Doctor Who Season 10, Episode 11: World Enough And Time

Wow! Now THAT was an episode! Holy Christ!

This week on Doctor Who, it's the penultimate episode of Season 10, and man, what a story it was. I have no idea how Moffat's gonna write himself out of this corner!

We're now just one episode away from the end of Peter Capaldi's run on the show. I have to say, I wasn't a huge fan of him when he first started, because his "stern, grumpy" Doctor was quite a jolt after the friendly Tenth and often goofy Eleventh. 

But Capaldi softened quite as he grew into the role, and I'll honestly miss him. That seems to be the pattern I experience every time a new actor takes over the role of the Doctor: Shock, Dislike, Gradual Acceptance, Enjoyment and then Sadness.

With the exception of the three part Monks misfire, Season 10 of the series has been a vast improvement. The plots have been simpler, the concepts more grounded, and the writing more focused. I guess showrunner Steven Moffat was saving his best for last.

This season also benefited greatly from the addition of Pearl Mackie as the Doctor's new companion Bill Potts. So far she's been a shot in the arm, and just what the series needed. I wouldn't mind seeing her stick around for a couple more seasons, but after the events of this episode... I don't know if that's possible.

Season 10 also saw the addition of Matt Lucas as Nardole, the Doctor's comic relief companion. I like Nardole quite a bit, but it's obvious the writers have absolutely no idea what to do with him. He spent the beginning of the season constantly reminding the Doctor of his oath to guard the mysterious Vault. Unfortunately once that storyline was resolved, he's spent the rest of the season literally standing around in the background, like a glorified extra. Hopefully if he sticks around for Season 11, they'll think of something for him to do.

I was glad to see the return of the original 1966 Mondasian Cybermen in this episode. For my money, they were the creepiest versions ever, as they were extremely disturbing and unsettling.

I feel like the show's never really taken advantage of the whole "body horror" concept of the Cybermen. In each subsequent appearance, the Cybermen became more and more robot-like, as if the writers forgot there were supposed to be chopped-up people inside their cybernetic suits. By the time they appeared in the Modern Series, they were pretty much just Daleks in Iron Man armor. Luckily this episode takes them back to their horrific roots.

And now a word or ten about spoilers. Back in the 1982 Doctor Who story Earthshock, the BBC went to great lengths to conceal the fact that the Cybermen were the big bad in Episode 1. Of course that was much easier in those days, since newspapers and TV Guides were the closest thing to social media back then. The point is, when the Cybermen appeared at the end of that episode, all of Great Britain uttered a huge gasp of surprise. Fans still talk about that ending to this day!

Cut to 2017. The BBC gleefully announced that the original Mondasian Cybermen would appear on the show months before Season 10 even aired. Same with the appearance of both Michelle Gomez as Missy and John Simm the Master. And of course they trumpeted the fact that Peter Capaldi would be leaving the show and regenerate sometime during the Christmas Special.

Holy crap, is there anything left that they didn't tell us?

OK, I get that there's a lot of crap out there that's demanding the attention of the viewers, so it's necessary to hype the show and get people interested in watching. But surely there's a way to entice them WITHOUT publishing the goddamned scripts twelve months before they air. Jesus Christ, the BBC even released a freakin' POSTER for this episode, featuring both versions of the Master on it! I miss the days when the Cybermen could unexpectedly appear and knock the audience out of their chairs in utter surprise.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
We begin on a desolate, snowy planet (possibly Mondas?), as the TARDIS materializes on the surface. A disheveled-looking Doctor staggers out, collapses to his knees and begins glowing gold with regeneration energy as he screams "Noooooo!" Cue opening credits.

Apparently the cold open was actually a flash forward to the final episode of the season (or beyond), as we cut to a massive cylindrical spaceship, four hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide. As the camera flies past it, we see various levels of the ship through the windows. The lower levels contain industrial-looking cities, while the higher levels are filled with Earth-type environments— mountains, plains, etc. The ship is perched in front of a massive black hole, and it's reversing engines in a desperate attempt to escape its gravitational field.

The TARDIS materializes on the bridge of the ship, and Missy, Bill and Nardole exit. This is a "test run" for Missy, to see if she really can be a good girl and stop being evil. The Doctor hangs back inside the TARDIS, monitoring her progress.

Missy announces to the empty bridge that she and her "pets" are responding to the ship's distress call. A jittery blue skinned alien named Jorj appears, indicating that "the ones below" have detected a human and are on their way up from the bottom of the ship. He demands to know which of the three is human, and Bill sheepishly admits she's the only one. Jorj apologizes in advance, saying he has to kill her in order to prevent "the ones below" from entering the bridge.

The Doctor sees what's going on and flies out of the TARDIS, trying to reason with Jorj. It doesn't work, and he fires his raygun at Bill, blasting a huge smoldering hole clean through her body! She looks down at her chest for a few seconds for effect, then falls over.

Cut to a flashback of the Doctor explaining to Bill that he wants to give Missy a chance to reform. He tries to talk her into accompanying Missy on a mission and help keep her in line. Bill refuses, saying Missy scares her. She finally agrees, but makes the Doctor promise she won't get killed. He tells her he'll try.

Back on the ship, a group of mummy-like figures exit the elevators and collect Bill, who's somehow not quite dead. The figures assure the Doctor that she'll be "repaired," but refuse to let him come along. Before they take her away, he implants a message in her subconscious: "Wait for me."

