The following contains spoilers for “Empire of Death.”

“Empire of Death” is the typical Russell T. Davies series finale: It’s bombastic, dense and totally uninterested in resolving its own story. The episode bounces around for the requisite amount of time before leaping to its climax with an arresting visual of little substance. Because what Davies is really interested in is the scenes afterward, and the all-too-brief moment where Ruby Sunday gets coffee.

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At the end of “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and (classic-series companion) Mel (Bonnie Langford) are face to face with Sutekh’s minion (Susan Twist). Sutekh begins spraying its dust of death, a cloud of dust that turns whoever it touches into a pile of dust themselves. The Doctor and Mel outrun the cloud on Mel’s scooter in an action sequence that feels like it ate the bulk of the episode’s budget.

The pair head back to UNIT HQ to reunite with Ruby at the time window. Sutekh’s dog form is still clutching the TARDIS as a prized possession and wipes out the rest of the UNIT staff, including Kate (Jemma Redgrave), Rose (Yasmin Finney) and Morris (Lenny Rush). (Three deaths you just know won’t last for longer than half an hour.)

Sutekh explains to the Doctor he clung to the TARDIS (at some point) and followed it around on every step of the Doctor’s journey. Every planet the Doctor landed on, he planted a Susan Twist character there, each one lingering both as a trap for the Doctor and to sow Sutekh’s murderous dust. And he used the TARDIS’ perception filter to hide what he was doing. Did you know the filter operates at a distance of 73 yards? It’s a callback!

The Doctor, Ruby and Mel hightail it into the memory window’s TARDIS, which turns out to be the Memory TARDIS (which is just a regular TARDIS). This was a small, cobbled-together set from the 60th anniversary framing series Tales of the TARDIS, in which classic series actors introduced classic series episodes to new viewers. While in flight, the trio see what Sutekh has done to the universe, rendering it cold and empty, and giving Ncuti Gatwa a chance to scream his frustration into the literal void.

It’s now very important to uncover the identity of Ruby Sunday’s mother, especially given that Sutekh is interested in the answer. The trio take the Memory TARDIS on one final voyage to the dystopian future as shown in “73 Yards.” That’s where evil prime minister Roger ap Gwillam has instituted compulsory DNA testing to ensure the UK is a racially-pure nation. (Yes, it is a bit yikes.) But it’ll also give the Doctor the chance to identify who Ruby’s mother is from the records.

Once the information is on screen, they’re all pulled back to UNIT HQ in 2024 by Sutekh who is similarly curious. Sutekh uses his power to pull the Doctor to the floor, threatening his life, unless Ruby shares the information held on the gizmo she’s holding. But as she gets close to the pooch, she smashes the screen with the data on it and clips a piece of smart rope to Sutekh’s collar to ensnare him.

The Doctor then whistles for the TARDIS to come back to him, where he and Ruby clip the other end of the lead to the console and dematerialize. They then take this giant, evil alien dog on a walk through the time vortex which, uh, ah, something something brings everyone back to life. Try not to think too hard about it and enjoy the arresting visual of the TARDIS dragging a giant evil dog through some nice CGI.

There’s then some words about the Doctor having to become a killer in order to stop Sutekh killing. He casts Sutekh into the vortex. Given that’s what he did last time, I’m not sure why it’s more successful now but, as I said, coherence was never the focus of the episode.

Back at UNIT HQ, with everyone revived and eating pizza, they’re able to track down Ruby’s mother. She got pregnant at 15 and gave her daughter up to avoid the reprisals from some sinister stepfather who may have harmed the child. But she never sought to track down her daughter afterward, and didn’t even tell the father of the child that she’d had a baby. As for why Sutekh was interested in Ruby’s mother, the Doctor says it’s because people had invested time and emotion into her. Which feels like Davies chiding the audience for focusing on questions he himself laced into the series for this purpose.

And while I can see what Davies was trying to say, it’s not as if he’s played fair here – pointing a neon sign at Ruby saying that she was important. We don’t know why she can bend reality to her will, or make it snow whenever she thinks about her abandonment. We didn’t obsess over this question because we apply meaning to meaningless things, but because the show and its characters ascribed meaning to them.

The Doctor and Ruby stand outside a coffee shop where Ruby’s mother is now sitting, drinking and staring at her phone. The Doctor suggests that, since her mother never cared enough to look for her, she isn’t interested in connecting. But Ruby is undeterred and walks in, orders a coffee and sits on a big bench across from her mother, so that when the waiter calls her name, her mother looks up.

