Top Ten Worst Moffat Era Episodes, Part Two

(Previous article containing entries 6-10 here).

Basing an entire season's drama on whether the title character
of a decades old series will die is an awful writing move.

5 - The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (Series 6, Episodes 1 & 2)
Written by Steven Moffat

I went camping in Easter 2011 and it was terrible, just terrible. The worst aspect, for me, was not being able to see The Impossible Astronaut, a premiere I had been really excited for. In hindsight, this was to be the start of a lifetime of disappointment. When I finally watched this two-parter I was initially blown away, but as Season 6 went on, it became increasingly clear that the admittedly well-done setup of The Doctor's death and Amy and Rory's decision to hide it from his younger self were all for nought, and it was a very egregious example of the way that Moffat fails to write compelling mystery and suspense.

The Silents, introduced in this episode, have the inklings of a good idea. Moffat likes to play around with sight and memory, and so the gimmick of the Silents erasing your memory of them when you look away is quite spectacular. As time wears on, though, it becomes a bit of a tired meme, and holes start appearing in the concept - how did these things come to be, and how do they communicate? We're never given those details; neither are we very clear on why they are manipulating the Human race, other than some vague mentions of them blowing up the TARDIS last season and one of them killing a woman at random in a bathroom. For me and a few others, the story fails to convince the viewer that the Doctor's solution to the problem - brainwashing Humanity into committing a Silent genocide using the Moon Landing video - is anything short of barbaric and cruel, especially when the music and tone make it seem like a heroic and dashing thing to do with no moral implications.

Other annoyances in the episode bought it a place on the upper half of this list. Like Churchill before and after, the episode sees the Doctor palling around with war criminal Richard Nixon. (I look forward to Doctor Who in 40 years doing an episode where the 21st Doctor goes for dinner with Trump). In Moffat tradition, there is melodrama and death fake-outs, further damaging the credibility of the show's stakes, and River Song is here at her most annoying, clichéd self. It's also worth mentioning that as a whole, Series 6 is my least favourite of the revival for a number of reasons, and some of them are showcased here - poor writing, the really bad mytharc story surrounding River Song, and a feeling that the show is just being half-assed on every front.

Honourable Mention: The Wedding of River Song is the culmination of this terrible storyline and is just as muddled and poorly thought-out. It manages to barely escape the list by not including a genocide, and by being too similar to some other episodes already here.

Rory thinks he look intimidating, but he's also wearing a
Roman outfit for literally no reason and he looks like a stoned
hipster asking after his weed stash.

4 - A Good Man Goes To War (Series 6, Episode 7)
Written by Steven Moffat

I don't quite know where to start with Good Man. It feels quite unique, for both good and bad reasons. At the time I recognised it as fluffy in the extreme - heavy in style, light in substance. Now Meant to be the dramatic cliffhanger to the first half of a season unnecessarily split in two, the events of Good Man are so bizarre and ridiculous that sometimes I have to remind myself that an episode this bad even exists.

Never one for subtlety, the Doctor (the one famous for solving his problems with words and using violence as a last resort) blows up an entire fleet of Cyberman ships (which they apparently have now) to extort information about Amy's location. Rory thinks he's cool because he's wearing a centurion costume, and for some reason the soundtrack agrees. We find that Amy has been kidnapped by a military cult called the Silence; an offshoot of a Space Church that wants the Doctor dead. This army includes human soldiers, two gay characters who literally ask why they deserve to have names, and headless monks who never appear before or after and who make no sense. This trained army is disabled by a bunch of Silurians and a "good" Sontaran who talks about breastfeeding. After humiliating one of the Silence generals, it is revealed that Amy's baby is part Time Lord because she was conceived in the TARDIS, "in a bunk bed" and that River Song was Amy's baby after all. The bad guy gets away with Amy's baby, as the one they thought they rescued was a clone that melts when she leaves.

The moment I heard that Amy had named her child "Melody Pond" I knew what the twist was; I'm not sure anyone was particularly asking for that kind of twist, either. River Song's welcome was long overstayed, and tying her destiny even more tightly with The Doctor's feels uncomfortable for a show with a characteristically transitive nature. The loss of Amy's baby, something that should be traumatising to Amy and Rory, never gets the treatment it deserves in follow-up episodes, and this is where for me they cease to be characters and become delivery devices for cool one-liners.

Honourable Mention: The Almost People is nowhere near this list, as the two parter it closes actually has good ideas and executes them well, but the ending scene where Amy is revealed as a ganger and then we watch her being forced to give birth in captivity is traumatic and horrible. It has Moffat's hands all over it.

And billions died.

3 - Kill The Moon (Series 8, Episode 7)
Written by Peter Harness
Please read my review of this episode, it goes into much more detail on just how scientifically illiterate it is.

I have debated with myself about how high on this list this episode deserves to be; it was in second place for a while until I came to my senses. While it does deserve to be here, the reason that this episode is so bad is entirely down to its own writer, Peter Harness, who likes to bring right-wing political elements to his episodes. Kill The Moon fails on three fronts - the science that is so bad as to render the episode unbelievable, the anti-abortion message shoved into a show it does not belong in, and a general failure to make anyone in the slightest bit likable.

The central dilemma at the heart of the story, whether to kill the alien living in the moon, never has any weight because the science used in the episode is so laughable. The Doctor has been coming to Earth for thousands of years, and has only now noticed that the Moon is an egg?! Lines about there being no minerals or water on the moon betray the fact that Harness didn't seem to do a cursory Wikipedia search before writing this trash, and that lack of effort seeps into the episode. We're meant to be struck by the moral dilemma, and be taught that not aborting the child is the best thing to do in the long run, but unlike in the real world, Harness brings in magic nonsense that defies the laws of physics in order to avoid all consequences for that choice. That over all other things makes the polemic nature of this episode as clear as glass. The anti-abortion message is so woven into the episode that there's no hope of actually exploring sci-fi ideas, because everything is pointed towards making you hate the idea of abortion in every situation.

I really have to wonder how this got past the writing team. It's notable that Harness' later stories are co-written with Moffat, in a miraculous case of him making something better by being there. That would not be the case in the remainder of this list, with two Moffat episodes taking the silver and gold slots by a country mile...

Honourable Mention: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion two-parter, also written by Harness, spends its first half going, "Did you know that all refugees are terrorists? Dangerous terrorists. Anyone of them could be a terrorist. Your mum could be a terrorist." It then spends its second half going, "How dare you suggest that refugees are terrorists!? All that terrorists need to stop terroristing is a good talking to." It was stupid, insensitive, and although the speech at the end is well performed, the whole exercise was a total disaster.

I would mention the amazing moment when Moffat kills off a
new black character so she can have been a white woman all
along, but that feels like overkill.

2 - Let's Kill Hitler (Series 6, Episode 8)
Written by Steven Moffat

This was originally going to be one step above its immediate predecessor, A Good Man Goes To War, but then I realised that it had Hitler in it as a joke character and it just shot up here. Let's Kill Hitler is, quite frankly, an embarrassment. The end of hiatus should be a time for a good episode to bring the audience back on side, but instead we are given this nonsense - more of everything Moffat; fake-outs, making The Doctor the centre of everything, River Song, sexism, and so on.

