For the 2024 Doctor Who series finale episode, Empire of Death, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies teased on the official Doctor Who podcast, “Far away on a distant planet, a kind woman is waiting with something absolutely vital.”

Who could have guessed it was something as simple as a spoon?

After most of the universe is destroyed by Sutekh’s death wave the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) requires something metal and something real for the TARDIS memory. A kind woman (Sian Clifford), the last survivor on a distant planet, supplies a spoon.

This isn’t the first time the Doctor has employed a spoon an episode of Doctor Who. The Seventh Doctor played the spoons as a musical instrument in Time and the Rani and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

Spoons were a recurring theme for Twelfth Doctor, who famously used a spoon in his fight against Robin Hood’s sword in Robot of Sherwood.

The Twelfth Doctor appeared to favour soup while under duress in Heaven Sent and Hell Bent.

In The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the Thirteenth Doctor constructed a new sonic screwdriver in a Sheffield workshop from melted spoons.

She refers to it as a sonic Swiss Army knife but it doesn’t include a knife because “only idiots carry knives.”

We look forward to the next uncommon appearance of a spoon in Doctor Who.

Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Jamie Donoughue, Empire of Death is now available on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Ireland and Disney+ everywhere else, where available. Empire of Death will also broadcast on BBC One in the UK on 22 June at 6:40pm.