Nardole scans the ship and says the bottom levels are teeming with life forms. Jorj says that's impossible, as the ship was just launched and only has a skeleton crew of fifty. The Doctor says the enormous population below are actually the descendants of the crew. 

The Doctor explains that the massive gravity of the black hole is actually distorting time itself. Time's moving incredibly slowly at the top of the ship, which is nearer the black hole. Four hundred miles away at the bottom of the ship, time's moving normally. Because of this, two days have passed on the bridge since the ship was launched, while centuries have gone by on the lower decks.

Bill wakes up in a hospital ward at the bottom of the ship, and sees a cybernetic chest plate has been grafted onto her body. This doesn't seem to concern her all that much, as she gets up and takes a walk. She wanders into a ward filled with patients whose faces are completely covered in gauze masks. One of them taps out the word "PAIN" over and over and over on an electronic vocal device, which may be the creepiest thing I've ever seen on this show. Bill looks out the window of the ward and sees a decayed city, under a vast metal ceiling with "1065" painted on it. Apparently this is the level she's on.

Bill hears footsteps and hides behind a curtain. A nurse enters, along with Zathras from Babylon 5, er, I mean the odd-looking Mr. Razor. He notices Bill hiding, and after the nurse leaves, tells her to follow him.

He takes her to his apartment, where he shows her a live video feed of the Doctor and the others on the bridge. Bill notes that they appear frozen, and Mr. Razor explains the ship's time differential to her. He says she's been in the hospital ward for months, while only seconds have passed for the Doctor on the bridge.

Bill apparently decides to share Mr. Razor's flat, living with him for over a year (!). They pass the time by watching the Doctor, Missy and Nardole on the monitor as they slowly approach the elevator. 

Bill asks Razor about the creepy patients in the ward. He says that over the centuries, the engines have polluted the atmosphere at the bottom of the ship, causing the inhabitants to sicken and die. The hospital then began altering the population to help them survive the toxic environment. All this is in preparation for Project Exodus, an expedition to the top of the ship. When Bill asks why she can't simply take an elevator to reunite with the Doctor, Razor says her cybernetic heart will only work within the confines of the hospital (?).

Eventually the Doctor and the others enter the elevator and start on their way down. Bill asks Razor to take her to  meet the Doctor when he arrives. He agrees, but then betrays her by taking her to an operating room, where she's captured by a group of cybernetically enhanced patients. The Surgeon appears, holding an elaborate headpiece. He tells her the device won't remove the pain caused by the cybernetics, but will make her not care about it.

The Doctor & Co. arrive at the bottom of the ship. The Doctor and Nardole look for Bill, while Missy stays behind to hack into the computer and gather intel. Razor enters the control room and confronts Missy, saying it took him a while to figure out who she really was. He says she's been on the ship before, and that the Doctor will never forgive her for what she did to Bill. Missy has no idea who Razor is or what he's talking about.

The Doctor and Nardole wander into the operating room, where they see a figure in the shadows. It clomps toward them, and the Doctor sees it's an original model Mondasian Cyberman.

Missy calls up a file and sees that the ship isn't from Earth as they thought, but from Mondas. Razor then whips off the mask he's been wearing for years, revealing he's the Harold Saxon incarnation of The Master— the one who preceded Missy.

The Doctor tells the Cyberman he's looking for Bill Potts. The Cybermen stops and says, "I AM BILL POTTS!" in its horrible singsong electronic voice. The two Masters then enter the room and stand next to Cyber Bill. The Master welcomes the Doctor to the Genesis Of The Cybermen. Inside the Cyberman's mask, we see Bill shed a single tear.

Thoughts:

• The cold open might have been more effective if we hadn't just had a "fake regeneration" scene a couple weeks ago in The Lie Of The Land. 

Yes, I realize that Peter Capaldi's leaving the show and the Doctor's due to actually regenerate soon, but I can't help but feel this is yet another fake out. The BBC's already reported that he won't regenerate until the 2017 Christmas Special, so that doesn't bode well for it happening next week in Episode 12.

Maybe this regeneration scene is actually from the final seconds of Episode 12, and the Christmas Special will pick up right where it left off?

• Sigh... I reeeeeeeally could have done without all the lame "Doctor Who" jokes and lines at the beginning of this episode. Showrunner Steven Moffat has specialized in this joke for the past five or six seasons, but he really went overboard with it this week!

For several years now I've been saying that every time Moffat makes a "Doctor who?" joke on the show, he owes me $20. Congratulations, dude! You just paid off one of my credit card bills!

What bothers me most about all this is the fact that the general public really does think the character's name is "Doctor Who." It's been a personal crusade of mine the past couple of decades to educate people that he's just called "The Doctor." No "Who" required, thanks. And then Moffat goes and writes an entire scene implying that's the Doctor's name after all. Feh.

I can understand why the public's confused about the Doctor's name though. After all, the show's called "Doctor Who," so it's only natural to assume that's the character's name as well. Plus he's actually been referred to as "Doctor Who" numerous times in the show's history, both in the stories themselves, as well as in the credits.

Back in The Highlanders, the Second Doctor called himself "Doktor von Wer" (German for "Doctor Who"), and in The Underwater Menace he signed his name "Dr. W." And the Third Doctor drove around in a car with a "WHO" personalized license plate. Why would he have that if it wasn't his name?

