Shocking Revelation: Deleted Scene Unveils the Mystery Behind Doctor Who Season 14’s Ending!
Doctor Who season 14 was one of the show’s more polarizing seasons in recent memory, softly rebooting the series for new audiences while introducing a new incarnation of the Doctor. It was a controversial season for many reasons, but perhaps its biggest problem was the somewhat rushed ending that didn’t fully bring everything together as smoothly as the best Doctor Who finales are known to do. Doctor Who Season 14’s ending felt somewhat rushed, but a few recently released deleted scenes might help solve that issue.
A handful of deleted scenes from Doctor Who’s most recent two-part finale were released in celebration of “Doctor Who Day”, which marked the 61st anniversary of the show’s debut on British television in 1963. While these scenes were likely cut for time, they help explain certain areas of the story that initially left audiences confused and contributed to the overall feeling that everything was being rushed. Doctor Who season 14’s disappointing finale was an unfortunate result of a season that slightly lacked direction, but these scenes reveal there was a purpose behind everything after all.
The Whistle Comes Out Of Nowhere In Doctor Who Season 14’s Finale
The Doctor Uses A Whistle To Magically Defeat Sutekh
One of the strangest goofs in “Empire of Death” is when the Doctor uses a whistle to get Sutekh’s attention in the final showdown, but the show never explains where this whistle came from. The moment is played without much explanation, which led many audiences to correctly assume that its introduction had merely been cut from the episode. It’s not a major issue, and it doesn’t fundamentally change anything about the story, but the whistle’s inclusion has always been a jarring moment that takes the viewer out of an otherwise tense and exciting scene.
Whistle aside, that final showdown against Sutekh is one of “Empire of Death”’s more confusing sequences: Sutekh was hiding in plain sight for countless years, but once he makes his presence known, he’s immediately thrown back into the time vortex using a dog’s leash. It’s a very underwhelming moment that seemingly comes as a result of the episode’s heavy focus on exposition and frustrating misdirection, leaving little time to wrap everything up in the end.
A Deleted Scene Perfectly Explains The Fourteenth Doctor’s Whistle
This Scene Gives Some More Context To The Strange Detail
Thankfully, Doctor Who’s anniversary deleted scenes finally explain where the whistle came from in the first place – and it’s so much more interesting than anybody could have guessed. The scene was deleted from the moments after Sutekh’s defeat in “Empire of Death”, following the Doctor and Ruby in the TARDIS as they’re trying to restabilize the ship. When Ruby asks how the whistle was so effective, the Doctor reveals that he actually received it from a future version of himself.
Once again, time travel comes in handy to save the day and explain how the Doctor came so well-prepared for his fight against an enemy that he didn’t (yet) know about.
He then uses the TARDIS to pitch the whistle to the perfect frequency, before opening a panel in the ship’s floor and revealing a time-travel passage to the Memory TARDIS, where they’d been trapped earlier in the episode. He passes the whistle to his past self, knowing it will save him later. Once again, time travel comes in handy to save the day and explain how the Doctor came so well-prepared for his fight against an enemy that he didn’t (yet) know about.
Why Doctor Who’s Whistle Explanation May Have Been Deleted
The Scene Was Most Likely Cut For Time
The most likely explanation for this scene’s deletion is the episode’s already lengthy runtime. It’s one of the longest stories in the season, and there are plenty of important narrative threads that needed to be wrapped up before it could come to a conclusion. “Empire of Death” needed to resolve the mystery of Ruby’s birth, come up with a legitimate way of sending Sutekh back into the time vortex, follow the Doctor to the ends of the universe, and include Ruby’s reunion with her mother in just under an hour. This means there was barely a minute to spare.
“Empire of Death” had the foundations to be one of Doctor Who season 14’s best episodes, and this deleted scene would have resolved one of its most jarring issues. If it was truly cut for time, there are many other scenes that should have been deleted before this one – the episode is filled with exposition and takes a long time to really get going, so any of these minutes in the first act could feasibly have been cut down instead. This scene has that typical Doctor Who charm that audiences come to the show for, and its absence was certainly felt.
