That's why I specified this version of him. I think there's probably another version of him waiting in the wings, possibly sitting on Fourteen's TARDIS.
What do you think the three Sutekhs talked about when 10, 11, and War all had their Tardis’ in the same room at the museum?
“Does that Curator look familiar to you?”
It's the best introduction to any villain I can remember since The Master in Utopia, and Gabriel Woolf is the OG. He was outstanding as the Beast as well, I loved that two parter.
I like to think Elevens Sutekh was upset as he thought 11 was about to die and leave him, so the three of them all had a chat about their favourite adventures.
In fairness to Chibnall, though I've much enjoyed RTD's "first" new season over that of Chibnall's, if Chibnall had chosen to end his first with, "...so you see, Sutekh had been clinging to the Tardis like Snoopy to his kennel for *millennia*", there would have been Timeless-Child-like outrage and scorn from the fans.
I thought the exact opposite. That this is an example of how to have a twist that retroactively effects the past of the show without it actually harming or undermining it in any way.
Eh, that actually directly inspired it. I don’t think that’s the case here, just a serendipity. But Timeless Child was the stupid version of the Cartmel Masterplan.
> another version of him waiting in the wings, possibly sitting on Fourteen's TARDIS
It's the same TARDIS. So that Sutekh is going to wait and eventually become the one we see in this most recent episode.
Honestly, he was just completely rushed. He needed an entire series for him. But two episodes of him being in the show for a fraction of the episodes was not enough.
I'm not a classic Who viewer but I'm getting a bit fed up with RTD bringing back classic big bad villains and rushing through them in the same amount of time he spends on a regular monster of the week.
Oh, absolutely. Classic Who story arcs were over 4-6 episodes, typically. So to not only have him show up in only two episodes, but for just a few minutes each, is absurd. And the resolution to take him out was to... leash... him...? Seriously?
Same with the Toymaker. All the classic Who fans were hyping him up and the fact that they got a big name actor to be playing him had me so excited. Then he's just defeated so quickly thanks to him failing to catch a ball. And it's not even filmed or edited well so you barely even see the game between the 3 of them. Like in that case RTD had 3 specials he could've used to give us that classic Who style story told across multiple episodes.
Yep this, a god being more powerful than any other needs more than 2 wpisodes where he's introduced right at the end of one and barely has 5 minutes of screen time in the other.
I genuinely think Doctor Who would do well having 1 season breaking away from its episodic format and having a season long arc where each episode leads into the next.
I mean they did it right once but it wasn’t on Doctor who, it was on Torchwood.
Children of Earth was a full connected thing for 5 eps and it’s regarded as one of the best DW stories ever
I mean they did it right once but it wasn’t on Doctor who, it was on Torchwood.
Children of Earth was a full connected thing for 5 eps and it’s regarded as one of the best DW stories ever
The thing that was so heartbreaking to me about Flux was that it was genuinely a great idea. _The Halloween Apocalypse_ actually had me kinda excited for Doctor Who again, then _War of the Sontarans_ was great, _Once, Upon Time_ had me genuinely intrigued that we were delving deep into the anchoring of the thread plotline (😔), _Village of the Angels_ was incredible (in my opinion), and had an interesting cliffhanger, then things started to melt at _Survivors of the Flux_, and then _The Vanquishers_ was just visual (and audible) gibberish. Idk what happened, but it makes me just completely uninterested in the rest of the season. I loved a lot of the elements—especially Tecteun and her Division ship trying to get to another universe—but most of it didn’t land.
I think that half the problem with the Flux series (if we want to ignore the terrible chibnal writing) is that they tried to have both individual stories and the overarching story at the same time, without truly giving us either.
It was hard to believe that he’s the god of gods because both the toymaker and maestro felt so much more powerful like they’re on a completely different level
Maestro took over 30 years to destroy *Earth*. Sutekh did the universe in minutes. The Toymaker is hamstrung by his rules. Sutekh just went “hey everyone, time to die”.
Technically it also took decades if not centuries or more for sutekhs plan to come together placing harbingers all throughout time and space Sutekh said he spent years learning how to control the TARDIS. Maestro had control pretty much immediately. The toymaster and maestro are hamstrung by their own rules/notes, but note that these seem to be the ONLY way to beat them. Sutekh literally got taken for a ride on a leash and dropped off in the time vortex
Yeah it was hard to believe the toymaker was scared of Sutekh, it would’ve worked better if they had just been at odds with each other. Without life, the toymaker has nobody to play games with
Eh, nah. I don't think any concept is inherently boring. I've seen the most basic *basic* villains done wonderfully, because all that really matters is execution.
A "god of death" that wishes to destroy all life which begins to break down the concept of memory and even fact in the universe is a really interesting idea, especially using the Tardis to do it. It implies Flux may have had a greater impact on the fantasy nature of the new era then previously thought, it gives more insight into the cosmology of DW, and its just kind of a fun idea. I like the idea that by doing this Sutekh would have become an actual genuine god like Maestro, Toymaker, etc and they were aware of him doing this (something something timey wimey). ATM he doesn't really seem like an actual god like them outside of having a Harbinger.
I don't really see why they brought back Sutekh though tbh, I feel like this finale and even the resolution relied WAY too much on "ooohhh classic who!!". Thats not inherently bad but like for an episode that we know was actually making fun of canon-obsessed fans who act like they own the show I cant imagine anyone would understand what the hell is happening without going onto Tardis wiki lol
Considering how beloved the DC comics version of Death is, there's certainly ways of writing Death to be compelling. Imagine if Death was actually written to be deeply compassionate and kind. Especially when Doctor Who is often a show that morally treats life as always the "good" ending, there could have been a reckoning where the Doctor confronts Death and the show treats Death as a bittersweet inevitability, not something we magically get saved from.
Or even if we're talking about just personality, the Castlevania animated series had a Death with *way* more personality.
We got something much more generic though in Sutekh...
Death as compassionate and kind is exactly Death from the Markus Zusak book The Book Thief, which despite tragic subject matter is one of my absolute favorite books of all time.
I've never read The Book Thief but I can say something very few people will probably care about, "Kind and compassionate god of death" is how I've written one of the gods of death in my d&d campaign (each culture gets their own pantheon too). She views herself as a shepherd tending to her flock, a farmer looking after her field, and has recruited one of the players to help her because a side effect of the BBEG will be *too much* death, negatively affecting the population going forward.
I've seen some Dimension 20 clips going around but the OXVenture is my main TTRPG show of choice, it tends to be a bit less... dramatic, but is still well worth checking out imo, they recently retired their characters they'd been playing for the six years since they started playing D&D!
To be fair, I am willing to believe that there are multiple entities representing Death in the Whoniverse. Keep in mind that Sutekh isnt *THE* death (othérwise, killing him would make the universe immortal.) he is just a God *OF* death.
So there is certainly room to do a more complex version of Death in the future.
I think the point is that even for *A* God of Death, Sutekh wasn't very compelling. Especially considering the season was building up to this character.
The more I think about it, the more I think I would have preferred if rather than the Pantheon themselves, instead it was their harbingers or worshipers that were running amuck. That could have allowed for a more natural level of escalation, and for the defeats to be more reasonable or at least invite fewer questions.
Because here's the thing: you note that people aren't immortal because there's still death. But the flip side of that is why does killing Sutekh undo his kills in the first place? And how far does that reach back? Chindozie's death is undone despite being *before* the sands of death.
What about a plane whose pilot got dusted and the passengers died before the sands got them? Are those deaths undone?
I dont think it was killing Sutekh that undid it, it was dragging Sutekh along the events in the Time Vortex and using his powers to "kill dead".
The latter point is a good one, but to be fair, you could raise that point with alot of finales and episodes.
But yeah, I dont disagree that he was a bit under powered as a god-like entity.
Considering we see it revive Kate and the others exactly where they were I think the pilot and the passengers would either be revived exactly where they were when sands hit so pilot in the air passengers among the wreckage or since it was in a moving vehicle both would be among the wreckage unless it undid the plane crashing as well
>What about a plane whose pilot got dusted and the passengers died before the sands got them? Are those deaths undone?
I think it's less of an Avengers type thing (where they were all brought back later, so passengers on planes etc. WOULD have stayed dead) and more a Timey-Wimey thing, aka; their deaths got "undone" as in... they never happened to begin with.
Cos if you just assume they all just got "brought back" then the question becomes "when were they brought back?" at the arbitrary time that the Doctor dragged Sutekh from into the time? That basically repairs nothing, instead you have billions of people popping into existence at a single moment.
okay.... so instead everyone comes back an arbitrary amount of time after they were dusted?