Let's Kill Hitler is a confusing beast because it expects us to take it seriously as Moffat abuses time travel and retcons to try and make River Song's story make sense. The deep trauma Amy and Rory would suffer at losing their newborn daughter is explained away; "She was with them the whole time," he says, "She was the immature friend they had, so really they helped raise her after all!" The simple fact is that, not only is this callous, it doesn't even make sense. The Doctor's personality changes drastically even across one life, and yet we're meant to believe that River's brainwashing lasted two lifetimes, even when one of them saw her being raised as a human child in Leadworth. Her character bounces around so much in this one episode that the "surprise" at the end when she decides to sacrifice the rest of her regenerations to reverse The Doctor's poisoning feels hollow, and, along with the time-travelling vigilante team, puts a focus on Moffat's hero-worship of the Doctor over all other things.

Trying to mix this shambles of a main plot with the biggest sci-fi cliche of all time is a big no-no, as is the entire threat of the episode. You can't have the Doctor's death lingering over us from the premiere and then expect us to care that he might die now instead of then. We all know he isn't going to die, but Moffat just resist using this trope over and over. What we're left with is an episode that really serves no purpose beyond dropping the hint for the solution to this season's grand gambit. It doesn't even manage to be fun, because it all rings as insincere and childish, and with a deep lack of respect for those watching.

Honourable Mention: The Big Bang, where Moffat... retcons the Universe? I should have seen it coming.

That's the worst Series 6 episodes gone, which can only leave...

The worst, most drawn-out regeneration. Even worse than the
one before. Yes, that one.

1 - Time of the Doctor (Series 7, Third Christmas Special)
Written by Steven Moffat
My review here from the time is really good, and talks about the plot.

Here it is. The worst story belongs to the worst Doctor. Since 2013 I have seen almost everything in the Classic Series, and I have been waiting for something to knock Time from its pedestal, and nothing has. In his attempt to culminate everything in the Matt Smith era, Moffat manages to encapsulate almost every shit thing about it. He makes the Doctor the centre of the Universe one last time, and simultaneously tries to brand his mark onto the show in a permanent and terrifying way. Not content to retcon his predecessor's main storyline out of existence, not content to retcon his terrible companion into every area of Doctor Who history, Moffat decided he also had to be the one to solve the issue of the Doctor's regeneration limit, despite being two Doctors too soon, just so they can write that Moffat woz 'ere.

I might not have minded Moffat's solution to the 13 life problem had it not been such a deus ex machina. Clara begging the Time Lords to help The Doctor is something that should not have worked, and only works because of her status as a magical plot device here in her first season. The paradox the Doctor's survival creates is one that Moffat never apparently realised, as without his death and grave to send Clara through time in Name of the Doctor, all of this never happens, and Series 7 never happened. Which seems to be the show's attitude as well, as apart from the Zygon two-parter, nobody has ever mentioned the events of this season after the fact.

Sexism and archaic attitudes to gender politics were rife throughout Moffat's era, especially in Smith's tenure, and that is one of the things I remember the most from this episode. Smith's Doctor is not a role model for children - he is a pest. The Doctor by this point in his life has literally no excuse to be unfamiliar with human customs and standards of reasonable interaction. He smacks Clara on the bottom and shows up to her house naked. Five episodes before this he sexually assaults a rape survivor in The Crimson Horror by holding her down and kissing her. He laughs when she slaps him, and tells her it feels good. It may seem like I'm demonising the Doctor here, but it's clear from elsewhere both in Doctor Who and away from it that Moffat simply doesn't see anything wrong with these things

Fuckety-bye!

I would go into more detail about the episode, but I think you get the idea. My review linked above is a lot more comprehensive, and has a fun drinking game. I wanted to take a moment to say something personal. There are episodes on this list which made me mad, Kill the Moon in particular being a big one for that. But no episode crushed my faith in Doctor Who more than Time of the Doctor. I was fully prepared to sit and wait for Moffat to leave the show before watching it again. So I have to thank Peter Capaldi and Brian Minchin, who managed to steer the show back into something that, although flawed, I wanted to tune into every week. Part of me is looking forward to the future of the show, because I know that however much I have disliked what Chibnall brought to the show before now, nothing can ever be as bad as this shitty, shitty farce of an finale.

Thanks

Top Ten Worst Moffat Era Episodes, Part One

I recently wrote a list of my favourite Moffat era episodes in order to shine to positivity onto what I saw as a bad time for the show. This is not that list. For all intents and purposes, this list is intended to be my final word on everything Moffat did wrong in his seven years with the program. Some episodes are on this list because they are truly bad; others because they encapsulate an aspect of the era as a whole that really ground my gears. I'll also include (dis)honourable mentions with each entry to highlight episodes that escaped being included here. Okay, here goes...

The original placing of this episode saw Amy larking about
on a pirate ship right after traumatically losing her child.
Small blessings.

10 - Curse of the Black Spot (Series 6, Episode 3)
Written by Steve Thompson.

Eleven, Amy and Rory are a trio who, in Season 5, were developed as a fun alternative to previous companions. Eleven wasn't the authority figure that previous Doctors had been; instead, he came off as a weird mate to two fun hipsters. While this worked in Series 5, in Series 6 it starts to become jarring. I started to hate Eleven's humour, and the way that the series would excuse some of his more morally questionable actions in the name of "fun" and spectacle. Soon, on top of the that, the individual episodes would begin to suffer when the series' mytharc began to colour every aspect of production. While we will explore more of that later, what comes first on this list is the painfully mediocre Curse of the Black Spot.

I was initially excited for this story - it's got pirates and magic, as well as Hugh Bonneville and Lily Cole (who at 15 I liked for two very different reasons). The episode's main concept actually works fairly well  - a pirate curse which sends a Siren to destroy those who are injured is, in actual fact, the workings of an alien medical system trying to heal members of the crew. The problems come in the execution. Everything goes well until we actually reach the alien ship and Rory is almost drowned, leading to a long, drawn-out scene where we are meant to be sad and actually believe that Rory is going to die, even though by this point in Moffat's tenure they had pulled this trick about six times. This is just one facet of an overall problem Moffat's era has with believable stakes, with Moffat's inability to actually kill a main character lasting into the final episode of his tenure.

And, on top of all that, the issue I and others have had is that it isn't particularly memorable. A lot of the other episodes in this season have had very iconic images, whereas the pirate theme is such stale window-dressing that I'm not sure people even remember it as "the pirate one". Maybe "the one on the boat with the supermodel". While it was initially this mediocrity that got it put on this list, the melodrama was what ensured it stayed here.

Honourable mention: Night Terrors, which is just as bland and ridiculous but at least tries to be scary with some competence.

How The Moff Stole Christmas

9 - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (Series 7, First Christmas Special)
Written by Steven Moffat.
"You and me, Cyril, we're weak. But she's female."

Doctor Who is cursed with bad Christmas specials, it's just the case. They've tried to offset this in recent years by having important plot things happen in them, but before they tried this, there was this episode. Doctor-Widow-Wardrobe is full of so many odd things that I'm actually surprised that the thing that immediately comes to mind when I look back on it was how exceedingly dull it was. This episode might be lower on the list if it weren't for its bizarre sexual politics and for the fact that this is the start of Series 7, the series that took two years to finally end.

It feels very much like Moffat trying to convince us, and not too successfully, that he is a feminist.
The climax of the episode has guest character Madge save the day because the aliens see her as the strongest member of the group. This is because she is a mother, and women are strong and better than men because they can be mothers. Aside from the fact that motherhood is not the only thing that defines a woman's worth, the outright statement of "we're weak, but she's female" is such a clear attempt to dispel the discussion of the thoroughly unpleasant things that Moffat wrote previously. "Look, he said that women were great. He must be feminist." That falls through though when we see the backstory, where the most romantic way he can think of having Madge and her husband get together is him stalking her until she is worn down by his constant harassment.

