We’ve had a bit of time to digest the finale of this year’s Doctor Who season (and boy, does it feel good to say that knowing we only have to wait until next year for the new one). So while we sit twiddling our thumbs and waiting for Steven Moffat’s Christmas Special, it’s time to do what we Doctor Who fans do best – concoct elaborate theories about minor plot details while handing down authoritative judgements on what the showrunners should do next.
“Empire of Death” thoroughly understood its assignment as a Russell T Davies Doctor Who Finale, giving us spectacle, recurring characters, the death of the universe (for the second time, although the fifth attempt since 2005 by our count), and it least one massive gaping plot hole. It also had breadcrumbs aplenty for future seasons, including the mysterious Mrs Flood who might be Romana, or Clara Oswald (“Clever boy!”), or the Master’s new incarnation, but is almost certainly not the Rani (it’s never the Rani). And of course, there’s the ever-present mystery of Mel Bush – whatever the answer, it’s going to annoy fans of the spinoff media.
So among all that, you can be forgiven for missing a tiny loophole that opened that might bring back the universe’s masters (small M) of high fashion, the Time Lords. But to understand that loophole, you need to understand Sutekh’s evil plan.
Death Hitches a Ride
First, let’s take a look at Sutekh’s evil plan. Instead of getting thrown into the distant future by Tom Baker’s Doctor at the end of Pyramids of Mars, he’s been clinging onto the side of the TARDIS, presumably shuffling over to make room for Captain Jack when necessary.
(Sidebar – when the 15th Doctor used his giant cartoon mallet to whack a second TARDIS into existence, did he create another Sutekh as well?)
Everywhere the Doctor landed since then, Sutekh created a person who resembled the actress Susan Twist (did Davies write that entire series arc just because he saw an actress with that name?) 73 yards away from the TARDIS itself. That person blended in perfectly with their surroundings in exactly the way that the TARDIS doesn’t, and went on to live their lives until Sutekh gave the go signal, at which point they turned everybody into sand.
But then, in a stroke of genius entirely fitting a Russell T Davies-written finale, the Doctor realizes that if you bring death to death, you actually bring life. So he puts an actual lead on Sutekh and drags him off into the time vortex through “all of time and space” to “bring life to the whole flipping universe”, and we get a tour of what we have to assume is a very small selection the planets Sutekh has revived, including familiar names like Telos (although Telos might not have noticed because all the Cybermen there are still frozen in tombs), and others that show off Davies’ passion for making up words. One name was noticeably absent from that list.
But…
“The whole flipping universe.”
Okay, so the first question. If you’re bringing “death to death”, does that mean it could also bring to life people who weren’t killed by Sutekh?
The answer is “If the writer wants”. But just for fun why don’t we say the answer is “No”.
Second question: Did we ever find out how the Master killed off all the Time Lords in “Spyfall“? Could he have had help from an ally who similarly loved wordplay-based pseudonyms? Okay, turning all the Time Lords into sand wouldn’t have left much for him to make Cyber Time Lords out of, but even Sutekh had plenty of gaunt, semi-mummified allies after he did the double-Thanos snap.
Now you might be about to point out that everyone else in the spacetime continuum, from the past and the future, died at the same time when Sutekh unveiled himself, but if you read that sentence back to yourself very slowly you’ll realise it’s not much of an argument.
So it is entirely possible Sutekh was behind the death of the Time Lords, and that his magical mystery tour of the vortex brought them back. And that brings us to our third and final question: Why would you want to do a thing like that?