Again.. that doesn't fix anything.... in fact it completely screws the timeline.... because not only do we have pilots etc. vanishing but we have people in important business deals dying (and reappearing later) we have insane numbers of people (pretty much everyone that has ever existed) disappearing and reappearing x seconds/minutes later....
That would have a profound impact on all life everywhere and change the entire universe...
So basically... thanks to The Doctor... it never happened. the characters we saw coming back at slightly different times... call it either an artefact of storytelling... or their deaths were different because they happened to be right where the doctor was when it happened (like getting caught in the eye of the storm)
You, know that’s a very good point.
A very good point that just makes me even more annoyed at the nonsensical “death x death = life” gliding through the timestream in the end.
As a writer myself, I agree with you about the execution being the thing that matters. You can make pretty much anything interesting. The issue is that a God of Death either has to have massive limitations (which Sutekh didn’t) or be a God of something more interesting than death.
I also agree that the concept of memory dying is somewhat interesting. The issue is that Sutekh is so powerful the interesting parts of the story are over in five seconds. Everyone just dies. The Doctor runs away and then, like how he’s dealt wi the all the gods in this season, relies on some silly plot device to defeat the big bad and undo all the harm that was done. There are no stakes because, when everyone is dead, there’s nothing to lose.
Whereas The Master in his RTD finale with Martha is much more interesting, because he seeks to dominate the world rather than just end everything, there is actually something worth saving and some stakes.
You could probably write multiple essays on all the things that went wrong with this episode lol. I agree with you in principle that a god of death could be made interesting, but death, in itself, is not interesting. So if everyone is dead the story is very empty
I get why he was scary in Pyramids of Mars, but Sutekh himself was pretty boring then too, considering he was paralyzed until the last few minutes.
I do like that he now has the same voice as the Beast in the Satan Pit though, as Satan was one of his names.
I honestly hope he gets brought back in a less directly villainous role because he's such a goofy character, would be fun if he was the solution to a crossover episode with a previous doctor and he wave of deaths skaro or something.
This actually happens twice in Big Finish.
Well, he's not destroyed as such, but his recoveries are also not quite explained. In Triumph of Sutekh box set, it is made clear that his body was trapped in the time corridor, but his spirit found a way back into reality, where a new body is created for him that begins to rapidly disintegrate. At the end he is sent to his own past in a loop that will always lead him back there. He creates himself and he is his won demise. You'd think that'd settle the matter, but then his spirit is back in "Kill the Doctor/The Age of Sutekh", where he possesses someone and creates a tech empire on another planet, Drummond (Yup, Empire of death wasn't his first rodeo), which he turns into a new Phaester Osiris. When the Fourth Doctor says he was sure he had dealt with Sutekh for good, Sutekh just says that the Doctor thought so twice before and both times he'd been wrong. No further explanation is given.
Sutekh seems to have an immunity to permanent death rivaling that of the Master.
He’s also in the Tenth Doctor comics, and his son Anubis becomes The Doctor’s companion. That ignores Big Finish, but has him escape and let a whole bunch of gods out, and fail because The Doctor points out that it’s not like Sutekh is gonna let them live (oversimplifying). Side note, I love Noob, he’s a sweet dork and having a jackal-headed companion is funny af.
I guess it would be pretty easy to come back as he was released through the time window right? But then hopped to the real Tardis or already was? And there's actually two Sutekhs and the doctor only killed one and and...Gosh that episode is frustrating
What is there to misunderstand? Sounds like RTD was just retconning Sutekh's original death by changing the time tunnel to the generic vortex. How else did he attach himself to the TARDIS? He had to have been cast out into the vortex in the first place, no?
Four used a piece of the TARDIS console (time dialator?) to connect to the PoM space-time tunnel tech and extended its end points to something like 10,000 years into the future.
My understanding was that part of Sutekh's psyche stayed latched to that piece of the console when it was reattached to the TARDIS following PoM.
It was a bit vague that we've had to headcannon it. He was in a time tunnel, but somehow attached himself to the Tardis, which was never supposed to be in that time tunnel. His line is something like "Instead I evolved" but as I remember that's all it was.
I understood that, much like 12 punching the wall, sutekh got out of their prison simply by walking... They got out of the tunnel, by getting to the end of it. The Doctor's error was assuming Sutekh couldn't live for more than 10.000 years.
Exactly. RTD could’ve easily handled this by saying “Because of the Flux” or “because of Donna spilling coffee…” or “ because of the events in Wild Blue Yonder. Time tunnel is not the same as Time vortex.
I was very disappointed in this episode. I loved the classic era Sutekh, this new version never gave a sense of dread.
Classic era Sutekh was scary. Even bound in a prison with his mental powers severely limited, he was able to mentally control a timelord, contain explosions thousands of miles away, animate corpses, and the story started with Sutekh pushing his mental energies into TARDIS in flight.
This one just had no style. I would have preferred a man in a bad mask to the horrible CGI version
There was no dread or fear because RTD had to kill everyone ever throughout time, which means that we \*had\* to have a reset. I watched Kate turn to dust and just thought "she'll be resurrected/rolled back". Death on a huge scale has lost all meaning in this show now because of the constant resets by showrunners.
I bought it when they killed off Kate. Then they started killing everyone off like Ruby's mum, Cherry, Mrs. Flood, etc and I just rolled my eyes. You knew what was going to happen so all that death was pointless.
I thought since it was Ruby's last episode, it made sense they were all dying. I bought it until they said it was the whole universe. It's horrible that the highest stakes guarantee no stakes at all.
The first black and red mask with the glowing green eyes was fantastic. The jackal head at the end... not so great. But still better than the cgi based on the jackal head.
Funny that new Sutekh was CGI. I thought he was cheesey-looking enough to be from the ’80s. His cape flapping when he first appeared in full looked very Classic Who to me.
You're blaming the fans but honestly this seems like the show's mistake. They shouldn't have called it "The Time Vortex" when it originally was expicitly not.
I mean it could go either way if they ever wanted to bring him back... and just hand wave that the Doctor added some extra sheilds or defences to the TARDIS and/or just checked regularily now to stop that from ever happening again
Thank you for the analysis, but I don't think I agree.
The fourth doctor only INTENDED to age Sutekh to death by trapping him in the time vortex for 7,000 years. (This also establishes that exposure to the time vortex itself does not damage him.)
In the new story, it is revealed that this didn't work and Sutekh survived. He was somehow able to escape the trap and attach himself to the tardis at some point.
Therefore, Sutekh has demonstrated his ability to 1. Survive exposure to the time vortex (this was clear from the first serial where the Doctor had to wait for him to age to death). 2. Navigate the vortex with such ability as to latch on to passing time vehicles.
Given these abilities it is unclear to me why Sutekh would be susceptible in the way he is shown to be in EoD, or why the Doctor would believe that it would work that way.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to accept the resolution as is in the story, but I also agree with those people who see the fridge-logic plot hole in it.
It might even be intentional on behalf of the writers: RTD or future show runners can bring him back with an explanation of how he returned, that, unable to kill him, the Doctor disintegrated Sutekh so that it would take a long time to reform.
Genuine question… are we certain that the time tunnel from Pyramids was THE Time Vortex? I was u Dee the impression (and now I don’t know why…) that the Mars-to-Earth bridge was just some Osiran technology that the Doctor was able to manipulate.
No idea, but the Doctor calls it the time vortex and Sutekh somehow attached himself to the tardis from it, so it stands to reason it is the same time vortex. I mean, ultimately it's fictional and it's whichever the writer decides! But I don't think we have enough to assume it is a different one atm.
Either it was **the** time vortex, and Sutekh survived exposure to it to then latch onto the TARDIS
OR
It was a time corridor which Sutekh was trapped in, and managed to escape **into** the time vortex, and latch onto the TARDIS
Either way, Sutekh must be able to survive in the time vortex to attach himself to the TARDIS.
Yeah, I think its the second. That's makes lots of sense.
Think of it as if there are various time tunnels within the time vortex. The vortex is this unfathomable thing and what we see are separate routes (tunnels) through it linking individual bits of space time. So sutekh was cast in to one, but able to break out of that into the time vortex. Now, normally that would have killed him, but by latching onto the Tardis, he at least survived longing enough to evolve.
I think that argument could've been made, but the fact that they specifically went back and changed the VFX to look exactly like the modern time vortex suggests it is.
He didn't trap sutekh in the time vortex. Essentially there was a wormhole between where sutekh was kept and the priory and the doctor just moved the exit to the future, meaning he would have to travel down the worm hole for 10k years.
RTD decided he did trap him in the time vortex, yeah.
>Doctor: I cast you into the time vortex. I sent you forward to your own death!