The episode does have some nice moments with Madge's kids, and with Bill Bailey's cameo. But the rest of it feels as wooden as the monsters of the week.

Honourable Mention: Last Christmas, whose wasted potential as a great send-off for Clara is tempered by a passable plot and a fun guest star.

8 - The Power of Three (Series 7, Episode 4)
Written by Chris Chibnall

It's an appearance by our next showrunner, whose writing for Doctor Who has always towed the line between okay and terrible. Chibnall had a big hand in the story of 2012's September Season, writing two of its five episodes and also writing online-exclusive prologues and epilogues (one of which included the Doctor sexing up a historical figure and "laying down some backing vocals" for Dizzee Rascal.) With the exception of its third episode, I really don't like the September Season very much at all, and of his two episodes I hate this one slightly more.

The Power of Three acted as part of the September Season's theme statement, with The Doctor acting as a random interjector into Amy and Rory's suburban life. While this departure from Who norm should have been an refreshing new take, it instead highlights just how much Amy and Rory had ceased to work as companions - why would they ever want to spend time in the TARDIS? The episode loosely follows an alien plot where millions of black cubes appear out of nowhere. Apart from letting us get to know Moffat's modern version of UNIT, the episode's main plot goes nowhere, with a forgettable alien villain with zero visible motivation. Instead, a lot of the runtime is filled with smaller ideas that never get fleshed out, leaving the main story deflated and unimpressive.

Part of my feeling on this is clouded by the fact that as the years have dragged on I have come to find Amy and Rory absolutely insufferable. Something about them feels off and unrealistic, possibly the way that throughout their tenure on the show they never react to trauma in the way that real people do, and they aren't allowed to when the stakes are never high enough for us to care either.

Honourable Mention: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which I hate almost as much as this episode for its bland guest characters, weird rapey undertones and flashbacks to Pete, Part Two. It escapes this list by at least trying, and because I couldn't fit them both in when there's so much else that needs to be on here.

I have never hated a TARDIS team more. 

7 - Angels Take Manhattan (Series 7, Episode 5)
Written by Steven Moffat

We've moved one space in the list, and one episode along in the show. When the Weeping Angels first appeared in Blink they were scary and unique, and even though I didn't rate them much, I understood the novelty and admired its execution. Their next appearance in Season 5 was great too, enhancing their powers and reputation. Then came this. Angels Take Manhattan, like most of the Moffat mytharc episodes, is a mess. It wants to impress you with its cleverness, move you with its pathos, make you mourn for two companions who were, at that time, the longest runners in the revival series. Instead, I was left frustrated and confused, baffled at how this made it to the screen in its current condition.

The development of the Angels goes from the bizarre to the absurd - as weak statues, as cherubs, as the Statue of Liberty. At one point the script orchestrates a scene where an Angel is weak enough that it can't use the touch time-travel powers (the ones Angels are famous for using when they're, you know, weak) so that one can grab River Song's arm, leading her to, I shit you not, break her own hand out of love for The Doctor.

At the time I described Amy and Rory's departure as "the adult conclusion for these characters." Now I see them as being written out for narrative purposes - the September Season shows that there was clearly nothing left to do with them. Weeping Angel time travel nonsense is put in place to trap Amy and Rory in 1940s New York, where the TARDIS can now "never go", but no mention is made of them just getting a boat somewhere where the Doctor can reach them. It feels less like the Doctor has felt a great loss and more like he just gave up on his friends because he's a dick. What's worse is that, as I've said above for other episodes, them dying all the time and coming back robbed every single ounce of suspense out of their actual finale.

Rather than dressing up their departure in melodrama, it would have been far more effective and moving for them to leave the TARDIS permanently of their own accord, or even just to kill them. This half-assed crap makes important character moments feel weak. When I think of companion exits that just gut me, that make me miss them, I think of Tegan and "It stopped being fun, Doctor", I think of Sarah Jane stood on a street corner in Aberdeen with her luggage, I think of Jo, with The Doctor leaving her party and slowly driving away. There was so much potential in this but the show set itself up for failure time and time again, and this is the result.

Honourable Mention: Asylum of the Daleks because it began the utter mess that was the multiple-Claras arc and saw Amy and Rory divorce and then get together again for no reason. Also, Daleks don't have Asylums.

The biggest retcon, of course, is the idea that Ten would
ever go around with a floppy fringe.

6 - Day of the Doctor (Series 7, 50th Anniversary Special)
Written by Steven Moffat

It is no exaggeration to say that I had been looking forward to the 50th Anniversary for about 9 years, which at the time was over half my life. I expected something spectacular, and true to Doctor Who's long and varied history. What we got was the second part of the "of the Doctor" trilogy, Moffat's insidious attempt to imprint himself on every aspect of the show's history regardless of sense or reason. It featured so many retcons and bad storytelling decisions that it felt more like a monument to the Moffat era than anything else - and that includes all the foibles, including having no stakes, remedial attitudes towards women and having a piss poor conclusion. The only reason that is isn't higher on the list is because I am a sucker for nostalgia.

Day's worst crime is the Time War retcon. There were quite a few ways to write the Time Lords back into the series in a way which wouldn't rob the emotional core out of the revival's first four seasons, but instead, the Doctor's greatest regret never actually happened. The event that informed the character of Nine and Ten was a fake, according to this story. Also, there was a WHOLE DOCTOR between Eight and Nine that messes up the numbering, and his inclusion is my most contentious point. Moffat couldn't include Eight because the layman wouldn't know who he was, and couldn't include Nine because Eccleston refused to return (likely balking at the idea of his character's entire personality being a lie), so he just made up his own so he could have one more Doctor to contribute to the series. The War Doctor, while well acted by the late and great John Hurt, doesn't make sense as a character - he's supposed to be a regeneration designed to be capable of genocide, but he ends up not being able to do it, and Eleven is far more genocidal than he is.

Other elements of the episode also don't belong in a 50th Anniversary special. Ten's engagement to Queen Elizabeth I, admittedly a hangover from RTD, is made even worse by sexist writing, including a line completely ignoring the original irony of "the body of a weak and feeble woman". Most of the not-Time-War plot was taken up by a Zygon invasion of earth, which seemed an oddly specific callback to make and whose only real legacy was setting up the politically insensitive Zygon two-parter in Series 9. Among other miscellanea, the show also contained a random appearance by Billie Piper, not playing Rose Tyler; a Doctor Who superfan who would later go on to be killed by Missy, and Tom Baker as "The Curator", who is implied to be a future incarnation of the Doctor re-wearing Four's body.

Honourable Mention: Name of the Doctor also pulls off a spectacularly bad retcon when it tries to claim that Clara is responsible for not only saving The Doctor's life thousands of time, but for every good thing that has ever happened in the Doctor Who universe. Is not on this list because I already included two from the "...of the Doctor" trilogy on here.

I cut this article in half because of its length, so expect the top five soon.

Thanks.

Twelve Moffat Era Episodes Worth Keeping

After almost eight years in the driving seat, Moffat's time with Doctor Who is at an end. I have made no secret over the past couple of years how much I grew to dislike his time on the show, sometimes to the point of recommending that new fans skip entire seasons just so they don't get led down the same garden paths I did. But, now we've reached the end, I decided it would be charitable to pick some episodes from Moffat's six seasons of the show that I actually like; two for each series. They're not the only ones I like, but they are the standout few that I would recommend to people, and they are my personal highlights of what I consider to be a terrible part of the show. In order of broadcast...