So the "Doctor Who"name situation isn't without precedent. But having Missy try to convince Bill that the Doctor's name is Who is a little too meta for my tastes, and brought the episode to a screeching halt. 

• When Bill says the Doctor considers her a friend, Missy's appalled, saying, "Ew, Doctor! Think of the age gap." She then tells him that "Time Lords are friends with each other, dear. Everything else is cradle snatching."

This brings up an issue the show rarely examines: the fact that even a hundred year old human is a child compared to the extremely long-lived Doctor. This was an especially seamy situation during the early days of the Modern Series, when the then-thousand year old Doctor fell in love with the nineteen year old Rose Tyler. Yeah, he might have looked like David Tennant, but he was several centuries old. What the hell would he possibly have to talk about with an air-headed teen?

• This isn't the first time the Doctor's found himself in a place threatened by a black hole. In 2005's The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, the Doctor and Rose landed on Krop Tor, a planet precariously balanced in orbit around a massive black hole.

• At one point Jorj suggests his ship may have been boarded by something that came out of the black hole. Missy tells him, "Nothing comes out of a black hole!"

Eh, that's not quite true, at least in the Whoniverse. Wayyyyy back in 1972's The Three Doctors, the Doctor and several of his friends traveled through a black hole to an antimatter universe, where they battled the renegade Time Lord Omega. They eventually returned to their own universe by going back through the black hole. 

Missy wasn't present during that adventure, so maybe she doesn't know it's possible to escape one.

• Missy apparently has a "sonic umbrella," which she brandishes in this episode. She's been carrying the umbrella around since her first appearance, but as near as I can tell this is the first time she's used it as a sonic (I may be wrong about that one though).

• Jorj appears to be from the same blue-skinned race as Dahh-Ren from Oxygen. Whatever their race is called, it seems to be a running joke on the show that they all have human-sounding names.

• The Doctor assumes the colony ship is from Earth, since it's filled with humans (except for Jorj). At the end of the episode, Missy discovers the ship and its inhabitants are actually from Mondas, a twin planet of Earth.

That means Mondasians must be absolutely identical to humans then, right? Jorj says the Surgeon detected Bill's "human" life signs on the bridge, and is sending up a squad of proto-Cybermen to retrieve her. If Bill was the least bit different from a Mondasian, the Surgeon wouldn't bother with her, would he?

• I'm struggling to understand how Bill could possibly survive a ten inch hole blown completely through her chest. 

And she most definitely IS somehow still alive, the episode confirms it. When Nardole states that Bill's dead, the Doctor says, "Those things are going to repair her, so clearly she isn’t." Plus the Doctor's able to implant a message into her subconscious, implying she's not quite dead yet.

Later Bill wakes up good as new with a Cyber-heart implanted in her chest. Seems like the Surgeon would have had to fix a lot of other damage while he was at it. Like replacing a good hunk of her spinal column, and probably her lungs as well.

• Although the "Ship Experiences Time At Different Rates" plot was interesting, it wreaked havoc with the plot at times. Seconds after Bill appears on the bridge, the Surgeon detects her and sends up a squad of proto-Cybermen to capture her and bring her to the hospital ward at the bottom of the ship.

But time's moving much slower on the bridge than in the hospital ward. Much, much slower. It probably took the Cybermen a couple of years to travel to the bridge and back. Does that seem right? Would the Surgeon really bother sending a crew on a mission that took that long?

• Shortly after its launch, the colony ship encountered a black hole and reversed course in a desperate attempt to back away from it. In order to do so though, twenty of the crew had to go all the way down to the engine room at the bottom of the ship, and physically push a button marked, "Reverse." Does that sound right?

Shouldn't they be able to control something major like that from the bridge at the top of the ship? If not, why have a bridge at all then? 

It's like this spaceship is a 1900s ocean liner, with a Captain who has to relay orders to a crew below decks when he wants to increase speed or turn.

That's not the only flaw in this poorly-designed colony ship. At one point Mr. Razor says, "This was a good place once, hundreds of years ago, when the settlers first came here, but this ship is old, everything is dying. Our world is rust. Our air is engine fumes."

So... there're no exhaust vents in the ship? The engine pour their fumes right into the habitat levels? That's... that's not a good design.

• The Doctor realizes that due to the time differential at the opposite ends of the ship, the team sent to the bottom to reverse engines ended up reproducing and populating the lower levels. It's now filled with thousands of their descendants.

Jorj says the team consisted of twenty crew members. Is that enough people to create a viable, genetically heathy population? Maybe that's why everyone at the bottom of the ship is so unhealthy! They're all inbreds!

• A few weeks ago in The Lie Of The Land, I noted that the Doctor was wearing a very worn and threadbare coat. I assumed it was tattered because he'd been a captive of the Monks for several months.

He must have liked the look of his scruffy jacket, because he's wearing it again in this episode!

• I don't know whether to blame Steven Moffat or actor John Simm for this, but one of them reeeeeeally liked the late Tim Choate's performance as Zathras on Babylon 5. Mr. Razor doesn't look all that much like Zathras, but his accent, broken speech patterns and even his body language are virtually identical.

Plus, Zathras' first appearance was in a time travel episode of B5, where he played an eccentric caretaker on a miles-long space station!

• I'm struggling to wrap my head around The Master's plan here. Apparently at some point in the past, he encountered the massive Mondasian colony ship and decided, "What the hell, I'll just hang out in there for a few decades." Note that he had no idea he'd ever cross paths with the Doctor there, so he's not there for revenge. Maybe he saw the whole "time differential" thing happening on the ship, and decided to stick around and observe what happened?