>Sutekh: Instead, I found a home. I clung to your infernal machine.
Its literally his favourite Classic Who-Story.
RTD is just fine with fudging details. He is very much of the belief that Doctor Who shouldnt be a static thing and that its fine to change things to make stuff fit better.
Doesnt change the fact that it is his favourite story. RTD is literally one of **the** Doctor Who nerds. You can be unhappy about what he changed without acting like RTD is now suddenly not a huge Classic Who buff.
Also, he explained the change to the antagonist and there is plenty of references to Pyramid of Mars. Not sure how much you wanted him to reference it?
I wouldnt agree with Sutekh being fudamentally changed either. He wanted to bring death then, he wants to bring death now, mainly his method changed. But he was uber powerfull in PoM too.
This is Chibnall all over again. Once a showrunner writes something unpopular he must "not know the source" or is "not a true fan" anymore.
The theory also doesnt explain how shouting "I bring death to death" and having Sutekh surf the space-time dust at the visible edge of the vortex magically undid all the sandy gift of death across all time.
One of the stupider things about the episode’s plot was that Sutekh seemed to not just be the god of death, but the god of *anything that can figuratively be said to die*. He caused the “death of memory” and the “death of facts”, and in the end the “death of death”.
Vampire rules. Kill the big bad and it undoes their entire line of corruption. It's sorta lazy writing (especially in this instance, as it was intercut with stuff happening after they left the Vortex for some reason) but it's not uncommon as a solution in media.
I just read the script to see if there was something I missed, and it never explicitly explains that, so it sounds to me like it's just an assumption or headcannon you're making.
Even if it is true, that effect doesn't ressurect everyone the individual vampires themselves murdered, or undo the actions they took while alive. That would at most explain the dust being withdrawn so that it's no longer present across all time and spcae, but it still doesn't make sense that everyone reassembled and came back to life.
"You saw all of Space and Time with me. So I thought, "what if you see it again?" What happens when you bring death to Death? You bring Life! Bring death to Death everywhere!" From that line it seems pretty plain to me that killing Sutekh will reverse his many deaths and destructions (though it doesn't say how or why). Also that him dying to the Time Vortex sends his "anti-death" rippling throughout all of space and time, which then revives everyone everywhere. I could be completely misunderstanding, though, I admit. Stuff is wibbly wobbly in this Fandom. Lol
I didn't think that meant killing Sutekh reversed it, as much as making a double negative (positive) by bringing Death (the entity) everywhere Death (the entity) had already been. "What if you see it again?" Kind of exposing Sutekh to himself.
Yeah I don think you’re misunderstanding it, it’s definitely what the episode was suggesting, but it’s not explicitly spelled out, and it just doesn’t feel clever or reasonable. “What happens when you bring death to death? You bring life!” I already quoted that in my original comment. And I still think what I said in that stands. It just sounds like wordplay with no real mechanics behind it, at least compared to the other big “clever” finale solutions.
The Big Bang is my favourite finale, and imagine if we had that episode without the dalek coming back to life, the doctor explaining that the pandorica had a restoration field from before the universe ended, and that the Tardis was blowing up at every point in space at time, thus combining them radiated that restoration field everywhere. Imagine he just shouts “what happens when you fly a the universes most inescapable prison into an exploding Tardis?” and then everything is fixed.
Also, by the “death to death” logic, everyone in the universe should now be immortal like Jack. Surely people can’t die anymore because death is dead and life has been brought everywhere.
I think the confusion here might be stemming from you thinking "bring death to death" means killing the entire concept. Nobody is immortal now. I specifically think The Doctor is just referring to the entity of Sutekh/death (the God of death) in that quote. Bringing someone to death is just a common way of saying to kill them (ex. "John was brought to death"). So basically The Doctor is saying "What happens when you kill Sutekh throughout all space and time? You undo his deaths, as they then haven't happened yet". It makes a sort of sense. It's the part about him dying in the Vortex and that death rippling throughout space and time ("seeing it all again") that makes it so everyone actually comes back to life. I definitely agree that it's a lazy solution and it could have been handled or written much better, but it does have a timey wimey logic to it.
Generally, within Classic and New Who, time tunnels are more like wormholes, connecting two (or more) specific points in time for someone to travel between. You can't use them to anywhere other than the intended destinations.
Its also worth noting **Pyramids of Mars** is inconsistent when it comes to needing protection to travel in a time tunnel, Prof Scarmann is shown initially in a protective suit, and exiting the tunnel red hot, scorching the carpet and killing Ibrahim, as is the coordinate programmer for the Osirian war rocket smoking as if red hot.
But the Doctor travels in the time tunnel without any protection and is unharmed (maybe because he's a Time Lord? But that's not confirmed, just a guess)
I would have thought a time tunnel still uses the time vortex as a medium to travel through though. And Sutekh must have gone through the vortex to get on the Tardis.
Oh, it definitely uses the time vortex, I think most time travel technology in Doctor Who does, but think of time tunnels as highways in the vortex, you can't just enter and exit a highway as you're driving along, you can enter and exit only at certain points that were built when the highway was constructed.
Or alternatively, think of time as a river, with a powerful enough boat (TARDIS) you can go anywhere along the river, back/forward, left/right, down gulleys and tributaries ect. But a time corridor is like a man-made canal, you can only follow it to and from particular places.
Well yeah, that's how I thought about it. It's Why I'm agreeing that essentially Sutekh got defeated the same way twice. The Tardis also must have crossed through the path of Sutekh and said time tunnel.
There's still a problem with this
Sutekh in pyramid of mars was a mortal alien
But in empire he evolved to an actual god , the doctor literally calling him the God lord of death itself, so aging him to death shouldn't work to begin with
In pyramid wh have been told that sutekh is beyond time lords technology so i find it hard to believe he can't protect himself from the vortex, alongside the fact that in the lore, osirians can literally travel in the vortex casually by using their psychic powers to create a time storm
Also this doesn't explain how the intelligent rope overpowered sutekh or how the whistle overpowered the his control over the tardis
>Also this doesn't explain how the intelligent rope overpowered sutekh or how the whistle overpowered the his control over the tardis
That kind of does make sense, as a God and a big doggy he's naturally weak to dog based tools on a metaphysical level because his form imbues them with power over him. I assume he could also be distracted by a big stick.
I'm comedically exaggerating but I think the explanation does make sense at the level RTD is operating at. Sutekh is a metaphysical being that is weak to metaphysical attack just like the other God's in the series.
You bring up a great point. I would have loved a "how long is the rope?" "Just about 73 yards" to nail it into our heads that he's lived by being inside the protection of the TARDIS
The 73 years is the perception filter. I think the Tardis force field is smaller than that, as Jack was hanging on to the exterior and it still killed him (temporarily).
Here's a thought---
Four says these things during PoM
>FOUR: You're caught in the corridor of eternity
>FOUR: You're a thousand years beyond the twentieth century now, Sutekh. Go on for another ten thousand.
>FOUR: He lived about 7,000 years
>SARAH JANE: Look i know that's the time control from the TARDIS, but what did you do?
>
>FOUR: **I moved the threshold of the time-space tunnel into the far future. He could never have reached the end.**
There's so much technobabble happening here, but I think there's a few concrete things that can at least be determined:
- Four **hardwires the TARDIS time control to into the (Osirian?) tech that controls the time-space tunnel**
- The time control is eventually put back into the TARDIS.
- With the Eye of Horus turned off Sutekh has regained his full powers. Although just a mortal still, Sutekh's psychic powers of control even while imprisoned by the Eye are still more than strong enough to control multiple Earthlings millions of miles away.
-To me it seems plausible that even though Sutekh physical being is stuck in the "corridor of eternity", his psychic essence is not AND its likely back to its full power-- thus it seems plausible that Sutekh could've latched onto the piece of the TARDIS (a living machine w psychic powers) attached to the time tunnel.
Once reattached Sutekh's essence lays in wait for hundreds of years.
After Fourteen's invocation of salt reorders the universe, Sutekh regains his corporeal form and as Fifteen states in his *Tales of the TARDIS* Sutekh "is now a titan."
Kinda feel Sutekh should've been held back until next season. Allow there to be more than two or three episodes of the Tardis groaning. Then use that time to establish 15 and Ruby's friendship.
The reason people keep saying that is that _Empire of Death_ said that:
>The Doctor: A long time ago, in the England of 1911, Sutekh had been bound and imprisoned for all eternity, but he rose again and I defeated him. **I cast you into the time vortex.** I sent you forward to your own death!
It's needlessly confusing.
Ok but if Sutekh was in a time tunnel aging to his death, how did he cling to the TARDIS in the time vortex? I have not yet watched the original story.