The Eleventh Hour - Series 5, Episode 1 (2010)

It's easy to forget after all that followed just what a strong start the Eleventh Doctor had. After a lot of initial misgivings following the bizarre ending to The End of Time, Matt Smith's first outing was full of fun action and witty writing that reassured a lot of us about the show's future. Smith's Doctor is yet to degenerate into his later self-obsessed creep and is instead energetic and warm, giving us memorable post-regeneration moments like fish fingers and custard. The time-bending nature of the new companion's introduction strikes an innovative note across the new series, and more than makes up for the run-of-the-mill nature of the rather dull bad guy in the Atraxi.

As I said in my review of the episode, there was definitely a "moment" where the Eleventh Doctor clicked with me as the same character as the previous ten. What interests me now is that despite his actually fairly competent beginning, the bad writing for this Doctor as the show went on led to him becoming my least favourite version. That knowledge makes it difficult to watch the scene here with the same excitement, but I think it just about works. All told, I would say that The Eleventh Hour is the best first episode for any of the NuWho Doctors, and the irony is delicious.

Vincent and the Doctor - Series 5, Episode 10 (2010)

A show like Doctor Who often goes into the past for cameos from historical celebrities, but this episode stands out. Instead of simply placing said celebrity into a story and having events happen around him, this episode is directly aimed at establish Vincent's character and backstory. British comedy writer Richard Curtis uses Doctor Who's conventions in unconventional ways, taking a monster-of-the-week pseudohistorical format and using it to explore the depression of one of Europe's great unappreciated artists.

While the 42-minute format of a Doctor Who story requires that a lot of the real-world subtleties are smoothed over, the story's decision to look into mental health and the legacy of art makes something beautiful out of what would otherwise be an end-of-season filler episode.

The Doctor's Wife - Series 6, Episode 4 (2011)

This series is my least favourite of the revival show by a country mile - long arcs which constrain real story-telling, bizarre decisions like Amy's forced pregnancy and the Doctor's fake-out death, and the mid-season split that exacerbated all of the other issues. The only episode of the season that isn't affected by the all-absorbing tendrils of mediocrity is this one, written by acclaimed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman for the previous series and moved over to this one.

While at times the episode veers into fan-fiction territory, the discussion of the idea of the TARDIS as a sentient entity was a long time coming, and could not have been brought into reality more perfectly than by Suranne Jones. Add to that lots of nostalgic nods to both RTD and the Classic Series, a fab villain in Michael Sheen's House and a general sense of fantastic whimsy, and you have one of NuWho's best episodes.

The God Complex - Series 6, Episode 11 (2011)

So what if Toby Whithouse took the ending straight from The Curse of Fenric? I *love* The Curse of Fenric! And I love Toby Whithouse. Despite me saying that The Doctor's Wife was the only episode that had escaped Series 6's terribleness, this one is actually my favourite from the season, and the only one I consider worth rewatching. The unnerving hotel which exploits people's fears is such a fantastically Doctor Who kind of plot, and with the episode's well-realised cast of characters the episode hits every beat it needs to in terms of action and plot. I remember especially liking the fake-out companion Rita, even if the exchange "You're a Muslim/Don't be frightened" is even more tone deaf now than it was in 2011. And, although it wasn't permanent (it never is with Moffat), I loved the fact that Amy and Rory left! Needless to say that they had outstayed their welcome considerably by this point, and I was glad for the small hope that this was the back of them.

A Town Called Mercy - Series 7, Episode 3 (2012)

The only decent episode of the five episode "September Series" from 2012, A Town Called Mercy is another decent Whithouse episode, this time putting the Doctor, Amy and Rory into a Western town that has been infiltrated by an alien war criminal and the cyborg sent to bring him to justice. Aside from just loving Westerns, I liked this episode because of the fact it actually asked some moral questions. You know, like this is actually science fiction or something. While it has its goofy moments, and the main moral conflict isn't satisfied in a particularly interesting way, the fact that it actually inspires thought makes it an oasis of civilisation in a period of the show that was veering wildly out of control.

Cold War - Series 7, Episode 8 (2013)

Guys, I was so excited for Clara. After watching Amy and Rory's terrible writing for three years, I was looking forward to some Northern charm from Jenna Coleman's new companion. Clara is difficult to parse for me, because her three-ish seasons varied so wildly. In Series 7, she had little to no actual character that we could see, with a great deal more that was simply told to us by other characters without much evidence. Cold War, the third episode of the 2013 half of Series 7, is the best because it manages to take this and, for one episode, subvert it.

Finding themselves on a Russian submarine in 1983, the Doctor and Clara find themselves trying to pacify an Ice Warrior, making their first appearance since 1974. Clara is seen to be compassionate and empathetic, and is ultimately the solution to the episode's dilemma. I love the 80s soundtrack, the base-under-siege plot and the new-look Ice Warriors, who manage the difficult task of respecting the Classic Series and still feeling modern.

Flatline - Series 8, Episode 9 (2014)

True story: this list was almost a ten episode list, because I forgot Series 8 existed. Capaldi's first season suffers from writing that is usually more bland than painful, as the writers tried to make Twelve into an ambiguous moral figure. This has been attempted before, but the issue with this was more that instead of spending time showing Twelve making questionable moral choices, the end result felt a lot more like Capaldi being constantly grumpy and rude, and going "Am I a good man?" every other episode. The only upshot of this was that Clara seemed to gain a personality overnight and the relationship between her and Twelve became more complex and real as a result.

By comparison to the season around it, Flatline felt a lot more like an early Tennant episode - set on a council estate with some unique aliens and TARDIS hijinks. The standout performances of Jovian Wade and Christopher Fairbank as graffiti artist Rigsy and council worker Fenton respectively help to flesh out the premise of 2D aliens trying to enter our dimension by providing stakes we can work with. Add to that the element of The Doctor being trapped in the TARDIS and relying on Clara throughout the episode, and what could have been bland comes alive.

Dark Water - Series 8, Episode 11 (2014)

You will notice later that every one of Capaldi's eleventh episodes is on this list. Capaldi's finales have a flare for the ridiculous that usually start off on the right foot with a strong premise and go downhill in the second half. In this case, the episode actually culminates a lot of the season's slightly nebulous themes and brings it together in a way which threatens to change the status quo of the Doctor Who universe, as well as providing a double whammy cliffhanger that left me excited to be watching the show again after so many boring episodes.

Danny Pink is not my favourite NuWho character, especially as his relationship with Clara gave off some abusive vibes in the mid-season with Clara scared to let him know that she was with The Doctor for fear of his reaction. The finale worked with his character and gave us a side to his soldier past that felt three dimensional and worth the build-up. It also let us have the moment at the start of the episode with Clara and the Doctor where they finally have a stand-off, and it's great stuff.

This in turn leads us into the grander plot of the episode - the Nethersphere, and Missy's plot with the Cybermen. While I questioned whether some of the comments in the episode were wise ("The dead can feel it when you cremate them, lol!"), I really did like the concept and how it was executed. Missy is a bloody masterstroke - Michelle Gomez brings a brand new personality to The Master that is playful and unpredictable in a way that is more endearing than Simm's Joker-like performance.

