Well he’s written Midnight at least… 
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As many issues as I have with this (and there’s many; which you’ve all heard before), I will admit it’s a gorgeous episode to look at and especially so on the big screen 
Hoping we get this year’s finale in cinemas too
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I am glad people can enjoy this one and I did think I’d mellow on it over time whereas it actually keeps going down in my esteem the more I think about it. I’m not prone to hyperbole which makes talking about my very favourites and very least favourites tricky to adequately express but I promise that it now troubles my bottom 5 of all Doctor Who for me. And had a huge impact in making me wary of the approach taken at the moment.
With Joy to the World failing to pick me back up, I’m now going into S2 very cautiously indeed because if the approach to the next season is anything remotely like how he thought he could wrap up the first then I have very little faith.
My mind is open, it always is, but I genuinely think this story is so bad enough to feel quite burned going forward. Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death left quite a big wound that hasn’t fully healed yet basically.
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I won’t be free that weekend, which I’m gutted about, but yeah hope so, for other people to enjoy!
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A pre-existing social event clashing with the finale - that’s some pretty poor planning on your part!
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Unfortunately I get in trouble if I cancel family holidays because of a TV show 
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I’m apparently a bigger fan of this than most. Or fan might be too much, but I like this one and actually prefer it slightly over Legend. This one has a strong beginning and end with a more subdued middle. Many great moments, such as in the climax with Sutekh. Seeing Mel reunited with Sixie’s cost and Ruby with her mother made me tear up.
7/10
Empire of Death is a wild mix of camp spectacle and solemn apocalypse, tied together with heart and flair. Sutekh’s return may be over-the-top and slightly silly, but it’s glorious all the same. The real triumph, though, is Ruby Sunday’s grounded, human story coming to a heartfelt conclusion.
Dust storms, dog gods, and DNA—this finale’s got it all.
You’re welcome to read my full review below (spoilers!):
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I rewatched the 2 finale episodes today.
I think they are a lot of fun, but just would have taken some small rewrites to fix some of the problems. And I really, really think Susan should have been in it.
But I liked it!
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I’d be curious to know how/where, because I can’t really see where she’d slot into things.
For me – just spitballing an idea – I think it could’ve been nice (assuming RTD doesn’t have any intentions of revisiting Susan on screen) at the end for the Doctor to witness Ruby meeting her biological mother, sitting with her family, and then musing to himself that it’s time he went to see his granddaughter as he sets the TARDIS controls and the ship flies away. That way you imply he went to find Susan, but it’s open-ended and open to interpretation. It also doesn’t erase any spin-off Doctor/Susan stuff because 15 would simply say vague words to the effect of, “maybe it’s time I went to see her again.”
Or maybe not, idk.
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Well, I don’t mean they should have had everything that was in the episode and also squeezed in Susan, that would be too packed.
I mean somehow we should have got Susan, but it probably would have needed a massive rewrite.
I really want to have him meet Carole Ann Ford as his granddaughter again, so we get the nostalgia and the cameo, but then have her regenerate and be young again, she could be a new companion.
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who is gonna go to cinemas at 8am 
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Fair enough! I do find it strange that RTD teased Susan so much and then just didn’t go there with it. Reminded me of a couple of times Moffat would tease something and then go in completely the opposite direction too. But what with the whole theme of family in the season, it felt even stranger that RTD used her as fan-bait.
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I really like reading reviews like this, reviews that are more positive on the negatively perceived episodes because it offers a fresh perspective and help’s me reframe my own thoughts on the episode. I don’t know if I would go as far and say I also think it’s a 7/10, but I will say I do think my original rating of 3/10 was quite harsh 
.
The logic of “bringing death to death means life” might feel like a handwave, but honestly? Two negatives make a positive, and it fits the fairytale logic that has always powered Who at its best. It works emotionally and thematically, even if it’s not airtight sci-fi.
This is a pretty healthy outlook, sometimes airtight consistency is sacrificed to tell a better story, and I think Doctor Who is better for it. I also think that adopting this outlook has helped me enjoy newer Who more, and not get quite as bothered by some of the more “controversial” elements like TTC.
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If you bring death to death, aren’t you just making more death? To undo death, you need to bring life to death.
If you bring happiness to happiness, you’re not making sadness - you’re just bringing more happiness. If you bring love to love, you’re not making hate - you’re just bringing more love. If you (somehow) bring life to life, you’re not making death - you’re bringing more life.
I get the double-negative thing ordinarily but, huh.
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Well I assume they’d do a midnight release again for the one they’d show at the cinema
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Well said! This is my biggest issue of many with the episode
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If you kill a killer then he can’t kill any more.
As Sutekh is the “god of death”, and you kill him inside the time vortex with a Time Machine, then somehow it also retroactively undoes the killing that he did.
It works for me 
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Also, the Doctor represents Life, and Sutekh represents Death. The Doctor “kills” Death by throwing him back into the Time Vortex, therefore brignin life back to the universe. So it’s also literal.
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I wonder, could we see the consequences of this in Season 2? The Doctor unknowingly resurrected races, planets etc?
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Even with those justifications I still have a very hard time buying it. It’s also, I maintain to this day, something any other writer would be (correctly in my opinion) derided for.
But even if I could buy it, even if death to death bringing life as a big undo made sense to me, it’s still presented as too easy a fix. Narratively I mean, not for the characters (although that is also debatable).
This is partly because RTD writes primarily from the heart and not the head, which I fully understand is his appeal to many people. Now I’m not saying he doesn’t ever write from the head because often he does, but it’s the feels he mostly shoots for. So in a battle between his heart and his head when both are needed to write a story, his heart will usually win out. To varying degrees. And that sometimes does sacrifice a satisfying plot or sturdy structure for me.
He doesn’t do it every time, just too many times for my liking. I’ve said many times I actually flat out dislike this story and one of the reasons is that it’s so messy and I would have vastly preferred losing a lot of what we got in Empire of Death and having this death to death thing seeded more so that it didn’t feel like such a copout to me when we got there.
It wouldn’t have fixed the story for me completely but it would have firmed it all up a bit.
I will rewatch it eventually when I get there on my marathon so who knows? By then maybe I’ll have come round to it but it doesn’t work for me at all right now. And I really hope this next series takes the taste away.
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