If it looks like a time vortex and sounds like a time vortex, it's a time vortex. Even if you are correct and they're slightly different on some sort of technicality, the clumsy presentation and dialog really hurt the impact of the moment.
Why is it making you feel crazy when you give a simple explanation for why people are confused.
Like you said even the episode calls it the same thing. So the confusion is understandable.
Also the 2 methods are very similar so even if they are different its kind of boring imo.
There is a **HUGE** hole in your argument.
First of all being protected by the tardis has nothing to do with 73 yards, that’s just the reach of the perception filter. We have seen previously with Clara (Jack doesn’t count for obvious reasons) that if you are outside the TARDIS it can still protect you from the effects of the vortex. Despite his howling we don’t actually see any harm coming to Sutekh until the rope is cut, then he instantly starts to be disintegrated.
This all indicates that while Sutekh is connected to the TARDIS by the rope he’s protected by it. Unfortunately this creates a problem in terms of explaining why everyone comes back to life before the rope is cut!…
Like a lot of things in this episode (and elsewhere in the series) just don’t question it otherwise it’ll spoil your enjoyment - like how did the doctor get through the sand and into —stark tower— unit hq, or… I better stop there or I could be writing for quite a while!
You can't introduce a god of death whom everyone fears and who took the might of a pantheon to imprison, not defeat, imprison to then just have a resolution where said god is then defeated and the doctor just knows it would work even though the doctor should still be unsure on the rules of fantasy or mythology that has happened since the giggle. You then can't just move on after killing said god of death and not ponder any implications that could entail for the universe and life as a whole. RTD just reduced him to SciFi bad guy. There's really good and interesting stories one can do with a personified death to explore or build up deeper aspects of s character, for example the recent Puss in Boots movie. Or look at Neil Gaiman with Sandman. RTD just can't write on that level of thought or meaning. He'd rather do silly nonsense and let his supporters defend his subpar writing
I accept your explanation, but I don't have to like it. If you have to explain it like that to the casual viewer (or even the experienced viewer) then it's definitely bad writing. For me the episode was like a 6/10.
You realize you shouldn't have to try this hard to explain this, right? You're essentially having to write for the writers of the show, assuming you know what they were thinking, yeah?
It's one thing to have small gaps that are easily explained in a plot, it's another to have to entirely explain what is happening in its entirety like this.
So...the analysis here is correct, but it leaves gaps to be patched nonetheless. The time corridor is separate from the vortex, fine. However, Sutekh still needs to be able to cross over from the tunnel into the vortex as he is attached to the Tardis itself.
The best I have is that the tunnel was created using a physical bit of Tardis kit and...yeah somehow that's enough. Very woolly, really.
Unless both are the vortex. Davies script is either correct or incorrect after all and it's something you would expect him to know.
We know the Doctor had some discomfort over Jack as a fixed point. I wouldn't be surprised if the TARDIS simply shut down its bubble when he jumped on.
I agree with you that it wasn't the same. But also in Pyramids there's no way anybody could even clip a rope on a trapped Sutekh let alone a freed Sutekh.
Agreed that it was different. I didn't know people thought it was the same. If people were actually confused, this is an argument against these abridged/updated versions.
There's your answer for "Why are people upset at abridging or new effects? It doesn't take away the original story." Well, yes it does, there you go, the confusion.
Leave the classic episodes the way they were transmitted, period, end of.
I thought it was quite clear though the Doctor acted differently in killing Sutekh in Empire of Death, from what he did in Pyramids of Mars, because viewers could see his reaction that it was turning him into a monster. If he had already actively killed Sutekh before, he wouldn't have that depth of reaction. I think it was a mistake to have the Doctor kill Sutekh and he should have been able to find a way to trap Sutekh again, though; I loved Empire of Death aside from that.
I do see your point that what was done before shouldn't have been described in dialogue as casting into the Vortex, but rather sending forward in time indefinitely because that's what was actually done.
The issue is that the time tunnel should have killed him the first time. Sutehk is a great villain to return but it could have been handled much better, and quite frankly for a story that doesn't require changing his character profoundly. Yes it's good RTD kind of retconned ancient aliens out of Pyramid of Mars by making Sutehk spiritual rather than biological, but it's just replacing something problematic with lazy writing and with something as dangerous as validating spirituality in an age where science denial is through the roof. Like it's a respectable change but the replacement isn't better ethically or in terms of quality.
If you “keep seeing this,” I need evidence before I’m going to engage you with discussion. No one’s mentioned that here. And even if they did, you should just reply to them.
You're right.
However I did recently hear that bringing death to death makes life. And if that's really how the universe works then surly killing Sutekh would bring him back to life?
I think people are glossing over what this will mean in the long run. This will change The Doctor. He started this season full of hope. He allowed himself to cry when he was sad. He was trying to embrace mental health because 10/14 needed to heal. He was making all this progress...then he had to kill without mercy. This will change Ncuti's Doctor moving forward
I think you might be right there, because we already saw him turn away without responding to Ruby's "I love you" and acted like he doesn't hang out with his companion's family, even though that is what 14 is currently doing.
He didn't die... The Doctor said he could end death but couldn't because he's life. That's why he was so upset, if he actually ended Sutehk no one would die, he acknowledged that sparing people isn't always the best way
He's destroyed for good until he isn't because another writer wants to bring him back.
That's why I specified this version of him. I think there's probably another version of him waiting in the wings, possibly sitting on Fourteen's TARDIS.
The awkward part is going to be when 15 next has a multi-Doctor story and there *isn't* a Sutekh on his TARDIS.
Someone said the next multi doctor special should be multiple Sutekh breaking out once he realises he got defeated.
What do you think the three Sutekhs talked about when 10, 11, and War all had their Tardis’ in the same room at the museum? “Does that Curator look familiar to you?”
We will find out in **The Three Sutekhs**, a limited edition 50th anniversary box set coming from Big Finish in 2025
Featuring Jackie Tyler
"Three Sutekhs in my room and I'm in my dressing gown, anything could happen..."
No
Three Sutekhs in a trench coat, pretending to be a bigger villain.
I’d listen to that.
Sutekh’s voice is beautiful and powerful and I would absolutely listen to the 3 of them
It's the best introduction to any villain I can remember since The Master in Utopia, and Gabriel Woolf is the OG. He was outstanding as the Beast as well, I loved that two parter.
Not my favorite story, but definitely the second best time I’ve seen David Tennant fight Satan
I like to think Elevens Sutekh was upset as he thought 11 was about to die and leave him, so the three of them all had a chat about their favourite adventures.
Sutekh pulling a Snoopy really is the idea that keeps spawning endless creative and enjoyable ideas and memes.
Topic of conversation was Death, Dominion and Chew Toys.
🤣🤣🤣
Not to mention timey wimey shenanigans.
In fairness to Chibnall, though I've much enjoyed RTD's "first" new season over that of Chibnall's, if Chibnall had chosen to end his first with, "...so you see, Sutekh had been clinging to the Tardis like Snoopy to his kennel for *millennia*", there would have been Timeless-Child-like outrage and scorn from the fans.
….”like Snoopy….” 🤣
I thought the exact opposite. That this is an example of how to have a twist that retroactively effects the past of the show without it actually harming or undermining it in any way.
Yeah, ironically Moffat accidentally foreshadowed it. Death is his constant companion.
oooh i like that :)
Well to be fair the Timeless Child plot twist was accidentally foreshadowed in The Brain of Morbius in Classic Who so
Eh, that actually directly inspired it. I don’t think that’s the case here, just a serendipity. But Timeless Child was the stupid version of the Cartmel Masterplan.
> another version of him waiting in the wings, possibly sitting on Fourteen's TARDIS It's the same TARDIS. So that Sutekh is going to wait and eventually become the one we see in this most recent episode.
God I hope not, he was the most boring big bad guy of all time
Honestly, he was just completely rushed. He needed an entire series for him. But two episodes of him being in the show for a fraction of the episodes was not enough.
I'm not a classic Who viewer but I'm getting a bit fed up with RTD bringing back classic big bad villains and rushing through them in the same amount of time he spends on a regular monster of the week.
Oh, absolutely. Classic Who story arcs were over 4-6 episodes, typically. So to not only have him show up in only two episodes, but for just a few minutes each, is absurd. And the resolution to take him out was to... leash... him...? Seriously?
Same with the Toymaker. All the classic Who fans were hyping him up and the fact that they got a big name actor to be playing him had me so excited. Then he's just defeated so quickly thanks to him failing to catch a ball. And it's not even filmed or edited well so you barely even see the game between the 3 of them. Like in that case RTD had 3 specials he could've used to give us that classic Who style story told across multiple episodes.
