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 This two-part story is the final story of Season Forty One (New Series 14). It has been written by Russell T Davies and was directed by Jamie Donoughue.
According to the official synopsis for this story, The Doctor and UNIT investigate Ruby's past. However, a Time Window, that UNIT has created, reveals horrifying secrets from Christmas Eve in 2004. While at the same time the mysterious Triad Technology unleashes the greatest evil of all.
This story resolves three plotlines that have been ongoing throughout this season. The first episode resolved this season’s mystery of how all the characters, that have been played by Susan Twist, are all connected. The first episode also resolves the mystery of the ‘One Who Waits’ (that is first mentioned in "The Devil's Chord"). This is revealed to be Sutekh - whose first and only previous story was the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Pyramids of Mars".
This story also saw The Doctor and his travelling companion Ruby Sunday directly trying to discover the identity of Ruby's mother, an arc started in the 2023 Christmas special "The Church on Ruby Road". In this earlier story it was established that Ruby had been abandoned as a baby outside a church on Christmas Eve night. Her mother (or the person that we are led to believe to be her mother) simply strolled away into the darkness. The first episode of "The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death" continues the mystery surrounding her identity - which is finally resolved at the end of the second episode.
This story stars Ncuti Gatwa, as the Fifteenth Doctor, as he and his travelling companion, Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson), call on the help of UNIT, who is headed by Kate Lethbridge Stewart (played by Jemma Redgrave), in determining the identity of the mysterious woman, as well as the identity of Ruby's mother. They are joined by Melanie Bush (played by Bonnie Langford) as they also attempt to stop Sutekh from destroying all life in the universe.
Numerous guest actors reprised their roles after appearing earlier in this season and throughout the 2023 60th anniversary specials. As well as Jemma Redgrave and Bonnie Langford the guest cast list includes Yasmin Finney (as Rose Noble) and Anita Dobson (as Mrs Flood) also making a return. New stars include Lenny Rush (as Morris Gibbons) and Genesis Lynea (as Harriet Arbinger).
Jemma Redgrave plays the part of Kate Lethbridge Stewart - the daughter of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (otherwise known as The Brigadier) - and the leader of UNIT. Kate last appeared in "73 Yards" and also in the 2023 60th anniversary special "The Giggle".
Melanie Bush is a former Sixth Doctor and Seventh Doctor travelling companion. Bonnie Langford had previously returned to the show in the 2023 Fourteenth Doctor story "The Giggle" after a 36-year absence. Bonnie Langford described her role in this story as being ‘camp as hell’.
Rose Noble is the daughter of former companion Donna Noble. Yasmin Finney first appeared in the show in the 2023 Fourteenth Doctor story "The Star Beast".
Nicholas Briggs again voices the Vlinx. Other returning cast members include: Michelle Greenidge (as Carla Sunday), Angela Wynter (as Cherry Sunday), Alexander Devrient (as Colonel Christofer Ibrahim) and Aidan Cook (as the Vlinx). Aneurin Barnard also guest stars as Roger ap Gwilliam, a role first introduced in "73 Yards".
Gabriel Woolf, at the age of 91, additionally appears as the voice of Sutekh, reprising his role from the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Pyramids of Mars". Gabriel Woolf was also the voice of The Beast in the 2006 Tenth Doctor story "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit".
New to the show is Lenny Rush who stars as Morris Gibbons, a scientific advisor for UNIT. Lenny Rush was originally cast to voice the character of Eric in "Space Babies". However, the producers were so impressed with his performance during the read-through and early days on set that they chose to recast him as Morris Gibbons instead.
Russell T Davies also teased an additional role in this story which he described as ‘vital’. This was later revealed to be Sian Clifford who appeared as a character that is listed in the credits as ‘Kind Woman’.
The second episode includes archive footage from "Pyramids of Mars". This included: Tom Baker (as the Fourth Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (as Sarah Jane Smith) and Michael Sheard (as Laurence Scarman). The second episode also included archive footage of Carole Ann Ford as Susan taken from the coloured version of the 1963 First Doctor story "The Daleks".
Both episodes of this story were produced in this season’s fifth production block.
Russell T Davies has revealed that he first got a rough idea for the first episode 40 to 50 years earlier. He has also called the second half of this two-part story and the season’s finale - ‘literally, the biggest finale ever’ and Director Jamie Donoughue compared this two-part story to a feature film.
It has been revealed that when designing Sutekh, the design team wanted to recreate the original aesthetic of Sutekh, while also making him not resemble any particular culture or time period, instead portraying Sutekh as an ancient and malevolent force. Russell T Davies has stated that Sutekh was no longer an Osiran (see "Pyramids of Mars"), but had evolved into a God through prolonged exposure to the time vortex after clinging onto the TARDIS. The production team looked at Russell T Davies’ sketches for Sutekh’s design and then worked to iron out the final design. Once the design was finalised, the team used various tools to visualise Sutekh’s appearance in 3D space, including virtual reality headsets. The team would also use key art to visualise how Sutekh would appear when confronting characters.