The Woman Who Lived - Series 9, Episode 6 (2015) 

Season 9 had a number of gimmicks that felt a little off. The main one, apart from it being split up into two-parters, was a RTD-style keyword, The Hybrid, which fed into each episode in more subtle way than the previous series' inclusion of Missy in almost every episode's epilogue. Like most of Moffat's running stories, it ended in a copout, but it also gave us the character of Me, a character I genuinely thought was really cool. The only episode where that character gets the right amount of focus is this one, The Woman Who Lived.

Introduced in the first part of this loose two-parter as a Viking child who the Doctor hubristically resurrects by bonding with alien technology, we see her here as an immortal being, slowly losing her morality and memories, and desperate to be The Doctor's companion. I initially dismissed the casting of Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as stunt casting, but she really can act. I guess it was hard to see that at the time, with her storyline in the 2015 series of Thrones mostly consisting of her wiping corpses and selling cockles.

The only bad thing I have to say about the episode is that it has one too many talking lions. And that is almost entirely negated by there being almost no Clara in it.

Heaven Sent - Series 9, Episode 11 (2015)

Because of this season's odd nature, the finale two-parter is a lot more loose than usual, and this is immeasurably for the better. Simply put, Heaven Sent is one of the program's finest episodes, way beyond the likes of Blink. And I mean it; unlike the previous season finale, where I have to overlook glaring faults, this is a really well-crafted story, with everything just coming together. It's essentially a Capaldi one-hander, seeing him trapped inside a bigger-on-the-inside Time Lord device which makes him relive the same sequence of events over and over again. The theme of persistence and certainty in the face of death is a strong one, especially with Capaldi at the helm, giving it his all, portraying a man so determined to escape that he repeatedly resigns himself to death just to make a millimetre's progress.

Oxygen - Series 10, Episode 5 (2017)

Due to personal goings-on in my own life, I have not reviewed Series 10 and I don't know if I will, but on the whole I enjoyed it. I liked the semi-reboot of the series and Bill Potts is a light shining down on the show. Oxygen was a great base-under-siege episode that had some good ideas, my favourite of which was the Adams-esque dilemma of the parent company making them pay for their oxygen. It's kind of a like a traditional Doctor Who Base-Under-Siege story where the enemy is the life-support system.

Unlike a lot of Base-Under-Siege stories in NuWho, it avoided the pitfall of not feeling like there were any stakes by seriously threatening the lives of both Bill and The Doctor. They both experience the vacuum of space and are choked and chased and electrocuted. Just when you think the status quo will be reasserted, we discover that The Doctor is now blind! This was a great way to end the episode, as well as a lead-in to the following three-part story where The Doctor's need to protect Bill is a major theme.

World Enough And Time - Series 10, Episode 11 (2017)

In the year-long hiatus between Series 9 and 10, I started listening to Big Finish audios - I've listened to about a dozen now, and when they are good, they are good. My favourite, predictably, is the Fifth Doctor audio Spare Parts, which takes place on Mondas and gives a very thorough look at the kind of world that would create the Cybermen. It's spooky and full gruesome moments. I bring it up because World Enough and Time borrows extensively from Spare Parts and it's legacy, even more than the supposed "adaptation" that was Rise of the Cybermen back in 2006.

The marketing was full of spoilers for the return of John Simm as The Master. I will admit that Simm's disguise fooled me for a good while; his reveal at the end to Missy is fantastic. I had always wanted a multi-Master story, and it was a real coup to get Simm back to the show after his ambiguous exit seven year prior. Not only was it fun from a fan perspective, but it was also the perfect way to highlight the character development that Gomez' Master had been undergoing throughout this weird and wonderful season.

For the first time in a while there was a palpable sense of horror in this story, as Bill Potts spent time in the creepy hospital at the base of a ship falling into a black hole, with The Doctor and Missy at the top watching her life pass on fast-forward. The most memorable parts of the episode are the parts that surround the Cybermen, with pre-formed cloth-faced bodies crying out for death, and the crushing blow at the end of the episode when Bill is transformed. I was annoyed that this amazing character had been given so tragic a fate, but the following episodes made up for that slightly. Scenes like the ones in the hospital are what I have been asking for for so long - actually exploring the body horror of the Cyberman premise and using it to bring nightmares to whole new generation.

Epilogue

I can't honestly say, now that it's over, that this part of the show was entirely bad. The Capaldi era feels like a much-needed improvement over the Smith era, which went downhill fast. I think the key difference is that during those first three or so years, the writing of the Doctor and his companions entirely focused on archetypes and "mysteries" which never amounted to anything resembling human behaviour. The Twelfth Doctor is much more of a complex personality, even outside the narrative constantly informing us without evidence that he's morally shady. Now that I've lended the era some charity and genuinely discussed episodes I liked, I think it's time to do a top ten worst list. This is going to be fun.

Thanks.

Fate of the Cybermen: The Cybermen of NuWho

Written 1/10/15.

This is Cyberman Month, where we've been looking at the original five black and white stories featuring Mankind's cyborg nemesis. I've also covered the five other Cyberman stories from the Classic Series, under Phillip Hinchcliffe in 1975 and later John Nathan Turner through the 80s. But what of the Cybermen now in the revival of the show? I've certainly covered all of the episodes, but it's often harder without hindsight to pinpoint the design and story changes which have brought the Cybermen from the swinging 60s into modern living rooms. So, in this article, I will be examining the history of the Cybermen in NuWho, and wondering where they might go from here.

This was in fact the first publicity image
of the Cybusmen. I love the head tilt.

The Cybusmen - 2006-9
Seen in: Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Cyberwoman, The Next Doctor

Russell T Davies waited until the second series of the revived show to bring back the Cybermen, spending his first season giving a similar treatment to the Daleks. While they were made shiny gold and layered in a number of different political metaphors, the Cybermen were given an entirely new origin story. Instead of originating on Earth's twin planet Mondas, the Cybermen of an alternate universe originated on Earth itself, created by a disabled human scientist, John Lumic, who wished not only to end human pain and suffering, but also to prolong his own life and unite the world under the brand of his company, Cybus Industries.
     These Cybermen are strong, and sturdy, their design featuring a more angular face and a headplate which from behind recalls a roman helmet. Much was made of the Cybermen's reduction to "stampy metal robots," in the fan consciousness at the time, but this is somewhat unfair - if anything, these Cybermen harken back to the "boiler-suit" design from the middle three Sixties stories, except this time with a budget to fully execute the idea. While their voice was fairly memorable and well done (ta to Nicholas Briggs), they were imbued with a few new catch-phrases indicative of the change in their overall philosophy - "Delete", "Upgrade" and similar phrases likening their thoughts to computer software.
     That change in philosophy is a distinctly modern one. The original Cybermen were a reactionary fear to the use of cybernetics in medicine - artificial hearts, artificial limbs. They were the whole concept of prosthesis medicine taken to a logical extreme, in which a person's entire body is replaced and thus, in the eyes of Kitt Pedler and Gerry Davis, so is the soul. RTD's Cybermen - or the "Cybusmen" as fans call them - are an attempt to apply the same method to capitalism, more specifically to companies like Apple. Rise of the Cybermen sees everyone on the Alternate Earth owning a Cybus Industries "earpod" which downloads information directly into people's brains, and from this we can see the Cybusmen as a particularly heavy-handed message to not let corporations tell you what to think and what to feel.

Of course Chris Chibnall would give a Cyberman a metal bra
and heels. Talk about fetishes.