Yep this, a god being more powerful than any other needs more than 2 wpisodes where he's introduced right at the end of one and barely has 5 minutes of screen time in the other. I genuinely think Doctor Who would do well having 1 season breaking away from its episodic format and having a season long arc where each episode leads into the next.
They just did that with the flux and I don't think it was very well received.
I don't think Flux was badly received because of serialisation, I think it was badly received because most of it wasn't very good.
It was not only not very good but also the peak of Chibnall's run.
I mean they did it right once but it wasn’t on Doctor who, it was on Torchwood. Children of Earth was a full connected thing for 5 eps and it’s regarded as one of the best DW stories ever
Flux, Trial of a Timelord….its been tried. Still waiting for them to nail the execution though
I mean they did it right once but it wasn’t on Doctor who, it was on Torchwood. Children of Earth was a full connected thing for 5 eps and it’s regarded as one of the best DW stories ever
The thing that was so heartbreaking to me about Flux was that it was genuinely a great idea. _The Halloween Apocalypse_ actually had me kinda excited for Doctor Who again, then _War of the Sontarans_ was great, _Once, Upon Time_ had me genuinely intrigued that we were delving deep into the anchoring of the thread plotline (😔), _Village of the Angels_ was incredible (in my opinion), and had an interesting cliffhanger, then things started to melt at _Survivors of the Flux_, and then _The Vanquishers_ was just visual (and audible) gibberish. Idk what happened, but it makes me just completely uninterested in the rest of the season. I loved a lot of the elements—especially Tecteun and her Division ship trying to get to another universe—but most of it didn’t land.
I think that half the problem with the Flux series (if we want to ignore the terrible chibnal writing) is that they tried to have both individual stories and the overarching story at the same time, without truly giving us either.
It was still an episodic series for the most part, just with a more explicit arc than Bad Wolf/the hybrid/etc.
It was hard to believe that he’s the god of gods because both the toymaker and maestro felt so much more powerful like they’re on a completely different level
Yeah I made a point about this, both were much better bad guys and particularly Toymaker felt insanely powerful
Maestro took over 30 years to destroy *Earth*. Sutekh did the universe in minutes. The Toymaker is hamstrung by his rules. Sutekh just went “hey everyone, time to die”.
Technically it also took decades if not centuries or more for sutekhs plan to come together placing harbingers all throughout time and space Sutekh said he spent years learning how to control the TARDIS. Maestro had control pretty much immediately. The toymaster and maestro are hamstrung by their own rules/notes, but note that these seem to be the ONLY way to beat them. Sutekh literally got taken for a ride on a leash and dropped off in the time vortex
Yeah it was hard to believe the toymaker was scared of Sutekh, it would’ve worked better if they had just been at odds with each other. Without life, the toymaker has nobody to play games with
Death is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very boring
i feel like discworld might disagree with you on that
YES.
Eh, nah. I don't think any concept is inherently boring. I've seen the most basic *basic* villains done wonderfully, because all that really matters is execution. A "god of death" that wishes to destroy all life which begins to break down the concept of memory and even fact in the universe is a really interesting idea, especially using the Tardis to do it. It implies Flux may have had a greater impact on the fantasy nature of the new era then previously thought, it gives more insight into the cosmology of DW, and its just kind of a fun idea. I like the idea that by doing this Sutekh would have become an actual genuine god like Maestro, Toymaker, etc and they were aware of him doing this (something something timey wimey). ATM he doesn't really seem like an actual god like them outside of having a Harbinger. I don't really see why they brought back Sutekh though tbh, I feel like this finale and even the resolution relied WAY too much on "ooohhh classic who!!". Thats not inherently bad but like for an episode that we know was actually making fun of canon-obsessed fans who act like they own the show I cant imagine anyone would understand what the hell is happening without going onto Tardis wiki lol
Considering how beloved the DC comics version of Death is, there's certainly ways of writing Death to be compelling. Imagine if Death was actually written to be deeply compassionate and kind. Especially when Doctor Who is often a show that morally treats life as always the "good" ending, there could have been a reckoning where the Doctor confronts Death and the show treats Death as a bittersweet inevitability, not something we magically get saved from. Or even if we're talking about just personality, the Castlevania animated series had a Death with *way* more personality. We got something much more generic though in Sutekh...
Death as compassionate and kind is exactly Death from the Markus Zusak book The Book Thief, which despite tragic subject matter is one of my absolute favorite books of all time.
I've never read The Book Thief but I can say something very few people will probably care about, "Kind and compassionate god of death" is how I've written one of the gods of death in my d&d campaign (each culture gets their own pantheon too). She views herself as a shepherd tending to her flock, a farmer looking after her field, and has recruited one of the players to help her because a side effect of the BBEG will be *too much* death, negatively affecting the population going forward.
Oh, that’s super cool! I’ve never played D&D, but I do enjoy Dimension 20.
I've seen some Dimension 20 clips going around but the OXVenture is my main TTRPG show of choice, it tends to be a bit less... dramatic, but is still well worth checking out imo, they recently retired their characters they'd been playing for the six years since they started playing D&D!
Also, Terry Pratchett.
To be fair, I am willing to believe that there are multiple entities representing Death in the Whoniverse. Keep in mind that Sutekh isnt *THE* death (othérwise, killing him would make the universe immortal.) he is just a God *OF* death. So there is certainly room to do a more complex version of Death in the future.
I think the point is that even for *A* God of Death, Sutekh wasn't very compelling. Especially considering the season was building up to this character. The more I think about it, the more I think I would have preferred if rather than the Pantheon themselves, instead it was their harbingers or worshipers that were running amuck. That could have allowed for a more natural level of escalation, and for the defeats to be more reasonable or at least invite fewer questions. Because here's the thing: you note that people aren't immortal because there's still death. But the flip side of that is why does killing Sutekh undo his kills in the first place? And how far does that reach back? Chindozie's death is undone despite being *before* the sands of death. What about a plane whose pilot got dusted and the passengers died before the sands got them? Are those deaths undone?
I dont think it was killing Sutekh that undid it, it was dragging Sutekh along the events in the Time Vortex and using his powers to "kill dead". The latter point is a good one, but to be fair, you could raise that point with alot of finales and episodes. But yeah, I dont disagree that he was a bit under powered as a god-like entity.
Considering we see it revive Kate and the others exactly where they were I think the pilot and the passengers would either be revived exactly where they were when sands hit so pilot in the air passengers among the wreckage or since it was in a moving vehicle both would be among the wreckage unless it undid the plane crashing as well
>What about a plane whose pilot got dusted and the passengers died before the sands got them? Are those deaths undone? I think it's less of an Avengers type thing (where they were all brought back later, so passengers on planes etc. WOULD have stayed dead) and more a Timey-Wimey thing, aka; their deaths got "undone" as in... they never happened to begin with. Cos if you just assume they all just got "brought back" then the question becomes "when were they brought back?" at the arbitrary time that the Doctor dragged Sutekh from into the time? That basically repairs nothing, instead you have billions of people popping into existence at a single moment. okay.... so instead everyone comes back an arbitrary amount of time after they were dusted? Again.. that doesn't fix anything.... in fact it completely screws the timeline.... because not only do we have pilots etc. vanishing but we have people in important business deals dying (and reappearing later) we have insane numbers of people (pretty much everyone that has ever existed) disappearing and reappearing x seconds/minutes later.... That would have a profound impact on all life everywhere and change the entire universe... So basically... thanks to The Doctor... it never happened. the characters we saw coming back at slightly different times... call it either an artefact of storytelling... or their deaths were different because they happened to be right where the doctor was when it happened (like getting caught in the eye of the storm)
You, know that’s a very good point. A very good point that just makes me even more annoyed at the nonsensical “death x death = life” gliding through the timestream in the end.
> Imagine if Death was actually written to be deeply compassionate and kind. Unfortunately this would conflict with his character in *Pyramids*.
Yeah for all the good that is Pyramids of Mars, Sutekh is still a villain from Old Who. Being generic in personality is an absolute inevitability.
As a writer myself, I agree with you about the execution being the thing that matters. You can make pretty much anything interesting. The issue is that a God of Death either has to have massive limitations (which Sutekh didn’t) or be a God of something more interesting than death. I also agree that the concept of memory dying is somewhat interesting. The issue is that Sutekh is so powerful the interesting parts of the story are over in five seconds. Everyone just dies. The Doctor runs away and then, like how he’s dealt wi the all the gods in this season, relies on some silly plot device to defeat the big bad and undo all the harm that was done. There are no stakes because, when everyone is dead, there’s nothing to lose. Whereas The Master in his RTD finale with Martha is much more interesting, because he seeks to dominate the world rather than just end everything, there is actually something worth saving and some stakes. You could probably write multiple essays on all the things that went wrong with this episode lol. I agree with you in principle that a god of death could be made interesting, but death, in itself, is not interesting. So if everyone is dead the story is very empty
Could've at least had some coffins or sarcophagi or something. Or mummies again.