Millennium FX designed the mask for Susan Twist's character with the goal of accentuating her bone structure but without suggesting the appearance of a zombie. Bonnie Langford also used prosthetics resembling a skull in order to portray Melanie's transformation into a servant of Sutekh.
To create the scene of the TARDIS arriving in UNIT headquarters, a tennis ball was rolled down the aisle on the set to allow for interaction with the performers. The TARDIS was later added using visual effects.
To create a more realistic look in the Time Window scene, the production team opted not to use a green screen. Instead, a team returned to St Mary's Church in Nash, Newport, which was previously used as the location in "The Church on Ruby Road" where lidar photogrammetry scanning was used to create a three-dimensional model of the church. After applying effects to the model in Unreal Engine, it was projected onto the studio wall and camera tracked.
Some filming occurred at One Central Square in Cardiff in June 2023. Additional filming took place near Cardiff's Principality Stadium. To make the set appear as being London it included a red double-decker bus, telephone booth, and a London-dressed taxi cab. Other filming locations included Cardiff City Hall and Barry in July 2023. Codenames were used while filming in public to keep this story’s antagonists a secret.
The set for the Remembered TARDIS was constructed to reference past iterations of the TARDIS interior, with props from past incarnations of The Doctor and former companions being used in order to decorate the space. Melanie specifically notices the clothing of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. A replica of the TARDIS console from the Fourth Doctor’s era was constructed and inserted into the ceiling of the set. The set was small, and thus those filming this story had to hold the cameras rather than use tripods or dollies. Director Jamie Donoughue aimed to convey the sense of claustrophobia inside this version of the TARDIS.
Russell T Davies originally intended on having the Remembered TARDIS set destroyed after it transported The Doctor, Ruby, and Melanie to 2046. This idea was scrapped due to the special effects already planned for other parts of this story. Russell T Davies eventually got the idea to re-use this set for the Tales of the TARDIS, as part of Doctor Who's sixtieth anniversary celebrations and also for the episode introducing "Pyramids of Mars".
In the scene in which The Doctor uses his whistle to summon the TARDIS, the possessed Melanie and Susan Triad are sent flying by it, which Russell T Davies described in the script as like ‘skittles’. The production team had limited attempts to get the shot right. Stunt doubles were used in order to shoot the scene, and they were hoisted on ropes in order to convey the visual of being knocked into the air.
The Doctor is seen wearing his original outfit again from when he first met Ruby in "The Church on Ruby Road".
The Doctor confirms he travelled to all the different worlds in the past because he thought it was fun.
When Ruby asks The Doctor who is ‘the man with hair’, when watching Sutekh's past encounter with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, The Doctor declines to confirm to Ruby that it is one of his past incarnations. He simply responds that the man and the woman on the screen used to travel in the TARDIS like he did with Melanie.
The Doctor believes he is a bringer of destruction and death, a belief he has expressed numerous times before, like in "Rose", "The Lazarus Experiment", "Human Nature/The Family of Blood", "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End", "The God Complex" and "The Name of The Doctor".
Mrs Flood is heard to call The Doctor a ‘clever boy’. Clara Oswald used to call him this as seen in "Asylum of the Daleks" and "The Name of The Doctor". At the end of this story Mrs Flood also teases that The Doctor's story will ‘end in absolute terror’.
The Doctor stops Ruby trying to interact with her mother for fear of changing the timeline. The Ninth Doctor previously failed to stop Rose Tyler doing this with her father Pete Tyler in the 2005 story "Father's Day".
The Doctor states he cannot allow Ruby to change the events of the night she was born because it is a fixed point in time, meaning breaking it would severely damage the universe, as displayed in "The Fires of Pompeii", "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead", "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon", "The Girl Who Waited" and "The Wedding of River Song".
The Doctor mentions fighting goblins to save Ruby in "The Church on Ruby Road". However, he also notes that his memory of the event keeps changing, as established in "Space Babies". Indeed, this time, Ruby's mother does point at The Doctor despite not doing so when he first visited the church.
This story concludes the mystery of the identity of Ruby's mother (and in turn her father) first set up in the 2023 Christmas special "The Church on Ruby Road". Russell T Davies has revealed that he got the story idea of Ruby's mother being an ordinary human, rather than someone special, from the character Rey's story arc in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where Rey's parents were initially revealed as ‘nothing special’ before this was reversed in the following film. As Russell T Davies preferred the idea of Rey being ‘ordinary’, he wrote the twist regarding Ruby's mother as his ‘response’ to the films.
Ruby's alternate self, had previously met Kate Lethbridge Stewart during the events of "73 Yards". However, this timeline was erased from existence.