Also, for some reason, once he arrived on the ship he donned a weird disguise, even though it's unlikely anyone onboard would have ever looked at him and said, "Hey, you're the Master!"

When the Doctor finally arrives on the ship, the Master somehow recognizes him, even though he's never seen this particular incarnation before. I guess he probably saw him step out of the TARDIS and figured it out. Also, he somehow recognizes Missy as a future version of himself, which is even more impressive. 

Evidently he then decided to screw with the Doctor by befriending befriend Bill, hanging out with her for over a year, then betraying her and handing her over to the Surgeon for Cyber-conversion.

I could see the whole Bill thing being part of an elaborate revenge plot against the Doctor after he arrived, but I have no idea why the Master was on the ship before that.

• After Bill wakes up in the hospital ward, she sees two chronometers side by side on the wall. Both display how much time's passed on the ship since it was launched. The one on the left shows the elapsed time on the bridge. The one on the right displays how much time's passed on level 1056, where Bill is.

A few things about these chronometers...

First of all, they were obviously installed AFTER the ship was caught in the black hole. They had to be, right? There'd be no other reason to have two clocks measuring time at both ends of the ship, unless they PLANNED to get caught in the black hole!

Secondly, when Bill first sees the chronometer, two days have passed on the bridge since the ship was launched. Amazingly, 365,035 days have gone by at the bottom of the ship. Assuming Mondasian days are the same as Earth's, that means 1,000 years have elapsed at the bottom of the ship since it took off! No wonder the place is falling apart!

That means one day on the bridge equals about five hundred years below.

Bill then begins living with Mr. Razor, where they spend their days watching the Doctor move very, very slowly on the bridge. Bill looks at the chronometer again, and it now reads 365, 433, meaning it's been 398 days since she woke up in the hospital ward with her new Cyber-heart. 

Note that Mr. Razor says she was in the hospital ward for "several months" before she woke up, so it's possible she's been on the ship for two years. Somehow I got the impression she was there a lot longer than that.

• When Bill first wakes up in the hospital ward, she wanders into a wing filled with faceless patients. One of them constantly taps out the word "PAIN" on a little Speak N' Spell device.

This was an extremely creepy and unsettling scene, like something out of a nightmare. Kudos to everyone involved!

• When Bill first sees the Doctor on the bridge monitor, she asks Mr. Razor why the image is frozen. He tells her they're not frozen, but moving really, really slow. He says, "They are at top of ship. Top of ship very slow. We are at bottom. Bottom much faster. Very fast bottom."

Welllll, that's not quite true, Mr. Razor. Time IS moving very, very slowly at the top of the ship, but it's moving at normal speed (or close to it) at the bottom. Nitpicky perhaps, but there is a difference.

• Moffat uses this episode to tweak the traditional Cybermen origin a bit. Way back in 1966's The Tenth Planet, we were told that billions of years ago, the Earth and Mondas were twin worlds, orbiting around one another. Mondas was a complete duplicate of Earth, right down to the shape of its continents (which oddly enough, appeared to be upside down!). The inhabitants of Mondas were identical to humans as well.

Then at some point in the distant past, Mondas was knocked out of orbit and sailed off into deep space. As you might imagine, this was bad for the planet's environment, and the Mondasians began dying off in droves. In order to survive, they began replacing their bodies with cybernetic parts, until they were more machine than man. They removed all emotions from their minds as well, in order to "preserve their sanity."

Eventually the Mondasians developed a planetary drive system, so they could fly their world around the galaxy. They then began conquering other planets, turning the inhabitants into Cybermen (just like the Borg!).

When Russell T Davies revived the show in 2005, he must have thought the Cybermen's "twin planet" origin story was too silly for modern audiences. In Rise Of The Cybermen/The Age Of Steel, Davies reintroduced the Cybermen, but revamped their origin so they now came from a parallel universe.

Moffat's script seems to restore the Mondasian "twin planet" origin, with a few tweaks. He's dropped the "Rogue Planet That Can Be Driven Through Space" idea, as the Cybermen now originate on a four hundred mile long colony ship.

• Kudos to the makeup/costume department, for coming up with a "modern" version of the original Mondasian Cybermen.

There's no denying that the original Cybermen were very creepy, with their bandaged faces, unsettling singsong modulated voices and their normal-looking human hands.

That said, those first costumes were pretty crude by today's standards. They honestly looked like the crew raided a junkyard and glued various car and air conditioner parts to the actors. 

These new costumes do an amazing job of honoring the Cybermen's original look, while updating them for modern audiences.

• This episode also solves a minor problem I've always had with the series. Virtually every time the Doctor's encountered the Cybermen over the years, they've always been the latest, most advanced versions.

Why would that be? The Doctor's got a freakin' time machine, for corn's sake! You'd think every now and then he'd run into an older version of the Cybermen for a change.

Thankfully, this episode finally, at long last, rights this grievous oversight.

• On the bridge, the Doctor uses "Venusian Aikido" to overpower Jorj. This is a shoutout to the Third Doctor, who often used it during his run on the show.

Nardole's line about needing four arms to properly perform Venusian Aikido is a reference to Doctor Who novelizations from the 1970s. In those stories, the Doctor boasted that he was one of the few two-armed beings who'd mastered the discipline.