     But allegory aside, one area where I think that the Cybusmen excel over their previous incarnations is the fear and paranoia that they produce. Conversion between human and Cyberman was only actually seen in a single story of the Classic Series - the often derided Attack of the Cybermen. With the Cybusmen, we see the population of London marching into factories, waiting outside little cubicles, and then wandering in as their brain is surgically extracted from their body and placed into a Cybus Industries shell. It's obviously not as gory as I'm making it sound, but the whole idea of extracting and reprogramming the brain rather than slowly switching body parts means that becoming a Cyberman is an act of complete and utter dehumanisation. Some of my favourite moments from the Rise/Age two-parter came when the Cybermen ended up for one reason or another referring to their former selves, especially the Parallel Jackie Tyler, which just hits you as a gut-punch that this person, while not dead, is irreversible changed. It's fantastic.
     The Cybusmen within Series Two were at their most effective. I was glad that the show used them sparingly, and used them to influence a large part of the show's ongoing mythos. While Cyberwoman was quite, quite ridiculous, it had all of the body horror, all of the adult fears about losing the ones you love, and it also presented the whole idea of a single Cyber-conversion unit as a terrifying thing. While their execution in The Next Doctor was a little more experimental and weird, I think it was still an interesting use of the concept, and I can't really think of anything more awesome to do with your cybernetic guys than to stick them in Victorian England and make them create a slave-driven steampunk mecha. Oh. Yeah.

Hold on... that's a Preacher gun. From the Parallel Universe.
The Cybusmen never even wielded those, this is ridiculous.

The Fake Cybusmen - 2010-11
Seen in: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes To War, Closing Time, Nightmare In Silver (briefly).

Moffat's first move upon taking the show was to hoist a major redesign onto the Daleks, who had to be included at least once per year in order to fulfil the BBC's contract. However wise that decision was given that as of writing we just had a massive Dalek episode and not a single "New Paradigm" Dalek actually appeared, it led to the apparent explanation that the Cybermen couldn't be redesigned, because the budget had gone towards the new Daleks and the new Silurians. Why bother to bring them back, then, if it's going to be a continuity nightmare? Ha. Moffat doesn't care about keeping continuity within the show as he runs it, only in making references to Classic Who in some bizarre effort to please the fanbase.
     In this period of the Cybermen's history, there was a motion to distance the show from their alternate-universe origin, with the idea being that the Cybermen we were seeing were the originals from our Universe. However, the only concessions made to this were the removal of the "C" plate in the centre of their chests, and the fact that they now apparently have vast fleets of interstellar spacecraft that The Doctor can blow up as and when he pleases. Their catchphrases have changed as well, with at least one Cyberman screaming the Borg cry of "Assimilate" and for some ungodly reason having tentacles in its head. At least one fan theory espouses the idea that some of the Cybusmen remained in our universe at the end of Doomsday and found some of our Universe's guys, who decided to copy the design in the name of style.

Skulls are more funny than scary, particularly when they start
chattering at you. What's it going to do, bite you to death?

     The show attempted to make these Cybermen better in Closing Time, an episode which somehow managed to be the most disappointing thing in Series Six - no mean feat, I'll tell you. They had them skulking under a department store, kidnapping people, converting them and making the use of Cybermats for the first time since 1975. But, of course, they had to spoil it by having the Cybermen's weakness to emotion (admittedly weaponised by both The Invasion and The Age of Steel) become so absurd that the sound of a child crying for his father became enough to melt solid steel.
     It says a lot about the Moffat era that they simply didn't care enough to try and work out what these Cybermen were all about. There's no ideology behind them, no basis in any form of metaphor or idea, they are just cut-and-paste villains who borrow a lot of their catch-phrases from The Borg. Which, when you mention it, goes to describe our next lot...

Some Cybermen face designs look happy, others sad. These
are in a state of constant dumb surprise.

The Iron-Man-Borg-Lovechild - 2013-Present
Seen in: Nightmare In Silver, Time of the Doctor, Dark Water/Death In Heaven

The excitement when I saw the publicity photos for Nightmare In Silver was just ridiculously high. I love the Cybermen, and I love Cybermen stories, at least in principle. Every time there's a new Cybermen story or redesign I tell myself that this time, it's going to be good. It's going to work, there's going to be a point to them again. The Cybermen are best when they are both A.) working off of your fears about being robbed of your humantiy and B.) working as a metaphor for some aspect of ourselves that is leading us down a bad path. The best Cyberman stories have these elements, be it the original fear of medical technology in The Tenth Planet, of unguarded militarism in The Invasion, or of dehumanising Capitalism in Rise/Age. The most recent incarnation of the Cybermen? They are completely gone. Any hint of being about something is gone, and the Cybermen are now mostly just empty villains.
      Their initial appearance in the romance-novel-sounding Nightmare In Silver brings with it a lot of promise. Their design is given a technical upgrade when a "Cyber-mite" (evidently an evolved version of the Cybermats) absorbs and reverse engineers a newer piece of technology. The Cybermen which result from this have super-speed (an ability seen in a single sequence in their very first appearance and then never again) as well as the ability to both adapt to energy weapons as they're being fired upon and to assimilate people using tiny organisms. In other words, the Borg. I make this comparison a lot on this blog, and that's because it's perfectly warranted, especially after that episode., While the idea of a plague which could rob you of your humanity is still pretty scary in principle, it lacks the body-horror and deeply personal elements which make the Cybermen effective.

Death In Heaven returned some body horror to the Cybermen,
even if it went about it in a weird way.

     Ignoring the ridiculous wooden Cybermen of Time of the Doctor (fuck that episode, seriously), their next appearance was in last series' finale, Dark Water/Death In Heaven, where they have become tools of The Master. This two-parter did good and bad things with the concept. On the one hand, the whole idea of downloading the minds of the human race and resurrecting them in robotic shells is key to what made the Cybusmen work, and so that was really effective. What wasn't effective was this whole business of these new Cybermen apparently having an entire human corpse inside them, which seems to go against the entire idea of having them now so easily transferred via a "Cyber-virus". Why attempt to forcibly combine the two ideas, when the whole "downloading people" thing is scary enough? Having people actually rise from their graves as Cybermen with their original bodies and suggesting that one of them is The Brigadier is effing ridiculous. It made the episode funny rather then terrifying, which as is the case with Capaldi's stuff so far, it was a hair's breadth from being.

The Future

There were accusations flying around during the Wilderness years that any interesting things that could be done with the Cybermen had already been done, and not just in the show, but in the extensive material from the Expanded Universe. Then, Rise/Age appeared, an adaptation of the audio Spare Parts, which was an origin story for the Cybermen of our Universe, similar in style to the way that Genesis of the Daleks had breathed new life into the metal pepper pots by revealing their history and ideological purpose. Whether or not you believe that everything good from Rise/Age came from Marc Platt and Spare Parts, I don't think that there is a Cyberman story which better combines a really good origin for the Cybermen, a set of body-horror moments which scare and unsettle, with what is a fairly decent adventure story.

The one on the right has discovered that her husband Gerald
is having an affair with the pool boy, and the one on the left
was the one trying to cover it up.