At the end of this story, it saw Ruby temporarily depart from travelling with The Doctor, marking the first time, since Dan Lewis in "The Power of The Doctor", that a companion willingly ended their travels with The Doctor after only one season.
The Doctor claims he will see Ruby again. The Tenth Doctor once promised the same to Sarah Jane Smith in "School Reunion" and Martha Jones said this to him when she ended her travels in "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords".
Melanie Bush says she lost her own family to the most terrible things. The Toymaker previously mocked her for being an orphan in "The Giggle".
The Doctor mentions Kate's father (The Brigadier), but not by name. Again, The Doctor shows his respect for his old friend by telling Ruby that he ‘was the best of men’. Kate recalls how her father and The Doctor used to work together and how her father had told her tales about The Doctor when she was a child.
The Doctor remarks how he hopes one day to see Susan again and he claims to have never seen his granddaughter, Susan after they parted company at the end of the 1964 First Doctor story "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". However, the novel "Fellow Traveller", by Mark Gatiss (a short story in the anthology Adventures in Lockdown), depicts the Thirteenth Doctor meeting Susan. The Eighth Doctor also, caught up with her in the Big Finish Productions audio and Short Trips stories: "An Earthly Child", "Relative Dimensions", "Lucie Miller", "To the Death", "All Hands on Deck" and "The Shoreditch Intervention".
Kate is surprised that her father never mentioned The Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, to her. The Brigadier and Susan briefly met in the 20th Anniverssary Special "The Five Doctors".
Kate reveals that both Rose Noble and Donna Noble had joined UNIT following the events of "The Giggle", although Donna is not seen in this story and was only mentioned to be a part of the team now.
After appearing in nearly every story of this season actress Susan Twist plays the part of Susan Triad in this story. Previously Susan Twist played seemingly disparate characters. She first appeared in "Wild Blue Yonder" and made a further, uncredited, appearance in "The Church on Ruby Road" before appearing in nearly every story of this season. The Doctor and Ruby have noted a pattern occurring, as seen in "The Devil's Chord", "Boom", "Dot and Bubble", "Rogue" and by Ruby's alternate self from another timeline in "73 Yards".
In this story Susan Twist now plays a more major role - a character some have theorised to be related to the TARDIS, given the anagram created by her first initial and surname, ‘S TRIAD’. However, Susan Triad turns out to be the head and founder of the company S Triad Technology. which turns out to be an anagram which, when abbreviated, becomes ‘Sue Tech’ - that is revealed to be a homophone of ‘Sutekh’.
UNIT has a new scientific advisor, Morris Gibbons, with Shirley Bingham currently away in Geneva, having previously appeared as an advisor in "The Star Beast" and "The Giggle".
The Doctor once more states that Roger ap Gwilliam is the most dangerous British Prime Minister in history, recalling when he said this in "73 Yards". Ruby though does not recall whether or not she ever met him because the events from that timeline were erased. However, she once again shows echoes of that timeline in her knowledge that 66.7 metres is 73 yards and has a vague familiarity of meeting Roger ap Gwilliam.
The Doctor remarks how he and Melanie met Albert Einstein in "Time and The Rani".
The mystery behind Mrs Flood continues when she is heard to say that she ‘is always hiding herself away’.
This story re-introduces Sutekh to Doctor Who after his only previous televised appearance in the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Pyramids of Mars", where he battled against the Fourth Doctor. This means that Sutekh's appearance in this story marks the first time that The God of Death has appeared on the show for 49 years.
The Doctor describes Sutekh as ‘The Death of Ages. The Typhonian Beast. The greatest monster I have ever fought’.
Sutekh is based on the Egyptian deity Set, which accords with Russell T Davies's goal of bringing more Gods to the show. He was also revealed to be ‘The one who waits’, mentioned by The Toymaker, in the 2023 Fourteenth Doctor story "The Giggle", and the leader of the Gods of Chaos, other members of which were encountered in "The Giggle" and "The Devil's Chord".
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The Firsts:
The first Doctor Who story to be directed by Jamie Donoughue.
The first time that a title has included the words ‘of death’ since the 1977 Fourth Doctor story "The Robots of Death" and the 1979 story "City of Death".
The first time since the first episode of the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "The Stolen Earth/Journey's End", to use a ‘To be continued’ caption during the end credits.
Bonnie Langford’s first appearance as former companion Melanie Bush since the 2022 story "The Power of The Doctor".
Yasmin Finney’s first appearance as Rose Noble (the daughter of former companion Donna Noble) since the 2023 story "The Giggle".
Sutekh’s first appearance in the revised show and the first for 49 years since the 1975 Fourth Doctor story "Pyramids of Mars".
The first time since Dan Lewis in "The Power of The Doctor", that a companion willingly ended their travels with The Doctor after only one season.
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The Lasts (Subject to Future Stories):
The last story of Season Forty One (New Series 14).
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