• At one point Mr. Razor confronts Missy, whips off his disguise and reveals he's the Master. This is in keeping with the Classic Series, in which the Master was fond of using disguises to, er, disguise himself.

• The biggest question of the episode is why the hell Missy doesn't immediately recognize the colony ship, and why she doesn't remember living on it for decades as the Master.

In the past, it's been established that when the Doctor meets a future version of himself, he'll forget about it once the episode's over. Take The Day Of The Doctor for example, in which the Eleventh Doctor teamed up with the Tenth Doctor (along with the War Doctor). 

One would think that since Ten was the earlier model, he'd remember the time he ran into Eleven, but he didn't. For some reason— call it cosmic censorship, selective memory or writer fiat— once Ten went back to his own time period, he had no memory of his encounter with his future self.  

But just the opposite's happening here. The Master is the previous version, and Missy's the current one. For some reason, Missy has absolutely no memory of ever being on the colony ship, while the Master seems to know all about her— even the fact that the Doctor's trying to de-evilize her!

So what the hell's going on here? Is it possible that this version of the Master isn't the previous one after all? What if he's the NEXT version? Maybe at some point in the future, Missy regenerates into the John Simm Master again. That would definitely explain her selective amnesia in this episode, but I doubt that's what's going on here.

The real reason why Missy doesn't remember of course is, once again, "plot contrivance." If Missy remembered being on the ship before, then everyone would have realized who Mr. Razor was the second he showed up, and Moffat couldn't have done his big reveal at the end.

Hopefully this is something that'll be cleared up in the next episode. It'll probably be written by Steven Moffat though, so don't bet on it.

• When the Doctor sees Bill's been turned into a Cyberman, Nardole says they could use the TARDIS to go back in time and rescue her. The Doctor says, "This close to a black hole, we'll never be able to pilot her accurately."

Sigh... this is yet another plot contrivance. The Doctor can pilot the TARDIS anywhere in time or space, except when it's inconvenient to the storyline

• At the end of the episode, the Master tells the Doctor he's witnessing "The Genesis Of The Cybermen."

This is obviously a not-so-subtle reference to the Tom Baker story Genesis Of The Daleks, which aired in 1975. It's the one that introduced Davros, creator of the Dalek race.

It may also be a nod to a proposed storyline called Genesis Of The Cyberman, which was written in 1981 by Doctor Who script editor Gerry Davis. For whatever reason, then-showrunner John Nathan-Turner rejected the script and it was never filmed.

• We've had multiple Doctor stories before, in which he met previous incarnations of himself. As near as I can tell though, this is the first time we've had a multiple Master episode.

• At the very end of the episode, we see a closeup of Bill inside her Cyberman headgear, as she sheds a single tear (out the wrong side of her eye). This tear then runs out the lens of her Cyberman mask.

So Moffat just explained why every model of Cybermen seen after The Tenth Planet has that "teardrop" cutout in the corner of their eyes, didn't he? It's because they're in constant pain, or remembering their humanity.

And here I thought the teardrop was to show a Cyberman had killed someone...

• This Week's Best Lines: 

Missy: (bursting from the TARDIS) "Hello! I’m Doctor Who! And these are my plucky assistants, Thing One and the Other One."
Bill: "Bill."
Nardole: "Nardole."
Missy: "We picked up your distress call and here we are to help, like awesome heroes!"

Bill: "Yeah, we’re not we’re not assistants."

Missy: "Ok, right, so what does he call you? Companions? Pets? Snacks?"
(apparently Missy's a fan of Dr. Seuss!)

Missy: (seeing Jorj) "Oh, hello, what have we got here?! You’re probably handsome, aren’t you? Congratulations on your relative symmetry."

(this line confirms the idea that Time Lords have no idea whether a particular human is attractive or not, something the Twelfth Doctor struggled with when Clara traveled with him)
Jorj: "Who are you?"

Missy: "Well, I am that mysterious adventurer in all of time and space, known only as Doctor Who, and these are my disposables Exposition and Comic Relief."

(that may be the single most meta line in the fifty-plus year history of Doctor Who)

The Doctor: "Nardole agreed."
Nardole: "No, I didn’t."
The Doctor: "You did in my head, which is good enough for me."

Bill: "So, Time Lords, bit flexible on the whole man/woman thing, then, yeah?"

The Doctor: "We are the most civilised civilisation in the universe. We’re billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes."

Bill: "But you still call yourselves Time Lords?"

The Doctor: "Yeah, shut up."

Bill: "So promise me one thing, yeah? Promise you won’t get me killed."
The Doctor: "I’m sorry. I can’t promise you that."
Bill: "Thanks!"

The Doctor: "I mean, look, you’re human, and humans are so mortal."
Bill: "Cheers!"

The Doctor: "I mean, you pop like balloons. I mean, one heart. It’s your most important organ, and you’ve no back up. It’s like a budget cut."
Bill: "You’ll try and keep me alive?"

The Doctor: "Within reason."
Bill: "Thanks, mate!"
(Moffat must have just watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey right before he wrote this scene. Also, I love the line about humans popping like balloons)

Bill: (indicating the proto-Cyberman who keeps tapping "PAIN") "What about him?"

Mr. Razor: "It’s all right. They don’t feel pain."
Bill: "I think they do."Mr. Razor: "Yes, they do."
Bill: "So why did you say they don’t?"

Mr. Razor: "It was a clever lie, but you see straight through me."Mr. Razor: "Do you want the good tea or the bad tea?"

