Doctor: Ncuti Gatwa
Companion: Millie Gibson – Ruby Sunday
Guest
Gabriel Woolf – Voice of Sutekh
Susan Twist – Susan Triad
Bonnie Langford – Melanie Bush
Jemma Redgrave – Kate Lethbridge-Stewart
Yasmin Finney – Rose Noble
Genesis Lynea – Harriet Arbinger
Lenny Rush – Morris Gibbons
Aidan Cook – The Vlinx
Nicholas Briggs – Voice of the Vlinx
Alexander Devrient – Colonel Christofer Ibrahim
Jasmine Bayes – Corporal Alice Sullivan
Anita Dobson – Mrs Flood
Michelle Greenidge – Carla Sunday
Angela Wynter – Cherry Sunday
Sian Clifford – Kind Woman
Amol Rajan – Himself
Aneurin Barnard – Roger ap Gwilliam
Tachia Newall – Colonel Winston Chidozie
Fela Lufadeju – Bailey Sinclair
Faye McKeever – Louise Miller
Production
Directed by Jamie Donoughue
Written by Russell T Davies
Script editor: Scott Handcock
Produced by Vicki Delow
Executive producer(s): Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson
Music by Murray Gold
Series 14
Running time: 2nd of 2-part story, 54 minutes
First broadcast 22 June 2024
Mel helps the Doctor flee from Susan Triad. Susan and Harriet Arbinger kill everyone, including all UNIT staff, by releasing Sutekh's dust of death. Ruby's adoptive mother Carla, her grandmother Cherry, and Mrs Flood are also killed.
The Doctor and Mel reunite with Ruby in the Time Window as Sutekh arrives on top of the Doctor's TARDIS. Sutekh reveals that when the Doctor defeated him previously, he latched onto the TARDIS and grew more powerful. He explains that the dust is spreading through every place the TARDIS has ever landed through copies of Susan. The Doctor realises he and Ruby can use the TARDIS in the Time Window to create a 'remembered' TARDIS featuring objects from across the Doctor's history, which the pair and Mel use to flee.
The Doctor uses special 'intelligent rope' to stabilise the remembered TARDIS. He visits a woman who gifts him a spoon which he uses to repair a monitor from the Time Window. The monitor responds to Ruby's memories and shows her a 2046 interview with Roger ap Gwilliam, the 'most dangerous prime minister in history'. The Doctor realises that because Gwilliam made DNA Tests compulsory they can find Ruby's birth mother. Sutekh is only keeping the pair alive because he is also interested in the identity of Ruby's mother.
The Doctor, Ruby, and Mel visit 2046 and search DNA records for Ruby's mother. While they do this, Mel is turned into a servant of Sutekh and transports everyone back to UNIT HQ. Sutekh attacks the Doctor and to make him stop Ruby says she will show Sutekh the name of her mother. Ruby instead destroys the monitor containing the identity and attaches the intelligent rope to his collar. The Doctor uses a whistle to activate a rocket booster in the TARDIS console, bringing it towards him and vaporising Harriet Arbinger in the process. He attaches the other end of the rope to its console, dragging Sutekh through the time vortex, forcing him to undo all the deaths he caused, including those of the UNIT staff, Ruby's mother and grandmother, and Mrs Flood. Despite his avowed pacifism, the Doctor proclaims himself a "monster", and kills Sutekh by releasing him into the time vortex, where he is disintegrated.
In the aftermath, Susan joins UNIT, who identify Ruby's birth mother as Louise Miller, a then-15-year-old girl who left Ruby because of her extreme youth and troubled family circumstances. The Doctor explains Louise was a normal woman and was only assumed to be important because they believed her to be. The mysterious happenings around Ruby appear to have been the result of Sutekh assuming Ruby's mother held the key to defeating him, unwittingly willing Ruby to be more powerful than she really was.
The Doctor takes Ruby to see her mother and they reunite. Ruby decides to visit her birth father, and the Doctor leaves by himself after a tearful farewell. Mrs Flood explains to the audience that, while Ruby got a happy ending, the Doctor's story will end in "absolute terror".
Empire of Death