From there, we see the Sundays catching up. But for all the wonders of the universe the Doctor wishes to see, this apparently joyful reunion isn’t one of them, choosing to leave Ruby there. He says they'll meet again but, given he left his own granddaughter, it’s just as likely he’ll forget all about her. 

And so the TARDIS sets off for pastures new.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

I don’t think “Empire of Death” paid off the previous episodes with any degree of satisfaction but I never expected it to, either. Davies's modus operandi is to ignore the mechanics of storytelling in favor of vibes and those brief moments of touching character drama. The whole giant dog in space is weightless compared to the scene where Ruby sits across from her mother. Ironically, it was here that we should have dragged things out — the anticipation of if she would speak up would have been a better use of the show’s time than a lot of what happened last week.

But the ending did make me wonder about who in this world gets the privilege of a happy ending. Davies nearly died of a drug overdose in the mid ‘90s and then lost his partner to a brain tumor in 2018. He’s a cynical, nihilistic writer who feels humanity is only ever one or two missed meals away from the most evil forms of fascism. And yet, it’s rare that he ever plays a minor note at the conclusion of an episode of Doctor Who.

No companion leaves without a parting gift big enough to sooth the pain of being separated from the Doctor. In fact, on two separate occasions, a companion gets their own personal clone of David Tennant. Here, does Ruby get a happy ending by being reunited with her mother, or is it her mother who gets the greatest of absolutions? She never sought her daughter out, never looked to remedy the rupture, yet here she’s welcomed with love.

In fact, this episode provokes plenty of questions for me, including if it’s okay for the people who abandon you to get to live their lives with the comfort of moving on? What about the weird twist that the Doctor kills Sutekh but allows his wave of resurrection to reanimate planets full of evil beings? After all, Telos — one of the Cybermen’s hangouts — gets namechecked as a place that has been saved. Maybe it’s just better to remember that, sometimes, you need to turn your brain off and just feel Doctor Who. See you for the Holiday special.

Mrs Flood Corner

Mrs. Flood is disconnected from Sutekh, breaking the fourth wall at the end of the episode while dressed as a glam rock Mary Poppins. She tells the audience that the Doctor’s ending is on the way and is delighted by the idea, further stoking thoughts that she’s playing a longstanding villain. The obvious guesses — given Mrs. Flood is played by a woman — is that it’ll be some future incarnation of Missy or The Rani. Fine?

The following contains spoilers for “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.”

In an episode full of misdirection, the biggest one has to be its title, given we’ve learned very little about what Ruby Sunday’s legend actually is. Instead, the first part of the series’ two part finale is essentially an hour to build a sense of dread that spills over in its final moments. I could cheat and say “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is just “Army of Ghosts” — the first half of the 2006 season’s finale — with a bigger budget. Except the big bad that reveals itself at the end is a villain from a far deeper cut than the usual corners of Doctor Who’s history.

The Doctor and Ruby arrive at UNIT HQ to ask about the mysterious woman — Susan Twist — following them around the universe. UNIT, meanwhile, has been monitoring someone named Susan Triad, a British tech billionaire who will announce her gift to humanity later that day. Even the goofballs at UNIT work out that S.TRIAD is an anagram of TARDIS and the Doctor thinks Triad, or the mysterious woman more generally, could be his granddaughter.

But there’s also the matter of Ruby’s parentage to uncover, giving the Doctor a reason not to just confront Triad. The Doctor, Ruby and a UNIT soldier enter the time window — a low-grade holodeck — to try and see who left Ruby on the steps of the church. But the history’s a bit wonky, and Ruby’s faceless mother — unlike what we saw in “The Church on Ruby Road” — turns and ominously points toward the TARDIS. Not long after, the TARDIS is engulfed in a black cloud of swirling evil that nobody’s sure what to do about.

The Doctor then meets Triad just before she gets on stage, prompting her to remember all of her other selves. Whenever Triad dreams, she’s somehow aware of those myriad alternate selves. And while she takes to the stage, the Doctor asks the team at UNIT HQ to scan the TARDIS. It is similarly engulfed in an invisible cloud of malevolent stuff that’s threatening everyone in the area.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

[ASIDE: This is the second time in four years that Doctor Who has tried to parody an Apple Keynote. And this is the second time that they’ve totally misunderstood how to stage one that looks even remotely evocative of what they’re parodying. I know the conventions of the tech keynote have mutated since the Steve Jobs era, but they’re not even trying.]

A UNIT staffer, Harriet Arbinger (Wait… H. Arbinger?) starts muttering about a dark prophecy while Triad goes off script. The Doctor, standing close by, watches as she turns into a skeleton monster while the TARDIS is menaced by a giant animal head surrounded by Egyptian iconography. Turns out Susan isn’t the Doctor’s granddaughter, or even a key component of the story, but an innocent. An innocent who has been co-opted by Sutekh, an all-powerful Egyptian God we first saw in 1975’s “Pyramids of Mars.” Cue the credits.