     There are so many possible stories that you could develop using the Cybermen from either Universe which would be fulfilling to a purpose of some sort, and genuinely fun at the same time. We don't need a full history lesson a la Attack to explain where they've come from - if necessary, just stick in some minor background dialogue, because the people who notice that stuff will love it and people who don't will love the story for being a good story. The Cybermen have always been for me the dark mirror of humanity, always a vision of what we may become, either literally or in metaphor. It's what makes them so powerful to me, and why after all these years, they're the ones I remember the most. I bought Earthshock, I bought Attack, because the most exciting thing for me about rewatching The Five Doctors over and over again was watching the many different ways the Doctor defeated the Cybermen. One can only hope that there will come a story good enough to inspire that same devotion and love in future generations.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 8.13: Last Christmas

Doctor Who Christmas specials are, respectively: fantastic, good, So Bad It's Good, unnecessary, overblown So Bad It's Amazing, okay-if-you-don't-think-too-hard, boring, and "Oh my god, this is the worst thing I've ever seen." Last Christmas doesn't attempt to make up for last year's travesty, and nor should it - the show's moved on from that era of terrible writing and slapdash plots. We have to focus on the era of mediocre writing now! Deciding that NuWho wasn't quite derivative enough, this week's episode is what happens when you combine Alien, Inception and, presumably, a late night of last-minute script-writing while flicking through the movie channels.

Father Christmas, while not true to the archetype, is
surprisingly entertaining. From the BBC

     Clara is awoken by the sound of Father Christmas arriving on her rooftop. The Doctor appears, and they travel to a base on the North Pole staffed by a cast of characters, all trying to traverse a room of face-hugger possessed people. The monsters are the Dream Crabs, who can only see you if you're thinking about them, and who can put you into a recursive dream state. Just as the group is about to be cornered by them, Santa appears again with his comical elves to save the day. Clara is later attacked again and this time enters a dream state in which Danny is still alive. The Doctor enters this state to get her out of it, but the resulting knowledge reveals that the whole thing was a dream - and then again, another time. Soon the dream is finally broken, with the crew of the base returning to their old lives. The Doctor wakes up and visits Clara to find she is in her 80s. At the last second, Father Christmas appears again and reveals one last layer of dream. Clara is normal age, and the secrets are all out, so she agrees to travel with him once again.
     The two main influences on this script are Inception and Alien - not really hard to see what that means, either. The Alien thing is fairly blatant, with the film itself being discussed within the episode, and the episode blended that film's claustrophobic setting with the show's usual "Base-Under-Siege" plot. The Inception thing I'm less sure of - it's about four years late to be riding that film's coattails, and the dream-within-a-dream thing is part of the consciousness now. What's more important is how the setup is used. While the interal logic of the dreamscape was interestingly realised and intriguingly thought out, there were a few too many layers for me. By the third wake-up I was beginning to wonder if it would ever stop with the revelation. It also tied into a problem with Clara's departure, but I'll go into a bit more detail on that further down.
     The episode's weirdest concession to the Christmas spirit was the appearance of Nick Frost as Father Christmas, at first pushing the "the fiction is real" argument like back in Robots of Sherwood and then thankfully transforming him into a shared avatar of hope and goodwill within the dreamers' minds. I wasn't that confident of Frost's performance initially, but once it transformed into something more outwardly comical, his cheeky and off-kilter delivery of the cliched Santa lines actually gave me a few chuckles. At the same time, he was able to deliver a few warm moments too. The same can't be said for his two sidekicks, Ian and Wolf, who were both unnecessary - even if it was nice to see Nathan McMullen in something now that Misfits has finished.

Capaldi was on fine form and provided the best performance
of the episode. From the BBC

     Character wise, this week was a continuation of the themes from the finale, with The Doctor and Clara's mutual closing lies being revealed to one another fairly early on and going on to have an important part in the story. While it felt rather unnecessary to carry on their partnership, it was nice to see those issues actually covered, and for the rest of the episode the pair were written in a surprisingly sensitive and enjoyable manor. The scene with the aged Clara, replaying out a particular scene from Time of the Doctor, was quite heartfelt and touching, and would have made an excellent finale for the character of Clara. But Jenna Louise-Coleman decided to stay on, so that was shelved and it was just another dream. I was disappointed by that, especially as that extra layer confused the nature of the episode's supporting cast, who were all given fairly effective micro-characterisations. Despite that annoyance, Capaldi and Coleman are on top form as always, as they have been for the rest of the series.
    I'm still not fully on board with Moffat, but this episode marks the close of a season much improved on the last. It feels like Moffat and his writers have been working on their criticisms - sometimes to good effect, sometimes not. Last Christmas was that same mix of surprising quality in some places and uneasy decisions in others, but Im I'm so much more invested in these characters that I'll actually be looking forward to next season instead of just watching it out of tradition.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 8.12: Death In Heaven

Okay so yeah I might have actually liked this episode.
From Wikimedia

Moffat finales do not have a good track record with me, at least not on second-viewing - I usually give them glowing reports after broadcast and then cast a more critical eye after the fact. Well, it's two months later and I've seen the episode twice, and my opinion of Death In Heaven has remained the same. The good bits are good and the bad bits are... there. That is to say, while Moffat's writing still has a number of flaws with plotting and sexual politics, this episode managed to create enough genuine character drama and characterisation that I kept with it and just rolled my eyes at the silly bits as they came around. Which means I liked this episode, in an objective sorta way.
     The Master and The Doctor are captured by UNIT before the Time Lady gets the chance to gloat, but not before the 91 Cybermen from her 3W facility in London fly up into the air and explode, creating black clouds which rain down Cyber-pollen on graveyards. Clara pretends to be The Doctor in order to fool some Cybermen into not shivving her, but she is eventually kidnapped by a Cyber-converted Danny. The Doctor is awakened, and Kate Stewart (with great reference to her father The Brigadier) reveals that he is now President of Earth, and is aboard a private jet. The Master, not kept under more security than a pair of handcuffs, sets her flying Cybermen on the plane and kills Osgood, leaving The Doctor and Kate to fall to their deaths. Clara discovers that Danny, while revived and converted, can still feel the pain he's been put through, and he asks her to turn on his inhibitor.
     The Doctor manages to fall into his TARDIS, and follows Clara's call to her location. The Master's plan is revealed - kill all of humanity, bring them back as Cybermen and then give them to The Doctor as a gift to corrupt him into being like her. He rejects her offering after some deliberation, and allows Danny the power of control over all of the Cybermen. He commands all of them to fly into the sky and explode, destroying the cloud and the Cyber threat. The Master is seemingly killed by a rogue Cybermen identified by The Doctor as The Brigadier, who also is seen to have saved Kate from falling. Two weeks later, and The Doctor and Clara meet up with one another, each telling a lie - Clara, that Danny managed to send himself back into the land of the living (he sent the child he killed in Afghanistan instead), and The Doctor that he has found Gallifrey and gone back to be President. The two hug and separate, with The Doctor subsequently being interrupted by Father Christmas.