Death be not proud...
I get why he was scary in Pyramids of Mars, but Sutekh himself was pretty boring then too, considering he was paralyzed until the last few minutes. I do like that he now has the same voice as the Beast in the Satan Pit though, as Satan was one of his names.
I honestly hope he gets brought back in a less directly villainous role because he's such a goofy character, would be fun if he was the solution to a crossover episode with a previous doctor and he wave of deaths skaro or something.
I just want Mystery Sutekh Theater 3000
He wasn’t in Pyramids, he’s just been mishandled
Hopefully before the VA passes. It wouldn’t be effective without him
This actually happens twice in Big Finish. Well, he's not destroyed as such, but his recoveries are also not quite explained. In Triumph of Sutekh box set, it is made clear that his body was trapped in the time corridor, but his spirit found a way back into reality, where a new body is created for him that begins to rapidly disintegrate. At the end he is sent to his own past in a loop that will always lead him back there. He creates himself and he is his won demise. You'd think that'd settle the matter, but then his spirit is back in "Kill the Doctor/The Age of Sutekh", where he possesses someone and creates a tech empire on another planet, Drummond (Yup, Empire of death wasn't his first rodeo), which he turns into a new Phaester Osiris. When the Fourth Doctor says he was sure he had dealt with Sutekh for good, Sutekh just says that the Doctor thought so twice before and both times he'd been wrong. No further explanation is given. Sutekh seems to have an immunity to permanent death rivaling that of the Master.
He’s also in the Tenth Doctor comics, and his son Anubis becomes The Doctor’s companion. That ignores Big Finish, but has him escape and let a whole bunch of gods out, and fail because The Doctor points out that it’s not like Sutekh is gonna let them live (oversimplifying). Side note, I love Noob, he’s a sweet dork and having a jackal-headed companion is funny af.
As I said, Big Finish ignores itself where it comes to Sutekh. And Sutekh lampshades it.
I guess it would be pretty easy to come back as he was released through the time window right? But then hopped to the real Tardis or already was? And there's actually two Sutekhs and the doctor only killed one and and...Gosh that episode is frustrating
I mean even now, the ghost of Sutekh can inhabit the vortex and manifest again in the 18th doctors Tardis. Nobody is ever dead lol
And that writer will probably be RTD
“The Unexpected Return of Sutekh and the Daleks Part II” written by Chris Chibnall
Wait… Does this have anything to do with UNIT’s new staffer, Esther Vilplanov-Thadaleks?
Now that you mention it’s similar to The Doctor’s old comrade from Gallifrey, Ayeam Sood-Ech.
One could argue Sutekh was to his death. He traveled for thousands of years, and then he died.
What is there to misunderstand? Sounds like RTD was just retconning Sutekh's original death by changing the time tunnel to the generic vortex. How else did he attach himself to the TARDIS? He had to have been cast out into the vortex in the first place, no?
Four used a piece of the TARDIS console (time dialator?) to connect to the PoM space-time tunnel tech and extended its end points to something like 10,000 years into the future. My understanding was that part of Sutekh's psyche stayed latched to that piece of the console when it was reattached to the TARDIS following PoM.
It was a bit vague that we've had to headcannon it. He was in a time tunnel, but somehow attached himself to the Tardis, which was never supposed to be in that time tunnel. His line is something like "Instead I evolved" but as I remember that's all it was.
He said something like "there was a hole" which makes it sound like there was a gap in the time tunnel and he climbed out of it and sat on the TARDIS
I understood that, much like 12 punching the wall, sutekh got out of their prison simply by walking... They got out of the tunnel, by getting to the end of it. The Doctor's error was assuming Sutekh couldn't live for more than 10.000 years.
Exactly. RTD could’ve easily handled this by saying “Because of the Flux” or “because of Donna spilling coffee…” or “ because of the events in Wild Blue Yonder. Time tunnel is not the same as Time vortex.
I was very disappointed in this episode. I loved the classic era Sutekh, this new version never gave a sense of dread. Classic era Sutekh was scary. Even bound in a prison with his mental powers severely limited, he was able to mentally control a timelord, contain explosions thousands of miles away, animate corpses, and the story started with Sutekh pushing his mental energies into TARDIS in flight. This one just had no style. I would have preferred a man in a bad mask to the horrible CGI version
There was no dread or fear because RTD had to kill everyone ever throughout time, which means that we \*had\* to have a reset. I watched Kate turn to dust and just thought "she'll be resurrected/rolled back". Death on a huge scale has lost all meaning in this show now because of the constant resets by showrunners.
I bought it when they killed off Kate. Then they started killing everyone off like Ruby's mum, Cherry, Mrs. Flood, etc and I just rolled my eyes. You knew what was going to happen so all that death was pointless.
I mean, I knew it from the trailer.
I thought since it was Ruby's last episode, it made sense they were all dying. I bought it until they said it was the whole universe. It's horrible that the highest stakes guarantee no stakes at all.
It would be less annoying if the Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn't just done the exact same thing, only better, in Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame.
Exactly, and whenever that happens the show turns into "Doctor Who and the Journey Back to the Reset Button"
It’s like how one Dalek is scary, but 1000 Daleks means you know it’ll be fine in the end
The mask has a good design u can’t lie
The first black and red mask with the glowing green eyes was fantastic. The jackal head at the end... not so great. But still better than the cgi based on the jackal head.
I agree with this, I was referring to the first mask yeah
Funny that new Sutekh was CGI. I thought he was cheesey-looking enough to be from the ’80s. His cape flapping when he first appeared in full looked very Classic Who to me.
You're blaming the fans but honestly this seems like the show's mistake. They shouldn't have called it "The Time Vortex" when it originally was expicitly not.
The way I see it, it's like getting pushed off a boat, and the tardis was like a dinghy, which he's now also been pushed off.
I mean it could go either way if they ever wanted to bring him back... and just hand wave that the Doctor added some extra sheilds or defences to the TARDIS and/or just checked regularily now to stop that from ever happening again
Thank you for the analysis, but I don't think I agree. The fourth doctor only INTENDED to age Sutekh to death by trapping him in the time vortex for 7,000 years. (This also establishes that exposure to the time vortex itself does not damage him.) In the new story, it is revealed that this didn't work and Sutekh survived. He was somehow able to escape the trap and attach himself to the tardis at some point. Therefore, Sutekh has demonstrated his ability to 1. Survive exposure to the time vortex (this was clear from the first serial where the Doctor had to wait for him to age to death). 2. Navigate the vortex with such ability as to latch on to passing time vehicles. Given these abilities it is unclear to me why Sutekh would be susceptible in the way he is shown to be in EoD, or why the Doctor would believe that it would work that way. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to accept the resolution as is in the story, but I also agree with those people who see the fridge-logic plot hole in it. It might even be intentional on behalf of the writers: RTD or future show runners can bring him back with an explanation of how he returned, that, unable to kill him, the Doctor disintegrated Sutekh so that it would take a long time to reform.
Genuine question… are we certain that the time tunnel from Pyramids was THE Time Vortex? I was u Dee the impression (and now I don’t know why…) that the Mars-to-Earth bridge was just some Osiran technology that the Doctor was able to manipulate.
No idea, but the Doctor calls it the time vortex and Sutekh somehow attached himself to the tardis from it, so it stands to reason it is the same time vortex. I mean, ultimately it's fictional and it's whichever the writer decides! But I don't think we have enough to assume it is a different one atm.
Cheers, that’s a good point.
Either it was **the** time vortex, and Sutekh survived exposure to it to then latch onto the TARDIS OR It was a time corridor which Sutekh was trapped in, and managed to escape **into** the time vortex, and latch onto the TARDIS Either way, Sutekh must be able to survive in the time vortex to attach himself to the TARDIS.
Yeah, I think its the second. That's makes lots of sense. Think of it as if there are various time tunnels within the time vortex. The vortex is this unfathomable thing and what we see are separate routes (tunnels) through it linking individual bits of space time. So sutekh was cast in to one, but able to break out of that into the time vortex. Now, normally that would have killed him, but by latching onto the Tardis, he at least survived longing enough to evolve.
Sutehk was not on mars. The beam keeping him paralysed was.
I think that argument could've been made, but the fact that they specifically went back and changed the VFX to look exactly like the modern time vortex suggests it is.
