Yeah, I think it is the same flavour of thing, though the Sutekh thing really didn’t work for me at all, while 7b does. I shall have to ponder why, and possibly rewatch s1 because I haven’t since it came out
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What else about AOG/DD? What do we think of all the TV bits with the ghosts? My favorite of those is “the only spirits I serve here…” even though I’m completely unfamiliar with what it’s referencing.
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It’s the least spooky ghost story ever. Since I am again in a DWM mood…
What makes it work in The Flood, from which this story took this idea, is that it’s just invisible Cybermen that only the companion, Destrii, can see. Because she is not human and her eyes can see in the frequency they’re at. It makes them extremely menacing because we, the readers, know what they are. But nobody else can see and the only person who can haven’t met them yet.
In comparison, the ghosts in Army of Ghosts are… just there.
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The Flood is by far the superior story to both New Series finales it seems to inspire (i.e. the Ghosts being Cybermen aspect of Series 2 and the Cyber Rain aspect of Series 8).
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I don’t think they intended it to be spooky. More “why are there ghosts here, and what do they mean?”
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That’s Peggy Mitchell, legendary character from one of the UK’s most watched soap opera (and it’s also a BBC show), Eastenders.
It’s a fictional scene in Eastenders making a joke about Den Watts, who died twice on the show - he came back “from the dead” and then was killed off again. So he came back again as a Cyber Ghost in the Doctor Who universe.
Also fun fact, Den’s killer and second wife was played by Tracy-Ann Oberman, who also plays Yvonne Hartman!
This is also the show that is crossed over in the notorious Charity special Dimensions in Time
And Mrs Flood is played by Anita Dobson who is also Eastenders royalty, and also ran the pub from the show.
There’s loads of other characters from Eastenders in Who actually!
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And don’t forget Dirty Den actor, Leslie Grantham had one of his very first roles as Kiston in Resurrection of the Daleks AND he was taught drama by Louise Jameson whilst he was in prison.
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EastEnders, that’s right. Not British enough to really know the soaps, I guess.
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I think it’s because Clara splintering herself along the Doctor’s timeline makes a lot more sense than an all-powerful god of death being interested in a human’s genealogy like someone watching a soap opera. Also we weren’t left with nearly as many plot holes after Name of the Doctor as we were after Empire of Death (what’s with the snow???) but maybe that’s just me.
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Yes, I think I agree - to me, Clara’s motivation of being kind and a little insane and doing what she did to save her friend makes a lot more sense to me than as you say, Sutekh getting weirdly obsessed with Ruby and just sort of being there. I think there are interesting parallels to draw with how the Doctor mythologises his companions and Sutekh does the same to Ruby, but yes. Overall I think I would take 7b any day
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Plus the fandom theories about Ruby e.g. being sort of an artificially created “Perfect™️” companion (a la Sam Jones) etc were So Much More Interesting than what we got
EDIT:
Theory 1
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I’ll save my thoughts on that for when our discussion of Empire of Death comes around 
I think people are being a little too hard on Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. Not a lot of the New Who finales pull off something satisfying like Parting of the Ways, but these two episodes get pretty close.
Also any criticisms of these episodes are completely invalidated by this legendary moment:
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I mean we technically have a thread for Empire of Death already from back when it aired if you wanted to get into it.
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Oh yeah, I forgot about those.
Well, it stunk!
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The club thread won’t be around for a few years! You can’t leave us hanging for that long!
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Cybermen v Daleks. What else to say? This isn’t as good as Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways but is a fun finale. Certainly superior to RTDs ghastly subsequent season ending stories. The Army of Ghosts cliffhanger is great. A lot of this feels like comic book/fanfic but in an entertaining way, the Daleks giving sass to the Cybermen! Jackie is fun in this one, the Genesis Ark is a cool idea. But there are some cringe moments, the ‘Ghostbusters’ moment is embarrassing & yes the Rose/Doctor dynamic is still a bit much but I think the finale works & despite myself I do feel the emotion of their final meeting, as well as Pete & Jackie getting together. This was before the clickbaity ‘companion will die’ trope become overused. I wasn’t sure if I’d still enjoy this having not seen it for ages but if anything I liked it more, accepting that for a lot of younger fans the Rose/Dr storyline ending was fitting & emotional for them.
But in general I really thought this season was a big step down in quality compared to the last one.
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The club thread won’t be around for a few years! You can’t leave us hanging for that long!
That’s how long it’s going to take me to fully grapple with the folly of having a pretty excellent season overall sandwiched between with one of the worst season premieres and season finales in the show’s entire history. Poor Fifteenth.
As for Ten…
This isn’t as good as Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways but is a fun finale. Certainly superior to RTDs ghastly subsequent season ending stories.
It feels like for the rest of RTD (and some of Moffat and Chibnall), we were stuck trying to recreate the magic of Parting of the Ways. Even here in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, we don’t quite achieve that same level of hype and emotional weight.
But in general I really thought this season was a big step down in quality compared to the last one.
This is very true yet also weirdly both series still feel like growing pains. I believe the production had to reinvent itself for Tennant a bit and essentially that took them back to square one. They’re still figuring some stuff out and the quality definitely trends up from here.
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& I forgot to say, I really hate this era’s Cyberman design.
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I have nostalgia for them so take this with a pinch of salt, but I love these designs
They feel exactly like a 2000s corporations version of a cyber men, and they’re great because of it and that reminder of these cyber men’s origin
When we got to the smith era and the cybus logo is replaced with just a blue glowey bit, and they’re using seperate guns instead of the built in ones, then they loose all appeal for me because you’ve removed what made these designs interesting
As a standard cyber an design I’m less a fan, but think about the cybus cyber men in the same light as the defence drone dales, and they work great
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Also with how chunky they are, you never forget that there’s a human body in there, even with it being fully covered in metal… Until smiths era when theres the head guarding the pandorica and they just use them as generic robots
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