Bill: "What’s the difference?"

Mr. Razor: "I call one good, one bad."
Bill: "Er, I’ll take the good one."Mr. Razor: "Excellent, positive attitude. Will help with the horror to come."

The Doctor: "Right, we need to find out more about this ship."
Nardole: "On it."
The Doctor: "No. Missy, you do it. Nardole, you come with me."
Nardole: "But I'm the computer guy. That's always me."
The Doctor: "Sorry, she's cleverer."
Nardole: "She's more evil."
Missy: "Same thing."
The Doctor: "It really isn't."
Missy: "Oh, it is a little bit. A little bit the same."
Missy: (to Mr. Razor) "Hello, ordinary person. Please maintain a minimum separation of three feet. I’m really trying not to kill anyone today, but it would be tremendously helpful if your major arteries were out of reach."

The Master: "Hello, Missy. I’m the Master, and I’m very worried about my future."

Missy: (to the Doctor) "This is not an exodus, is it? More of a beginning, really, isn’t it?"
CyberBill: "I waited."
The Master: "In fact, do you know what I’d call it? I’d call it a genesis."
Missy: "You’ve met the ex?"
The Master: "Specifically, the Genesis of the Cybermen."
(somehow the Master refrains from winking into the camera when he says this)

Doctor Who Season 8, Episode 12: Death In Heaven

Now that's how you close out a season! 

After a very, very uneven batch of episodes, showrunner Steven Moffat pulled out all the stops and managed to prevent Season 8 from being a total wash with this reasonably decent wrap up.

I have to admit it's taken me longer to warm up to this Doctor than the previous ones. I liked Christopher Eccleston's portrayal and was sorry to see him go after just one season. David Tennant was amazing from the moment he started, and he quickly became my all time favorite Doctor. When he announced he was leaving, I was sure no one would ever be able to replace him, but Matt Smith won me over by the end of his first episode.

Peter Capaldi though... his Doctor is colder, more distant and more alien than previous incarnations. He's a fine actor, but his portrayal is making it harder for me to actually like this version of the Doctor. It's also probably not helping that he's taken a back seat to Clara all season. Definitely a bold move, but not necessarily a good one.

Speaking of Clara, Jenna Coleman really hit it out of the park this season, as the writers, freed from all the Impossible Girl bushwah, finally figured out what to do with the character. Too bad it took them so long, and even too badder that she's probably going to be leaving the show soon, if the rumors are true.

Samuel Anderson also turned in a fine performance as Danny Pink throughout the season. It's just too bad the character was so criminally underused. Even when he did appear, he was abused by the characters as well as the writers. He was definitely much too good for Clara, who was always too busy jetting off with the Doctor to spend any time with him.

This season gave us some standout episodes, such as Mummy On The Orient Express and Flatline. But it also gave us what may go down in history as the show's worst– Kill The Moon. That episode featured a plot straight out of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, featuring jaw dropping "science" that would make Ed Wood cringe. The idea that Earth's moon is an enormous egg that hatches a giant space dragon is beyond preposterous and a definite low point for the series.

There are currently around 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who. Pity Kill The Moon isn't one of them. Unfortunately every preposterous second of it will be with us forever in glorious 1080p high definition.

I'm hopeful Capaldi will grow on me, and I'm really pulling for Clara to stay on another season or two. We'll find out at Christmas, I suppose.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
Picking up right where last week's episode left off, Clara is threatened inside the 3W corp by a Cyberman, while the Mistress (sorry, I'm having trouble calling her the Master) reveals her plan to the Doctor. She releases 91 Cybermen from St. Paul's Cathedral, who fly– yep, the Cybermen can now fly– to strategic points around the globe and detonate into clouds of "cyber spores." These spores infiltrate cemeteries and morgues and transform the dead into new Cybermen.

Meanwhile, the Nethersphere begins shutting down, and Danny's soul is transferred into his now Cyberman body. He saves Clara from a group of other Cybermen, then takes her to a nearby cemetery. Danny removes his face plate and reveals his identity to Clara, begging her to activate his emotional inhibitor chip, which will remove all his human feelings and end his pain.

Kate Stewart, daughter of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the head of UNIT, captures the Mistress as well as the Doctor (and his TARDIS) and takes them aboard a UNIT aircraft. Once there, she informs the Doctor that due to the current crisis, he's been made President Of Earth (!). The Mistress escapes as a horde of Cybermen attack. Kate is sucked out of the plane seconds before it's destroyed. The Doctor plummets to Earth but manages to catch up with the falling TARDIS. 

He materializes in the same cemetery where Clara and Cyber Danny just happen to be (thanks to the TARDIS' plot relevancy circuit). The Mistress joins them and reveals her incredibly convoluted plan to the Doctor, and gives him full control of the entire Cyber Army. Clara activates Danny's emotional inhibitor, but his love for her is so strong it overrides his programming and he refuses to harm her. The Doctor tosses Danny the control bracelet, which gives him command of the Cyber Army. Danny and the Army fly into the sky and detonate themselves, which destroys the clouds that would have transformed the entire world into Cybermen.

The Doctor is then about to destroy the Mistress. Before he can, she's vaporized by a lone Cyberman, who turns out to be the Doctor's old friend the Brigadier. He also saved his daughter Kate as she fell from the UNIT plane. The Cyber Brigadier then flies off into the sky, his fate unknown.