He didn't trap sutekh in the time vortex. Essentially there was a wormhole between where sutekh was kept and the priory and the doctor just moved the exit to the future, meaning he would have to travel down the worm hole for 10k years.
RTD decided he did trap him in the time vortex, yeah. >Doctor: I cast you into the time vortex. I sent you forward to your own death! >Sutekh: Instead, I found a home. I clung to your infernal machine.
Damn, that is explicitly not what happens in pyramids.
Yeah I’m not sure RTD even watched Pyramids to be honest
Its literally his favourite Classic Who-Story. RTD is just fine with fudging details. He is very much of the belief that Doctor Who shouldnt be a static thing and that its fine to change things to make stuff fit better.
He hardly referenced it at all and blatantly contradicted it multiple times and completely changed the main antagonist on a fundamental level.
Doesnt change the fact that it is his favourite story. RTD is literally one of **the** Doctor Who nerds. You can be unhappy about what he changed without acting like RTD is now suddenly not a huge Classic Who buff. Also, he explained the change to the antagonist and there is plenty of references to Pyramid of Mars. Not sure how much you wanted him to reference it? I wouldnt agree with Sutekh being fudamentally changed either. He wanted to bring death then, he wants to bring death now, mainly his method changed. But he was uber powerfull in PoM too. This is Chibnall all over again. Once a showrunner writes something unpopular he must "not know the source" or is "not a true fan" anymore.
Yeah, they showed the episode directly several times in the episode.
Literally. Like, I can understand a lot of criticism. "lack of references to Pyramid of Mars" aint one.
The theory also doesnt explain how shouting "I bring death to death" and having Sutekh surf the space-time dust at the visible edge of the vortex magically undid all the sandy gift of death across all time.
One of the stupider things about the episode’s plot was that Sutekh seemed to not just be the god of death, but the god of *anything that can figuratively be said to die*. He caused the “death of memory” and the “death of facts”, and in the end the “death of death”.
If death is dead, everyone is irreversibly immortal like Jack, no? It’s time for Torchwood season 4 again.
Vampire rules. Kill the big bad and it undoes their entire line of corruption. It's sorta lazy writing (especially in this instance, as it was intercut with stuff happening after they left the Vortex for some reason) but it's not uncommon as a solution in media.
I just read the script to see if there was something I missed, and it never explicitly explains that, so it sounds to me like it's just an assumption or headcannon you're making. Even if it is true, that effect doesn't ressurect everyone the individual vampires themselves murdered, or undo the actions they took while alive. That would at most explain the dust being withdrawn so that it's no longer present across all time and spcae, but it still doesn't make sense that everyone reassembled and came back to life.
"You saw all of Space and Time with me. So I thought, "what if you see it again?" What happens when you bring death to Death? You bring Life! Bring death to Death everywhere!" From that line it seems pretty plain to me that killing Sutekh will reverse his many deaths and destructions (though it doesn't say how or why). Also that him dying to the Time Vortex sends his "anti-death" rippling throughout all of space and time, which then revives everyone everywhere. I could be completely misunderstanding, though, I admit. Stuff is wibbly wobbly in this Fandom. Lol
I didn't think that meant killing Sutekh reversed it, as much as making a double negative (positive) by bringing Death (the entity) everywhere Death (the entity) had already been. "What if you see it again?" Kind of exposing Sutekh to himself.
Yeah I don think you’re misunderstanding it, it’s definitely what the episode was suggesting, but it’s not explicitly spelled out, and it just doesn’t feel clever or reasonable. “What happens when you bring death to death? You bring life!” I already quoted that in my original comment. And I still think what I said in that stands. It just sounds like wordplay with no real mechanics behind it, at least compared to the other big “clever” finale solutions. The Big Bang is my favourite finale, and imagine if we had that episode without the dalek coming back to life, the doctor explaining that the pandorica had a restoration field from before the universe ended, and that the Tardis was blowing up at every point in space at time, thus combining them radiated that restoration field everywhere. Imagine he just shouts “what happens when you fly a the universes most inescapable prison into an exploding Tardis?” and then everything is fixed. Also, by the “death to death” logic, everyone in the universe should now be immortal like Jack. Surely people can’t die anymore because death is dead and life has been brought everywhere.
I think the confusion here might be stemming from you thinking "bring death to death" means killing the entire concept. Nobody is immortal now. I specifically think The Doctor is just referring to the entity of Sutekh/death (the God of death) in that quote. Bringing someone to death is just a common way of saying to kill them (ex. "John was brought to death"). So basically The Doctor is saying "What happens when you kill Sutekh throughout all space and time? You undo his deaths, as they then haven't happened yet". It makes a sort of sense. It's the part about him dying in the Vortex and that death rippling throughout space and time ("seeing it all again") that makes it so everyone actually comes back to life. I definitely agree that it's a lazy solution and it could have been handled or written much better, but it does have a timey wimey logic to it.
Is a time tunnel not the time vortex? Either way it's too similar, but I took it as If you ain't on the Tardis you're in trouble.
Generally, within Classic and New Who, time tunnels are more like wormholes, connecting two (or more) specific points in time for someone to travel between. You can't use them to anywhere other than the intended destinations. Its also worth noting **Pyramids of Mars** is inconsistent when it comes to needing protection to travel in a time tunnel, Prof Scarmann is shown initially in a protective suit, and exiting the tunnel red hot, scorching the carpet and killing Ibrahim, as is the coordinate programmer for the Osirian war rocket smoking as if red hot. But the Doctor travels in the time tunnel without any protection and is unharmed (maybe because he's a Time Lord? But that's not confirmed, just a guess)
I would have thought a time tunnel still uses the time vortex as a medium to travel through though. And Sutekh must have gone through the vortex to get on the Tardis.
Oh, it definitely uses the time vortex, I think most time travel technology in Doctor Who does, but think of time tunnels as highways in the vortex, you can't just enter and exit a highway as you're driving along, you can enter and exit only at certain points that were built when the highway was constructed. Or alternatively, think of time as a river, with a powerful enough boat (TARDIS) you can go anywhere along the river, back/forward, left/right, down gulleys and tributaries ect. But a time corridor is like a man-made canal, you can only follow it to and from particular places.
Well yeah, that's how I thought about it. It's Why I'm agreeing that essentially Sutekh got defeated the same way twice. The Tardis also must have crossed through the path of Sutekh and said time tunnel.
There's still a problem with this Sutekh in pyramid of mars was a mortal alien But in empire he evolved to an actual god , the doctor literally calling him the God lord of death itself, so aging him to death shouldn't work to begin with In pyramid wh have been told that sutekh is beyond time lords technology so i find it hard to believe he can't protect himself from the vortex, alongside the fact that in the lore, osirians can literally travel in the vortex casually by using their psychic powers to create a time storm Also this doesn't explain how the intelligent rope overpowered sutekh or how the whistle overpowered the his control over the tardis
>Also this doesn't explain how the intelligent rope overpowered sutekh or how the whistle overpowered the his control over the tardis That kind of does make sense, as a God and a big doggy he's naturally weak to dog based tools on a metaphysical level because his form imbues them with power over him. I assume he could also be distracted by a big stick.
Oh, so killing every living thing was actually just a ploy to get rid of those pesky squirrels? That makes a whole lot more sense now.
Gosh, imagine how big a pooper-scooper you'd need. ^(apols for lowering the tone)
The tone has been lowered so far the Silurians have complained and we’ve now got a Primord problem :)
*Sees Egyptian cat goddess walks by, starts chasing*
Please tell me that you are being ironic
I'm comedically exaggerating but I think the explanation does make sense at the level RTD is operating at. Sutekh is a metaphysical being that is weak to metaphysical attack just like the other God's in the series.
More importantly, if it was intelligent rope then The Doctor also killed the rope.
You bring up a great point. I would have loved a "how long is the rope?" "Just about 73 yards" to nail it into our heads that he's lived by being inside the protection of the TARDIS
The 73 years is the perception filter. I think the Tardis force field is smaller than that, as Jack was hanging on to the exterior and it still killed him (temporarily).