It’s a slender synopsis, mostly because these scenes are played slowly as the tension ratchets up. “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” takes its time, letting the screw turn gently until you’re almost happy when the big reveal happens. It’s a gripping ride on a first watch, although I imagine it’ll not have too much value when you go back to it a third or fourth time. But, then again, that’s often been an issue with episodes penned by Russell T. Davies. It’s also a good way to juice bookings for next week’s finale which will get a UK cinema release on June 21.

Was it easy to guess that we’d be getting Sutekh back after his one outing in “Pyramids of Mars?” The rumor mill certainly pulled in that direction over the last month or so, and it’s not as if we didn’t get a clue or two along the way. Longtime Davies fans will recall that Vince watches the part one cliffhanger at the end of the first episode of Queer as Folk. And we’ve already had a whole scene from “Pyramids of Mars” lifted — the jump into a ruined future — in “The Devil’s Chord.”

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

If you are unfamiliar, “Pyramids of Mars” is a classic, and another blockbuster from the pen of the series’ best 20th century writer, Robert Holmes. At the time, Holmes was the series’ script editor and had commissioned a story from writer Lewis Griefer. But Griefer’s material was so poor that Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe decided a replacement was needed. So Holmes was tasked with writing a whole new episode in a tiny amount of time. The finished episode was credited to pseudonym Stephen Harris, but it’s all Holmes under the hood. Sadly, because of various rules around writing credits, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” end credits actually give credit to Lewis Griefer as Sutekh’s creator and omit Holmes, which feels pretty rough.

But that one minor injustice aside, let’s bring on the finale.

Susan Twist Corner

• Well, looks as if we have our answer that Susan Twist was something of a misdirect.

• Gabriel Woolf, who voiced Sutekh in 1975, is back to give voice to him now.

• When Mrs. Flood was left to look after Cherry, she was clearly aware of Sutekh’s return and seemed delighted by it. But she didn’t appear to be a harbinger, so it’s likely she’s representing another, different malevolent character from the series' past.

The following contains spoilers for “Rogue.”

Doctor Who has always been gay.

From the get-go, many of its key creative figures were queer, and a large proportion of its fans are too. As Tat Wood explained in his essays in show guide About Time 6, the mix of science, fantasy and camp offered subtextual solace for queer youth in less tolerant times. Russell T. Davies returned and pledged to start saying the quiet part as loudly as he possibly could. As it stands, “Rogue” is probably the overtly gayest episode of Doctor Who ever made.

“Rogue” was written by Kate Herron and Briony Redman, the former best known as the director and executive producer of Disney’s Loki. Davies was loudly critical of Loki’s single nod toward the character’s pansexuality, calling it a “craven, feeble gesture.” This, then, is a chance to make amends by embracing all of the modern-day queer-geek touchstones. “Rogue” is an episode that sprints through slash fiction, D&D, cosplay, identity and, of course, the simmering erotic tension generated when two hot dudes face off against one another.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

As for the plot, it’s another modern-day Doctor Who that is carried by performances and vibes rather than mechanics. We open in 1813 at a stately home where two “gentlemen” are arguing in the night over a Lady’s Honor™. But the heroic figure breaks character, annoyed that his wimpy part isn’t as fun as playing the conniving, libidinous villain. Turns out he’s an alien that can absorb other people’s identities, leaving nothing but a desiccated corpse.

Inside the building, the Doctor and Ruby are dancing along to the Bridgerton-esque party, indulging their love of the Netflix series. Ruby is wearing a pair of Sonic Earrings that either control or inform her movements (it’s not clear) letting her partake in the formal dances. The earrings pick up interference, sending the Doctor off to investigate while Ruby immerses herself in capital-S Society. The source of the disturbance is a brooding figure lurking on a balcony above the dance floor: Rogue (Jonathan Groff).

Rogue is a bounty hunter sent to apprehend the alien — a Childer — who transforms into other people at the cost of their lives. The Doctor and Rogue slink off to discuss the matter in private and find the remains of the Duchess of Pemberton (Indira Varma). The pair accuse each other of being the Childer but, since Rogue has a gun and the Doctor doesn’t, he wins the argument. He marches our hero at gunpoint to his spaceship and uses a device to trap him in place, planning to dump him in an incinerator. The Doctor, however, is more interested in flirting with Rogue and hijacking the ship’s sound system to play Kylie Minogue.