A few days later, the Doctor and Clara meet in a cafe and lie to one another before going their separate ways.

Thoughts:
• In the pre-credits scene, Clara orders an advancing Cyberman to stand down by telling it that she's the Doctor.

For a minute I actually half believed her. I wouldn't put it past Moffat to pull something like that out of his ass. It's got that "insane idea that can't possibly work but sounds really cool and shocking" aura about it that's endemic of most of his concepts. Remember, this is the man who turned Amy and Rory's daughter into River Song, so the idea of Clara somehow being a future version of the Doctor wouldn't be all that farfetched. And it would have neatly explained the whole "Doctor Clara" motif that's been going on all season.

In fact, right after her outlandish statement, they even listed Jenna Coleman's name before Peter Capaldi's in the opening credits, just to mess with us! They also flashed a brief image of her eyes instead of Capaldi's in the credits as well!

• When Clara's trying to convince the Cybermen that she's really the Doctor, she gives them a pretty impressive and detailed rundown of his history. They're still not quite convinced, so she says, "How about my name?"

I get that she was bluffing here, but what if they'd said, "OK, fine. What's yer name then?" What would she have told them? She doesn't know his real name. Or does she? I'm really foggy as to whether Clara's "Impossible Girl" history and all the stuff from The Name Of The Doctor really happened or not.

And if she somehow did know the Doctor's name, isn't the universe supposed to explode or something if anyone ever says it aloud? Or was that retconned out of existence last season as well?

• When UNIT first shows up, the Cybermen scoff, saying they're invulnerable to Earthly weapons. Kate Stewart says don't be too sure, because UNIT's upgraded their weaponry. As proof, she throws down an old school Cyberman head and says, "You left this behind on one of your previous attempts." 

The head is the same model and design of the Cybermen who invaded Earth way back in the 1969 episode The Invasion. That was also the first time we saw Kate's father in the rank of Brigadier.

• Kate Stewart tells the Doctor that he's now the President Of Earth. Apparently in the event of an alien incursion an Earth president is inducted with complete authority over every nation state, an idea that was we're supposed to believe was agreed upon unanimously by the leader of every country. 

Yeah, that's never gonna happen. Can you imagine North Korea or Iran agreeing to something like that? Or the U.S. for that matter? No leader would ever agree to such a thing.

• The last time we saw UNIT scientist Osgood, she was sporting a long, striped scarf. She continues the Doctor groupie thing in this episode, as she's now wearing shoes similar to the Tenth Doctor's, and a bow tie, because "bow ties are cool."

Pity the Mistress killed her off. She'd have made a good companion for the Doctor. I was looking forward to the next time we saw her, when she'd no doubt have been wearing a red-lined Crombie coat.

On the other hand, she pretty much asked for her death. You can't blame a shark for eating you when you stick your head in its mouth.

• So the Cybermen can fly now. That's new, and pretty darned cool. I can't believe no one ever thought of before.

• Inside the Nethersphere, Danny watches from a balcony as it slowly shuts down. He's standing next to the Afghan kid that he accidentally killed when he was a soldier.

So I guess kid must have finally warmed up to him. In the previous episode he was terrified of Danny and ran from him (and rightly so).

By the way, what happened to Danny potentially "deleting" himself from the Nethersphere? Last episode ended on a cliffhanger with him about to push the delete button on his iPad, and this episode the entire thing appears to have been completely forgotten.

• Danny's soul find its way back to his body, which has now been transformed into a Cyberman. His body was being housed in the Chaplet Funeral Home. I'm assuming that's a reference to Dodo Chaplet, one of the First Doctor's companions?

• So let me see if I understand the Mistress' plan. She's been manipulating events for quite some time now to guarantee that the Doctor and Clara end up together. She was the "shop girl" who gave Clara the Doctor's number last season in The Bells Of Saint John, and she also put the advert in the newspaper a few weeks ago in Deep Breath. 

So why's the Mistress so hot for Clara and not Rose, Martha, Donna or Amy? Good question. 

Anyway, once the Doctor and Clara are together and have become good friends, the Mistress orchestrates this whole incredibly complicated Nethersphere plan to trap the souls of the dead so she can download them into Cyberman bodies. She does this in order to rule the world, right? Wrong. 

No, the sole point of this entire exercise was to make Clara so angry that she'd be willing to commit murder and kill her. And for the Doctor to then "save" Clara by killing the Mistress himself. Which will prove that the Doctor's no better than she is, and that they're both cut from the same cloth.

That's one hell of a long way to go for such a small reward. Couldn't she just short-sheet his bed, or ring his doorbell and run instead?

I would also not be surprised to find out that Missy was the driver of the truck that killed Danny, as she knew his death would cause the Doctor and Clara to come a'running to 3W.

• The mechanics of the Cybermen part of the plot are still a bit vague. The Mistress has been collecting souls inside the Nethersphere for years, and possibly decades (because time travel, I guess?), so they can be downloaded into Cybermen bodies. 

The 91 Cybermen housed inside St. Paul's Cathedral fly into the sky and explode, releasing clouds of "spores," which I assume must have been some kind of nanotechnology. These spores then fall to the ground in the rain and soak into the Earth, where they somehow contact dead human tissue (through airtight coffins, yet) and transform the corpses into fresh Cybermen. That part I understand. Sort of.

