlock S3E1 just made fun of fans for theorising and speculating about the series 2 cliffhanger, but on a much larger scale… It just feels like mean spirited writing.
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Oh I loved that in Sherlock though 
I found that hilarious
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I just don’t like the idea of a mystery show making fun of people for being invested in the mystery 
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It’s called referencing teh show’s past. They mentioned Mavic Chen in The Giggle but we don’t actually think he’ll be back, do we?
Well, that might be explained by whatever is revealed to us at the end of this season… or not.
In all my life, I’ve never met anyone who’s “just human” - we are all special, unique human beings! And nothing wrong with that 
Ahh yes, still love that one!
I think we should all have learned by now to always go into things with muted expectations - never expect to see or hear antyhing, go in with an open mind and don’t get too hung up on details - sometimes a line is just a reference. That means you will almost never be disappointed and you will actually be positively surprised when those real surprises occasionally drop. This approach has worked for me and I enjoyed S1 more thanks to it - I’m more positive on EOT than most.
That being said, speculating is always fun, we just shouldn’t convince ourselves that the speculation is enything more than that 
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While I generally live by that rule of thumb, this felt different to me this time because of just how hard Susan got teased, the fact she got referenced repeatedly throughout, and as I wrote in my super long post yesterday, the fact that it would thematically tie in perfectly with what was happening with Ruby. Normally my expectations are muted and I don’t get lost too much in speculation, but here it really did feel like RTD wanted us to expect Susan only to pull the rug out from under us
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That’s a good point. But I also think that the reason Susan was brought up - as well as tehe Doctor’s status as a father (?) and grandfather - was precisely to tie it to the overall themes of family in S1. The same way the Doctor being an orphan tied to Ruby being an orphan. It was probably also done to help new viewers, who don’t know about Susan, connect with the Doctor more.
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Agreed but that’s why I’m so annoyed! Her appearing ties so much into the themes that by only referencing her and not having her actually appear, it feels like the themes aren’t being delved into as much as they could have been imo
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Yeah it was very different to regular ‘referencing the past’. I wouldn’t even especially want Susan to come back because it would ignore the 8DAs, but the story was written as though that was likely, and combined with the whole thing with Ruby it just made the whole finale into a load of setup with no payoff.
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People have pointed out that as memory was dying due to the dust of death wiping out history, the Doctor forgot that the 4th Doctor was him.
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Frustratingly dull. I don’t hate Empire of Death but I think it’s very disappointing and unengaging - from the second it kills everyone in the universe five minutes in, you know it’s heading for a massive reset button and your only hope is that it’s good and clever. And, in the end, it’s not.
We have a tedious middle act where characters sit around watching Pyramids of Mars on an iPad, the spoon lady, and some bobbins where the Doctor and Ruby go to a future to look at a computer while Sutekh just sits around twiddling his thumbs. Then there’s the ten minute walkdown at the end which I find incredibly dull.
It’s just a whole heap of nothing really happening until the episode reaches the point where it has to undo everything (“I bring death to death” okay Russell, are you sure you’re going with this?). Mel falling asleep in the memory TARDIS just about sums it up.
RTD is better than this, even with his track record of wobbly finales.
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I wouldn’t call it dull. The scene flying through the time vortex was incredible, something we’ve not seen before, and I was smiling the whole time.
The spoon lady was poignant and sad.
Mel being possessed was shocking. Although I knew there was a reset button for UNIT I thought maybe that Mel’s time was up.
I liked it 
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Yup. Even if he isn’t the best at finales, he’s written ones which are leagues ahead of this.
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