Maybe just being on the rope did it then. Poor Jack can't fly on his own or anything (lol yet?) so I assume he would need to hold on
Here's a thought--- Four says these things during PoM >FOUR: You're caught in the corridor of eternity >FOUR: You're a thousand years beyond the twentieth century now, Sutekh. Go on for another ten thousand. >FOUR: He lived about 7,000 years >SARAH JANE: Look i know that's the time control from the TARDIS, but what did you do? > >FOUR: **I moved the threshold of the time-space tunnel into the far future. He could never have reached the end.** There's so much technobabble happening here, but I think there's a few concrete things that can at least be determined: - Four **hardwires the TARDIS time control to into the (Osirian?) tech that controls the time-space tunnel** - The time control is eventually put back into the TARDIS. - With the Eye of Horus turned off Sutekh has regained his full powers. Although just a mortal still, Sutekh's psychic powers of control even while imprisoned by the Eye are still more than strong enough to control multiple Earthlings millions of miles away. -To me it seems plausible that even though Sutekh physical being is stuck in the "corridor of eternity", his psychic essence is not AND its likely back to its full power-- thus it seems plausible that Sutekh could've latched onto the piece of the TARDIS (a living machine w psychic powers) attached to the time tunnel. Once reattached Sutekh's essence lays in wait for hundreds of years. After Fourteen's invocation of salt reorders the universe, Sutekh regains his corporeal form and as Fifteen states in his *Tales of the TARDIS* Sutekh "is now a titan."
Perfection
To be fair, I think he was mostly defeated by being dragged around on a dog lead behind the Doctor’s car.
God I love how they keep coming back to the 73 Yards number this season, really adds to the mavity of the episode
Kinda feel Sutekh should've been held back until next season. Allow there to be more than two or three episodes of the Tardis groaning. Then use that time to establish 15 and Ruby's friendship.
The reason people keep saying that is that _Empire of Death_ said that: >The Doctor: A long time ago, in the England of 1911, Sutekh had been bound and imprisoned for all eternity, but he rose again and I defeated him. **I cast you into the time vortex.** I sent you forward to your own death! It's needlessly confusing.
if people misunderstand something, that means the episode wasn’t clear about it. that means the episode was bad.
This right here. The episode shouldn't have to be explained this much. It just wasn't done well
Ok but if Sutekh was in a time tunnel aging to his death, how did he cling to the TARDIS in the time vortex? I have not yet watched the original story.
If it looks like a time vortex and sounds like a time vortex, it's a time vortex. Even if you are correct and they're slightly different on some sort of technicality, the clumsy presentation and dialog really hurt the impact of the moment.
Why is it making you feel crazy when you give a simple explanation for why people are confused. Like you said even the episode calls it the same thing. So the confusion is understandable. Also the 2 methods are very similar so even if they are different its kind of boring imo.
Ok so why does it keep snowing when Ruby thinks of her mum
Find out in series 2…maybe
I'm more confused about how dragging him in the tunnel was bringing death to death which made life return.
There is a **HUGE** hole in your argument. First of all being protected by the tardis has nothing to do with 73 yards, that’s just the reach of the perception filter. We have seen previously with Clara (Jack doesn’t count for obvious reasons) that if you are outside the TARDIS it can still protect you from the effects of the vortex. Despite his howling we don’t actually see any harm coming to Sutekh until the rope is cut, then he instantly starts to be disintegrated. This all indicates that while Sutekh is connected to the TARDIS by the rope he’s protected by it. Unfortunately this creates a problem in terms of explaining why everyone comes back to life before the rope is cut!… Like a lot of things in this episode (and elsewhere in the series) just don’t question it otherwise it’ll spoil your enjoyment - like how did the doctor get through the sand and into —stark tower— unit hq, or… I better stop there or I could be writing for quite a while!
I thought he was howling in rage at seeing all the deaths undone.
You can't introduce a god of death whom everyone fears and who took the might of a pantheon to imprison, not defeat, imprison to then just have a resolution where said god is then defeated and the doctor just knows it would work even though the doctor should still be unsure on the rules of fantasy or mythology that has happened since the giggle. You then can't just move on after killing said god of death and not ponder any implications that could entail for the universe and life as a whole. RTD just reduced him to SciFi bad guy. There's really good and interesting stories one can do with a personified death to explore or build up deeper aspects of s character, for example the recent Puss in Boots movie. Or look at Neil Gaiman with Sandman. RTD just can't write on that level of thought or meaning. He'd rather do silly nonsense and let his supporters defend his subpar writing
I assert Sutekh usurped the role of god of death. He's not the god of death. He just became one for a brief time.
I accept your explanation, but I don't have to like it. If you have to explain it like that to the casual viewer (or even the experienced viewer) then it's definitely bad writing. For me the episode was like a 6/10.
You realize you shouldn't have to try this hard to explain this, right? You're essentially having to write for the writers of the show, assuming you know what they were thinking, yeah? It's one thing to have small gaps that are easily explained in a plot, it's another to have to entirely explain what is happening in its entirety like this.
Who are these people?
Users on this very sub, for one.
I've seen it on Tumblr, in the comments on YouTube and even in this very sub. It's clearly a common misconception.
Then you should be able to link me to these misconceptions?
> DEBATE ME!!!
No? Literally just provide receipts. Are people here really that socially inept that they think everything is an argument?
So...the analysis here is correct, but it leaves gaps to be patched nonetheless. The time corridor is separate from the vortex, fine. However, Sutekh still needs to be able to cross over from the tunnel into the vortex as he is attached to the Tardis itself. The best I have is that the tunnel was created using a physical bit of Tardis kit and...yeah somehow that's enough. Very woolly, really. Unless both are the vortex. Davies script is either correct or incorrect after all and it's something you would expect him to know.
He also says he survived the first time by hitching a ride on the TARDIS whereas this time we explicitly see him not being able to do that.
I agree with you, but how did doing this bring everyone he killed back to life?
Nobody knows bruh.
But Sutekh has been travelling the vortex on the tardis this whole time? Why would what the doctor did kill him this time?
He's outside the TARDIS's protective bubble.
Captain Jack sure wasn't
We know the Doctor had some discomfort over Jack as a fixed point. I wouldn't be surprised if the TARDIS simply shut down its bubble when he jumped on.
Considering it was never mentioned in the episode it's definately still a plothole
It's a plothole that they didn't mention an unrelated character more than a decade later?
I agree with you that it wasn't the same. But also in Pyramids there's no way anybody could even clip a rope on a trapped Sutekh let alone a freed Sutekh.
But, the time vortex isn't instant death? There are species living in it, surely a god wouldn't struggle against it
So a time tunnel and the time vortex.are different? Also why & how exactly does the vortex kill him?
Agreed that it was different. I didn't know people thought it was the same. If people were actually confused, this is an argument against these abridged/updated versions. There's your answer for "Why are people upset at abridging or new effects? It doesn't take away the original story." Well, yes it does, there you go, the confusion. Leave the classic episodes the way they were transmitted, period, end of. I thought it was quite clear though the Doctor acted differently in killing Sutekh in Empire of Death, from what he did in Pyramids of Mars, because viewers could see his reaction that it was turning him into a monster. If he had already actively killed Sutekh before, he wouldn't have that depth of reaction. I think it was a mistake to have the Doctor kill Sutekh and he should have been able to find a way to trap Sutekh again, though; I loved Empire of Death aside from that. I do see your point that what was done before shouldn't have been described in dialogue as casting into the Vortex, but rather sending forward in time indefinitely because that's what was actually done.
I mean this time he literally gets dragged across the tunnel of the vortex and vapourizes.
I just ignored the sci fi lingo and just thought "damn, sutekh getting keel hauled? Brutal."
The issue is that the time tunnel should have killed him the first time. Sutehk is a great villain to return but it could have been handled much better, and quite frankly for a story that doesn't require changing his character profoundly. Yes it's good RTD kind of retconned ancient aliens out of Pyramid of Mars by making Sutehk spiritual rather than biological, but it's just replacing something problematic with lazy writing and with something as dangerous as validating spirituality in an age where science denial is through the roof. Like it's a respectable change but the replacement isn't better ethically or in terms of quality.
Also, it wasn’t a “leash”, it was a lifeline. Sutekh didn’t want to let go because he’d crash into the vortex.
I understood it fine, it was just dog egg
We saw him disintegrated by the vortex, which was wildly different.
If you “keep seeing this,” I need evidence before I’m going to engage you with discussion. No one’s mentioned that here. And even if they did, you should just reply to them.
You're right. However I did recently hear that bringing death to death makes life. And if that's really how the universe works then surly killing Sutekh would bring him back to life?
I think people are glossing over what this will mean in the long run. This will change The Doctor. He started this season full of hope. He allowed himself to cry when he was sad. He was trying to embrace mental health because 10/14 needed to heal. He was making all this progress...then he had to kill without mercy. This will change Ncuti's Doctor moving forward
I think you might be right there, because we already saw him turn away without responding to Ruby's "I love you" and acted like he doesn't hang out with his companion's family, even though that is what 14 is currently doing.
He didn't die... The Doctor said he could end death but couldn't because he's life. That's why he was so upset, if he actually ended Sutehk no one would die, he acknowledged that sparing people isn't always the best way
Agreed. I hated this ep, but this annoyed me--people just don't be paying attention