What I don't get is how are all the souls ending up in the proper bodies? Danny Pink's soul correctly finds and inhabits his. Same with the Brigadier. So does every soul go to the right body? Are the souls naturally drawn to their old shells?

What about the souls of people whose bodies were cremated, which was a big deal last week? Do they not get a new body? Do they have to stay in the Nethersphere or do they just dissipate and are lost forever? 

Or better yet, what about the bodies we see rising from the cemetery? Some of them have got to be little more than dust by now. What exactly are the Cyber spores reacting with there?

Oh, and once that's all done, there's also a second cloud that'll rain down and turn the living into Cybermen as well. 

I think that's what all's happening here, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Such are Steven Moffat's plots.

• I have mixed feelings about Michelle Gomez as the Mistress. She's a fine actress and she dives right into the part, but I thought she was a bit too over the top here. She didn't just chew the scenery, she devoured it. The director really needed to tell her to dial it down a notch or twelve.

I still feel like she's the Master in name only. But then I felt the same way about John Simm's potrayal a few seasons back as well. I'm not a fan of the modern "insane" Master. It's like they're trying to make this new psychotic, cackling version of the character the Joker to the Doctor's Batman.

I much prefer the old school "Bond villain" Master, who was cold and calculating but mannered and polite. A Master who's simply the moral opposite of the Doctor. A Master who sits quietly scheming while incarcerated seems much more dangerous and chilling than one who sticks her tongue out at a security camera. 

Roger Delgado set the bar for the character and in my opinion, no one else has ever come close. Anyone playing the Master should really be looking to him for inspiration.

• The scenes with the Cybermen attacking and destroying the UNIT plane were very well done. Same with the scenes of the Doctor falling to Earth and desperately trying to catch up to the plummeting TARDIS. 

The Doctor really needs to come up with some kind of remote control for the TARDIS, so he can call it to him or have it materialize around him or something. Of course if he did so, most episodes would last about ten minutes.

• Clara was born November 24, 1986. November 23rd is of course the day Doctor Who premiered back in 1963. There's a crap ton of shout outs and homages to this date peppered throughout the series.

• At one point the Mistress exclaims, "Oh my giddy aunt." That was a favorite saying of the Second Doctor. The Mistress must have studied the Doctor's timeline, because as far as I know she/he never met Doctor #2.

• Ever since Missy first appeared she reminded me of someone, but I couldn't quite put my finger on who. It all clicked when I saw this scene. The Mistress is Mary Poppins! 

So I guess we're supposed to believe that she gently floated down from 35,000 feet, with nothing but a small umbrella to slow her descent? Oy.

Was this an homage to the fan theory that Mary Poppins was secretly a Time Lord?

• The Doctor really needs to add a space between P and E when he dogs Danny. Every time he'd call him "P.E." it sounded more like he was saying "Pee."

• Danny, now a Cyberman, begs Clara to activate his emotion inhibitor, which will render him an unfeeling machine and end his pain. Clara agrees and takes the sonic from the Doctor, aiming it at Danny's chest. She asks the Doctor, "Just think and point, yeah?"

This actually makes sense. The sonic has so many functions (the Doctor once even used it to tint his glasses!) that a thought interface would be much more logical than having to fiddle with hundreds of settings.

Of course this contradicts numerous earlier episodes, in which the sonic is shown to have specific settings. Just a few episodes ago in The Caretaker, the Doctor tossed the sonic to Clara and told her to use setting 41 to send out random bursts of helicon energy to distract the Skovox Blitzer.

• I was really pissed when the Mistress seemingly killed Kate Stewart, so I was happy to see her alive at the end of the episode– saved by a Cyberman who turns out to be her late father, the Brigadier.

I'm not sure whether I should be touched or appalled by the idea of the Brig becoming a Cyberman.

• Before the season began, wasn't Moffat squawking about showing us why the Doctor has the same face as Caecilius,  the guy from Fires Of Pompeii? It's a question that didn't need to be asked, much less answered. The series has used actors in more than one role many, many times in the past. All shows do it. It's just a fact of television production. 

So despite the fact that I don't care and don't need to know why the Doctor has the face of a man from ancient Rome, what happened to the explanation? Did Moffat forget about this? Was it filmed and then ended up on the cutting room floor? Or was this explanation simply another of his numerous lies?

• Before she's killed (don't worry, I'm sure she'll get better), the Mistress tells the Doctor that she knows where to find their lost planet Gallifrey. She says it's right back where it used to be, at coordinates 10-0-11-00. 

These coordinates have been mentioned before, way back in 1975's Pyramids Of Mars.

The scene in which the Doctor, hoping against hope, flies the TARDIS to those coordinates, only to find nothing, were very well filmed and acted.

• For some reason, the bracelet that controlled the Cyber Army could also bring one, and only one person back to life. Danny uses it to restore the young boy he accidentally killed when he was a solider.

How the hell did that work? That kid's probably been dead for a couple of years. So the bracelet was able to completely rejuvenate and restore his body to factory settings?

• At the end of the episode, the Doctor and Clara meet in a cafe. Clara lies and tells him that she and Danny are together and she'll no longer be able travel with him. The Doctor lies back, saying he's found Gallifrey and he'll most likely be chilling there for a while.

So do you suppose the Doctor and Clara both knew the other was lying?

• Nick Frost appears in the rather jarring mid-credits scene as Santa. Frost is at least the fourth actor from Shaun Of The Dead to appear on the series, which confirms my belief that there are only about thirty actors in all of Great Britain.