This is a fantastic shot and it actually does what I've always
wanted - display the human element within the Cybermen.
It would have helped had they not been made into magic
microbes though. From Wikia

     Okay, last week's elephant in the room - The Master is now a woman, and calling herself Missy because, according to Moffat, "I couldn't go on calling myself The Master, could I?" Yes, you could have - Master as used by that character refers to both being "The Master of all matter" and to the fact that he claims to have a Master's degree, both of which are gender-neutral titles. Changing their title to "Mistress" adds an unfortunate connotation of subservience, especially when you add in Moffat's standard "crazy-sexy woman" tropes, this time thankfully toned down to match Capaldi's less sexual Doctor. There was also a complete avoidance of any discussion of trans issues which would be raised by a Time-Lord changing gender, with the previously all-male Master instantly adopting feminine traits and mannerisms. You could argue that it's just The Master playing up her new appearance for the fun of it, but some look at that side could have been both interesting and relevant. Despite that though, I absolutely adored Michelle Gomez' performance and thought it was entirely in-character for the Master, a blend of both the Delgado and Simm portrayals, with a hint of Ainley's ham. I really hope her character isn't dead and that we see her again.
     I've said many times here that the Cybermen are my favourite of the show's big monsters - the original form being a cautious tale about a desperate people forced to integrate themselves with their technology to survive, and then not being able to return to the same ways. RTD reinvented them fairly well, with a satire on Capitalism and consumerism, but since the Moffat era any actual lore about them has been thrown out of the window and they've been used as an interchangeable villain whose only thing is that they have no emotions, except when they do, because love and stuff. In their last appearance, I made comment that the Cybermen's new design made them a more boring cross between Iron Man and The Borg. Here the comparison to the latter gets a full-blown execution, with The Borg's converting nano-probes taking the form of "Cyber-pollen" which can somehow revive the dead. That's so obviously Bad Science there's no point in discussing it on that front. One thing the episode did do well with the Cybermen was an angle the show tried before back in Closing Time - one person using emotions to resist conversion. The scene in that episode, in which a father's love for his child is enough to melt steel, felt cheesy - here the mood was more somber and triumphant, and as the plot was more primary character based it didn't disturb the rhythm that Danny's love for Clara is what allowed him to carry on.
     As to that, we had a strong continuation of the character scenes from the previous episode. I may not be particularly enamoured with the direction of these character traits, but the fact that they've been developed continually across the series in a consistent way as opposed to the depending-on-the-writer nature of the previous season is such a breath of fresh air. The Doctor's wrestling with good and evil felt hollow earlier in the season - here he's given actual moral dilemmas, albeit ones coated in weird, OTT plotting, and his decision to put aside his differences with Danny feels more realistic for it. Clara's imitation of The Doctor, and her ultimate decision to "execute" Danny herself, follows the logical conclusion of this season's development of Clara from one of Moffat's paper-thin female characters into a defined woman who, even if she has no provenance, certainly has dimension. The lying scene at the end of the episode felt well-won and really new, and I really enjoyed having that level of genuine emotional complexity in Moffat's work. I just wish that this wasn't the second time we said goodbye to Clara, and that this was the actual ending for her tenure as fulltime companion.

I didn't think that the show could make the connection
between these two work, but in this scene it ends up being
poignant regardless of how you like the characters.
From doctorwhotv

     Cybermen aside, the main weak spot in this episode was the appearance of UNIT. Their inital appearance and quick deduction of The Master's identity felt like a return to strength, but soon the rot started to set in. Osgood, a character from Day of The Doctor who was used to both stand for and parody the show's fans, was both intelligent enough to recognise The Master for who she was but not clever enough not to ignore everything she says. Not to mention the fact that The Master has escaped UNIT custody before, and that was in less secure circumstances than tied loosely to a board. It's times like this that I wish Torchwood would make a reappearance, they knew how to get things done. Oh wow, now I'm thinking about Michelle Gomez' Master in Torchwood. That would be wicked.
     Death In Heaven, while not a cohesively good episode, was still one that I enjoyed very much. At first I thought it was just the sheer joy of seeing a well-executed Master mix with some adequately-executed Cybermen. The episode takes so many aspects from various RTD episodes that it was almost a given that I was going to enjoy it. But when I came back to the series to review it, I realised that there was something organic here, something which was genuine. Moffat writing character drama and for once actually succeeding in doing so without derailing characters, inciting huge retcons or just being an offensive ass. It wasn't perfect, but by god it was progress, and it made me feel something. And to be honest? That makes it more like Doctor Who than the show's been in a long time.

Thank.

NEXT WEEK: I can't believe I'm watching it in January, but then again, I did only see it Last Christmas.

Review: Doctor Who 8.11: Dark Water

The Doctor and Missy witness the latter's plan unfold...
(More on her next time, I promise.)
From The BBC

I was going to write this as a double-review with next week's episode, seeing as the two form the show's first two-parter since Series 6, and the plot and theme elements are quite closely connected. I decided to split it up because Dark Water negates its own premise in a reveal near the cliffhanger, and I wanted to examine the genuinely good sci-fi ideas and character drama that this episode managed to develop without it being bogged down by discussions about the return of certain classic villains. If you ignore that reveal, Dark Water is one of the most intriguing and well-written build-up stories that Moffat's ever produced. Oh, and spoiler warning from the off.
     Clara is in the middle of trying to tell Danny how she feels about him over the phone when he's rather rudely hit by a car and literally sent to the land of the dead, waking up in a bureaucratic afterlife handled by Seb (Chris Addison). Emotionally hollowed, Clara reaches out to The Doctor and tries to blackmail him into changing history, going so far as to try to destroy all of the TARDIS keys should he say no. After The Doctor discovers how far Clara is willing to go, he uses the TARDIS' memory-guidance thing from Listen to try and find an afterlife. This takes the two to 3W industries, a company who claim to have contacted the afterlife that Danny is now in. As Clara contacts Danny on the other side, The Doctor discovers that the operation is in fact a cover-up for the building of a new race of Cybermen, using the captured minds and bodies of the dead. Running the operation? A flirty Time-Lady previously introduced as Missy, who now reveals what she was once called - The Master.
     Okay, so I've mentioned before that I'm not big on the Clara/Danny relationship. It's forced, it's unnecessary and at every step it contains unhealthy elements which in reality would be a cause for concern. This episode seems to satiate people who like the relationship and those who don't, giving Clara a grand act of love but also highlighting the level of mistrust between them in life, and in death. Because of the lack of chemistry, I don't sense love from these two, but rather a friendship between two people who think that the relationship deal is what you have to do to be close to someone - it's a trap I've fallen into myself, and makes a lot more sense than the romance the episode is trying to portray. That in mind, this episode was fab for characterisations - Clara's reliance on deceit and stable elements to simply function, Danny's internal conflict which makes him demand the truth from others and yet hole up the truth behind his actions in Afghanistan, and The Doctor, who recognises both of these things and is powerless to do anything about them except try to help them be together.

Clara tries to talk to Danny across the realms.
From the BBC

     And as for that sci-fi idea, my god is that powerful. As miffed as I was about the idea of a real, planar afterlife in the Doctor Who Universe (sudden afterlife revelations rile me a bit), the idea that after death you continue to experience whatever happens to your corpse is a chilling one, even if the script gives it a little too much buildup. The revelation that this afterlife is in fact a Matrix-style supercomputer holding the consciousnesses of the dead still holds in the fridge horror, but I think it dimishes the spiritual side a little and plays into the rest of those final few minutes, which turn the episode from a slow-building suspenseful drama into Moffat's attempt to ape The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday.
     Dark Water's main flaw was that it comes packaged with a finale that only provincially has anything to do with it, and which is far more bombastic in its aims. Comparatively, it's a much slower and tense story with a great deal to say and a decent way of saying it. The character beats are flawed, true, but they're really errors carried forward and in that context they're better than anything else in Moffat's main plotlines. I may not be very highly invested in Clara and Danny's relationship, but for once in this era I recognise them doing things that people actually do - and that is glorious progress right there. Right on.

Thanks.

NEXT TIME: Dodgy gender politics, a plothole the size of Birmingham and an attempted tribute to Nicholas Courtney that doesn't go anywhere. What else, but Death In Heaven?