The God of Death has returned, and all is lost. Or is it? Despite the fact that Sutekh can end all life in the universe, the Doctor lives to fight another day. Can he, Ruby and Mel defeat the last of the Osirans? Will they solve the mystery of Ruby’s parentage? And can they still get home in time for tea?

The answers to all of those questions and one or two more will be answered when you watch Empire of Death, but let me warn you straight away that it’s very unlikely to do any of that in a way that leaves you feeling satisfied by the resolution.

For starters, things feel entirely too rushed, and I also couldn’t escape the feeling that we had one plot contrivance after another thrown at us, in a way that defied even the often loose logic of the show by several orders of magnitude. Certain things repeatedly just felt like they were just there, lacking any clear or  sense as to why.

After a strong opening sequence, with plenty of shocking, Infinity War-style demises, this season finale really flounders, with Russell T Davies struggling to pull everything together to write himself, and the characters, out of the various corners he wrote them into.

It’s not all bad; the leads give it their all, as always, with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson, as the Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday, being featured in some genuinely emotional and affecting scenes. It all looks fantastic, Murray Gold’s score is wonderful and it’s great to have a classic Who villain back.

Yet after building up Sutekh so much, even going so far as to centre a new Tales of the TARDIS episode around the Fourth Doctor story he originally featured in (Pyramids of Mars), he ends up being a big puppy when all’s said and done.

You can expect the mystery of Ruby’s mother to be solved here too (oh, and before I forget, the Memory TARDIS from Tales of the TARDIS even gets explained), albeit in a way that still leaves more questions than answers about the circumstances, and some laughable details in the way it all plays out. Her pointing, for example, has an unintentionally funny explanation that doesn’t make any sense at all.

One particular scene, in the story’s epilogue, once more showcases Gatwa and Gibson’s chemistry and emotional range, but with the short length of the season and how little time we’ve spent seeing this particular Doctor and his companion together, it doesn’t feel particularly earned.

In my review of the season’s penultimate episode, The Legend of Ruby Sunday, I did express my concern about Russell T. Davies having form for not really being able to satisfyingly tie up a season-ending two parter, and unfortunately that feeling wasn’t unfounded.

I hate being grumpy about Who, because it’s a show that’s very important to me, and has been for decades; I can often see past, or excuse, things that turn other viewers off entirely. It’s hard, however, to shake the feeling that this is, almost certainly, the weakest season finale we’ve had for a very long time; a problem made worse by the brevity of this latest season, lots of unsatisfyingly resolved plot threads (as well as one that’s left wide open in another fourth wall break, which ends up feeling frustrating after the episode we’ve just seen; why should we care about another mystery when the one we’ve just solved was so deflating?), and how little time we’ve had to get to know our TARDIS team.

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