Once Rogue has scanned the Doctor and discovered he’s not a Childer (complete with fan-baity images of past Doctors) they agree to work together. They talk about their lives, and the fact they have both clearly lost people along their journeys. After the Doctor has toured Rogue’s ship (it’s messy, he leaves his D&D dice on his main console) they visit the TARDIS. Both offer each other the chance at a better, or at least different, life, although we know deep down neither of them could ever leave what they have now. It doesn’t stop them from getting ever closer, but never quite being able to act upon their obvious impulse to lock lips. Now, with the help of the TARDIS, the Doctor modifies Rogue’s trap to more humanely exile them to an alternate dimension instead of an incinerator.

Meanwhile, Ruby is watching some Bridgerton drama, making friends with a character who behaves like she’s drawn out of a Jane Austen parody. It turns out that she is also a Childer, one of a handful that came to Earth to LARP their way through the evening. The gag being that, much like the Doctor and Ruby, they’re all Bridgerton fans who came to indulge in some fantasy. The night will end with a grand wedding, albeit one that just happens to descend into homicidal chaos.

After a chase, the Doctor and Rogue return to the house to see Ruby, now apparently the latest costume change for one of the Childers. Ruby's apparent death unleashes the Doctor’s vengeful side, and he prepares to sentence all of the aliens to a long and painful exile as a consequence. But when he does trap the Childers, it turns out Ruby was just playing along and had actually beaten her would-be attacker. But once the trap is sprung, it can’t be undone, and so the Doctor is faced with no choice but to condemn his friend along with his foes.

As a payoff, Rogue passionately snogs the Doctor and takes the trap controls out of his hand. Knowing that the Doctor can’t decide what to do, he sacrifices himself to push Ruby out of the trap, taking her place in the process. He triggers the trap, imprisoning himself in the alternate dimension with the Chidlers. As dawn breaks, the Doctor talks a good game about moving on, as we all must do in times of loss, but Ruby sees through it. There’s no way for him to rescue Rogue, and so he must accept what has happened and move on to pastures new. Which, in this case, is the next episode, the first part of the series’ two-part finale.

Bad Wolf / BBC Studios

One downside of Doctor Who’s abridged season is that we’ve been deprived of a lot of Ncuti Gatwa. He was absent much of the last two episodes and only at the end of “Dot and Bubble” did he get his first showpiece moment. Given Gatwa’s generosity to share focus with his co-stars, it’s gratifying to see him getting a chance to shine. And while Groff has to play Rogue as a stoic for much of the episode, the interaction between the pair is joyful.

I don’t feel as qualified to talk about the queer representation in the episode, but their chemistry felt believable and grounded. I’ll leave it to better, more qualified writers to expand on these themes, but I was urging the pair to kiss every time their faces came close. It’s funny how time changes your opinion on things: When the Doctor kissed in the doomed 1996 TV movie, I hated it. The idea of a sexy Doctor enmeshed in such human trivialities outraged my 12-year-old mind. Now, I just want the Doctor to bang whoever they want, whenever they want.

The nature of a guest-starring role in a running TV series means that there was no chance Groff would not die or be exiled into the ambiguous “if you ever fancy coming back” void. But it does mean Doctor Who’s loudly, proudly queer era has embraced the “Bury Your Gays” trope. It’s sad to see two men who are attracted to one another not get a chance to embrace that future, even if Rogue’s sacrifice is noble and well-telegraphed.

None of that should detract from the fact “Rogue” is a delightful way to spend an hour, and yet another welcome swerve both across genres and tones. It’s a gloriously slashy and fun romp that should help show that Doctor Who is a vehicle through which you can tell almost any story it’s possible to tell. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with it all those years ago, and I hope you have too.

Susan Twist Corner

I was on vacation and so couldn’t review “Dot and Bubble,” which was a magnificent episode of Doctor Who. Last week, the pair recognized Twist who was playing Penny Pepper-Bean, and the Doctor even took a picture of her face. They also both clocked where they’d seen her before, although Ruby’s memory was shakier given the time-bending weirdness of “73 Yards.”

Here, Twist is depicted in a portrait which, again, the Doctor notices and records. It does appear that the show has managed to find a way to balance the needs of each episode with the knowledge fans will scrub every frame for more meaning. But this isn’t Davies’ first time mining the show’s metatext and paratext to bait fans: 2008’s “The Next Doctor” played with audience expectations after David Tennant announced he would be leaving but information about his successor was kept quiet.

It might be nothing, but Rogue also mentions his bounty-hunting “paperwork” has gotten a lot more demanding since the “new boss” took over. Is that a hint about a big bad or just a character moaning about the admin side of their job?